Sharps Compliance: Wall Street Analyst Forum Presentation Transcript

TRANSCRIPT SPONSOR

Sharps Compliance Corporation (SCOM)
Wall Street Analyst Forum
May 23, 2007 11:50 am ET

Executives

David Tusa - EVP, CFO and Business Development

Presentation

Moderator

At this time, I'd like to introduce our next company. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Sharps Compliance is a leading provider of cost-effective medical waste disposal solution for industry and consumer. Speaking today on behalf of Sharps Compliance Corp. is David Tusa, Executive Vice President, CFO and Business Development. Welcome.

David Tusa

Thank you and welcome, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to hear the Sharps' story. Sharps is a Houston-based public company with about $35 million market cap, 11.8 million shares outstanding and we have insider ownership of about 41%. That 41% is Directors and officers. We also have a couple of highly-worth individuals that have been long-time investors. And the company takes the ownership closer to 60%. We have actually accumulated, over the last three or four months, some institutional ownerships since we launched this investor relations program. And we calculated about 10% to 15% institutional ownership that company currently have.

Sharps develops, manufactures and markets products designed to collect and track and dispose the small quantities of medical waste. Now, what's small quantities of medical waste, that's used syringes, lancets or other devices that typically puncture the skin, commonly referred to in the industry as Sharps. So, you will hear me in terms of Sharps and that’s what the reference is.

The company's product that fill out structure is transported from the end-user to the company's disposal facility, the US Postal Service and also in some cases UPS.

We refer to the product as the Sharps Disposal by Mail products or mail backs. Another term you will hear throughout the presentation is small quantity generator, which is our market. Our market is providing products and services to small quantity generators of medical waste. Now, this in contrast with large quantity generators of medical waste, which are typically hospitals. The hospitals, larger quantity generator, our market is everything outside of a hospital market.

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We've a number of markets and sectors that we actually address home healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, agriculture, hospitality, industrial/commercial, professional and residential. The company is vertically integrated. I think that's important to know, because it differentiates us from other players in the industry, that we design, we manufacture. We have design and manufacturing capabilities. We have proprietary tracking software in all sense, in it's incineration facility. The company also has fulfillment alternatives available directly to patients.

Lets talk about the market. The market for our products, there's 9 million or 10 million Americans that self-inject. That generate about 2 billion used syringes that are disposed of annually outside of the healthcare settings. So, outside of the hospital, there's 2 billion syringes that are disposed off. And if you would use our product the Sharps Disposal by Mail System to address all 2 billion of these syringes, that would take an estimate of 30 million to 40 million mail backs a year, which equates to about $1 billion market.

Now, the market penetration today is about 1% and actually its majority of 1% is our product. So, we believe there is 1% penetration in the $1 billion market. And why is this, well the regulations today they've been very inconsistent and unclear. As matter of fact, if you looked on the EPAs on website in December of '04, you would see that the EPA advice you to throw the syringes in the trash, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

EPA changed their guidance in December '04 and the Sharps' mail back is one of the recommended solutions.

There is other drivers from the legislative side. California enacted legislation in '06 that takes effect in '08 California Senate Bill 1305. And then, Massachusetts also enacted legislation that will take effect in '08.

And what you have here is, you have legislative, you have a outside drivers that are moving the business. So, what we feel we have, is a true emerging market opportunity $1 billion market, 1% penetration that's being pushed by legislative and other needs.
I am going to address all of the markets. But I want to highlight two markets in particular: One is pharmaceutical manufacturer, probably the best way to talk about that one is to talk about the recent win, the company announced a $1.4 million purchase order with our major pharmaceutical manufacturer to address basically the disposal of the syringes used to treat chronic patients or patients that had chronic diseases.

And the pharmaceutical manufacturer saw the value and the product facilitates probably disposal. And also looking there is a vehicle to gather patient data, as well. They can potentially use to improve drug compliance. But there is many, many self-injectable drugs that treat chronic diseases, and any of these drugs can have 10,000 to 200,000 patients.

