STERIS - Earnings Call - Q4 2025
May 15, 2025
Executive Summary
- Q4 FY2025 delivered a clean top- and bottom-line beat: revenue $1.481B vs $1.467B consensus* and adjusted EPS $2.74 vs $2.599 consensus*, with constant-currency organic growth of 6% and expanding EBIT margin to 24.8% driven by price/mix and productivity.
- FY2026 outlook initiated: revenue growth 6–7% (as-reported and organic), adjusted EPS $9.90–$10.15 despite a ~$30M pre-tax tariff headwind; tax rate ~23.5%; capex ~$375M; FCF ~$770M.
- Segment mix healthy: Healthcare revenue +5% (service +13%, consumables +6%, capital -4%); AST +9%; Life Sciences -7% (CECS divestiture and lower capital), with Life Sciences margins up on mix/price.
- Cash generation and balance sheet strong: record FY free cash flow $787M and gross debt/EBITDA ≈1.4x; company increased buybacks in FY25 and retains capacity for M&A.
What Went Well and What Went Wrong
What Went Well
- Price/mix and productivity drove margin expansion: Q4 gross margin to 44.3% (+170 bps YoY) and EBIT margin to 24.8% (+110 bps YoY); ~210 bps of price in Q4.
- Recurring revenue engine: Q4 total recurring revenue grew to $1.109B (service +7.3% YoY; consumables +6.5% YoY), supporting durability through cycles.
- Clear FY26 plan despite tariffs: “Our fiscal 2026 outlook of $9.90 to $10.15 includes $30 million of tariff costs... The EPS range implies 7% to 10% growth” (CEO).
What Went Wrong
- Life Sciences revenue -7% YoY on CECS divestiture and capital softness; capital -16%, service -21% in Q4.
- Healthcare capital equipment down 4% YoY in Q4; management flagged shipment timing and customer project delays in recent quarters.
- EO-related items and legal spend: a $48.15M Illinois EO litigation settlement recorded in Q4; FY26 cash outflow ~$40M reduces FCF vs FY25.
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the STERIS plc Fourth Quarter 2025 Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touch-tone phones. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Julie Winter, Investor Relations. Ma'am, please go ahead.
Julie Winter (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications)
Thank you, Jamie, and good morning, everyone. As usual, speaking on today's call will be Mike Tokich, our Senior Vice President and CFO, and Dan Carestio, our President and CEO. I do have a few words of caution before we open for comments. This webcast contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call without the express written consent of STERIS is strictly prohibited. Some of the statements made during this review are or may be considered forward-looking statements. Many important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, including without limitation, those risk factors described in STERIS's Securities Filings. The company does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments.
STERIS's SEC filings are available through the company and on our website. In addition, on today's call, non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted earnings per diluted share, adjusted operating income, constant currency organic revenue growth, and free cash flow, will be used. Additional information regarding these measures, including definitions, is available in our release, as well as reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures are presented during this call with the intent of providing greater transparency to supplemental financial information used by Management and the Board of Directors in their financial analysis and operational decision-making. With those cautions, I'll hand the call over to Mike.
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
Thank you, Julie. Good morning, everyone. It is once again my pleasure to be with you this morning to review the highlights of our fourth quarter performance from continuing operations. For the fourth quarter, total as reported revenue grew 4%. Constant currency organic revenue grew 6% in the quarter, driven by volume as well as 210 basis points of price. Gross margin for the quarter increased 170 basis points compared with the prior year to 44.3%. Positive price, favorable mix, and productivity outpaced labor inflation. EBIT margin increased 110 basis points to 24.8% of revenue compared with last year. The adjusted effective tax rate in the quarter was 23.5%. The year-over-year increase was driven by unfavorable discrete item adjustments. Net income from continuing operations in the quarter was $270 million. Adjusted earnings per diluted share from continuing operations was $2.74, a 14% increase over the prior year.
