Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 13

Kevin Lobo: Yeah. Look, I think, the outsized growth is in the Medical division, right? So Medical division isn’t going to typically grow 26% organic, right? That’s outsized and that’s really, let’s call it, making up for supply. So they had huge orders and we were able to get healthy in some of the product lines and we were able to get a lot of shipments out the door. That kind of variability could happen from quarter-to-quarter. But if you look at a full year kind of organic growth rate, Instruments 10%, Endoscopy 15%, Medical 11%, kind of on a rolling four-quarter basis. Those are really outstanding results. So it’s not a one quarter wonder. I would kind of look at the overall year having organic growth of 9.7%. That’s the highest I have had in my tenure.

And we have new products, I would say, they are as good a set of pipeline as I have had since I have been in this role. So that bodes well for next year. We are starting with the highest organic growth guide that we have ever started with and assuming launches go well and everything, this should be another very, very strong year. I think you will see a little bit of volatility quarter-to-quarter primarily with Medical, because they do have the largest backlog of all the divisions in the company and a more consistent performance with the implants side of the house.

Vijay Kumar: Understood. And maybe off of those comments, Kevin, and maybe perhaps for Glenn as well, that 7% to 8.5% guide for fiscal 2023, is that a front-loaded guidance? Just when I look at the comps here for 2022, is that so 8.5% front-loaded? And what is it assuming for supply chain, are you assuming supply chain to improve just given off of Q4 levels? And the order that you mentioned, Kevin, did that backlog grow versus third quarter or are we starting to work down on the backlog?

Glenn Boehnlein: Hi, Vijay. I will take some of these. If I miss a part, you can correct me. First of all, the growth is not front-end loaded. It’s pretty steady throughout each of the quarters and you will see that there is going to be solid growth just given sort of the momentum that we are feeling from fourth quarter. In terms of the order book, we exited 2022 with an increase in the order book year-over-year. So we are actually feeling very bullish about capital sales, about our customer’s willingness to buy capital. So we don’t — we feel like that’s a great tailwind for the whole year and did I miss the third part?

Kevin Lobo: No. I think you probably

Glenn Boehnlein: Yeah. Okay.

Vijay Kumar: Sorry, on the supply chain situation.

Glenn Boehnlein: Yeah. As I mentioned, we assume that we will see gradual improvement in the supply chain. We saw some of that in Q4. We actually feel pretty good about our access to supply, we are seeing a reduced volume of spot buys, which are those really high cost items and we are also beginning to work with our original set of vendors and also going up the food chain and actually working with chip suppliers so that we feel like we have a good handle on what’s going to happen with supply chain, but it should become better quarter-to-quarter-to-quarter with good improvement and visible improvement in the back half of the year.

Vijay Kumar: Understood. Thanks, guys.

Kevin Lobo: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Shagun Singh with RBC. You may proceed.

Page 3 of 13