So, we feel that is a significant market for us to continue, and we are calling on many of the other pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell our product, and to sell our offering.

There's another significant market opportunity, it reach our clinics. I am sure everyone has read what's going on, in the retail clinic side. These are clinics they are changing the face of healthcare in the United States. And what retail clinics are? Basically, not much of the healthcare in a retail setting, this probably to what we say about with 150 of these retail clinics now, and in drug stores, grocery stores chain, discount store chain. And based on all the data, we see is that growing to 2,000 to 3,000 over next 1 or 2 years, because that's a great market for us.

Our retail outlet is the perfect small quantity generator setting and where there is syringes that are being used, and there is a need for disposal.

Now, we already do a lot of business. In the retail side, right now, in this primarily flu shots is, there is more-and-more flu shots that are actually administered in retail settings. It grows every year. Manufacturer of buildings in this flu shot season has actually doubled every year, for the last few years and we see continuing trend of significant growth in that area.

We already sell to the major change right now, the grocery and retail chains on the flu shot side. And we want to parley those relationships to expand our presence into the retail clinics as that business grows.

Sharps' is vertically integrated, that's important because that’s a differentiator. In that, we'd have manufacturing, assembly. We have proprietary systems. Our units, our mail back containers are approved by the Post Office. It's actually a pre-paid box. When you buy the product, what you buy is, you buy the entire solution. You buy the container. It also comes in a cardboard box that has pre-paid postage. So, you pay for the appliance and then the product is ultimately disposed off at our treatment facility. We have a treatment facility in East Texas.

We also provide data and monitoring services and supplies monitoring services to customers as well.

The next slide is the product mix. And actually, the Sharps Disposal by Mail or the mail back that represents about 65% of our current billings. We have a number of other products but the other products are used primarily in a home healthcare setting. The majority of the growth that you will see in the business going forward and the growth that you have seen recently is in the Sharps Disposal by Mail System. So, that 65% of the product sales mix will only increase going forward as the company grows.

Sharps Disposal System is cost effective and convenient. You will ask, what’s the alternative? Well, in the large quantity generator sector there's pick-up services that are used, because there are large quantities of syringes that are disposed off in one location from a truck and a driver. It makes sense to take a drive to the hospital and to pick up large quantities of medical waste. And in the small quantity generator sector, its different. The small quantity generators, you will see, we talk about the markets and it could be a dentist office. It could be a retail grocery store chain. It could be a home. In those settings, it's much more cost effective to have the unit transported via the mail or UPS.

So, you are not sending a driver and a truck out to pick up small quantities of medical waste. Besides product being cost effective and convenient, there's many sizes of products that we have that facilitate the customers needs. And again, the product has recommended disposal method in the recent legislation.

Next slide is the billings of different markets. The company grew over 10 years ago on a core business of home healthcare. And actually, a few years ago, the home healthcare represented over 80% of the actual billings of the company. And that's down as you see in the latest quarter to about 57%. The growth of the company that can be experienced is outside of home healthcare. It's in all the other markets, retail, pharmaceutical, agriculture, commercial/industrial, hospitality and professional. And that's important to note because we think that the market opportunities outside of healthcare will eventually dwarf the actual home healthcare market.

I spoke to you about pharmaceutical and the retail markets. Commercial and industrial is just what it is. The industrial or commercial facilities in high-traffic areas. Hospitality markets in the hotels, restaurants, assisted living facilities, contract food service providers, basically, anywhere outside the hospital setting.

We talked a bit about healthcare. Agriculture, all products are used to dispose syringes used in dairy farms to administer drug to diary cattle. We work with residences in developing municipal programs. What you find in the California legislation in addressing the disposal needs, they are also recommending residential programs. I believe we are up to about 25 cities. So, we are actually working with the municipality to put in place to support residences to obtain a mail back.

Also the professional market. We do a lot of business in the dental side, vet and doctors office and other service providers. About 70% of our sales are direct sales. About 30% are through distributors. We like the direct sales approach, so we can be closer to the customer and ultimately have a lower price point to the customer.

