Abbott Laboratories
Q1 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 16 Apr 2020

[Operator:]

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Abbott’s first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. All participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer portion of this call. During the question and answer session, you will be able to ask your question by pressing the star, one keys on your touchtone phone. Should you become disconnected throughout this conference call, please redial the number provided to you and reference the Abbott earnings call. This call is being recorded by Abbott. With the exception of any participant’s questions asked during the question and answer session, the entire call including the question and answer session is material copyrighted by Abbott. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without Abbott’s express written permission.

[Scott Leinenweber:]

Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Robert Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Funck, Executive Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Robert and Bob will provide opening remarks. Following their comments, we’ll take your questions. Before we get started, some statements made today may be forward-looking for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the expected financial results for 2019. Abbott cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Abbott’s operational results and financial results. This may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect Abbott’s operations are discussed in Item 1A, Risk Factors to our annual report on Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019. Abbott undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law. Please note that first quarter financial results and guidance provided on the call today for sales, EPS and line items of the P&L will be for continuing operations only. On today’s conference call, as in the past, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Abbott’s ongoing business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled with the comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings news release and regulatory filings from today, which are available on our website at abbott.com. Unless otherwise noted, our commentary on sales growth refers to organic sales growth, which is defined in our earnings news release issued earlier today. With that, I will now turn the call over to Robert.

[Robert Ford:]

Thanks Scott. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. As everyone here knows, we haven’t seen a quarter or any time quite like this before. This global environment is unprecedented in our lifetimes. Before we get into the details of the quarter, I want to take a moment to thank our employees, our customers, and our suppliers, all of whom are making extraordinary efforts to keep systems working and to maintain supply of our critically important products to the people who need them.

[Bob Funck:]

Thanks Robert. As Scott mentioned earlier, please note that all references to sales growth rates, unless otherwise noted, are on an organic basis which is consistent with our previous guidance. Turning to our results, sales for the first quarter increased 4.3%. Our adjusted gross margin ratio was 58% of sales. R&D investment was 7.3% of sales, and adjusted SG&A expense was 32.2% of sales. Exchange had an unfavorable year-over-year impact of 1.8% on first quarter sales. During the quarter, we saw the U.S. dollar strengthen versus most currencies, which resulted in a larger, unfavorable impact on sales compared to expectations had exchange rates held steady since the time of our earnings call in January. Based on current rates, we would now expect exchange to have a negative impact of a little more than 3% on our full year sales. As we announced this morning in our earnings news release, given the uncertainties regarding the duration and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re suspending our previously issued annual guidance for sales and earnings per share. We’re actively monitoring the situation closely and will provide updates as appropriate.

[Operator:]

Our first question comes from Robbie Marcus with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

[Robbie Marcus:]

Thanks, and congrats on a good quarter, all things considered. Maybe I can start with two positives in the portfolio here - I’ll ask them separately. First on diagnostics, Abbott is leading the way. You have three different tests, the ID Now molecular test, the m2000 SARS/COVID-19 test, and then the antibody test which was just announced. I know a lot of people are interested in the potential of all three of these tests here, so I was wondering if you could give us an overview of where you are with the testing, the potential revenue implications, and volumes that you’ll have, and any other tests that we should be on the lookout for on the horizon here. Thanks.

[Robert Ford:]

Sure Robbie. Yes, it was definitely an intense first quarter here for our diagnostic business even though it doesn’t look like that in the sales number, right. We’ve got a core lab business that had some declines in it given the similar dynamics that we saw in our cardiovascular procedures as the hospitalization and procedures kind of came down. Then on the other side of the business, we have our rapid and molecular business where we did see positive growth in the quarter, and we actually didn’t have a lot of COVID test sales for those businesses in the quarter. As you know, we got our approvals towards the end of the quarter, last week or so in March, so the potential here for the COVID tests are more significant for us in the second quarter here.

[Robbie Marcus:]

Appreciate the response, very helpful. Maybe just one other bright spot in the portfolio is Libre. This is a non procedure-based recurring revenue product. You had great international numbers. The U.S. number looked a little lighter this quarter, kind of flat quarter over quarter. Maybe just help us understand the trends in that business and how sustainable that is as people are away from their endocrinologist. Thanks.

