Cooper Cos Aktie

Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q3 2026 Cooper Companies Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kim Duncan, Vice President of Investor Relations and Risk Management. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Cooper Companies Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, we will discuss the results and guidance, the conclusion of the strategic review and current corporate developments. We will then use the remaining time for questions. Our presenters on today's call are Al White, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Andrews, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements including statements relating to revenue, EPS, cash flow, interest, FX and tax rates, tariffs and other financial guidance and expectations, also strategic and operational initiatives, market conditions and trends and product launches and demand. Forward-looking statements 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 of the 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 Cooper's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings, all of which are available on our website at coopercos.com.

Also as a reminder, the non-GAAP financial information we will provide on this call is provided as a supplement to our GAAP information. We encourage you to consider our results under GAAP as well as non-GAAP and refer to the reconciliations provided in our earnings release which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website under quarterly materials. Should you have any additional questions following the call, please e-mail [email protected].

And now I'll turn the call over to Al for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Kim, and welcome, everyone, to our Q3 Earnings Call. This quarter included a number of notable developments, including earnings exceeding expectations, record free cash flow, solid fertility growth at CooperSurgical and the favorable completion of a significant tax matter. At CooperVision, however, we proactively reduced U.S. channel inventory that weighed on our results and will continue to impact Q4. Importantly, our underlying demand in the U.S. remained healthy throughout the quarter with consumption increasing at a mid-single-digit rate and we're now positioned to enter fiscal 2027 with a healthier channel and stronger foundation. We're also taking additional steps to strengthen CooperVision revenue performance, and I'll speak to these in a moment.

But first, I want to address the completion of the strategic review, which we announced in a separate press release today. Following a comprehensive evaluation of alternatives, the Board has concluded the strategic review. As part of the process, we conducted a thorough assessment of CooperSurgical, including a potential sale of the business, where we received significant interest and engaged with numerous parties. Ultimately, however, the Board unanimously determined that shareholders are better served by continued ownership than by pursuing a transaction at this time. The Board and our advisers believe several temporary factors influence valuations late in the process, including developments related to a competitive entrant in the nonhormonal IUD market and the impact of our fertility litigation settlement.

These factors contributed to what we believe was a temporary disconnect between CooperSurgical's intrinsic value and the offers received resulting in proposals that did not adequately reflect the full value and long-term potential of the business.

While the formal strategic review has concluded, our commitment to enhancing shareholder value has not changed. We gained valuable insights through the process and will intensify our focus on profitable organic growth and disciplined capital allocation, including share repurchases. The Board and management will also continue to evaluate opportunities to maximize long-term shareholder value and remain open to strategic alternatives that appropriately recognize the value of our operations.

Turning to the quarter. CooperVision reported revenue of $717 million, essentially flat year-over-year. EMEA and Asia Pac performed largely in line with our expectations while the results in the Americas reflected CooperVision's U.S. channel inventory reductions. Moving forward, we see opportunities to strengthen our growth globally through improved execution of our contract wins and product launches. And to support this effort, we're investing in expanded sales coverage, increased customer marketing programs and enhanced commercial execution capabilities, including AI-driven targeting and analytics tools. These initiatives are already gaining traction in Asia Pac, where our new commercial leadership team is fully in place and in the U.S. where we're actively expanding our sales force organization. These efforts are driving stronger customer engagement, including within our private label business, where new account wins and SKU introductions are expanding our customer footprint and deepening penetration within existing accounts.

We're also continuing to invest in our distribution infrastructure, including a new packaging facility in Puerto Rico that will expand direct-to-consumer and direct to customer fulfillment capabilities, enhancing service levels and supporting long-term growth. All these actions are well underway and position us to drive greater revenue growth in fiscal 2027 and beyond.

Turning to products. Our flagship MyDay franchise continues to perform well, highlighted by double-digit growth in EMEA and double-digit consumption growth in the Americas. This performance was driven by strong customer partnerships, ongoing expansion in high-value categories such as torics and multifocals, growing adoption of our premium MyDay Energys offering and the successful launch of MyDay MiSight.

MyDay toric delivered another quarter of double-digit growth, supported by the industry's broadest daily parameter range and the same market-leading toric design is Biofinity. MyDay toric maintains a meaningful competitive advantage, offering approximately 30% more prescription options than any other daily toric lens. MyDay multifocal also delivered another quarter of double-digit growth, supported by its advanced optical design and easy-to-fit platform. With favorable demographic trends and significant room for category expansion, we continue to view multifocals as one of the most attractive growth opportunities in contact lenses. And to build on this, we are preparing to launch MyDay toric multifocal, extending our leadership in optics, parameter range and clinical performance.

Finally, MyDay Energys delivered another quarter of double-digit growth, reflecting increasing recognition among eye care professionals and wearers of its differentiated combination of premium optic advanced material technology. For clariti, performance varied by region, with growth in EMEA, offset by softer performance in our other 2 regions. However, our next-generation clariti multifocal continues to gain momentum, supported by the same proven fitting design as Biofinity and MyDay. And we also recently completed the clariti family launch in Japan and initial [indiscernible] response has been encouraging.

Turning to Biofinity, strength in EMEA and within our market-leading made-to-order portfolio, including toric multifocals and extended ranges, was offset by the inventory moves in the U.S., resulting in a flat quarter. Regarding myopia management, MiSight delivered another strong quarter with 20% organic growth. EMEA and the Americas led performance while softness in China weighed on Asia Pac. Although this was partially offset by growing momentum in Japan following our MiSight launch earlier this year.

In EMEA, growth was supported by the ongoing launch of MyDay MiSight with back-to-school campaigns highlighting the benefits of a silicone hydrogel offering. Canada also launched MyDay MiSight in August and customer feedback has been excellent. Importantly, in these markets that have MyDay MiSight, the MyDay platform now supports patients across every stage of life, from [ IOB ] management and children through spherical, toric, multifocal and premium lifestyle offerings in adulthood.

Looking ahead, we expect MiSight growth to be in the low teens in Q4 against a difficult prior year comparison resulting in roughly 20% growth for this full year and setting the stage for a promising 2027, supported by continued momentum in existing markets and the upcoming launch of MyDay MiSight toric.

Lastly, on Vision, we're accelerating programs tied to new product development, and that ties nicely in with the opening of our Global Vision Center in the U.K. later this month. This state-of-the-art facility brings together R&D, our next-gen technical manufacturing teams and our commercial teams a single integrated environment. The investment will accelerate innovation, enhance collaboration and enable greater speed to market as we capitalize on one standardized manufacturing platform for all future product development.

Turning to CooperSurgical, revenue was $349 million, up 3% organically. Within this, fertility delivered another solid quarter, growing 5% to $141 million. By product category, fertility growth was driven by broad-based strength across our leading global portfolio of products and services, partially offset by softer capital equipment sales following a very strong prior quarter. Genomics was a notable contributor driven by robust global demand, along with continued adoption of witness our automated laboratory management platform. Performance was further supported by new clinic wins, expansion within existing accounts and increasing uptake of recently launched products and services, all resulting in continued global market share gains.

Geographically, growth was led by the Americas, where we continue to gain share, while EMEA and Asia Pac remain mixed as strength across several markets was offset by macro headwinds in the Middle East and China. Stepping back, the long-term fundamentals of the global fertility market remain compelling. Delayed family formation, expanding access to care, increasing treatment utilization and continued investments by fertility clinics supports durable long-term growth. Government support for family building also remains favorable.

Earlier this year, Denmark expanded publicly funded fertility coverage from 3 cycles to 6. Japan's reimbursement framework continues to improve access and affordability for assisted reproductive technologies. In the Middle East, investments in reproductive health care infrastructure continue to support growth in the UAE fertility market. And in California, large group health plans are now required to provide coverage for IVF and certain infertility treatments representing another meaningful step towards expanding patient access.

To conclude on Fertility, we expect continued strength, including a solid fourth quarter, supported by healthy market trends and growing momentum across our innovation pipeline particularly in genomics.

Turning to office and surgical, revenue was $208 million, up 2%. Medical Devices grew 4%, driven by continued strength in our surgical OB/GYN and specialty device portfolios while PARAGARD revenue was flat. Finally, CooperSurgical delivered another quarter of strong operating leverage, reflecting the improved profitability and cash generation of our streamlined business model.

Now before turning the call over to Brian, let me leave you with a few key takeaways. At CooperVision, underlying demand remains healthy, and our long-term growth drivers remain firmly in place including continued momentum in MyDay, strong demand for our toric and multifocal lenses and the ongoing success of MiSight. At CooperSurgical, we remain excited about the fertility market and the opportunities ahead, supported by our strong R&D pipeline. Finally, while the strategic review process was extremely challenging for our teams, it provided valuable insights, and we believe we are well positioned to execute our plans and deliver strong performance in 2027 and beyond.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you, Al, and good afternoon, everyone. Most of my commentary will be on a non-GAAP basis, so please refer to today's earnings release for a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results.

For the third fiscal quarter, consolidated revenue was $1.066 billion, increasing approximately 1% on both a reported and organic basis. Gross margin was 66.7%, down 60 basis points year-over-year. This was largely in line with our expectations, reflecting higher costs and foreign exchange headwinds. Operating margins increased 30 basis points year-over-year to 26.3%, driven by ongoing productivity improvements. Interest expense was $21.5 million our non-GAAP effective tax rate was 15.3%.

Before moving to earnings, I want to spend a moment on taxes. During the quarter, we recognized a sizable discrete tax benefit of approximately $307 million. Following the favorable completion of [ HMRC's ] examination, of our fiscal 2021 transfer of intellectual property and related assets to the U.K. Importantly, the closure of the examination provides clarity and certainty around a matter that has been under review for several years and is now expected to extend meaningful non-GAAP tax benefits for at least an additional 10 years.

Turning to earnings. Non-GAAP EPS increased 4% to $1.15, including approximately $0.03 from tariff refunds based on approximately 193 million diluted shares outstanding. This marks our 11th consecutive quarter exceeding consensus earnings expectations, reflecting disciplined execution, strong operational management, and the benefits of the reorganization completed in the fourth quarter of last year.

Turning to cash flow. We generated free cash flow of $273 million. The highest quarterly free cash flow in Cooper's history. This was driven by strong operating performance, improving working capital trends and declining CapEx all of which has contributed to year-to-date free cash flow of $528 million, up 86% from last year. This performance reinforces our confidence in achieving our goal of generating $2.2 billion of cumulative free cash flow in fiscal '26 to 2028. Supported by this strong cash generation, we repurchased $339 million of shares during the quarter, bringing fiscal year-to-date repurchases to $445 million while maintaining leverage below 2x. Given our confidence in the business and commitment to capital returns, the Board approved a $1 billion increase to our share repurchase authorization, bringing the remaining capacity to approximately $1.5 billion for future repurchases.

Turning to guidance. For Q4, we expect consolidated revenue of $1.057 billion to $1.080 billion representing organic growth of 0% to 2%. We expect CooperVision revenue of $692 million to $706 million, down 2% to flat organically. Within this, we expect regional performance trends to be broadly consistent with Q3, with the Americas reflecting the impact of channel inventory actions, EMEA delivering another solid quarter and Asia Pac continuing to face near-term challenges. We expect CooperSurgical revenue of $364 million to $374 million, representing organic growth of 4% to 6%. We expect interest expense of roughly $25 million, reflecting incremental borrowing associated with share repurchases and litigation-related payments. We expect the Q4 non-GAAP effective tax rate to be roughly 16%, resulting in non-GAAP EPS of $1.05 to $1.09. We expect around $170 million free cash flow, excluding litigation-related payments of roughly $272 million. Our foreign exchange assumptions are largely unchanged from last quarter.

In summary, we expect Q4 to be broadly similar to Q3 with the primary differences being greater commercial investments in CooperVision, additional FX headwinds and lower tariff refunds which will pressure gross and operating margins.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2027, it's too early to provide guidance other than to note that our scheduled [ GILTI ] increase of roughly 2% in the U.S. taxation of foreign earnings will impact our non-GAAP effective tax rate. All else being equal, we expect this increase -- we expect this to increase our tax rate from roughly [ 15.5% ] this year to roughly [ 17.5% ] in fiscal 2027.

To conclude, despite actions we took within CooperVision that weighed on performance, we delivered another quarter of earnings above expectations and record free cash flow. We also achieved a favorable resolution of [ HMRC's ] examination of our 2021 U.K. tax planning initiative and returned significant capital to shareholders. At the same time, we are intensifying our efforts to drive organic growth through new commercial investments and a more streamlined operating model. Together, these initiatives position us to accelerate growth, expand profitability and increase cash generation in the years ahead. Supported by our strong balance sheet and disciplined capital allocation framework, we remain confident in our ability to create meaningful long-term value for our shareholders.

With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jon Block.

Thanks, guys. So Al, previously, the fiscal 2H '26 CVI growth was expected to be up roughly 4%, now fiscal 2H is expected to be flattish. And you made some comments around consumption. I just want to be clear, is the entirety of that revision inventory related, as you did call out consumption of mid-single-digit growth specific to the quarter. I'm just wondering if that consumption assumption was -- also applies to fiscal 4Q. So maybe you can just tease out the plus [ 4 to 0 ] in fiscal 2H, how much of that is destock versus underlying fundamentals?

Yes, Jon, it's all destock. So the consumption in the U.S. market here has been running pretty steady all year in the mid-single digits. It was -- it did in Q3, and it did in the first month of this quarter. So I would expect consumption to remain as is. Meaning the entire reason for the reduction in the revenue guidance for CooperVision was tied to just channel inventory. That's it.

So thanks for the clarity there. I guess just an obvious follow-up, which would be, if you're exiting this year at flat off of pretty modest comps, just any high-level thoughts on 2027 with CVI. In other words, do we think it can go back to mid-single digits as it would revert back to consumption? Or should we think, hey, you're going to be below market this year, do we think below market next year really until some new products start to come out of the innovation hub.

Yes. A couple of things on that. I mean, some of the moves that we're making that you see here in the U.S. with respect to the channel inventory are one that's impacting us. Another one that's impacting us has been for a little bit and will to end this year. is some of the portfolio rationalization we're doing with our legacy hydrogels. Our legacy hydrogels were down double digit across the board as we continue to kind of move away from those products. That work we're going to get completed here in our fiscal Q4, and that will put us in a significantly better footing back to kind of CooperVision of old or normal CooperVision, if you will, as we get into 2027.

Your next question is from the line of Jeff Johnson.

Let me just stick on maybe that same line of question Jon was just asking and then I've got one other follow-up as well. But on the destock itself, Al, you may have just answered the question on some of the legacy hydrogel stuff. But what is actually driving that destock? And how do we think about the risk that, that bleeds over into the early part of '27. Have you ring-fenced that fairly confidently that this is a fiscal Q4 should be the last of it? Or how do we think about like the early '27 potential impact? And then one follow-up.

Yes. We have ring-fenced that, so to speak. We have gone through that deep deeply and dug into all the details and where the channel inventory is and what's happening. A lot of it was tied to Biofinity but there was other -- there was stuff with dailies, and there was definitely, definitely inventory that was tied to some legacy hydrogels and some of those kind of products. But we're going to get that behind us here in Q4, at least the vast majority of it. Same with the rationalization in the moves in Asia Pac, so that we get back in good footing and get back to normal, if you will, in 2027.

Okay. I guess I'll just push you a little bit on that. Just hearing your answer there, the different lines that destock, but why are they destocking? Has end markets slowed? Did you guys have too much inventory in the channel from past efforts to kind of prop up numbers? Is it competitive new product launches that are just requiring less CooperVision inventory? Just anything there?

And then you mentioned APAC there at the end of your answer. I guess my other question was going to be on APAC. Last quarter, you talked about fiscal Q3 being the last of the Cooper-specific issues there and you felt like the market was kind of flat, maybe down a little bit in Asia Pac and that you could get back towards that market rate in Q4. Has that assumption now changed? And if so, maybe why.

Yes, I'll touch that one first, Jeff. So on Asia Pac, I would say that market is actually stabilizing to getting a little bit better, which is great news. I think I said last quarter, I'd have to go back and look that we were finishing up the a lot of the rationalization work and positioning work and so forth with respect to the legacy hydrogels and clariti entering. So that's what I'm kind of referencing saying that similar to last quarter, we're going to finish that up. We were probably halfway through it or maybe a little bit more. We took another chunk out of it here in Q3, and we'll finish that in Q4. So I think you'll get Asia Pac being back to relatively back to normal like as we start the year off.

If I look at the channel inventory in the U.S., we see channel inventory kind of go up and go down, and we've seen that many times over the years. We did have channel inventory trend higher here and that's been for a couple of different reasons. Some of it was people buying before price increases. Some of it's been consolidation activity. Some of it's been buying before things like IT upgrades go in. Most recently here, and like Q1 and Q2, you saw channel inventory move up associated with buying tied to some of the new private label contracts we won, and that was pushing up inventory without offsetting it in a different spot.

So this was something that we took a look at a long and hard look at it and said, "Hey, normally, what would happen here and what's happened in the past is that channel inventory would burn itself off over the next 1.5 years or something like that. and you'd move back to normal." And rather than doing that and dealing with that as we have many times over the 20-plus years I've been here, decided to go ahead and proactively accelerate that and just get that taken care of right now in Q3 and Q4 so that we won't have that overhang at all next year. And we'll go back to growth tied to consumption.

Your next question is from Larry Biegelsen.

It's [ Ale ] on for Larry. Can you quantify the impact of the U.S. inventory reduction in fiscal Q3? I mean you talked about consumption being in the mid-single digits. So is that different versus what you reported for [ CVA ], is that the magnitude of inventory reduction in the quarter? And what's a seeing about the impact of the inventory in fiscal Q4? And I have a follow-up.

Yes. So yes, just to be clear on that, the Americas would have reported growth around 5% in Q3 if we hadn't made the inventory reduction moves. We would envision Q4 is actually going to be pretty similar to what Q3 was. I would say, for the Americas, for EMEA and Asia Pac so you'll have a similar inventory reduction that will occur in Q4 in the U.S.

Okay. So the magnitude should be similar, you're saying, for the inventory reduction in Q4?

That's right.

Okay. And then my other question is around the P&L for Q4. So I'm backing into an operating margin somewhere in the mid-20% just based on your EPS guidance. That would be down sequentially as well as year-on-year. So one, I just want to check that. And two, what's driving that lower margin? I mean, you have a tariff benefit in fiscal Q3. Is all inventory related or are there other factors in there? And if there's anything in your EPS guide about additional buyback in fiscal Q4?

Sure. So nothing in the guidance with respect to buybacks, answer that one. When you look at your operating margin think and you're in the ballpark, and Brian kind of touched on it, the factors being tariffs, being FX is a little bit more negative and then be in investments in CooperSurgical. So we have started that investment activity in CooperSurgical. We started it during Q3, actually. So you're going to -- we're starting to see the impact of that. Now we'll get a return on that, of course, next year, but you're starting to see the impact this year.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Bednar.

Sorry to hammer here, beat a dead horse, but I'm going to ask another one on the destock. Just a question on your confidence that this is just an Americas issue that won't bleed over to EMEA and maybe talk about how Americas is benchmarked versus EMEA, so we can have confidence that this issue just doesn't extend over to that geography and visibility that you have into the channel there. And maybe why not maybe take it from a different perspective, why not make some moves in EMEA, so that channel or that geography is on healthy footing heading into fiscal '27?

Yes. So the difference is EMEA is a much greater subscription-based market we're actually seeing the U.S. move in that direction. That's one of the things I was talking about with the new Puerto Rico facility is that you're seeing more direct-to-consumer shipping activity. You see that in EMEA right now. That kind of prevents you from having like these inventory, these big inventory swings and so forth. So we just don't really see that EMEA, I mean you can get it with customers and so forth, of course, right? But but we just don't have that happening in EMEA. So I'm not worried about it in that region.

When you look at the U.S., it's centered on a relatively small number of players, if you will, between distributors and some online e-commerce. So it's pretty easy to straightforward tackle it, and that's what we did. And it's pretty easy to get an understanding about how much channel inventory is out there. What levels people need to hold in order to maintain customer service requirements and so forth. And you can look at that delta, and that's how you ring-fence it, so to speak, to be able to say, "Hey, I can do this, and I can quantify it within a couple of quarter period."

All right. All right. That's helpful. And then, Al or Brian, I think you both discussed today investments in CPI sales, marketing and R&D. Usually, that type of approach that's needed to accelerate growth comes at the expense of margins even if temporarily, but it doesn't seem like that's what you're suggesting today. So can you talk a bit more about the investment buckets and then your confidence level in posting margin improvement next year in the face of this spending knowing that we've already gone through some cost efforts coming into this fiscal year.

Sure. I'll take that one. Yes, so the commercial investments in sales force expansion, marketing programs, new product development, those -- the sales force adds tend to be a short-term detriment to margins as we bring in those sales force, train them up, get them deployed, that will be a short-term detriment for longer-term benefits. So we are addressing sales force expansion across our businesses, across regions. So I'm not going to get into 2027 guidance right now. Obviously, we've been leveraging parts of the P&L, and we continue to leverage that, and you see that drop through in profitability and earnings.

But in terms of next year, we'll get into next year in December in terms of how that's going to impact how the moves to drive long-term sustainable organic growth will impact our year, including gating in December.

Your next question is from the line of Robbie Marcus.

Two for me. One, when did you first start the destocking? And where are you now with channel inventory? I don't know if you measure in days in the U.S. where was it in the beginning of the year? And where was it last year, just so we could get a sense? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes. So I would say -- well, I don't want to go kind of back and like build out by quarter. I don't think that's going to do anybody any good. But I look at it and say that we're -- I would say, halfway through it. We did it here in Q3, and we're going to do the other half of it in Q4.

Okay. But you're not willing to say if this year ran at above average or below average?

Well, this year has run above average. As I mentioned, like there was stocking associated with some of the new private label contracts we've won, as an example, that is pushed up distributor inventory that we saw in Q1 and Q2, as an example.

Great. And then I know you're not giving '27 guidance. I think we're all grappling with so much of the movement and changes in guidance throughout the past several quarters. But maybe are you okay with leveraged EPS growth next year? And maybe like a 3% to 4% top line, still a touch lower than where the Street is? Or does the step-up in tax preclude the ability to get leveraged EPS growth?

Yes, as for as much as I'd like to give commentary on next year. I'm just not going to get into it right now not until December.

Your next question is from Joanne Wuensch. Please go ahead.

I'm going to try it from a different angle. If the third quarter and the fourth quarter are negatively being impacted by the channel inventory, and the contact lens market is growing 4% to 6%. Is it reasonable to assume that next year, you can grow within the range of the market?

Yes. That is reasonable. I would say a couple of things, Joanne. And I give just a little color on that because your question is very fair. Like we don't have a manufacturing issue. Our team is strong. We're producing product. We don't have a distribution or logistics issue. We don't have a problem winning contracts. We won a number of contracts where we struggled is execution at the end of that, is actually executing and delivering revenues. So it's kind of like we're moving through this entire process, which is one of the things that's kept me optimistic. But then we're not converting at the very last stage of that. That actual commercial execution is where the struggling has happened.

So the sales force execution, this additional marketing the intensity around that kind of stuff and targeting and so forth is the key to success for us, right? It's not product, it's not getting customer products. It's not winning contracts. It's executing at the end on the sales. We don't have enough salespeople out there. Like [ Insights ] 2020, we should have moved faster around this. Like we don't have enough salespeople on the street. We have quite a bit less than our competitors have out there right now. So this is a matter of doing that last stage of investing. And we're on top of that. We're moving as fast as we can right now on that.

I'm not expecting this channel inventory to bounce back. We're taking it out, and we're going to manage it more aggressively to ensure stability there but I do expect better execution. We have a long history of strong execution. So I'm confident in the team and that we'll deliver that.

Your next question is from the line of Steve Lichtman.

I just want to switch gears to CSI and on the decision to keep the business, you pointed to the valuation disconnect. But as you look at the 2 businesses together, coming off of this process. What was management and the Board's ultimate assessment of why the 2 together are stronger than a part? Because obviously, the lack of obvious synergies has been one of the questions from investors.

