Bioventus Inc. (BVS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the BioVentus Inc. second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's question, we'll be right back. there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I'd now like to hand today's conference over to Dave Crawford. Please go ahead.

Thanks Virginia and good morning everyone and thanks for joining us. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the BioVentus 2026 second quarter earnings conference call. With me this morning are Rob Claypool, President and CEO and Mark Singleton, Senior Vice President and CFO. Rob will provide an update on our 2026 priorities and the second quarter highlights and then Mark will review second quarter results and discuss our 2026 guidance. We will finish the call with Q&A. A presentation for today's call is available on the Investors section of our website, bioventus.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that our remarks today contain forward-looking statements that are based on the current expectations of management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated, including the risks and uncertainties described in the company's filings with the SEC, including factors and the company's form 10K from the year ended December 31st, 2025. As such factors may be updated from time to time in the company's filings made with the SEC, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements which may speak only as to the date made. Although the company may voluntarily do so from time to time, it undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. This call will also include references to certain financial measures that are not calculated in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. We generally refer to these as non-GAAP or adjusted financial measures. Important disclosures about the definitions and reconciliations of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP are available in the earnings press release on the investor section of our website at bioventus.com. And now I'll turn the call over to Rob.

Thank you, Dave. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call today. BioVentus continued its positive momentum in the second quarter, delivering solid financial results across our business. As we continue to strengthen our commercial, operational, and financial fundamentals, We are seeing encouraging leading indicators that reinforce our confidence in our future growth drivers. As such, we are reiterating our full-year guidance on all metrics and are confident that our long-range growth prospects will drive enhanced value for our shareholders. Before going through the details on the second quarter, I'd like to take a moment to address the strategic review we disclosed this morning. As you saw in our press release, following receipt of multiple expressions of interest and an unsolicited acquisition proposal are The Board has formed a committee of independent directors that will evaluate a range of strategic options. Importantly, these options include, but are not limited to, a sale of the company or the continued execution of our standalone plan. We have built a strong foundation for growth and success at BioVentus, and I am confident that the committee, with the assistance of Evercore as financial advisor, will take the time it needs to carefully evaluate all options to maximize value for our shareholders. Turning to the quarter, I'll update you on the three priorities we outlined at the start of the year. One, accelerating long-term revenue growth with increased investment in our business. increasing earnings even with the higher level of investment, and three, continuing to strengthen our robust cash flow and enhance capital allocation optionality. Let me expand on each priority, starting with accelerating revenue growth and increasing investments into our business. Second quarter revenue grew 4% as we continue to capitalize on the opportunities to grow our core business led by strong double-digit growth in our pain treatments business. Within pain treatments, our HA franchise, led by Duralane, our market-leading single-injection therapy, continues to be a durable strength for BioVentus, consistently growing well above the market. Our product is a great product. performance is driven by strong commercial focus, the experience of our dedicated sales force, NeuralAid's clinical differentiation, and broad private payer coverage. In the second quarter, this compelling combination helped us expand volume in existing accounts and win new ones. We believe our go-to-market approach and disciplined pricing strategy positions us for sustainable, above-market revenue growth in HA. Here today, the HA business has outperformed our expectations, allowing us to deploy the significant operating profit generated by this franchise to invest in our key growth drivers, including PRP, PNS, ultrasonics, and international. During the second quarter, we continued to increase investments in these businesses by expanding our commercial team, raising awareness of our differentiated solutions, and and enhancing physician training programs. I'm pleased to report that these initiatives are generating valuable data-driven insights while producing positive traction across several leading performance indicators. These insights help us determine the optimal mix of future investment and commercial actions to maximize growth and returns. Let me highlight a few examples, starting with platelet-rich plasma. Our momentum is building in PRP, and as capital placements continue to accelerate, we are seeing both larger and more frequent disposable reorders. These leading indicators demonstrate that our PRP systems efficient, customizable solution is gaining traction and beginning to displace competitive offerings. We are also beginning to realize the benefits of leveraging our HA Salesforce to drive PRP adoption. which helps us win new PRP accounts and creates additional opportunities to expand our HA