The Cooper Companies, Inc. (
COO)
Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
March 5, 2009 5:00 p.m. ET
Executives
Albert White – Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations
Robert S. Weiss - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director
Eugene J. Midlock - Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President
Analysts
Stephen Willoughby - Cleveland Research
Jeff Johnson-Robert W. Baird & Company
Larry Biegelsen -Wachovia
Joanne Wuensch -BMO Capital Markets
Christopher Cooley- FTN Equity Capital Markets
Kim- JPMorgan
Michael Weinstein - JPMorgan
Jared Holz - Thomas Weisel Partners
Peter Bye – Jeffries & Co.
Nikhil - Citigroup
Presentation
Operator
Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2009 The Cooper Companies Incorporated earnings conference call. My name is Melanie and I will be your coordinator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session at the end of this conference. If, at any time you require operator assistance, please press “*0” and an operator will assist you. Also, please note today’s call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Al White. Please proceed.
Albert White
Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Cooper Companies first quarter 2009 earnings conference call. I am Al White, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations and joining me on today’s call are Bob Weiss, Chief Executive Officer and Gene Midlock, Chief Financial Officer.
Before we get started, I would like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including all revenue and earnings per share guidance and other statements regarding anticipated results of operations, market conditions, and planned product launches.
Forward-looking statements necessarily depend on assumptions, data or methods that may be incorrect or imprecise and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Events that could cause our actual results and future actions as a company to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements are set forth under the caption Forward-Looking Statements in today’s earnings release and are described in our SEC filings including the business section of Cooper’s annual report on Form 10-K. These are available publicly and on request from the company’s Investor Relations Department.
Now, before I turn the call over to Bob let me comment on the agenda for the call. We will keep the formal presentation to roughly 30 minutes followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. We request that anyone asking questions please respect the time of others and keep your questions to a minimum so that we may get to as many callers as possible. Should anyone have additional questions, please call our Investor Relations line at 925-460-3663, that’s 925-460-3663 and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
As a reminder, this call is being recorded and a copy of the press release is available on our website at www.coopercos.com under Investor Relations.
With that, let me turn the call over to Bob for his opening remarks.
Robert S. Weiss
Al, thank you, and good afternoon and evening to everyone. I think for starters I will just kind of say in spite of a global recession and a financial crisis, which continues at an unabated pace, this was a great quarter, certainly in my opinion.
Some of the key messages I would like you to take away from this conference call today are the following. This was, of course, a solid quarter from the point of view of our bottom line with results showing $0.53 in earnings per share versus $0.15 in the prior year and $0.45 when we consider last year’s call out.
Our top line growth was 3% and 4% in constant currency was at the top end of our guidance range in spite of a weak November that we had talked about previously.
Our new launches targeted for calendar quarter ended March 31st, have already started, Proclear 1 Day in Japan and Biofinity Toric has been shipped in the US.
