See which workplaces made this year's list.

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Employees say:"I have been working for this company for 5.5 years and I can honestly say that this is a great place to work. I feel seen and heard by my manager and coworkers. My team has a great relationship/bond where we treat each other like family and have each others back. For example, while enduring many &nbsp;organizational changes, I know that my manager has my back and best interest at heart. I feel safe here in knowing that my day to day decisions on how I do my job are valid and backed up."

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AI is a major force shaping this year’s list—but it’s far from the only story.

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Employees say:&nbsp;"Though we are a very large, global organization, we collaborate together at the individual level and there is a strong sense of 'one GEHC.' We are clear on our purpose to keep patients and customers at the forefront of what we do and are often reminded about the global impact we are having in health care, regardless of our role. When someone reaches out to me or I reach out to them, I feel there is a strong sense of servant leadership and desire to help. I continue to be amazed at the colleagues I have met across the globe who know me first as a person and secondly as my role—people genuinely enjoy creating relationships across regions, functions, and segments, which makes work fun, enjoyable, and personable!"

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 62,000 U.S. employees.

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Employees say:"I have found that at GE HealthCare, this organization is very committed to our values, always keeping our colleagues and patients as the priority and ensuring safety and quality. This is embodied throughout meetings and demonstrated through leaders at all levels. There is a natural strive towards continuous improvement and challenging ourselves and our work to continue to be forward-thinking. It makes the work interesting and exciting, but the best part is that the people here have a mind-set of supporting each other to accomplish the big rocks together and doing it the right way!"

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Industries included in the sector are insurance and managed care, medical products and facilities, pharmacy services, and pharmaceutical companies.

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GE HealthCare designs, manufactures, and services advanced medical technology, diagnostics, and digital health solutions. The company’s roots go back to pioneering work with X-ray technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company is also responsible for the first routine full-body CT scan and key innovations related to MRI and ultrasound scanners. A longtime division and then subsidiary of General Electric, it completed its spinoff as an independent company in January 2023.

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Q4 2024

GE HealthCare (GEHC): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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GE HealthCare

ge healthcare

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GE Healthcare Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Caroline Borders. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, and welcome to GE Healthcare's fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings call. I'm joined by our President and CEO, Peter Arduini and Vice President and CFO, Jay Saccharo. Our conference call remarks will include both GAAP and non GAAP financial results. Reconciliations between GAAP and non GAAP measures can be found in today's press release and in the presentation slides available on our website.

During this call, we'll make forward looking statements about our performance. These statements are based on how we see things today. As described in our SEC filings, actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Peter.

Thanks, Carolyn, and thanks to all those joining us today. At our Investor Day, we shared progress that we've made in executing on our PrecisionCare strategy since becoming an independent company. Now two years into our journey, I'm pleased to say that we're continuing on the path of strong execution with our fourth quarter results. In the quarter, we saw orders growth in every segment. We also saw robust backlog and book to bill, the strongest since we became a public company.

We continue to see strength in The U. S. Market. For example, in a recent survey of U. S.

Customers, half of those surveyed indicated they expected incremental imaging investment, particularly in the outpatient setting driven by expansion plans. In China, we're beginning to see a slight improvement in the market, evidenced by orders growth. This market is evolving in line with our previous commentary. We continue to deliver revenue growth driven by demand in our advanced visualization solutions and pharmaceutical diagnostics businesses with overall strength in The U. S.

For the total company, both sales volume and price were positive. In addition, sales and orders grew mid single digits excluding China in the fourth quarter. We also continue to deliver robust margin expansion and earnings per share growth, while investing in R and D. Our progress has been driven by our lean culture, creating better value for our patients and customers, while delivering efficiencies across the business. We believe our commercial strategy, which is focused on securing highly strategic long term enterprise deals that help our customers deliver on their goals differentiates GE Healthcare.

What sets us apart is the way we bring together our holistic offering, which includes a comprehensive and integrated portfolio of AI powered equipment, proprietary radiopharmaceuticals and services enabled by our digital capabilities. In 2024, we closed 50 enterprise deals globally laying a solid foundation for the future growth. And last month, we announced a care alliance with Sutter Health valued at $1,000,000,000 over seven years, bringing the total value to date of large deals closed since spend to over $5,000,000,000 I'll talk more about this partnership and the impact of our enterprise strategy later on the call. Our commercial strategy supports our evolution from an imaging company to a healthcare solutions provider by working together with our customers to solve their greatest challenges. I'd like to share a few examples that illustrate this transformation.