Yes. Well, I would say that it's really the P&L. It's at the end of the day because if you take a look at the shared services concept that we deployed, remember, we did the restructuring in Q4 of last year and you've seen the savings. I mean, I know there's frustration over revenues. I have frustration over revenues, but I think this was something like our 11th straight quarter of beating earnings expectations. And some of those quarters, we beat an earnings expectations by 5%, 10%. I mean we beat earnings this quarter with CooperVision coming in way under what revenue expectations were.

So the strength of the P&L, when I look at it from a perspective of operating leverage and being able to drive that and drive cash flow, highest quarterly cash flow we've ever had in the company. And as Brian said, we're going to keep delivering a lot of cash flow. At the end of the day, yes, you're right. We have 2 different businesses. But the back office when it comes to finance, IT, legal and HR and so forth, it support very effectively both of these businesses so that we can generate good earnings and really strong cash flow.

And then we need to deploy that cash flow to stock buybacks and we did a lot of buybacks this quarter. We're going to generate a lot of cash next year, and that's going to continue to be our focus. So that's where the logic comes in of having the 2 companies together. And proof is in the pudding, which we've done. Now we need to get revenue growth going, and I get that. Within Vision, surgical is actually plug in along fine, even through all these disruptions. I mean, this was an incredibly disruptive process, like we thought we were going to sell CooperSurgical. Let's be clear about that. Like I got on the last call and I talked about that, right?

So everybody of this company was working on their normal jobs on the sale of the business, every piece of planning that we were doing, every budgeting, every IT plan had to go and have a with and without each of them and so forth. But we got through that. We got through the exercise, and we still delivered the earnings, and we killed the free cash flow. And now we turn our attention back to where it needs to be, which is driving revenue growth within CooperVision and investing heavier in CooperVision. And that's what we're going to do next. So it's one more box we need to check, and I think that's the last one that we need to check. But that's the logic of having the businesses together.

Got it. Great. And then just follow-up to that, in terms of use of free cash looking forward beyond stock buybacks, you may have mentioned this in your release tonight, but is it fair to say that relative to inorganic, that Vision is going to be a higher focus now than on CSI all else equal?

100%, yes. They're very heavy focus right now on CooperVision organic growth. That's where we need to put our attention, that's where we are putting our attention, and that's where we're putting our money. That doesn't mean that CooperSurgical is not going to do well and get its investments because fertility is very important to us. And and we're strong on the med device side. And we're going to continue to invest and grow those businesses, but the #1 focus clearing a way is driving organic growth at CooperVision right now.

Your next question is from the line of David Saxon.

Great. Maybe one on CVI, and I'll ask one on CSI as my second. So just on CVI follow-up to the sales and marketing investments. Like are there specific regions that need those additional resources? Do you need those additional sales reps to get to the mid-single digits next year. And then would love to just get your latest take on pricing and how the market -- how are you feeling about the market's ability to take price?

Sure. So when it comes to the sales force expansion, I would start that with the U.S. market because right now, we are -- we've got consumption growing mid-single digits. That's probably in line roughly with where the market is. we should be doing better than that. Given the contracts we've won and so forth, we should be growing faster than market here. The addition of this direct sales force and the expansion that we're doing right now is going to add coverage for something like 5,000 additional doors so that's a big deal for us. Do we need to get that sales force in place to get to mid-single digit? No, because that's what we're doing right now on a look-through basis. Should we be accelerating that doing better? Yes, we should be.

When I look at Europe, they're in good spot, I challenge the European team there. We have a great fantastic leader running Europe over there and I've challenged him to maybe look at some expansion and hiring some more salespeople. Asia Pac is in pretty good shape right now. I just talked to the head of Japan, great guy, energized. He's got some really good ideas. I really -- I'm excited about what he's doing. He's doing some hiring over there. to focus in some different areas of the markets where we don't currently compete. And he needs to keep doing that. I stress that to him and the rest of the team, invest, drive growth. We're going to get -- these are all high-return models like we are going through this from a return perspective, I feel good about that. But so anyway, that gives you a little bit of color on the worldwide side.

Pricing, I would say, when I look at pricing and when I look at product mix, it's still pretty good in the industry. The higher-priced products are doing better. We see that with our competitors. We see that with products like MyDay MiSight, the MyDay torics and multifocals and so forth continue to perform better. So higher-priced products doing better and there still remains a potential to take price, like inflation is still out there. We see that, and there's still the potential for us to be able to take price, and we're actively looking at that right now.

Okay. Great. And then on CSI, maybe just talk about what you're seeing in terms of cycle trends, what the outlook is going into fiscal '27? And then you mentioned PARAGARD competition in the release. So I would love just an update there. I think that competitive launch was in August. So curious if you're seeing any impact there.

Sure. On the fertility side of things, we are seeing a growth in cycles, and that's a positive. The other thing we're seeing is we're hurdling through that year period where we have some consolidation and you're starting to see fertility clinics investing more. There's more capital equipment opportunities out there. Our genomics team is absolutely killing it. They're doing a great job, taking a whole bunch of market share. We have somewhat of a new fertility team that started probably 6, 12 months ago that is really doing that. Our new leader, she's just fantastic, and she's doing a great job in killing it. So I'm super optimistic about the fertility market. Anybody who thinks that that's not a good market or that, that litigation settlement is going to disrupt our momentum and progress is just wrong. I just don't see that in the market.

When you look at the PARAGARD competition, we've talked about that in the past. We are the only -- PARAGARD is the only non-hormonal IUD in the market right now. There is a competitive product that received approval that was bought that it closed during this past quarter for us. They started their training and that product will get launched at some point in the future, and there's concern about that. And at this point in time, I'm going to hold off giving any guidance or commentary above and beyond what we've already given, but we'll certainly have a lot more color to be able to give on the December call.

Your next question comes from the line of Navann Ty.

Just CSI post strategic review. You mentioned some insights from that review. So can you maybe discuss that into more detail and the levers that you mentioned, including investment that you started in the quarter to drive fertility growth. If you could give more details.

Navann, it was a little difficult to hear. I think you were asking for the impact of -- or the -- do you say the impact from the strategic review tied to CSI? Can you repeat your question?

Yes. I think Al mentioned that you gained some insight from the strategic review and also mentioned some investment that you started in the quarter to drive fertility growth. If you could discuss that into more detail.

Sure. So the insights is an important one because one of the things that the strategic review did was to really drill down into the profitability of our portfolio, all aspects of our portfolio, frankly, and take a look at profitability by product and take a look at profitability by geography and relationship. One of the areas where we've seen significant improvement is the profitability of CooperSurgical. And what it did is it kind of highlighted other areas where there's some opportunity for us to do a better job in terms of driving ongoing profitability improvement. So we're going to learn from that, like we learned a lot from the strategic review. It uncovered some different things, and it's going to make us a better company. It is making us a better company today.

I mean, right now, we are doing investments within fertility. We've added some investment activity, including within our R&D. We have great new Head of R&D, who is running that organization and pulling forward some launches. We've got some exciting stuff going in genomics there with some new launches and some expanded products that we have. I would say we're continuing -- that's where we're putting dollars. We're putting #1, first and foremost, is CooperVision organic growth; and number two, though, after that is fertility, where we are continuing to invest. And we believe that those investments are going to drive good fertility growth. And we also believe that some of the stuff that we've been covered and the insights is going to give us opportunity to continue to drive leverage in that business.

And you also mentioned the -- in the press release the valuation impact of the fertility settlement. Is that fully settled? Or is there anything else we should know about?

That is fully settled. So there's nothing new on that. There was concern that, that settlement. You'll remember, that was from an issue we had in 2023. There was a concern that, that settlement would negatively impact our ongoing sales, not our operations. We haven't had any issues since then associated with the media and so forth. So I just don't believe that's accurate, and we haven't seen that. We didn't see it in Q2. We didn't see it in Q3. We're certainly not seeing it as we get rolling here in Q4. But but I appreciate whether that was a true concern on negotiating tactics, hard to tell.

Your next question is from the line of Anthony Petrone.

You have Brad Bowers on for Anthony. Just maybe I wanted to ask one about the overall strategy or dynamics underlying the CVI business. Obviously, slowdown in growth is not unique to Cooper, but still growing below growth we got in the destocking dynamics, but obviously, you had also taken some share in some of the wider SKU ranges and obviously, some of the new products with MyDay, it sounds like the Americas growth is strong, but you even admit you wish you were growing better. So I wanted to hear about some of the more competitive dynamics and the confidence that those remain in your favor.

I would say that those remain in our favor. So nothing has changed with respect to that. I will say that the area where losing share is the wrong word, but where we don't operate is kind of in the super premium segment. There is a part of the market, especially on the daily side that we refer to as super premium. It's really high-priced products and that's just not an area that we compete in right now, and that's shown a lot of growth, and it has very high revenue per patient.

So where we continue to do well, we continue to win patients. Our revenue per patient is not close to where some of our competitors are. And a lot of the market continues to get driven by that really premium segment. Now we are launching -- we've launched MyDay MiSight into that more premium segment. That's what's being launched into Europe. So I think there's some potential for us to gain some ground there. But that would be -- if I had to highlight 2 things, that would be one of them is not having products in the super premium space. And then the other one would be the desire to rationalize some of our legacy hydrogel products. Again, we're definitely seeing a negative impact from that.

That makes sense. But obviously, punching above your weight given the underinvestment in -- not underinvestment, but smaller sales force than competition. Obviously, that is a tailwind, but just wanted to hear -- maybe remind us how productivity kind of ramps there. Obviously, the base is now lower, so it does kind of imply getting back towards that high -- mid- to even high single digits to your point, getting above consumption? And then also just impact, obviously apparent maybe the opportunity that, that would be obscured if there is strong growth in the U.S. by some of the OUS impacts? Just maybe help us figure that out as well.

Sure. Just one quick point. As Brian just said that I met MyDay Energys, I think I said MyDay MiSight, but MyDay Energys is the premium product. With the sales force, I would say, if I had to put some parameters around that, we're recruiting now. We'll get people trained and have them out on the street executing. I would say probably in early mid-fiscal Q2.

So from that perspective, right, they need to visit offices and start doing their jobs and so forth and pulling revenues in. So that's probably a positive impact more in the Q3, Q4 time frame. Now I do think early in the year, we'll continue to have consumption be solid. So we'll still put up good results, but I believe we'll accelerate a little bit off that as we get the benefit from those employees. Frankly, same thing when I look at some of the other markets around the world.

Your next question is from the line of Brett Fishbin.

I have to say a lot of mine have been asked. So maybe just a follow-up on kind of the last point. I was going to ask about your thoughts on underlying market share dynamics, just given the full year CVI growth guide for the Americas. It sounds like a lot of it has to do with salesforce and you're looking at some incremental investment activity. So maybe just the first part, is there anything else that stands out that you think might be driving, call it, full year growth in the Americas below market outside of that?

And then the second follow-up question is just how you're feeling about the product portfolio. I think your point about super premium lenses is really interesting. So just curious like how you feel about current offerings and maybe how active the R&D pipeline might be in regards to some new ideas or even new brands?

Sure. I would say on the selling side, I would go back to sales execution. Like we've won some great private label contracts here in the U.S. with a few of the buying groups. We've won some really nice contracts in Asia Pac. Historically, when we win those contracts, we would see the sale of execution turn those into revenue growth. And that's what we've expected more of that, right? You've seen that in some of the guidance. You've seen it in some of my commentary. That's where that has not come to fruition yet. And where -- when we looked at it and peeled back the onion and said, well, why, what is the difference? What's happening? We have a full portfolio out there right now. I feel good about the portfolio. It's arguably the most robust that we've ever had, and we didn't build out the sales force and a lot of the marketing support commensurate with the size of the portfolio that we have right now. So we need to do this activity so we can capitalize on these contract wins that we have.

I will say with respect to R&D and new products, we have accelerated that activity had a number of meetings with the R&D team and with our commercial team. We are accelerating launch activity that we were looking at in the 2030 kind of time frame and pulling that forward a couple of years. So very, very active on R&D and laser focusing in on some new product introductions that we think are going to be pretty damn exciting. We were a little too broad on some things. So narrowing that down and executing and getting some new products into the marketplace is going to be beneficial for us. And I won't go too far on that yet, but we will spend some time in the near future going through some of those details.

All right. Awesome. I'll keep it to one question. We'll look forward to hearing more about that in the next few years.

And our final question comes from the line of Issie Kirby.

I think most of might have been asked as well, but just wanted to touch on Asia Pacific and China in particular, which has been a drag for quite some time now. Can you remind us of that business for you guys envision? And just how you're thinking about it strategically? Like does it get to a point where it's really given the dynamics in the market, not necessarily worse you being there anymore?

Yes. Well, China was another struggle this quarter. I mean it was the only market as an example where MiSight was actually down. It's not -- it's not been a great market for us. So we are reengineering there. We've got a new team in place. We're looking at some different growth opportunities to see the best way to reestablish and drive growth in that marketplace right now.

I do believe that I will say, within the context of Asia Pac, after many quarters of negative and product rationalization in China and some of the other markets, we are definitely coming to an end with that activity. I know you've heard that before, but I'll just tell you, when you look at the size of the business, I mean it's gotten to be -- it's just relatively small. I mean I think it's less than 2%, it is less than 2% of revenues this quarter on a consolidated basis. So the business just is getting smaller over there.

So it's a great question and a great challenge. And we are looking at seeing if we can [indiscernible] that business to drive success. And I do believe there are some opportunities there in some channels like e-commerce, where we can play differently and be successful. But we're taking a hard look at it right now because we want to get good revenues, if you will, right, profitable revenues and things that make sense. So doing work on it. That's -- I'll update you more as we get into December and give guidance on next year.

Can I just really quickly squeeze in a follow-up on what went on with MiSight in China in the quarter?

Sure. We have not been able to gain traction with MiSight in China. And if I look around the world, in other markets that have spectacles, we continue to do fine. As a matter of fact, it just grows the overall marketplace. I think the unique thing with China ends up being Ortho K, probably more than anything. You've had a lot of pricing pressure on Ortho K because of government pricing policies. So it's really disrupted that marketplace. There's a lot of knockoffs there. There's a lot of disruption around pricing with Ortho K. There's a lot of knockoff spectacle lenses and so forth there. So although there's massive opportunity with a number of children that have myopia, the market itself is very disjointed right now.

And with no further questions in queue, I will now turn the call back over for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for taking the time. I know we had a lot to discuss today, and I'm sure we'll have a lot of follow-up calls with details. So I appreciate everyone's interest and look forward to catching up and providing an update on our next earnings call in December. Thank you.

Thank you again for joining us today. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Janine, and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to The Cooper Companies Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the call over to Kim Duncan, Vice President of Investor Relations and Risk Management. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Cooper Companies Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call we will discuss results and guidance concluded in the earnings release and then use the remaining time for questions. Presenters on today's call are Al White, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Andrews, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements relating to revenues, EPS, cash flows, interest, FX and tax rates, tariffs and other financial guidance and expectations, strategic and operational initiatives, market conditions and trends and product launches and demand. Forward-looking statements 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 of the 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 Cooper's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings, all of which are available on our website at cooperco.com.

Also as a reminder, the non-GAAP financial information we will provide on this call is provided as a supplement to our GAAP information. We encourage you to consider our results under GAAP as well as non-GAAP and refer to the reconciliations provided in our earnings release which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website under Quarterly Materials. Should you have any additional questions following the call, please e-mail [email protected].

And now I'll turn the call over to Al for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Kim, and welcome, everyone, to our Q2 Earnings Call. We delivered record revenue and non-GAAP earnings this quarter with revenues growing 8% to $1.08 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share increasing 26% to $1.21. This marks our tenth consecutive quarter of beating consensus earnings expectations, demonstrating the consistency and disciplined execution of our operating model. We also generated another quarter of robust free cash flow, reinforcing confidence in the strength and durability of our cash generation.

CooperVision reported a solid quarter with revenues increasing 8% or 4% organically driven by continued strength in the Americas and momentum in EMEA. CooperSurgical also performed well with revenues up 8% or 6% organically, led by our fertility business growing 13% or 10% organically. We also delivered meaningful operating margin expansion this quarter as back office consolidation and efficiency initiatives continue to deliver operating leverage, especially within CooperSurgical. Overall, our results reflect steady execution against our strategy of driving sustainable, profitable growth through innovation, new product introductions, leveraging our infrastructure, generating free cash flow and gaining market share.

Now before moving into the quarterly details, let me address 2 key topics. First is our strategic review. We initiated this process to evaluate opportunities to unlock long-term shareholder value across a range of potential outcomes. At the same time, we've been working through litigation related to a December 2023 embryo culture media recall in our fertility business. We've now reached settlements with substantially all of the claimants in this case as disclosed in the Form 8-K, which was filed this evening with our earnings release. With that done, we are now actively advancing discussions with multiple parties that have submitted significant indications of interest in CooperSurgical.

To summarize that activity, we've received robust interest in CooperSurgical and in conjunction with our Board and the assistance of our advisers, we're focused on identifying the optimal path forward to maximize shareholder value. CooperSurgical's strong performance, highlighted by record revenue and non-GAAP earnings this past quarter strengthens our confidence in the business and underscores our view that this is a very valuable asset. That said, we are working with speed and plan to provide a more definitive update to the market soon.

Second is an update on our capital allocation strategy. We remain focused on investing in high-return organic growth opportunities, maintaining balance sheet flexibility and repurchasing shares. While buybacks were limited this quarter, they remain a core part of our strategy, and we expect to be significantly more active moving forward.

With that, let's turn to our Q2 performance, starting with CooperVision. After achieving an 18th consecutive year of share gains in 2025, our focus is on extending that streak. We remain the #1 global contact lens company with roughly 1/3 of all wearers using CooperVision lenses and we expect this leadership position to continue serving as a key driver of revenue share gains as well as continued transitioning to daily silicone hydrogel lenses. Additionally, our leadership position in pediatric myopia control through MiSight will remain an important growth driver.

For the quarter, CooperVision delivered revenue of $724 million, driven by share gains in both the Americas and EMEA. The Americas grew 7%, supported by continued strength in premium lenses, while EMEA increased 6%. Fueled by strong demand for MyDay and MiSight, further reinforcing our #1 position in that region for both revenue and wearers. In Asia Pac, revenue declined 6% as we continue repositioning our portfolio including rationalizing legacy hydrogel products and managed through broader market softness across the region, including greater-than-expected weakness in Japan, which created additional headwinds and further pressured our results.

Turning to products. Daily silicone hydrogel lenses grew 8% with our flagship MyDay brand delivering double-digit growth driven by expanding customer partnerships and success with premium products. We also saw gains across both branded and private label channels with improvement across all regions and particular strength in multifocals and Energys. And both of these products remain key growth drivers as we continue rolling them out in new markets. The multifocal has excellent momentum supported by its next-generation optical design that enables an easy-to-fit lens with consistent performance across different lighting conditions, distances and patient profiles. And Energys continues to perform exceptionally well, benefiting from its innovative design that combines premium optics with advanced material technology designed specifically for maximum comfort in today's always on digital lifestyle.

With respect to clariti, we continue to upgrade the portfolio, including upcoming launches of our next-generation multifocal in EMEA and Asia Pac and the toric and multifocal launch in Japan.

Turning to our FRP portfolio. Biofinity delivered strong results, growing 5% organically. Growth was led by toric and multifocal lenses, including our market-leading extended ranges and made-to-order offerings. Parameter breadth continues to be a key driver for Biofinity supported by our highly innovative and flexible manufacturing platforms that offer more than 6x the prescription options than all other monthly brands combined. As a result, eye care practitioners can fit virtually any patient who walks through the door using just this one product family.

Turning to myopia control. MiSight delivered an excellent quarter, growing 24% to $32 million. Our newest market, Japan is exceeding expectations with strong and accelerating momentum. We recently hosted the sixth Annual Asia Pac Myopia management Summit in Tokyo, highlighting the clinical performance and patient benefits of MiSight and are seeing increased awareness and adoption following the event. Also, our recent launch of the highly innovative MyDay MiSight in Europe is performing extremely well as eye care practitioners absolutely love this product and we're seeing a similar reception as we expand availability globally. At the same time, we're increasing our consumer awareness activity during the high-demand back-to-school period by having multiple markets run national marketing campaigns to further build parent awareness. Overall, these initiatives spanning innovation, geographic expansion, customer partnerships and consumer activation reinforce our confidence and MiSight's continued robust growth.

Turning to CooperSurgical. Q2 revenue reached $358 million, reflecting growth of 8% or 6% on an organic basis. Within this fertility performed well, growing 10% organically to $144 million. Growth was driven by strength across our leading global portfolio of products and services, including capital equipment, where we saw strength in the U.S. and continued global momentum from witness, our highly successful automated lab tracking system. These capital sales provided a near-term lift while also positioning us for longer-term growth as they drive incremental consumable demand over time. Additionally, late quarter buy-in activity in the Middle East contributed to performance as distributors restock following the reopening of aerospace.

Geographically, results were led by EMEA, where we continue gaining share and solid performance in the Americas. Asia Pac was mixed with softness in China, offset by strength in other markets. By product category, growth was led by genomics, capital equipment and consumables supported by new clinic wins, expansion within existing accounts and continued adoption of recently launched products.

Looking ahead, underlying fertility trends remain healthy, and we anticipate continued strength in the back half of the year with fertility expected to grow in the mid-single-digit range. The long-term outlook also remains positive, supported by a strong innovation pipeline, particularly in our equipment portfolio.

Regarding the overall global fertility market, we continue to expect steady improvement supported by improving cycles and increasing investments in technology and workflow optimization by fertility clinics. The fundamental drivers of the industry also remain intact, including the ongoing trend of delayed childbirth and expanding access to care. This was recently highlighted in the U.S. with updated CDC data showing U.S. fertility rates fell in 2025 to a new annual low of 3.6 million births. Within this, women aged 30 and older, now comprise 53% of all births and for the first time in the U.S., more babies were born to women 40 and above than the women under 20.

In response to these trends, support for expanding IVF coverage is growing. For example, in California, starting in January this year, most large group health plans with over 100 employees are now required to cover IVF and infertility treatments, significantly increasing access to care.

Moving to Office and Surgical Products and Services, sales reached $214 million, up 4%. Medical Devices grew a healthy 6% as our surgical OB/GYN and specialty devices continued to deliver strong performance. In PARAGARD came in ahead of expectations, delivering flat revenue for the quarter.

Now before I turn the call over to Brian, let me conclude with a few comments on our revenue guidance. For CooperVision, we're guiding to full year organic growth of 3.5% to 4.5%. Similar to our peers, we expect market growth at the low end of the historical 4% to 6% range with Asia Pac weighing on the category, while EMEA and the Americas remain healthy. Importantly, this softness is regional, not global, and we view it as temporary as Asia Pac resets amid economic pressure, especially in China and Japan and to a lesser extent, Korea. Specifically for CooperVision, we now expect Asia Pac to decline in Q3 with pressure from both the market and our ongoing rationalization of legacy hydrogel products.

That said, we now have full regional leadership in place, including a new regional head and new country managers in Japan, Korea and China, and we're seeing strengthening execution and commercial discipline, including progress on MyDay contract wins and product launches. Outside of Asia Pac, demand remains solid for premium products, including daily silicone hydrogel lenses as well as torics and multifocals. For CooperSurgical, our guidance is unchanged at 4% to 5% organic growth.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you, Al, and good afternoon, everyone. Most of my commentary will be on a non-GAAP basis, so please refer to today's earnings release for a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results.

For the second fiscal quarter, consolidated revenue was $1.08 billion, representing an 8% increase year-over-year or 5% on an organic basis. Gross margin of 68.1% was roughly flat year-over-year as positive currency offset higher costs, including tariffs. Operating expenses rose just 1% reflecting benefits from last year's reorganization that delivered efficiencies across the organization. This progress is particularly evident at CooperSurgical, where expenses declined year-over-year for the second consecutive quarter. Importantly, this significant operating leverage has been achieved while continuing to invest in key revenue growth initiatives.

Operating income increased [ 19% ], resulting in a 27.5% operating margin. Interest expense was $20.9 million and the effective tax rate was 15.4%. Non-GAAP EPS grew 26% to $1.21 with roughly 196 million average shares outstanding. Strong free cash flow of $96 million was used to reduce net debt to $2.3 billion and repurchased $13 million of stock.

