Vapotherm, Inc.
Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 8 May 2021

[Operator:]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vapotherm Inc., First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your speaker today, Mr. Mark Klausner. Please go ahead.

[Mark Klausner:]

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for the Vapotherm First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining us on today's call are Vapotherm's President and Chief Executive Officer, Joe Army; and its Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, John Landry.

[Joe Army:]

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. I will begin by discussing our first quarter results. Then I will hand the call over to John Landry, our CFO, to provide the financial details of our first quarter, 2021 results. I will then update you on our key areas of focus for the remainder of the year before taking questions. Our first quarter was another strong quarter for Vapotherm. We generated $32.3 million in revenue, a 69% increase over first quarter 2020, and increased our worldwide installed base by nearly 2,200 units to 30,829 units. Of note, we significantly increased our installed base in Latin America, which we expect will pay dividends for years to come.

[John Landry:]

Thank you, Joe. As mentioned, revenue in the first quarter of 2021 was $32.3 million, representing a 69% increase over revenue of $19.1 million in the first quarter of 2020. U.S. revenue with $22.1 million representing an increase of 54% over the first quarter of 2020 revenue of $14.3 million, while total international revenue with $10.2 million, which represented an increase of 115% over the first quarter of 2020 revenue of $4.8 million. Disposable revenue with $17.2 million in the first quarter of 2021, representing a 38% increase over revenue of $12.4 million in the first quarter of 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, we saw roughly 170 disposables worldwide. Disposable revenue with $12.5 million in the U.S. compared to $9.7 million in the first quarter of 2020, representing 29% year over year growth. International disposable revenue was $4.79 million compared to 2.7 million in the first quarter of 2020 representing growth of 72%. Worldwide service revenue was $1.7 million in the first quarter of 2021, which grew by $1 million over the first quarter of 2020, largely due to HTE revenue and increased service and other revenue. A worldwide installed base grew by 2,179 units in one. And as of the end of the first quarter, our installed base consisted of 30,829 units reflecting 73% year-over-year growth. Our monthly U.S. disposable utilization rate for the first quarter of 2021 was 1.81 as compared to 2.51 in the prior year. Our installed base expanded significantly due to COVID-19 and as expected, it will take time for these newly installed units to become fully productive. In addition, the decline in U.S. disposable utilization was also due to little to no flu or RSV because of social distancing and mask wearing and lower birth rates worldwide than in the prior year. The monthly international disposable utilization rate for the first quarter of 2021 with 2.21 as compared to 2.29 in the first quarter of 2020. Gross profit in the first quarter of 2021 was $17.2 million, an increase of $8 million over gross profit of $9.2 million in the first quarter of 2020. Gross margin was 53.1% in the first quarter of 2021, compared to 48.2% in the first quarter of 2020. The gross margin improvement was due to significantly higher revenue and production volume in comparison to 1Q 2020 as well as an increase in average selling prices in the U.S. on both capital and disposable sales. Operating expenses were $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of $5 million over $21.9 million in the prior year.

[Joe Army:]

Thanks, John. Before opening the line for questions, I would like to review what we will focus on in 2Q and for the remainder of the year. We will place heavy emphasis on ensuring is productive, especially all the precision point units that were installed in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. We accelerated our one hospital, one day program as COVID-19 hospitalizations decreased in the U.S. and we'll continue to educate our customers on how our technology treats both hypoxic and especially hypercapnic patients throughout the hospital. Our field team will also continue to be focused on adding new gold and silver ED accounts while our critical team will continue to develop clinical evidence, demonstrating our ability to treat hypercapnic patients. The launch of will be expanded throughout the EU and U.K. , and we'll be working closely with the FDA on our own pathway in the US. We will continue to focus on growing our installed base in both the U.S. and internationally, and will be ready to meet our customer's needs should COVID-19 hospitalizations increase or remain at the elevated levels we're currently seeing in Latin America and the EU. We will also prepare for the launch of our new HPT 2.0 platform in the second half of 2021. Finally, we expect that the HGE pilot work we will be conducting in select U.S. geographies will help inform our home strategy. Last but not least. I'm excited to let you know that we will be hosting our first ever investor day on June 23 at 10

[Operator:]

Your first question comes from the line of Bob Hopkins from Bank of America.