The Distributors are important in certain markets. [Genes] is a very, very good example there is 40,000 or 50,000 genes stocks across country and you do want again selling directly to each one of those, so, we use the major distributors in the dental industry, Henry Schein comparison in their catalogue and we also on the home healthcare side use distributors, as well, where its needed.

We have recently added a new Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, with experience in the pharmaceutical and managed care background. A lot of experience, and experience in the markets where we think, where the company, will be experiencing significant growth going forward.

There is a very solid business model, recurring revenue growth with high customer retention.

Early penetration in this significant market again $1 billion market, 1% penetration.

We target quarterly revenue growth of at least 15% and we think there is appetite 40% and we ask question why there is significant range? We are a small company and the deals that we are signing are large deals. So, you could have any one particular deal significantly affect the quarterly revenue growth.

We have, for our manufacturer. We have solid gross margins during the low 40%. Our SG&A has been quite stable and we think it's going to be quite stable going forward. So, that’s important, with that resulting in significant operating leverage and what that means is the vast majority of our gross profit it's generated on the incremental revenues is going to the bottom line. You saw that when you looked at the last few quarters, there is significant increase in the profitability, the increase in the operating margins 7% to 12%. And that's because the business model allowing us to drop significant portions of the incremental revenues to the bottom line.

We have been experiencing aggressive, innovative management team, actually very flexible to take advantage of the market opportunities, and the ability and capability to respond.

The next chart is a growth rate, on the annual revenue and actually over the five year periods about 12%. But I think there is two things you should takeaway from this chart. The growth really in the last two periods presented, I think is most appropriate and that's the kind of growth that we have been experiencing which has driven the bottom line and actually that growth happens at a time when the legislative process has provided opportunities for us.

So, the timing of legislation has stepped up, our additional sales efforts has helped grow those revenue as well. And actually in the last quarter, if you look at our last quarter, which is a third quarter, quarter in March, which you'll see is actually a 26% increase in our customer billings year-over-year. And that was driven primarily by large pharmaceutical or portion of the large pharmaceutical deal that we have signed.

From a quarterly standpoint, you can see the growth in the revenue between the quarters. I do want to point out there is a better seasonality, the third quarter has typically been a seasonally low business, that was really generated from the home healthcare side in the third quarter has historically been seasonally low.

The first quarter, which is a quarter in September, has usually typically been quite high because that is the flow chart there is really one of the areas that is quite seasonal and that generate significant revenue in that quarter

So, we are going to look at things on a quarter-over-quarter basis to better measure the business.

The operating leverage, I mentioned that earlier, if you look on the right side of the screen, you will see the operating leverage and the operating margin, in the last three quarters 7% to 12%, and that’s been driven by again a substantial portion of the incremental revenue grown and gross profit going right to bottom line.

Net income, same trend. Significant increases in net income as a result of the growth and the incremental gross profit going to the bottom line. I don’t have a slide of the balance sheet, but I think we have mentioned, we are not the typical small ruling company that has account diluted or upside down balance sheet. We have $2 million in cash, $2 million in working capital, $2 million in equity, $4 million in assets. We have no debt. We have straight common stock. We don’t have debt, borrow, defers and converts. It's a very straight forward balance sheet.

And in addition to that, we have about $2.5 million line of credit with JP Morgan Chase. They are our bankers. It's not a factory rearrangement. It's a straight forward line of credit that has a warrant based on receivables and inventory. I think that differentiates us. I know it has when folks like yourself have look at us as a company. And when they look at our balance sheet, they are impressed with our ability to position such for the growth going forward.

Our factories were a success. We have government regulation, that’s driving change. What we also have is an education process in educating the world on the need for the proper disposal of Sharps. So again, 2 billion syringes, disposed properly outside of the hospital settings.

We have an experienced management team. Again, we are not a typical small company. We all have experience in much larger companies, from our Head of Sale, Head of Operations and in the finance and we have a in-house SEC experience as well.