Before moving to guidance, let me address the litigation charge we took this quarter. In December of 2023, CooperSurgical initiated a voluntary recall of one batch of embryo culture media consisting of 3 specific lots, which led to claims and lawsuits being filed across various jurisdictions, alleging damages associated with the use of the product. Between December 2023 and mid-March 2026 we resolved a significant number of claims and lawsuits through settlements, which were largely cut by insurance. From mid-March 2026, we identified developments, which resulted in a reassessment of our exposure. With this, we've proceeded with negotiations and reached settlement agreements covering over 95% of claimants.

Based on this, we concluded that a loss is probable and reasonably estimable, particularly with respect to potential exposure exceeding available insurance coverage. The net impact to resolve outstanding claims was $271.6 million, consisting of $324.1 million of accrued settlement, partially offset by $52.5 million of insurance recoveries. We have excluded this charge from our non-GAAP earnings. Additional information regarding this matter is provided in the Form 8-K filed today with the earnings release, and further accounting details will be included in our Form 10-Q, which we anticipate filing tomorrow, June 5.

Turning to the full year fiscal 2026 guidance. We've updated expectations with revenues expected to be roughly $4.28 billion to $4.32 billion, reflecting growth of 5% to 6% or organic growth of 3.5% to 4.5%. CooperVision revenue is expected to be in the range of roughly $2.88 billion to $2.91 billion, up 5% to 6% or 3.5% to 4.5% organically. And CooperSurgical remains [indiscernible] unchanged with a range of roughly $1.4 billion to $1.41 billion up 4% to 5% as reported and organically. Interest expense is expected to be around $85 million, and the effective tax rate is expected to be around 15.5%.

For earnings, we're maintaining guidance at $4.58 to $4.66 and we're increasing our 2026 free cash flow outlook to roughly $650 million, excluding any litigation payouts, the majority of which we do expect will be made during fiscal 2026. There are several key considerations underlying this guidance. As discussed on prior earnings calls, we continue to expect gross margins to decline year-over-year.

For the third quarter specifically, we expect gross margins of approximately 66%. This is primarily driven by unfavorable FX and certain higher costs, including tariffs, freight and the impact of lower production at CooperVision were success from our new AI-enhanced inventory control system is allowing us to reduce inventory levels. Importantly, while this inventory work will occur over time, it benefits free cash flow, reinforcing our confidence in our 2026 free cash flow objectives and in achieving $2.2 billion in free cash flow from 2026 through 2028.

Regarding tariffs, our guidance assumes approximately $22 million this fiscal year but does not include any potential tariff refunds. Should refunds materialize, they could be as much as [ $15 million ] and would provide meaningful upside. The guidance also does not include any accretion from share repurchases.

With that, I will turn it over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first Question comes from the line of Jeff Johnson from Baird.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Can you hear me okay?

Yes. Jeff.

So a couple of questions here. Let me just start first on APAC, expecting another quarter of declines. I think we're 4 quarters in a row now flat to down. You do swing from kind of a plus [ 5% ] comp that you came against this quarter when you did the minus [ 6% ] to a negative 5% comp if my model is correct. So how do you -- what are the drivers of that staying negative on top of a negative 5% comp? And just any progress you're making on getting through some of those older hydrogel and any other updates you can provide on what's going on in Asia Pac. And I have one MiSight follow-up question.

Sure. Yes, you're exactly right from a comp perspective on how we move from Q2 to Q3. I would say the difference in that market from what we've seen in prior quarters is softness in the market itself. That Asia Pac market, especially when we look at Japan and China is softer than we anticipated it was going to be. It looks like as we sit here, it's going to continue to be soft and talking about the market. So we're continuing to do what we're doing, which is executing on MyDay and repositioning the products and so forth and rationalizing the hydrogels but we're doing it in a market that's now considerably softer than when we started the process.

We still have a little ways to go on rationalizing the hydrogel products, and it's going to continue to put pressure on us for probably I don't know, maybe all through 2027 even. But we're starting to get it behind us. The numbers are starting to get smaller, so the impact is at least being reduced.

All right. Let me just pull on that thread and I'll just ask my MiSight question on the call back tonight. But just as you talk about that potentially consider continuing through 2027, should we think about APAC then? And I know it's hard to predict where the market goes, but especially for your part of the business on reducing some of that FRP exposure there or the hydrogel exposure. Should we think about Asia Pac being flat in -- as we get into 2027? Are we going to stay in negative territory for the next 6 quarters? And again, I know it's hard to predict and you don't guide by geography or product line, but just on that comment and sorry about the dog. But on that comment, if you can provide any color.

Yes, because it will be dependent largely on what that market does. I think we get to a point here probably even in Q4 here, not this quarter, next quarter, where we're going to be essentially in line with market. I think we'll probably grow in line with market as my guess in 2027 so it will end up being dependent on that market. Right now, I would probably argue that market is essentially flat. I mean, it might even be down a little bit, but flat down. So we'll see what the market does, but I think we'll at least be back in line with the market in Q4 of this year and through 2027.

Our next question comes from the line of Jon Block from Stifel.

Maybe I'll just start with the strategic review for CSI. I'm just curious as that interest that you cited from multiple parties, is that for the entire CSI business? Or is it, call it, different parties more looking for different pieces of the business? Any color that you can provide and sort of elaborate there?

Sure. Yes. We received -- I don't know how to say other than significant interest in the entire business and in pieces of the business, both. But I would say there's a sufficient number of parties that have given indications of interest that are on the entire business, that's how we're moving forward.

Okay. Fair enough. And then, Brian, I'll do some sort of real-time math, which is always dangerous. But the 1H EPS for the year is, I think, $2.31, if I've got that right, it's exactly 50% of the full year guidance at the midpoint. And for each of the past 3 years, 1H was closer to about 45% or 46%. So in other words, like that would sort of imply maybe some upside to the EPS guidance. I know you called out maybe those inventory dynamics with AI, better controlling the inventory. And so therefore, I guess, like less consumption. But is that everything? Or why wouldn't you have that delta relative to past years when it does seem like you guys are doing a really, really good job on the OpEx side of things?

Jon, yes, thanks for the question. I mean certainly, we are driving strong operational results, top to bottom, including stronger sales, margins, leverage. I think -- my guess is that there is a little bit of a mismatch really between how the Street and we modeled FX for the year. I gave an FX tailwind last quarter of 1% for the year. So what you saw in the first half was a pretty decent amount of FX favorability that flow through the bottom line. So the EPS growth that you saw in the 20s between Q1 year-over-year in Q2 certainly is a direct result of all the work we've done exiting Q4 to drive a stronger operating model.

But the FX favorability when I talked about the 1%, that was really a -- what you see in the second half of the year is really FX turning decently negative. And so that starts here in Q3 with an FX negative to Q3. And then again, here in Q4. So it's probably just a bit of a timing phenomenon, if you will. But if that continued strong operational delivery with, of course, the noise around tariffs and some of those other costs that I talked about.

Next question comes from the line of Jason Bednar from Piper Sandler.

I'll actually follow up real quick here on the guide. A couple of pieces here. Just really in the context of you beat consensus by $0.11. We're not touching the guide here for the rest of the year. Just is that a little bit of conservatism, a little bit of maybe some of the uncertainty around APAC demand on the CBI side. Just trying to juxtapose that against raising last quarter when you beat as well. So just is there something different here as we think about the philosophy?

And then on the $2.2 billion free cash flow figure, I just want to confirm that's more of an adjusted figure that doesn't account for the litigation outflow that we got over the settlement that we learned about today.

Sure. I'll take the second one first, and maybe I'll -- can jump in on the first one. On the $2.2 billion free cash flow, that is inclusive of our expected payouts related to litigation. So what I'm trying to convey here is we are delivering a strong operating results this year, and I expect that to continue. The work we're doing to optimize inventory through the use of our technology-enabled systems, our supply chain system that I mentioned in our prepared remarks, are helping us to drive better inventory balances. So while that's a little bit of a pressure on gross margins for the remainder of this year and next year, it is a positive -- it does have a positive impact on driving free cash flow. So the $2.2 billion is essentially an increase from where we were to start the year with respect to the litigation because we're hurdling that litigation and reiterating the $2.2 billion of free cash flow.

I guess, I'll just -- I'll start with the other question. I mean the first question on why the EPS guidance is remaining the same. I mean, I think it's basically, like I said earlier to Jon, the FX, as we modeled didn't change for Q2, the year-over-year impact for Q2 was $0.08, and we thought it was -- we expected it to be $0.08 when we exited Q1. So really, the delta is in just the impact of the FX unfavorability in the second half. So certainly, we are expecting some higher costs. I don't know -- I think it's a balanced guidance, and we've taken down CooperVision revenues a little bit. But I think the guidance is prudent where we've said it and believe that we're putting ourselves in a position to deliver.

All right. Helpful. Just maybe one follow-up here on the share repo strategy. Like the stock is as cheap as it's been in a long time. But obviously, this is a lower buyback activity period relative to what we saw last quarter. Were you blacked down at all from buying back stock in the quarter? Was U.S. free cash an issue? I'm just trying to figure out just how we think about the approach that you took here in the quarter. I hear what you're saying on being more active going forward. But was there something else that limited the activity here in the fiscal second quarter?

Yes, Jason, there was. So we started purchasing a few shares back a very small amount, essentially a few days after we reported earnings but then took a -- you could argue a conservative position if you wanted to on share buybacks given other activity. We do not have those restrictions now and would anticipate exiting this call being much more aggressive on share buybacks going forward.

Next question will be coming from Larry Biegelsen from Wells Fargo.

I'm actually going to ask 2 on the strategic review you talked about. I'll just ask the first one. And then after you answer, the second one. So historically, I think you've believed that it made sense to keep CVI and CSI together. What's changed for you? That's the first question.

Sure. Well, I mean the reason I like keeping them together was for flexibility, if you will, right? One had a good quarter, one didn't. It was able to move things around. We have a lot of cash flow as a combined business. And I always believe that we would be able to get significant back office synergies out of the business once we stop doing acquisitions and had a chance to do that, which we did, right? We stopped doing acquisitions been, what, 1.5 years or almost 2 years since we've done an acquisition. And you're seeing the leverage that we are able to drive through back office consolidation, deliver the earnings this quarter that we just had and the increase in cash flow. So I still like that piece of it.

But I also look at the market right now, and I look at where our valuation is today, which I believe is absurd, I look at the strength of the CooperSurgical business. And we're in a position right now, and we're probably not alone within the medical device industry where there's a good argument that private investors are willing to pay a premium price over the public markets. If that is the case, and it certainly appears that may be the case, then we're going to do what's best for our shareholders. And if what's best for our shareholders is to transact and that is what we're going to do.

Okay. And then second, I guess, do you expect to have an update before the next earnings call. You said soon? And is there any reason why a deal wouldn't happen for CSI based on the offers coming in?

It's a little tough to answer that one. We got the litigation stuff done. So we moved into, if you will, round 2 of the process, and we're going to work on that really fast right now and see what kind of progress we can make. If that happens to be before we report earnings in the beginning of September, we'll certainly get a release out there. If not by that at least. But we'll see. I mean, we're -- there's nothing now holding us back from being able to move very quickly.

Our next question comes from the line of Young Li from Jefferies.

All right. Great. I guess, to begin, I was curious if you can make some comments on fiscal 3Q or fiscal 4Q revenue split, if there's any color you can provide to help us model that out.

I'm not sure what you're asking, honestly, just like the revenue gating maybe, I'm not sure.

Just the revenue cadence for fiscal 3Q versus 4Q was the implied guidance for the second half of the year.

Well, I would probably say -- I just think about it kind of off the top of my head without numbers or anything. CooperVision will be okay in Q3 and be a little bit better in Q4 is what I would envision. That's kind of what we've been seeing and executing through. CooperSurgical is -- should have a decent Q3 and a decent Q4. I'm not sure, like we don't give quarterly guidance or specific numbers or ranges or anything. So probably directionally, that's what I would say.

All right. Great. That's really helpful. I guess just on the fertility business. It rebounded to double digits earlier than expected, hurt some of the positive comments from your prepared remarks. I guess, can you maybe talk a little bit more about what you're seeing in the market and how that can -- that progress can maybe continue through the rest of the year?

Yes. We went through a period within the fertility industry where we were seeing a lot of consolidation among fertility clinics. And we were seeing a much greater focus on clinics driving their own profitability. So we went through that period and depressed our results. it depressed the market's results for a while. And now we're working through that. We had a good quarter here from a capital equipment perspective, right? And when we're putting capital in, that's a really good sign for us. So yes, it pumps up like an individual quarter because capital can always be a little bit lumpy but it also gives us future consumable sales.

So you're seeing right now a market that's getting a little bit better. It's not going to shoot up, but it's going to continue to progress and get a little bit better. and you're seeing us taking a little bit of share in that space. And again, it might be a little lumpy with capital. But from a market perspective, we believe we're going to continue to see positive trends.

Next question is from Steve Lichtman with William Blair.

Thank you. I guess, first out, it sounds like you're seeing a firm end market in the U.S. in Europe. In the U.S., what are you seeing on price? I know you've been conservative on that, but do you see some opportunities given maybe inflation things stubbornly high here?

Yes. Yes, price is okay when it comes to the U.S. market. Okay. In EMEA, it's still a challenge in Asia Pac. When we look at inflation and we look at where pricing is and opportunities, I mean, we took pricing earlier this year, like we normally do. We've seen some competitors take pricing out there. I guess I would just say we'll continue to evaluate it.

The nice thing is when you look at most of the world outside of Asia Pac, there continues to be a lot of interest in premium products, higher-priced products, and there's not a pushback necessarily on some of the price increases or people just transitioning over to a higher-priced product. So I won't kind of commit to anything on that. But yes, inflation is kind of staying stubbornly high, so to speak. I mean, Brian mentioned we see some of the costs roll through our own P&L. So we'll continue to take a look at it.

Got it. And then just in Japan, have you launched clariti toric multifocal. I wasn't sure if that hit the market? And could that still help in that lower price environment that you've obviously been dealing with over the last few quarters?

Yes, that is launching soon. I am excited about that, by the way, because that does give us the full clariti family there to compete as we try to move hydrogel wearers over to a silicone hydrogel, be it our own wearers right now, a number of whom we're losing like. But as we get that launch in Japan, that's going to help us keep our own wearers transition from older products into that silicone hydrogel, and it's going to give us the opportunity to go after the market a little bit more. So that's coming. I don't think that will have much of an impact, honestly, in this fiscal year, but we'll probably get a little bit positive impact in Q4 and then more in 2027.

Next question is from Travis Steed of Bank of America.

I really wanted to ask about the lower revenue guidance, 100 basis points lower. Is that all APAC? And what exactly has changed versus 3 months ago in APAC? Is it more market, more execution? Is the market stuff new? I'm just trying to understand what's changed and why the lower guide?

Yes. It's Asia Pac and it's market-based. I mean that's just to be very succinct. That's what it is.

Okay. And what's the -- why has the market changed versus 3 months ago? Just want to make sure that's clear to everybody.

Consumer weakness. We really see that not in every market, but we see it in Japan, and we see it in China. Now China is not very large for us. So it's bigger in Japan where we've seen that just consumer softness. And those markets, keep in mind, a lot of those markets are more consumer markets, if you will, than medical devices, meaning you don't need a script to buy contact lenses. So in a lot of our markets around the world, including in Asia Pac, we definitely have a more of a consumer bent like almost a discretionary consumer event, if you will, than we do a medical device sale. And we're seeing some of that activity in that region right now. Some of the soft consumer activity in that region.

Yes. Got it. And then on -- if there is a CSIs, would assume the proceeds are used for buyback, I just want to make sure that's the right assumption.

That's correct. I would assume that the vast majority of them are certainly used for buybacks, yes. We'll have to look obviously at [ remainco ], if you will, balance sheet, and there will be a number of things we'll need to evaluate there. But a significant portion of it certainly will be used for share buybacks. That's right.

Next question from David Saxon of Needham & Company.

Great. Just wanted to follow up on the [ Apex ] or down [ 6 ]. I guess how much of that was the market and this consumer softness you've talked to versus rationalizing the legacy hydrogel part of the portfolio? And then just on that repositioning, like what inning are you in at this point?

Yes, it's always hard to parse that kind of stuff out. But I mean, the guide down was because of the market. I think it could have been like half of that 6 came, if you will, from the market. When I think about where we are from a hydrogel perspective, we're probably more than halfway but not much farther, right, fifth inning or something like that. We still have some work to do.

Okay. And then just on clariti. So I mean it sounds like there -- it was probably kind of in line with last quarter's growth. I guess what's the outlook for that products as you look out to the back half in '27?

Yes. Clariti was actually probably a little bit weaker this quarter than last quarter. MyDay was stronger and kind of more than made upward, if you will. I think that the big thing on clarity right now is that we do have to get it properly positioned in Asia Pac, which we're very actively doing, right? Get those products launched, get the multifocal out there, so we have the full set of products and start getting that product rolling again.

I mean the market is odd as it sounds, like the market continues to go to premium products, which is not where Clariti is positioned. Clariti is much more of a it's super easy handling. I mean, it's by far the easiest lens for someone to insert and remove. So if you're a new wearer like you're going to clariti all day long, but it's not positioned in being sold as a premium product, which oddly or interestingly enough, the market continues to gravitate towards. So I think that clariti is not in a bad space. It's still a pretty decent sized product for us. If we can get the other launches out, we can finish some of the repositioning, we can get it going again.

Next question from Mr. Anthony Petrone from Mizuho Group.

Maybe a couple just on strategic comments, CSI. Is there any major difference in the margin profile of office surgical and fertility just as we consider if it goes a piecemeal or as a whole? And if you sort of look ahead to a scenario where CVI stand-alone, maybe just an update on where the bulk of capital allocation would go what could you expect a stand-alone CVI to sort of look like operationally? And what is it the stand-alone effective tax rate looks like?

Yes. So I don't want to speculate too much on that. I would say that given where we are from a CapEx perspective in CooperVision, as a stand-alone entity, we'll generate decent free cash flow on CooperSurgical. And I would imagine a significant portion of that would go to a very consistent share buyback program. I'll hold off kind of providing more color until we have a little bit more visibility on a transaction.

On the margin question, I'm going to hold off answering that one, too. But I will say, just to be clear, like although we have received significant interest on the individual pieces of Surgical, we are proceeding as of today with the entire business because we have enough interest at high enough levels in the entire business that that's the way we're proceeding. That business is fairly integrated. So if you look at fertility and medical device, like we have co-located plants, co-located distribution facilities and so forth. I'm not saying that you can't split things like that up, but it becomes very difficult to do something like that. So right now, that's not where the focus is. The focus on the entire business.

Next question from Navann Ty from BNP Paribas.

On CVI, if you could discuss the contribution of the new launches. I know you mentioned the myopia control in Japan, the MyDay MiSight in Europe. So I would be interested to hear about the contribution in Q2 and for the rest of the year. And then on CooperSurgical, your closest competitor had called out improving market conditions and IVF cycles. So do you see similar trends as well continuing and also changes in our competitive landscape as the competitor has also called out market share gains?

And then just a quick one on the strategic review, thank you for the helpful color on the interest. Would you say that the litigation has slow down the review process by your quarter or so?

Yes, a couple there. So let me hit those. The last one is litigation slowed down the process. The answer to that was -- or is yes. However, the litigation is now done and settled and we're moving on from that and able to move quickly. So yes, it did, but it's behind us. So we needed to get that done and we did get that done.

If I look at fertility, yes, I would agree with our peers who have talked about a strengthening market. I mentioned that earlier. We are continuing to see strength in the market. I know we've had some peers come out and say that they're taking share. I guess, numbers or numbers, right? Like I don't know what to comment on other than look at the numbers. If you look at new launches within CooperVision, you're touching on my side, there's a push and pull going on in my side right now. So as glasses continue to enter the market, that is a negative to contact lens is short term. I continue to say that short term, we want more and more kids in myopia control products, we're seeing more and more kids go on myopia control products. Glasses are doing incredibly well around the world. But that is a short-term negative for us. It's kind of pulling our growth down.

The flip side is the positive reaction to MyDay. MiSight in Europe, which is great. MiSight in Japan, which is going really well. We have quite a bit in R&D and new products that we're developing and some new products that we're going to launch and I'm really excited about. So there's definitely a push and pull going on right now within that space. But that's why we did, what, 23% growth last quarter, 24%, did a little over $100 million last year in revenue. So it's a real product line that's continuing to grow. And I think as long as we can stay focused on it, which we will and we can drive performance and we can come out with new and innovative products, which we're going to, we're going to continue to see nice growth from our myopia control franchise.

The next question is from Joanne from Citigroup.

How are you doing today? I want to touch based on just 2 things and give an update on the manufacturing of your MyDay lenses. And also PARAGARD looks like it was flat sequentially or year-over-year might be the right answer, which is better than I think most expected. And if you could just give us a feel for what's going on there. That too would be great.

Joanne, yes, with PARAGARD, it was flat against this year remember from last year, a pretty hard comp, we were launching the single hand inserter last year. So yes, PARAGARD, we were expecting PARAGARD to be down. It was flat this quarter. So it's doing well. I mean, that product grew nicely last year. And right now, it's well positioned at single hand inserter is helping us. We're well positioned. Team is doing a really nice job selling it. So I continue to think that we've got a chance to put up good numbers in PARAGARD.

On the manufacturing of lenses, probably not too much to add there. We're continuing to crank along. I think the one thing that Brian highlighted, which is important is our inventory levels internally got a little high as we were supporting like MDR and supporting customers around the world through our logistics, which can get kind of complex with all the private labels and so forth, we do. We implemented a new AI-based inventory control system and the team has done just a really, really nice job with that. And that targeting and that work they're doing is allowing us to reduce our inventory levels and we're going to continue to do that. That's going to be an effort that's going to happen the rest of this year and all of next year. So that does have a negative that Brian mentioned in terms of less production, higher cost per unit, but it has a clear positive impact on cash flow.

So we'll give more color as that as we proceed through that and those details kind of come out. But yes, we're continuing to work through that process. I mean, ultimately, that is about a more efficient business. So to me, it's positive.

Next question is from Robbie Marcus from JPMorgan.

Great. Two for me. First, Al, sorry to come back to this. Just wanted to ask again on the Asia Pac market weakness, you said it's a bit Cooper-related, bit Cooper -- a bit market related. Is it that volumes are going down in the market? Is it that consumers are shifting to private label? Are they extending where more than usual? Are they trading back to glasses. Maybe just give us a little more flavor for what exactly is happening to cause the slowdown so we can get a better sense of how transient it might be.

Yes, yes. You're definitely getting some of what you were just talking about, Robbie, which is some changing in wearer behavior. We see that every once in a while in different markets. We're seeing that there. And whether -- it's always the to fine-tune that as to whether it's somebody wearing glasses or how often they're doing it or what they're doing with their contact lenses and so forth. But we are seeing that type of activity. When we've seen that in the past, that will happen for a year. and eventually, you annualize that. And eventually, by the way, it swings back the other way as people start wearing contact lenses more. So I think that's what we're seeing.

The other thing we're seeing there is a little bit more online purchase activity, meaning a little bit more e-commerce activity. That is not where we're strong. We're strong with the fitters. We're a little bit weaker when you talk about online activity. So there's been a little bit of shift over there, which is a little bit of a negative for us. But I think if you're talking about the market, it's largely tied to the dynamics you were talking about. And you don't have pricing over there. I mean that's the other thing is we're able to get positive pricing around the world and the shift of more premium products and in that market, you just don't really have any pricing.

Got it. Okay. Separate question, as we think about a potential separation of the women's health business, how should we think about the fully burdened margin -- operating margin for each of the companies and the free cash flow that each generates because you talked before about one of the strong rationales as you've integrated it well in the back office. So I'd imagine there's probably a good amount of dissynergies to stand that up if whatever acquirer doesn't have those back-office capabilities to stand it up with. And then I know there's some tax dissynergies as well, anything you could comment on that just as we think about maybe splitting them up and what a [ remainco ] might look like?

Yes. Yes. So a few different comments on that. There's definitely some back-office consolidation work that we've done. We did that in Q4 of last year. I think about that in the context of like HR, finance, IT and so forth. But CooperSurgical still has a full team of people like working on that. So yes, there is some dissynergies, if you will, but it's probably not as significant as you think. We don't have co-located facilities. That's probably the biggest thing, meaning that the manufacturing and distribution of CooperVision products is separate from CooperSurgical products. So from that perspective, that's a big one in terms of your ability to do something with the transition services agreement and everything else that comes along with it.

