TransMedics Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMDX) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Waleed Hassanein: Thank you, Bill. Again, I’ll address the first two parts of your question, and I’ll let Stephen address the impact on the P&L. We evaluated all different options of how to build the TransMedics aviation business in TransMedics. We have completely eliminated the organic option of adding one plane at a time because it will take significantly long time for TransMedics to secure a Part 135 charter operating license is going to take at least 12 to 18 months. So our two most efficient paths are either acquiring a Part 135 operator that had significant assets of jets that we can leverage quickly or creating a joint venture with one operator that had, again, a license and a significant number of assets. These are the two options that we are actively pursuing across the United States.

As far as the ability to finance this, we’ve always stated publicly that we do not expect to tap into our current balance sheet to finance anything related to the aviation business. So we’re exploring different modalities of financing that is non-dilutive or less dilutive forms of financing options in front of us. And we’re working with our advisers on the different options. I’ll turn it on Stephen.

Stephen Gordon: Yes, Bill, from a P&L perspective, so today, the revenue for flights is not in our P&L. So we would think of that as an adder from a revenue perspective for each transplant, whether it’s $20,000 or $30,000 depends on the length of the flight. So that will be one change. So more of our revenue would be in the service bucket, although we think the service revenue, the service margin will be improved. The overall company gross margin percent may come down a bit. But from a dollar perspective, it should be an accretive to our income. And once we’re in positive EPS, it would be favorable to EPS.

Operator: The next question is from Allen Gong with JPMorgan.

Allen Gong: Congratulations on the really strong quarter. We — there’s obviously a lot of really exciting things to talk about when it comes to heart and liver, but I do want to like kind of touch on lung a little bit. It’s clearly continuing to face pretty significant challenges even as the rest of your portfolio is taking off. I understand that lung really was impacted quite a bit by COVID and has not really come back necessarily in the same way for you even as transplants have recovered. So what kind of details can you provide on your strategy to really get that market back up and running for OCS?

Waleed Hassanein: Thank you, Allen, for the question. I think as — I’ll focus on what I stated publicly before. And hopefully, as the year progresses, we will be able to reveal some of more granular detail about our initiatives. So basically, what we’re doing is literally we are trying to leverage three things. We’re trying to leverage the NOP and the success of the NOP in liver and heart to rev up the lung market. So that’s one angle and we discussed that in detail at the ISHLT. The second angle is we’re trying to reeducate the market, market in general, including patients group, about the importance of OCS Lung and what does it mean to a patient on the waiting list waiting for a lung transplant. And also the market in the form of the pulmonologists and the transplant surgeons.