The traction, as you see the numbers over the last 3 years, we have gained significant traction as a result of the sales activities over the last couple of years. And actually, when people ask me about competition, although there are a couple of small competitors, one of the small divisions of large companies or small private companies. The biggest competition we have is actually people doing nothing. They are throwing syringes in the trash and we are selling. That’s what we are selling again versus potentially selling against a competitor.

We are the leader in the small quantity generator market. We have a very strong customer base and very impressive customer base, Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies. We have a recognized brand name. We have very powerful operating leverage as you saw in the numbers. We have a value-added product in service. We provide web tracking, quicker destructions via the internet. Again, providing electronic data back to our customers as they seek that. Also the company has performed consistently.

High-quality product has consistently performed and has been able to do a very good job of retaining as a significant customer base.

That's the presentation. If you have any questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible)

David Tusa

In small quantity generator side, really there's a little bit of competition and that’s primarily on the home healthcare side. Tyco has a small division handle that has a very small division and they sell a lot of just containers but the alternative small mail back division. It's very small. We see them out there every once a while, [Safe Sitel] actually who is the leader in the large quantity generator market has a very small presence in the mail back business.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

No. Well no, not from a revenue standpoint. No, we're tracking with $12 million to $12.5 million and from what we can tell, I think its difficult to get the information that you are talking may be the other business is representing may be $2 million or $3 million in total.

Again, this is emerging market, this is a 1% penetration, the $1 billion market been driven by legislation. We are now seeing the benefits of the legislation, benefits towards the company. Then may be you think that as well, without the legislation, (inaudible) generate this level of revenue, where about people doing the right thing.

Now, that they were happy doing the right thing. Now, with legislation in place and with the education process is going on and we think that that's benefiting the opportunity the pharmacy although, I think is a great example.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers saw the value in our product. It was a PO with 50,000 units to be an integral part of the program that they have in this ring, a popular drug one that you see on TV. That they want to make sure that the patients are protected and then community is protected. And our product is actually, so we do the fulfillment on that deal, where we send facility information electronically. And we actually, send the product directly to their patient. And we deal directly with the patients and providing them the Sharp Disposal by Mail.

They will provide patient data and whatever else that the large pharmaceutical manufacturer actually want. So, what we like about that deal is obviously is large if you deal and it’s 50,000 units. We've actually $1.4 million and in the quarter ended March, we built 450,000 of remaining force, grows about 900,000 that remaining on that purchase order that should be completed by the end of the calendar year. So, actually a backlog $900,000 of that order remaining to be fill.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

That's good question. What we've seen in California is that the way the legislation is, the municipality is basically the enforcement will be here and they cannot be put in place by September '08. But, what we are seeing is, we are seeing everybody moving, not everybody, we are seeing many folks moving advance of that legislation and putting either programs in place for the residences.

Let me give you example how that program would work, there will be a municipality in California and we would work with them to the program in place and the resident would go to may be Rite Aid and show proof of residency and they would be either given the mail back or may be pay a very small co-pay. And those programs are being put in place, as we speak.

The other thing, I think it was real helpful on the legislation whether its in California, Massachusetts is, it helps us our larger deals, when you deal with them a pharmaceutical manufacturer, who is dispensing on our pre-filled syringes with drug used to treat chronic patients. And they can have 10 to 200,000 patients on these drugs and they have seen the legislation out there. And they want to be responsible. They want to be environmentally conscious. They want to be responsible. So, I think what it's doing is, it's helping us along the way and making our value proposition easier because of legislations that's out there, but actually forced once it's actually implemented, would be in September of '08.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible)

David Tusa

Yeah. We were talking about that earlier. There are so many opportunities. There are so many markets. Our biggest challenge is focusing on largest revenue, highest margin, near-term revenue. And we study each of the markets in great detail. We have a strategic plan that we have put in place on each of the markets. And with any sales markets we identified, and if it qualifies, for one of those, then that's what the focus would be.

