Becton Dickinson at Barclays Conference: Strategic Medtech Shift

On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX) presented at the Barclays 27th Annual Global Healthcare Conference, outlining its strategic focus on separating its Life Sciences business to enhance shareholder value and concentrating on its medtech division. The company is navigating both opportunities and challenges, including leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and addressing potential market fluctuations.

Key Takeaways

• Becton Dickinson plans to separate its Life Sciences business to focus on medtech growth.
• The medtech business has consistently grown over 6% annually for the past three years.
• The company is integrating AI across its platforms to improve clinical outcomes.
• Significant margin improvements have been achieved, with a 370 basis point increase in gross margin.
• The company is actively monitoring potential challenges such as changes in Medicaid funding and research spending.

Financial Results

• Medtech business growth: Over 6% annually for the last three years, with 6.3% growth last year.
• Edwards Critical Care acquisition reported 8% growth in Q1.
• Biologics business has grown by over $800 million since the start of BD2025.
• Interventional segment growth has been in the 6-7% range since the Bard acquisition.
• Gross margin improved by 370 basis points.

Operational Updates

• Launching the next-generation Pyxis system with a new AI platform this year.
• Biopharma Solutions is experiencing strong growth, especially in biologics and GLP-1s.
• PureWick is projected to become a $1 billion opportunity by 2030, with the first mobile version launching this year.

Future Outlook

• Becton Dickinson plans to announce the form of the Life Sciences transaction this summer.
• Continued investment in R&D, particularly in the interventional segment.
• Long-term margin targets are set as part of the BD2030 strategy.

Q&A Highlights

• There is significant external interest in the Life Sciences asset.
• The company is considering selling different parts of the Life Sciences business to different locations.
• AI integration is a priority to enhance efficiency and outcomes across various business lines.

For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Barclays 27th Annual Global Healthcare Conference:

Unidentified speaker: The med tech focus going forward. Yes.

Tom, Executive, BD: Thanks, and it’s great to be here. Thanks for having us. Sure. So I’d say our announcement is actually a very much a continuation of our strategy, right? Over the last many years, we’ve been focused on building a growth oriented med tech company.

And we’ve been doing exactly that. And if you look at capital allocation, whether or not it was CareFusion, Bard or essentially every other tuck in that we did, it was driving a growth oriented medtech business and we can talk about that. If you actually look at the med tech side of BD, it’s been growing north of 6% every year for the last three years, six point three percent last year, 6.1 year before that and about 6.7% just excluding BDB and DS reinforcing that point. And we can talk about some of the drivers that we’re really excited about as we go forward. Of course, we also recently did the acquisition of Edwards Critical Care business that’s off to a great start 8% growth in Q1.

And that’s not included in those numbers as we look at anniversarying that in Q late in Q4. And at the same time, we’ve been reflecting on what the opportunity to what the opportunity is to unlock value from life sciences, which is a fantastic business inside of BD. We’ve been investing in that more organically over the last many years. But one that we think is undervalued in the company and that the separation can unlock new value for the new BD as we redeploy and reinvest capital from or the value from the sale of that sale or RMT or spin.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. And maybe just a follow-up on the means of separation, the mode, the pathway to separation. I’m sure you’re getting a ton of questions about that. Maybe talk a little bit about what we can expect in the coming months about more color on which way you think it’s it’s going to go?

Tom, Executive, BD: So we’ve shared that we expect to announce the form of the transaction this summer. And just a little background. So we’ve also shared that we began the process of looking at our portfolio in the first half of last year of 24 working group of our Board etcetera and that culminated obviously in the announcement that we made. As we think about the form of the transaction, maybe just another point is the discussions with interested parties did not start at our press release. It was ongoing well before that.

There’s a significant amount of interest in the asset that’s only come up raised up even more after the announcement. And so all of those three forms RMT, sales, spin, they all create value for our shareholders. Obviously, some can create outsized value. And typically that’s associated with where you have synergies that you can capture that as part of incremental value. And obviously that’s a sale and a spin or a sale in a RMT, sorry.