In 2024, we introduced approximately 40 innovations. Additionally, products launched within the last three years contributed to a strong new product introduction vitality of approximately 50% for the year. These high margin NPIs reflect the impact of our increased R and D commitment and also help us drive recurring revenue. For example, our cath lab, ALIA IGSPULSE is outperforming our expectations and we're on track to launch Fercato in the near term. We continue to advance our leadership position in AI.

In one year, we've gone from 58 to 85 AI enabled FDA authorizations, one of the most in healthcare. To date, we've upgraded approximately 30% of our MR base with Air Recon DL and expanded Sonic DL to move beyond cardiac into other areas like brain and orthopedics. We're also making strides with the development of cloud based solutions like Care Intellect to accelerate bringing clinical and operational applications to market. And we're executing on our disciplined M and A strategy complementing our existing technologies and solutions. Last year, we closed two acquisitions, MIM software with AI enabled image analysis and workflow tools and intelligent ultrasound, adding innovative real time recognition technology.

We also announced the planned acquisition of NMP to deepen our radiopharmaceutical distribution capabilities in Japan and other Asian markets. Turning to our outlook for 2025, we introduced guidance for the year, which reflects healthy demand for our products and services in most of our markets globally, which is reflected in our orders growth. This guide is in line with our current view of the China market and The U. S. Tariffs on products from China.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Jay to walk through our financial results for the fourth quarter and to provide more details on 2025 guidance.

Pete. Let's start with our financial performance on Slide four. For the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we reported revenues of $5,300,000,000 with organic revenue growth of 2% in line with our expectations. Global sales growth excluding an approximate 200 basis point impact from China was up 4% for the fourth quarter. On a reported basis, service revenue grew 6% and product revenue was up 1%.

Organic orders growth was 6% year over year driven by continued strength in The United States and across all segments. Order dollars continue to outpace sales helping us deliver strong total company book to bill of 1.09x, our highest since the spin. We exited the fourth quarter with a record backlog of $19,800,000,000 up $700,000,000 year over year and up $200,000,000 sequentially. We continue to make excellent progress on margin delivering an adjusted EBIT margin of 18.7%, up two sixty basis points year over year due to productivity and volume. As a result, fourth quarter adjusted EPS was $1.45 up 23% year over year.

Free cash flow of $811,000,000 was down $145,000,000 from last year. Turning to our full year results on Slide five, for 2024, revenues of $19,700,000,000 grew 1% organically versus last year, in line with our guidance. On a reported basis product revenue was flat and service revenue grew 3%. Recall that we grew 8% organically in 2023. Importantly, recurring revenue, which is more predictable and has attractive margins represented more than 45% of total revenues for the year.

Organic orders grew 3% year over year and book to bill was 1.05x. 2024 adjusted EBIT margin of 16.3% expanded 120 basis points year over year ahead of our guidance driven by productivity and price. Adjusted EPS of $4.49 also exceeded our guidance for the year growing 14% year over year. In 2024, our adjusted EPS benefited by approximately $0.08 from one time tax favorability related to completing our prior year global tax filings. Free cash flow of $1,600,000,000 was down $161,000,000 year over year, which I'll cover later.

On Slide six, let's take a closer look at the strong progress we made on our margins in the fourth quarter and for the full year. Adjusted gross margin expanded 150 basis points versus the fourth quarter last year and 140 basis points versus the full year 2023. The increase in adjusted gross margin was a result of productivity improvements including partnering with suppliers on material costs, design change improvements in our products and factory and service productivity. We also benefited from higher margin new products. As an example, in PDX, we held a multi team Kaizen focused on improving the capacity on two of our critical manufacturing lines by shortening changeover times, reducing wasted motion and prep time and implementing environmental health and safety actions, we added over 1,000,000 annual patient doses of capacity.