So, pharmaceutical manufactures, on the retail clinic side, we are working and dealing directly with, whether it's a clinic operation, whether it's the large retail chain and trying to secure that business. On the professional side, just talking to our distributors on pushing the doctors in the dentist office. It's really different. It's really different for each market. We do a combination of direct sales. If the deal is large enough, where we have a fixed direct sales force, if the deal is large enough, we will send someone out that will call it on the respective customer and make the pitch.

We also have inside sales. We found that actually because we actually have demos of the products online. That inside sales actually works pretty well. We actually believe we will then get a lot of enquires as well through the internet, through our website presence, where many enquires can be handled, people are doing Google or other searches and looking for simulations.

But it's all going to do. We recently did a deal with one of the largest managers of malls, high-end malls across the country. We have a wall mounted unit, it's called the Sharps Secure that collects Sharps in a public restroom driving an (inaudible), when this particular arrives on (inaudible) malls, that’s managed by this firm which is one of the larger one using our product. Instead of baby changing station, and you will see our product that will wall mounted to facilitate the proper disposal of Sharps.

From the stats that I have seen, one in every 12 households has a self injector, whether multiple sclerosis or diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis. So, when they inject, they are not always at home. So, we are going to be where they are going to be, wherever they have to inject. So, the wall mounted product has been quite popular and we think that it's an opportunity for us as well on the public side.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible)

David Tusa

Right. We really look at it from a market standpoint. We are looking where the market opportunity is going to. We think about it. I mean, everything is going to start in California, right. Sharps (inaudible) and works it way across the country. So, there are many other states that had similar legislation that are considering, many other states. So, using this in a sell space people realize that as we use to a long time ago, when we put a oil down to storm seller and we through call that recently in the trash that those days are long gone and we hope eventually what we are doing and with the help of legislation that one day the proper disposal of the Sharps will be just common nature, that's what people will do, just as a dispose of [oil barrel].

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

The various industry, that’s not a good question. I'll give you the example that I give to a lot of folks that I talk to.

On the surface, it doesn’t look like natural barrier to entry, but actually it is, first thing you have to do before going to sign a product. Okay, great you can treat it and probably do that for most engineer you can knock-off one of their products. The thing is you certainly have to have a infrastructure in place. Okay, well, that doesn't happen overnight and then by the way, don't forget you have to have a postal permit.

Well, not just United States post office and it is just not going to issue a postal permit to anyone, its going to allow them to transport syringes to the mail and as a matter of fact the postal service. There is a lot of testing actually the postal service has rigorous testing of the product. We did have a problem with our postal permit. So, we've actually had competitors that have had three separate products support because they didn’t meet the postal standards.

So, you will have to prove to the post office that you have a product that can withstand the requirements of the post office and the testing of your (inaudible), we do like what we do or you don't need to test it in advance use independent labs to test our products, and we do it on an ongoing basis when we test our product.

So, let's say, that you're fortunate enough to convince the post office to give your postal permits, when you put your infrastructure in place. You have to have a tracking system, and the customers is liking when it's Internet-based and it's web-based and they can go online and then see what's going on with their product to attain a proper destruction.

And then, you have that destruction, you are going to have to have some sort of facility where there is lot of light and weather is consideration and let me tell you what. If you don’t significant volumes you are going to pay a lot, if you can get the attention of the other medical waste disposal facility.

So, let's say you got all that done. Now, you've got a product, now you've got an infrastructure, now you got a postal permit, now you are going to go and you are going to competing on yourself, we've been doing this for a long time. We recognized later, we have first mover advantages we've been doing this for long time, look at our customer base we have our own generation facility. And, so you are going to be competing against who has been with the marketplace a long time, a trusted name, a proven name and a quality name.

So, can it be done? Yes, it can be done, its going to take a bit of time, its going to take some capital. And but, we would have been out there quite a bit --.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

In '08.

Unidentified Audience Member

When in '08.

