Avanos Medical, Inc. (NYSE:AVNS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rick Wise: Got you. Just last for me. Joe, I heard your M&A comments that you were disappointed that something hadn’t happened by now and as I think back to chatting here with you and Michael in mid-November at the Stifel Healthcare Conference, you had said you would hoped, you thought the potential was there to see two potential bolt-ons sometime in the first half. How are you thinking about those time lines today? Is that the track on your mind or should I imagine, given the timing of the Investor Day that, no, it’s been pushed out longer. Just what’s going on out there and just where are you now? Thank you.

Joe Woody: Yeah. Yeah. So very robust pipeline, it’s even built further since we last were together, I think, at the New York in November. We do think that we will have a transaction in place prior to the Investor Day in the near-term. And I do think that we will likely have a second bolt-on in the second half of the year, so maybe not too in the first half of the year. We are orienting a lot of our focus on the Digestive Health area, but we still have a couple of Pain items that we want to do, again, being more focused in orthopedic pain and recovery than we have been in the past. So we feel really good about this. We obviously have a lot on with the transformation. So we are carefully also looking at phasing and not wanting any missteps in execution, because a lot of this, as you can imagine, requires a lot of work.

But that said, we are going to be in an excellent position for M&A and I think we have demonstrated a good track record. We have plenty of powder at one time to go out and conduct these and they are going to enhance that growth profile as well, especially given that to the extent we did two and that’s going to give us an even better outlook for 2024 and parts of the end of the year.

Rick Wise: Thank you very much.

Operator: The next question comes from Matthew Mishan with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Matthew Mishan: Hi. Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Michael.

Joe Woody: Good morning.

Matthew Mishan: Could you guys — yeah. Could you guys help quantify the product exits between Chronic Care and Pain, where the $35 million is coming out of? And then does that also — does that take the place of potential spins or divestitures or is that something you are still looking at?

Michael Greiner: So two points. Matt, we will get more into details at Investor Day as to where these exits are coming from, partially because we have relationships that we are still in place right now, which is why we are giving a range of what the full year impact would be. So some of these we may hand over to an existing distributor relationship. Some we may just get out of altogether due to product availability. Some we may get out of just due to other relationships. So we are not going to get the details into the split of that yet, but we will have more clarity in detail on Investor Day around that first question. To the second question, it’s a mix. So some of the stuff we are deciding to get out of would be a little bit of the spend in getting out of products that just aren’t worth the effort of trying to sell, because we just wouldn’t get value for them.

So it just makes sense to exit those, but it doesn’t necessarily take place out of other product categories where we do believe there’s real value there and we would consider divesting of those product categories.