customer base. With respect to PNS, our world-class differentiated technology, combined with strong commercial execution, has created excellent momentum, including increased velocity in surgeon adoption and stem trial placements with high conversion rates to permanent talisman implants, which is a great thing to do. resulting in a growing base of new business. In addition, surgeons consistently express strong appreciation and clear recognition of our differentiation, which is translating into competitive conversions and meaningful inroads with larger institutions. The strength of these leading indicators confirms our continued focus on expanding Salesforce coverage and enhancing clinical support, and investing in clinical evidence generation to further augment our differentiation. In ultrasonics, our technology, combined with our investments in marketing and surgeon training, is driving encouraging traction with key leading indicators, particularly increased surgeon adoption, accelerating disposables growth, and new wins with larger accounts and market-leading IDMs. We expect these early indicators to translate into revenue acceleration in the second half of this year and beyond. Finally, in our international business, momentum continues to build following the addition of new talent and the team's greater focus on select markets with the best growth opportunities. We are encouraged by the speed of execution, the depth of our opportunity pipeline, and our customer win rates. Together, these indicators give us confidence in delivering strong, double-digit growth in the second half and for the full year. Turning to our second priority, increasing earnings, even as we invest in our future growth drivers. The second quarter was a powerful demonstration of how we have enhanced the earnings power of the business. Despite accelerating investments, we delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 23%. And for the full year, we expect to maintain a margin of at least 20%. Our operating profitability combined with significant interest expense savings generated adjusted EPS of 22 cents in the quarter. And year to date, we have increased our adjusted EPS by 24% compared to the prior year. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we expect to further accelerate our investments while continuing to grow earnings and deliver on our full-year financial guidance. We are able to achieve this by leveraging the earnings power generated from our durable, above-market revenue growth and stable peer-leading gross margin. Turning to our third priority, accelerating cash flow. We delivered another strong quarter with cash from operations of $20 million. We used our strong cash generation to repay an additional $24 million of our term loan. also achieved an important financial milestone, reducing our net leverage to below two times. And we expect our net leverage to be below 1.5 times by the end of the year, reflecting our disciplined capital allocation. We plan to continue to prioritize strengthening our balance sheet by using our strong free cash flow to further reduce debt this year. by creating significant capital deployment optionality for the future. Overall, we continue to execute with discipline and deliver strong results against our strategic priorities We are entering the back half of the year with significant momentum, increased conviction in our strategy, and growing confidence in the strength of our portfolio and investment approach. Before I turn the call over to Mark, I'd like to highlight another important milestone. Ventus was recently recognized by U.S. News and World Reports as a best company to work for. This recognition is a testament to the talent, commitment, and culture of our world-class team. And it further strengthens our resolve as we continue our journey to build BioVentus into a leading $1 billion MedTech company that delivers exceptional value for our customers, employees, shareholders, and all other stakeholders. Now I'll turn the call over to Mark. Thank you Rob and good morning everyone. Let me start by highlighting that our performance this quarter reflects the strength of our strategy and our disciplined execution against the investment thesis we outlined. The combination of durable growth and momentum in our core business and peer leading gross margin is an enabling us to fund the investment into our four growth drivers. In the near term, each of these four areas of growth are generating encouraging evidence and increasing our confidence in future revenue acceleration. At the same time, we continue to deliver on our commitment to improve profitability and generate strong cash flow. This powerful combination sets us apart and positions us to create meaningful long-term value for our stakeholders. Turning to our headline results from the second quarter, revenue of $153 million increased 4% compared to the prior year period. Health was driven by significant strength in our pain treatment business, which was partially offset by a few factors, including a challenging comparison to the prior year in surgical solutions and restorative therapies, and a shift in timing of some orders, which we will discuss in a moment. Adjusted EBITDA of $35 million increased over $1 million compared to the prior year and grew faster than revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 23% expanded 20 basis points compared to the second quarter last year, even with our increased investment. adjusted earnings were 22 cents per diluted share for the quarter, compared to 21 cents in the prior year period. let me provide some additional commentary on our quarterly revenue. In global pain treatments, we delivered double-digit growth with revenue of $82 million, representing a 12% increase compared to the prior year. As Rob highlighted, the ongoing durability of our performance continues to be driven by strong growth in HA from volume gains with our differentiated single injection Duralane therapy and favorable customer mix. This success