Steris (NYSE:STE) today reported fourth-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations while upping guidance for the year ahead.
Shares of STE climbed 4% t0 $197 apiece in after-hours trading. MassDevice‘s MedTech 100 Index, which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies, was flat on the day.
The Dublin, Ireland-based provider of sterilization services and other infection prevention tech posted profits of $187.2 million in the quarter ended March 31, 2023. That amounts to $1.89 per share on sales of $1.38 billion.
Steris recorded a 259% bottom-line gain on sales growth of 14.3%.
Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share (EPS) totaled $2.30. Wall Street analysts were expecting adjusted EPS of $2.15 on sales of $1.27 billion.
“We are pleased to end the year with strong performance,” Steris President and CEO Dan Carestio said in a news release. “Our teams worked diligently to meet customer demand in the fourth quarter. Heading into fiscal 2024, we are optimistic that many of the challenges we faced in fiscal 2023 are abating, including procedure volumes and supply chain constraints. As a result, we look forward to another year of record performance.”
Healthcare sales grew 20% in the quarter to $884.6 million, including gains of 31% in capital equipment revenue, 15% in consumables and 15% in services.
Applied Sterilization Technologies (AST) revenue grew 7% to $239.1 million. “This performance was driven primarily by increased demand from core medical device customers, partially offset by continued reduction in demand from single-use bioprocessing customers,” the company said.
And Life Sciences revenue grew 10% to $157.5 million, including gains of 14% in consumables, 8% in capital equipment and 6% in services.
Dental revenue sales dropped 2% in the quarter to $103.6 million.
Fiscal 2023 results and fiscal 2024 guidance
The company reported $107.0 million in net income for fiscal 2023, down 56% from $243.9 million the year before. Annual sales grew 8% year-over-year to $4.96 billion from $4.59 billion in fiscal 2022.
Adjusted EPS for the year came in at $8.20. Wall Street analysts were expecting adjusted EPS of $8.05 on $4.85 billion in sales.
Steris expects adjusted EPS of $8.55 to $8.7 for fiscal 2023, up from the previous guidance of $8 and $8.10 in February. Organic revenue growth is now forecasted at 7-8%, up from 6% at the end of last quarter.
