ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Vivek Jain: I think this is a very — it’s a topic we should not be talking about here, right? We’ve got our own business to run and we’re going to do it for.

Larry Solow: That’s fair. Okay. Great. Last question, just on free cash flow, Brian. Can you give us some idea? It sounds like it’s going to be — we certainly improved last year from a big usage. Is it going to be just modestly positive? Is there any more color on that? And — just kind of — and the second question is — last question on just debt reduction. I know originally, when the acquisition closed, we thought a couple of years you can get yourself down. Do you have any more — any updated target on when you can reduce leverage?

Brian Bonnell: Yes. I mean on free cash flow, I think the potential range for ’23 is a bit wide, just given the fact that we invested so heavily in ’22. And I think that’s going to be largely dependent on how quickly we can get to the right inventory levels and moderate or even reduce them. And so you’ll probably see most of that benefit come in the second half of the year. And then as it relates to debt paydown, I think what we just outlined in terms of guidance assumes no debt paydown this year. But I think, of course, depending on how quickly we get back to positive free cash flow generation will ultimately determine when we can begin to pay down debt. Not sure if it’s this year but we just need to get to positive free cash flow first.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Mishan with KeyBanc.

Matt Mishan: Kind of a follow-up to that previous question. I guess, when is the IT implementation scheduled to occur? And how are you thinking about portfolio rationalization and potential asset sales ahead of that IT implementation?

Vivek Jain: Sure, Matt. This is a little bit different than our other deals where we had to literally integrate, cut over and integrate on day 1. Here, we take control of the system and we can run it on our own and support it which is good because it still is even shaky a little bit in the fourth quarter. That will happen most likely if everything stays on schedule in the April, May time frame. Once we separate, then we have control of it and it’s our choice of how quickly to pursue the next action which is the integration, that integration is valuable to us because it leads to all these next level synergies that we were outlining on the call. So we would like to do that sooner rather than later. It doesn’t come for free. There’s a cost to doing that.

Let’s remember what we went through with Hospira. But certainly, being separate allows more degrees of freedom of what we want to do on pieces of the portfolio because we actually have a system that we can make choices about what can go or stay with a given business. I don’t want to — I would say, big picture, systems are secondary in terms of creating value in that discussion versus business performance, returns, etcetera and having everything going in the right direction. So it’s a component. It’s not the sole driver in the line you’re going down.

Matt Mishan: Okay. I think that’s fair. And then I think you answered this question in a different way — I’ll ask it a little bit differently. You have a wide range. I get that you want to be conservative and the macro is still fairly uncertain. Just can you point to 2 or 3 of the major swing factors that would get you from the low end to the high end, as you kind of look at like the big moving pieces?