If I look at a couple of other things, cash flow like free cash flow on a per revenue basis per dollar revenue basis is higher at CooperSurgical than it is CooperVision. But I would say, I guess I would say the upside of future free cash flow is actually greater at CooperVision because our CapEx is just going to come down a lot, like still a little elevated this quarter may be same. But I mean, as you get to Q4, it's going to start coming down. It will be down a decent amount next year. So there is some upside coming from future free cash flow in CooperVision.

You'll see some of the details. When you look at the Q tomorrow, right, you'll see some of the improvements that we're really starting to see at CooperSurgical on a GAAP basis. Like we don't have nearly as many non-GAAP adjustments as we used to, and we're going to try to keep those to a minimum. So you'll see those improvements. But I won't go too much into the operating margins because I think if there is a transaction, Robbie, like as you know, like we're rolling up our sleeves, looking at things, and we need to drill through those numbers and get you guys some real information, which we will.

And tax?

Tax would be, I guess, a [ remainco ] CooperVision tax would probably be fairly similar to what it is today.

Next question from Brett Fishbin from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Just going to shift gears a little bit back to operating margin in the quarter, which was definitely a bright spot. And I was interested if you could just provide some color or directional split on how much of the improvement was really driven by some of the durable changes in cost structure that you're taking versus other factors like FX or favorable mix with lower sales in APAC CPI this quarter?

I mean I'll comment quickly. Certainly, Brian knows numbers like the back of his head. CooperSurgical drove a decent amount of that operating margin upside just because of all the leverage that we're getting out of that from the consolidation, the back office stuff, I was just talking to Robbie about.

So I would say the bigger side was there. You've got some certainly in corporate where we were able to leverage expenses here also. That does not diminish vision, who's done a really nice job leveraging their P&L also. And then, yes, the FX is certainly a positive that Brian highlighted compared to right at the beginning of the year where FX is a nice positive to us in the back where it's a decent negative to us, it kind of flattens out for the year. But that's part of the win, does that help?

Yes. No, no, that's helpful. So it sounds like a combination of some of the underlying improvement and then maybe like split with some of the more temporary benefits like FX and product mix.

Correct. Yes.

All right. And then maybe just on a completely different topic. On the MiSight Japan launch, it did sound like momentum has picked up a little bit. I was wondering if you just had any new thoughts on the broader opportunity here around either the TAM or just overall contribution to the MiSight revenue story over the next, call it, 6 quarters?

Yes. The myopia control market, I've always been an optimist about that, and it was progressing a little slowly for a little while when we were basically the only company driving it. But now that you have spectacles out there, it is definitely accelerating. It's a really good market. I mean spectacles are doing well. You're seeing markets like China that have just exploded throughout Europe, you're seeing markets. I mean, we have a joint venture on one of those. The numbers are just really strong, and they can they continue to be strong, and we continue to see really nice growth on the spectacle side of things.

So I think that the myopia control market is going to be a big market. At the end of the day, it really truly is like almost every kid gets braces right now. Every kid who's got myopia should be wearing some form of myopia control products. So I feel good about where we're at. Japan is one of those markets where you have a lot of children that are myopic, this product is going to be fantastic for them. So I mean, we're actually looking at that right now from an investment perspective because as that market picks up and it's doing better, like I mean, we're challenging ourselves how to invest and where to invest and where to be more aggressive to ensure that we're capitalizing on our position. I mean we're the only contact lens company with an FDA-approved product out there. So we're doing well. I think we're going to continue to do well. And I feel good about that market in the near term and the long term.

Next question will be from Chris Pasquale from Nephron.

Al, I wanted to circle back to fertility. 10% growth this quarter, you talked about mid-singles in the back half of the year. Is the delta there really a bolus of capital sales that you got this quarter that we should view as kind of onetime in nature? Or are there other factors?

Yes. I kind of touched on that a little bit on the script. It's a great question, right? Because I think in the back half of the year, when we look at Q2 and Q3 fertility, it will probably be somewhere in the mid-single digits. So that delta that you were looking at was a combination of 2 things. One, it was capital. The other one was when the aerospace opened in the Middle East, we talked about that some last quarter. we had distributors there, buy some product from us and buy in advance in case the airspace shut down again. So we actually kind of had a couple of positives there that pushed us up to the 10%. So it was a great quarter. We did really well, right? But I don't want to act like we're going to -- we're not back yet around double digits. I think we did 14 out of 15 quarters stretch double digits. We're not back there yet, but we're at least back to mid-single-digit growth in fertility.

Okay. And then one quick one for Brian. Do you plan to seek refunds for prior tariff payments? And when do you expect to have clarity on whether you actually get those?

Yes. So we're in process of filing all those refunds. I mean I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we're expecting up to $15 million at this moment, sitting here today. A lot of those have been submitted though we're submitting some more. So we actually, I think, just got one refund recently, a small one. So that's not included in guidance. So to the extent that we get some of those refunds in the third and fourth quarter, then that's going to be upside to guidance.

Last question from David Roman of Goldman Sachs.

Yes. This is [ Marco ] on for David Roman. You touched a little bit on this, but I was hoping that you could clarify, as you think about retaining the earnings guidance with the top line reduction, can you talk a little bit about the interplay between protecting the P&L and sustaining growth investments?

Yes. I mean it's a good question, right? And we look at that very consistently. We are investing in growth opportunities. So we're leveraging the P&L through all that work that we've done in back office and so forth but we are continuing to invest in growth. We're launching products in different spots around the world, and we're supporting that launch. I mean that's one of the most important things to us. If you look at how strong we were in the Americas, how strong we were in Europe. We have to get going in Asia Pac. We made a lot of moves. We're doing a lot of things there.

So we are investing in growth. I mean, at the same time, we obviously want to put up with good numbers. And I guess I'd just say we've got a lot going on right now. I mean that's the other thing. There's a lot of activity in the company right now, no surprise. So you've got some risk around disruption in other areas as we come through hoops and do all the things that we're trying to do. So I think we're trying to balance all of that and I think, as Brian said, that guidance range is a good way to look at it. And that was to me, that was a prudent guidance range right now given everything that's going on.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back over to Al for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for being on the call today. I guess I'll just end by restating that, which there's a lot going on right now. We're working super hard. We're making a lot of progress in a lot of areas. We look forward to continuing to make a lot of progress into communicating that progress in the future. So with that, I thank everyone for the call and look forward to talking to you in the coming months.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter 2026 Cooper Companies Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kim Duncan, Vice President of Investor Relations and Risk Management. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Cooper Companies First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, we will discuss the results and guidance included in the earnings release and then use the remaining time for questions. Our presenters on today's call are Al Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Andrews, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. .

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements relating to revenues, EPS, cash flows, interest, FX and tax rates, tariffs and other financial guidance and expectations, strategic and operational initiatives, market conditions and trends and product launches and demand.

Forward-looking statements 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 of the 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 Cooper's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings, all of which are available on our website at coopercos.com.

Also, as a reminder, the non-GAAP financial information we will provide on this call is provided as a supplement to our GAAP information. We encourage you to consider our results under GAAP as well as non-GAAP and refer to the reconciliations provided in our earnings release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website under quarterly materials. Should you have any additional questions following the call, please e-mail [email protected]. And now I'll turn the call over to Al for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Kim, and welcome, everyone. We're pleased to report a strong start to the fiscal year, highlighted by product launches, outstanding profitability and robust cash flow. These results reflect our disciplined execution, combined with the significant synergies we're realizing from last year's reorganization. For today's call, I'll begin with an update on the 3 key strategic priorities we outlined in December and then move to Q1 results and guidance.

First, we remain focused on delivering consistent market share gains for CooperVision. In calendar 2025, we gained share for an 18th consecutive year, and we enter 2026 with the intention of doing so once again. In our first fiscal quarter, we made meaningful progress with the global rollout of our premium MyDay daily silicone hydrogel portfolio, growing branded sales and executing on private label contracts.

Regionally, the Americas and EMEA strengthened and have excellent commercial momentum. Japan weighed on our Asia Pac results, but we're executing on product launches and investing to restore growth in the region. We're also incredibly excited about the early adoption of our MyDay MiSight launches in EMEA and MySight in Japan. At CooperSurgical, we're encouraged by improving trends in our fertility business and look forward to positive momentum continuing. Second, our commitment to delivering strong earnings and free cash flow through operational excellence was clearly evident this quarter.

The organizational changes and IT implementations we completed last year are generating meaningful synergies, providing us with the opportunity to invest in sales and marketing initiatives while still delivering outstanding financial performance. Q1 earnings exceeded the top end of our guidance range and those earnings translated into a healthy $159 million in free cash flow.

Given our strong start to the year, we're raising guidance for both earnings and free cash flow. Third, we continue to maintain a disciplined approach to capital allocation. We've entered a multiyear period of consistent earnings and free cash flow growth, and we're deploying capital to high-return opportunities. This starts with prioritizing internal investments that drive revenue growth, which we did this past quarter by increasing sales and marketing spend at CooperVision and CooperSurgical in support of product launches and key strategic initiatives across both businesses.

We also repurchased $92 million in stock during the quarter, reinforcing our commitment to consistent share repurchases as a core part of our long-term strategy to drive shareholder value. The remainder of our cash was used to reduce debt. Before reviewing the quarterly details, I want to address the strategic review we announced in December. We understand our strong investor interest in this process. While we're not in a position to provide an update today given where we are in the process, the review is progressing as planned with active engagement from our Board and advisers.

We will communicate outcomes if we have something definitive to share or when the process is complete. In the meantime, our Board and management remain highly focused on maximizing long-term shareholder value. This includes driving organic growth by winning new contracts and strengthening customer relationships, delivering strong earnings and cash flow by leveraging our infrastructure and deploying a consistent capital allocation strategy that includes share buybacks and debt paydown. With that, let's move to the Q1 results.

Consolidated revenues were $1.024 billion, up 6.2% or up 2.9% organically. CooperVision reported revenue of $695 million, up 7.6% or up 3.3% on organically. And CooperSurgical delivered revenue of $329 million, up 3.3% or up 2.2% organically. Operating margins improved meaningfully and non-GAAP earnings grew 20% to $1.10. For CooperVision, on an organic basis, torics and multifocals grew 6% and spheres grew 1%. Daily silicone hydrogel lenses grew 7%, led by double-digit growth in MyDay, while clariti was up slightly.

Biofinity and Avaira grew a combined 3% and MiSight continued its strong growth, up 23%. Regionally, the Americas grew 6%, led by strength in daily silicone hydrogel lenses and EMEA grew 4%, strengthening our #1 market position in that region. Asia Pac declined 4% as execution on new product launches was more than offset by softness in Japan, primarily tied to lower margin older hydrogel products. To accelerate APAC performance, we've upgraded several leadership roles, increased marketing investments and are ramping up our new regional distribution center, which is already enhancing customer service with faster fulfillment.

We've also recently launched MyDay toric in Taiwan, MiSight in Japan, MyDay MySight in Australia and New Zealand, and we're increasing regional availability of MyDay multifocal and MyDay toric expanded range. We also have private label launches underway in multiple markets. And in Japan, we'll be launching the full clariti family later this year with the addition of both the toric and multifocal providing a competitively priced [ old family ] silicone hydrogel upgrade path for the large base of hydrogel wearers in that market.

While we expect Asia Pac to remain down in Q2 due to declining legacy hydrogel sales, we are confident the region will return to growth in fiscal Q3 given all of our launch activity. Turning to products. Our daily silicone hydrogel portfolio continues to perform well. with MyDay leading the way through expanding customer partnerships, broader availability and ongoing launches, our premium priced offerings delivered its strongest performance led by MyDay multifocal, Energys and torics all growing over 15%.

Particular strength was seen with MyDay multifocal as its rollout continues to gain momentum. Our premium MyDay Energys also posted strong growth driven by its innovative digital boost technology designed to provide maximum comfort in today's heavy digital world. This product will be launched shortly in Europe, and we look forward to the boost that will provide in that region.

MyDay toric, which offers the broadest SKU range in the category and is powered by the same leading toric design in our Biofinity toric continued delivering exceptional growth. We also closed additional MyDay key customer contracts and private label partnerships this past quarter across all 3 regions.

For the clariti product family, it grew modestly led by the ongoing launch of our new multifocal in the Americas. This multifocal has the same next-generation optical design as MyDay, meaning an easy fit lens with consistent performance across different lighting conditions, distances and patient profiles. So we expect strong performance as we launch across EMEA and APAC later this year.

Turning to myopia control. MiSight grew 23% to [ 28 million ]. Momentum is building with our latest innovation MyDay MiSight launching in EMEA in January to an extremely positive reception, thanks to the combination of proven myopia control efficacy and the all-day comfort of a premium silicone hydrogel lens. We also launched MiSight in Japan in February and are seeing a similar enthusiastic response. Japan is one of the world's most significant vision care market and with an estimated 77% of elementary school children being myopic, it represents a substantial opportunity for MiSight.

We're supporting these launches with our most comprehensive professional engagement programs to date, highlighted by major conference engagement, high-impact regional launch events , extensive KOL education and media initiatives reaching tens of thousands of eye care professionals. These efforts are driving very strong clinician activation rates, reinforcing our confidence that our early momentum will continue as MyDay MiSight expands in EMEA across Asia Pac and into Canada.

MiSight remains the only FDA-approved contact lens for myopia control and the first and only loans approved for myopia control in both Japan and China. We're also continuing to invest heavy in myopia control R&D and have several exciting breakthrough innovations underway, which further supports our confidence in MiSight's ability to deliver consistent long-term robust growth. To conclude our CooperVision, let me highlight our performance relative to the market.

This is calendar quarter data, so apples-to-apples with our competitors. In calendar Q4, we grew 10% and the market grew 6%. For the full calendar year 2025, this translated into 6% CooperVision growth versus the market at 5%, marking our 18th consecutive year of market share gains.

Turning to CooperSurgical. We delivered quarterly revenue of $329 million, up 3% or up 2.2% organically. Fertility revenues were $127 million, up 3% organically. Growth was driven by strong global genomics performance, supported by continued commercial and operational execution across product launches, new clinical wins and expansions within existing accounts.

We also saw solid results in consumables, led by media, ZyMot, our sperm separation device that helps optimize fertility procedures and Witness, our automated lab tracking system. These gains were partially offset by softness in the Middle East and lower equipment installations. Importantly, we are now seeing early but clear signs of recovery in the fertility market. As we move through the first quarter, results steadily improved, supported by solid execution on contract wins and new product launches as well as strengthening underlying market trends. This momentum positions us well for continued improvement through the remainder of the year, though developments in the Middle East, where we hold a leading market position remain a source of uncertainty.

For the fertility market overall, the product and services segments that we operate in had delivered strong growth for many years before slowing in late 2024. While several factors contributed to the deceleration, the industry is now recovering, driven by renewed clinic interest in adopting new technologies, along with improving cycles in the U.S. and several European countries.

Although a rapid rebound is unlikely, we anticipate steady improvement as we annualize last year's pressures and underlying activity normalizes. Moving to Office and Surgical, sales were $202 million, up 2% organically. Medical Devices grew 6%, driven by strong performance in our surgical OB/GYN portfolio led by our uterine manipulators and related products and continued momentum in our specialty surgical products, including our innovative single-use lighted cordless surgical retractors. This was partially offset by softness in some legacy medical devices and PARAGARD declining 7%, which was expected against a difficult comp tied primarily to last year's launch of the new single hand inserter.

To conclude, I want to recognize and thank our Cooper team for their dedication to operational excellence investing in sales and marketing to drive organic growth while maintaining disciplined cost control and continuing to build a streamlined and technologically efficient companies, no easy task. So thank you to the entire team. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you, Al, and good afternoon, everyone. Most of my commentary will be on a non-GAAP basis, so please refer to today's earnings release for a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. For our first fiscal quarter, consolidated revenue was $1.024 billion, up 6.2% year-over-year and up 2.9% organically. Gross margin was 68.1%, exceeding expectations driven primarily by a lighter mix of low-margin Asia Pac revenue at CooperVision. Excluding the impact of tariffs, gross margin would have been essentially flat.

Operating expenses rose only modestly and improved as a percentage of sales declining from 43.6% to 41.2% year-over-year, reflecting the benefits of the reorganization executed in fiscal Q4 of last year. These efficiencies stem from the structural changes we've made as we transition to a smaller, more efficient organization that leverages technology, including AI to automate work and optimize shared services.

The impact of these efforts was particularly evident at CooperSurgical, where expenses decreased year-over-year. Operating income increased a healthy 13.9%, resulting in a 26.9% margin. Interest expense was $22.4 million, and the effective tax rate was 15.1%. Non-GAAP EPS grew 20% to $1.10 with roughly 197 million average shares outstanding. Free cash flow was very strong at $159 million with CapEx of $102 million.

We deployed this cash by repurchasing 1.1 million shares of stock for $92 million, making the final $50 million payment related to our 2023 Cook acquisition and applying the remaining balance towards reducing net debt to $2.4 billion.

Lastly, in February, we addressed our $1.5 billion term loan maturing in December 2026. By amending and extending $950 million for another 5 years, to February 2031. The remaining $550 million will be repaid in December 2026 when it matures, using our strong free cash flow and ample revolver capacity.

Moving to full year fiscal 2026 guidance. Our revenue expectations are essentially unchanged with consolidated revenues of roughly $4.3 billion to $4.35 billion, reflecting organic growth of roughly 4.5% to 5.5%. CooperVision revenue is expected to be in the range of $2.9 billion to $2.93 billion up 4.5% to 5.5% organically. And CooperSurgical is expected to be in the range of $1.4 billion to $1.41 billion, up 4% to 5% organically.

For earnings, we're raising guidance to $4.58 to $4.66, reflecting our Q1 beat and stronger expected operational performance. Regarding tariffs, our estimate of approximately $24 million remains the same for the year. Our expectations on interest expense and tax remain unchanged with interest expense of around $85 million the effective tax rate between 15% and 16%.

Turning to cash flow. Our cash conversion rate continues to improve. And we're increasing our fiscal 2026 free cash flow outlook to $600 million to $625 million. For fiscal '26 through 2028, we continue to expect to generate more than $2.2 billion of free cash flow, driven by higher operating profits, improving working capital performance and lower CapEx.

From a capital deployment standpoint, our priorities remain unchanged. We're investing in growth and innovation, repurchasing shares and reducing debt. To conclude, I'm proud of the operational excellence we're seeing across the organization. We're optimizing and leveraging prior investments in numerous areas, including IT, distribution, HR and finance, and we're increasingly applying AI-enabled tools to streamline areas such as marketing, planning, forecasting and support functions.

Our reorganization efforts are delivering meaningful synergies and the results are evident. Looking ahead, we have additional opportunities to further optimize the way we work. With our multiyear CapEx cycle winding down, our manufacturing teams are now evaluating ways to capitalize on the next-generation production improvements developed over the past several years.

Early planning is underway, and while this work will take time, the results have the potential to be material. In the meantime, we'll continue driving efficiencies by leveraging technology while consistently investing in initiatives to support sustainable organic growth. And with that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Johnson with Baird.

I guess the first question, let me just kind of back out and go more higher level. Al, I mean you reported a 10% calendar 4q number. I think over the last 3 quarters, you've been up 3%, 3.5% for CVI. So one, can you reconcile that 10% number versus the last few quarters [ at 3 ]? What's different in the number you're citing there versus what we see in your CVI organic growth results? And then 1 follow-up question.

Sure. Yes. We knew we're going to get that one. It's literally just a matter of months and shipment of product. So we had had a weak November and December of 2024, and we had a really strong January of 2025. So just when you comped against that, the way that the shipments worked, it resulted in a really strong calendar Q4 for us. .

All right. Fair enough. And I guess, again, maybe I'll go even further out and apologies for the feedback. But you've been talking about kind of getting back to market growth above market growth, at least as you report CVI. How is that plan going so far? Maybe update us on the MyDay -- Clariti to MyDay transition? Just in general, it still feels like your results are maybe lagging the market here a little bit relative to some of your peers. So how do you feel like you're doing kind of getting back up into above market over the next couple of quarters?

Yes. Great question, Jeff. I'll break that up a couple of different ways. I mean if I look at the Americas, we're doing well. The U.S. had a good quarter. We're gaining a lot of traction. We've got product launches and a lot of activity. The team is doing a fantastic job. So I would say we're in good shape with the Americas. When I look at EMEA, again, in good shape there.

We took a step forward this quarter against last one, but we've won a number of contracts there. We have a number of product launches going on. I would say our -- we have better visibility for that market right now to improving sales. So I feel pretty good about the momentum that we have in the Americas and the momentum that we have in EMEA right now associated with MyDay and clariti, frankly.

And then I go to Asia Pac as kind of the third one. And the results there, right, have been a little tough for us. And that's the area that we need to get figured out and get back to kind of our old traditional growth rates and we'll be in fantastic shape. As I mentioned, we're doing a lot of stuff to drive growth in Asia Pac.

We did see success kind of in a number of areas where we've had problems. We stabilized when it comes to a lot of the e-commerce stuff that we talked about. We stabilized the China business. We had a changeover number of some personnel, a number of leadership positions. So we're in good shape in a number of countries. The one that we kind of have left right now is Japan, and I can target that down to like Japan, older hydrogel products where some of our competitors are taking some share.

We have not cave down price or anything along those lines. So I think we're going to continue to have a little bit of pressure in Japan with traditional hydrogels, again, in the [ next to next ] quarter because I think that the region will probably be down because of it.

But then all of that success, the stuff that I'm talking about, all those product launches in Asia Pac, the success of executing on those private label contracts, all of that kind of stuff, the transition point on that happens in Q3 and you're going to have Asia Pac growing again. So another one where, I would say, we had a number of points over the last year and just a lot better, a lot clear visibility right now on where those challenges are and where the successes are going to come from. So I think Q2 fiscal Q2 ends up being a step up certainly from this quarter. And then as I've said all along, like we'll be back to rolling in Q3 and Q4

And from Wells Fargo, our next question is from the line of Larry Biegelsen

All right. That was a new pronunciation. AL, we heard your comments about Middle East in IVF. Maybe you could just level set us on what your exposure is there and how you're thinking of the war might impact your business? And I have 1 follow-up.

Sure. Yes, to put some numbers around that, kind of, for us, on a consolidated basis, the Middle East is about 2% of our sales. A lot of it is distributor. And obviously, the Middle East is a very large region. So it won't have that much of an impact on us other than it could impact fertility because there's a decent amount of fertility business.

We're #1 in that region. We have good [ stride ]there. So it's just a matter of us being able to get products there. I mean women are obviously still going through fertility treatment and so forth there we, have to be able to get product in. So if that situation extends for a period of time, it will be more challenging for us. Even With that, we're still -- we have a lot of good momentum in fertility, and I think we still will still improve quarter-over-quarter.

But that's kind of the 1 question mark. Otherwise, I'd even be more bullish on fertility.

And Brian, the margins were really strong in Q1. Just remind us how we should think about the phasing for the year, how you're thinking about -- I guess the tariffs, you said no change. But in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling effects, if that stood, would there be upside on tariffs?

Sure, Larry. I'll start with the second part of your question, at least as it relates to tariffs. We assumed $24 million in the year. That's what we assumed as of the last guidance. We're going to sit tight. Obviously, we capitalize and release the impact of tariffs 4 months later. So any change to tariff rules or guidelines or whatever takes effect won't impact us until later in the year. .

But a 10% tariff makes very little impact. It's pretty similar to the $24 million. So I'd assume that if it goes up to 15% that could be somewhere upwards of like $4 million. But for now, we're just -- we're -- the 10% is what it is, and that's what we factored in the guidance. As it relates to operating margins, yes, I mean it's the same story that we've been talking about from exiting last quarter. We're getting really durable savings from the synergies and the elimination of fixed costs from the reorganization that we talked about in Q4.

We're leveraging prior investment activity, and we're being really disciplined. We're scrutinizing all nonrevenue-generating expenses, particularly the back office, and we're investing in sales and marketing. So the drop-through in operating margins was good in Q1, and I would expect -- I would expect you're going to continue to see stronger operating performance, which is why, frankly, we raised our guidance $0.13 at the bottom end and $0.10 at the midpoint based on stronger operating performance. But I'm not going to get into gating at this moment.