And we’ll announce more as we go forward, but we again see significant external interest in the asset and we’re focused on maximizing shareholder value.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Another question that we get is, I mean, these are terrific sort of long term growth businesses and part of the portfolio for a long time, but there’s some argument that maybe they belong in different places or you might have different interests in different parts of these businesses. So maybe talk about your the possibility that we might wind up with a transaction that sends them to different locations? We’re

Tom, Executive, BD: focused on again maximizing shareholder value. That’s certainly a possibility. There’s interest in as you described that, there’s interest in both together quite a bit. But we’ll get as we go through our process, we’re not against that concept if it were to maximize shareholder value, but certainly there’s ease and focus for new BD to do a single transaction. But again, we’re focused on maximizing shareholder value, whatever that scenario is.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. So now the second part of the question, sort of shifting to new BD. This does the separation does kind of, I’d say, unlock maybe or open up some flexibility in the way the company can invest in R and D. It kind of provides you with some opportunities to invest internally and strategically. Maybe talk a little bit about where you see some of those opportunities?

Tom, Executive, BD: Yes. So, as you look at how we’ve organized the new BD into four specific segments, maybe if I just walk through those, we can talk about some of those opportunities that we’re really excited about. First off, just given the context of today’s environment, it’s I think it’s important to start with our medical essentials business, right? It’s a business that as you look at periods of economic uncertainty, it’s really thrived. I think BD is traditionally when the risk of a recession or economic slowdown comes up, BD is typically top two or so performers in those environments.

And that’s because of that durability of our medical essentials business, right? No matter what type of care people need, they need BD, right? Ninety percent plus of anyone having any medical procedure will be touched by a BD device. And those procedures can change in different economic climates, but all of them need BD. As you think about the other three businesses, which are even higher growth, start with Connected Care, we’re really excited about the next generation Pyxis that’s launching later this year, very much on track combined with our first AI platform that cuts across all of the BD systems and we’ll be announcing more details on that.

But it’s a new system that BD Pyxis Pro will be the first platform to leverage that new AI platform that eventually all BD systems will be tapped into. Obviously, the APM business we’re really excited about, off to a great start on integration. A number of new exciting launches taking place there and we view that as not just a one off acquisition of the Edwards Critical Care business, but a new growth platform for us to invest in into adjacent spaces in the future. As we look at our biopharma solutions business, we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities ahead there. We’ve built over the last five years the world’s largest drug delivery company for biologics.

If you just look back to when we started BD twenty twenty five, we’ve grown that business more than $800,000,000 and the vast majority of that has been in biologics, which we said is now more than $1,000,000,000 business for us. By the way, when we say biologics, we exclude vaccines, which many companies do combine. GLP-1s are the main driver of that category. There’s others as well, but we couldn’t be more excited also by the pipeline that we have with GLP-1s. Not only GLP-1s are on market today, but we have quite a healthy mix of new GLP-1s coming to market that we may read about as well as we now have over 40 GLP-one biosimilars signed in our devices, both our auto injectors and pens as well as our prefilled syringes.

So great growth trajectory there also wearables, our new Libertas platform and Evolv platforms. As you look at new therapies that are going to not be delivered in infusion centers, but delivered in the comfort of one’s home, delivered by the patient themselves, those two platforms ideally fit with that new those new classes of molecules coming to market. And we’ve got the first molecules in clinical studies are at clinical trials already away for Libertas moving forward. And then finally, if we look at our interventional segment, that’s been growing in that 6%, seven % range since we essentially since we bought Bard. We see continued strong growth there with a number of exciting platforms.

