Owens & Minor, Inc. (NYSE:OMI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Lisa Gill: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just kind of going back to the last question, can you give us an idea of what your expectation is for cash flow this year would be my first question? And then secondly, when I think about the guidance range, it’s really wide just given the $0.50 from top to bottom. Can you maybe just talk about what’s in each end of the range? I know you talked about the $30 million is it on the bottom end that you don’t achieve all the $30 million and the top is that you do or something else that is driving that big gap between the lower and upper end?

Ed Pesicka: No. Lisa, thanks for the question. It is a big range and the reality of it is it’s really the main component of that is what we’re calling the destocking effect and when does that and we sit with our customers, and if I look across the industry, some customers I’ve talked to, as well as other studies been out there. And I saw a study that said about a third of customers are back to normal usage, about a third still have several quarters worth of product that they’re going to use for destocking and about a third half close to a year’s worth. So that window of trying to get that feel is what really is creating that range that’s out there from now to the end of the year. I think in addition to that, kind of, as we move to the upper end of that range outside of the whole destocking conversation, it’s really going to be focused on this — on the operating model realignment, how fast can we get the benefit in place, how much of that can we achieve this year to help us push us up towards that upper end of the range.

So that’s the way we’re looking at it and that’s why it is a broad range this year at where we’re at.

Alex Bruni: Thanks, Ed. And good morning, Lisa. Just to add to what Ed mentioned there, obviously, the band on earnings does bear on where we expect cash flow to be this year. In addition to that, it’s early days in this operating model realignment program. And as we talked about in the previous question, looking at that leverage could be as much as a turn lower. I think that gives you an indication of how much cash flow we think we can generate this year. But again, as we work through the operating model realignment program, we’ll have better visibility to that.

Ed Pesicka: And I think it is a benchmark where we think it’s going to be at least as much of what — as what 2022 was, that can be your floor on that.

Lisa Gill: Okay, great. Thanks for the comments.

Operator: The next question is from Evan Stover with Baird. Your line is open.

Evan Stover: Hey, thank you. I think part of the theme in the last couple of years has obviously been the thinking that S&IP and specifically the PPE portfolio in there would settle in above pre-pandemic, stock, demand, et cetera. I mean, I think that’s changed. And I’m just wondering if in your outlook you’re kind of — you’ve kind of eliminated that thinking in how you forecast and where stockpile levels are et cetera in your customer base. Just trying to think about how you factor that into the outlook.

Ed Pesicka: Yes. Evan, we think short-term that’s probably the case. What we’ve seen is, we haven’t seen usage go down by clinicians and that’s important just because COVID has moved on, it doesn’t mean that the protocols are going away. What we have seen and this is an important something important to consider is if you think about the channels to the customers, whether it’s our distribution channel or other distribution channels, those companies bought a tremendous amount of product that now have excess stock. You’ve got customers that have excess stock, because they build stockpiles up. So while the actual usage in burn rates in hospitals from what we believe is not going down, it’s their utilizing stuff that they have in their stockpiles, think about a hospital who’s having financial issues right now.