[Bradley Bowers:]

Brad Bowers on for Bob today. Thanks for taking our questions. So I appreciate the color that you gave on the decline in the US. disposable. They're obviously a little bit below historical. So I was just wondering, you know, what conversations you're having that sort of give me confidence that, you know, you can return to normal utilization, and how the progress is going with making sure that those boxes in the U.S. that you placed are getting used.

[Joe Army:]

So I'll take that one, John, if you don't mind. So thanks very much for the question. First thing I'll tell you is that when you look at the quarters turn rates, when you, we don't publish this information for you guys, but when we look at the, the aggregate, the components for that, the monthly pieces, the January turn rates were very, very strong, very high. And as we saw the COVID-19 hospitalizations begin to drop off, and they dropped off very quickly after they peaked in the first or second week of January, we saw that drop off pretty rapidly from, from well below what we've seen for historical norms. We started talking, obviously out in the field, talking about all the customers and what they were telling us is "There's no flu anywhere in the system at that point in time", and we haven't seen any flu in north America in any, any capacity whatsoever this year, nor have we seen any kind of RSB. But what it did do is it let our field team get back into the accounts. You know, by the time we got into February, our people were back on the ground back to teaching, training, coaching. So we're hearing stories like what I shared with you guys on this call, we're hearing more and more of those stories. Like now, I'm able to get back into these accounts and I've been able to see it firsthand. I'm telling you, I think this year's going to be sloppy, but I'm very excited about what I see for the end of the year, in terms of reverting back to our historical norms. And in fact, because of the number of gold accounts that we've been opening, you guys know that those gold ED accounts turn at a higher rate than non-ED accounts. So what we're, what we're working on doing is to make sure that we're educating the heck out of everybody on using this technology on hypercapnic patients now. And we, we can see that what we're going to get to by the end of the year, and feeling very good we'll be back to historical norms.

[Bradley Bowers:]

Got it, appreciate that. That's helpful. And then I guess this one, I guess we'll call it a clarification, but on, you know, your confidence, when you talk about having disposables in the U S showing year over year growth, you know, it sounds to me like we might see the utilization be a little bit lower than typical, you know, over Q2 and Q3. So are you talking about for the full year there? Cause I mean, that seems to me to imply that it's, it would be maybe Q4 weighted a bit. So maybe just trying to think about the progression of that and thank you.

[Joe Army:]

Yes, I guess that's probably right. I think the other question that you got to be factoring in is are people going to continue to wear masks? Because what everybody's learned is that masks have an impact on the spread of flu. I mean, it's really what we saw this year. We've masked, and are the kids going to school or not, because they're a vector for not only RSB, but for flu as well. So we're, we're taking a, when, when the patients are back in the hospital, we're treating them, but we got to see the patients get back in the hospital first. But I think from a modeling point of view, John's probably better off talking to you about that than I am.

[John Landry:]

Yes, that's right, Brad. And that is for the full year, a year over year disposable growth, we expect despite some of the points that Joe made around training and education and some of the downsides we saw there in the first quarter after COVID hospitalizations decreased, we're still confident that through training and education, focusing in on the ED Gold accounts and the hypercapnic patients specifically, we'll be able to grow that disposable revenue on a year, over year basis versus 20. And then when you look at it on a two-year compounded annual growth rate, our U.S. disposables we expect those to grow in the low thirties on a two-year compounded annual growth rate versus to 2019.

[Joe Army:]

When you start to look at 2022, and you think about the size of that install base, that's what I'm thinking about it is, that is a really, really big install base that we've been able to build during this pandemic. And that's why I'm telling you, I think this year is going to be sloppy, but I'm very excited about what I'm seeing for 2022, on that disposable front in particular.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Margaret Kaczor from William Blair.

[Margaret Kaczor:]

A few things I wanted to follow up on, you know, number one, you talked about doubling your presence in gold and silver EDs. It's obviously been a bit of a land grab for you all, but as you look through this year and next year, are you still seeing repeat purchases from these newer accounts, meaning that you can continue to see kind of the benefits of 2020 in future years? And then how should we think of possible capital budgets trending through 21 and 22?

