Overview:
Bioventus shocked the world with significantly better-than-expected sales and profits for the Q4 and full year 2024.
Bioventus shocked the world, reporting significantly better-than-expected sales and profits for the Q4 and full year 2024. It was a truly remarkable turnaround in a very short period of time.
For the quarter ended December 31, 2024, Bioventus reported $153.64 million in sales and $7,990 million in operating profit, which was above both Wall Street’s expectations and management’s guidance. Full-year net sales were $573.28 million.
Bioventus’s Double-Digit Organic Revenue Growth Throughout 2024
During the Bioventus’s fourth quarter earnings call, Robert Claypoole, president and CEO, reported a strong financial performance in 2024, including double-digit organic revenue growth in all four quarters, along with 150 basis points of adjusted gross margin expansion.
He added, “We also optimized our global portfolio with the successful divestiture of our advanced rehabilitation business. While there’s more work to be done, I’m pleased with the progress to date and believe we now have an even stronger foundation for sustained future momentum and success.”
In the fourth quarter alone, Bioventus reported a sales growth of almost 14%. Drivers of growth included Ultrasonics, which had the highest quarterly growth rate of the year, and DUROLANE.
In addition, after five years of declining sales, Exogen saw a sales growth of 7% by the end of 2024.
Claypoole also shared some of the company’s financial priorities for 2025: driving above-market growth, continuing to expand profitability, and accelerating free cash flow generation.
He explained that while they have exceeded financial expectations for 2024, there was still much more work to be done.
Mark Singleton, Senior Vice President and CFO, also offered a deeper dive into the fourth quarter numbers. Reported revenue was almost $154 million, an increase of 14%. For the second consecutive quarter, Ultrasonics revenue grew by more than 20%.
Pain treatments, including DUROLANE, also had positive momentum in the fourth quarter with a revenue increase of 17%. International sales grew 11% from the year before, largely due to Ultrasonics shipments that had been delayed earlier in the year.
Singleton said that based on current trends, they expect 2025 net sales to be in the range of $560 million to $570 million with an above-market organic growth of approximately 6% to 8%.
Analysts Ask for Clarification on 2025 Sales Expectations
Chase Knickerbocker with Craig-Hallum asked about the 2025 outlook for their hyaluronic acid (HA) and DUROLANE business.
Claypoole reassured that they feel confident about their HA business. “What our guidance implies is growing above the market, roughly 2x again in 2025. And keep in mind, that’s very volume based. As it relates to price, we’re very focused on price. We’re analytical. We’re strategic, and we’re very disciplined with our pricing, and we closely monitor what our competitors are doing as well.”
He added, “At this point, for 2025, we expect that our growth is going to be driven by volume again and that price will be fairly stable when you consider the entire year.”
Lilia-Celina Lozada with JPMorgan asked if any supply challenges with the bone graft substitute are expected to continue in 2025.
Claypoole said that they feel really good about how they have been able to ramp up the onboarding of new customers.
He said, “We feel really good about the bone graft substitutes business. It faced challenges, as we mentioned in the middle of last year because of the supply challenge, which then because of that, we slowed our onboarding of new customers through distributor agents. And as we mentioned in the last call, we overcame those supply challenges and have been driving new customers since that time.”
Lozada also asked about expectations for Exogen now that the business has stabilized.
Claypoole was very positive about this technology too. He said the clinical benefits have been well proven and the decline in sales was because Bioventus has deprioritized it. Once the company refocused on it last year and made some new investments, sales have been back on the rise.
“We turned it around, as I mentioned, to the 7% growth last year. And now with the market growing in the low single digits, we, as we mentioned, we expect it to grow in the low to mid-single digits. And of course, we’re going to work hard to achieve the upper end of that range.”