reflects the intense focus and strategic collaboration across our customers. Salesforce, corporate accounts, and pricing teams. Additionally, we saw positive contributions from PRP and P&S, and we continue to expect both to rank in the second half of the year, as we have previously discussed. Moving to surgical solutions, revenue in Q2 totaled $50 million, which was a decline of 5% compared to the prior year. though it reflects 5% growth sequentially. In addition to the challenging prior year comparison, performance was impacted by the timing of certain ultrasonics capital placements and international orders, shifting approximately $2 million of revenue or more than 100 basis points for the company into the second half. Revenue and BGS were also impacted by challenging prior year comparisons and deliberate portfolio actions to prioritize higher margin profitable growth opportunities. It is important to note that ultrasonics disposables performance is accelerating, and we are gaining significant traction within BGS with new large accounts and IDNs. which will propel second half and longer term profitable growth. In restorative therapies, revenue of $21 million declined 2%, resulting from a change in mix, specifically with Medicare patients, in addition to a difficult comparison to the prior year. We expect growth to resume based on current business opportunities and the execution that the Exogen team has demonstrated. over the past two years. Finally, international revenue of $19 million was lower than the prior year by 1% or 2% on a constant currency basis, primarily due to the timing of distributor orders, which is consistent with the business. fundamental growth at international continues to be strong and given our increased strategic focus, talent additions, and improved commercial execution, we expect to generate strong double-digit growth in the second half of the year and for the full year. Moving down the income statement, adjusted gross margin of 75 percent was 90 basis points lower than the prior year period as expected. primarily due to higher freight costs and product mix. Additional adjusted total operating expenses and R&D expenses increased by $4 million as we continue to strategically invest in our key growth drivers to accelerate future revenue growth and expand the long-term earning potential. At the same time, demonstrated disciplined cost management by controlling expenses and finding efficiencies across the business. Adjusted net income of $20 million increased $1 million compared to the prior year period. improvement reflects the benefit of continued revenue growth, stable gross margins, and lower interest expense, demonstrating a leverage in our business model and impact of our ongoing focus on operational execution. Adjusted net income was also impacted by an increase in our effective tax rate compared to the prior year due to the removal of the valuation allowance, and we expect to have a higher effective tax rate for the year. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statement, we continue to generate strong cash flow driven by our robust profitability, disciplined working capital management, and capital life business model. Cash flow from operations totaled $20 million during the quarter, and we ended the period with $29 million of cash on hand and $248 million of outstanding debt. During the quarter, we reduced debt by an additional $24 million, bringing total debt repayment for the year to $46 million as we continue to prioritize deleveraging and repayment of our term loan. This strengthens our financial position and is expected to drive further interest expense savings while enhancing our ability to strategically deploy capital towards our highest value opportunities. Through the first six months of the year, we have achieved 5% revenue growth, 12% adjusted EBITDA growth, 24% growth. 4% adjusted EPS growth, and $22 million of growth in cash from operations. year-over-year revenue growth to increase in the second half compared to the first half by over 300 basis points, half of which comes from acceleration in our surgical solutions business with a portion related to the shift in timing from the second quarter into the second half, and the other half from revenue acceleration in both P&S and PRP. In addition, cash from operations is expected to approximately double in the second half compared to the first half of this year. As a result of strong progress to date in our outlook for the business, we are reaffirming our full-year financial guidance. We continue to expect 2026 revenue to be in the range of $600 million to $610 million. Adjusted earnings per share to be between 75 cents to 70 cents. $1.79 per diluted share and cash from operations to range between $84 million and $89 million. In closing, we are off to a strong start to the year and remain focused on executing our strategy to invest in our four growth drivers. We believe we possess a powerful combination of growth, operational discipline, and financial strength to position us well as we build a leading medtech company and create meaningful, meaningful long-term value for our shareholders. Operator, please open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Our first question will come from the line of Chase Knickerbocker with Craig Hallam. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. So just first on pain, it's clear that both you and kind of your leading competitor in the single injection market are growing volumes here in the first half of the year, maybe just a couple parter there, can you give us an idea of kind of volume versus price? performance in the quarter, again, focusing particularly on Duraline. And then kind of just help us with kind of a little bit of characterization around the competitive dynamics that are currently out there in the single injection market, you know, how, you know, kind of both. And again, your leading competitor could be kind of grabbing volumes and taking share at the same time. Thanks. Thanks.

