OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Kenneth McGrath: Yes, from a cash perspective, as we mentioned, we increased cash quarter-over-quarter. One thing we did highlight is that our working capital increased over — during Q4. A lot of that was ramping up for some of the government business, as well as for the packaging changeover that we’re doing. And if you look at it, there was significant — I think our inventory quarter-over-quarter went up about $17 million and our accounts receivable went up by $9 million. We believe that’s highly convertible to cash, given the government contract and the business that it’s serving.

Operator: Our next question will come from the line of Patrick Donnelly from Citi.

Elizabeth Speyer: Hi. This is Lizzie on for Patrick. So I guess, first, I think you mentioned for some of the consumer-oriented customers, they were ordering less this quarter. I guess how quickly do you suspect that they’re going to work through this inventory? Is this more of like a 2-quarter — or is it more like the second half of the year? And I have one follow-up.

Scott Gleason: Yes, Lizzie, I think the guidance that we provided is that, we’re not going to see kind of a snap recovery here in the first half of the year. That said, when we look at the end market growth for our core customers, most of them are continuing to grow. And you can see that among a lot of the clinical laboratories that you guys cover, that the end markets remain growing. That’s what makes us confident that some of the softness that we’ve seen is tied to inventory rebalancing. We are seeing some labs having some financial challenges, and so they’re trying to preserve cash. And so that activity is, we believe translate into the business. And so that gives us confidence in the longer term. But I think the bigger thing that Carrie mentioned is, the fundamental backdrop we see for the market overall is exceptionally strong.

And we’ve seen an increased interest in people reaching patients where they are. We had the Grifols deal last quarter. We had the Quest deal this quarter. I think that’s a strong example of the types of demand that we’re seeing from customers, and we expect that to continue. And it’s something that we’re going to be focused on heavily this year, as we focus on growth.

Elizabeth Speyer: Great. And then I guess just on your priorities when it comes to investing back in the business, you talked about site consolidation, standardization and the new packaging. What are your other — what are the other areas, I guess, that you’re looking at, whether it’s cutting costs or just investing internally?

Kenneth McGrath: Yes. As you mentioned, our focus areas, first, it’s around InteliSwab, which we’ve delivered on over the past couple of quarters and continue to — with significant reductions in costs. And in Q1, we’ll see reductions, as we mentioned in the packaging. And then the other area of focus will be around our facility site rationalization, and really looking to optimize the footprint that we have, as well as, as Scott mentioned, taking the capabilities that we’ve developed with InteliSwab, and transferring those to other product lines and those efficiencies. Those are the primary focus areas, in addition to, as Carrie mentioned earlier, the restructuring that we announced earlier today. Those are the primary areas that we’ll be focused on going forward.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Couillard from Jefferies.