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Bednar.

I actually want to pick up on the line of question that Jeff had, but as far as the competitive landscape as it stands today and your share position. Maybe talk about, AL, our new fit activity across the quarter. Just what are you seeing in the data when you look at your performance versus peers, if you can break it down dailies versus monthlies?

Sure. If I look at new fit activities, it probably hasn't really changed that much. At the end of the day, we're taking wearers. So the [ fit ] activity continues to put us in a good position. Now you have a whole lot of other variables that go into, I would say, but if I narrowed down to just new fit activity, whether it's dailies or FRPs, we are taking wearers in both of those as we did this past quarter. So I feel good about that as kind of continuing to be a good indicator of the future.

Okay. All right. And then as a follow-up, it really seems like industry pricing dynamics have come down, at least relative to where we were last year. It sounds like the latest round of increases here the last few months are sticking. It should be good for all the players out there. How are you thinking about future list price increases and managing these discussions, but with wholesalers and docs, especially if I think back we went through multiple increases in the past few years, usually like 2 increases a year, do you think the market can absorb more than 1 price increase a year without negatively affecting demand here going forward?

Yes. Well, I do because of the technology that's coming out. I mean we are launching -- as an industry, we're launching new products, really innovative products. We have some great ones ourselves. I mean there's nothing more innovative in the contact lens industry today, the MyDay MiSight that's launching out there. But the multifocals that we're launching are great products. Energys is a great product. I know some of our competitors have some products out there that they're launching a good price point.

So consumers are willing to pay for that high quality and contact lenses are not particularly expensive at the end of the day. So the positive pricing that you're picking up on, on your comment is true. I'm happy about or I feel positive about pricing in the marketplace right now. The only reason I put a little caveat on that is still in Asia Pac. There's definitely markets in Asia Pac where there's some pretty competitive pricing out there. But yes, generally speaking, I'd say pricing is positive right now, and it's appropriate given the technologies that are rolling into the marketplace.

From Stifel. Our next question comes from the line of John Block.

The CVI number, I think I heard you at [ 33 ] precisely. It was a bit below expectations, even the bottom end of the midpoint. But you gave that guidance, call it, first or second week in December. So maybe just talk to us, again, it was slightly below, but what deviated from expectations relative to when you gave it? And it would seem to suggest that maybe January was a little bit than you expect. So can you give us any color on how things trended into February. And yes, sorry for the awful feedback.

Yes. No, you're right, John, because we were looking at Asia Pac being essentially flat for the quarter, kind of similar to what we did in Q4, and that would have meant CooperVision consolidated growth would have been like 4.3% something like that. And you're right, it was 3.3%. So that delta was very specific and very targeted, if you will, to what happened in Japan on those legacy products.

I mean we started seeing it some in December, and then we definitely saw that activity in January. So that's what happened. That's where it picked up. I thought that, frankly, the momentum we have with all the product launches and activity and everything would overcome that. But yes, that was a decent hit for us as we rolled through December and January. You're right and that's why I said, I think Asia Pac will probably be down one more quarter before all the positive energy that we have kind of overwhelms that, if you will. .

Okay. Fair enough. And second one, [indiscernible] sort of the boring question. But Brian, when I look at the add-backs in the quarter, almost half of the add backs were from like a hit from natural causes and litigation, which is just a little uncommon, it didn't seem to be the case in the prior quarter. So any color on what you can give around the add-backs if you can elaborate a bit.

John, I think you're talking about just in the other category, where we break out, I think it was $6.7 million was related to other legal related matters. I mean we don't -- our stance is not typically to talk about what legal matters are going on. We obviously have insurance for a number of things, but there are some things that we don't have insurance on where we're defending ourselves or we're -- we've got some legal related matters that show up. So it was a little bit higher this quarter, but not too atypical from years past.

From Jefferies, our next question is from Young Lee.

Great. I guess to start, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about there's an update on sort of how the supply dynamics have impacted your ability to win new contracts in the quarter?

Supply dynamics...

That impacted your...

First supply, you're probably referencing some of the MyDay capacity. We don't have those issues anymore. So I would say that when it comes to supply constraints, manufacturing or supply constraints or logistic challenges, I am very happy to say those are in the rearview window. Now we don't have those challenges anymore. So that's not impacting us.

Yes. Apologies for the sound quality. I don't think you heard the question fully, but I was just wondering if you were able to win more new contracts this quarter just given the improvement in supply.

I got you. I got you. The answer to that is yes. Yes. We did win a number of new contracts. As a matter of fact, we won them in all 3 regions, and they were definitely MyDay related. So we won a bunch kind of last year and as we were exiting last year, but we've continued to expand relationships and partnerships and win additional MyDay business. So yes, we have. .

Okay. Great. Very helpful. And then I guess to follow up, I wanted to get a little bit of color and update on PARAGARD. It's a high-margin business, although we know about the volume pricing dynamics. Are there any incremental updates on the competitive front, just given the potential for impact on the profitability side?

I would say no updates. As far as I'm aware of that licensing agreement that you referenced on the competitive side has not closed. So I don't have any updates or any details on any of that. I think for us, PARAGARD was minus 7% for the quarter. We're still expecting that to be flat to up a little bit for this fiscal year. And then we'll see how that plays. If that deal actually does happen, and we'll give some color on their launch plans and so forth. But right now, I don't want to speculate on any of that.

From Barclays. Our next question is coming from the line of Matt Miksic.

But One question just following up on the market. There was some kind of a neutral trajectory during last year in terms of the market. Based on your best guess and what you saw, I guess, during and exiting Q4 on a calendar basis, do you think that's improving now? Do you think we're stable? Any further color on what the ups and downs were from last year? And then I have 1 follow-up. .

Yes. I think I would say we're at least stable, if not improving a little bit. We did have, as a contact lens industry, a softer year last year. But it's at least stable. The reason I say improving, as I sit here thinking about it on the top of my head, right, is because of pricing that somebody asked about earlier. I'm trying to look at the market and say, "Hey about 1% is going to come from price, about 1% will come from wearers and then you'll have all the others, you have the shift to dailies and and so forth that's happening that will drive it. That 1% that's coming from price, I would certainly stand by that, and it could be potentially a little bit better than that.

So I do think the market is well positioned for a decent year. So I'd be like a rebound of what it was years ago, but it's going to be a better year, I think, in 2025 than it was in 2024.

Got it. And then just a follow-up on some of the dynamics [indiscernible] this next quarter and the quarter after, you mentioned Japan is down in this quarter, improving by the third fiscal quarter, I think. How do you -- how should we think about the impact of some of these -- the private label engagements that you announced and mentioned that you were able to close some more. When do those those coming in this year? Are they just kind of filter in and support sustainable growth. I mean how to think about it because it just seemed like there was quite a number of them that you signed. And I'm just wondering, if that's something we're going to notice as you get into the middle half of this year?

Yes. Good question. And yes, we are executing on those private label contracts and a number of branded contracts that we won, and you will see those as we progress through the year. They got masked this quarter because of what happened in Japan, as I was saying otherwise, we would have been kind of 4.3%, somewhere 4.4%, somewhere around there. But we are executing and doing well on those contracts.

So the way I see it playing out is we continue to execute on those contracts, and we have good visibility on that. That's going to result in a better Q2. But as I've said all along, it's going to be Q3 and Q4 is when all those contracts and those launches really start coming together for us. So I just think that we're kind of have one more quarter behind us of some of the challenges that we were dealing with, and we have one more quarter here in the quarter that we're in, where we have some residual challenges in Asia Pac still putting up a step in the right direction in Q4.

But then we get back to kind of the CooperVision of old and the more consistent solid revenue growth rates in Q3 moving forward.

Our next question comes from Bank of America from the line of Travis Steed.

I guess the first question I have is on kind of Q2 revenue, kind of where you want the Street to shake out and kind of the cadence of revenue growth for total company and CooperVision and CooperSurgical. We heard the comments on Japan other dynamics that you'd point to that we should model for Q2.

Well, I think if I look at it that way, I'd say we'll probably have another good quarter. I would expect in the Americas. I would expect EMEA to be a little bit better. than it was this quarter. And Asia Pac is the question mark to me. It will be down a little bit in total. So I would assume that the Q2 results are little bit better than what we did here. I would look at surgical pretty similar. Fertility should be a little bit better even with some Middle East risk out there.

And the rest of that business is humming along fairly well. So I would think CooperSurgical will post a little bit better sequential quarter than what they did in Q1.

On the second question, I wanted to ask on the strategic review. When do you expect that to be complete? What's the goal for the outcome? Anything else you could kind of say on the [indiscernible] would be helpful.

Sure. There's really not much else I can add on that. I mean we announced that we were doing that kind of $4 million, if you will, beginning of December and went through the holidays and so forth. And we're very active on it right now with our advisers and the Board and so forth. So I don't want to comment or say anything right now, it probably wouldn't be appropriate to go into any details until we get some concrete information. So I'll hold off on that one, but certainly provide updates when we can.

Our next question comes from Mizuho Group from the line of Anthony Petrone.

Maybe on private -- one on private label and then 1 on MyDay MiSight. So on private label, I don't know if you can share this, Alan or Brian, but what was the percent of private label exiting last fiscal year? And with the addition of these new private label contracts, where can that increase to? and Is that margin neutral? Is it a margin drag? Or can it be accretive to margins? I have the one quick follow-up on MiSight. .

Yes. So our private label was running for quite a while, about 1/3 of our revenues. It's a little bit higher than that. We don't break out the specific numbers. It's a little bit higher than that. And it's still kind of trending along there. We actually had a pretty good quarter with branded sales. And we're seeing a little bit more success now winning some contracts in business around branded sales.

So I wouldn't highlight too much with respect to that one. Margin wise, we have a tendency to look at things at an operating margin level, and I know the operating margin on those are fairly similar. So from that perspective, it doesn't make a big of a difference. It could make a little difference on gross margins. Those contracts come through, they'll put a little pressure on gross margins probably as we move to the back half of the year.

And then on MyDay MiSight, Japan, maybe can you size that in terms of the number of target practices you're going after, like how many sites are you looking to penetrate? And what is the market size and dollar for MiSight, in Japan.

Yes. So just to be clear on that one, Mike, the product that got launched in Japan was just MiSight, the regular MiSight because it took us like 3 years to get regulatory approval on that. So MyDay MiSight is in multiple European countries right now. We just launched it like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa I think but Japan is the kind of the traditional, if you will, MiSight. Yes, as I mentioned on the call, it's like 77% kids are myopic. So there's still a big opportunity there. It's really hard to gauge the size of that market and to put numbers out associated with it.

But I will say we are super aggressive there right now, and I'm crazy happy to say that the product is being received really well. That's an ophthalmology market rather than an optometrist. So you have a marketplace with doctors who look at clinical data and they understand clinical data. And when you have that kind of combination of a lot of myopic kids and professionals who understand clinical data, a product like MISight is going to do really well there. So I think that I talked about 20% to 25% growth from MISight this year. We did 23%. And I would certainly be comfortable saying 20% to 25% again or higher based on the success that we're seeing early indications on MyDay, MiSight and MiSight in Japan.

Our next question comes from the line of BNP Paribas from the line of Navann Ty.

One on CooperVision, if you could discuss MiSight, again, solid performance in light of the Stellest entering the market? And my second question is on the CooperSurgical, your fertility pure-play peer had supportive market comments. So what are you seeing in IVF cycles across the U.S. the impact.

Sure. I think that with -- I'll touch on the first one, which was the Stellas activity here in the U.S. that is going to turn out to be a positive for us. There is a lot more interest in myopia control, pediatric myopia issues -- and the education that's coming because of Stellest and the attention that the optical community is now putting on myopia control is quite a bit more than it was when it was just us pushing it.

So there's going to be some push and pull from that because obviously younger kids are going to move into glasses much quicker. But when you look at, especially 11 and 12 year olds who are in sports or any activities or anything else concerned about their looks or whatever, like we're seeing an increasing amount of fit activity when it comes to kids in that 10 to 12 age in the U.S. market.

So I think at the end of the day, that's going to be a positive for us long term. And I even think this year, it's not going to be detrimental to us where I thought that it might be at one point. So I'm happy that product's in the market. I'm happy with what they're doing, and I'm happy with promotional activity that's out there educating the marketplace. On the fertility side of things, Yes. As I mentioned, the -- I think the risk of the downside that was there and kind of that market continuing to trend down, I would take that off the table. because we are seeing positives in the fertility industry now.

We're seeing improving IVF cycles in the U.S. We're seeing improving IVF cycles in some of the European countries. We're seeing fertility clinics starting to look at upgrades and so forth as new technology comes out, new equipment comes out. So I would say that we're going to continue to see the fertility industry get a little bit better. I don't see like a fast, huge ramp-up or something like that. But I would say the downside has kind of taken off the table. And I would say, stabilization to improvement is what we're seeing right now.

Yes. from William Blair. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Widman.

Al, you mentioned reinvestment in myopia control, and it sounds like on the R&D side, can you talk about the opportunities you see to build on the MiSight platform from an innovation perspective? And then I have a quick follow-up on free cash flow.

Sure. There's some really exciting stuff there. I mean, 1 is that we need to get a MyDay MiSight toric out into the marketplace. That is one of the products that the optical community really wants. So we're doing a lot of work on that right now. That's a positive. We have kind of like a MiSight, if you will, that we're working on to even get better efficacy. We've also got some really cool exciting stuff when you look at like combinations with atropine and so forth that are that have the potential to really, really help kids that are not reacting to kind of regular or traditional treatment. .

So yes, you're right. We're spending a decent amount of money in R&D on MISight or myopia control in general, and we're going to continue to spend that because this is a great market. I mean we have opportunity to have that product continuing to grow a solid 20% plus for like years and years and years and years. So yes, we're investing in that pretty decently.

Great. And then Brian, the upside you're seeing on free cash flow this year and the raised guidance. Is that coming from higher operating margin, better working capital management, maybe all of the above? What's exceeding your initial expectations heading into the fiscal year?

Yes, thanks for the question. Really, all of the above, we're seeing stronger operating performance, and I touched on that earlier. But we're collecting better. We're building inventory more smartly, I guess, smartly, that's a word, but we're building inventory in a more efficient manner. And FX is helping a little bit, but it's really just a combination of the operating performance and better working capital. Obviously, the lower CapEx helps, too. .

Our next question comes from the line of Joanne Wuensch sorry, from Citibank. .

Fundamental 1 and a bigger picture one, please. Foreign exchange, what are you dialing in with all of the shifting U.S. dollar given the macro environment? And then my second question, I'll just put it on right up front. How are you thinking about CSI revenue improving throughout the year? What are the drivers or levers that we can pull on that one? Or [indiscernible].

I'll answer the second one, and I'll let Brian answer the first one. So on the CSI side of things, we'll have like PARAGARD, which is down 7% to finish the year kind of flat to up a little bit. So I think Q2 will be another year because or another quarter because of the comp where it will probably be down a little bit, but then we'll have a good like back half of the year with that product.

When I think about like the medical devices, boy, our specialty surgical team is killer. Those guys are just do a fantastic job. So I think we'll continue to have strike there. And then as I was mentioned on fertility, just better visibility, more comfort in that, that market is and we stabilized and arguably trending up is going to put some improving growth rates on that. So I think Q2 is better. I think, frankly, Q3 is better than Q2 for CooperSurgical. So just kind of progressing along with improvement, probably somewhat similar to vision, where the best quarter will be the Q3, Q4.

I'll take the FX question. As we were exiting last week, we were sitting to more favorable relative to last guidance on FX. But obviously, with the Middle East conflict, the dollar strengthened. And so as we thought about and as we set the guidance ranges for this earnings call, we took out the revenue ranges by $6 million of Vision and $1 million in Surgical, reflecting FX. But really, we kept the rates pretty similar to the rates from last earnings call, it's a little bit conservative. So really, we're looking at a headwind -- or sorry, a tailwind to revenues of roughly 1% and also a tailwind to EPS of roughly 1%. So very, very similar to the last call. .

Our next question comes from JPMorgan from the line of Robby Marcus.

Two for me. First, Al, I wanted to get your thoughts. First quarter organic growth missed on CVI guiding overall. And it sounds like second quarter will still be maybe a little weaker than original expectations due to Asia Pac. You talked about third and fourth quarter and a lot of the private label drive in fourth quarter. And you didn't flow that all through in the original guidance. How are you thinking about sort of the conservatism of the guide now with the slower start to the year? And does the slower start maybe take some of the upside off the table as you left the guidance the same.

I would characterize that, honestly, the exact thing because where we had that softness in Japan, I talked about, I mean I can pinpoint that softness and talk about what happened there and we have good, good visibility around what happened and how we're correcting that. But we have more strength in the Americas and more strength in EMEA than I would have said back in December. So I guess -- I mean I net that out and say, yes, we came in below our range and where we wanted to come in, in fiscal Q1. But I would say that America is stronger than when we gave that guidance in December.

EMEA is stronger than when we gave that guidance in December, Asia Pac probably pretty similar to where we gave that guidance because of a net positive of contract execution and product launches [ and wins ] offset by kind of the negative of the stuff I talked about. So net-net, I would put the odds of us being able to post a good year and so forth and success in the back half pretty similar to what we had in December.

Great. I wanted to go back to the question on the PARAGARD competitor. I realize deal hasn't closed yet and you're not ready to talk about the competitiveness here. But I'm guessing that wasn't included in the guidance. So did you include any competitive threats like that in the guidance for the year? I guess that's the question as we think about it.

Yes. So when we gave initial guidance, I can't remember. I thought I mentioned it on the December call. But when we gave the initial guidance, we assumed a negative impact because of the competitive launch and that it would happen at the end of this year. It's probably more likely that we will not have a negative impact, meaning that was a little conservative. But we'll see. I don't know. I mean, that thing hasn't closed and we're in March already of our year. So we're working obviously well into our year at this point in time. So we'll see. But to confirm, yes, we had included that in the initial guidance of assuming kind of flat to up just a little bit.

From KeyBanc Capital Markets, our next question is from Brett Fishbin .

All right. Hopefully, there's not too much feedback. Just wanted to circle back on the 1Q operating margin performance, which I think you noted in the press release was better than expected and obviously is a top priority this year. I was just hoping you could unpack a little bit in terms of what went better than you thought and why you were able to call the operating margins as exceeding expectations.

[indiscernible] the financial details, of course. A big part of that was just good solid execution. I mean we did all that work in Q4. And we knew the team was going to do a good job with it and they have like organizationally, we've just done a really nice job. I would kind of highlight AI, and I hate to sound like one more person talking about it. The reality is that our organization has embraced it.

And this isn't our organization like all of a sudden right now getting on and training and everyone's going to train on it and so forth. Our organization embraced it last summer. And we started implementing that stuff as we were going through the year, and we're seeing positives come out of that type of work. The technology advancements at Cooper are are fantastic. I'm super happy. And we have a lot more to do. This isn't a 1-quarter thing. So we saw some of it certainly in Q4. We're seeing those improvements in Q1, and we're going to continue to see the use of technology and AI advancements being positive to us on our operating margins as we move through this year.

Yes. I guess not much to add to what AL just said. I mean we talked about in Q4, we grew OpEx, it was basically flat year-over-year. And then here again in Q1, OpEx was roughly flat year-over-year. So there's a lot that we're doing to drive synergies and efficiencies, leveraging prior investment activity, and we're just really being very disciplined about fixed costs in the back office. And so we want to leverage our [indiscernible]. We're doing that much, much more than ever before, as Al talked about. And this is just great operational execution. AL talked about it and I talked about it in our prepared remarks and I expect that to continue through the year.

All right. Great. And then most of my questions were asked. Maybe I'll just ask 1 more on some of the new product launches. You mentioned several incremental launches that are really phased throughout this year, including MiSight in Japan, MyDay MiSight Europe and in Asia, Energys, the toric multifocal. Are there 1 or 2 of these that you would call out as maybe the most exciting to you in terms of like just what they can do for company growth over the next year or 2 as they ramp?

You could kind of hear my excitement on MyDay in Japan and MyDay MiSight. I mean I just -- I still believe that there is a fantastic market out there in pediatric optometry in treating kids myopia progression. And we've had that product. We got to a little slower start than I would have liked on that, and China has turned out to be pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

But the rest of the world is gaining traction and doing well. And MiSight is back, and it is doing well. And with MyDay MiSight and the products that we have and the stuff in R&D and so forth, it's going to continue to do well for a number of years. So that's -- I'm really excited about that. On the MyDay side, is it's execution. I mean that's what it is. Like I said, we got full product availability last summer. We finally got out there. We're executing a contract win, branded, private label getting product launches done, all that stuff probably takes a little bit longer than you want it to take, but it's execution and that's what we're doing right now.

Next question comes from Nephron Research of Chris Pasquale.

And that was excellent pronunciation on that one. You nailed it. I had a couple of questions. One on fertility. You talked about improving cycles in the U.S. and Europe. You didn't mention China, which I think was a big piece of the weakness last year. So what are you seeing in that market? And are you still confident that it can bounce back to where it was historically?

I highlight kind of the Americas and Europe, but Asia Pac and China, in particular, is still continuing to be not the greatest market in the world. It's not -- I wouldn't say it's getting worse, but it's not -- we're not seeing the improvements that we are in other markets around the world. .

Okay. And then just on the capital allocation front, your debt leverage ratio is lower now than it's been in a few years. It's going to go down even further when you repay that portion of the term loan. As you think about your priorities and the pace of buybacks, is there a target leverage ratio that you think is appropriate for the business that would dictate kind of how quickly you go, you've still got, I think, close to $1 billion in authorization available?

Well, share buybacks are a high priority of ours right now, given where our stock is trading. So I would envision us to continue to do share buybacks. And depending upon what happens with the stock price over after this and the next quarter and so forth, especially with our belief, our visibility in the back half of the year, I think you could see us get quite a bit more aggressive on stock buybacks. .

From Redburn, our next question comes from the line of Issie Ivy Kirby.

You made an interesting comment at the end around looking at sort of next-generation manufacturing and production obviously appreciate it early, but would love any more color around that. Do you think this puts you really ahead of your peers in terms of manufacturing capabilities. And then is this factored in, I guess, to the CapEx and free cash flow guidance over the next few years?

world class. I mean, are best-in-class. They've been spending a lot of time and energy, especially in CooperVision over the last number of years, expanding facilities, starting new lines up and so forth. To be able to now take a breather and work with our great R&D team to look at next-generation work in deploying that and optimizing our infrastructure and so forth, like there's a lot of exciting stuff that we can do there. It takes time. But there's a lot of exciting stuff that we can do there as our CapEx comes down. And I think I'll turn it to Brian because I think that's all factored in and how we looked at free cash flow.

Yes, certainly. I mean we have -- we take -- we have a 3-year, 5-year, 10-year view on things. And so -- when we gave the free cash flow commentary and we reiterated again today over $2.2 billion. That factors that in. But we've talked about over the years as as we're building, building, building to support more supply and capacity. It's hard for us to work on continuous improvement in these optimization things. And now we've got a breather, and we can do that. But there's lots of great ideas and lots of opportunities to drive success into the future.

Great. And then just really quickly, if I may, on sight loss and the FDA approval. Any updates there? I know it seems to be performing well with Essilor in Asia. So I'd just love to hear SP-11 Thoughts on [indiscernible]? .

Yes. It's performing well. In Asia, you're exactly right. We still love that product, and it's doing really well in Asia and a number of other markets around the world. So we love it, and we think it's going to be a fantastic long term, no update so on an FDA approval .

Our final question comes from Goldman Sachs from the line of David Roman.

I'll keep it to one 1 here given where we are in the time of the call. Maybe I think in your prepared remarks, you talked about some of the specifics you were seeing on OpEx efficiency. And I think you called out operating expense declines in CSI, which I know we'll see when the Q comes out here. But can you maybe just help us think through how you are reflecting on some of the G&A savings that you're realizing here from the restructuring you announced last year, to what extent you're contemplating reinvesting that and whether that is showing up in the P&L now? And then in a scenario you did go down a path of reinvestment, where would you be looking to deploy those resources?