[Robert Ford:]

Sure. As I said, if you look at our script data, if you want to look at the U.S. data, we had a very good quarter as it relates to script. Beginning of the year, I talked about how we were deploying a lot of demand generation strategies here, whether it was sales force expansions, direct to consumer advertising, etc., and you can see that , those that follow the weekly Rx data. You can see that inflection point starting in the first couple of weeks of January here versus where we exited. Our scripts between Q1 of 2002 and Q4 of ’19, the scripts actually grew 35% sequentially, obviously over 100% if you look at it year-over-year. The sequential growth rate there that may be referring to is really focused here on just kind of timing of sales and sale shipments in the quarter. I expect to see that shipment selling mimic what we’ve been seeing in our Rx generation in the U.S. that you saw in the first quarter, and I think that speaks a lot to the value proposition of Freestyle Libre. Not only is it accessible, affordable, but it’s easy to use. It’s easy to start patients on the products, so I think that we’ve seen that play out here even within this situation that we saw with COVID in the U.S. You’re right - international business has done very, very well, growing at very high rates, and that’s off a very, very large base, so I’m very pleased with the international business. I think there’s more work to be done there for sure. We’re starting to roll out the Libre 2 product in Europe and in the international markets a little bit more intentionally with that expansion. I think we showed some of our accuracy data on Libre 2 in the European conference beginning of this month, and I think that’s going to help fuel a lot of our growth also in the international markets too.

[Robbie Marcus:]

Appreciate it, thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Lewis from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

[David Lewis:]

Good morning. Robert, just a couple quick questions from me. The first thing, as you’re sort of thinking about recovery, you made some comments on China, but I wonder where is China right now as kind of a percent of prior normal? In the U.S., have you seen week over week the business get softer? Has the U.S. reaches some stabilization at a trough? Then just more broadly, how are you thinking about recovery across the quarters this year? Any qualitative commentary would be helpful, then I have a quick follow-up.

[Robert Ford:]