We also recognized productivity improvements of more than 20%. For the fourth quarter, R and D investment was 6.5% of sales, up 9% year over year. For the full year, we invested $1,300,000,000 in R and D equating to roughly 6.7 percent of sales, up from $1,200,000,000 in 2023. We remain committed to investing in innovation and developing unique technologies. We're also cultivating research collaborations that strengthen our leadership position in fast growing areas such as theranostics, interventional cardiology among other growth opportunities.

On G and A, we've exited substantially all of our TSAs with GE further enabling us to optimize our cost structure today and into the future. I'm really proud of all the teams who supported our transition to a standalone enterprise. Because of the actions I just mentioned, we delivered excellent improvement in adjusted EBIT margin, up two sixty basis points in the fourth quarter and 120 basis points for the full year. These results combined with our ongoing focus on execution and operational improvement give us confidence in our ability to deliver margin expansion into the future. Now, I'll turn to our segments starting with Imaging on Slide seven.

Organic revenue in the quarter was flat versus the prior year. Strength in The U. S. And rest of world was offset by headwinds in the China market. Segment EBIT margin was up 200 basis points year over year driven by favorable price and product mix.

The fourth quarter results capped a strong year of margin expansion for Imaging with an improvement of 170 basis points on a total year basis due to progress with both productivity and price. We continue to see robust growth in The U. S. As customers invest in innovation. Turning to AVS on Slide eight, organic revenue was up 4% year over year with increased sales volume in The U.

S. Partially offset by a decrease in China. Segment EBIT margin increased by two forty basis points year over year, driven by continued productivity through standardization and volume, as well as new product introductions. Sequentially, the strong improvement in margin versus the rest of 2024 was primarily due to volume leverage in the quarter. Customer demand for our AVS products remain robust, particularly in interventional cardiology and surgery like our OEC three d platform.

Moving to Patient Care Solutions on Slide nine, organic revenue growth was flat versus prior year with services growth and improved fulfillment offset by a difficult comparison in monitoring solutions. Segment EBIT margin declined 50 basis points due to inflation and portfolio mix, partially offset by productivity actions. Sequentially, EBIT improved two twenty basis points due to volume leverage. As our portfolio mix normalizes and with continued productivity initiatives, we expect to drive improved margin performance. Strong global customer partnerships, particularly in The U.

S. Position us well for future growth. Moving to Pharmaceutical Diagnostics on Slide 10, we delivered another strong quarter generating 9% year over year organic growth and EBIT margin of approximately 33%. We're pleased with this continued growth and margin expansion both year over year and sequentially. I would note that the year over year EBIT comparison was favorably impacted by one time items, including an investment related to in licensing pet radio tracers in the fourth quarter of last year.

I also wanted to highlight that we recently announced $138,000,000 investment to expand our contrast media manufacturing facility in Cork, Ireland. This will create additional capacity to meet growing demand for contrast media, while offering increased flexibility and supply resiliency. Turning to cash flow on Slide 11, in the fourth quarter we delivered healthy free cash flow of $811,000,000 This was down 145,000,000 year over year due to inventory builds in 2024 that we expect to work down in the first half of twenty twenty five. Looking at the year, we're pleased with execution on our capital allocation initiatives. To strengthen our balance sheet, we paid down $400,000,000 of debt in 2024 and an additional $250,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five.

We also executed on strategic M and A, including our purchase of MIM and Intelligent Ultrasound, as well as our planned acquisition of NMP. Let's turn to our outlook on Slide 12. For 2025, we expect revenue growth in the range of 2% to 3%, which reflects continued demand for our products and services, as well as our current view of market conditions in China. We're taking a measured approach that assumes China's sales performance will be negative in the first half of twenty twenty five with a sequential improvement in the second half of the year versus the first half, leading to a low single digit decline for the year. In addition, we expect a foreign exchange headwind to revenue to be approximately 1.5%.

While The U. S. Tariff dynamic is fluid, we have incorporated the new China tariffs which are in place today into our 2025 guidance. This impacts adjusted EBIT by approximately 10 basis points assuming eleven months of impact. Therefore, we spent full year adjusted EBIT margin to be in the range of 16.7% to 16.8% representing year over year expansion of 40 to 50 basis points.