I mean we are doing that. We're doing that already. I was talking about how aggressively we're doing that certainly in the MiSight of things, and we certainly saw that in Q1. That's just putting dollars back into sales and marketing. That's where it's going. So leverage G&A, put dollars into sales and marketing, and we're getting enough savings through all of our work that we're able to do those reinvestments and still put up stronger than earnings than people were expecting. So the combination has kind of come together very, very nicely for us.

with no further questions in queue. I will turn the call back over to Al White for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for taking the time on today's call. We look forward to talking to everybody in 3 months and continuing to make progress and having a good call then. So thank you, and have a good night.

Thank you again for joining us today. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Robbie Marcus, the med tech analyst at JPMorgan. Very happy to introduce CEO of Cooper Companies, Al White. Al will do a presentation followed by some Q&A. Al?

Great. Thank you, Robbie. We'll go ahead and jump into it here. So most of you I recognize or vast majority I recognize. For those I don't or for those who are new to the story, I'll just take a quick minute on this overview slide here. For those who don't know us, Cooper Companies, we were founded in 1958 and been on the S&P 500 since 2016. We operate really under two different business units, CooperVision and CooperSurgical. I'll touch on each of these as we go through the presentation. But CooperVision is one of the leading contact lens companies in the world. We're actually the #1 contact lens company in the world in terms of wearers and #2 in terms of revenue dollars. And then CooperSurgical is a fertility women's health care business. We're a leader in the fertility space for non-pharma, for medical device and so forth. And we've had that business for a long time operating very successfully.

We have over 15,000 employees around the world, and we have over 50 million people who are using our products between contact lenses and our women's health care and fertility products with about 42 million patients annually wearing our contact lenses. Our CooperVision business is about 2/3 of our consolidated revenues. And geographically, if you look at it, we're pretty geographically dispersed. We have a little bit over half of our revenues is in the Americas. Next biggest region is in Europe and then Asia Pac.

If we look at our historical performance, you could see this chart, kind of nice chart up into the right other than the COVID disruption. You could see the growth as we come along here for the last 10 years being 8.6%. On a consolidated basis, CooperSurgical almost 16% and CooperVision at just a touch over 6%. A lot of the CooperSurgical growth has been driven by acquisitions over the years. We've done during this period of time, I don't know how many, but a lot of acquisitions. We did our last CooperSurgical acquisition in August of '24. We haven't done one since then. But you can see, it's driven a lot of nice growth.

CooperVision comes from organic growth primarily. There's been a little bit of acquisition activity, but the contact lens market, I'll touch on it a little bit, but it's just a very consistent solid mid-single-digit growing industry. So that's delivered the 6.3%, and you can see the $4.1 billion in revenues. If I touch on a couple of the boxes there, two growing segments. Both of our industries are growing. Contact lenses mid-single digits, just very consistent year in and year out. Fertility was -- as an industry was growing upper single digits for many years. We had many years where we grew double digits. I'll touch on why we saw a pullback in that market, but it's still a nice growth market. The other comments are kind of self-explanatory here.

Touching on guidance. So we're an October year-end company. Our fiscal year-end is October. This was the guidance we gave back in December. You see the growth for CooperVision and for CooperSurgical and here the organic growth. And you could see a little bit lower in Q1 with a little bit of improvement as we move through the year. And I'll touch on that kind of as what's transpiring and why we're confident that we'll continue to see improvements as we progress through the year.

Non-GAAP EPS, $1.02 to $1.04 in Q1 and $4.45 to $4.60 for the full year. We've had double-digit non-GAAP EPS growth the last couple of years. This would be another year of double-digit growth. Free cash flow of $575 million to $625 million. We are kind of at an inflection point, if you will, when it comes to free cash flow. We had a number of years where we are investing very heavily in the business, especially on the CooperVision side. That included a pretty significant expansion associated with new manufacturing lines, new manufacturing buildings, distribution centers, packaging and labeling machines and so forth and even purchasing our own buildings that we hadn't done historically. That compressed our free cash flow for a number of years. This year -- that was kind of ending at the end of last fiscal year.

This fiscal year, you see the tail off in a lot of spending that we have and some of the final big investment activity, and you're going to see the improvements in operating cash flow and so forth, lift our free cash flow back up to a more respectable $600 million, if you will, at the midpoint. We have talked about $2.2 billion plus in free cash flow over the next fiscal year. So this would be the first year of that. The future is really going to come from less capital CapEx in terms of CooperVision and some improvements that we're going to get as we operate the business from a working capital perspective.

If I jump to this slide, I could probably talk about this slide for half an hour or something, but I won't go quite that long with it. But key strategic priorities when we look at the business before we jump into CooperVision and CooperSurgical. We are heavily focused right now on driving organic growth. We're in a position as a company, especially on CooperVision, where we invested for a number of years. That investment is now transitioning itself over to organic growth. And success with private label contracts and other type of business as we roll new products out around the world. Super excited about that and optimistic about the future that Cooper is back, if you will, to what we were producing for quite a long time. That organic revenue growth is important, but also is the operating income growth, the commitment to earnings and free cash flow.

We did a reorg in Q4. That's part of the EPS guidance that we gave for this year. That was a fairly large reorg for us. In order to accomplish that, we had to do a couple of different things. We had to stop doing acquisitions in CooperSurgical, which we did so that we could finish the integration activity. We also had to finish our ERP, our big IT implementations, and we did that. We put a new ERP in CooperSurgical, and we finished a lot of our ERP upgrade work at CooperVision. That happened in 2024 and into 2025. We were able to take a look at the business at that point in time really in Q4 and pull a lot of costs out of the business as we consolidated a lot of the back-office operations. And that pulled a lot of dollars out, a lot of synergies.

So I would kind of describe that almost as like a first step for us. It was a big step, but it was a first step. We have additional steps that will be taken to drive more efficiencies in the business. Everybody talks about AI. I could do the same thing. I mean the benefits of AI are spreading themselves through our business. We see that through our distribution channel with '09 and other areas where we're optimizing our inventory, but we also see it as just the general management of our business. And frankly, it's putting us in a position where we were able to reduce headcount. And on a go-forward basis, we'll be keeping headcount much lower, relatively flat compared to what we've done historically.

Disciplined capital allocation approach is another important one. So as I mentioned, for many years, we were doing acquisitions. We were also investing heavily, and we'll continue to invest heavily. But without the acquisitions, which we don't need to do right now, we spend about 2/3 of our free cash flow last year on share buybacks. We anticipate spending about 2/3 this year. I would say on a go-forward basis, we'll probably spend somewhere around 1/3 to 2/3 of our free cash flow and share repurchases on a fairly consistent basis. So -- that will not be opportunistic, so to speak, it will just be like on a consistent quarterly basis entering the market and buying stock back.

Our Board increased our share repurchase plan from $1 billion to $2 billion last year, and we have about -- we had about $1 billion of availability when we entered this quarter. So you can expect that to kind of be a consistent part of our capital allocation on a go-forward basis.

And then the culture and community. I'm super proud of our company, love our employees, and we have dedicated people. We went through a lot of the reorg and so forth, and the people worked incredibly hard to drive success for Cooper. They're very passionate about our business. I'm passionate about our business. So we really focus on that and we -- and a big part of that is promoting from within. We have so many promotions from within, and that's where we really, really focus and we believe that's incredibly important for us.

If I jump to the global soft contact lens market in total, and I look at it, the contact lens market grows somewhere around 4% to 6% every year. Now we'll get up and downs because of COVID and some other different things will happen. But at the end of the day, it's a 4% to 6% growth market, and there's almost -- it seems like nothing you can do about it. Kids everywhere looking at their phones and everybody in this room knows, you can go out to restaurants and all the kids are watching videos and everything else, right? All of that stuff is driving the myopia epidemic that we're dealing with right now. Somewhere around 1/3, 35% of the world is myopic today. It's estimated to be 50% in 2050. That's an amazing number. That -- all of those people are going to need some sort of correction, of visual correction. So whether that's glasses or contact lenses is going to drive the market forward. From a competitor perspective, you can see there's 3 leading companies. This is on a revenue basis. The market is about $11 billion. J&J is at the largest at about 36%. We're second largest at 27%, Alcon at 25%.

The market continues to move. I kind of put it in three baskets. One is price. If you look at price, last year, price was about 1% of the market's growth. Global net pricing was about 1%. I had said this year that I think global net pricing will be about 1%, that was at the beginning of December. I'm actually optimistic, I have to say, based on what I've seen from competitors and so forth that pricing will be at least 1% this year. Our pricing in two of our competitors have taken pricing that I've seen. One of our large competitors I haven't seen yet. But based on the pricing that I've seen, if everybody goes along those ways, we'll actually have stronger pricing this year. So fingers crossed on that one.

Growth on wearers. I just mentioned the growth of myopia in general. So we see about 1% market growth from wearers every single year. That was a little higher as we came out of COVID, but it's kind of settled at about 1%. Then the remaining portion of the growth in the market comes from daily lenses and daily silicone hydrogel lenses. So as the market has shifted, you go back a few years, people used to wear monthly lenses, right, or 2-week lenses and you take them out, you clean them every single day. Now the market shifted over to dailies. Put your lenses in like mine at the beginning of the day. At the end of the day, you take them out and you throw them away. That shift over to daily lens is a driver for market growth. As an industry, we get about 2.5x more revenue per patient for a daily were compared to a monthly or 2-week wear. So that's continuing to drive both.

There is a long tail on that. I mean we still probably have 10-plus years of transition over to daily wearers and the daily marketplace. We also have multifocals that are part of the growth of the industry right now. I mean I'm wearing them right now. But it used to be when somebody aged out, so to speak, and started wearing reading glasses, they didn't want to switch to multifocals. Because one eye would do distance and one eye would do reading, and it was hard to get comfortable with that. Today's new technology kind of mushes those together, if you will. So it's very, very easy to wear multifocals. Look up, see distance, immediately looked out and read like I'm doing. So you're seeing growth in multifocals because it's the technology advancements have been there. So a lot of different things that are driving the contact lens industry forward. And it's one of the reasons like I firmly believe we'll continue to see that mid-single-digit growth for a long time.

From an industry perspective, high barriers to entry. There's no question about that. These are all medical device products. We're talking about manufacturing billions and billions and billions of contact lenses to tight parameters. It's very expensive. The manufacturing lines are huge. So some pretty significant barriers to entry. And on top of all of that, you have technology, you have intellectual property and so forth. It's very difficult for someone to enter this marketplace. And I kind of walk through the favorable industry characteristics around this.

Recession-resistant is probably one to add on that. We've always seen the contact lens industry be recession-resistant. Once people start wearing contact lenses, you keep wearing them. Anyone who starts wearing contact lenses never switches out. I can speak to that for myself, right? Once you get over the hump and you realize that you can put them in and you can take them out pretty easily, you'll never wear glasses again, trust me on that one.

CooperVision, just quickly. I touched on this, right? We're the #1 contact lens company in the world in terms of wearers. 33%, 1/3 of people who wear contact lenses are wearing CooperVision contact lenses. We are under-indexed on dailies, the one part of the market I just talked about that we're excited about with our MyDay launch. If we can get our fair share of that part of the market, which we will. We've got some really nice growth in front of us.

This is our portfolio here, our core portfolio. You've got MyDay and the different offerings within MyDay, which is our daily -- premium daily silicone hydrogel lens, clariti and then MiSight. I'll touch on MiSight in a second. In our FRPs, Biofinity is the broadest SKU range by far of a contact lens. So that product family can basically fit anyone. 99.99% or something like that, a contact lens wearers can be fit in a Biofinity contact lens. We'll custom make them for anyone. So it's an amazing, amazing successful product and then Avaira Vitality.

If I look at the track record of CooperVision, half our business is fears, half is basically torics and multifocals, which I touched on multifocals. We're continuing to see torics grow. Toric is someone with an astigmatism that needs to be corrected. It's a little bit more of a difficult fit. But as technology advancements have come along, it's been much easier for optometrists to fit people in Toric lenses and give people truly the correct proper vision of wearing lenses. So we've seen growth in both of those, and we're market leaders when it comes to torics and multifocals. Right now, those two segments are about 40% of the overall market. You can see it's almost half of our business.

So this is similar to the prior slide, the 6.3% organic growth. And you can see over the last 10 years, our market share within the contact lens industry has increased from 22% to roughly 27% now.

I love this little slide here, performance meets potential, and this has like our new product launches on it. We have a product which is MiSight, and it reduces the progression of myopia. And something that's very, very important to mention is all contact lenses are myopia management. They're all FDA-approved myopia management products. Myopia control is different. Myopia control has myopia management. Yes, it corrects your vision, but it also has control. It reduces the progression of myopia. So it's for children to reduce their progression. It's an amazing product. The innovation around this is amazing. We're the only one who has an FDA-approved contact lens for this. Essilor now has an FDA-approved glasses for this was [ Stellest ] and they're launching that. And they're promoting that, and they're doing a great job like reinforcing that message and we are that no child should ever leave an optometry office without being in a myopia control product. Not myopia management, everything is myopia management. No child should ever leave an office and not be in a myopia control product, whether that's Essilor's Stellest here in the U.S. or whether that's our MiSight.

We're also launching MyDay MiSight, which is our market-leading daily silicone hydrogel lens that has MiSight technology in it. We're launching that in Europe. That's ahead of schedule. We're actually going to start shipments of that product on Monday. The marketplace is receiving that really well. There's great interest in that because: One, it's a silicone hydrogel, the latest technology as UV protection, which they want. And it also creates this continuum, where some child who's wearing this for the treatment to reduce their progression of myopia, as soon as they age out of that at about 17 or 18 years old, they can transition straight into a regular MyDay lens. So we're linking all that together very successfully. So I love this. I'm super excited about it. It's going on right now. We're also launching our MiSight product in Japan in Q2. We've got MyDay Energys, which we're launching in Q2 in Europe. Energys is a product that helps people who are on their devices a lot. It's basically think about it as a product that you can wear that enhances your visual acuity a little bit. So if you're reading all the time and you're looking at a phone all the time, rather than using a regular sphere, this innovative technology allows you to read that a little bit easier. So it's a really clever technology. It's very successful in the U.S. market, and we're finally launching that in Europe and EMEA in Q2.

MyDay MiSight, I mentioned, we're also going to be rolling that out by the end of the year in select countries in Asia. We're rolling MyDay multifocal throughout APAC right now. MyDay Toric expansion, which is the widest torque SKU range available on a daily SiHy. We're continuing to roll that out. And we have MyDay Toric multifocal, a little bit more of a specialty lens but excited about that and rolling that out at the end of this fiscal year. So a lot of activity. I will say this is just execution. We know how to do this stuff. We do it really well. We're rolling these products out. This is our next couple of years. We've had some other exciting stuff that's going to be in '27. We're going to roll these products out and be really successful with them.

If I move over to CooperSurgical for a minute here, you can see the 16% growth over the last 10 years. 39% of that business is fertility and the remaining part is office and surgical, which is a couple of different areas. I'll touch on as I jump through this section.

The fertility market, the fertility market was growing upper single digits for a number of years. We're talking about IVF here, and we were growing double digits. And we saw that come back pretty aggressively as fertility clinics last year, which are heavily owned by private equity, refocused from growth, growth, growth over to margin expansion and whether that was bringing some stuff in-house like some genetic testing or going through RFPs to consolidate their suppliers. We saw some of that activity have pulled the market growth down. We're starting to see green shoots on that some positivity coming out of that. But basically, you have a fertility market globally that's growing mid-single digits. We grow a little bit faster than that. The market is about $3 billion.

It's underpinned by the fact that 1 in 6 people will experience infertility at some point in their lives globally. So this is a market that's large, it's not going away and it's going to continue to grow. We see more and more, whether it's countries or states like California or even the current administration talking about the importance of reimbursement, insurance reimbursement and so forth to support fertility treatment. So a lot of really positive macro growth trends.

The first one I'll touch on here, which is women delaying childbirth. One of the things is that the later you wait to get pregnant, the harder it is to get pregnant. And the average age of a woman having a baby here in the U.S. is crept all the way up to 30 years. As you move into your 30s and anyone in this room or anyone who has tried to have children, as you get older, it gets challenging, that pushes the fertility market forward. So there are several things here that are driving the industry for, but we're going to continue to see a lot of long-term consistent growth out of the fertility marketplace.

A couple of highlights here, but innovation is another important part. We launched 3 new products here. You can see recently. We have a number of additional products that we have within our fertility R&D operation that we're going to launch. We spent a lot of money and a lot of time on acquisitions historically. As we transition here over the years and built that business out, it's going to be more important for us to generate next-generation products. So that's where our focus is. You'll continue to see that. And I look forward to every year updating the innovation and the products that we're bringing to market.

The other part of our business within CooperSurgical is office and surgical products, and you could kind of break that up 3 ways, if you will. A lot of it's medical devices, surgical medical devices, heavily focused on the OB/GYN. You have PARAGARD, which is a nonhormonal IUD, and you have stem cell storage, which is CBR. Many of you might know that if you stored your child's stem cells. Those 3 businesses make up the lion's share of the rest of our business. Good solid businesses. We have a real staple in some areas, real strength like in labor and delivery as an example. That's an area of the market where we're very strong in here in the U.S., and we're expanding labor and delivery into European market. So a lot of positives there. Things going well on our medical device side of our business.

Last slide here, I'll summarize and then take some questions. Kind of 5 key points here that I've touched on as we've gone through the presentation, right? First off, we're operating in growing markets, starting with contact lenses and the fundamentals that are driving the contact lens industry forward, and fertility as a core market of ours, good solid fundamentals. Both of the industries are growing mid-single digits. We expect to take a little bit of share in both of those, which is going to give us kind of good, consistent solid mid-single to mid- to upper single-digit revenue growth, and we'll be able to drive a lot of good earnings and free cash flow off that. So we love the underlying fundamentals of the businesses that we operate in.

Brand and private label leadership I didn't touch on private label, but it is an important component of our business. Within the contact lens industry, we're really the only player that does private label. Most of this is kind of an oxymoron, but it's kind of premium private label, if you will, like as an example, if you go to Costco and buy Kirkland contact lenses, you're buying CooperVision contact lenses. So as we roll products out around the world, we're fine rolling them out as private label products, and we're a clear, clear leader when it comes to private label around the world. And that's an important growth area for us right now. It's part of what we're working through is that first 6 months of last year, we had pretty solid growth. Next 6 months was disrupted. And right now, we -- during that 6 months, we won a whole bunch of private label contracts. This 6 months that we're in right now basically is executing on those private label contracts we've won, do what we know to do, do it well, execute on that. We're seeing that. We're having success on that as I stand here today. And then you'll get back in the back half of this year, the final 6 months seeing back to more traditional growth rates for CooperVision.

Leverage investments and drive operating performance. We've invested a lot in the business. We did a lot through COVID and after COVID, heavy IT investments and so forth. We have to leverage those. We are -- we saw that in fiscal Q4. We're going to see that here this year. It's built into our guidance. So good leveraging of our investments. Long-term focus and discipline on creating shareholder value, transitioning from a lot of that investment activity to -- back to executing, driving organic growth, delivering bottom line earnings. We're seeing the acceleration in free cash flow right now and then good capital allocation of that buying stock -- buying our own stock back, which is which is depressed right now. So it makes all the sense in the world where our stock is trading to be buying stock back.

And then a proven track record of delivering strong financial results. I mean we reported Q4. That was our eighth consecutive quarter of beating consensus earnings expectations. We also beat cash flow expectations. We raised expectations for this fiscal year for earnings. We raised expectations for free cash flow for this year. And we have a track record of doing that. We're going to continue to execute and deliver on earnings and free cash flow, much greater focus, as I mentioned, on organic revenue growth to ensure we're delivering that as we move through this year.

So with that, I kind of talked a bunch. Let me go ahead and pause. Robbie, I don't know if you have questions or if anyone in the audience has any questions.

Great presentation. With regard to the private label business, how do you win that business? Is it price? Is it quality? Like what's...

Yes. So when we think about private label, we're competing against branded because it's someone else who's offering a branded product. So we're going in and offering a private label product for them. The real core reason behind that is the same reason that anybody has private label, right? Retailers have private label because it's sticky. They want to get repeat customers, have them come back and stay in their products, wear their products. They want very high premium products in this space in medical devices and contact lenses. So they require premium products. And they require something that they're going to get good support around. And then they're going to make more money on it, right? They negotiate that, whereby they're able to say to us, "Hey, you don't have to provide the same marketing support and so forth. But take that marketing support that you're not doing and go ahead and give us a little bit of price on that," right? So we negotiate that deal out. But it gets driven heavily by all the retailers or buying groups around the world who want to create a product that brings people back.

The last thing you want to do is take your time and your energy and fit somebody in a product and a contact lens and have them turn around and just buy it online. You want them continuing to come back to you. So that's the core driver behind it.

Al, on the last earnings call, you announced a formal valuation to perform a strategic review to enhance shareholder value. Why now? What makes this the right time today versus in the past? And what can investors expect to see from Cooper as a result of this in 2026?

Sure. Yes, we announced with our December earnings call a strategic review, and it was a good time to do it. I mean, you can kind of tell from what I was talking about like an inflection or a transition in the business, if you will. We've completed the CooperSurgical build-out. That business is in a really good place right now. There's a lot of things that we can still do, and we're still very excited about it. But we had the same thing going on CooperVision. We completed a lot of work. So it was a good time to come out and just say, hey, everybody, we're doing a strategic review. We're looking at our business in total here and the vision side and the surgical side. What should these businesses be together? Should we continue to run on that? How should we think about it and go through that process?

So we announced that probably no surprise, right? We received a number of calls from strategic private equity and so forth with some interest. We're working through that process right now with Chuck Adams and his team from Citigroup and evaluating different alternatives and we'll see how things play out, if at all, and we'll announce something, we'll announce an update as much as we can in our next earnings call.

Maybe -- you've talked a lot in the past of why it made sense to keep the businesses together. So we'll see what the strategic review holds. But how should we think about the financial synergies between the two? Are there tax synergies? How well integrated are these businesses have separately run? And how is the different facilities are they as we think about maybe some of the permutations of what could happen?

Sure. I think we're probably pretty similar to a lot of companies, right? I mean because there are a lot of people who spin businesses to off sell businesses. I mean, when you look at it, it's core, what are you getting from businesses being together. You're getting synergies, which we have and we announced a bunch of those $50 million in synergies we announced that we're going to be getting this year from our recent reorg, right? That's a back office. So they're largely back office, HR, IT, legal, finance and so forth. You can pull all that in and consolidate that together. So synergies is a big component of it. Scale is another one, right, bigger company, you're able to negotiate with FedEx or UPS or anyone else. You also have diversification built within scale to allow your business to perform or report results a little bit more consistently.

And the last one, Robbie, you touched on, which is tax. A lot of the tax goes for everybody, us included, to cash taxes paid. So it's not so much necessarily the effective tax rate you see in the P&L as much as it is cash taxes paid, your ability to tie your profits to your expenses. In our case, CooperSurgical has a big profitable U.S. operation. We have expenses associated with corporate and vision, and we're able to tie those together to minimize our cash taxes paid.

So I would say kind of those are the 3 components when I look at it and say, all right, you have those 3 positives. If you were to split the business, probably same analysis other people have done. If you were to split the business and you have two stand-alones, you're saying, well, my forward PE on these two stand-alone businesses is going to go higher because investors are able to focus specifically on those businesses. Is the split in the separation and the higher PE that's assumed enough to make up for what you're giving up and synergy scale and taxes paid, that's the question mark. And I think similar to other people, we're going through that same exercise.

You're about 2/3 of the way through your 1-month offset from calendar quarters. Any comments on how you're trending so far in the quarter as you sit here today?

Sure. It's interesting. I had said in December on our earnings call. We had taken share 17 straight years in the contact lens market. And I know everybody was telling me we weren't going to take share this year that we were struggling. And yes, we had -- we stubbed our toes a couple of times. But based on how we finished the year, I believe that we took market share for the 18th consecutive year. We had a good finish in the calendar year. So I haven't seen the calendar year numbers for our competitors yet, I'll see them soon. But based on how we finish, I think we're in good shape. So -- yes, we're continuing to execute. I mean this is blocking and tackling for us. It's what we've done for a long time as a company. Execute, launch these products, be successful with private label, support our customers, do advance innovation like all the things that we do, just core stuff is what we're doing right now. It's not new distribution centers. It's not new ERP. It's none of that kind of stuff. So we're seeing right now success from what we do best, and that's what we envision we'll continue to see.