Sure. On your question on China, it’s an important market for us but we’re not overly reliant on China. Let me put your general demand question here, I think, a little bit into context, and I’ll walk through what we saw in the quarter geographically and across the businesses, and then talk a little bit about how we see the rest of the year going. If you look at our business and break them out into two groups, I would say more hospital-based demand generation businesses and then the second part more consumer-based demand businesses, they’re about 50/50, roughly 50/50 in size. We don’t tend to look at our businesses that way, David, but I think as we looked at coronavirus and started to look at our models, we started to look at this approach by looking at hospital and consumer-based. On the consumer-based side businesses, so you look at our EPD business, our nutrition business, our diabetes care business, all of them performed in the quarter very well. They all performed in line with our trends, with our targets, with our aspirations, with the execution of our growth strategies. Obviously the exception to that was some parts of our nutrition business, where we did see pantry loading as a result of some of--towards the end of March there, where we saw a lot of consumers try to stock up and get ready. But excluding that, all of them performed well and on target, and obviously there was increased demand for some of these products and our supply chain was resilient, was able to fulfill them. I see those businesses going forward performing at the same trend, at the same rate that we have been seeing. Obviously we might see a little bit of nutrition in the second quarter adjust a little bit, but overall I see these businesses performing at the same kind of trend. If we look at the hospital-based businesses, so think about that as the more core lab testing, our cardiovascular portfolio, even to some extent our neuromodulation business even though it’s not hospital, it’s more ASC, we definitely saw a decrease in those procedures, in those elective procedures and in that routine testing. Even within those, you see some differentiation, so we didn’t see our heart failure business get impacted that much because those are lifesaving devices versus an EP ablation procedure that was more elective and could be pushed out. But in general, I would say testing and procedures, we saw that drop. We collect daily device implant data and we collect daily hospital diagnostic testing data, and we collect it on a global basis, so I think we’ve got a pretty robust set of information that we can look at here as we start to observe the trends that we saw in the quarter. As we shared, we’re starting to see an improving trend here in China. It’s not to the level that we saw, you know, our normal levels pre-COVID, say December-January kind of rates, but they’re definitely not as low as where they were in February and we’re starting to see them every week get better and better and getting closer to those levels that we saw pre-COVID. We’ve seen other markets around the world, whether that’s Asia or some of the other European smaller markets there, where we’ve seen the beginning of the same kind of recovery trend that we saw in China, so starting to see some of the beginning of that recovery, and then in other markets we’re seeing this flattening and a stabilization here that’s suggesting that the speed of the virus is a little bit more controlled. If I look at this data, and we’ve looked at it various different ways, we’ve run a lot of different forecast models and sensitivities here, there’s a couple things that I can see ahead of us here. The first one is Q2 will likely be our toughest quarter in the year, especially, I would say, for our core lab business and our cardio and neuro businesses. This will probably be our toughest quarter for those, and I think our consumer businesses will continue to perform at the trends and dynamics that I had just explained. The second thing that we can see here based on our modeling, based on the data that we’re seeing from--that we’re collecting on a daily basis, is that we can see a recovery into Q3 and into Q4, especially for these more elective procedures. There are some that you can push out, but they are important, they are lifesaving, they are solving some significant problems, whether it’s a stent, a pacemaker, repairing a mitral valve. We will see those start to come back, the same way that we’ve started to see in some of the earlier markets that are further along in their recovery. I don’t believe that they’re going to come back at the same speed that they came down, but like I said, these are important procedures and I do see them coming back. I’m talking to a lot of health systems, a lot of CEOs from health systems, and they are already talking about how they are planning to start to work with some of those elective procedures. It will be a V-shape. I don’t think it will be--I think the right hand side of that V-shape will be definitely a little less steeper than the left hand side of that V-shape, but I think we’re going to see that recovery in Q3 and Q4, at least that’s what our data is suggesting. Clearly it’s quite possible that other industries might take longer to recover, but I think for healthcare, the data our modeling here suggests the kind of recovery that I’ve just described. The third thing we can see here clearly is that testing is going to play a major role here at getting back to work, getting back to school, getting people back to factories, back to distribution centers, etc. We know that this is 24/7 type of work that our teams need to do to be able to scale up, and I think that the sales ramp and potential, etc. is really going to be guided by our manufacturing ramp-up and our ability to deliver on that manufacturing ramp-up, and I think we’ve been batting at a very high average here based on the commitments that we’ve made. When you look at all of that and you put all of this into context here, we have decided to suspend our guidance. We’re usually right here to the penny every quarter, and it’s going to be--right now, it’s going to be very difficult to get that right to the penny going forward. But I believe that we’ll be in a position to give, let’s say, some more qualitative updates sometime in the quarter and, depending on how that goes, we might be able to give guidance in the second half here. I’ve looked at the consensus that’s been put out there. We beat the revised consensus across our business. I’d leave the consensus where it is right now, given that it is a pretty fluid situation; but I think we could do better. There’s just too much depends on right now for us. We’re going to keep on focusing on what we’re doing and sometime throughout the quarter here, if we feel that we’re in a better position to be able to give some more qualitative assessment and guidance, we’ll do that.

[David Lewis:]

Okay, thanks Robert. That’s actually very specific, more than I hoped for. In terms of the second question, you’ve probably been less active on growth oriented M&A these last couple year than some of your peers, but you’re going to emerge from this pandemic crisis with probably the strongest balance sheet in large cap device. How are we thinking about your interest in--you know, buybacks I imagine are less of your focus, but your interest in opportunistic M&A here, coming out of this crisis? Thanks so much.

[Robert Ford:]

Sure. Listen, I’d say right now we’ve done a lot of work on our balance sheet over the last couple of years. We’ve talked a lot about the work we’ve done to improve our leverage ratios, the work that the organization has done to improve our cash conversion cycle, so yes, our financial strength here is very strong. As Bob talked about, we’ve got a strong cash position here towards the end of the quarter, close to $4 billion. We have access to credit facilities, and we’ve got businesses that are strong cash flow generators and that’s going to be important as we go forward. We don’t have a lot of debt maturing or coming due here in the next couple of years, so I don’t foresee our capital allocation strategy to really change at this point. We have a strong dividend, we pay a strong dividend and we’re going to continue to do that. That’s an important part of our identity. We haven’t done a lot of share repurchases historically. Most of the time when we do that, it’s really just to try and offset some of the dilution. I think Bob and the finance team, I would say, is definitely looking at our capex and our capex spending. I don’t--we’ll probably see some slowdown a little bit in that, and the team--I know Bob’s kind of working on that. We’ll see how that’s going to look like, but that will just be a factor of getting the work done, and right now there are some of our projects that require people to be building sites, etc. We’ll continue to focus on that, we’ll continue to build our capacity expansions that we talked about in the past, but we’ll probably see some phasing a little bit over there. On your question on M&A, I’m not really looking at anything as we talk about it. There’s an opportunistic side to it and there’s a strategic side to it, and on the strategic side I just don’t see anything right now that fits what we want to do and where we want to go. Quite frankly, our execution here, again going back, and maybe this sounds a little bit broken record here, but we’ve just got so many opportunities in our existing portfolio to keep on focusing on, and now you layer on top of that the opportunity we have on our testing platforms, so our big focus here is on internal execution.