Operationally, we remain committed to driving productivity initiatives and expanding margins. We're assuming an adjusted effective tax rate in the range of 22% to 23% for the full year. On adjusted EPS, we expect to deliver between $4.61 and $4.75 for the full year, representing 3% to 6% growth year over year. This includes approximately a point of impact from recently announced tariffs on products from China. Lastly, we expect to deliver free cash flow of at least $1,750,000,000 for the full year.

For the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect organic revenue growth year over year to be in the range of 1% to 2% and adjusted EBIT margin and adjusted EPS to be approximately flat year over year. When looking at the first half of twenty twenty five versus the second half of the year, we expect organic revenue growth to be stronger in the second half of the year As we move through the year adjusted EBIT margin rate and adjusted EPS are expected to increase sequentially. Overall, we're very proud of the work our teams contributed in 2024 to deliver on innovation and financial progress and we feel good about our guidance for 2025, especially with strong backlog and orders momentum. Now, I'll turn the call back to Pete. Pete?

Thanks, Jay. As you've heard today and see on Slide 14, our NPIs launched in the last few years have appealed to customers, which translated into orders and revenue growth in 2024. This is another example of how we've made progress on our PrecisionCare strategy. We expect this to continue in 2025 and beyond. We continue to evolve the way we think about innovation, which has always been a cornerstone for GE Healthcare.

Innovation is so much more than the technology we create. It's about having a deep understanding of diseases and acting as a strategic partner for our customers rather than a transactional equipment vendor. By understanding the unique needs of each customer, we co create a holistic offering inclusive of technology, services and solutions and bring it all together in a cohesive way to drive transformation for the customer. We began our long term enterprise partnership strategy to deliver PrecisionCare when we became an independent company. A best in class example is of how it's taking hold in our recent announcement with Sutter Health, one of the largest integrated delivery networks in The U.

S. Building on a twenty year relationship, Sutter Health chose us to help them transform the way they deliver care to their 3,500,000 patients and create capacity to serve tens of thousands more across their network. Another example is our long term agreement with Nuffield Health in The UK to provide our latest advanced imaging and ultrasound equipment, technology upgrades and services over the next two decades. As the partner of choice, these agreements bring us the security of a multi year commitment, while increasing capacity and access of quality care for patients. We believe our ability to bring together a holistic offering of smart devices, drugs, digital solutions and services is differentiating and will result in more of these long term partnerships accelerating recurring revenue growth.

In summary, on Slide 15, I'm proud of how our teams delivered in 2024 and what they do for patients every day. We continue to deliver solid results in revenue, margin, earnings and cash And we're executing on our PrecisionCare strategy through commercial enterprise partnerships and investments in R and D to deliver innovation that solves the most pressing healthcare challenges for our patients and customers. We're starting 2025 with strong momentum in orders, record backlog and book to bill. And we're also on track to launch a number of exciting NPIs, including our proprietary radiopharmaceutical, Farcato. We've laid the groundwork for stronger sales conversion from orders, which positions us well for future growth.

All of that said, we're taking a measured approach to guidance as we start the year and see how the market dynamics including China improvement and tariffs evolve. As a global company with a diversified supply chain and a significant U. S. Manufacturing base, we will continue to proactively work on potential mitigation plans. Meanwhile, we're making good progress towards our total company medium term financial targets.

I'd also note that we are humbled to be recognized by Fortune as one of its world's most admired companies for 2025. And this is really a testament to the dedication of our 53,000 global colleagues to deliver every day for patients and customers. Before we open up the call for questions, I'd like to take a few moments to share an organizational announcement. After more than twenty years with the company, Tom Westrick, President and CEO of Patient Care Solutions has decided to retire from GE Healthcare. We expect to announce his replacement in the near future.

Tom will remain with us to support a smooth transition and I'd like to thank Tom for his contributions to the years and wish him all the best in his retirement. And with that, let's open up the call for questions.

Thank you, Peter. I'd like to ask participants to please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Operator, can you please open the line?

Our first question comes from Anthony Petrone with Mizuho Financial Group. Your line is open.

Thank you very much and good morning, good morning everybody. Congratulations on a very strong overall print record bookings backlog and margin. And I think Jay, I'm going to start off on the latter there on margin. And so maybe walk us through a little bit on the 18.7%, about 120 basis points above our model. But in particular, your LRP calls for high teens to low 20s, you're already in that range exiting 2024.

