LeMaitre Vascular, Inc. (NASDAQ:LMAT) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 23, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

J.J. Pellegrino - Chief Financial Officer

George LeMaitre - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Dave Roberts - President

Conference Call Participants

Matthew Mishan - KeyBanc

Michael Petusky - Barrington Research

Brooks O’Neil - Lake Street Capital

Jim Sidoti - Sidoti

Operator

Welcome to LeMaitre Vascular Q4 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. J.J. Pellegrino, Chief Financial Officer of LeMaitre Vascular. Go ahead, sir.

J.J. Pellegrino

Thank you operator. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us on our Q4 2022 conference call. With me on today’s call is our Chairman and CEO, George LeMaitre; and our President, Dave Roberts.

Before we begin, I’ll read our Safe Harbor statement. Today, we will make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which is subject to risks and uncertainties. Wherever possible, we will try to identify those forward-looking statements by using words such as believe, expect, anticipate, pursue, forecast and similar expressions. Our forward-looking statements are based on our estimates and assumptions as of today, February 23, 2023, and should not be relied upon as representing our estimates or views on any subsequent date.

Please refer to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information and the risk factors in our most recent 10-K and subsequent SEC filings, including disclosure of the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which include organic sales growth as well as operating income, operating expense and EPS excluding special charges and gross margin, including the impact of foreign exchange. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures discussed in this call is contained in the associated press release and is available in the Investor Relations section of our website, www.lemait.com.

I will now turn the call over to George LeMaitre.

George LeMaitre

Thanks, J.J. On today’s call I’ll cover three topics. Number one, organic sales growth was 8% in Q4. Number two our sales force build-out and APAC expansion continued. And number three we have largely finished our initial MDR CE filings. We posted sales of $41 million in Q4, an 8% organic increase. Organic growth was led by APAC, up 22%, followed by EMEA, up 9%; and the Americas, up 6%. By product, biologic patches were up 11%, carotid shunts were up 24% and bovine grafts were up 11%. These increases were partially offset by Omniflow, which was down 55% due to a back order. We project this backorder will largely be resolved by the end of Q2 2023. Rep head count stood at 131 on December 31, 2022, up 27% year-over-year. Rep headcount grew 25% in both the Americas and EMEA and 40% in APAC. We also added two regional sales managers in 2022. Territory sizes are now smaller, and we think this will lead to better coverage of our vascular surgeon customers. Notably, we held sales kickoff meetings for all three geographies in January 2023, our first in-person meetings since January 2020.