[David Lewis:]

Very good, thanks so much, Robert.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bob Hopkins from Bank of America. Your line is open

[Bob Hopkins:]

Great, thanks. Good morning. Just a couple quick questions. First, I wanted to circle back to testing, specifically regarding the two COVID-19 tests that are being run on ID Now and M2000. I just wanted to be super clear on where you are today in terms of shipping capacity. Is it that 5 million per month that you talked about, and also can you give us a sense as we look forward, given the critical importance of these tests, where you’ll be, say, maybe midyear in terms of testing and shipping capacity? Thank you.

[Robert Ford:]

Sure. On the testing side, we talked about achieving a manufacturing ramp-up here as we come out of the gates with the ID Now platform at about 1.5 million tests, and we’re on target to do that definitely throughout the middle of this month here. We’re making improvements in the manufacturing process and adding more ships, etc. to be able to expand that to get to 2 million tests by June. That’s what we’ve talked about, and right now we’re on plan, on target to deliver on that expansion. Obviously we need more than 2 million of the ID Now tests, so we’re looking at how we can ramp up. As I explained in the beginning in the first question, these manufacturing processes are highly precise, highly automated so that we can get the performance and the reliability of the product, so these involve making--setting up manufacturing lines, and you don’t do those in a week or two weeks. There’s a lot of work going on there, but we know we need to--we know that there’s a need for more ID Now tests. On the M2000, we made the commitment to ship a million tests in the month of March, which we did. We talked about shipping 4 million tests in the month of April, and we’re on target to do that--to manufacture 4 million tests, and we’re on target to do that. We’ve moved the team along to find ways that we can expand that, and the teams are working on that also, so I’d say right now that 5 million test mark on those two tests is where we’re at, and as we make progress with our manufacturing ramp-ups, we will be clear about what the market can expect.

[Bob Hopkins:]

Great, thank you. One follow-up on the same sort of topic. Congratulations on the new serology test that you just announced. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about sensitivity and specificity data relating to that test, and whether you think the high levels that have been quoted are sustainable when you think about general population testing. Thank you.

[Robert Ford:]

Yes, to answer your question on the accuracy, right now the label we have is if you do the test 14 days post symptoms, the sensitivity of the test is 100% and the specificity of that test is 99.5%. That’s over 1,000 samples, so I think we’ve got a very accurate, reliable test here to be able to work on. Obviously if you try and do this test five days after you’ve been exposed to the virus, your body hasn’t produce enough antibodies to be able to be detected at a reliable, accurate level, so that’s why when I talked about how we’ve set up our tests, the different form factors, that the use of the antibody test is more to look towards a couple weeks after somebody’s been exposed, have they built enough antibodies that they’ve defeated the virus. That’s the data.

[Bob Hopkins:]

Thanks Robert.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Vijay Kumar from Evercore. Your line is open.

[Vijay Kumar:]

Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations, guys. Two questions from me. One, maybe on the near term, when you think about the serology test and applicability to opening up the economy, there are some issues around prevalence rate and false positives, and is this now paving the way for a second wave of infections. Maybe address that, how these tests could be deployed perhaps in helping us open up the economy. One other- you know, when you think about your employees getting back to work, what science are you looking for to completely open up workforce and letting employees back?