So PureWick, we’ve talked about being a $1,000,000,000 opportunity by 02/1930, certainly well on its way, big trial underway right now for at home reimbursement that really unlocks. We have great business at home, but it can be many times larger with the support of reimbursement. We have the first mobile PureWick launching later this year for people who are wheelchair bound and then we have essentially every year thereafter new launches coming there. On the surgery side, our acquisition of TIFA, which is for P4HB, it’s a biomaterial that essentially allows tissue reconstruction and the biomaterial is fully absorbed and disappears within about eighteen months. We now are up to seven year data showing it’s just as good as plastic mesh in repairing abdominal issues.

And we’ve basically been serially innovating to replace plastic mesh. We have other solutions coming with that including we’ve started to enroll first patients for breast cancer indication or breast indication. And the first one there is for the use in preventing basically a side effect of implants. And then we have two other ones that we expect to be starting enrollment and moving forward here in the next year or so. So really exciting opportunities within the surgery and other near adjacent spaces and finally in the peripheral vascular space and PI.

So that business has been growing high single digits for us. We’ve got a number of new exciting launches coming in that next year. And we see overall if we look at interventional, we see a lot of opportunities from a continued tuck in M and A strategy that was core to Bard’s success. It’s been core to our continued success since we’ve bought them. We certainly see that as a high margin, high growth platform that we’ll continue to invest disproportionately in new BD as well.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. And then then thinking about the flexibility that the separation provides in the P and L and maybe talking about some of the margin expansion and improvements in cash flows that have been part of your execution over the last year or two. What incremental do you feel like you’re going to where are you going to apply some of those resources? Is it to accelerate some of the programs you talked about, Tom? Is it to bring up the size or scope of M and A given the sort of capacity and sort of cash flow bandwidth experience maybe that you’ve gained?

Chris, Executive, BD: Yes. I’ll touch on that one. So a couple of things. One, you see us driving significant margin improvement, most notably in gross margin. It started at the back end of last year.

This year, we had three seventy basis points improvement in gross margin. Is driven by we’re very early innings here, but our BD excellence system across BD, that’s manufacturing, we’re rolling it out in commercial and R and D as well, but just significant progress there. The principle of BD excellence is driving kind of a zero waste mindset, optimizing the throughput and max potential of our manufacturing lines. We’re still very early innings there. So not only is that an exciting time now, but as you think of kind of our next BD2030, you should expect to see that continued momentum of driving margin improvement that will meaningfully drive earnings, cash flow through 02/1930 mostly driven by gross margin.

But I think importantly to your question and you see us doing that this year actually in Q1, we’re taking that benefit and we’re over investing in R and D. We’re actually driving R and D investment above sales growth. So we’re deleveraging R and D and we’re very targeted in commercial go to market and selling driving outsized investment there. I think when you look across our portfolio, interventional is an area that’s differentially getting those investments. We see that as a high growth space that we want to continue to invest in both organically and inorganically.

And I think from an M and A standpoint as well, you’ll we see a ton of opportunity as well in interventional. Tom kind of gave some examples of platforms, both in surgery, our urinary incontinence franchise, peripheral vascular disease are areas and examples where we’ll continue to invest. You saw us also this year with the acquisition of APM, which we said was accretive across the board, nice contributor to growth. Pro form a growth in the quarter was 8%. Again, we’ve actually added investment above what they were doing in selling and R and D, driving closed loop innovation program in R and D with our Alaris infusion pump.

So I think that gives you some examples. And basically the spirit of this is, UBD has a much more focused medtech growth profile. The impact of BD excellence is going to differentially impact BD. That’s where you still have a lot of our core large manufacturing. So it’s actually sort of accretive to the benefit that you would expect to get out of BD excellence.

As a nice mid single digit growth profile, but importantly with that targeted capital allocation, we’re not done with that growth profile. We’re going to continue to add both through organic prioritization and inorganic investment continue to drive that growth profile up.

Tom, Executive, BD: And I think with the margin expansion that Chris talked about, we’re in early innings there. BDxcellence, we just started in the last two years. And to think about how we’ve scaled that is I couldn’t be more proud of the team. And we started with just teaching the organization about the Kaizen principles of which are behind BD excellence. Obviously, we’d also started our manufacturing network consolidation strategy as part of Recode, which has now come together under this.

