NYSE:BDX Becton, Dickinson and Company Q1 2024 Earnings Results & Report $196.11 -2.80 (-1.41%) Closing price 03:59 PM EasternExtended Trading$196.39 +0.28 (+0.14%) As of 07:30 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Massive. Learn more. Becton, Dickinson and Company beat analyst earnings expectations but missed on revenue in its Q1 2024 results, released February 1, 2024. The company reported EPS of $2.68 versus the $2.39 consensus estimate, while revenue of $4.71 billion fell short of the $4.73 billion estimate by $26.46 million. Revenue increased 2.6% year over year. Research:ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast Earnings Announcement Details QuarterQ1 2024Report DateFebruary 1, 2024TimeBefore Market OpensConference Call8:00 AM ET Becton, Dickinson and Company EPS ResultsActual EPS$2.68Consensus EPS $2.39Beat/MissBeat by +$0.29One Year Ago EPS$2.98EPS Beat Rate8 of last 8 quartersBecton, Dickinson and Company Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$4.71 billionExpected Revenue$4.73 billionBeat/MissMissed by -$26.46 millionYoY Revenue Growth+2.60%Upcoming EarningsBecton, Dickinson and Company's Q4 2026 earnings is estimated for Thursday, November 5, 2026, based on past reporting schedules, with a conference call scheduled at 8:00 AM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Q4 2026 Earnings ReportConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)SEC FilingEarnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by Becton, Dickinson and Company Q1 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrFebruary 1, 2024ShareShareShare This ReportLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways BD raised its full-year guidance, now expecting 5.5%–6.25% organic revenue growth and adjusted EPS of $12.82–$13.06, up $0.09 at the midpoint. Q1 adjusted EPS of $2.68 beat expectations on the back of 51.1% gross margin and 20.2% operating margin driven by margin improvement and a discrete tax item. The innovation pipeline advanced with trials and clearances for next-gen PureWick female external catheter, BD MiniDRAW capillary blood collection, and the BD Alliance point-of-care molecular platform. Simplification and BD Excellence operating system initiatives, including Kaizen events and plant consolidations, are on track to reduce footprint by ~20% and support the target of 25% operating margin by FY2025. Q1 growth was impacted by a 150 bps headwind from a tough respiratory compare and a ~5% decline in China revenue, leaving total organic growth at 2.4%. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallBecton, Dickinson and Company Q1 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xTranscript SectionsPresentationParticipantsPresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Hello, and welcome to BD's first fiscal quarter 2024 earnings call. At the request of BD, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay on BD's Investor Relations website, investors.bd.com, or by phone at 800-688-7339 for domestic calls and area code +1-402-220-1347 for international calls. For today's call, all parties have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Greg Rodetis, Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations. Greg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BD00:00:46Good morning, and welcome to BD's earnings call. I'm Greg Rodetis, Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of the BD team, thank you for joining us. This call is being made available via audio webcast at bd.com. Earlier this morning, BD released its results for the first quarter of fiscal 2024. We also posted an earnings presentation that provides additional details on our business, strategy, and performance. The press release and presentation can be accessed on the IR website at investors.bd.com. Leading today's calls are Tom Polen, BD's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, and Chris DelOrefice, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Tom will provide highlights of our performance and the continued execution of our BD 2025 strategy. Chris will then provide additional details on our Q1 financial performance and our updated guidance for fiscal 2024. Greg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BD00:01:50Following the prepared remarks, Tom and Chris will be joined for Q&A by our segment presidents: Mike Garrison, President of the Medical Segment, Dave Hickey, President of the Life Sciences Segment, and Rick Byrd, President of the Interventional Segment. Before we get started, I want to remind you that we'll be making forward-looking statements. I encourage you to read the disclaimer in our earnings release and the disclosures in our SEC filings, which are both available on the Investor Relations website. Unless otherwise specified, all comparisons will be on a year-over-year basis versus the relevant period. Revenue percentage changes are on an FX neutral basis, unless otherwise noted. When we refer to any given period, we are referring to the fiscal period, unless we specifically note it as a calendar period. Greg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BD00:02:43I would also call your attention to the non-GAAP reconciliations included in the appendices of the press release and earnings presentation. With that, I am very pleased to turn it over to Tom. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:02:56Thanks, Greg. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier today, we reported our results for the first quarter. Overall, we executed Q1 as expected. Total revenue growth was largely in line with our expectations, and on the bottom line, adjusted EPS was ahead of our expectations due to good execution on our margin goals through our BD Excellence operating system and the timing of a discrete tax item. Also consistent with our plan, we delivered very strong growth in cash flow that positions us well to deliver another year of growing free cash flow double digits. I want to thank our team of over 70,000 associates for the strong execution, agility, and unrelenting determination to deliver for our customers, patients, and shareholders. These results give us the confidence to increase our FY 2024 guidance. Turning to our BD 2025 strategy. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:03:53During Q1, we continued to execute well against the five actions we outlined at our Investor Day to drive profitable growth and value creation. This includes continuing to advance our innovation pipeline, which supports our durable 5.5%+ targeted revenue growth profile. We remain focused on advancing innovation in high-growth areas, anchored against three irreversible forces we see reshaping healthcare today and over the next decade: connected care, new care settings, and chronic disease. Specifically, in Q1, we made meaningful progress achieving several key R&D milestones for technologies that position BD as key enablers of care shift to new settings. In our PureWick portfolio, which is now the market's leading platform for non-invasive urine management in a billion-dollar market growing double digits, we started our randomized clinical trial pilot for PureWick Female to generate evidence to support future at-home reimbursement. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:04:54Our PureWick program is progressing well, and we remain on track to launch our next generation female external catheter later this fiscal year, which will provide a better patient experience and a more dignified way for women to manage their urinary incontinence. In Q1, we received 510(k) clearance for our new BD MiniDraw Capillary Blood Collection System. Based on a recent study, two-thirds of patients prefer MiniDraw's fingerstick collection in a retail setting over a previous experience with a traditional venous blood draw. Since it does not require a phlebotomist, MiniDraw can expand access to sample collection for several routine blood tests to new settings, such as retail clinics and pharmacies. Lastly, in molecular diagnostics, we initiated a clinical trial enrollment for the BD Eliance point-of-care molecular platform and our first assay, a rapid CT/GC test for in-office testing and treatment. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:05:55BD Eliance enables BD to enter into the high-growth molecular point of care market. We continue to see molecular diagnostics as a strong growth catalyst, as evidenced by double-digit growth this quarter in our BD COR and BD MAX platforms, where we continue to leverage our growing installed base through menu expansion, with more than 20 assays currently available on BD MAX. Both Next Gen PureWick and BD MiniDraw are on track to launch later this fiscal year, and we anticipate our first 510(k) submission for the BD Eliance system and our first assay this fiscal year as well. Regarding Alaris, servicing our customers and bringing all Alaris pumps in the field up to the cleared standard remains our priority. Customer response has been very positive, with strong momentum engaging with customers. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:06:47While it is still early in the process, I'm pleased with our progress, and, as we recently shared, we now believe $200 million is the floor on revenue in fiscal 2024. We are also executing well on our broad simplification strategy to drive margin expansion and a double-digit base EPS CAGR through FY 2025. This includes accelerating adoption of our BD Excellence operating system, which focuses on the application of lean principles to drive excellence everywhere, every day, across our plants and business, and is driving productivity gains across our operations. In FY 2023, we held 18 week-long Kaizen events, and in Q1 FY 2024 alone, we executed as many, a trajectory which will continue through the rest of FY 2024. We've deployed this mindset outside of our factories, driving greater efficiency through the organization at all levels. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:07:50Our BD Excellence operating system is an important new capability we're building to drive a world-class culture of continuous improvement and lean management throughout BD. We also progressed our Project RECODE initiatives, including our network optimization effort to drive plant efficiencies. We have multiple site consolidations, either completed or underway, to reduce our footprint by approximately 20%. The combination of BD Excellence with our RECODE network architecture program is supporting our FY 2024 goals, contributing to our plan for 25% operating margins in FY 2025, and also now providing visibility for continued margin expansion beyond FY 2025. We're also seeing our systematic focus on cash flow continuing to yield results. Through working capital efficiencies and our BD Excellence operating system, driving more efficient CapEx spend, we delivered over $850 million in operating cash flows in Q1. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:08:59This strong execution to start the year positions us well to deliver double-digit growth in free cash flows in FY 2024, and positions us to capitalize on M&A opportunities in higher growth categories and opportunistically return cash to shareholders. Lastly, our teams around the world continue to make meaningful advancements on our ESG strategy. Just last week, we announced a collaboration with the Kenyan government to advance access to critical cancer diagnostics for women in Kenya through self-sampling, furthering our commitment to expanding health equity and access around the world. We see the power of this self-sampling model as applicable across other underserved markets as well as in the U.S. In summary, I'm pleased with the progress we made in Q1 and the solid margin execution, which enables us to raise guidance for fiscal 2024. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:09:58With strong progress of our innovation pipeline and growing momentum from BD Excellence and our simplification programs, we believe we are well positioned to achieve our BD 2025 goals. With that, let me turn it over to Chris to review our financials, guidance, and outlook. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:10:17Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. As Tom noted, we executed well against our performance goals in Q1. Q1 revenue growth was largely as we expected, and I'm pleased to share we exceeded both our margin and earnings goals and delivered strong cash flow that positions us well to support our double-digit free cash flow growth goal. I'll now provide some insight into our revenue performance in the quarter. Additional detail can be found in today's earnings announcement and presentation. Q1 revenue was $4.7 billion, with organic growth of 2.4%. That was driven by high single-digit organic growth in BD Interventional and solid growth in BD Medical, with China market dynamics playing out as expected, partially offset by a decline in BD Life Sciences, which was impacted by the comparison to the prior year respiratory season. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:11:13As expected, China and respiratory were the primary drivers of Q1 revenue growth, underindexing our full-year goal. The respiratory season alone impacted total company growth by about 150 basis points. Regionally, organic growth was driven by the U.S., EMEA, and Latin America, partially offset by the expected decline in China. Total Q1 revenue growth of 1.6% reflects the divestiture of our surgical instruments platform. Turning to the segment performance, BD Medical revenue totaled $2.2 billion in the quarter, growing 2.4%, driven by growth in medication management solutions and pharmaceutical systems. Mid-single digit growth in MMS was led by strong performance in dispensing.... driven by innovations in our BD Pyxis portfolio that are improving nursing workflows and efficiencies. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:12:12In our infusion business, we are pleased with our strong progress, bringing the BD Alaris infusion system back to the market, and continue to expect Alaris to ramp over the course of the year. Infusion also reflects strong demand for IV sets. Performance in pharmacy automation reflects the comparison to an outsized quarter in the prior year and the timing of planned capital installations. Growth of 3.4% in pharmaceutical systems was in line with our expectations and was led by strong double-digit growth in prefilled devices for biologics, and as expected, was partially offset by customer inventory dynamics, including a slowdown in demand for anticoagulants. Growth in medication delivery solutions was about flat and slightly ahead of our expectations. Our vascular access management strategy continues to drive strong performance, particularly in catheter solutions. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:13:11As expected, MDS growth was impacted by market dynamics in China, including volume-based procurement, which continues to play out within our expectations. BD Life Sciences revenue of $1.3 billion declined 2.5%, which reflects a decline in IDS as a result of a tough comparison in the respiratory season, worth nearly 500 basis points. It was partially offset by strong growth in Biosciences. Performance in IDS reflects the tough comparison in respiratory testing that was partially offset by high single-digit growth in our microbiology platforms, and double-digit growth in molecular IVD assays on both our BD MAX and BD COR platforms. Biosciences grew 5.7% as expected, despite a strong comparison in the prior year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:14:03Biosciences performance was driven by strong mid-single digit growth in our research and clinical platforms that reflects double-digit growth in research instruments, driven by strong demand for our recently launched BD FACSDiscover S8 cell sorter and double-digit growth in clinical reagents as we continue to leverage our growing install base of FACSLyric and FACSDuet solutions. BD Interventional revenues totaled $1.2 billion in the quarter, growing 4.7% and 8.4% organic, which excludes the impact of the surgical instruments divestiture. BDI organic growth was led by surgery and UCC. In surgery, double-digit organic growth was led by continued market adoption of our leading Phasix resorbable hernia products in our advanced repair and reconstruction portfolio, and strong demand for our ChloraPrep infection prevention solution. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:15:04High single-digit growth in urology was led by strong double-digit growth in our PureWick chronic incontinence solutions, with continued strong demand in both the acute care and home care settings. Mid-single digit growth in PI was in line with our expectations and reflects growth across the portfolio. It was partially offset by the expected timing of distributor orders. In our peripheral vascular disease platform, we continue to drive market penetration with our Rotarex atherectomy system and our venous portfolio. Performance in our oncology business was driven by growth in biopsy, including strong market acceptance of our recently launched BD Trek powered bone biopsy system. Now, moving to our P&L. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:15:50Adjusted gross margin of 51.1% and adjusted operating margin of 20.2% were ahead of our expectations, due to good execution on our margin improvement goals across our portfolio of simplification initiatives and strong SG&A expense leverage. R&D spend was in line with our expectations. In addition, as we previously shared, a discrete tax item that was contemplated in our full-year tax rate was realized in Q1. As a result of these items, we exceeded our Q1 operating income and our adjusted diluted EPS expectations, resulting in an EPS of $2.68. Regarding our cash and capital allocation, Q1 cash flows from operations totaled over $850 million. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:16:39This reflects continued improvements around working capital, including good management of inventory levels, continued discipline around CapEx investments, and leveraging our fixed asset base as a result of the benefit from our simplification programs and BD Excellence operating system. We remain focused on free cash flow conversion and expect another step improvement in FY 2024. As we execute against our BD 2025 strategy, we also remain well positioned to achieve our long-term cash conversion target of around 90%. Beyond our investments in growth, we returned $775 million in capital to shareholders, including dividends and $500 million in share repurchases. We ended Q1 with a cash balance of $1.2 billion and a net leverage ratio of 2.7x. Moving to our updated guidance for fiscal 2024. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:17:37For your convenience, the detailed assumptions underlying our guidance can also be found in our presentation. Based on our Q1 performance, including the strong momentum in many parts of our business and progression of our margin improvement initiatives, we raised the midpoint of our FY 2024 organic revenue growth guidance and raised our adjusted EPS guidance, increasing the midpoint by $0.09. The increase to adjusted EPS reflects Q1 operational outperformance and a small improvement in FX. As a result, we now expect to deliver organic revenue growth of 5.5%-6.25%, which increases our midpoint to slightly above 5.8%. We now expect adjusted diluted EPS, including the impact of currency, to be in a range of $12.82-$13.06, which reflects about $12.94 at the midpoint. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:18:38Regarding foreign currency, based on current spot rates, for illustrative purposes, currency has improved modestly, and for the full year is now estimated to be a headwind of approximately 25 basis points to total company revenues and approximately 360 basis points to adjusted EPS growth on a full year basis. As you think of phasing over the balance of fiscal 2024, the following are some considerations. First, we continue to expect organic sales growth to be higher than our full year range in the second half, partially driven by the expected ramp in Alaris, along with the easing of prior year comparisons, such as China. Second, our updated guidance reflects an improved margin cadence over the balance of the year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:19:27Specific to Q2, adjusted gross margin is in line with our prior expectation and continues to reflect significant sequential improvement, given the lessening impacts from inflation, prior inventory reductions, and FX. We now expect Q2 adjusted operating margin to expand by 25-50 basis points year-over-year, driven by our continued margin improvement efforts and continued leverage in SG&A. Third, the discrete tax item realized in Q1 was largely a shift from Q2 and results in revised phasing of our full year effective tax rate. Based on this timing dynamic, we currently expect our Q2 tax rate to be nearly 17%. We expect strong operating performance to offset the tax phasing impact, and as a result, there are no changes to our expectations for Q2 adjusted earnings per share. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:20:25Lastly, we remain confident in delivering about 50 basis points of adjusted operating margin improvement for the year. As a reminder, the first half inventory impact is transitory and behind us as we exit Q2. And as FX and inflation moderate at a meaningful rate through the back half, coupled with a continuation of the first half margin improvement we expect to deliver from our strong simplification portfolio, we can naturally achieve our second half margin goals. In summary, based on the strength of our portfolio and new innovation, we have clear line of sight to deliver our FY 2024 revenue guide, which at the midpoint, is above our 5.5%+ target and results in a three-year CAGR of nearly 7% growth. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:21:13I'm pleased with the continued strong execution by our talented organization to start the year, which supported over-delivering on our margin and operating income goals and increasing our earnings outlook. With a strong quarter of cash flow, we remain well positioned to deliver another year of double digit free cash flow growth, which increases our capacity to support additional value-creating opportunities, including M&A. We remain well positioned to continue to deliver against our BD 2025 strategy and financial targets. With that, let's start the Q&A session. Operator, can you assemble our queue? Operator00:21:53At this time, if you have a question, please press star and one. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and two. In order to allow for broad participation, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Lastly, to provide optimal sound quality, please pick up your handset when you ask your question. Thank you. Our first question will come from Rick Wise with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:22:28Good morning, Rick. Rick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Stifel00:22:29Tom, hi, Chris. You've used the word confidence repeatedly, and just picking up on that, heading into the quarter, we knew you were very clear about things like currency and the peso, divestitures, the flu benefit, if you will, time shift. But, you know, the setup and your new guidance clearly says that the rest of the year, we're gonna see accelerating organic growth, second half. I think your language in the slides above full year guide. Help us... Maybe you could talk in a little more detail about the drivers of sales acceleration and the things that are most critical to creating that outlook that you're feeling confident about. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:23:29Yeah, thanks for the question, Rick, and good to connect. So as you said, Q1 played out, you know, as expected. Total revenue growth was largely in line with our expectations. As you said, there were really two factors that we recognized were gonna be playing out in Q1. One was the flu compare, given the large kind of early timing last year. That was about 150 basis points that we knew was gonna happen. And then, volume-based procurement in China. And those two factors played out, actually exactly as we expected. In China, in fact, we were watching that, we saw VoBP stay focused within MDS, which was just our assumption. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:24:06We had really strong growth in BDI within the quarter, double digit, mid-teen growth, high single digit growth in life sciences, and so we saw that play out. China actually did a little bit better than budgeted in Q1, and so we feel good that that's gonna continue to play out for the year. I think, you know, as we also think about the back part of the year, to your question, something else we were looking at as we started and gave guidance to begin 2024 was, of course, Alaris. We're really pleased to have Alaris back with new improvements, our new 510(k). It's a big deal to be back servicing our customers fully. It's a great product and highly unique. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:24:44And so, of course, Q1 was really the first quarter with Alaris relaunched and our team back to proactively upgrading and remediating our base, and we wanted to get feedback and engagement, and it's been quite positive. And I think that's part also, as we look ahead, that confidence in those early engagements and the progress we're making is what's led us to also comment that we see now $200 million as the floor for the year. The other aspects, as you think about the growth drivers that we've been talking about, and we often call out six specific platforms. You saw really great growth in PureWick this quarter. Pharm Systems, we had signaled very clearly the anticoagulant topic that was gonna create a slower compare or slower growth in Q1. We're seeing the underlying business there do really well. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:25:35Biologics grew double digits in the quarter. Flow playing out, strong demand for FACSDiscover, molecular double-digit growth, as you heard in the prepared remarks, peripheral vascular and pharmacy automation. Those trends in the marketplace continue with strong outlooks for those businesses. So again, we saw very clearly the two factors that we knew were gonna impact us in Q1, and they played out as expected. Chris, any other comments to add? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:26:04I would just, you know, sometimes it's easier, just like bigger picture, right? I'm sure you're, you're looking at our back-half-to-go plans, which we are very confident in. To Tom's point, we've expressed confidence in Alaris in establishing a floor now. I think the Alaris dynamic is important. If you, if you look at the back-half-to-go, it's about 7% revenue growth. Last two years, we delivered right around 7%. This year, actually, if you think about it, Alaris is gonna cycle over medical necessity. It's not a significant contributor to growth in the first half, despite seeing very strong progress. But what that does is it adds about a point to growth more in the second half, right? So we see really good momentum there. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:26:45So when you think of this sort of Alaris adjusted, you're at six, and we cycle over the China compare in Q4, which had declined as well. So, I think plans are intact. The strong underlying fundamentals in kind of these six key areas we keep pointing to, like Tom mentioned, on biologics, are well positioned and feel good about the rest of the year. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:27:07Thanks for the question, Rick. Rick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Stifel00:27:08Yeah, and just as a follow-up, I'd ask about the EPS guide. The $0.07, Chris, I think, if I'm calculating correctly, you beat operationally EPS. You've raised $0.09 at the midpoint for the full year. Talk about your confidence in that driving that midpoint EPS raise, you know, again, how margins are, in more detail, or mix or volume, are gonna help you get to those EPS targets. Thank you. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:27:50Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Rick. Yeah, we were definitely pleased with the margin progression and operating income delivery. Q1, it was strong. It exceeded expectations. We basically passed that through to your point. The other thing we did is we actually accelerated margin improvement in Q2 by about 25-50 basis points, so derisked the back half of the year. We did that on a couple of things. Whenever you start the year, you wanna see a couple of things. One, did we call some of these transitory headwinds, like China? We knew we had a transitory item in inventory that hit us in the first quarter. There was 200 basis points. We had outsized FX in the quarter. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:28:38All those played out as expected, and we had stronger delivery on calling inflation dynamics and more importantly, our margin improvement program. So we continue to accelerate those. We've had two years now of consistent track record of delivering against our margin expectations, back to pre-pandemic levels, 400 basis points over two years. If you look at our margin progression throughout the year, basically, with these transitory items behind you, the level of cost improvement we delivered in Q1 alone, with moderating outsized inflation, through the back half of the year, it goes from really, in Q1, we said it was almost 2x what we're calling for the full year in outsized inflation, 100 basis points. It cuts in half in Q2 and then moderates in the back half. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:29:27We just have to keep executing against our margin improvement portfolio, which is really strong. That's what gave us confidence with the Q1 performance, and our ongoing programs to raise for the year, and we're focused on executing against that. Rick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Stifel00:29:42Thanks, Chris. Operator00:29:46We'll take our next question from Travis Steed with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Travis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America00:29:53Hi, thanks for taking the question. I'll take the first question on, on revenue. Just curious if there anything to call out in some of the kind of non-flu areas, Pharm Systems, MMS, if you think kind of growth outlook there is still, still on track with your expectations and, and the decision to, to raise the revenue guidance. Just curious what's giving you the confidence at this stage to, to go ahead and raise that revenue guidance at this point? Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:30:16Yeah, Travis, this is Tom. Thanks for the question. Good morning. So on Pharm Systems, specifically, again, as I mentioned, we saw that play out as expected with the impact of the one customer that we mentioned in anticoagulants and strong underlying growth beyond that, again, double-digit growth in biologics. Our capacity continues to, those investments that we made continue to play out as expected. We have capacity to meet customer needs, and, you know, we're engaging very actively in that space. And as we think about the slight raise on revenue, again, we feel it really Alaris, the floor of $200, as we see now for the year, based on, again, early engagement with customers. We thought that was prudent to do, given our outlook in that space. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:31:01I don't know, Mike, if you have any other comments then? Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:31:05Just to also comment that in addition to the double-digit demand in biologics, that we've been pretty successful in terms of entering, you know, the development agreements for future pipeline of molecules in the space. You know, our innovation portfolio around Hypak and Neopak, and also the wearables portfolio with Libertas and Evolve, that continues to progress really well, and additional developments, development agreement in this area, are occurring. Yeah, we've described the Pharm Systems business as a high single digit grower, you know, going back to Investor Day, and we continued to see that in 2024. That's our expectation, you know, despite any early part of the year headwinds. Travis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America00:31:49Great. And last question, Chris, just on margins in Q1, it was a nice kind of core outperformance on margins in Q1, especially without the revenue upside. Just curious to kind of go through what got better in Q1 on the margin side and confidence and what gets better, and if you think about the 300 basis point step up in margins from Q1 to Q2, just to give some confidence that that 300 basis point step up sequentially is achievable? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:32:16Yeah, thanks, Travis. So first of all, in the quarter, it wasn't one thing. I'd just say execution is kind of the theme here. Organization is hyper-focused, consistent with what we've done. It's predominantly our cost improvement programs. You know, we had some mixed benefit as well, which has been part of our strategy on portfolio as well. So all of that, I would say the headwinds kind of played out as expected, and we over-delivered through good focus, execution on our margin improvement initiatives. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:32:47To your point, the Q1 step up, the step up from Q1 to Q2, about 300 basis points that we've signaled, if you think of it this way, again, we had two, what I would call pretty transitory items in Q1, with the outsized FX, coupled with the inventory reduction and absorption dynamic. Those two items alone, as you head into Q2, are about 30%. So those were 400 basis points. They're only about 30% of that value in Q2. So you pick up momentum there, coupled with the fact that the outsized inflation, which was almost 2x what we called for the year in Q1, it starts moderating significantly, almost in half in Q2, and then it further moderates by the back half of the year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:33:37So really, it's just cycling over those kind of one-time items, outsized inflation, moderating back, and us continuing to deliver what we already delivered in Q1. So we're confident that progression continues. With that, you naturally get the sequential step up that we're driving towards, and again, feel good about our operating margin, which is why we improved our phasing, increased Q2, and feel good about the line of sight we have to the back half of the year. Travis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America00:34:08Super helpful. Thanks, Chris. Operator00:34:13We'll take our next question from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Vijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISI00:34:21Good morning, Tom, and thanks for taking my question. My first one, Tom, if I just look at Q1 organic, 2.4, right? A lot of questions on, look, utilization is strong. Why is this optically 2.4, well below medtech sort of prints we've seen so far. Can you help us bridge? I think you mentioned 150 basis points of restocking. Does that include COVID? I think you mentioned China. What was the China impact in Q1? I think you mentioned some timing elements, customer orders. What was that impact? And Alaris, it looks like it was not a contributor to growth, so maybe just help us draw a bridge between the 2.4 and what it should have been without some of these underlying one-time items. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:35:07Yeah, great question, Vijay. Maybe just those two items that we referenced, you know, from the start of our guide, flu and China. Those two combined, if you take those out, it's about 5%, underlying growth, just excluding those two items. So that, those are quite significant. If you look at procedure volumes, et cetera, you're seeing that flow through in the base business where those two items aren't. So as an example, if you look in Interventional, you'll see that very strong growth in surgery, right? Double-digit growth, which is getting the benefit of procedure volume. You're seeing in UCC, you know, 9% growth there as an example, you know, solid in NPI, a little bit of inventory timing there. But we're seeing those factors play out. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:35:52Again, I'd concentrate on those two topics, which again, played out as we expected, the large flu compare, just given the early timing last year in China, underlying was about five. Chris, any other thing? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:36:07Yeah. No, just I mean, on Alaris, Alaris played out as expected, actually. Again, what we've highlighted is it was gonna be a journey as you think of the natural progression of engaging with customers, and the natural kind of life cycle of then placement, revenue recognition, et cetera. We're actually very pleased with our progress there. And as a matter of fact, right, we, we declared that $200 million is more of a floor. That was part of what gave us confidence to increase the low end of, the revenue guide. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:36:38And so we're continuing to focus on executing there and that was as expected. On the flip side, what it does is, in the back half of the year, it gives you a almost basically a full point of growth tailwind that will help. Which, so when you look at the back half, think of that, it'll kind of moderate the expectation that you're seeing around feeling like, that growth is outsized versus the front half of the year. It's as expected with the ramp we were expecting on Alaris. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:37:04Yep. So turn it to Mike here. I think it's obviously, this is the first quarter that we've relaunched Alaris, and so the focus is first on engaging customers, getting agreements in place for remediation and upgrades, and, and that those are the key metrics that we look at in the first quarter of launch, because that's what's indicating how the revenue is gonna evolve in the back half of the year, and that's what we, right, are feeling good about. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:37:26Right. Just to remind that last year we had, you know, the certificate of medical necessity, that's how we were shipping. We're not doing that now, so it becomes more of like a step over to, you know, get to there and then, growth on top of that. So that's, that's what we're seeing in, in first quarter. So it's actually, you know, starting from ground zero in terms of the selling process and ramping it up. I actually feel really good about that. I feel really pleased with the way our manufacturing ramp-up has gone, and that scale-up is going quite well, so, you know, we're able to supply product, you know, to our customers. I think the customer response, you know, they're recognizing that, you know, Alaris is almost like a different system. It's, it's a different category in a way. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:38:10It's, you know, the power of one with all the infusion modalities as a single system, the most advanced interoperability in the category, you know, 750 live sites, you know, order of magnitude more than anyone else. You know, so it's, it's almost being recognized a little differently, that way. So that's good. And we've sort of exceeded... We've set certain expectations. We've exceeded those, relative to the return to market in terms of upgrading the fleet in the field. So it's, it's early, but I think the way things have progressed, that's what-- those are the sort of the elements that led us to build confidence, to say that we think 200 is the floor. Vijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISI00:38:48That, that's helpful. And Chris, maybe one quick one for you. The margins still imply a 300 basis points step up in back half versus your 2Q levels. Can you just talk, I think inflation was part of it, but just maybe a similar bridge on margins from the 2023 to, you know, 2026 in back half. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:39:12Yeah, again, you know, it's, it's basically a continuation of Q2. When you move out of Q2, both FX, the inventory dynamic goes completely away, which is almost 75 basis points still in Q2. So right off the bat, you pick that up as you move through Q2. That's probably the biggest item. FX continues to moderate. We have reasonable signals on FX, obviously, can continue to move, but that moderates down. The other thing is, outsized inflation moves from about 100 basis points, which is our full year average in Q2. That further moderates down significantly. And then again, if you just continue the, the cost improvement and margin improvement initiatives we already executed in Q1 throughout the year, it gets you to where we, we need to be from a margin standpoint. Vijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISI00:40:02Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:40:05Thanks, Vijay, for the question. Operator00:40:08We'll take our next question from Larry Biegelsen with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Larry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo00:40:16Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Hey, Mike, you know, why would medical growth in fiscal 2024 be in line with the corporate average, given the tailwinds in MMS and Pharm Systems? You know, you just said you expect Pharm Systems to grow high single digits in 2024. So what are the expectations for MMS and MDS this year? Last year, medical, you know, was 9%, was above the corporate average. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:40:41Yeah, so, you know, for... I'll talk first about, you know, MDS. You know, the business is actually showing really good momentum underlying, which is masked a little bit by the impact of VoBP in China. So the VoBP is a headwind for the year. You know, it's playing out as we expected and, you know, built into our plan. But we're seeing, you know, strong momentum in the U.S., strong momentum, you know, in catheters and, you know, and somewhat, you know, driven by some of the new recent product launches that we've had. You know, SiteRite 9, Nexiva near-port, PIVO Pro, you know, these advancements are working out in the field and being very attractive to customers as we advance the once the hospital stay vision. We're also watching injection systems and hypodermic. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:41:32We're aware of some of the recent recalls, agency action in this area, and we've ramped our capacity, prepared to serve if market needs arise in the U.S. So that's sort of, you know, MDS. You know, from an MMS perspective, the way that I'm sort of seeing it and thinking about it, is infusion sort of returning to be a, you know, contributor to growth versus maybe flat to a drag, with return of Alaris. And then also, we're really excited for, you know, very soon, our upcoming market release, of the ex-US infusion system, BD Nexus. Our dispensing business continues to perform very well. It's got solid growth, both in the quarter, in hospital and alternate site. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:42:16Our MedBank acquisition grew double digits in the quarter and, you know, continues to expand our presence in non-acute settings, so I feel good about that. Pharmacy automation, that proposition continues to resonate really well, for both Rowa and Parata. You know, as we noted previously and in the presentation, this quarter last year was actually Parata's, you know, strong Q4 finish for their fiscal year, so it created a bit of a tough compare. This was expected and, you know, our timing ramp of installs is weighted more towards the back half. So those are sort of the things that, you know, give me confidence around, you know, MDS and, MMS. Larry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo00:42:54... A couple. And Tom, you know, China was down 5% in this quarter, in Q1. Talk about what you're seeing there and your confidence. I think in the past, you said you expect China to be flat to up low single digits this year. Thanks for taking the question. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:43:09Yep. Thanks, Larry. Well, that, that expectation remains unchanged. China played out essentially exactly as we expected in the quarter, was a little bit favorable to budget. What we saw and what we expected was VoBP, as Mike described, specifically within MDS, which is where it's remained. We didn't see it expand to other areas at all. We're not seeing that. It's, our view is, as we had projected. And we also expected to see strong growth in BDI, which we've had over the last several years. We saw that play out in the quarter, mid-teens growth in BDI in Q1, and we saw solid growth, you know, very high single digits, on the cusp of double-digit growth in Life Sciences in China. And so that base business in China is continuing to do well. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:43:54We'll. You know, we saw VoBP start in the back half of last year, and so again, that's gonna become a tailwind for us as we think about a compare in China as we go over that. So thanks for the question. Larry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo00:44:06Thank you. Thank you. Operator00:44:10We'll take our next question from Robbie Marcus with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Robbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan00:44:17Oh, great. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to ask, I know we're on fiscal 2024 here, but wanted to look out to 2025, and, you know, based on operating margin guidance, it implies about 100 basis points expansion next year to get to your, your long-range plan target. You know, so I'm sure the answer is pretty similar to the 2024, but how do we think about the implied about 100 basis points next year and your confidence in that? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:44:45Yeah, Robbie, thanks for the question. Actually, at JPMorgan, as you know, we outlined a strong plan outlining all of our margin improvement initiatives. I think gross margin is the next stage of accelerated focus for us, and we already have a great pipeline of margin improvement initiatives there through Project RECODE, right? We actually already completed our 20% goal of SKU rationalization. We're actually gonna go further there. The network architecture, Tom highlighted in our prepared remarks, the strong progress there with initiatives underway that reduced our network by 20%. As a matter of fact, next year, the network architecture value we get out of that actually doubles going into 2025, so you're gonna really start seeing the benefits of that. BD Excellence is another one. We're getting great traction this year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:45:38It's part of the momentum we have in this year on margin that will continue into next year. You also have the Alaris dynamic. As that fully ramps up and scales, we'll get margin leverage there. So all those things, coupled with the continued strong growth profile of being able to consistently do five, 5+, which we've, we've been well above, gives us strong confidence in 2025 and the 100 basis points. As a matter of fact, as we exit this year, doing everything we did, we really should be well-positioned to carry that kind of momentum into next year. It's premature to kinda make a formal commitment and manage all the puts and takes, but certainly high confidence in the 2025 and great momentum there. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:46:21Yeah, maybe, Robbie, and good morning. Just to add to Chris's good comments there. I think another way just to think about it is, as we launched BD 2025 in 2022, it was a four-year roadmap ahead, right? And so the end of 2024 will be 75% of the way through BD 2025. As you think about the margin number that we've set out as our guide for FY 2024, that's 80% of the way to our margin goal, right? So from a timing perspective, 75% of the way through BD 2025, 80% of our margin goal, we're clearly on track, slightly ahead, and we're seeing really good momentum in our programs as evidenced this quarter. I think you've heard us talk about BD Excellence. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:47:04Obviously, as we started BD 2025, right, our focus was: Let's get Alaris back, number one, take those learnings, apply them across the company to make sure we were building capabilities. Second was optimize our portfolio for growth, spin and back up. Obviously, we sold V. Mueller. We drove tuck-in M&A that's driving accretive growth. We rebalanced our R&D into high-growth spaces, and we built our portfolio of simplification programs, starting with RECODE, which are on track, and you're seeing those play out. But along the way, and starting last year, we began to develop capabilities for BD Excellence, right? And it's our operating model - operating system to drive a whole new scale of lean capabilities across the company. And last year, we had thousands of associates across the company engaged in BD Excellence. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:47:53You know, this year, we're really pressing the pedal on that program now, as we've made progress on those first three areas that I mentioned. And so, as we said in the prepared remarks, if you think about the Kaizens that we did all of last year through BD Excellence, we did just as many in Q1 of this year, just completed. And that's gonna continue to scale as we go through the year. And so we see really good momentum there. It's giving us visibility not only on our 25 margin goal, but we also indicated it's giving us visibility beyond 25 to continue, you know, margin progression as we look ahead. So thanks for the question, Rob. Robbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan00:48:31Great, really helpful. Just a quick follow-up. You know, China VoBP is a headwind you've talked about. How do we think about where that's hitting each of the business units and the size, just so we can, you know, kind of try and back out that headwind in our models? Thanks. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:48:51Yeah, Robbie, it's almost all within MDS, specifically. Essentially, it is all within MDS. That's where we see it, so. Robbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan00:49:00Great. Operator00:49:04We'll take our next question from Patrick Wood with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Patrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan Stanley00:49:11Amazing. Thank you. Two quick ones. I guess the first is, pharmacy automation, completely get the timing of their year-end and that side of things. But just curious, you know, how you think things on orders, whether it's like order mix and kind of the outlook for the rest of the year based on, you know, what you're hearing from the customers right now from the order book? Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:49:33Yeah, I'll take that. So for pharmacy automation, you know, we feel really good on that. Like I mentioned, the tough compare, 'cause, you know, they were incentivized. Parata and the team there was incentivized to finish their Q4 strong, so they had already lined up installations last year for their finishing. They had a record for them quarter last year. So it's a little bit of a tough compare. Order book looks good, especially in the sort of retail long-term care channels. You know, and we continue to leverage our BD sales force to talk to our acute care customers about starting to transform the pharmacy in the acute care with our IDN customers. So we see that, you know, continuing to grow throughout the year. You know, overall, you know, it's been a... Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:50:23You know, we've described it as sort of a, you know, low double-digit grower, and, you know, that's, that's sort of what we have projected and expected for the, for the rest of the year. Patrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan Stanley00:50:33Brilliant. And then maybe quickly, one either for you, Tom, or Dave. You know, Eliance, you know, molecular point of care is obviously a very fast-growing but very competitive market. Just curious how you're seeing that product fit in, the interplay between, like, high and low plex. You know, just curious how you're gonna fit into that market. Thanks. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:50:50Turn that to Dave. Thanks for the question, Patrick. Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:50:53Thanks, Patrick, and for picking up on Eliance. And, you know, if you just take a step back, if you look at the molecular dynamics overall, you know, we have said that this is one of the sort of six growth drivers for, for BD, right? So, you know, we continue. And if you look at the divergence of the market, there's a, there's a real thesis playing out in terms of, of the way customer evolution will happen, right? So you think about the centralization of high-volume molecular cervical cancer testing, we satisfy that with BD COR. You think about BD MAX in the acute setting, you know, and we're seeing good, as, as you heard Tom say in the prepared remarks, you know, good double-digit growth there. Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:51:31But clearly, there is decentralization of relevant testing to the point of care and these new care settings. And obviously, Eliance will be our entry there in this sort of high, you know, single-digit market. If I think about it specifically on Eliance, the way to think about it is, you know, what is different about it? You know, our goal here will be that we would anticipate it to be cleared, giving critical results, you know, within less than 15 minutes, that can be used in a wide variety of settings. You know, what is the unmet needs that it will actually address? Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:52:07Deliberately, we've actually selected CT/GC as our first assay, because when you look at all the CDC and NIH reports, there is an increasing burden of STI, so it will increase access to testing. You know, think about it now, if, you know, if you're one of those unfortunate patients and you're in a clinic, you could get that result diagnosed and a potential treatment administered while you're in a clinic, in a decentralized setting. Deliberately, we think CT/GC is really the right assay to lead with. Then, of course, because of the capabilities and these less than 15-minute results, we see a strong roadmap behind it, you know, focused on respiratory assays, other STI assays, vaginitis, et cetera. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:50Yeah, the test and treat concept with 15 minutes or less- Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:52:53Exactly. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:54- time to result. Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:52:54In the clinic while you're there. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:56Core component. Patrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan Stanley00:52:57Love it. Thank you. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:59Thank you. Operator00:53:02We'll take our next question from Patrick Miksic with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:53:10Good morning, Patrick. Matt MiksicManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays00:53:13Hi. Hi. This is Matt. It's okay. So, just a couple follow-ups on some of the factors that, you know, played through Q1. You talked about last quarter, and I have one follow-up. One was, obviously, you know, a lot of detail and questions that came after around the peso and around wages. If you could just sort of, you know... It sounds like you're most of the way through that entering Q2, and just maybe a quick update on that. And then the anticoagulation business in China. I think that was something that you were hoping was going to find that capacity would find a new home, perhaps in this quarter, next quarter, and an update on that. And then just one follow-up, if I could. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:53:59Yeah, it's Chris. Thanks, Matt, for the question. Appreciate it. Yeah, the when we started the year, and we talked about kind of the inflationary dynamics and supply chain, one of the biggest ones that we were still seeing play out through the year was wage dynamics in our supply chain organization. You know, that continues, but it's playing out as expected, so nothing new there. Regarding FX, good news is moderately favorable. We passed through both the revenue and earnings on that, so stable at this point and moving in the right direction. We'll continue to watch it and, you know, I think we're happy with the operational performance and passing through both the $0.07 operational beat and the $0.02 of FX. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:54:43Maybe, Mike, for Pharm Systems. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:54:45Yeah, for Pharm Systems, the capacity that's freed up for anticoagulant, there is, you know, some of it where the teams are, you know, hunting for home for that, and there's been some success there. But I think we also just took a strategic decision to look at the anticoagulant market overall, and it returning to more of a post-COVID Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:55:06... normalization there and, are converting lines, over to biologics to help, you know, accelerate our ability to have capacity to serve in that area, and that's playing out pretty well. So we've been able to, you know, there's been some increased demand that's come in for biologics that, you know, we'll be able to recognize later in the year, and then, you know, we'll be able to serve that, you know, in part because of, these line conversions. So it's been a little bit of both, relative to that anticoagulant dynamic. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:55:36Thanks for the question, Matt. Matt MiksicManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays00:55:36Super helpful. You bet. And just one follow-up, if I could, on cash flows and sort of M&A. And I remember, you know, last quarter, you know, Chris, you emphasized a bunch of times, and part of that impact was, you know, bringing up excess inventory, having an impact on margins. You're through that, you know, you made nice progress on leverage. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what that looks like for the rest of the year in terms of M&A outlook and the kinds of things, maybe the size of things that you might be—we might expect in the next, you know, six, 12, 18 months? Thanks. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:56:16Yeah, thanks for the question, Matt. I appreciate you recognize, we've definitely been extremely focused on cash flow performance. Was really pleased with the quarter. It was really strong cash flow, strong double digits, gives us confidence for the year. It played out in all the areas that we've been trying to leverage. One, we're getting more efficient with our CapEx expenditures. Part of this is from a simplification efforts and BD Excellence that we're driving through our plants. In addition, you saw improvement in inventory, and you saw improvement in our collection cycle as well. So all really positive things. We sit at, basically at our net leverage target, and so we're well positioned and consistently will remain disciplined as you think of M&A. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:57:02But as you can imagine, we, we always have, you know, an active portfolio of things that we look at. We're gonna remain disciplined. It's been a nice contributor organically to, to growth. Last year, you know, delivered nearly 40 basis points. Certainly something that we're going to continue to focus on as part of our, our growth strategy, and more to come on that. Tom, I don't know if you want to add. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:57:25That was extremely well said. It remains an active part of our growth strategy. I think as we've shared in the past, right, we've been focused on accretive growth, accretive margin acquisitions, which has been our track record, and we've executed well against those over the last several years. I think we've clearly built a good track record of that. So we've got a strong, healthy M&A, you know, active pipeline, focused again in strategic areas where the market has significant structural or macro tailwinds to drive sustainable growth and where we can bring meaningful additional value, either through our channel, our global footprint, our manufacturing prowess. Again, we remain very disciplined on strong returns, accretive growth. We haven't been doing dilutive deals. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:58:08That remains, right, our emphasis as we're focused on delivering on our 25% operating margin goals. You know, but we're gonna continue to focus on that, and we have a strong pipeline. Thanks for the question. Operator00:58:25At this time, I'll return the call to Tom for any closing comments. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:58:33Thank you all for joining our call. As you heard, we had good momentum to start the year, and we look forward to sharing our progress towards delivering our BD 2025 goals and increased outlook for FY 2024 on our next call in May. Thank you very much, and have a great rest of the day. Operator00:58:51Thank you. This does conclude today's program. On behalf of BD, thank you for joining today. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.Read moreParticipantsAnalystsGreg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BDTom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BDChris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BDRick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at StifelTravis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of AmericaMike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BDVijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISILarry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells FargoRobbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorganPatrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan StanleyDave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BDMatt MiksicManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at BarclaysPowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) Becton, Dickinson and Company Q1 2024 Earnings FAQ Did Becton, Dickinson and Company beat earnings estimates for Q1 2024? Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) reported earnings of $2.68 per share for Q1 2024, beating the consensus estimate of $2.39. The report was announced on Thursday, February 1, 2024. What was Becton, Dickinson and Company's revenue for Q1 2024? Becton, Dickinson and Company reported revenue of $4.71 billion for Q1 2024, against a consensus estimate of $4.73 billion. Where can I read Becton, Dickinson and Company's Q1 2024 earnings call transcript? The full Becton, Dickinson and Company Q1 2024 earnings conference call transcript is published on this page, including prepared remarks and the analyst Q&A session, along with the participants who spoke on the call. When is Becton, Dickinson and Company's next earnings date? Becton, Dickinson and Company's next earnings date is estimated for Thursday, November 5, 2026. MarketBeat tracks confirmed and estimated earnings dates for Becton, Dickinson and Company on the company's earnings history page. Becton, Dickinson and Company Earnings HeadlinesFirst Eagle U.S. Value Fund Q3 2026 Portfolio ReviewOctober 26 at 1:00 PM | seekingalpha.comBecton, Dickinson and Company's Q4 2026 earnings: What to expectOctober 26 at 12:36 PM | msn.comMy next big call (under $1)17,556% on KDA. 3,900% on PRE. 2,650% on OCEAN. Every single one of these was recommended to our community before the big move happened. Now, I'm making my next big call. It's a coin under $1.00 that most investors have never heard of. But the world's largest bank is already building on it. It has a deflationary burn mechanism tied directly to institutional usage. With Bitcoin well off its highs and fear still hanging over the market, this is the exact environment where my biggest winners have been found.October 26 at 1:00 AM | Crypto 101 Media (Ad)Becton, Dickinson and Company (BDX) - What Are Researchers Thinking About This Stock?October 25 at 3:47 AM | americanbankingnews.comBecton Dickinson (BDX) Stock Trades Below Fair Value After A 40% RunOctober 23 at 3:17 PM | finance.yahoo.comIs Becton Dickinson (BDX) Fully Priced As Execution Improves Before Earnings?October 23 at 5:16 AM | finance.yahoo.comSee More Becton, Dickinson and Company Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Becton, Dickinson and Company? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Becton, Dickinson and Company and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About Becton, Dickinson and CompanyBecton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX), commonly known as BD, is a global medical technology company that develops, manufactures and sells a broad range of products used by healthcare providers, clinical laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and patients. Its offerings support medication delivery, diagnostics, infection prevention, surgical care and other clinical procedures. BD’s products include needles, syringes, injection devices, intravenous administration systems, medication-management technologies, specimen-collection products, diagnostic systems and laboratory instruments. The company also provides solutions for flow cytometry, microbiology, biosurgery, vascular care, urology and oncology, along with technologies designed to improve healthcare worker and patient safety. Founded in 1897, BD has expanded from a medical supply business into a diversified medical technology company serving customers in the United States and international markets. Its operations are organized around medical products and solutions, life sciences and interventional businesses, with products distributed through healthcare systems, laboratories and other channels worldwide. BD is headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Tom Polen serves as the company’s chairman, president and chief executive officer.View Becton, Dickinson and Company ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Latest Articles Anthropic's IPO Filing Reveals a Massive Opportunity for AI Infrastructure GiantsBristol Myers Squibb's Cancer Breakthrough Could Have Implications Beyond Its Own StockBuy the Dip: 4 Stocks the Market Marked Down Too Far Ahead of Big CatalystsComfort Systems Earnings: AI Slowdown or More Growth Ahead?MarketBeat Week in Review – 10/19 - 10/23Amex Stock Slides on Job Cuts, But the Real Story Is MacroBloom Energy Just Reported—Its Biggest Order Is Still Waiting on a Pipeline Upcoming Earnings Hilton Worldwide (10/27/2026)Royal Caribbean Cruises (10/27/2026)CocaCola (10/27/2026)Baker Hughes (10/27/2026)ONEOK (10/27/2026)Robinhood Markets (10/27/2026)HSBC (10/27/2026)S&P Global (10/27/2026)Visa (10/27/2026)HCA Healthcare (10/27/2026) Unlock superior investment research and tools. Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools and reports. Get MarketBeat All Access MarketBeat All Access Features Best-in-Class Portfolio Monitoring Get personalized stock ideas. Compare portfolio to indices. Check stock news, ratings, SEC filings, and more. Stock Ideas and Recommendations See daily stock ideas from top analysts. Receive short-term trading ideas from MarketBeat. Identify trending stocks on social media. Advanced Stock Screeners and Research Tools Use our seven stock screeners to find suitable stocks. Stay informed with MarketBeat's real-time news. Export data to Excel for personal analysis. Sign in to your free account to enjoy these benefits In-depth profiles and analysis for 20,000 public companies. Real-time analyst ratings, insider transactions, earnings data, and more. Our daily ratings and market update email newsletter. Sign in to your free account to enjoy all that MarketBeat has to offer. Sign In Create Account Your Email Address: Email Address Required Your Password: Password Required Log In Email Me a Login Link or Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google Forgot your password? Your Email Address: Please enter your email address. Please enter a valid email address Choose a Password: Please enter your password. Your password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least 1 number, 1 letter, and 1 special character. Create My Account (Free) or Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Google By creating a free account, you agree to our terms of service. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
PresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Hello, and welcome to BD's first fiscal quarter 2024 earnings call. At the request of BD, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay on BD's Investor Relations website, investors.bd.com, or by phone at 800-688-7339 for domestic calls and area code +1-402-220-1347 for international calls. For today's call, all parties have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Greg Rodetis, Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations. Greg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BD00:00:46Good morning, and welcome to BD's earnings call. I'm Greg Rodetis, Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of the BD team, thank you for joining us. This call is being made available via audio webcast at bd.com. Earlier this morning, BD released its results for the first quarter of fiscal 2024. We also posted an earnings presentation that provides additional details on our business, strategy, and performance. The press release and presentation can be accessed on the IR website at investors.bd.com. Leading today's calls are Tom Polen, BD's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, and Chris DelOrefice, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Tom will provide highlights of our performance and the continued execution of our BD 2025 strategy. Chris will then provide additional details on our Q1 financial performance and our updated guidance for fiscal 2024. Greg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BD00:01:50Following the prepared remarks, Tom and Chris will be joined for Q&A by our segment presidents: Mike Garrison, President of the Medical Segment, Dave Hickey, President of the Life Sciences Segment, and Rick Byrd, President of the Interventional Segment. Before we get started, I want to remind you that we'll be making forward-looking statements. I encourage you to read the disclaimer in our earnings release and the disclosures in our SEC filings, which are both available on the Investor Relations website. Unless otherwise specified, all comparisons will be on a year-over-year basis versus the relevant period. Revenue percentage changes are on an FX neutral basis, unless otherwise noted. When we refer to any given period, we are referring to the fiscal period, unless we specifically note it as a calendar period. Greg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BD00:02:43I would also call your attention to the non-GAAP reconciliations included in the appendices of the press release and earnings presentation. With that, I am very pleased to turn it over to Tom. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:02:56Thanks, Greg. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier today, we reported our results for the first quarter. Overall, we executed Q1 as expected. Total revenue growth was largely in line with our expectations, and on the bottom line, adjusted EPS was ahead of our expectations due to good execution on our margin goals through our BD Excellence operating system and the timing of a discrete tax item. Also consistent with our plan, we delivered very strong growth in cash flow that positions us well to deliver another year of growing free cash flow double digits. I want to thank our team of over 70,000 associates for the strong execution, agility, and unrelenting determination to deliver for our customers, patients, and shareholders. These results give us the confidence to increase our FY 2024 guidance. Turning to our BD 2025 strategy. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:03:53During Q1, we continued to execute well against the five actions we outlined at our Investor Day to drive profitable growth and value creation. This includes continuing to advance our innovation pipeline, which supports our durable 5.5%+ targeted revenue growth profile. We remain focused on advancing innovation in high-growth areas, anchored against three irreversible forces we see reshaping healthcare today and over the next decade: connected care, new care settings, and chronic disease. Specifically, in Q1, we made meaningful progress achieving several key R&D milestones for technologies that position BD as key enablers of care shift to new settings. In our PureWick portfolio, which is now the market's leading platform for non-invasive urine management in a billion-dollar market growing double digits, we started our randomized clinical trial pilot for PureWick Female to generate evidence to support future at-home reimbursement. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:04:54Our PureWick program is progressing well, and we remain on track to launch our next generation female external catheter later this fiscal year, which will provide a better patient experience and a more dignified way for women to manage their urinary incontinence. In Q1, we received 510(k) clearance for our new BD MiniDraw Capillary Blood Collection System. Based on a recent study, two-thirds of patients prefer MiniDraw's fingerstick collection in a retail setting over a previous experience with a traditional venous blood draw. Since it does not require a phlebotomist, MiniDraw can expand access to sample collection for several routine blood tests to new settings, such as retail clinics and pharmacies. Lastly, in molecular diagnostics, we initiated a clinical trial enrollment for the BD Eliance point-of-care molecular platform and our first assay, a rapid CT/GC test for in-office testing and treatment. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:05:55BD Eliance enables BD to enter into the high-growth molecular point of care market. We continue to see molecular diagnostics as a strong growth catalyst, as evidenced by double-digit growth this quarter in our BD COR and BD MAX platforms, where we continue to leverage our growing installed base through menu expansion, with more than 20 assays currently available on BD MAX. Both Next Gen PureWick and BD MiniDraw are on track to launch later this fiscal year, and we anticipate our first 510(k) submission for the BD Eliance system and our first assay this fiscal year as well. Regarding Alaris, servicing our customers and bringing all Alaris pumps in the field up to the cleared standard remains our priority. Customer response has been very positive, with strong momentum engaging with customers. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:06:47While it is still early in the process, I'm pleased with our progress, and, as we recently shared, we now believe $200 million is the floor on revenue in fiscal 2024. We are also executing well on our broad simplification strategy to drive margin expansion and a double-digit base EPS CAGR through FY 2025. This includes accelerating adoption of our BD Excellence operating system, which focuses on the application of lean principles to drive excellence everywhere, every day, across our plants and business, and is driving productivity gains across our operations. In FY 2023, we held 18 week-long Kaizen events, and in Q1 FY 2024 alone, we executed as many, a trajectory which will continue through the rest of FY 2024. We've deployed this mindset outside of our factories, driving greater efficiency through the organization at all levels. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:07:50Our BD Excellence operating system is an important new capability we're building to drive a world-class culture of continuous improvement and lean management throughout BD. We also progressed our Project RECODE initiatives, including our network optimization effort to drive plant efficiencies. We have multiple site consolidations, either completed or underway, to reduce our footprint by approximately 20%. The combination of BD Excellence with our RECODE network architecture program is supporting our FY 2024 goals, contributing to our plan for 25% operating margins in FY 2025, and also now providing visibility for continued margin expansion beyond FY 2025. We're also seeing our systematic focus on cash flow continuing to yield results. Through working capital efficiencies and our BD Excellence operating system, driving more efficient CapEx spend, we delivered over $850 million in operating cash flows in Q1. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:08:59This strong execution to start the year positions us well to deliver double-digit growth in free cash flows in FY 2024, and positions us to capitalize on M&A opportunities in higher growth categories and opportunistically return cash to shareholders. Lastly, our teams around the world continue to make meaningful advancements on our ESG strategy. Just last week, we announced a collaboration with the Kenyan government to advance access to critical cancer diagnostics for women in Kenya through self-sampling, furthering our commitment to expanding health equity and access around the world. We see the power of this self-sampling model as applicable across other underserved markets as well as in the U.S. In summary, I'm pleased with the progress we made in Q1 and the solid margin execution, which enables us to raise guidance for fiscal 2024. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:09:58With strong progress of our innovation pipeline and growing momentum from BD Excellence and our simplification programs, we believe we are well positioned to achieve our BD 2025 goals. With that, let me turn it over to Chris to review our financials, guidance, and outlook. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:10:17Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. As Tom noted, we executed well against our performance goals in Q1. Q1 revenue growth was largely as we expected, and I'm pleased to share we exceeded both our margin and earnings goals and delivered strong cash flow that positions us well to support our double-digit free cash flow growth goal. I'll now provide some insight into our revenue performance in the quarter. Additional detail can be found in today's earnings announcement and presentation. Q1 revenue was $4.7 billion, with organic growth of 2.4%. That was driven by high single-digit organic growth in BD Interventional and solid growth in BD Medical, with China market dynamics playing out as expected, partially offset by a decline in BD Life Sciences, which was impacted by the comparison to the prior year respiratory season. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:11:13As expected, China and respiratory were the primary drivers of Q1 revenue growth, underindexing our full-year goal. The respiratory season alone impacted total company growth by about 150 basis points. Regionally, organic growth was driven by the U.S., EMEA, and Latin America, partially offset by the expected decline in China. Total Q1 revenue growth of 1.6% reflects the divestiture of our surgical instruments platform. Turning to the segment performance, BD Medical revenue totaled $2.2 billion in the quarter, growing 2.4%, driven by growth in medication management solutions and pharmaceutical systems. Mid-single digit growth in MMS was led by strong performance in dispensing.... driven by innovations in our BD Pyxis portfolio that are improving nursing workflows and efficiencies. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:12:12In our infusion business, we are pleased with our strong progress, bringing the BD Alaris infusion system back to the market, and continue to expect Alaris to ramp over the course of the year. Infusion also reflects strong demand for IV sets. Performance in pharmacy automation reflects the comparison to an outsized quarter in the prior year and the timing of planned capital installations. Growth of 3.4% in pharmaceutical systems was in line with our expectations and was led by strong double-digit growth in prefilled devices for biologics, and as expected, was partially offset by customer inventory dynamics, including a slowdown in demand for anticoagulants. Growth in medication delivery solutions was about flat and slightly ahead of our expectations. Our vascular access management strategy continues to drive strong performance, particularly in catheter solutions. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:13:11As expected, MDS growth was impacted by market dynamics in China, including volume-based procurement, which continues to play out within our expectations. BD Life Sciences revenue of $1.3 billion declined 2.5%, which reflects a decline in IDS as a result of a tough comparison in the respiratory season, worth nearly 500 basis points. It was partially offset by strong growth in Biosciences. Performance in IDS reflects the tough comparison in respiratory testing that was partially offset by high single-digit growth in our microbiology platforms, and double-digit growth in molecular IVD assays on both our BD MAX and BD COR platforms. Biosciences grew 5.7% as expected, despite a strong comparison in the prior year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:14:03Biosciences performance was driven by strong mid-single digit growth in our research and clinical platforms that reflects double-digit growth in research instruments, driven by strong demand for our recently launched BD FACSDiscover S8 cell sorter and double-digit growth in clinical reagents as we continue to leverage our growing install base of FACSLyric and FACSDuet solutions. BD Interventional revenues totaled $1.2 billion in the quarter, growing 4.7% and 8.4% organic, which excludes the impact of the surgical instruments divestiture. BDI organic growth was led by surgery and UCC. In surgery, double-digit organic growth was led by continued market adoption of our leading Phasix resorbable hernia products in our advanced repair and reconstruction portfolio, and strong demand for our ChloraPrep infection prevention solution. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:15:04High single-digit growth in urology was led by strong double-digit growth in our PureWick chronic incontinence solutions, with continued strong demand in both the acute care and home care settings. Mid-single digit growth in PI was in line with our expectations and reflects growth across the portfolio. It was partially offset by the expected timing of distributor orders. In our peripheral vascular disease platform, we continue to drive market penetration with our Rotarex atherectomy system and our venous portfolio. Performance in our oncology business was driven by growth in biopsy, including strong market acceptance of our recently launched BD Trek powered bone biopsy system. Now, moving to our P&L. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:15:50Adjusted gross margin of 51.1% and adjusted operating margin of 20.2% were ahead of our expectations, due to good execution on our margin improvement goals across our portfolio of simplification initiatives and strong SG&A expense leverage. R&D spend was in line with our expectations. In addition, as we previously shared, a discrete tax item that was contemplated in our full-year tax rate was realized in Q1. As a result of these items, we exceeded our Q1 operating income and our adjusted diluted EPS expectations, resulting in an EPS of $2.68. Regarding our cash and capital allocation, Q1 cash flows from operations totaled over $850 million. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:16:39This reflects continued improvements around working capital, including good management of inventory levels, continued discipline around CapEx investments, and leveraging our fixed asset base as a result of the benefit from our simplification programs and BD Excellence operating system. We remain focused on free cash flow conversion and expect another step improvement in FY 2024. As we execute against our BD 2025 strategy, we also remain well positioned to achieve our long-term cash conversion target of around 90%. Beyond our investments in growth, we returned $775 million in capital to shareholders, including dividends and $500 million in share repurchases. We ended Q1 with a cash balance of $1.2 billion and a net leverage ratio of 2.7x. Moving to our updated guidance for fiscal 2024. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:17:37For your convenience, the detailed assumptions underlying our guidance can also be found in our presentation. Based on our Q1 performance, including the strong momentum in many parts of our business and progression of our margin improvement initiatives, we raised the midpoint of our FY 2024 organic revenue growth guidance and raised our adjusted EPS guidance, increasing the midpoint by $0.09. The increase to adjusted EPS reflects Q1 operational outperformance and a small improvement in FX. As a result, we now expect to deliver organic revenue growth of 5.5%-6.25%, which increases our midpoint to slightly above 5.8%. We now expect adjusted diluted EPS, including the impact of currency, to be in a range of $12.82-$13.06, which reflects about $12.94 at the midpoint. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:18:38Regarding foreign currency, based on current spot rates, for illustrative purposes, currency has improved modestly, and for the full year is now estimated to be a headwind of approximately 25 basis points to total company revenues and approximately 360 basis points to adjusted EPS growth on a full year basis. As you think of phasing over the balance of fiscal 2024, the following are some considerations. First, we continue to expect organic sales growth to be higher than our full year range in the second half, partially driven by the expected ramp in Alaris, along with the easing of prior year comparisons, such as China. Second, our updated guidance reflects an improved margin cadence over the balance of the year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:19:27Specific to Q2, adjusted gross margin is in line with our prior expectation and continues to reflect significant sequential improvement, given the lessening impacts from inflation, prior inventory reductions, and FX. We now expect Q2 adjusted operating margin to expand by 25-50 basis points year-over-year, driven by our continued margin improvement efforts and continued leverage in SG&A. Third, the discrete tax item realized in Q1 was largely a shift from Q2 and results in revised phasing of our full year effective tax rate. Based on this timing dynamic, we currently expect our Q2 tax rate to be nearly 17%. We expect strong operating performance to offset the tax phasing impact, and as a result, there are no changes to our expectations for Q2 adjusted earnings per share. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:20:25Lastly, we remain confident in delivering about 50 basis points of adjusted operating margin improvement for the year. As a reminder, the first half inventory impact is transitory and behind us as we exit Q2. And as FX and inflation moderate at a meaningful rate through the back half, coupled with a continuation of the first half margin improvement we expect to deliver from our strong simplification portfolio, we can naturally achieve our second half margin goals. In summary, based on the strength of our portfolio and new innovation, we have clear line of sight to deliver our FY 2024 revenue guide, which at the midpoint, is above our 5.5%+ target and results in a three-year CAGR of nearly 7% growth. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:21:13I'm pleased with the continued strong execution by our talented organization to start the year, which supported over-delivering on our margin and operating income goals and increasing our earnings outlook. With a strong quarter of cash flow, we remain well positioned to deliver another year of double digit free cash flow growth, which increases our capacity to support additional value-creating opportunities, including M&A. We remain well positioned to continue to deliver against our BD 2025 strategy and financial targets. With that, let's start the Q&A session. Operator, can you assemble our queue? Operator00:21:53At this time, if you have a question, please press star and one. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and two. In order to allow for broad participation, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Lastly, to provide optimal sound quality, please pick up your handset when you ask your question. Thank you. Our first question will come from Rick Wise with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:22:28Good morning, Rick. Rick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Stifel00:22:29Tom, hi, Chris. You've used the word confidence repeatedly, and just picking up on that, heading into the quarter, we knew you were very clear about things like currency and the peso, divestitures, the flu benefit, if you will, time shift. But, you know, the setup and your new guidance clearly says that the rest of the year, we're gonna see accelerating organic growth, second half. I think your language in the slides above full year guide. Help us... Maybe you could talk in a little more detail about the drivers of sales acceleration and the things that are most critical to creating that outlook that you're feeling confident about. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:23:29Yeah, thanks for the question, Rick, and good to connect. So as you said, Q1 played out, you know, as expected. Total revenue growth was largely in line with our expectations. As you said, there were really two factors that we recognized were gonna be playing out in Q1. One was the flu compare, given the large kind of early timing last year. That was about 150 basis points that we knew was gonna happen. And then, volume-based procurement in China. And those two factors played out, actually exactly as we expected. In China, in fact, we were watching that, we saw VoBP stay focused within MDS, which was just our assumption. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:24:06We had really strong growth in BDI within the quarter, double digit, mid-teen growth, high single digit growth in life sciences, and so we saw that play out. China actually did a little bit better than budgeted in Q1, and so we feel good that that's gonna continue to play out for the year. I think, you know, as we also think about the back part of the year, to your question, something else we were looking at as we started and gave guidance to begin 2024 was, of course, Alaris. We're really pleased to have Alaris back with new improvements, our new 510(k). It's a big deal to be back servicing our customers fully. It's a great product and highly unique. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:24:44And so, of course, Q1 was really the first quarter with Alaris relaunched and our team back to proactively upgrading and remediating our base, and we wanted to get feedback and engagement, and it's been quite positive. And I think that's part also, as we look ahead, that confidence in those early engagements and the progress we're making is what's led us to also comment that we see now $200 million as the floor for the year. The other aspects, as you think about the growth drivers that we've been talking about, and we often call out six specific platforms. You saw really great growth in PureWick this quarter. Pharm Systems, we had signaled very clearly the anticoagulant topic that was gonna create a slower compare or slower growth in Q1. We're seeing the underlying business there do really well. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:25:35Biologics grew double digits in the quarter. Flow playing out, strong demand for FACSDiscover, molecular double-digit growth, as you heard in the prepared remarks, peripheral vascular and pharmacy automation. Those trends in the marketplace continue with strong outlooks for those businesses. So again, we saw very clearly the two factors that we knew were gonna impact us in Q1, and they played out as expected. Chris, any other comments to add? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:26:04I would just, you know, sometimes it's easier, just like bigger picture, right? I'm sure you're, you're looking at our back-half-to-go plans, which we are very confident in. To Tom's point, we've expressed confidence in Alaris in establishing a floor now. I think the Alaris dynamic is important. If you, if you look at the back-half-to-go, it's about 7% revenue growth. Last two years, we delivered right around 7%. This year, actually, if you think about it, Alaris is gonna cycle over medical necessity. It's not a significant contributor to growth in the first half, despite seeing very strong progress. But what that does is it adds about a point to growth more in the second half, right? So we see really good momentum there. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:26:45So when you think of this sort of Alaris adjusted, you're at six, and we cycle over the China compare in Q4, which had declined as well. So, I think plans are intact. The strong underlying fundamentals in kind of these six key areas we keep pointing to, like Tom mentioned, on biologics, are well positioned and feel good about the rest of the year. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:27:07Thanks for the question, Rick. Rick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Stifel00:27:08Yeah, and just as a follow-up, I'd ask about the EPS guide. The $0.07, Chris, I think, if I'm calculating correctly, you beat operationally EPS. You've raised $0.09 at the midpoint for the full year. Talk about your confidence in that driving that midpoint EPS raise, you know, again, how margins are, in more detail, or mix or volume, are gonna help you get to those EPS targets. Thank you. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:27:50Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Rick. Yeah, we were definitely pleased with the margin progression and operating income delivery. Q1, it was strong. It exceeded expectations. We basically passed that through to your point. The other thing we did is we actually accelerated margin improvement in Q2 by about 25-50 basis points, so derisked the back half of the year. We did that on a couple of things. Whenever you start the year, you wanna see a couple of things. One, did we call some of these transitory headwinds, like China? We knew we had a transitory item in inventory that hit us in the first quarter. There was 200 basis points. We had outsized FX in the quarter. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:28:38All those played out as expected, and we had stronger delivery on calling inflation dynamics and more importantly, our margin improvement program. So we continue to accelerate those. We've had two years now of consistent track record of delivering against our margin expectations, back to pre-pandemic levels, 400 basis points over two years. If you look at our margin progression throughout the year, basically, with these transitory items behind you, the level of cost improvement we delivered in Q1 alone, with moderating outsized inflation, through the back half of the year, it goes from really, in Q1, we said it was almost 2x what we're calling for the full year in outsized inflation, 100 basis points. It cuts in half in Q2 and then moderates in the back half. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:29:27We just have to keep executing against our margin improvement portfolio, which is really strong. That's what gave us confidence with the Q1 performance, and our ongoing programs to raise for the year, and we're focused on executing against that. Rick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Stifel00:29:42Thanks, Chris. Operator00:29:46We'll take our next question from Travis Steed with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Travis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America00:29:53Hi, thanks for taking the question. I'll take the first question on, on revenue. Just curious if there anything to call out in some of the kind of non-flu areas, Pharm Systems, MMS, if you think kind of growth outlook there is still, still on track with your expectations and, and the decision to, to raise the revenue guidance. Just curious what's giving you the confidence at this stage to, to go ahead and raise that revenue guidance at this point? Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:30:16Yeah, Travis, this is Tom. Thanks for the question. Good morning. So on Pharm Systems, specifically, again, as I mentioned, we saw that play out as expected with the impact of the one customer that we mentioned in anticoagulants and strong underlying growth beyond that, again, double-digit growth in biologics. Our capacity continues to, those investments that we made continue to play out as expected. We have capacity to meet customer needs, and, you know, we're engaging very actively in that space. And as we think about the slight raise on revenue, again, we feel it really Alaris, the floor of $200, as we see now for the year, based on, again, early engagement with customers. We thought that was prudent to do, given our outlook in that space. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:31:01I don't know, Mike, if you have any other comments then? Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:31:05Just to also comment that in addition to the double-digit demand in biologics, that we've been pretty successful in terms of entering, you know, the development agreements for future pipeline of molecules in the space. You know, our innovation portfolio around Hypak and Neopak, and also the wearables portfolio with Libertas and Evolve, that continues to progress really well, and additional developments, development agreement in this area, are occurring. Yeah, we've described the Pharm Systems business as a high single digit grower, you know, going back to Investor Day, and we continued to see that in 2024. That's our expectation, you know, despite any early part of the year headwinds. Travis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America00:31:49Great. And last question, Chris, just on margins in Q1, it was a nice kind of core outperformance on margins in Q1, especially without the revenue upside. Just curious to kind of go through what got better in Q1 on the margin side and confidence and what gets better, and if you think about the 300 basis point step up in margins from Q1 to Q2, just to give some confidence that that 300 basis point step up sequentially is achievable? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:32:16Yeah, thanks, Travis. So first of all, in the quarter, it wasn't one thing. I'd just say execution is kind of the theme here. Organization is hyper-focused, consistent with what we've done. It's predominantly our cost improvement programs. You know, we had some mixed benefit as well, which has been part of our strategy on portfolio as well. So all of that, I would say the headwinds kind of played out as expected, and we over-delivered through good focus, execution on our margin improvement initiatives. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:32:47To your point, the Q1 step up, the step up from Q1 to Q2, about 300 basis points that we've signaled, if you think of it this way, again, we had two, what I would call pretty transitory items in Q1, with the outsized FX, coupled with the inventory reduction and absorption dynamic. Those two items alone, as you head into Q2, are about 30%. So those were 400 basis points. They're only about 30% of that value in Q2. So you pick up momentum there, coupled with the fact that the outsized inflation, which was almost 2x what we called for the year in Q1, it starts moderating significantly, almost in half in Q2, and then it further moderates by the back half of the year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:33:37So really, it's just cycling over those kind of one-time items, outsized inflation, moderating back, and us continuing to deliver what we already delivered in Q1. So we're confident that progression continues. With that, you naturally get the sequential step up that we're driving towards, and again, feel good about our operating margin, which is why we improved our phasing, increased Q2, and feel good about the line of sight we have to the back half of the year. Travis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America00:34:08Super helpful. Thanks, Chris. Operator00:34:13We'll take our next question from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Vijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISI00:34:21Good morning, Tom, and thanks for taking my question. My first one, Tom, if I just look at Q1 organic, 2.4, right? A lot of questions on, look, utilization is strong. Why is this optically 2.4, well below medtech sort of prints we've seen so far. Can you help us bridge? I think you mentioned 150 basis points of restocking. Does that include COVID? I think you mentioned China. What was the China impact in Q1? I think you mentioned some timing elements, customer orders. What was that impact? And Alaris, it looks like it was not a contributor to growth, so maybe just help us draw a bridge between the 2.4 and what it should have been without some of these underlying one-time items. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:35:07Yeah, great question, Vijay. Maybe just those two items that we referenced, you know, from the start of our guide, flu and China. Those two combined, if you take those out, it's about 5%, underlying growth, just excluding those two items. So that, those are quite significant. If you look at procedure volumes, et cetera, you're seeing that flow through in the base business where those two items aren't. So as an example, if you look in Interventional, you'll see that very strong growth in surgery, right? Double-digit growth, which is getting the benefit of procedure volume. You're seeing in UCC, you know, 9% growth there as an example, you know, solid in NPI, a little bit of inventory timing there. But we're seeing those factors play out. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:35:52Again, I'd concentrate on those two topics, which again, played out as we expected, the large flu compare, just given the early timing last year in China, underlying was about five. Chris, any other thing? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:36:07Yeah. No, just I mean, on Alaris, Alaris played out as expected, actually. Again, what we've highlighted is it was gonna be a journey as you think of the natural progression of engaging with customers, and the natural kind of life cycle of then placement, revenue recognition, et cetera. We're actually very pleased with our progress there. And as a matter of fact, right, we, we declared that $200 million is more of a floor. That was part of what gave us confidence to increase the low end of, the revenue guide. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:36:38And so we're continuing to focus on executing there and that was as expected. On the flip side, what it does is, in the back half of the year, it gives you a almost basically a full point of growth tailwind that will help. Which, so when you look at the back half, think of that, it'll kind of moderate the expectation that you're seeing around feeling like, that growth is outsized versus the front half of the year. It's as expected with the ramp we were expecting on Alaris. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:37:04Yep. So turn it to Mike here. I think it's obviously, this is the first quarter that we've relaunched Alaris, and so the focus is first on engaging customers, getting agreements in place for remediation and upgrades, and, and that those are the key metrics that we look at in the first quarter of launch, because that's what's indicating how the revenue is gonna evolve in the back half of the year, and that's what we, right, are feeling good about. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:37:26Right. Just to remind that last year we had, you know, the certificate of medical necessity, that's how we were shipping. We're not doing that now, so it becomes more of like a step over to, you know, get to there and then, growth on top of that. So that's, that's what we're seeing in, in first quarter. So it's actually, you know, starting from ground zero in terms of the selling process and ramping it up. I actually feel really good about that. I feel really pleased with the way our manufacturing ramp-up has gone, and that scale-up is going quite well, so, you know, we're able to supply product, you know, to our customers. I think the customer response, you know, they're recognizing that, you know, Alaris is almost like a different system. It's, it's a different category in a way. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:38:10It's, you know, the power of one with all the infusion modalities as a single system, the most advanced interoperability in the category, you know, 750 live sites, you know, order of magnitude more than anyone else. You know, so it's, it's almost being recognized a little differently, that way. So that's good. And we've sort of exceeded... We've set certain expectations. We've exceeded those, relative to the return to market in terms of upgrading the fleet in the field. So it's, it's early, but I think the way things have progressed, that's what-- those are the sort of the elements that led us to build confidence, to say that we think 200 is the floor. Vijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISI00:38:48That, that's helpful. And Chris, maybe one quick one for you. The margins still imply a 300 basis points step up in back half versus your 2Q levels. Can you just talk, I think inflation was part of it, but just maybe a similar bridge on margins from the 2023 to, you know, 2026 in back half. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:39:12Yeah, again, you know, it's, it's basically a continuation of Q2. When you move out of Q2, both FX, the inventory dynamic goes completely away, which is almost 75 basis points still in Q2. So right off the bat, you pick that up as you move through Q2. That's probably the biggest item. FX continues to moderate. We have reasonable signals on FX, obviously, can continue to move, but that moderates down. The other thing is, outsized inflation moves from about 100 basis points, which is our full year average in Q2. That further moderates down significantly. And then again, if you just continue the, the cost improvement and margin improvement initiatives we already executed in Q1 throughout the year, it gets you to where we, we need to be from a margin standpoint. Vijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISI00:40:02Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:40:05Thanks, Vijay, for the question. Operator00:40:08We'll take our next question from Larry Biegelsen with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Larry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo00:40:16Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Hey, Mike, you know, why would medical growth in fiscal 2024 be in line with the corporate average, given the tailwinds in MMS and Pharm Systems? You know, you just said you expect Pharm Systems to grow high single digits in 2024. So what are the expectations for MMS and MDS this year? Last year, medical, you know, was 9%, was above the corporate average. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:40:41Yeah, so, you know, for... I'll talk first about, you know, MDS. You know, the business is actually showing really good momentum underlying, which is masked a little bit by the impact of VoBP in China. So the VoBP is a headwind for the year. You know, it's playing out as we expected and, you know, built into our plan. But we're seeing, you know, strong momentum in the U.S., strong momentum, you know, in catheters and, you know, and somewhat, you know, driven by some of the new recent product launches that we've had. You know, SiteRite 9, Nexiva near-port, PIVO Pro, you know, these advancements are working out in the field and being very attractive to customers as we advance the once the hospital stay vision. We're also watching injection systems and hypodermic. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:41:32We're aware of some of the recent recalls, agency action in this area, and we've ramped our capacity, prepared to serve if market needs arise in the U.S. So that's sort of, you know, MDS. You know, from an MMS perspective, the way that I'm sort of seeing it and thinking about it, is infusion sort of returning to be a, you know, contributor to growth versus maybe flat to a drag, with return of Alaris. And then also, we're really excited for, you know, very soon, our upcoming market release, of the ex-US infusion system, BD Nexus. Our dispensing business continues to perform very well. It's got solid growth, both in the quarter, in hospital and alternate site. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:42:16Our MedBank acquisition grew double digits in the quarter and, you know, continues to expand our presence in non-acute settings, so I feel good about that. Pharmacy automation, that proposition continues to resonate really well, for both Rowa and Parata. You know, as we noted previously and in the presentation, this quarter last year was actually Parata's, you know, strong Q4 finish for their fiscal year, so it created a bit of a tough compare. This was expected and, you know, our timing ramp of installs is weighted more towards the back half. So those are sort of the things that, you know, give me confidence around, you know, MDS and, MMS. Larry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo00:42:54... A couple. And Tom, you know, China was down 5% in this quarter, in Q1. Talk about what you're seeing there and your confidence. I think in the past, you said you expect China to be flat to up low single digits this year. Thanks for taking the question. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:43:09Yep. Thanks, Larry. Well, that, that expectation remains unchanged. China played out essentially exactly as we expected in the quarter, was a little bit favorable to budget. What we saw and what we expected was VoBP, as Mike described, specifically within MDS, which is where it's remained. We didn't see it expand to other areas at all. We're not seeing that. It's, our view is, as we had projected. And we also expected to see strong growth in BDI, which we've had over the last several years. We saw that play out in the quarter, mid-teens growth in BDI in Q1, and we saw solid growth, you know, very high single digits, on the cusp of double-digit growth in Life Sciences in China. And so that base business in China is continuing to do well. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:43:54We'll. You know, we saw VoBP start in the back half of last year, and so again, that's gonna become a tailwind for us as we think about a compare in China as we go over that. So thanks for the question. Larry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells Fargo00:44:06Thank you. Thank you. Operator00:44:10We'll take our next question from Robbie Marcus with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Robbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan00:44:17Oh, great. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to ask, I know we're on fiscal 2024 here, but wanted to look out to 2025, and, you know, based on operating margin guidance, it implies about 100 basis points expansion next year to get to your, your long-range plan target. You know, so I'm sure the answer is pretty similar to the 2024, but how do we think about the implied about 100 basis points next year and your confidence in that? Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:44:45Yeah, Robbie, thanks for the question. Actually, at JPMorgan, as you know, we outlined a strong plan outlining all of our margin improvement initiatives. I think gross margin is the next stage of accelerated focus for us, and we already have a great pipeline of margin improvement initiatives there through Project RECODE, right? We actually already completed our 20% goal of SKU rationalization. We're actually gonna go further there. The network architecture, Tom highlighted in our prepared remarks, the strong progress there with initiatives underway that reduced our network by 20%. As a matter of fact, next year, the network architecture value we get out of that actually doubles going into 2025, so you're gonna really start seeing the benefits of that. BD Excellence is another one. We're getting great traction this year. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:45:38It's part of the momentum we have in this year on margin that will continue into next year. You also have the Alaris dynamic. As that fully ramps up and scales, we'll get margin leverage there. So all those things, coupled with the continued strong growth profile of being able to consistently do five, 5+, which we've, we've been well above, gives us strong confidence in 2025 and the 100 basis points. As a matter of fact, as we exit this year, doing everything we did, we really should be well-positioned to carry that kind of momentum into next year. It's premature to kinda make a formal commitment and manage all the puts and takes, but certainly high confidence in the 2025 and great momentum there. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:46:21Yeah, maybe, Robbie, and good morning. Just to add to Chris's good comments there. I think another way just to think about it is, as we launched BD 2025 in 2022, it was a four-year roadmap ahead, right? And so the end of 2024 will be 75% of the way through BD 2025. As you think about the margin number that we've set out as our guide for FY 2024, that's 80% of the way to our margin goal, right? So from a timing perspective, 75% of the way through BD 2025, 80% of our margin goal, we're clearly on track, slightly ahead, and we're seeing really good momentum in our programs as evidenced this quarter. I think you've heard us talk about BD Excellence. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:47:04Obviously, as we started BD 2025, right, our focus was: Let's get Alaris back, number one, take those learnings, apply them across the company to make sure we were building capabilities. Second was optimize our portfolio for growth, spin and back up. Obviously, we sold V. Mueller. We drove tuck-in M&A that's driving accretive growth. We rebalanced our R&D into high-growth spaces, and we built our portfolio of simplification programs, starting with RECODE, which are on track, and you're seeing those play out. But along the way, and starting last year, we began to develop capabilities for BD Excellence, right? And it's our operating model - operating system to drive a whole new scale of lean capabilities across the company. And last year, we had thousands of associates across the company engaged in BD Excellence. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:47:53You know, this year, we're really pressing the pedal on that program now, as we've made progress on those first three areas that I mentioned. And so, as we said in the prepared remarks, if you think about the Kaizens that we did all of last year through BD Excellence, we did just as many in Q1 of this year, just completed. And that's gonna continue to scale as we go through the year. And so we see really good momentum there. It's giving us visibility not only on our 25 margin goal, but we also indicated it's giving us visibility beyond 25 to continue, you know, margin progression as we look ahead. So thanks for the question, Rob. Robbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan00:48:31Great, really helpful. Just a quick follow-up. You know, China VoBP is a headwind you've talked about. How do we think about where that's hitting each of the business units and the size, just so we can, you know, kind of try and back out that headwind in our models? Thanks. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:48:51Yeah, Robbie, it's almost all within MDS, specifically. Essentially, it is all within MDS. That's where we see it, so. Robbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorgan00:49:00Great. Operator00:49:04We'll take our next question from Patrick Wood with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Patrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan Stanley00:49:11Amazing. Thank you. Two quick ones. I guess the first is, pharmacy automation, completely get the timing of their year-end and that side of things. But just curious, you know, how you think things on orders, whether it's like order mix and kind of the outlook for the rest of the year based on, you know, what you're hearing from the customers right now from the order book? Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:49:33Yeah, I'll take that. So for pharmacy automation, you know, we feel really good on that. Like I mentioned, the tough compare, 'cause, you know, they were incentivized. Parata and the team there was incentivized to finish their Q4 strong, so they had already lined up installations last year for their finishing. They had a record for them quarter last year. So it's a little bit of a tough compare. Order book looks good, especially in the sort of retail long-term care channels. You know, and we continue to leverage our BD sales force to talk to our acute care customers about starting to transform the pharmacy in the acute care with our IDN customers. So we see that, you know, continuing to grow throughout the year. You know, overall, you know, it's been a... Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:50:23You know, we've described it as sort of a, you know, low double-digit grower, and, you know, that's, that's sort of what we have projected and expected for the, for the rest of the year. Patrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan Stanley00:50:33Brilliant. And then maybe quickly, one either for you, Tom, or Dave. You know, Eliance, you know, molecular point of care is obviously a very fast-growing but very competitive market. Just curious how you're seeing that product fit in, the interplay between, like, high and low plex. You know, just curious how you're gonna fit into that market. Thanks. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:50:50Turn that to Dave. Thanks for the question, Patrick. Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:50:53Thanks, Patrick, and for picking up on Eliance. And, you know, if you just take a step back, if you look at the molecular dynamics overall, you know, we have said that this is one of the sort of six growth drivers for, for BD, right? So, you know, we continue. And if you look at the divergence of the market, there's a, there's a real thesis playing out in terms of, of the way customer evolution will happen, right? So you think about the centralization of high-volume molecular cervical cancer testing, we satisfy that with BD COR. You think about BD MAX in the acute setting, you know, and we're seeing good, as, as you heard Tom say in the prepared remarks, you know, good double-digit growth there. Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:51:31But clearly, there is decentralization of relevant testing to the point of care and these new care settings. And obviously, Eliance will be our entry there in this sort of high, you know, single-digit market. If I think about it specifically on Eliance, the way to think about it is, you know, what is different about it? You know, our goal here will be that we would anticipate it to be cleared, giving critical results, you know, within less than 15 minutes, that can be used in a wide variety of settings. You know, what is the unmet needs that it will actually address? Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:52:07Deliberately, we've actually selected CT/GC as our first assay, because when you look at all the CDC and NIH reports, there is an increasing burden of STI, so it will increase access to testing. You know, think about it now, if, you know, if you're one of those unfortunate patients and you're in a clinic, you could get that result diagnosed and a potential treatment administered while you're in a clinic, in a decentralized setting. Deliberately, we think CT/GC is really the right assay to lead with. Then, of course, because of the capabilities and these less than 15-minute results, we see a strong roadmap behind it, you know, focused on respiratory assays, other STI assays, vaginitis, et cetera. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:50Yeah, the test and treat concept with 15 minutes or less- Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:52:53Exactly. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:54- time to result. Dave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BD00:52:54In the clinic while you're there. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:56Core component. Patrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan Stanley00:52:57Love it. Thank you. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:52:59Thank you. Operator00:53:02We'll take our next question from Patrick Miksic with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:53:10Good morning, Patrick. Matt MiksicManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays00:53:13Hi. Hi. This is Matt. It's okay. So, just a couple follow-ups on some of the factors that, you know, played through Q1. You talked about last quarter, and I have one follow-up. One was, obviously, you know, a lot of detail and questions that came after around the peso and around wages. If you could just sort of, you know... It sounds like you're most of the way through that entering Q2, and just maybe a quick update on that. And then the anticoagulation business in China. I think that was something that you were hoping was going to find that capacity would find a new home, perhaps in this quarter, next quarter, and an update on that. And then just one follow-up, if I could. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:53:59Yeah, it's Chris. Thanks, Matt, for the question. Appreciate it. Yeah, the when we started the year, and we talked about kind of the inflationary dynamics and supply chain, one of the biggest ones that we were still seeing play out through the year was wage dynamics in our supply chain organization. You know, that continues, but it's playing out as expected, so nothing new there. Regarding FX, good news is moderately favorable. We passed through both the revenue and earnings on that, so stable at this point and moving in the right direction. We'll continue to watch it and, you know, I think we're happy with the operational performance and passing through both the $0.07 operational beat and the $0.02 of FX. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:54:43Maybe, Mike, for Pharm Systems. Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:54:45Yeah, for Pharm Systems, the capacity that's freed up for anticoagulant, there is, you know, some of it where the teams are, you know, hunting for home for that, and there's been some success there. But I think we also just took a strategic decision to look at the anticoagulant market overall, and it returning to more of a post-COVID Mike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BD00:55:06... normalization there and, are converting lines, over to biologics to help, you know, accelerate our ability to have capacity to serve in that area, and that's playing out pretty well. So we've been able to, you know, there's been some increased demand that's come in for biologics that, you know, we'll be able to recognize later in the year, and then, you know, we'll be able to serve that, you know, in part because of, these line conversions. So it's been a little bit of both, relative to that anticoagulant dynamic. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:55:36Thanks for the question, Matt. Matt MiksicManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays00:55:36Super helpful. You bet. And just one follow-up, if I could, on cash flows and sort of M&A. And I remember, you know, last quarter, you know, Chris, you emphasized a bunch of times, and part of that impact was, you know, bringing up excess inventory, having an impact on margins. You're through that, you know, you made nice progress on leverage. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what that looks like for the rest of the year in terms of M&A outlook and the kinds of things, maybe the size of things that you might be—we might expect in the next, you know, six, 12, 18 months? Thanks. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:56:16Yeah, thanks for the question, Matt. I appreciate you recognize, we've definitely been extremely focused on cash flow performance. Was really pleased with the quarter. It was really strong cash flow, strong double digits, gives us confidence for the year. It played out in all the areas that we've been trying to leverage. One, we're getting more efficient with our CapEx expenditures. Part of this is from a simplification efforts and BD Excellence that we're driving through our plants. In addition, you saw improvement in inventory, and you saw improvement in our collection cycle as well. So all really positive things. We sit at, basically at our net leverage target, and so we're well positioned and consistently will remain disciplined as you think of M&A. Chris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BD00:57:02But as you can imagine, we, we always have, you know, an active portfolio of things that we look at. We're gonna remain disciplined. It's been a nice contributor organically to, to growth. Last year, you know, delivered nearly 40 basis points. Certainly something that we're going to continue to focus on as part of our, our growth strategy, and more to come on that. Tom, I don't know if you want to add. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:57:25That was extremely well said. It remains an active part of our growth strategy. I think as we've shared in the past, right, we've been focused on accretive growth, accretive margin acquisitions, which has been our track record, and we've executed well against those over the last several years. I think we've clearly built a good track record of that. So we've got a strong, healthy M&A, you know, active pipeline, focused again in strategic areas where the market has significant structural or macro tailwinds to drive sustainable growth and where we can bring meaningful additional value, either through our channel, our global footprint, our manufacturing prowess. Again, we remain very disciplined on strong returns, accretive growth. We haven't been doing dilutive deals. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:58:08That remains, right, our emphasis as we're focused on delivering on our 25% operating margin goals. You know, but we're gonna continue to focus on that, and we have a strong pipeline. Thanks for the question. Operator00:58:25At this time, I'll return the call to Tom for any closing comments. Tom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BD00:58:33Thank you all for joining our call. As you heard, we had good momentum to start the year, and we look forward to sharing our progress towards delivering our BD 2025 goals and increased outlook for FY 2024 on our next call in May. Thank you very much, and have a great rest of the day. Operator00:58:51Thank you. This does conclude today's program. On behalf of BD, thank you for joining today. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.Read moreParticipantsAnalystsGreg RodetisSVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at BDTom PolenChairman, CEO, and President at BDChris DelOreficeEVP and CFO at BDRick WiseManaging Director and Senior Equity Analyst at StifelTravis SteedManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of AmericaMike GarrisonPresident of the Medical Segment at BDVijay KumarSenior Managing Director at Evercore ISILarry BiegelsenManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wells FargoRobbie MarcusManaging Director and Senior Analyst at JPMorganPatrick WoodManaging Director and Lead Analyst in the Equity Research Division at Morgan StanleyDave HickeyPresident of the Life Sciences Segment at BDMatt MiksicManaging Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at BarclaysPowered by