We are pleased with our ability to grow earnings double-digits all year with lower interest expense following the divestiture of the dental segment. Capital expenditures for fiscal 2025 total $370 million, while depreciation and amortization totaled $476 million. We continue to pay down debt during the quarter, ending with $2 billion in total debt. Gross debt to EBITDA at quarter end was approximately 1.4x. Free cash flow for fiscal 2025 was a record, $787 million, well above our full-year guidance, driven by significant working capital improvements, in particular inventory. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dan for his remarks.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to hear more about our fiscal 2025 performance and our outlook for fiscal 2026. Mike covered the quarter, so I will touch on our performance for the full year and our outlook for fiscal 2026. From a total company perspective, we ended the year with 6% revenue growth and 12% earnings growth. The diversified nature of our business allowed us to deliver results in line with our original outlook, despite a few obstacles during the year. Looking at our segments, healthcare constant currency organic revenue grew 6% for the year, led by strong recurring revenue streams. Our outperformance in Consumables and services continues to be driven by procedure volumes in the U.S., as well as price and market share gains. Healthcare capital equipment revenue declined 5% for the year against our record year last year.
Capital equipment orders grew over 12% for the full year as underlying demand remained strong. Margins improved nicely in Healthcare, hitting the 25% mark for the year, with volume, pricing, and positive productivity offsetting labor inflation. Towards the end of the year, we also began to benefit from the restructuring cost savings, capturing approximately $5 million in savings in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. Turning to AST, constant currency organic revenue grew 9% for the year, with 7% growth in services. Med device customers remained stable, while bioprocessing was a bit lumpy during the year. Capital equipment shipments more than doubled compared to the prior year and exceeded our expectations. EBIT margins for AST were 44.8%, down slightly year-over-year as we continue to face energy and labor headwinds and had a negative mix shift from capital equipment shipments.
Constant currency organic revenue increased 1% for Life Sciences for the full year, driven once again by strong growth in Consumables and services offset by a decline in capital equipment revenue. Margins increased to 42.3%, a 360 basis point improvement, benefiting from favorable mix, pricing, and the divestiture of the CECS business. From an earnings perspective, we ended the year strong and exceeded our revised outlook with an adjusted EPS of $9.22. The upside to our estimates was driven by lower corporate spending and improved profitability in both Healthcare and the Life Science segments. Turning to our outlook for fiscal 2026, as noted in the press release, we anticipate as reported revenue from continuing operations to grow 6%-7% in fiscal 2026. We do not have any acquisition or divestiture impacts heading into the new fiscal year, and changes in foreign currency are expected to be neutral to STERIS.
As a result, constant currency organic revenue growth is also expected to grow 6%-7%. Included in this outlook is approximately 200 basis points of price. Each segment is expected to grow revenue in the range of 6%-7% for fiscal 2026. One minor note on AST revenue growth: our outlook reflects high single-digit growth in Services revenue, which will be somewhat offset by a decline in capital equipment to get to the 6%-7% growth total for the year. As you saw in the press release, we have estimated the impact for tariffs for fiscal 2026, which are reflected in our outlook. We manufacture a significant number of products in North America for use in the U.S., with about 85% of the products sold in the U.S. coming from North American manufacturing. This significantly reduces our tariff exposure compared to many others.
We are not immune to the impact of tariffs. Our fiscal 2026 outlook of $9.90-$10.15 includes $30 million of tariff costs. The EPS range implies 7%-10% growth in earnings, including tariffs, which is impressive performance. I want to take a moment to thank our supply chain and commercial teams for all their efforts on this front. The anticipated tariff impact is a net number. We do expect to leverage the strength of STERIS to mitigate some of our exposure. The $30 million estimate is based on global tariffs currently in effect, including the 10% global tariff and the recently announced 90-day trade deal with China. For your modeling purposes, at the high end of our earnings range, we would expect EBIT margins to increase approximately 20 basis points, reflecting our ability to offset tariffs. The effective tax rate is planned at approximately 23.5%.
As we enter into the new fiscal year, we are well-positioned to deliver both top and bottom-line growth in 2026. That concludes our prepared marks for the call. Julie, would you please give the instructions so that we can begin the Q&A?
Julie Winter (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications)
Thank you, Mike and Dan, for your comments. Jamie, can you please give the instructions for Q&A, and we'll get started?