But we did two fifty Kaizen as part of BDXcellence in year one. We did 500 last year. We’re going to do 1,000 plus this year. We already did more than two fifty just in Q1. And expect as we get into our BD2030 strategy, etcetera, we’ll start putting out long term margin targets on the gross margin side, just given our focus there and the runway that we see left, right?

And then the ability as Chris described to reinvest portion of that in accelerating organic revenue growth, more again, outside selling investment to drive revenue growth, That’s really part of our flywheel strategy as we look ahead. And in a more concentrated focused new BD, we see a lot of opportunity for significant value.

Unidentified speaker: Great. That’s exciting. So we have about nine minutes left. I’d encourage anyone who has a burning question to put up their hand and jump in. But we wouldn’t be covering the current market environment, the first fifty days of the new administration if we didn’t touch on some of the questions that have come out of that, including the potential impact of changes in Medicaid funding, potentially changes in staffing at health agencies.

In what ways can you talk about things like hospital risk to hospital budgets, maybe risk to access, how you’re looking at them now? I’ll leave kind of tariffs off the table because they’ve kind of been on and off and we think they’re on, but maybe just to focus on those two.

Tom, Executive, BD: Yes. As I mentioned, I’ll be flying to D. C. Again tonight. We’ve been spending a bit more time there than usual lately, but so we’ll know more.

But maybe just if I step back at a macro perspective, so a few of the things that we’re watching, obviously research spending, particularly as with the current PD structure, something we watch closely. Obviously, the news from reduced NIH investments is something that caught customers and researchers gave them pause to look at what the implications are for them. That’s something we watch very closely, both in The U. S. As well as in Europe, any implications of increased military spending and how government priorities may change related to healthcare and or research.

I think that’s something that just one needs to watch as we go forward. And then obviously China as well and the recovery timing of that and specifically again recovery in the research sector, which you’ve seen depressed research spending in China as well. So research globally is something that we monitor the dynamics that are going on. In terms of healthcare investment and Medicare, Medicaid cuts, it’s still early for that too, right? It’s not as definitive in terms of specific timing or scale, etcetera.

So I think that’s something everyone’s watching, but more to be determined. I think many of our solutions as we look at particularly our Connected Care segment, right? Take our one of our great growth platforms that we’ve built here over the last several years, our pharmacy robotics business or even our medication management connected care portfolio. It’s really one of the best applications actually I think the largest the second largest robotics business I believe in med tech now, our pharmacy robotics business, but it’s one that’s purely focused on efficiency, right, and helping people navigate cost constrained environments with less labor and improving outcomes at the same time. And there’s other robotics that are obviously more focused on clinical outcome improvement, whether or not they improve efficiency is a separate topic.

As we think about connected care and automation, there’s a big, big focus on efficiency improvements as part of ours, which fits in well in difficult environment.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Okay. So maybe then circling back on some of the opportunities for investment and growth. You’d mentioned AI often. You just mentioned this platform that some of the equipment is plugging into now.

I’d like to talk a little bit more about what you can tell us about how AI is integrating either in a business line or across the backbone of businesses. And then in the time we have left, love to understand a little bit more about sort of like the milestones and pathway to this Alaris APM integration that you’ve referenced a couple of times since the transaction?

Tom, Executive, BD: Okay. So we’ll start I think as you look at our journey, I think our first AI application was FDA approved more than five years ago, right, which was really the first one that BD had cleared was on Keystra, which is using AI to read Petri dishes, right? And it actually had five, ten clearances where microbiologists are not involved at all in the decision process. It says test positive or negative and then actually discards the samples if they’re negative and reports the results out. So that was our first application.

