Earnings Call Transcript - MASI Q4 2024

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Masimo's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. The company's press release is available at www.masimo.com. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. And I'm pleased to introduce Eli Kammerman, Masimo's Vice President of Business Development and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Eli Kammerman, VP of Business Development and Investor Relations

Hello, everyone. Joining me today are CEO, Katie Szyman; and CFO, Micah Young. This call will contain forward-looking statements, which reflect management's current judgment, including certain expectations regarding fiscal year 2025 financial performance. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our projections and forecasts are discussed in detail in our periodic filings with the SEC. This call may also include a discussion of the potential sale of our consumer business. The company is currently evaluating the impact of the sale of its consumer business and the timing and terms of any such potential sale are still under consideration and have not been determined, approved, or finalized. Also, this call will include a discussion of certain financial measures that are not calculated in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. We generally refer to these as non-GAAP financial measures. In addition to GAAP results, these non-GAAP financial measures are intended to provide additional information to enable investors to assess the company's operating results in the same way management assesses such results. Management uses non-GAAP measures to budget, evaluate, and measure the company's performance and sees these results as an indicator of the company's ongoing business performance. The company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures increase transparency and better reflect the underlying financial performance of the business. Therefore, the financial measures we will be covering today will be primarily on a non-GAAP basis, unless noted otherwise. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included within the earnings release and supplementary financial information on our website. Investors should consider all of our statements today, together with our reports filed with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q, in order to make informed investment decisions. In addition to the earnings release issued today, we have posted a quarterly earnings presentation within the Investor Relations section of our website to supplement the content we will be covering this afternoon. I'll now pass the call to Katie Szyman.

Katie Szyman, CEO

Thank you, Eli. I couldn't be more excited to join you today for my first earnings call as Chief Executive Officer. As many of you know, my new role was announced in January, but it only officially began on February 12, less than two weeks ago. That said, I want to touch on a few things before handing the call to Micah. First, I’d like to briefly discuss why I took the role at Masimo, and then I will give a few of my first impressions from the time I have been here. First, Masimo's mission is about patient impact. I wanted to be a part of helping Masimo continue to grow and deliver improved outcomes for hundreds of millions of patients throughout the world. Actually, I had a personal experience some years ago that demonstrated to me exactly how critical the products Masimo provides to patients can be. The short version of the story is that when my youngest daughter was about nine months old, she contracted near-fatal pneumonia. I spent four days in the hospital staring at her Masimo pulse oximeter values nonstop, praying they would go above 90 and stop alarming. Finally, on the fourth day, her Pulse Ox rose above 90 and climbed back to 98.99, and we got to bring her home to our family. So, I know firsthand what Masimo's mission means to patients and their families. Second, I have always respected Masimo as the technology leader, with its history of bringing meaningful innovations and products to market. The opportunity to continue the innovation-focused culture at Masimo, as we refocus on our core professional healthcare market, is extremely exciting to me. Third, I was attracted by Masimo's talent. The leadership team and bench strength here are excellent. I really appreciate how warmly we have been welcomed, starting with Micah, Bilal, Michelle Brennan, and the entire team. There is a true family feel at Masimo, and I want to take pride in the work that I believe will be integral to us achieving our financial and strategic goals in the years to come. Finally, I believe I can help Masimo further achieve its terrific potential. I've spent 30 years in the med tech space, including 10 years focused on advanced patient monitoring. I have a track record of delivering industry-leading profitable growth while improving patient outcomes, and I'm excited to devote myself personally to Masimo’s mission. Now, I’d like to briefly discuss my impressions so far. In all of my discussions, one consistent theme has been the significant opportunity we have before us. As a refocused organization, it’s clear to me that there are numerous unmet market needs we are well positioned to address and that we have strong momentum behind us to do so. At Masimo, we have an opportunity to change the way patients are monitored around the world. I fundamentally believe that all patients who are in the hospital should be monitored continuously all the time, and today, most are only monitored intermittently unless they're in the ICU. That is simply not enough. I also want to reiterate how impressed I have been by all of our people. Exceptional innovation requires exceptional talent, and we are in a strong position across our engineering, operations, sales, and all of our teams. To cultivate our talent, I'm committed to building programs that will actively engage, develop, and empower our current and future leaders. These programs will enable the organization to scale and will support our long-term growth. Lastly, my initial discussions with customers have reinforced how close our relationships with them are. We are the clear leader in our core categories for a reason, and I look forward to getting a chance to interface more with our customers and to partner with them to improve our products and services in the future. In closing, I'd like to recognize the entire team for just a fantastic quarter, and I’d especially like to thank Michelle Brennan, who has done an exceptional job as interim CEO. I'm thrilled to be taking on the CEO role at a time when the company has such positive momentum and exciting opportunities ahead. With that, I will pass it over to Micah.