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin that question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touch-tone phones. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up your handset prior to pressing the keys to ensure the best sound quality. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Again, that is star and then one to join the question queue. Our first question today comes from Dave Turkaly from Citizens. Please go ahead with your question.
David Turkaly (Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Hey, good morning and congrats on the quarter and the year. I guess we're looking at the segments, the biggest implied deltas and then that Life Sciences. And I was just curious to get some color on your comfort in that kind of bouncing back to that 6%-7% range.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Yeah, we did extremely well this year in our recurring revenues, especially our chemistries and Consumables business. We would expect that to continue. Where we were down significantly was obviously capital equipment. With a lot of uncertainty in pharma, the orders just dried up in the first half of the year. However, we saw a really strong rebound late in the year, and we are coming into fiscal 2026 with a pretty good backlog and a pretty good rate of orders. We are confident that we will be able to deliver the bulk of those in fiscal 2026 and continue on with the growth that we have seen historically within our Consumables business.
David Turkaly (Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Great. As one quick follow-up, it seems like the tariff impact might be, I do not know, $0.24 or something like that on the EPS line. Yet you are still getting into a double-digit range at the high end. I guess if you could just talk about some of the puts and takes, maybe even on the interest expense. I know you have delivered a bunch, but to get to that, even despite the tariffs, just maybe some color there.
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
Yeah, Dave, this is Mike. As normal, there's quite a bit of headwinds or tailwinds or puts and takes. First and foremost, we are going to benefit from about $20 million of restructuring cost savings that will be in FY 2026. That's a good guy. In addition to that, we do not anticipate spending +$20 million in ETO litigation. We anticipate spending about $5 million, so there's $15 million to the good also. Offsetting that is incentive comp getting back to 100% bonus. That is a -$15 million. Obviously, the tariffs are another -$15 million. If you look at our lower interest expense, it's really going to offset our higher tax rate. That's just the reconciliation for FY 2026 of the puts and takes.
David Turkaly (Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Thank you.
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
You're welcome.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Mike Matson from Needham & Company. Please go ahead with your question.
Mike Matson (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director)
Yeah, thanks. Just your cash flow guidance is a little bit down from 2025. I know you called out the working capital improvement you saw in 2025. I mean, is that the main kind of differential between the two years?
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
The big thing, Mike, is we anticipate paying a $40 million legal settlement for ETO, which is in FY 2026. That is going to negatively impact cash by $40 million. Of course, we are not anticipating to overachieve or reduce inventory as dramatically as we had in FY 2025. The big difference is the ETO legal fees, plus the impact of tariffs will negatively impact free cash flow also.
Mike Matson (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director)
Okay, got it. And then just your leverage ratio is down quite a bit. So just maybe you can give us an update on M&A. I'd expect you'd probably be looking to do some more deals if you can find things, but.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, this is Dan. What I would say, Mike, is that we have the capacity both from a financial perspective and from an intellectual perspective at this point, having not done any meaningful M&A now for a few years. If the right opportunity presents itself, we'll be involved.
Mike Matson (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director)
Okay, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Patrick Wood from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.
Patrick Wood (Managing Director)
Awesome. Thanks, [Sigmund]. Just two quick ones. It's probably too early to say, but how have the conversations with the customers been around potentially onshoring back to the U.S.? I'm trying to think of, I know some of the outsourced contract manufacturers have seen a big pickup in people trying to pull production back. I'm just curious, is that something that you think is actually going to happen, or is it more just a nice bullet point on a McKinsey slide?
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
It's probably the latter. I do think there are some opportunities. I assume you're talking about med tech in particular, but I do think there are some opportunities. Many of those large companies have manufacturing for local regions. To the extent that they may be manufacturing in Europe for the U.S. and they have U.S.-based manufacturing for similar products, you may see some shift of volumes going east or west, depending on the benefit that they can do in terms of tariff and how easy it is to do it. Keep in mind, highly regulated industry, it's not easy to move production volumes if they don't have all the regulatory permits and things like that. It takes time. There'll be some fluidity to it, I'm sure.
Patrick Wood (Managing Director)
That's awesome. Just quickly around kind of that M&A angle again, what have you been hearing from some of the smaller players, niche app compliance costs, all those sorts of things? Is there a situation where I know capacity is tight, but is there a situation where they end up having to force sell themselves essentially to you guys or your peers? How do you think about industry consolidation on the back of the kind of one-off costs there?