If we look at fiscal '26 guidance start lower at the beginning of the year, higher in the back end of the year. Obviously, there's 2 components. There is Vision and there is women's health. If you think about the two separately what gives you the confidence in the line of sight to go from the lower end up to the higher end to achieve the guidance range and hopefully exceed it.

Yes. I think that one thing I'd mention, which was if I look at the market in total, it was pricing, I'm a little bit more optimistic based on what I've seen on pricing that the market where I had assumed 4% to 5% probably has a much better chance to be, what, at least like 4.5 to 5% or something like that because I think pricing is going to be a little bit better. If I look at us, in particular, we won a number of private label contracts last year in the last 6 months of the year. We've been executing on those private label contracts. Just to kind of lay out quickly the time frame on that.

When you enter into a private label contract, you signed the deal with the customer, but they want their own packaging, their packaging and labeling and so forth. And then you're training their optometrists, bringing everyone up to speed, launching the product. That takes about 4 months on average before you have that product out and they're selling it. So when I look at the contracts that we've won the business in the last 6 months, that all starts transitioning into this year as we execute and we start picking up new wearers. We're winning new wearers right now. I've seen that in the most recent data, is that we're continuing to win new wearers. So when I look at winning new wearers, I look at the private label business that we've won, the execution on that, historical trends of how that plays out for us, like I have a lot of confidence that you're going to see -- Q1 do what it's going to do, it's going to be fine, right? Q2 be a little bit better and then Q3, as we're executing, we're really rolling things out. We're hitting on more cylinders, Q3, Q4 being stronger quarters.

I think you touched on the vision market pretty well in the presentation with volume and 1% pricing. How are you feeling about the global fertility market and the women's health market overall in 2026?

Yes. I think the fertility market -- the fertility market is going to be better in 2026 than it was in '25, right? We were running along really, really hot for a long time. You had fertility clinics, as I talked about, kind of pulled back. You had some of the things go on with the administration here and insurance coverage. You had some cultural things in Asia Pac. A lot of that has moved behind us. So as we move through this year, I think what we do is we start trending ourselves back to traditional historical growth rates, if you will, which are certainly mid-single digits. We were more conservative with that in our guidance because I do think that you start the year off slower, so it's probably low single digits for the fertility market starting the year off, kind of moving its way back up towards mid-single digit. Based on the wins that we have, the RFPs and some of the product launches that we have, I think we'll take a little bit of share above that. So nothing fantastic, but I do think we'll see consistent improvement.

Do you see any differences geographically, whether it's in the vision market or in the women's health fertility market where some regions are a lot better, some are weaker, just as we think about that?

Yes. Well, I certainly see it for us regionally when you think about CooperVision. If you look at the prior year, we grew 7% every quarter in Asia Pac. And then this past year, we bounced around a little bit. We were actually minus 5% in Q3 and flat in Q4. A lot of the contracts and the execution that I'm talking about is private label wins in that Asia Pac region for us. So we need to get that region going back, and I think we will. I'm confident that we will see improvements there. That would be the biggest one I would highlight. Outside of that, America is doing well. We're continuing to see pretty strong consumer behavior, frankly. Purchase activity continues to go to daily SiHys, more premium products, the torics and so forth and the newer product launches. Europe is doing well. We have a great European franchise for fertility and for our contact lenses. That's probably our best part of the world. It's EMEA for us on a company-wide basis, continuing to see good trends there. Asia Pac, I touched on, like, is a little choppier.

There have been some people that have tried to pitch publicly the idea that CooperVision either mergers or acquirers with another larger competitor. I won't ask you to comment on that specifically. But in general, do you think there's the ability for the large competitors in vision to do large acquisitions given the concentration? I know you're #1 by far in Europe in contact lenses. Do you think the regulators would tolerate large acquisitions of that size?

Yes. I mean I wouldn't say anything is impossible, right? You can push things through. I'd say it's very difficult, very difficult. I mean we are the #1 contact lens company in terms of revenues and wearers in Europe. We have a really strong position in a number of other countries around the world. So I think it'd be very difficult for us to do anything. J&J is a solid #1. Could Alcon buy Bausch an example, if they want, and those businesses completely overlap, maybe they could pull something like that off, I don't know. But I think it would be pretty difficult.

I think -- I feel like I'm your most avid free cash flow question asker on the earnings calls, and it's gotten a lot better over past few quarters. So it's great to see. And on the last earnings call, you went from $2 billion over the next 3 years to $2.2 billion already. So I guess, two-part question. One, what's driving the strong improvement of free cash flow? And then two, what gives you the confidence to raise it by 10% already before you even enter the time frame?

Yes. And I probably feel better about that as I stand here today. So if you go back when I was CFO before I became CEO, right? We had about 20% of our revenue converting into free cash flow. That number came way down as we invested very heavily to move into the daily silicone hydrogel space. And those -- that CapEx investment became dramatic. And layered on top of that was the fact we were buying a number of our buildings. So we had a lot of CapEx for a number of years, right? I mean -- and it's got up towards 10% of revenues. Now our maintenance and growth CapEx, kind of our core CapEx, if you will, that we're going to move to in '27, will be about 5% of revenues. So that drop alone is going to add a couple of hundred million dollars of free cash flow.

The other thing that we had is we renew a lot of these acquisitions I talked about. And we had a lot of integration-related activity that had a lot of cash charges associated with it. As I mentioned, we've wrapped up -- we wrapped the vast majority of that up. So our non-GAAP adjustments are going to go way down and the cash going out the door will go way down. This year, we'll still have some of it. We'll have severance associated with the reorg. We got a build out of a big CooperVision R&D facility. We got final payments on a lot of lines. But we have a lot of improvements coming from working capital and from operating improvement and lack of charges. And then if I go into next year, you get to a much more traditional lower CapEx level. We're going to -- we'll have a strong free cash flow year next year.

We're out of time, unfortunately. I appreciate a great discussion, and I appreciate everybody joining us today.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fourth Quarter 2025 Cooper Companies Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Kim Duncan, VP of Investor Relations and Risk Management. You may begin.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Cooper Companies Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, we will discuss the results and guidance included in the earnings release and then use the remaining time for questions.

Our presenters on today's call are Al White, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Andrews, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements relating to revenue, EPS, cash flows, interest, FX and tax rates, tariffs and other financial guidance and expectations, strategic and operational initiatives, market conditions and trends and product launches and demand. Forward-looking statements depend on assumptions, data or methods that may be incorrect or precise and are subject to risks and uncertainties.

We events that could cause our actual results and future actions of the 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 Cooper's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings, all of which are available on our website at coopercos.com.

Also as a reminder, the non-GAAP financial information we will provide on this call is provided as a supplement to our GAAP information. We encourage you to consider our results under GAAP as well as non-GAAP and refer to the reconciliations provided in our earnings release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website under quarterly materials. Should you have any additional questions following the call, please email [email protected]. And now I'll turn the call over to Al for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Kim, and welcome, everyone, to today's earnings call. I'll start by highlighting 3 key strategic priorities and then move into our quarterly results and guidance. Our first priority is to deliver consistent market share gains for CooperVision. We've accelerated the global rollout of our MyDay premium daily silicone hydrogel lens portfolio, and we're seeing momentum build. We're executing on numerous global private label contracts and winning new ones, and we're strengthening branded sales, especially among independent optometrists.

We're also looking forward to several upcoming product launches to further strengthen our positioning and ensure CooperVision delivers steady revenue growth throughout fiscal 2026 with the strongest performance expected in Q3 and Q4 and as MyDay achieves bold traction. Second is our continuing commitment to earnings and free cash flow. This quarter marked our eighth consecutive quarter of beating consensus earnings expectations and our fiscal 2026 earnings guidance exceeds current consensus expectations, driven by significant cost savings from our recent reorganization. Additionally, for the past 2 years, we've reported double-digit earnings growth, and we're targeting making it 3 years in a row. And importantly, these earnings are turning into cash with $150 million of free cash flow delivered in Q4, beating expectations. I'm also pleased to announce this momentum is continuing, and we're raising our fiscal 2026 to 2028 free cash flow target to more than $2.2 billion.

Our entire organization is aligned behind these efforts as free cash flow became a bonus metric in 2024 alongside revenue and earnings. Third is our attention to returning capital to shareholders. We repurchased nearly $200 million of stock in fiscal Q4, bringing our total fiscal year repurchases to almost $300 million or roughly 2/3 of our 2025 free cash flow. For fiscal 2026, we expect to allocate a similar percentage to share repurchases with the remaining portion targeted to debt pay down.

To support this effort and to reinforce our commitment to share repurchases being a core component of our long-term capital allocation strategy, the Board authorized an increase in our share repurchase plan to $2 billion in September. Before moving into the quarterly details, I want to emphasize that our Board and management team remain highly focused on driving long-term shareholder value. We've accelerated share repurchases. Insiders have bought stock. We've completed significant re-org and integration activity to increase profitability and cash flow, and we've been winning new contracts and solidifying long-term customer partnerships at CooperVision and CooperSurgical.

Additionally, we initiated an evaluation of strategic alternatives earlier this year and presented our initial findings to our Board in October, alongside ongoing governance discussions around the timing of our Chair's transition to retirement. Today, we have taken the next step by issuing a press release announcing a formal strategic review to ensure that we explore every opportunity to unlock long-term shareholder value. We also announced the transition of our Chair role from Bob Weiss to independent Board member, Colleen Jay. And finally, we're adding total shareholder return to our executive performance share plans to further align leadership incentives to our stock's performance.

With that, let's move to the Q4 results. Consolidated revenues were up 4.6% year-over-year or up 3.4% organically to a quarterly record $1.065 billion. Operating margins improved meaningfully and non-GAAP earnings grew 11% to $1.15. For CooperVision, we reported revenue of $710 million, up 4.9% or up 3.2% organically. These results were consistent with our guidance, driven by improved global availability of MyDay, partially offset by market softness in China in certain areas in EMEA. Overall, the global contact lens market continues to trend toward premium offerings, which is a positive for our MyDay portfolio, including our premium private label MyDay business, but it does create headwinds for clariti in our older hydrogel lenses.

On an organic basis, by category, torics and multifocals grew 5% and spears grew 2%. By modality, daily silicone hydrogel lenses grew 5% with double-digit growth in MyDay and declines in clariti. Our silicone hydrogel FRP lenses Biofinity and Avera grew 2% and and MiSight delivered strong growth of 37%. Regionally, the Americas grew 5%, led by strength in daily silicone hydrogel lenses, EMEA grew 3%, strengthening our #1 market position led by MyDay and Biofinity. This was slightly below expectations due to market weakness in a few countries but this doesn't appear to be tied to consumer activity, and we've already seen a pickup this quarter.

Asia Pac was flat as growth in MyDay was offset primarily by a 28% decline in China, driven by continued weakness in low-margin e-commerce channels where we're not chasing aggressive pricing activity.

Moving to products. MyDay delivered a strong quarter led by Torics and Energous. We're continuing to execute on the private label deals we won in Q3, and I'm pleased to report that we won quite a few more contracts in Q4, several of which are in the U.S. and Europe. So you'll see those in the coming months. Momentum is robust, and we're seeing increasing fitting activity with especially strong interest in our premium Comfort MyDay Energous lens featuring our innovative digital boost technology which we expect to launch in Europe in Q2 of this year.

From our MyDay multifocal, which continues to roll out in the APAC region and from our MyDay toric parameter expansion, which is expanding around the world. We'll also be launching MyDay MiSight and MyDay toric multifocal in 2026, and we expect those offerings to be received incredibly well. For clariti, we're progressing with repositioning the product family in Asia Pac, and we're seeing early positive signs with products such as clariti's new 3 ad multifocal launch, which delivered double-digit growth in the Americas.

Regarding FRPs, Biofinity delivered solid performance in the Americas and EMEA led by multifocals, Energous and our innovative made-to-order lenses, but remains soft in Asia Pac, especially outside of Japan. This was similar to last quarter with continued weakness in markets such as China.

Turning to myopia control. MiSight delivered strong growth of 37%, driven by robust performance in the Americas and another record-setting quarter in EMEA. Our back-to-school campaigns boosted fitting activity, while customer engagement initiatives and new pricing models supported higher purchase volumes. We expect this momentum to continue into fiscal 2026 with the upcoming launches of MiSight in Japan and MyDay MiSight across Europe, both scheduled for fiscal Q2.

Private label programs in Europe and other select markets are also proving highly successful, and we expect more deals to be signed this year. With MiSight growing 30% in fiscal 2025, reaching $104 million in sales, we expect growth of at least 20% to 25% for fiscal 2026 with further strength in 2027 as product launches gain traction.

To conclude on vision, let me share details of our performance relative to the market. This is calendar quarter data, so it's apples-to-apples with our competitors. In calendar Q3, we grew 5%, in line with the market. And on a year-to-date basis for the 3 calendar quarters of 2025, we've grown 4%, also in line with the market. CooperVision has gained share for 17 straight years, and we remain focused on achieving that goal for an 18th consecutive year in calendar 2025.

Turning to CooperSurgical. We delivered quarterly revenue of $356 million, up 4% or up 3.9% organically. This was at the high end of our guidance range, driven by solid execution. Within fertility, revenues were $141 million, up 1%, in line with expectations given last year's 13% comp. Growth was driven by market share gains in EMEA and strong global genomics performance, partially offset by softness in the U.S. As we enter fiscal 2026, we're optimistic that this will be a stronger year. We're seeing encouraging traction with new RFP wins from some major fertility clinics. We're receiving significant interest and witness our automated lab tracking system and our genomics portfolio is seeing an uptick in momentum following the recent launch of several new tests. For the overall fertility market, consumer spending remains tight, especially in Asia Pac, and clinics are continuing to manage spending carefully, but we are seeing some early positive signs, including improving cycle activity in the U.S. and growing global clinic interest in new technology.

We remain highly optimistic about the long-term outlook for fertility given the underlying fundamentals, supported by the estimate that 1 in 6 people globally are expected to experience in fertility at some point in their lives, underscoring the long-term significance and resilience of this market.

Moving to office and surgical, sales were $215 million, up 6% and up 6% organically. PARAGARD grew 16% following a softer Q3, driven by strong demand for our single hand inserter upgrade that was launched earlier this year. Medical Devices grew 3%, led by double-digit growth in our labor and delivery portfolio and a 35% increase in our OBP surgical line of innovative single-use lighted cordless surgical retractors. These gains were partially offset by softness in legacy products.

Moving to fiscal revenue guidance. For CooperVision, we're guiding fiscal Q1 to 3.5% to 4.5% organic growth as we continue to stair-stepping higher with execution around ongoing contract wins. For the full year, we're guiding to 4.5% to 5.5%, assuming the market grows 4% to 5%. Our expectation is that current momentum will result in strong share gains in Q3 and Q4, but we're maintaining conservatism to avoid having guidance be too back-end loaded. For CooperSurgical, we're guiding Q1 to 2% to 3% growth and full year to 4% to 5% growth. Within this, we're forecasting only a modest improvement in fertility, which we're optimistic will prove conservative given some of the recent market trends, along with much easier comps.

Before turning the call over to Brian, I want to thank the entire Cooper team for their outstanding execution this quarter, delivering strong results during a period of significant organizational change, reflects our team's commitment to building a more streamlined and efficient company, and it speaks volumes to the company's dedication to excellence. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian.

Thank you, Al, and good afternoon, everyone. Most of my commentary will be on a non-GAAP basis, so please refer to the earnings release for a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results.

For the fourth fiscal quarter, consolidated revenues were $1.065 billion, up 4.6% and up 3.4% organically. Gross margin declined marginally as expected, to 66.2% driven by tariffs and product mix, partially offset by positive foreign exchange. Operating expenses were flat, reflecting disciplined cost management and operating income increased a healthy 9% to a 27% margin. Interest expense was $23.7 million and the effective tax rate was 14.2%. Non-GAAP EPS grew 11% to $1.15 with 198 million average shares outstanding. Free cash flow was strong at $150 million with CapEx of $98 million and net debt was $2.4 billion, improving our bank-defined leverage ratio to 1.76x.

Lastly, we repurchased 2.9 million shares for $197.3 million, leaving approximately $1 billion of availability under our $2 billion repurchase plan. Before moving to guidance, let me recap the reorganization and integration work we completed in Q4. We began executing this effort in early Q3 and moved quickly with a clear focus on improving operational efficiency and reducing back office costs. By leveraging prior IT investments supported by AI capabilities, we integrated key support functions and are unlocking meaningful productivity gains.

At the same time, we completed significant acquisition-related integration work. From a financial perspective, we recorded approximately $89 million in charges associated with all of this activity and expect annual pretax savings to be roughly $50 million or $0.19 starting in fiscal 2026. Beyond operating margin expansion and free cash flow benefits, these savings strengthen our ability to invest in high-return opportunities, repurchase stock and pay down debt, fully aligned with our commitment to long-term value creation.

Moving to guidance and starting with Q1. We're guiding to consolidated revenues of $1.019 billion to $1.03 billion, representing roughly 3% to 4% consolidated organic growth. CooperVision's revenue is expected to be in the range of $693 million to $700 million, up 3.5% to 4.5% organically. And CooperSurgical's revenue is projected to be $327 million to $330 million, up 2% to 3% organically. For earnings, we're guiding to non-GAAP EPS of $1.02 to $1.04 with improving operating margins from strong operational leverage offset by lower gross margins due to tariffs and mix. Interest expense is expected to be around $24 million, and the effective tax rate to be in the range of 15% to 16%.

For the full year fiscal 2026, we're guiding to consolidated revenues of roughly $4.3 billion to $4.34 billion, reflecting 4.5% to 5.5% organic growth. CooperVision is expected to be in the range of $2.9 billion to $2.925 billion, up 4.5% to 5.5% organically. And CooperSurgical is expected to be in the range of $1.4 billion to $1.413 billion, up 4% to 5% organically.

For earnings, we're guiding to non-GAAP EPS of $4.45 to $4.60. This assumes another year of strong operating margin improvement driven by operating expense leverage, offset by lower gross margins due to tariffs and mix. Interest expense is expected to be around $85 million, assuming no share repurchases or changes in Fed policy. Note that if the Fed does lower rates next week by 0.25 point, interest expense would be reduced by roughly $2 million in fiscal 2026. The effective tax rate is expected to be in the range of 15% to 16%. Free cash flow for fiscal 2026 is expected to improve to $575 million to $625 million, driven by stronger operating cash flow from higher profits, working capital improvements and lower onetime costs. CapEx will also decline on an absolute basis as CooperVision's investment cycle winds down.

These positives will temporarily be somewhat offset by roughly $70 million tied to our reorg and final payments on building activity, including our new CooperVision R&D facility. From fiscal 2026 through 2028, we expect to generate over $2.2 billion in free cash flow. This outlook reflects 2 key drivers: First, consistent improvements in operating cash flow from higher profits, lower onetime items and tighter working capital management supported by a streamlined and AI-enabled operating structure; and second, CapEx normalizing in fiscal 2027 to roughly 5% of revenues, covering both maintenance and growth investments.

Lastly, on cash flow. At the divisional level, CooperSurgical generates more free cash flow per revenue dollar than CooperVision. But we expect that gap to narrow materially in 2027 as CooperVision's CapEx declines and free cash flow accelerates. From a capital deployment standpoint, we remain committed to investing in growth and innovation, repurchasing stock and reducing debt. Lastly, as you'll see in our 10-K tomorrow, we have successfully remediated the material weakness related to certain IT general control failures from fiscal 2024. And with that, I will turn it back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Jeff Johnson from Baird.

Congratulations on the progress in the quarter. Al, I wanted to talk, I guess, first on clariti, obviously, a good MyDay number in the period. Did you give a number for how much clariti was down? And I think that's been about a $400 million annualized line for you guys. What is maybe the floor on that? And as that continues to come down and MyDay grows, do you see those MyDay gross margins eventually within the next year or 2 getting to clariti gross margin levels?

Yes. I'll let Brian comment on the gross margins because we made a lot of progress there. Yes, clariti was down a couple of percent this quarter, and it's approach -- it approached $400 million this year. So it's still a pretty sizable product line for us. We're doing a lot of work on it right now. We've got some new products that we're launching, we're excited about. The 3 ad multifocal in the U.S. is being received really well. But on the flip side of that, we're doing some repositioning in places like Asia Pac to put that lens family more in the entry-level space that we want it to be.

And so we're going to continue to have some push and pulls here, I think, over the next couple of quarters. But I do still think that there's a place for that lens and has the opportunity to be very successful. If there's ever a situation where the market moves a little bit more towards mass market or is a little bit more price conscious, I think you'll see that lens take off. But in the meantime, to hit on the start of your question, Jeff, yes, good quarter for MyDay. We are making a lot of progress there. We have a lot of really exciting stuff going on. You want to comment on the margins?

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question, Jeff. I won't comment on individual product line gross margins, but I will say that the gross margins for the family of products of daily silicone hydrogel lenses, is below CooperVision's gross margins. I talked about mix being part of the reason for the gross margin decline in Q4. It will be part of the reason for the gross margin decline year-over-year next year. And as we sell more daily silicone hydrogels, I would expect that we'll still have pressure on the gross margin line.

Now that being said, we do get more revenue per patient. When we sell daily si-hys, we get more gross profit dollars, and we get more operating income dollars. And so as we leverage our prior investment activity and a more streamlined organization, I would expect we'll be able to drive operating margin expansion and earnings growth despite some of the headwinds we'll be seeing from the gross margin line.

All right, Brian. And maybe just one quick follow-up. Just whenever you guys give calendar versus fiscal numbers, it always opens it up to a question like this. But if you did 5% growth in calendar 3Q, Al, and you did 3.2% in fiscal Q4, it would seem to imply a pretty weak October, I believe, if I'm thinking about that correctly. But just tell me why I'm wrong there or at least kind of help reconcile those 2, the 3.2% and the 5% number.

Yes. It was the flip side, Jeff. It was actually the beginning of the quarter. The overlap in the beginning of the quarter, not the end of the quarter. October was a good month.

Our next question comes from Lawrence Biegelsen from Wells Fargo.

Al, could you please talk about the strategic review? How long will it take? And what's your reaction to those who have advocated for splitting up CDI and CSI and adding new board members?

Sure. We announced a strategic review for those who haven't seen and we issued a press release concurrently with the earnings release. We're going to take a look at options out there because we do want to drive shareholder value, right? And we look at that. And we were doing that work proactively with our Board over the summer. We actually presented strategic analysis and a strategic review to them in the month of October, and we obviously put that out publicly.

We'll provide an update on any activity on our next earnings call, which is the beginning of March, that's our Q1 earnings call, unless something material happens beforehand. And if it does, obviously, we'll issue a press release or make a statement on that. So outside of that, I'm not going to comment too much on it, but yes, it's underway.

So Al, no comment on -- I mean just maybe your latest thoughts. Obviously, there's -- there are others out there now advocating for splitting up CDI and CSI. Has your position changed I just love to hear your latest thoughts on that. And I'll leave it at that.

Yes. My position has not changed on that. We discussed that actually, Larry, at your conference in September, you raised it, and I gave my opinion on that. And my opinion has not changed, which is our job is to drive long-term shareholder, if taking certain actions are beneficial for our long-term shareholders then we need to evaluate those. As I talked about in the September meeting that we did. I believe if we drive value in this business that will maximize long-term shareholder value. And that's what we're doing. That's what we did with the reorg. That's what we're doing with stock buybacks. That's what we're doing driving cash flow. That's what we're doing in a whole slew of different ways. But we're going to look at the value of this business and do what's best for our long-term shareholder -- long-term shareholders. That's our job as executives of a public company.

Our next question comes from Jon Block from Stifel.

Great. Al, I think your contact lens market growth expectations for 2026, I think you said for the market, 4% to 5%. Year-to-date, the market's 4% and I don't know, it just seems like industry pricing power is fading a bit. So just talk, if you don't mind, about sort of the market growth assumption or construct, like what's behind that assumption if we do finish this year 4 or even a tad below, what's responsible for market growth acceleration if pricing power is decelerating? And then I'll ask a follow-up.

