Sotera Health Company (NASDAQ:SHC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

As I mentioned, we’re not seeing it get worse. We’re not able to draw a great correlation in R squared, David, because of some of the pockets in between us, if you will, but we are seeing that stabilize. We’re not seeing it get worse. We’re starting to see a little bit of recovery. But again, we feel pretty confident where we are and calling the visibility for the year on Sterigenics, and it’s really tied to volumes. We feel very good about our ability. If the volumes come, we’re going to be in a position to service that, which will help us get more margin improvement over time as well.

Dave Windley: Great. Appreciate the answers. Thank you.

Operator: The next question will come from Luke Sergott with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Luke Sergott: Great. Thanks, guys. I want to follow-up on that with the destocking. I mean after we’re dealing with it with the bioprocessing side and seeing on the devices. So, is there any way that you guys could estimate like as to how much has been stocked? Or from a normal cadence, is this like over a full year that’s been stocked up and they’re working down, six months, something like that, so we can get — I understand you’re not going to call there on the timing, but just from a magnitude like have — and going back in history, have you ever seen anything like this where we can kind of use that as a framework?

Michael Petras: Luke, unfortunately, we can’t. Like I think all of you are struggling with it. As you look at these big MedTech companies and pharma companies, right, they’re global in nature, they’ve got multiple product lines with its pharma and med device. We look at — we have conversations with them. We look at their public filings around their inventory levels, their days sales on hand, and we try to do the best job we can. And we’ve talked to a lot of our investors. They’re having the same struggles looking through that with our customer base. But I would just tell you, we don’t see it getting worse. So that would be the part that I want you to leave with as we continue to work through this overall throughout the channels.

Luke Sergott: All right. Great. And then just on the margin guidance, flat margin year-over-year. As the volumes come back in the back half and your growth there accelerates throughout the year, obviously, the pacing there should pick up in the margins. But I’m just wondering why we’re not getting back to more normalized levels there. Is there any — from an investment standpoint, if you guys can bucket out like the puts and takes there from the margin dynamics throughout the year?

Michael Petras: Yeah. So I would look at it when you look at ‘22 and ‘23, the margins are pretty consistent with that 50 — just slightly over 50%. That’s kind of where our guides lead you in 2024. We’re focused on really driving margin dollar growth, not necessarily rate expansion. But over time, if we get more operating leverage, as I mentioned minutes ago, I think that will help us with margin improvement. But right now, our guide is expecting flat margins at 50%-plus.

Luke Sergott: Okay. Thanks.

Operator: The next question will come from Brett Fishbin with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Brett Fishbin: Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking the questions. Just wanted to start off on one more follow-up around the revenue growth guidance. I’m just hoping if you could walk through some of the moving pieces, particularly around Nelson Labs and Nordion and thoughts for the year? I think you gave some commentary on the phasing. But maybe if you could just give a little bit more on full year expectation and how to think about whether the step-up in Nelson Labs performance in 4Q could proceed into 2024?

Michael Petras: Yeah. Brett, I think it’s all predicated on the volume recovery. As I stated in my remarks, that’s the pluses and minuses around the guide that we’ve given. We expect Nelson will continue to improve over time. We’ve had good growth in our RCA business has been able to help us offset some of the volume on the Sterility side. As I’ve also mentioned, some of the MDR compliance timing that’s played out. On Nordion, Nordion will be a consistent performer for us. It will be the lightest quarter, but — in the first quarter, but it will be over what you saw last year because, as you know, last year was a really slow quarter. But overall, we’re going to result in a growth rate that’s slightly better than what you saw last year out of the Nordion business.

Brett Fishbin: All right. Thanks for the color. And then just one follow-up I had. Maybe if you could just give a little bit more on how we should be thinking about the free cash flow setup for 2024. I think obviously, you had a pretty big adjustment or a moving piece in 2023 around the settlement, but maybe outside of that, is there anything changing significantly that we should be thinking about for 2024 outside of the ongoing CapEx projects that you have going? Thank you.