That outlook was through 2028. So maybe just a little bit on the margin dynamics coming in ahead of expectations and how we should be thinking about that through the LRP? And I'll have one quick follow-up. Thanks.

We're very pleased with the progress that we're making on margin expansion. To your point, the margin in the fourth quarter was ahead of our expectations, but I think notably it was two sixty basis points of expansion versus the prior year, 18.7 was a record for us. And as we look at the lines of the P and L, great performance on gross margin, 150 basis points or so. And then we also had declines in SG and A. We've talked about some of the work that we're doing to optimize this category, and we were able to deliver on that in the fourth quarter.

As we think about specific drivers of the result, we saw benefit from volume, mix and price all contributing. It was approximately 150 basis points of EBIT margin expansion from those categories. And then interestingly from a variable cost productivity program and savings initiatives, all of that good work that we're doing fully offset any inflation or inefficiencies that we saw. So all of the pricevolume mix was able to flow through unimpacted. Now I will tell you, we had about 100 basis points of one time items, some of which we had anticipated, some of it relates to spend from last year that was not repeated this year, some of it was related to foreign exchange.

And so in combination, that was about 100 basis points, but really this was just an overall really solid performance. We talk extensively about the lean culture and what we're trying to do and there's a lot of elements to that like safety, quality and delivery, but this idea of lean's impact on cost, I think was very solid in the fourth quarter. Now as we look to the midterm, it's important not to extrapolate off of fourth quarter because seasonally fourth quarter is always by far the highest margin of the year. And so we'll see a return to normalcy in the first quarter as we look to have a nice solid margin expansion in 2025. But I do think it's safe to say we're increasingly confident in our ability to deliver margin from the business.

So no change to mid term guidance. We did on the Investor Day, we said we think there's an opportunity to deliver 20% plus over time, and that plus was an important addition for us. I think this fourth quarter print gives us more confidence in that plus.

That's very helpful. The quick follow-up would just be, you're facing I'll stick to margin, let others jump in. You're facing the pressures in China, you have some FX, you mentioned inflation. Let's assume inflation stays there, but if we have normalization in China, is it fair to say that this could be an upside case to the mid-20s on the margin side over time? Thanks again.

resetting the midterm guidance, but I think it's safe to say, amidst if you look at last year's full result, 120 basis points despite very low sales growth and despite some unplanned market volatility. And then we fast forward to this year, we're talking about sales growth that's below the midterm expectations, and despite that, we're delivering another 40 to 50 basis points of margin expansion. So we feel really good about our opportunities to drive this going forward. And I think some of the excitement around innovation and all those products coming to market, those should only bolster performance. Pete, what would you add?

I think you covered it, Jay. But, Anthony, to your question, I think just as we went through the Investor Day and we talked about 20 plus part of that is as we're right on track to where we had expected to be. When you take a look at the growth rate, where we're expecting to be here for this year. And then if you recall, a lot of our launches come out in 2026 and a big focus on having those at higher value prices than the segments that they're in and also higher gross margins. And again, that's been a critical part of our strategy from the beginning, platforming and such.

And so it's good to see that coming through.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Craig Bisha with BFA Securities. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I want to start with China and maybe just see if you could elaborate on some of your comments on the order environment in China in Q4. And then, Pete, you've been helpful in the past talking about some of the work that you guys have done province by province to understand where each province is in the stimulus process. So just wanted to see if you can maybe provide some updated insight at the various stages for each province.

Yes, Craig, thanks for the question. I mean, I would start out just at a high level and say fundamentally what we said at Investor Day and what we've been communicating in between is on track to what our expectations are. We expected to see some improvement of orders. Again, it's off of a challenging base the previous year, but that actually took place. And so, again, from the standpoint of anti corruption and then stimulus and the movement going forward on that, we've looked at this across all the provinces and we've talked in the past about the different steps in the process.

And again, I would say at this point in time, it is on track to what we had laid out before, which is start seeing more orders improvement in the first half starting at later Q1, starting to see some of that in Q2, maybe having some benefits in the latter part of Q2, but the majority of the sales translation of orders would be more in the second half. And I'll have Jake can comment a little bit more as well about it from what we said on the guide. But from what we see things right now, they're on track to line up to exactly to that. Jay, what would you add to the China question?