Sure. Yes, Jon, I might go the other direction a little bit on that one. We grew -- as a market grew 4% in Q1, calendar Q1 and 4% in calendar Q2. The market grew 5% in calendar Q3. So it actually increased this last quarter. I do think that we're going to be in a 4% to 5% market growth for this year, I'd be really surprised if we're not. From a pricing perspective, I think global pricing for next year will end up being somewhere around that 1% on a true global net basis, so probably pretty similar, frankly, to what it was this year, which leads me to believe we'll probably be somewhere in that 4% to 5% range next year. I do think this quarter, which was 5 was probably a little bit better representation of where the market is. So I'd say 4% to 5%. But honestly, I think it will be closer to 5% next year.

Okay. Fair enough. And then just to shift gears, I take like a different approach in terms of going to CVI numbers for you guys rather than from like a product standpoint, just from a geography standpoint. I mean, APAC falling around 0% for fiscal '25. It was up [indiscernible] 7% in '24. And then at some point, this thing was growing 13%, 14% in the prior year. So for fiscal '26, is -- it seemed like more the same argument in Americas and EMEA for the most part, but we just see that APAC claw back a little bit closer to mid-single digits, a function of MyDay, but also a function of getting some of these quasi one-timers behind you. Just looking for any direction from a geographic perspective.

Yes, I think you're right, Jon. At the end of the day, we had some struggles in Asia Pac this year, it was heavily focused on the pure play e-commerce channel. That's where we lost share. I mentioned that China was down 28% in Q4. As you remember, it was down kind of mid-20s in Q1 and Q3. So our China business is quite a bit smaller this year than it was the year before and again, heavily focused on low-margin business. That's the reason that you've seen our revenues come down and be a little bit softer, but you haven't seen the impact on our profit.

Now we clearly do not chase revenues at all costs. We would never do that. And that's a great example of where we don't do it. We don't -- we're not chasing the market where we're seeing some participants with super aggressive pricing out there. We're maintaining fiscal responsibility and sensibility around how we operate. What I will say is as we move into fiscal '26 is these markets, like China and the pure-play e-commerce and some other markets have become a much smaller percent of our overall business. So we're not going to see the same detriment in '26 that we saw in '25.

Our next question comes from Robbie Marcus from JPMorgan.

This is Lily on for Robbie. The guide is a bit more back-end loaded from a revenue growth perspective. So what gives the confidence in growth stepping up over the course of the year? And what are some of the variables across Vision and Surgical that we should think about as improving over 2026.

Sure. Thanks, Lily. It's a little bit back-end loaded, but it's not that much back-end loaded. I mean we intentionally did not get overly aggressive on Q3 and Q4 so that we wouldn't have a situation where it was heavily back-end loaded. Even though, frankly, I'm pretty optimistic we're going to have a strong Q3 and Q4 given where MyDay is today and the momentum that we're seeing. But to answer your question, it ties to that. It ties to the MyDay sales that we have right now. The momentum that we're seeing out there, we won a number of additional private label contracts during Q4. As I mentioned, a number of those are in the U.S. and in Europe. So a number of people on the phone will start seeing some of those as we get into 2026.

So I'm excited about what's going on with MyDay and the progress that we're making. And that's going to be one of your biggest drivers that's going to push forward the CooperVision business. When it comes to CooperSurgical, we're forecasting a relatively similar year next year to this year, and that includes kind of being conservative on fertility. I mean I'm optimistic fertility picks up. And we certainly have easier comps that we're going to report against that's going to help us a little bit. But we want to stay a little conservative on fertility also in consumer spending. When I think about CooperSurgical, remember that we launched the single hand inserter for PARAGARD at the beginning of last year. So we had a really strong Q1. That's the reason that we're guiding a little bit softer here for Q1.

Having said that, PARAGARD just had a really strong Q4 and finish to the year. So we'll see how that plays out because frankly, guidance for CooperSurgical assumes flat to low single-digit growth in PARAGARD, and we did quite a bit better than that this year.

Great. That's helpful. And then just as a follow-up, I was hoping you could talk a bit more about the improved free cash flow outlook. What's driving that increase relative to the prior guide? And is any of that step-up coming from decreased investment in SG&A or R&D?

Sure. Yes. The way to think about free cash flow is it is not back-end loaded. It's just consistent performance, consistent execution. We'll step up nicely this year by continuing to do exactly what we've been doing. I mean, we just posted the $150 million in Q4, which was strong, and we're going to continue to post strong quarters here by delivering earnings growth by doing some of the working capital management that Brian mentioned. And then as we move into next year, you're going to see CooperVision's CapEx come down. Our maintenance and growth CapEx is about 5% of revenues. It's somewhere in that range, right? And we've been running upper single digits. So you're going to see that come down as we make final payments on our MyDay lines this year.

And then we're also completing some relatively significant business activity. And the last thing we really have this year is our new CooperVision R&D facility going up. So as those roll off and you continue to see profits grow, 2027 is going to be a nice free cash flow year. And then I think it's just more consistency in the next year. So we're saying over $2.2 billion now. Frankly, we feel pretty good about that number, the over on the $2.2 billion side of it.

Our next question comes from Jason Bednar from Piper Sandler.

I wanted to start first with -- I think I heard you right, there aren't any repurchases assumed in earnings guidance for fiscal '26. But I thought you referenced in the supplementary PR today that you're allocating free cash entirely to repurchases. So just how to reconcile that. Is that just conservatism? Or do I ask something incorrect there?

Yes. So we spent about 2/3 of our cash flow this past year on share repurchases, and we're targeting spending about 2/3 of our free cash flow on share repurchases in '26. That will be EPS accretive. We did not include that in the guidance range.

Okay. All right. Got it. And then as a follow-up, Al, good to see the TSR addition to the comp plans, I think a lot of us will be happy to see. That I did want to ask, just if you could discuss how you landed on Colleen as the next Chairman for the business. I know it's maybe a bit of a hot button issue right now, just given some of the items out there in the public domain. But if you could just discuss why that was the right move for the Board in the context of other options, whether currently on the Board or not on the Board?

Sure. We've been having conversations over the last year with Bob. And it's driven by Bob. I mean Bob is a great guy, right, he has a ton of value, but he's gotten to the point where he's saying, "hey, I want to go into full retirement. And it's that time for me." So we were talking about it in the context of transitioning the chair leadership over and how that should happen and when that should happen. And this was the right time to do that.

Colleen has been with us for a number of years. She's fantastic. She's super smart. She was a top executive over a Proctor & Gamble. She's got a global experience. She's had branding experience. She brings a lot to the table, and she just does a really nice job and she -- as I said, she adds a lot of value across the board, which is great. She was the one who probably 6 months ago, brought up the TSR and said, "Hey, we need to roll the TSR into here and look at shareholder returns and make sure we're aligning executive comp even closer to the stock's performance. And she brought that together with our consultants and so forth and put a plan together.

And yes, as I mentioned, we're going to be rolling that in. So I think she's the perfect perfect person to step in as the Chair. And Bob's going to -- Bob's plan is to continue to work with her and transition the roll over to her to ensure it's just -- it's a really smooth process.

Our next question comes from Travis Steed from Bank of America.

Just curious on what the strategic review, your willingness to take short-term dilution to create longer-term value and how you kind of balance the short term for the long term? And also how you think about consolidation in the contact lens space, are there potential synergies there or antitrust risk with actions like that.

Well, I think that -- I mean, you're always going to have some of those questions around short-term investments and short-term activity and the impact on the long term, be it across the board, right, product launches or product development or any number of moves that you can potentially make. So I think the important thing is what we said, which is, hey, we've done some work on a strategic review here. And people have asked the question about what does that mean? And actions can you take and so forth. And what I want to be clear about and that we issued the press release, is we've done a bunch of work on that. We're rolling up our sleeves to do more work on that. And we're taking a serious look at all the different alternatives that are out there be it a number of things, frankly, that we put in that press release. So I'm not going to go into all the details behind that other than to say, we are rolling up our sleeves. We're working with our advisers. We're looking at the different alternatives that are out there, and we want to ensure that we're driving long-term shareholder value, and that's our heavy, heavy focus.

Right. That's fair. And then gross margins down in [ some of these big ] [indiscernible]. Just trying to understand exactly how you're giving operating margin leverage. Is SG&A not growing on '26 and how much are you going to be cutting in the business.

Well, sure. I mean, I think when you look at it, you can just plug the numbers in, and you can see that OpEx itself or SG&A, if you will, is not going to grow very much because that's where we're set right now. So this is not additional cuts. This isn't like we need to go do things. We had this reorg activity planned out a while ago, and we completed it aggressively. And I think the team here did a fantastic job doing it aggressively and getting it done. And you can see that in the SG&A or in the OpEx, if you will, in our Q4 as reported results and you used to assume to continue to see that level of excellence in terms of spending, supporting the top line and driving leverage on a go-forward basis.

Our next question comes from Matt Miksic from Barclays.

So one follow-up on an earlier question around your sort of intention expectation of gaining share here in the fourth calendar quarter. Maybe just talk about where you see the various business lines impacting this is envisioned obviously. Just some color as to which catalysts do you think are kind of lifting off a little bit in the last month or so of the year. And then I have 1 follow-up.

Sure, Matt. That's a really good question. You'll remember last year in Q4, we did not have a particularly good quarter. We had some competitors launching product and they had a lot of activity going on, and it was one of the weaker quarters that we've had with respect to the market in a long time. So we are comping against that. And we are in a significantly better position in this calendar Q4 than we were in last calendar Q4. So what it comes down to is just weakness last year and strength this year, and a lot of that ties right to the topics we've been discussing starting with MyDay. So I do think we have an excellent opportunity to hear closest calendar year strong.

And when you compare that to last year's weakness, it should be a pretty good number. Well, I said it in the call, like we're 17 straight years of market share gains, and we have not given up on making that 18. So we'll see how things close out.

That's great. And then the follow-up, your question earlier on this as well, the sort of separation, you've talked about it, you've answered how you feel about it creating shareholder value. Given that it's been sort of -- it feels like these reporting lines and operating-wise feels like it has been running separately or independently in many ways and some might say ready to separate for some time. What -- if that's the case, if you looked at this before, what is changing now given sort of the new board involvement and new investor involvement that you think could make this possible now from a tax basis? Is it -- is the restructuring done and it's a tuned up upgraded portfolio that we think will get more interest? What would you say?

Well, I think that -- I mean, if you talk about a separation, it is a negative and that it will create dissynergies. It is a negative from a tax perspective. Having said that, you've seen a number of companies, whether it's in the med device space or med tech more broadly or even just more broadly just saying companies who have looked at their portfolios who have different businesses within their -- under their umbrella, so to speak. And they've looked at different ways to say, "hey, I want to try to unlock value. And I'm going to spin off my diabetes business or I'm going to spin this off or I'm going to spin that offer. I'm going to look at different strategic alternatives." I think that's good hygiene. I think that's important to do. And it now is an appropriate time for us to do that.

We made a ton of progress at CooperVision to position ourselves here to really get growing again and taking market share. And we made a ton of progress in CooperSurgical with our fertility business. And we're going to do great in fertility. So I think when you look at the businesses right now, it's just fair to ask the question, which is, are there strategic moves that we can make unlock shareholder value. And that's one of them. And I think it's important for us to roll up our sleeves and evaluate that, and that's what we're committed to do.

Our next question comes from David Saxon from Needham & Company.

Maybe I'll start with CSI just on PARAGARD. Al, I think you said flat to up low single digits for fiscal '26. It looks like the competitive IUD is going to launch in the first half of calendar '26. Is there anything embedded in that PARAGARD expectation as it relates to that launch? And then when you first acquired it, you talked about the margin profile really strong. Has there been any meaningful change to that margin profile? And then I have 1 follow-up.

Sure, David. A couple of things. Yes, there is the competitor product that was approved. I have no idea if it's going to launch or when it's going to launch or anything else about it. We did factor in some conservatism, if you will, into that -- into the -- my guidance of kind of flat to up a couple of percent, assuming that there is a competitive launch.

Now I'm forgetting off the top of my head, Brian will probably know. I think PARAGARD grew 7% this year. So I'm optimistic we'll have another good year. But yes, we did factor in a little conservatism around the potential for a competitor launch. I will say the margins have come down a little bit because of the single hand inserter launch, that activity. Nothing that I would classify as material. But yes, the gross margins are a little bit lower on that product.

Okay. Great. And then just on CVI. So the Asia Pac e-commerce dynamics, I mean it sounds like we'll lap that in the fiscal first quarter. But any residual impact from like the distributor channel inventory dynamics you talked about a couple of quarters ago or the private label conversion from clariti to MyDay. Just how we should think about those moving pieces as it relates to fiscal '26.

Yes. As we think about that from an Asia Pac perspective, I think you're still going to have a little bit of that noise, frankly in Q1, and we factored that into the guidance, right? We did 3.2 globally, and we factored in 3.5 to 4.5 as a company and we factored in continuing weakness in Asia Pac in Q1. So whether we see that or not or how much that changes like we'll see and we'll play that out. But you can see some of that, I think, as you continue to transition.

Our next question comes from Young Li from Jefferies.

Altra. I guess to start, maybe a question about the pipeline. I did hear that you're launching some new products that can't contribute to growth. But some of your competitors have been talking more and more about next-generation contact lenses and materials. I was wondering if you can comment sort of where you are with your program.

Sure. We have some great stuff going on in R&D. A couple of things that I'm not going to get into, but that I'm super excited about. We have some launches going on right now that I talked about. We have some stuff like MyDay, MiSight. I mean that is like market-leading innovation. First of all, we're the only contact lens company with an FDA-approved product for myopia control in my sight and now we're launching MiSight on the silicone hydrogel platform. We're 1 of the leading brands out there in MyDay. I mean you can't get much more exciting and innovative than that, and that's coming here in Q2. And we've got some other really cool innovation and stuff, including some material work and so forth that we're doing internally.

So I'm not going to start touting that right now. It's not the time to do that. But suffice it to say, we have some good exciting stuff going on ourselves, and we have some product launch activity that's pretty exciting right in front of us.

Okay. Great. So I guess the follow-up question just on the fertility business. Can you maybe go a little bit more into detail on the assumptions for growth next year, talking about the geographic variances between U.S. and its [indiscernible] impact from consumers?

Sure. Yes, I mean, at the end of the day, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with fertility. I happen to believe that fertility, by the end of the year, will end up growing mid-single digits, and I think we'll grow a little bit faster than that. I think some of that's going to come because of the easier comps. Some of that's going to become because consumers just levels off in Asia Pac, where it's been weaker, some of that's going to come because you have some pretty cool technology upgrades that are working their way through the system right now, including by us and you're going to see some clinics upgrading.

Having said that, that is not what we factored into our guidance for this year. We factored in a more conservative expectation around fertility because I just don't want to get ahead of ourselves there. So when we look at it from a guidance perspective, it's kind of a market more in the low single digits and us growing more in the mid-single digits.

Next question comes from Navann Ty from BNP Paribas.

On the MyDay momentum, can you discuss the revenue contribution of the MyDay product label contract in APAC throughout 2026 and 2027. And then on fertility, could you provide more details on the recently improving cycles you have called out and any changes in competitive landscape between you, Vitrolife and nextbring? And I don't know if you can give some details on the new technologies the clinics are interested in?

Sure. A number of things there. I'll answer your last one first because some of the new technology you may have just seen or if anyone follows it at ASRM, which is the big fertility conference here in the U.S. We just launched 3 new genomics tests that are being received incredibly well. And we have some other technology advancements that we're going to be launching this year within our genomics space and also within our capital space. And then we've got some super exciting stuff that we're working on in our R&D side that I'm excited to get out in the coming years. I'm going to step back to the MyDay momentum. I talked about that last quarter and that we were winning contracts, and we've been executing on those contracts.

A lot of that was tied to Asia Pac. As I mentioned, we're now seeing contract wins in EMEA and in the U.S., and you're going to see that momentum build as we move into Q3 and Q4. So that's a process that's going to happen. That's why I talk about step improvements because we have to manufacture the product, we have to label it and package it. We have to get it over into the hands of the retailer, the key account, whomever it is that selling that product, and we have to get it launched.

So it does take a little bit of time. We clearly took a step forward here in Q4, and we're going to take a step forward again, and then we're going to take another step forward as we execute on those contracts. This is not the first time we've done it. I've seen this many times over the years here at CooperVision and it's going to happen again this time. So I won't give you specific numbers on that, but I will just say that as you win those contracts and as you execute on those contracts, just over the quarter, you start picking up energy on that, and we see that momentum right now picking up from a fitting activity, and that's the key.

The first step is get product in people's hands, get the fitting activity increasing and so forth, then it transfers over to the sales and you see that momentum building, and that's what we're seeing and that's what I'm referencing. So I won't give you specific numbers on that, but hopefully, that gives you enough color to kind of didn't get comfortable with it.

Our next question comes from Joanne Wuensch from Citi.

This is Anthony on for Joanne. Could you just talk about your expectations for MiSight and the management portfolio for fiscal '26?

For my side for fiscal '26? Sure. We closed the year out well, right? We had a good solid quarter. I think we're going to have a good year next year. As I mentioned, I think we'll do at least 20%, 25% in fiscal '26. There's a lot of reasons to believe that we're going to be stronger than that. But we also have the tales launch that's happening here in the U.S. So we -- we're building a little conservatism in because of that. I mean right now, it's actually looking like it's a positive because you're just seeing so many people in the optical community talk about myopia control for children and how important it is and how it needs to be standard of care.

So in my mind, there's no question that long term, it's a significant positive and it's a significant positive for MiSight. If I look at just fiscal '26, could that impact our revenues here in the U.S. market a little bit? It could, right? And if it does, we factored that in. That was our assumption, which is if we get negatively impacted because it's the [ less ] in the very short term, the growth on MiSight might come down towards the 20% range. But there's a lot of reasons to be more optimistic. I mean MiSight launching in Japan. That should be a great market. It's not until Q2, but that's come in MyDay MiSight, as I mentioned, is arguably -- I'm going to argue the most innovative thing going on in the contact lens market, probably the most innovative thing by a wide margin going on in the contact lens market right now.

That product launch it in Europe, and we're going to hit a few other countries in Asia as we move through the year. So there's a lot of reasons to be excited about MiSight right now. We'll see how the year plays out.

Next question comes from Brett Fishbin from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Just had a couple of follow-ups on some of the CVI assumptions for FY '26. You were just talking about MiSight, but maybe just drilling into the Japan launch, which I think you mentioned today is planned for 2Q. Was hoping you can maybe just touch on how you're thinking about the longer-term opportunity in that region. And then just coming back specifically to what's expected in the FY '26 guide as a result of that launch.

Sure. Well, let me just be clear because the launch is for MiSight in Japan. We have -- we obviously have MyDay there now, although to be fair, it's pretty new and a lot of the contracts are pretty new. So let me just bifurcate that quickly, right? Because I think that MiSight itself going into Japan for the very first time should be very successful. That's an ophthalmologist market a product like that, that relies on clinical data, and that's the key when it comes to MiSight. I mean there's other things you could do, but MiSight is the only lens with this really strong clinical data. that will go over really well in a country like Japan. So although it's a Q2 launch, it will gain traction as we move through the year, and I would envision that's going to be a really successful product towards the end of '26 and into '27. If I think about Japan on a broader basis, we just didn't have the amount of MyDay capacity that we wanted there. We weren't able to do a number of the private label contracts and so forth that we wanted to because we didn't have product.

As you remember, Brett, right, we stopped being capacity constrained over the summer. We were able to aggressively go into all of Asia Pac, including Japan and start winning the private label contracts. We've won a number of those. We're executing on those now. So the assumption is not anything herculean, it's just that we execute under the contracts that we have and continue to get the product into the marketplace. So relatively straightforward stuff. And that's one of the reasons that we put guidance, that 3.5% to 4.5% in Q1. We did a 3.2% this past quarter. We're not saying that we're going to get a hockey stick immediate ramp up. We're just saying we're going to continue to get consistent, solid, improving performance.

All right. And apologies if I misspoke, I meant to say MiSight. And then just circling back, one other question. You've talked about some of the distributor channel inventory dynamics in the Americas. I was hoping you could just update whether that had any impact on 4Q, either negative or if there was some positive reversion? And then if you're still assuming like a relatively neutral impact there for FY '26.

Sure. Yes, there was really nothing there. At the end of the day, from an inventory perspective, I didn't raise it because there was nothing to talk about.

Our next question comes from David Roman from Goldman Sachs.

I'll just ask two questions here quickly upfront. One is, can you give us just a little bit more detail on the nature of some of the reorganization efforts that you've undertaken here? And then what are some of the actions you're taking to ensure retention. Sometimes with these restructurings, they're unintended consequences of losing the right people, you need to execute the business on a go-forward basis. What are you putting in place to ensure you have the right people to achieve the forward strategic objectives?

Yes, David, good question. On the reorg, it was pretty much across the board with a heavy focus on kind of back office support. So we did look at all of our areas. CooperSurgical a little bit more so because we had some integration-related work and some sales force consolidation there. But there was a lot of leverage opportunity in our support function areas because of all the IT upgrades that we've done. And frankly, you hear people talk about AI all the time. Well, it is real. And when we looked at the AI that we've deployed and our opportunities to leverage it, there were some good opportunities there.

When I look at retention details, I mean, we have fantastic people here with great teams of people who are here and the one thing that we're pushing on our organization right now is that we want everyone to embrace AI continue to embrace it, continue to learn it, make AI your friends, so to speak. I mean, because we made the moves that we needed to make in Q4 and our teams know that. And right now, it's about staying focused on executing, leveraging our growth, making all the appropriate moves. But one of the things that we want to make sure we do here, we always try to do is, first and foremost, we promote from within. And that's just a key point.

I mean if I gave you the stats, you would be amazed at how many promotions we have from within. And we're going to continue to do that. We train our people, and we want our people promoted from within. We want everybody here being successful, making more money and get ahead because we're a growing organization. We just need to do it intelligently so that we can really truly leverage this revenue growth on a go-forward basis. And the company right now is so much more efficient than it was and less bureaucratic that we're in a great spot right now to just do our jobs and execute.

Our next question comes from Anthony Petrone from Mizuho Group.

And maybe one on CV -- I want a strategic review. Just on CVI, maybe a little bit on the private label business, how that trended in the fiscal year where there are bigger opportunities out there that the gain or loss, how is that going to set up for '26 as well just thinking of the private label trend? And then on strategic, maybe just to recap on historically, what are the synergies of having CSI and CVI under 1 umbrella. And then over the years, have you noticed any dissynergies? In other words, has capital allocation between those 2 businesses, has that been an issue that could be resolved if they were 2 separate entities?

Sure. On the private label trends, I would say -- I would probably point to the new private label contracts that we've won in the U.S. and in Europe. There's some exciting stuff there. I'm not going to go too far into it, but you'll see some of it because it will be hitting and making itself public in that in maybe even January, but February, March time frame. So I think that's going to set us up well for -- again, for Q3 and Q4 this year to be good quarters for us. So I like the momentum that we have in Asia Pac in some different areas, but I'm probably equally excited about some of the newer contracts that we've won and that we'll be rolling out. On the strategic synergies, I would say, from a capital perspective, we have always invested in CooperVision first and foremost. That's our main driver. We put our dollars there. You've seen that over the years in terms of new manufacturing lines and distribution center upgrades and IT upgrades and so forth. We've also done a number of deals, as you know, at CooperSurgical as we built that business out.

But the last one we did was over a year ago, we did a little tuck-in in August of last year. So it's been a little while there. We've got a great business there, right? [indiscernible] has pulled everything together and has a really much more efficient business today than it was a year or so ago.

And we -- because of that, we've been able to do that work and reallocate our capital, if you will, to share repurchases, and we're going to continue to focus in that area. So I would say that there's been no negative at all from a capital allocation perspective. The synergies that we have are back-office synergies largely. And I talked about that and how we're just doing all that stuff more intelligently, but it's still back-office-type synergies. Those businesses still to a great degree run separately.

That concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Al White for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone. As you could tell, we had an incredible amount of work that was completed in this last quarter. And I'm excited that we were able to get on the phone with everyone today and go through those details and present it. And we look forward to speaking with everyone over the coming weeks. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.