[Robert Ford:]

Sure. As I said, we have to look at the suite of tests as not--you know, one test is not the panacea. You need to look at the comprehensive suite of testing and deploy them in the right ways. As I said, I think the serology test is very reliable as we roll this out for the antibodies. We’re working on an IgM antibody test also. Obviously as companies are thinking about coming back to work, the way we’re looking at this is, okay, we know that there’s going to be a little bit different--work a little bit differently than the way we’ve historically been working, so maybe not a lot of big meetings, 20 people, 30 people in the meeting rooms. It will probably be a little bit different than that. I think we’ll see people wearing masks, I think we’ll see more cleaning of doorknobs and elevator buttons and all of that, and I think that’s ongoing right now. I think a lot of companies are doing this right now, and that seems to be working. If you now add on to all of those protocols a lateral flow test here that’s got a very strong sensitivity, reliability, etc., and you add that on and you can test at companies using an occupational health team, etc., that will be an additional layer of security, of testing that will be on top of thermometers and everything I just described also. I think it’s going to be an important tool. You know, we’ve talked about this a lot in terms of microclimates - we try to think about everybody coming back at once, and then you use all this data that you just referenced, prevalence and sensitivity and specificity, and you try and look at that in very large populations, we need to think about it more in terms of a factory, an office building, a school, and then running these tests will allow you to, on top of what you are doing, provide another tool to be able to assist companies and schools, etc. get people back to work. I think that’s how at least we’re looking at it, and I think how I’ve heard other companies looking at how to reopen, how to get back.

[Vijay Kumar:]

That’s helpful. Then maybe a bigger picture question, or maybe this is more--you know, help us understand how we should be thinking about the future. When I look at 2021, obviously I’m not asking for guidance, we know ’20 was impacted but what is the right base, looking at procedure volumes, when you look at the underlying rate of incidents and prevalence for disease states, those really haven’t changed, so if we don’t have a second rate of infection coming in or next year being impacted, should we be looking at procedure volumes in ’19 as a base, the right base to build off, or should we be--you know, there are some issues in hospital capacity constraints, and should we be looking at the depressed 2020 procedures numbers as the right base to--you know, looking at how those numbers could trend next year? Thank you.

[Robert Ford:]

I can appreciate you’re trying to figure out 2021 already, Vijay, but I think it’s pretty tough right now for us to figure out how exactly Q2 is going to look like, let alone next year. I think you raise some of the unknowns that really make it difficult to predict - you know, how fast the economy recovers, how fast hospitals return to normalcy, how does our testing platform and how does the testing environment evolve. We’re all hoping for fast recovery here, but if it takes longer, we’ll have strong demand for testing and that will continue to help buffer the impact. I do think there’s a lot of pent-up demand here on cardiovascular devices and diagnostics, and I think hospitals are figuring how they’re going to get back to work. I think there’s a lot of patients that are in need of care, and I think that--I don’t know if we can predict exactly when it’s going to come back, but I do think that when it does come back, I think you’ll see these device procedures which are extremely important, as truly important in the care continuum, etc., that we will see them come back. That’s probably my best answer for you, is I believe that we will see recovery towards the second half of this year in these elective procedures, and you can try and model out what kind of V-shape is it - you know, does it look more like an L, does it look more like a V, is it something in between, etc. But I think that’s how at least we’re looking at the rest of this year.

[Vijay Kumar:]

That’s helpful. Thank you, Robert.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Taylor with UBS. Your line is open.

[Matt Taylor:]

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. First question, I just wanted to follow up on the testing since it’s so important, and certainly commend the team for their efforts in getting those out so quickly. It’s a two-parter. One is you mentioned in the early remarks that there’s been a lot of commentary about difficulty in the testing market. It’s not only due to kits, but folks have mentioned swabs and reagents and other things like that. I was just wondering from your perspective, I’m sure you’re getting a lot of feedback on this, what do you think is the biggest challenge out there in terms of getting access to testing now, and how do you see that improving over the next weeks and months? Then on--yes, go ahead, sorry.

[Robert Ford:]

On the question there of testing and testing supplies and shortages there, I think when you look at what we’ve done, we’ve made sure obviously that when we ship out our tests, they have everything they need to test, whether it’s controls, calibrators, whether it’s swabs in ID Now, those come together here. From Abbott’s perspective, we’re trying to make sure that they have everything that they need. I do think that some of the challenges you have is potentially workflow. At least for us, we’ve got--you know, our M2000s, they’re in regional hospitals, regional labs, which is a good thing because you can have not only your big, central labs doing a lot of centralization, but then you can use the regional network to be able to get to test I just think it’s a workflow process here, how to get the samples. I think a lot of hospitals might not want to be doing a lot of mass testing into the hospital, so how you collect the samples and then how you bring them into the hospital, and then how do you get them out. I think that’s probably one of the bigger challenges. I think that the team, whether it’s on the federal government side and also with a lot of governors, are figuring this out and they’re sharing how they’re doing it and sharing best practices, and at least on our side, we’re starting to see a ramp-up here on the M2000, but there’s obviously more that they can do.