We then used it as part of our medication management strategy in a partnership with Microsoft several years ago to start looking at helping customers understand where narcotic diversion could be happening in hospitals. And that was has been quite a successful platform. Obviously, the Advanced Patient Monitoring business has a phenomenal team around data analytics and AI and they are on multiple different platforms now with AI enabled hardware consumables with the software that are helping to predict for example in the future that someone’s blood pressure may precipitously drop fifteen minutes from now before it happens. So the intervention can be done. Maybe I’ll pivot to them the opportunities that we see with Alaris and that combined.

One of the things that brought us to Edwards Critical Care was as we spend time with our customers on the infusion side and we ask them what would be your dream scenario if you could add additional features from infusion platform? What is it that no one offers that is game changing in your mind? And one of the things that they mentioned is interconnected hemodynamic monitoring. If you’re not familiar with it, hemodynamic monitoring is monitoring someone essentially their blood pressure in a very specific detailed way. And after surgery, particularly heart surgery, but many types of surgeries, you can have big swings, right, it going two eighty and that’s just damaging your kidneys, your other organs, it’s not good for your body.

There’s major implications of that. And today the way it works is, it would be essentially like giving you a thermometer and saying keep this room plus or minus a tenth of a degree and there’s the thermostat on the wall. Just keep staring at the thermometer and keep adjusting the thermostat. That’s how it works in a ICU today, right? They look at the Edwards monitor and then they adjust the infusion pump, because hemodynamic is pressure of fluid going in more or less fluid.

So you need to change flow rates and medications that are contricting or expanding one’s vessels and that’s how they manage. And there’s no need for that, right? Today, we don’t do that with a thermometer. You just set the temperature and it manages itself. That’s the vision with the combination of the Edwards monitor and our infusion pump platform.

And we’ve actually already formed a we have a core team that’s working. We already have prototypes of that. It will take we’re not sharing the time on that yet, but I couldn’t be more excited by the early momentum. I’ve never seen an R and D team get stood up prototyping and as focused as this team considering we’re just over a quarter really into the post close, Q1 was our first one. So more to come, think about as we get towards the next Analyst Day, which will reschedule towards the end of this fiscal year going into next.

And we’ll share more at that point in time. Okay. And then on the broader AI side, so as I mentioned, we have individual platforms products that have been using AI. The launch of the Pyxus Pro and the platform that we’ll be launching there will be the first AI platform that will be standardized more of an umbrella platform that BD devices will feed into that essentially becomes very much chat GPT ish when you see the demonstrations of it, where you can just randomly ask any question you want using any of the data that we have access to across any BD platforms. It will graph, it will chart, it will answer your questions, Things around how do I reduce, where is my greatest waste happening in medications, which of my nurses are overriding the alarm systems or the safety systems of the pump most frequently that I should give additional training to, where are my drugs being stored in the hospital or which of my hospitals have this drug that could be in a shortage.

It’s utilizing AI to really help improve the lives of clinicians and those people managing medications and or the clinical outcomes of patients with medication.

Unidentified speaker: That’s great. And all that makes a ton of sense. The amount of sort of system data, hospital data, device data that you have access to, seems like it puts you in a great place to start kind of turning that back around. Maybe in the thirty seconds that we have left here, just anything that you feel is you’d like to to wrap up with here in terms of the environment, the positioning of the business here and what to think about going forward?

Tom, Executive, BD: Yes. Maybe first just on the environment. I think, when there has been times of uncertainty or challenging environments, it’s been times where BDs thrived and that’s definitely proven if you look back. At this point in time, we’ve done very well. There’s a near term catalyst opportunity in the stock as we think about unlocking value from the separation that we’re really excited about.

And as we’ve discussed, we’ve been very focused on transforming the new BD into a growth oriented med tech company, which you can see in our underlying performance over the last several years. And we could be more excited about the opportunities for new BD as we look ahead post separation and we’ll look forward to announcing more details on that this summer.

Unidentified speaker: Sounds good. Thanks so much for joining us, Tom.

Tom, Executive, BD: Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Chris, Executive, BD: Thanks everyone.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.