Zimmer Biomet reported $7.8 billion in 2018 sales, a 3 percent increase over the previous year. However, spine sales were up 14 percent.
CEO Bryan Hanson spoke on the earnings report conference call after six weeks on the job. Here are four key quotes on the company's plan going forward, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha:
1. Goals for the future: "In speaking with stakeholders, it's clear that Zimmer Biomet is working from a strong foundation that includes the industry's broadest portfolio, a robust commercial pipeline, meaningful market share in key end markets and world class sales teams. By virtue of those strengths, we also have the potential to go beyond our share of leadership and large joints to drive diversified growth in a number of attractive markets, such as sports medicine, extremities and trauma. Our goal scale and depth of portfolio also position us to continue expanding access to our solutions in under-penetrated patient subsets in global markets."
2. Sales team focus: "Our immediate priorities are to restore supply, engage with sales and return to offense. I carried a sales bag when I started my career, which means I absolutely understand the vital role of the commercial team. Zimmer Biomet's leadership is fully committed to reconnecting and rebuilding trust with our sales forces as they engage with our customers."
3. Spine segment underperformance: "While we benefited from strong demand of our Mobi-C Cervical Disc, our spine business continued to underperform due to revenue dissynergies related to our U.S. spine sales force integration. We continue to work to resolve the impact of these dissynergies, including recent senior leadership changes and we expect to realize the benefit of cross-selling opportunities in the future."
4. Zimmer and Biomet cultural integration: "This is Zimmer Biomet, not Zimmer and Biomet. I think it's important because one of the key things I'm going to be concentrating on is culture in this organization, and some of the things that are in the way of culture creation right now is we just haven't yet become a fully integrated new organization. There's still camps of Zimmer and Biomet and we need to create the Zimmer Biomet, forget the legacy companies."