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
I mean, in a general sense, I do think there'll be some industry consolidation, but we'd be in a much better position greenfielding than we would be buying assets that are 30+ years old.
Patrick Wood (Managing Director)
I mean, I'm 40, so I take offense at that, but thanks, guys.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
You have been compliant your whole life.
Patrick Wood (Managing Director)
That's definitely not true.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Mac Etoch from Stephens Inc. Please go ahead with your question.
Mac Etoch (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, good morning. I'll add my congrats on the quarter and the year as well. Maybe just touching on the outlook for FY 2026, you commented on AST kind of coming in line with the 6%-7% growth for the year. Low single-digits for capital equipment, high single-digits for Services. Can you flush out what you're seeing within the respective customer bases there? I think there's a little bit of a delta between what maybe I and the street were expecting versus your internal expectations. If you could just provide us a little color there, that'd be great.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Yeah, I think what we're doing here is we've seen a lot of just movement month to month, quarter-to-quarter in terms of volume. It has started to sort of modulate down. Our view is let's take a little more conservative approach on how aggressively some of the Bioprocessing is going to recover and also as customers reassess where they're manufacturing and if there is any movement going on and what implications that may have on total volume.
Mac Etoch (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. And then just in light of the current macro and everything that's going on with general policy, how are conversations progressing with clients? Have there been any change in behaviors relating to Life Sciences or the AST segment?
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Nothing that I would point to. There's a number of discussions, but I can't say there's anything concrete.
David Turkaly (Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Thank you for taking my questions. Appreciate it.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Sure thing.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Michael Polark from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Mike Polark (Senior Equity Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Hey, good morning. Maybe two on Healthcare. The first one, the allusion to market share gains driving growth in the fiscal year and quarter. I know we've talked about this before, but is there any service or business line that really stands out to you there as to STERIS doing way better than market? If so, what is it and what's going right?
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Honestly, I would say it's just across the entire segment right now. Our teams are just doing a phenomenal job, in particular in the North American markets, that we've just built out such a great portfolio and enterprise solution for large systems around sterile processing in particular and all the services that go along with that that we continue to do really well.
Mike Polark (Senior Equity Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
For the fiscal year ahead, 6%-7% growth for the Healthcare segment, would you call out any expected variances between how Consumables, services, and equipment should grow in 2026?
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
No, we're not going to provide that level of granularity. I will hit back on the fact that we had a great order year for that bodes well in terms of backlog for capital going in next year. We are optimistic about that.
Mike Polark (Senior Equity Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Jason Bednar from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead with your question.
Jason Bednar (Managing Director)
Hey, morning, everyone. Nice finish to the year here. Wanted to see if we could spend just maybe a bit more time on tariffs. Really topical for all companies here this quarter. Maybe break down, if you could, what that $30 million looks like across your network. I think I know you had $30 million in the press release. Mike, I think you made just some comment at one point, I think very early on, around $15 million. Just want to confirm it's $30 million net. If possible, break down maybe again how much exposure you have here around China-related tariffs and then how much on the non-China side. It would just be helpful just so we can update our own thinking as we see the next updates on the tariff front.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
I mean, just, Dan, and I'll let Mike add to this, but at a high level, it's about half China and half sort of the 10% global tariff, and it's about $30 million.
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
No more to add on that.
Jason Bednar (Managing Director)
All right. I like it. I think you said that $30 million, again, is a net number. Are you assuming any mitigation actions in that $30 million figure? Kind of what does the pacing of that activity look like throughout fiscal 2026? I'll just sneak in one extra here. It looks like share repo was a little lighter in the fourth quarter compared to the prior few quarters, but the stock's been hanging around a similar level now for some time, well off its highs. Maybe just talk about the decision to pause some of that activity, and is there a signal we should draw from that pause?
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
Yeah, I would say that in general, we had bought about $200 million of shares during FY 2025. We had bought those earlier in the year compared to the previous year. I would say there's no signal that we're driving there. It is almost double what we've typically bought, just offset dilution. Obviously, with our debt levels and debt ratios being where they are, we would definitely consider doing additional share buybacks beyond our just offsetting dilution in the future.