[Joe Army:]

Well, that's the second part first, right? Because I got to tell you, I don't think there's going to be much amount of capital dollars available on the respiratory front. We've just gone through a pandemic that was, you know, it was respiratory central. So you know, we're planning and capital budgets being pretty limited for the next, you know, I don't know, a couple quarters because of the next year or so. But what we are seeing is, we continue to see, when they've opened up accounts they are continuing to buy more of our gear, whether it be BTU's or that they're, they're, they're rounding those fleets out. So I like what I'm seeing there, Margaret, in terms of our ability to repeat what we've been doing, which is, you know, 60% of our capital equipment in any given quarter before this whole pandemic thing was to current accounts or expanding our fleet. And so I think that we're going to continue to see that particularly with the launch of the HVT 2.0, I mean that, that product is going to provide a lot of capability to take this technology throughout the hospital. And hospitals has been doing it, but it's been very hard to do, right, they have to buy a compressor and have to move it through there. So despite all that friction in that process, they've been doing it. So I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when they don't have to go through all of those hoops and we can put this thing anywhere they want.

[Margaret Kaczor:]

Okay. So yes, a couple of follow ups on that as well. If we think about installed base growth versus capital equipment or a cap X budgets within hospitals, I have to assume you're still thinking install-base, you know, domestically grows this year, certainly outside the U.S. grows this year and in future quarters as well as for ‘22. But, as you think about HPT 2.0, how comfortable are you pushing us up? You know, and how do you think about the pricing structure for those types of devices, whether around, you know, the device itself for committed contracts?

[Joe Army:]

Well, you know, I think the timing on this thing is actually pretty interesting. Especially when you start to think about different business models that can help hospitals deal with limited capital budgets, but still need the technology. So we're going to try a couple of different things and see how they work. But really it's, I have no doubt now, Margaret, given the exposure that we've gotten during this pandemic, we just scratched the surface on what we've got to go do, both in terms of the installed base and councilor RDA, but also in the installed base and all the accounts that we're not in. You know, while, while we're in 500 of the 2000 largest hospitals in the country, I mean, there's 1500 of the hospitals that we're not in yet, and there's an awful lot of ground to cover.

[Margaret Kaczor:]

Okay. And so let me add- I want to ask another one HVT 2.0, because you talked about the digital platform there. You know, can you remind us the cost benefit, I guess, of discharging the patient home, not having a patient come back to the hospital? That return, you know, if they were to come back, would be a cost to the hospital yet, so what are the cost savings associated with that digital platform?

[Joe Army:]

Well, first and foremost, you're going to improve the quality of the patient's life to begin with. Right? The second thing you're going to do is what HDE has been to demonstrate is a 40% reduction in all cause utilization on people who are on their remote monitoring platform at home. But I think for our gold and our silver accounts, what they're thinking about is CLPD readmissions within that 30-day window is a big problem for them. And it affects their entire CMS book of business where they're going to pay penalties on the whole book, not just on that CLPD patient. So there's the cost of treating them, but then there are the penalties imposed on that CMS book for, for all the CMS business. So that's really what we're kind of excited because it lines up really well with our existing book of business and what our hospitals are trying to accomplish, which is treat these patients, and then keep them out of the hospital. And, you know, that's what, that's what these platform is designed to do.

[Operator:]

And your next question comes from the line of Bill Plovanic from Canaccord.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

it's John for Bill tonight. I first want to dig also into the new HGE system. Are there any hurdles or challenges to reimbursement for home oxygen that you're considering when designing the business model for at home use?

[Joe Army:]

Well, you know, HGE is a remote patient monitoring system. It's not an oxygen system per se, right? So these, these, the reimbursement has been established during the pandemic. And it is, it is all designed to take care of these patients in the home as opposed to in that hospital. So the two are really, they're not connected at this stage. Now you can imagine that some point while we are dialing in on what our home, high velocity therapy product's going to look like, we're going to marry these two technologies together. So we're, we're really not going to be exposed to the home oxygen reimbursement, we're going to be looking more towards how do we keep these patients out of that hospital? And then how do we help the hospitals or health insurance company said money? And then how are we going to partner with them in that area? G.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Got it. Thanks, Joe. And then just more on, a dig on the HYPERACT trial. I know you feel it's slow to enroll, but can you provide some timeline expectations on how you plan to use the data to really drive the use in type two patients?

