Becton, Dickinson and Co. 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Good morning and welcome to BD's earnings call.

I'm Shawn Bevec, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us. This call is being made available via audio webcast at bd.com. Earlier this morning, BD released its results for the third quarter of fiscal 2026. The press release and presentation can be accessed on the IR website at investors.bd.com. Leading today's call are Tom Polen, BD's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, and Vitor Roque, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I want to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements. You can read the disclaimer in our earnings release and the disclosures in our SEC filings on our investor relations website. Unless otherwise specified, all comparisons will be made on a year-on-year basis versus the relevant fiscal period. Revenue percentage changes are on an FX neutral basis unless otherwise noted.

References to adjusted EPS refer to adjusted diluted EPS. Financials discussed here and included in the earnings release and 10-Q are presented on a continuing operations basis. Prior periods have been recast to reflect the spin-off of our life sciences business in combination with Waters, which is now accounted for as discontinued operations. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in the appendices of the earnings release and presentation. With that, I will turn it over to Tom.

Thank you, Shawn, and good morning, everyone. We delivered a strong third quarter with revenue, adjusted operating margin, and adjusted EPS all ahead of our expectations. This was our first full quarter operating as New BD, and more importantly, the quality of this performance reflects our more focused portfolio beginning to demonstrate the growth and earnings potential we designed it to deliver. Performance was broad-based, reflecting commercial momentum across our key growth platforms, strong operational execution, and the expanding impact of BD Excellence. Revenue was $5 billion, up 4.4%, with more than 90% of the portfolio delivering high single-digit growth. Performance continues to be driven by ongoing structural improvements across our key growth platforms, where we've been focused on enhancing commercial execution and driving product innovation.

This includes double-digit growth across biologic drug delivery, advanced patient monitoring, PureWick, and advanced tissue regeneration, along with strong performance in peripheral vascular disease and ROA pharmacy automation. As these platforms continue to scale and growth outpaces the broader portfolio, they are becoming more meaningful drivers of top and bottom-line performance. We also saw strong U.S. performance in MDS and specimen management, driven by broad underlying utilization as well as share gains. Growth was partially offset by known dynamics concentrated in less than 10% of our portfolio, primarily the difficult prior year comparison in Alaris, as well as vaccines in China, which all played out as expected. We delivered adjusted operating margin of 24.9% and adjusted EPS of $3.23, reflecting the increasing revenue contribution from our growth platforms, as well as strong operational execution through BD Excellence.

Based on our two-three performance, strong year-to-date execution, and confidence in the continued momentum of New BD, we are updating our full year guidance. We now expect revenue growth toward the high end of our low double-digit range and are raising the midpoint of our adjusted EPS guidance. Turning to our New BD strategy, we are increasing momentum across three strategic pillars: compete, innovate, and deliver. Starting with compete, we continue advancing commercial excellence with greater customer focus, stronger accountability, and faster decision making. Our goal is simple. It's to convert the strength of BD's portfolio into faster growth, deeper customer partnerships, and sustainable share gains. In Q3, this translated into strong outcomes across our growth platforms, and a few to highlight. Within Connected Care, we're seeing the power of our portfolio with continued share gains in Alaris this quarter and over 200 basis points year to date.

APM continued to grow above market, supported by expanded adoption of HemoSphere Alta and double-digit growth in both Smart Recovery and legacy consumables. Our incremental commercial investments going into this year are contributing roughly 100-150 basis points to APM's growth rate. In BioPharma Systems, we continue to see pipeline momentum with new customer agreements signed across the portfolio. We're achieving high win rates across the biologics market, including GLP-1s, and we now have approximately 100 agreements signed across novel and biosimilar GLP-1 programs. That demand is being supported by the capacity investments and innovative drug delivery technologies we've built over time. This includes a new collaboration with EMS, one of Brazil's leading pharmaceutical companies in the launch of a semaglutide therapy utilizing our Vystra injection pen in one of the region's largest healthcare markets.

In Interventional, our incremental commercial investments coming into the year are translating to stronger growth, with PI demonstrating another consecutive quarter of acceleration. In UCC, our incremental investments in the VA channel for PureWick continue to build momentum and contributed to another quarter of double-digit growth in the platform. Together, these results demonstrate that our compete strategy is a positive accelerator for New BD. We're winning more consistently, scaling our growth platforms faster, and strengthening our position with customers around the world. Our second priority is innovate. We're focusing our pipeline in attractive markets where healthcare needs BD most. Connected Care, enabling the shift to lower cost settings, and advancing treatment of specific chronic diseases. Our innovation momentum continued in Q3, with BD Excellence increasing the cadence and the speed of launches.

We expanded our vascular portfolio and PI with the early European launch of the differentiated Liverty TIPS Stent Graft, entering a market that's seen limited innovation for many years. BD Liverty brings enhanced ease of use, the broadest range of lengths available, and compelling clinical trial results. This launch broadens BD's presence in the approximately $2 billion global venous market, which is growing high single digits. We also launched the Elyra Thulium Fiber Laser System, expanding our kidney stone portfolio and presence in endourology. Early customer reception has been strong, with placements accelerating since launch. The endourology market is approximately $1.5 billion and increasingly driven by disposables, a model that plays to BD's strengths.

Finally, we continue to expand our non-invasive monitoring portfolio in APM with the launch of the Acumen IQ+ finger cuff and smart pressure controller, which pairs with our HemoSphere Alta platform and brings enhanced usability and advanced AI features to customers. This advancement in our non-invasive portfolio allows us to continue expanding our reach to underserved OR and ICU patients. These technologies are commercially available now in both the U.S. and Europe. We're investing behind markets with attractive growth, strong clinical demand, and clear competitive advantages. Collectively, these launches demonstrate a more focused innovation model that's strengthening the long-term growth profile of the company. Our third priority, deliver, is about operational excellence at scale. Improving quality, service, productivity, margin, and cash flow. Through BD Excellence, we've built one of the most resilient supply chains in our industry, with back orders at record lows and service levels at record highs.

Our scale, combined with BD Excellence embedded across our manufacturing network, is a growing competitive advantage that translates into efficiency, resiliency, and consistency for our customers. Again, this quarter, we delivered approximately 8% gross productivity in our plants, with service levels above 90%. That progress was driven by plant consolidations, raw material savings, waste reduction, and higher efficiencies on our critical lines and processes. We've also begun investing in the deployment of a standardized digital platform designed to run AI across BD's end-to-end supply chain, and we believe this represents another meaningful runway for productivity and service improvement over time. Turning to capital allocation, our discipline framework remains unchanged, our improving free cash flow is giving us more firepower to execute.

We remained committed to returning capital to shareholders, including through share repurchases, investing selectively in high growth tuck-in M&A, and driving towards our 90% free cash flow conversion target over time. With that, I'll turn it over to Vitor to provide more detail on our financial performance and updated guidance.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. We delivered a strong third quarter with $5 billion in revenue, up 4.4%, reflecting broad-based growth across the portfolio and disciplined execution through a dynamic environment. As Tom highlighted, performance was broad-based, driven by continued double-digit growth in several of our key platforms and strong performance in the U.S., partially offset by a difficult prior year comparison in Alaris and continued pressure in vaccines in China. All consistent with our expectations. Medical Essentials grew 3.2%. In MDS, strong U.S. performance benefited from share gains across vascular access management portfolio and utilization recovery related to last year's fluid shortage. This was partially offset by continued pressure in China. In specimen management, we delivered high single-digit growth, driven by share gains across the BD Vacutainer portfolio, improved supply, and incremental demand as customers work through competitor back orders.