Jason Bednar (Managing Director)
Sorry, on the mitigation activity on tariffs?
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
Yeah, the $30 million is a net number, Jason, so it's significantly higher than that. Obviously, there's a lot to be done to mitigate. Timing is always the question. Obviously, our supply chain guys and girls are working very hard to offset as much as possible. Yeah, it's a net number of $30 million, and we anticipate that that will hit us about equally throughout the calendar year.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Yeah, I would just add to that, with the 90-day pause or sort of redirect on the China tariffs, it gives us an opportunity to be much more strategic and thoughtful in terms of anything that we're changing as it relates to either vendors or manufacturing location or supply. I would expect more weight on the back end.
Julie Winter (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications)
I don't think we've said this: more weight on Healthcare. They're primarily impacting the Healthcare segment with a little bit in Life Sciences.
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
Very little, if any, in AST.
Jason Bednar (Managing Director)
All right. Very good. Thank you, everyone.
Michael Tokich (Senior VP, CFO, and Treasurer)
You're welcome.
Operator (participant)
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one. Our next question comes from Brett Fishman from KeyBanc. Please go ahead with your question.
Brett Fishman (VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. Thank you very much for taking the questions, and good morning. Just wanted to ask another question on Healthcare capital equipment. Sounds like you're not trying to give specific guidance on growth, but maybe just talk a little bit more about the capital equipment backdrop. You're exiting the year with some growth in the backlog, but really just curious how some of the recent macro developments have impacted either ordering patterns or hospitals' willingness to do implementations versus any deferrals you may be seeing.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
We've talked about this a lot in the past, and that is the capital equipment that we offer is really more of a utility than a luxury item. If you're going to see procedural growth and migration of procedures to different places, you can't accommodate that growth without having sterile processing capacity or surgical suites. At times when it may impact replacement business, if those things can be deferred, it doesn't really impact the new equipment in terms of going into expansions. We had a great order year last year, growing orders 12%. We've got our backlog into a very comfortable position. We haven't seen anything at this point that would indicate that that's slowing for us and, in fact, had really good volume in terms of orders going into Q1. We're excited about the opportunity there.
Brett Fishman (VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
All right. Just as a follow-up, I'm going to switch gears a little bit to AST. I think it was a pretty good sequential progression in FY 2025 from an AST growth standpoint. Just looking at FY 2026, for services, it sounds like high single-digits is kind of the starting point. I'm just curious, if demand were to be higher than expected, do you have enough capacity to theoretically return to double-digit growth in AST service, or is capacity starting to become a little bit of a limiting factor? Thank you very much.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Sure. It's not a governor for us right now. We are well-positioned to accommodate the industry's growth.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is a follow-up from Michael Polark from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead with your follow-up.
Mike Polark (Senior Equity Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Thank you. Just one more also on AST. As you reflect on fiscal 2025 in the services line, the December quarter was up 10%, March quarter up 6%. Dan, it sounds like bioprocess is a little lumpy. Is that the gyration or anything else to kind of spike out on the phasing of the last 12 months that makes more sense to you? My one other idea is any evidence that there was kind of front-loading of inventory building ahead of the Trump tariff era in the December quarter? Could that have been an influence in that period? Any other color would be great. Thank you.
Dan Carestio (President and CEO)
Sure. Yeah, no, we did not see that in terms of anybody front-loading tariff. I think you're giving the industry way too much credit to be able to see that coming. What I would say is we had a phenomenal December, an extraordinary December in terms of year-over-year comps. Nobody showed up for the first seven days of January. Just the plant restarts from a customer perspective was very abnormally slow this year, one day shorter of February in terms of processing days. We had a wonderful second half of February and March in terms of growth. Overall, those things impacted the quarter. I do not think it was anything more than that.
Mike Polark (Senior Equity Research Analyst of Medical Devices)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.
Julie Winter (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications)
Thanks, everybody, for taking the time to join us this morning. We look forward to catching up with many of you in the coming weeks.
Operator (participant)
With that, ladies and gentlemen, we'll conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.