No, I think that's right. We were encouraged to see orders growth in the fourth quarter. But as we kind of look forward, we're anticipating negative growth in the first half of twenty twenty five and then we'll see some sequential improvement in the second half versus the first half. So overall in our numbers, we're anticipating a low single digit revenue decline for the year. We'll watch this very carefully.

As we've said previously, we think China is an attractive long term market, but clearly there's been some volatility, so we've reflected that thinking in the guidance that we've shared here.

And I've in the past used a simple kind of process step about provincibles will announce that they have the money, they'll announce the tender, they'll grant the order and then you'll ship it. I mean, we're pretty much aligned to that kind of in step two, the tenders are starting to take place. And again, I think our guidance is very much aligned to how we think this is going to roll out for the year.

Got it. That's helpful. And you're just thinking about the hospital CapEx environment in The U. S. And around the world.

It sounds like you guys see a pretty solid market or environment. So I guess I wanted to ask if that is true and then maybe just touch on some of the competitive dynamics in the markets. I know one of your competitors recently talked about competitive wins. So we'd love to hear what you're seeing on a competitive front as well as the overall market environment.

Yes, I would say, Craig, look from a CapEx standpoint, ex the China discussions we just made, we see improvements pretty much around the world. I would say I'd start with Europe and say Europe was a more challenging year last year. I think we had mentioned in some previous comments about government changes that people put pauses on and took a look at things. We would expect to start seeing that moving in a more positive direction here in 2025. In The United States, it was a strong year.

And again, as hospital systems retool probably one of the oldest installed bases around different countries around the world. We're seeing again that upgrade taking place. And what underpins that, which is happening around the world, but more so in The U. S. Is just strong growth of procedures, which I know you guys all see in some of the device companies, interventional procedures up strong double digits, surgical procedures moving to outpatient centers requiring ultrasound and C arms.

Those are a lot of things that we're seeing the benefit and we believe are going to continue. The need against for cath labs to handle many of the growth in structured heart and orthopedic procedures as an example. So from that standpoint, that's kind of the marketplace. You asked about the competitive environment, obviously from a China standpoint, it's obviously been a very strong competitive market with local players as well as multinationals, but we feel quite confident in how we've laid out our ability to win. And I would say when you take a look at the markets around the world, we tend to be a little bit stronger in The U.

S. Than maybe we are in Europe just based on us being the largest U. S. Imaging company. But we believe we're doing quite well in each of the segments.

I would kind of hearken back to our Investor Day to say, look, we have a new product coming out in CT that we'll be on track to launch and discuss next year. We have an evolution in our molecular imaging pipeline with a full body PET that will be coming out. And so in certain areas there, I think some of our players are actually converting some of their own installed base, which is helping some of their growth. But we feel very confident that across our installed base and in many cases exemplified in some of the larger wins, we're doing quite well. You add in those new products in the coming years.

Those are again, as I mentioned at Investor Day, it's worth one to two points of additional growth from the new products that are going to be coming out.

next question comes from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Maybe, Jay, one on guidance question here. The two to three organic, I think ex China's around it, something like 2.5 to 3.5.

If I look at your capital book to bill, it was close to 1.1x in fiscal twenty twenty four. I think you ended the year at 1.1x. Why is 2.5x to 3.5x like ex China the right number when Q4 we exited Q4 at 4% organic? What is the guidance you mean for volume versus price in Florkado?

Sure. Thanks for the question. So overall, as you say, we have China down low single digit on a full year basis. And so excluding China, you get close to the mid single digit midterm aspiration. And I will tell you, we were very encouraged with the order performance in the fourth quarter, 6% with a very attractive book to bill is exactly where we hope to end the year and we were able to deliver on that.

A lot of that has to do with a buoyant capital environment as Pete described, and a lot of it has to do with great performance from the team. As we think about though the sales guidance, a lot of those orders have delivery dates either in the second half of this year or into next year. And so from our standpoint, while that's a very, very encouraging sign, it's not something that impacts Q1 or Q2 revenues. And so important for us to be very thoughtful about when those deliveries take place and how things work as it relates to guidance for the year. So what I would say is, from a fourth quarter standpoint, the record backlog that we put in place, the high book to bill along with the orders growth, gives us increasing confidence as we look at the health of the business.