David Tusa

September of '08.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

No. That's good question, that's actually one of the debates that we're knocking to as well. I think this answers what you are referring to and we are calling on them as well. Our marketing efforts stretch way beyond just calling on our respective customers, and these are probably our pharmaceutical manufactures. And we think it's important that this product be reimbursed. It's not reimbursed right now. It's not. No, even not. You can go to the pharmacy and you can buy syringes which are especially covered by insurance but disposal is not. So, we have active programs, what we want is payers, insurance companies and seeing some other to push for reimbursement, just to make logical sense. I can't guarantee we are going to be successful. I know we are going to be successful. It's very logical. But you would think it would ultimately be reimbursed. But it's still hard to [relocate] stores, as many, many different avenues that you have to take in marketing this product, get it to emerging market. It's a market that’s new and new to many of these firms.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

There's 2 billion syringes that are disposed off outside the hospital setting. It would take you 30 million to 40 million mail back to facilitate the disposal of all of those syringes in the United States outside of the hospital. Right now, there is less than 1% penetration. For instance, I think in the last fiscal year, we sold about 260,000 units. So, 260,000 when the market is $30 million to 40 million. That's how we get our roughly 1% penetration.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

The 15% to 20% is on the quarterly growth rate and the 15% being lower end of the range, assuming that new market deals are no larger opportunities. And most of the large deals that we are looking at, now we don't really see much do in the competition. The competition is when just not doing anything. That's the competition. But the small players typically would be giving a purpose on that hold out your market or at going after these other markets there is some competition. Now the larger deals that were usually (inaudible) I think it went in the sales force space.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

It's consistent. Again, we will experience some gross margin expansion because there is some level of fixed cost in there. We have got roughly 42% gross margin and we have been experiencing I think it's exterior limits that it's all. Here we may it a (inaudible) expansion going forward because of the increased volume. The other thing that helps actually gross margin from the long-term standpoint is, the growth is coming in the mail back product. Again, that's probably 65% of our revenue, right now.

The mail back is the highest margin product, so that helps as well because the growth coming from the highest margin product. And actually, right now since the total of 65% of our revenue, the product mix actually can have an effect on the gross margin because we do sell some other products that can be 20% to 25% gross margin.

But that should expand, but we like being conservative in saying that we feel comfortable with that lower 40% margin going forward. What base are the real important about these large deals, you are talking about the large deals?

When we work on these large deals, they want to come visit you, they want to make sure that you are a real company, and there's a real people, real management and when you go to your generation facility, again they want to make sure that these syringes are going to be in disposal properly. I don't want them ending up in a land sale.

So, we have large deals, there I want to make sure is that, that is everything there in place. So, that's why the vertical integration is so important to us, you only have these large deals because we can do just that, we can provide a full spectrum of the service.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

No, a consideration.

Unidentified Audience Member

Why don't you recycle?

David Tusa

There's no need to, if you think about the plastic container. The plastic container is may be a $2 or $3 item. And the majority of actual, the majority of the cost of the mail back, is in the system and it is also in the actual transportation of the unit from the end user after the incinerator, but if there product itself is really not, there is not a lot of cost in that. So, when it comes in, it gets burned and it gets considered either.

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

Yeah, absolutely, containment as well, containment as I guess, you won't be reaching your hand in their to probably

Unidentified Audience Member

(Question Inaudible).

David Tusa

Running out of things, everything is as far as you know that in experiences and as you mentioned, it's also very important. You know if you think about needlestick. What is the worst part about a needlestick? And by the way, you do a Google search. You do a Google search and put needlestick in there. And that is happening all the time, all across the country. And what is the worst part about the needlestick? You don’t know. It's the (inaudible) know, you don’t know. And you may not know it for years if you have anything. So, there's a significant costs, besides there's [additional] costs. There is a cost of the evaluation. There's a cost of traveling. There's a cost of testing. It has to go over some period of time. And you don’t know if it is Hepatitis C or HIV. That’s the biggest concern, when it comes to the syringes. So, there is a significant cost. And it is just really mind boggling with all the (inaudible) go forward the EPAs own guidance that, make a new syringe, place it in a coffee can, or in a plastic milk jug and put it in the trash, and it just certainly make sense in the environment going right now.

I think we are done. I appreciate it. Thank you everyone for your attendance. We will be available later, if there is more question.

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