[Matt Taylor:]

Got it, then one follow-up on that. I think on Bob’s question, you commented on the accuracy of the serology test, which is high. Could you comment on the accuracy of the other tests, your confidence in them with smaller samples that you had to get out quickly, and the relative importance of the two serology tests in determining who’s had the virus and who has immunity?

[Robert Ford:]

Yes, sure. On the molecular test, listen - molecular test is the gold standard for accuracy. RNA testing, testing viral load, etc. is the gold standard, and if you look at how we did the test, obviously it was work in conjunction with the FDA, using a testing model that was provided by the FDA. The tests are performed at 100% of the expected outcomes in the samples for both negative and positive results, so I think the ID Now system is very reliable. The other, M2000, we used levels of detection. You can go through levels of detection labels and you can see the accuracy and reliability of the M2000 versus the other systems that have been approved also. As I said, the use of the antibody test is just going to be an important tool in conjunction with molecular testing to be able to screen, test and manage the population. We’ll see how that’s going to roll out, and it will follow the vision that we’ve thought of, having both a lab-based system and a lateral flow-based system.

[Matt Taylor:]

Thank you very much.

[Scott Leinenweber:]

Okay, we’ll take one more question, Operator.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our final question comes from Larry Biegelsen with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Larry Biegelsen:]

Good morning, thanks for taking the question. Robert, let me just ask one multi-part device question on two milestones we’re waiting for, the MitraClip FMR NCD. Any update there? And of course Libre 2, any update on the status there? Just lastly, any other timelines in devices that could be impacted by coronavirus would be helpful. Thanks so much for taking the question.

[Robert Ford:]

Sure Larry, I was waiting for the Libre question. Let me answer your CMS question on secondary MR. As you’d expect under these circumstances, CMS has delayed the issuance of the proposed NCD. We were previously expecting that to be mid-February, but given the current circumstances, the delay here isn’t really having an impact on our business. I’m confident in the process, I’m confident that we’ve been working with them and the different societies over here, and this will move forward on the appropriate time. On Libre 2, I guess I sound like a broken record here, Larry, but what I’ll say is I’m very confident in the product, the same way that I’ve been saying I’m confident. I think some of you might have seen the accuracy data that we published at the European conference beginning of February. I’m very encouraged about resolving some of these open items here in the near future with the FDA. We’re just working through finishing items, but like I said, that’s not holding back Libre or Libre’s growth here. More to come.

[Larry Biegelsen:]

Anything else that we should be aware of that could be impacted on the device side from a timeline standpoint?

[Robert Ford:]

There’s been some discussion on clinical trial and clinical trial regulatory timelines here. Our near term forecast wasn’t really overly reliant on any patient enrolment end points. There’s obviously been some delays in some of the enrollment as we’ve seen a mandate here to pause some of these procedures, but I think once this is over, for the ongoing trials that have longer timelines here, we’ll look at opportunities that we’ll have to accelerate enrolment and make up for some time.

[Robert Ford:]

Let me just say in closing here, I think we had a pretty unusual quarter here for us. I think you saw the strength of our diversified business model come through in true strength. Some parts of the business--you know ,we did have some challenges, as I’ve described. Other parts of the business have been pretty stable, and I think they’ll continue to be pretty stable. Then there are others that are performing at very high levels, and I think we’ll start to see on the testing side how fast we can ramp up. The team here has done an amazing job around the world, not only to develop the tests but also the manufacturing and the supply chain teams across the world, across our network have done an incredible job. I said our financial strength here is pretty strong - I think we had that question here, and we’ll continue to look at ways to improve on that. As I said, we believe that there is a recovery and we’ll start to see that, I believe, in the Q3, Q4 timeframe. I think healthcare is a little bit different than you might expect from maybe other industries, so once we get a better sense of how that’s going to look like towards the second half of the year, we’ll definitely be updating and providing some more qualitative updates on that. Okay?

[Scott Leinenweber:]

Very good. All right well thank you, Operator, and thank you for all of your questions. This now concludes Abbott’s conference call. A webcast replay of this call will be available after 11

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.