The Cooper Companies, Inc. (NYSE:COO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Albert White: Sure. Yes, we’re not going to give a guidance range for myopia management this year. I mean, similar to all of our other products, we’re just not going to do guidance like we don’t do for daily SI highs or anything else. I mean, we’ll continue to give growth rates and details and so forth, but I’m not going to get into a guidance range. One other thing, Larry, I just want to mention, like our usual guidance, if you will, put that in quotes, usual guidance, and certainly pre-COVID was kind of running at the market at four to six and us six to eight. I mean, the market at five to seven and seven to nine is greater than our kind of pre-COVID, if you will, traditional guidance. So I just want to be clear that we are guiding to a stronger market overall and stronger performance from us than we used to guide to at least pre-COVID.

Lawrence Biegelsen: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from a line of Jeff Johnson with Baird. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Johnson: Yes, thanks. Good evening, guys. Al, just going back to some of the capacity and supply issues, we hear a letter went out in Japan. I’m not sure if it did in other markets as well, just on some of those supply constraints. So should we be thinking about geographically that 7% is going to be most impacted in the Asia-Pac region, number one? And number two, I think over the last couple of years, as a lot of contact lens companies, you guys included, have dealt with a lot of this rebound and strong move to dailies and that, which is helping fuel that top line. We’ve seen some things pop up, right, on the distribution side, on the warehousing side, some added costs. You are having to put in some extra lines to kind of hit these demand things, which are good.

Can you give us any assurances that this year you don’t feel like there’s going to be anything that gets uncovered kind of mid-year that all of a sudden adds some costs or takes away from some of the earnings that are being guided to for this year? Thanks.

Albert White: Yes, yes. Great questions. Let me answer that second one first. You are right. We have a lot more volume going through our supply chain, if you will, or through our logistics chain. We did a significant amount of that work over the last couple of years. And I take my hat off to our global distribution team. They’ve done an amazing job. I’m happy to say that the vast majority of that activity is getting behind us. And I’ll use the example I’ve talked about, which is our West Henrietta Distribution Center outside of Rochester, New York. Great team. They’re a great group of people. They’ve done a really nice job. That expansion is done. So the risk associated with that kind of activity is significantly lower.

Same thing, our liaise [Ph] team in Europe did a fantastic job with software updates and so forth. So I think we’re in a really good spot when it comes to our distribution, our packaging, labelling, distribution, and so forth. And I’ve got a lot of confidence in the team there. So happy to say a lot of that work is behind us. On the supply constraints, again, it’s my day related. From a regional perspective, we’ll see how that plays out. I don’t want to kind of point to any particular region or tip my hat from a competitive perspective or anything else to anyone. So we’ll see how it plays out. I’ll certainly, obviously, give commentary on that on the Q1 quarter. But again, I just want to be clear, we’re still expecting a good solid Q1.

Jeffrey Johnson: Yes, no, you come up against double-digit comp, I get that. So all good there. And then, Brian, if I could just pin you down a little bit on the guidance, on the EPS guidance. I just want to make sure I understand, the pound, the euro, some of those currencies have been kind of in a pretty tight range here over the last few weeks. The yen is what has really strengthened quite a bit in just the last week or two. Obviously, you guys have a pretty big sensitivity to the yen. So when you say you’re using current rates, I’m assuming you guys didn’t update your guidance this morning as the yen was off or strengthened a couple, two and a half, three points. So just, are you at $148 on the yen, $146 on the yen, $144? I know it’s ridiculous to have to single currency, but just the sensitivity is there. So I’d like to know kind of where we’re starting the assumptions on that $1360 to $14. Thanks.

Brian Andrews: Hi, Jeff. Yes, I guess what I’ll say is, we use roughly current rates, but you’re absolutely right. We did not factor in today’s currency moves, in particular, the yen. So, like with guidance, we’re initiating the year. We always exercise a certain level of prudence. And I would say we do that with respect to currency as well.

Jeffrey Johnson: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jon Block with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Block: Yes, guys. Great. Thanks for the questions. I want to just stick with the constraint for a second. And Al, you always mention the challenges on capacity. And I think you’re always very transparent about it. But, you have been seemingly staying ahead of the demand curve, unlike some of your competitors. And what recently changed? Because I wouldn’t think the demand in an industry that’s very consistent, in terms of the growth rate, can the demand really spike suddenly in a six, eight, ten week timeframe that calls you to be from, in front of it to behind it? Or was it really acute because it’s in one particular part of the portfolio? And then maybe if that’s the case, how do you have the confidence that you are able to rectify or reconcile it, over the next two to three months?

Albert White: Yes, great question, Jon. In a way, it’s not a demand spike, so to speak, as much as it has been consistently strong demand. Remember that when you’re talking about the MyDay lines, and a lot of our manufacturing lines now, it’s still taking us somewhere in the area of 18 months from the time we order that line to the time the line is producing product that we can sell into the marketplace. That’s still a little bit longer because of all the robotics, camera systems, and so forth. So you’re talking about if we had an increase in demand, which we’ve seen on those products, say over the last six, nine months, that kind of thing, right, you can order new lines. But to catch up on that sometimes, it takes a little while, right?

So what you’re getting in for production here right now would be lines that we ordered a year and a half ago. So I think the team did a really nice job in terms of planning that out, and we continue to plan that out in advance. But it’s a little hard to tie that together. When you get an extended period of time of winning more wearers than you anticipated, you can get yourself in these kind of situations. But where I get comfortable is we know what lines are coming on. We can see the production. We see the lines coming on. Our manufacturing team is insanely strong at getting these lines ramped up and into production, and they’re doing a great job. So we have all the schedules. We have the demand. We see all the activity and so forth, and we’re able to manage it.