Hey, Chase, this is Rob. Yes, thanks for the question, and we'll try to provide you some insights on that. You know, first, just reiterate that we've had a great first half, even better than our expectations. And to your question there, it was led by double-digit volume growth for Durlane. Again, you know this is our single injection therapy. And like I believe our first half performance shows again that HA is a very strong, durable, profitable growth driver for us. So that's, you know, we've talked about it before, but it's favorable movement in the market, but that's really due to our clinical differentiation, our broad private payer base, and our overall commercial strength. So we're looking forward to the back half of the year, not just for HA, but for pain overall. Again, whether you're talking about the first half of this year or the second half going forward, our progress and growth in this space is really driven by volume growth.

Help Rob, thanks. Maybe just on, you know, kind of going to surgical. Can you kind of just discuss your visibility into that capital, kind of getting pushed into the second half and kind of staying there? And then just to follow up on that, even if you kind of placed that $2 million in the second quarter, you know, surgical would have still been essentially flat. Can you maybe just peel back the layers a bit around kind of breaking down growth by ultrasonics and BGS? And then if you wouldn't mind talking about kind of capital in ultrasonics versus kind of handpiece growth, I think that would be really helpful for us to just kind of think about that business.

Yes, this is Rob again. There's a lot to unpack there from the question. So maybe I'll broaden it to surgical and just kind of give you overall perspective on it and also touch on both the capital and disposable pieces that you mentioned. So, you know, first, we feel great about the long-term outlook for both. both ultrasonics and BGS and for surgical overall. I think it's important to note that despite a difficult comparison in ultrasonics and Q2 and the transitory impact of the timing that you mentioned with respect to capital placements, and that alone was nearly a 400 basis point impact for surgical, The surgical business grew 5% sequentially in the second quarter. More importantly, we saw great traction in ultrasonics with our leading indicators from our investments, including new accounts, new users, capital placements, and accelerated sequential growth with disposables. So we're really looking forward to the second half of the year. And in BGF, look, we're constantly managing our business with operating discipline to drive possible growth. And to that end, we took some proactive actions in the channel in the second quarter that had a temporary impact on our performance. But there we also saw in Q2 very positive traction with new large account acquisitions and early penetration with the counts that we've recently won, which gives us clear line of sight to acceleration in the back half of the year. So again, a lot lighter quarter, less than our expectations for known reasons. And part of that was that shift in timing that you alluded to. And we fully expect to see a strong.

acceleration for our surgical business in the back half of the year and then just last for me Rob if I can sneak one more in appreciate all the context there I know you won't specifically comment on the strategic alternatives process, but maybe could you just help us contextualize it just a little bit as far as where we are? Is this fresh? Is this brand new? Or is this something we've been working on in the background before announcing it publicly here over the course of the quarter? Sure.

Yes, thanks for that question, Chase. You know, as mentioned, we made the announcement today, given the unsolicited acquisition proposal that we received, along with multiple expressions of interest. And, you know, beyond that, we can't provide a lot of detail beyond what we've already shared. But, you know, I will say we continue to be really excited about our significant progress and about the enormous potential ahead. we have a lot of confidence that the committee that I mentioned is committed to evaluating the full range of options to maximize shareholder value. So, We'll leave it at that for now, and we'll keep you updated on anything that we can as time goes on.

Thank you, Rob. Thank you. And again, to ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question will come from the line of Larry Solo with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks and good morning everybody. I guess, give us a little more color Rob, on PRP and PNS, I know it doesn't sound like you're ready to give us any numbers, but it sounds like that 2% and 12 million number. It sounds like you're headed in the right direction there, but maybe just a little color just on customer reception, um, just early on anecdotally, you know, how things are going. And I guess particularly on PRP, I guess it sounds like you're building some. Capital placements, um, which will drive more.

for sales too in the back half of the year. Yes, thanks Larry, great question. So I'll start off with PRP and like we're really encouraged by what we saw in Q2, including velocity of new customers, accelerated capital placements. as you mentioned there, both an acceleration and an increase in the size of our reorders. all of which further validated the market opportunity in front of us with our differentiated technology. And I'll also point out that we're really starting to leverage our established HA commercial team from PRP in a very synergistic way. And that not only makes this a good profitability driver for BioVentus, but I think it's also important to highlight that HA is helping us win PRP, and PRP is now helping us win business. So it's very exciting and we're looking forward to turning this business into a strong growth driver for BioVentus in the back half of this year and beyond. I'll touch on P&S briefly too since you mentioned it. We're really excited about what we saw in P&S in Q2 as well. It included an expansion of our P&S teams. an acceleration of new customers and new trials, and a great conversion rate to new implants. And we're receiving really positive feedback from the market. And when it comes to P&S, if it's roughly a $200 million market today, could reach $500 million over the next handful of years. And we're confident that our highly differentiated technology and our go-to-market strategy positions us very well to scale this business to over $100 million. As to the other part of your question, Yes, as expected, still tracking towards the 200 basis points for this year. So, again, really looking forward to the back half for both PRP and P&S and the years beyond.

Great. And if I could just follow up question for Mark. Sales growth, 5%. You mentioned 5% in the first half and EBITDA actually grew 12%, which shows some margin expansion. Curious. I know when we started the year with the investments, you know, enhance investments into the business. We thought EBITDA would be roughly flat-ish on the margin basis. Is that still your assumption? Because I think sales growth you mentioned was a little bit less than expected, but you still had some nice margin expansion there. Any thoughts on that as we look into the back half? Thanks.

Yes, thanks for the question. You know, feel really good about the control we have with our P&L and the peer-leading gross margins that we have. Overall, our expectations, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, are pretty consistent with what we've communicated for the full year around the 20%. Yes. 2Q EBITDA margin was 23%. So it's just a reflection of the powerful P&L that we have and the ability to control it. But with those really strong performance numbers, we are continuing to invest in our growth drivers. As we mentioned in the beginning of the year, we had highlighted $13 million of investment actually going to be a little bit more than that as we go into the back half of the year. You know, P&S will get the majority of those drivers because of, you know, how Rob just articulated the confidence that we have in that product and our ability to be successful there. So, we'll continue to invest in the second half. There'll be more investments into the second half than there was in the first half. very confident about the team's ability to provide the return on investment for those.

Right. Thanks. I appreciate it. Our next question will come from the line of Caitlin Roberts with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.