[Joe Army:]

Well, you know, it's building on, on the body of data that we've already built. I mean, this is a big deal. When you think about, well, what our technology is able to do, you can treat all kinds of respiratory distress in an emergency department with this. You don't have to pick and choose, right. If, if that patient comes in and they're, hypercapnic that technology, high-velocity therapy, is, is going to be the frontline therapy for them. Everybody could see why it makes sense that you're going to be able to treat a hypoxic patient with this. It was, it is not obvious to them at the outset when we first started down this path, and we began that Doshi trial that you could ever treat a, or blow off the CO2 of one of these patients with a nasal cannula. It was just something that clinicians had been trained for two generations that the only way to do that was with the pressure-based therapy, like a bi-pap. So when we think about our clinical strategy and how HYPERACT fits into this, it really is building on the building blocks of the Doshi study. Then the subgroup analysis, which showed how effective it was on those hypercapnic patients, then the Argentina trial, which was just published, which was on more seriously hypercapnic patients. The HYPERACT trial is designed for moderate to severe hypercapnic patients, which is, it will be a very, very important piece of work to show and give clinicians that confidence that there is a lot of body of evidence out there now that shows how to treat these patients frontline with our therapy. So we think all of these are going to continue to build together. We're just going to keep building more and more of that critical data for them so they can see it. Our goal is that we're going to respiratory distress patient that comes into that hospital. Hypercapnic, hypoxic, doesn't matter. As long as they're spontaneously breathing, our technology will be that first line therapy is what our goal is.

[Operator:]

And your next question comes from the line of Marie Thibault from BTIG.

[Marie Thibault:]

Lots of good updates here in your comments today. I want to ask a two-parter maybe on the international business. You noted that in Latin America you saw quite a lot of demand for the capital systems. I'm curious if there are new countries that you've entered or new ways to sort of expand your international business that weren't present before the pandemic, or maybe this latest spike, and then also sort of on the OUS side, how should we think about disposables after the pandemic is resolved? Should we think about it similar to the US? I know without as much direct salesforce, possibly there might be some difference in training and education outreach. So just love your thoughts there.

[Joe Army:]

Yes. I think you've hit the nail on the head there with the training through a distributor network. So we're spending a lot of time really working to help them develop and deliver on this hypercapnic training. So I think that's going to be the key. I would be surprised if the international turn rates didn't mirror the U.S. turn rates at some level, because there's been so much equipment that's gone up. That installed base has grown a lot, right. So I would expect to see that same kind of lag and then that same kind of return. And it's all going to be driven by that messaging and how tight we can deliver that education to those dealers right. And we have a very, very good network partners in all of these different countries. They're very clinically savvy and they understand how to treat these patients with them. With respect to new countries, Marie, we have been using this as an opportunity to expand in new countries. In Latin America, quite honestly, we have a very strong partner in Latin America. Linde, the gas company is our partner there and they've been our partner for a long time. And they have a lot of infrastructure in Brazil, in Mexico, in Columbia and all of these countries where we've been in a very good position to take care of those customers needs and our partners have done a super job. We continue to add distribution in new countries, but on a pretty selective basis. We really want to stay focused on those markets where we can see a path to being very successful in a reasonable period of time. So we're going to tend to continue to go into those countries that are maybe more developed, but it has been an opportunity for us and I think we've made a fair amount of hay with it. That international businesses performing very well the U.S. is too, but those international guys have really done a great job with this.

[Marie Thibault:]

Okay. That's really good to hear. Let me ask one then on and the FDA ID study. Glad to hear that you are about to get that kicked off. Would love to hear a little bit more about the design and possible time line around data coming out of that and a potential approval. And then over in Europe and the U.K., what is it specifically those bodies might want to see when it comes to reimbursement and granting reimbursement for . Thanks so much.