And I think we've reflected that with a reasonable guidance for this year. Pete, anything to add?

I think you covered it, Jay. I think you covered it. I mean, you mentioned you raised the question about Verkado, Vijay. We feel really good about where we are. Just to be clear, we're on track to our launch.

we've referenced before first dosing here within the first quarter and then ultimately launch April. We're well on track to that. And at this point in time, we're assuming in our plans roughly around $30,000,000 of revenue for the year.

That's helpful guys. And maybe one more guidance related question, Jay. Q1, I think I heard you say flat margins. Is there anything one off in Q1? And is that sort of a gross margin impact or is this an OpEx line item which would drive the flat margins?

In the first quarter, we're going to we'll expect to see a little bit of gross margin improvement and a little of OpEx investment. The interesting thing that's happening is we have a lot of exciting launches coming, so we have to make sure from an R and D standpoint, we're funding those for success. Some crucial programs with crucial milestones coming this year. So that investment is coming to bear in the first quarter. And then secondly, from an SG and A standpoint, we're excited about this Flercato launch and a number of other launches that are taking place across the company, but that does require having adequate investment.

We don't want to under club the investments in any of these crucial new product launches. So you're going to see a little bit of offsets from an OpEx standpoint to gross margin expansion leading to the margin that

So, Vijay, just a simple example is obviously we're expanding our cardiology pet call points. So we're adding sales force marketing to be prepared for the launch. That would be an investment in the first half that's part of built into that profit number.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Matt Taylor with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I noticed you talked about the order growth being up across the segments. And I guess I was wondering if you could help us a little bit more with any segment color in terms of the growth expectations for 2025 and particularly on PDX given the Larkado commentary you just gave?

Yes, I think we were definitely pleased to see the

order strength across the board. It was one of a rare quarter when every single business saw it was consistent orders growth. So that was really great. And on a full year basis, I think robust. As we look at 2025 guidance, I guess what I would say is we'll expect PDX growth broadly speaking in line with the growth of 2024.

And then the rest of the business we'll expect to see growth broadly speaking in line with the corporate average. So those are a couple of the dynamics. Pete mentioned the Flocato assumption embedded in PDX, but beyond that I think a nice environment overall contributes to the growth profile that we'll lay out for next year.

Can I just ask one follow-up on for Cato? You talked about the $30,000,000 Can you just talk about the gating factors and how you expect reimbursement to evolve and then the steps through actually getting on contract or is the need for hospitals to sort of reach out your referral patterns and where their capital is placed, is that a gating factor? Maybe just talk about how you think that evolves throughout the year?

Yes. Thanks, Matt. So again, as we spoke a little bit about this at Investor Day and the midterm opportunity, again, we believe on this is $500,000,000 type of product to drug. And so that hasn't changed at all from that standpoint. As I mentioned just in the previous question, our launch preparations are well on track, which is a combination of sales force.

It is reimbursement. It's also manufacturing scale up and all of those are on track. Keep in mind that with a radiopharmaceutical, which has a half life, the typical way that we work our manufacturing structure is in partnerships with contract manufacturing organizations. Why would that be? Because you need to have them closer to the cluster of where the products are starting.

So we actually have a selection of CMOs already set up that will be ready to produce right in the beginning. And we also then target our sales operations within those geographical areas. Why? Because you need to be able to deliver it within a half life window within there. So that manages how fast you ramp, you go a little bit more methodically.

We're also targeting centers that have cardiovascular PET capabilities already. Why? Because they're already doing these patients, In some cases with robitium, this would give them better options as far as how they can actually implement it. And then we'll be working on adding additional capacity into other areas. But other unlike other drugs where you can ship something, put it on the shelf and convert over time, remember this is just in time delivery.

So there's a little bit more orchestration to it, but this is what we do on other molecules day in and day out. We feel good about it, But again, it's why we have a more measured approach as we roll that out. To your point on coding and things, we're well down on the road on that. I'd say from a coding and HCP, CS codes and stuff, we're on track here to have approvals and fundamentally the code in effect in April. We've also filed through pass through.

GE HealthCare (GEHC) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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