[Joe Army:]

Sure. The U.S. trial, we're going to lay out a lot more detail at our investor day in June. So we would love to see you there and be able to walk you through that in a more detailed fashion. The way to think about this broadly speaking, Marie, is the trial that we ran at Oxford and St. Peter's is a very good proxy for what we're going to be running in the U.S. but, my guess is the U.S. one's going to be just a little bit bigger, probably have a couple more centers involved in it. You should expect to see some of the best NICUs in the United States participating in this trial. And I would expect it's a pretty similar design to that. We finished the enrollment in that thing in under a year. So I think once we get this thing moving, that was also in a pre COVID period, right? So this pandemic has added degrees of complexity to everything that we do across the Board. So we would expect that we're going to kick that trial off here by the time we get to our, like I said, our investor day in June, we're going to be able to give you a little more color on it. In terms of reimbursement in Europe, this is new for us because, we'd never actually explore this area, but when FDA made this a breakthrough technology, and we started to understand the possibility of additional reimbursement in the U.S. for that, we're like, well, let's do the same thing in Europe. There's an awful lot of economic value that this thing delivers by improving those clinical outcomes and creating more consistency of treatment effect. Oxygen is a, you heard me say this a million times, it is a deadly dangerous life-giving drug with a narrow therapeutic window. And this thing does an outstanding job of delivering on that. So we're learning about it, it's new for our organization, but we figured we really liked the fact that we'll get started on this whole reimbursement exercise in Europe ahead of the time. So that by the time we roll into the United States, we're going to know what we're doing on that front.

[Operator:]

And our last question comes from the line of Jason Bednar from Piper Sandler.

[Jason Bednar:]

Wanted to start with the ASP increase, taking on the equipment and disposables here at the start of the year. I'm just wondering if you can talk about how this, this price strategy lines up. How did the HBT 2.0 roll out? And then on the disposable side, just curious how these changes have landed with the installed base.

[Joe Army:]

Sure. One of the key items to driving the ASP increases, Jason, on the disposable side is the introduction of new products. So last year we introduced our ProSoft cannula as well as our air Slides, disposable patient circuit. Both of those have higher clinical utility for our customers and the patients that they utilize the technology with. And as a result, may command a higher price than our legacy technology and legacy cannulas in that space. So that's helped increase it as we've increased the mix of those new products that's helped uplift the ASP's as well as the typical medical CPI type increases that we're seeing there on a disposable front. On the capital side, it's more of a mixed situation, Jason, where we've had a higher mix of precision flow units that either are BTU or a compressor, which adds to the capital equipment revenue for the same amount of precision for units that go out there. So that's really a mix issue as well as again, the medical CPI price increases that we've seen on the capital. And as we look to HBT 2.0, we're still in the initial stages of working through that with a limited market of lease type work. And then we'll provide more color on that as we get deeper in that process.

[Jason Bednar:]

Okay. Just to be clear on this point, this is for both capital and disposal, this is mostly a mixed issue or entirely a mix issue -- not like-for-like price increase on either?

[Joe Army:]

You have medical CPI, which would be the base price increase, and then you have mix on top of that.

[Jason Bednar:]

Okay, great. And then as far as a follow-up, just wanted to touch on gross margin unit. Quick math from here would suggest maybe we're looking for margins to drop down to levels comparable to what we saw in 2019 over the balance of the rest of this year. So I guess, is that how you're thinking about things, John, or of the first quarter margin strength make you more comfortable about delivering maybe at the upper end of the range you've got out there.

[Joe Army:]

Sure, Jason, a good question. So as we look at gross margins, our gross margin for the first quarter of the year comes on the heels of our highest revenue per year expect based on the midpoint of our guidance, roughly 40% of revenues come through. So based upon the production sales volumes that we had in the first quarter, we had quite a tailwind there in terms of gross margin benefit. And as we go through the rest of the year and our volumes decrease from here, both on the production and sales side, we believe that we'll be generating margins that are more aligned with where they were in the 2019 time frame, but long term, our three point post margin improvement plan is intact. And that as we come out of 2021 going into 2022, we'll continue that trajectory and be in the 2022 gross margin range, which would be above where we came out of 2020. So we feel good about where we're going long term on gross margin improvement.

[Operator:]

And as there are no further questions at this time, I will now turn the call back to Mr. Joe Army for closing remarks.

[Joe Army:]

We just want to thank you all very much for your time today. And we look forward to seeing as many of you as we could fit into the plant on June 23rd, up at Exeter. And after that, we'll be back to you in August and talk to you about how the second quarter went. Thank you again and have a great day.