Micah Young, CFO

Thank you, Katie. I'm excited to partner with you as we embark on the next chapter for Masimo with a relentless focus on our core healthcare business to drive continued innovation, profitable growth, and long-term shareholder value. We finished the year with solid performance across both business segments as the healthcare and consumer teams were laser-focused on delivering strong results within their end markets. For the fourth quarter of 2024, our consolidated revenues were $601 million, representing 9% growth on a constant currency basis. Healthcare revenues grew 9% to reach $368 million, and we shipped 65,000 technology boards and monitors during the quarter, which is at the high end of our expected range. Non-healthcare revenues grew 11% to reach $232 million. For the third quarter, our consolidated gross margin was 52%, which included gross margins of 63% for healthcare and 35% for non-healthcare. Healthcare gross margins improved 190 basis points year-over-year, as we continue to realize the benefits of manufacturing our high-volume sensors in Malaysia, in combination with increased operational efficiencies and a favorable product mix related to more sales coming from consumables versus equipment. For our consolidated business, operating profit was $134 million, representing 46% growth versus the prior year period. Our operating margin of 22.4% improved 570 basis points year-over-year and rose 640 basis points sequentially. These improvements were directly attributable to the additional leverage we realized from our seasonally strongest period, as well as the actions we've taken to optimize our cost structure with a greater focus on our core healthcare business. Our non-GAAP net earnings per share was $1.80, representing 44% growth versus the prior year quarter. On a GAAP basis, we incurred a net loss of $6.52 per share, which included a non-cash impairment charge to goodwill and intangibles for Sound United in combination with other non-cash asset write-downs for the healthcare business related to the actions we've completed in the fourth quarter to improve our cost structure. As I mentioned on our last earnings call, the management team in partnership with the Board went through a very thorough process to review our R&D projects and product portfolio in addition to the actions we have taken to optimize the cost structure. As a result of our project portfolio review, we will be focusing on fewer projects and allocating resources to those areas that will drive the greatest return. With regards to optimizing our cost structure, we have rightsized corporate overhead costs, reduced marketing expenses associated with products that were not generating meaningful revenue, rationalized our facility footprint, and reduced costs in other areas unrelated to our top line growth. Although we will continue to explore new opportunities to optimize our healthcare business moving forward, the large asset write-downs associated with our strategic realignment efforts in the fourth quarter are now behind us, and we expect to see increased earnings and cash flow in 2025 and beyond. To summarize our fourth quarter performance, we delivered healthcare revenue growth of 9%, consolidated operating margin improvement of 570 basis points, and non-GAAP earnings per share growth of 44%. As a result of our strong earnings performance, we generated $50 million in operating cash flow for the quarter. For fiscal 2024, our consolidated revenues were $2.94 billion, which included healthcare revenues of $1.395 billion and non-healthcare revenues of $699 million. On a consolidated basis, our gross margins were 53%. Operating margins were 17%, and non-GAAP earnings per share were $4.40. For the healthcare business, revenues grew 10% for the year as we realized substantial growth in our consumable and service revenues, partially offset by a decline in capital equipment and other revenues. Within our consumable and service revenues, we delivered strong performance across our major product platforms with pulse oximetry, CO-Oximetry and hemodynamics, capnography, gas, and brain monitoring, all exceeding their respective growth targets. Within our capital equipment and other revenues, a large part of the decline was due to a change in accounting rules that started in fiscal 2022 and has progressively shifted a portion of our contract equipment revenue from capital leases to operating leases. As a result, this equipment revenue is no longer accelerated upon shipment and is now being recognized over the term of the contract. We expect this to be less of a headwind in 2025 and beyond. We also shipped nearly 235,000 technology boards and monitors, which exceeded our expectations coming into the year. More importantly, we had a record year in terms of gaining share through customer contracts as our incremental value of new contracts was $432 million. As a reminder, we believe incremental new contracts are the best leading indicator for our revenue growth. To summarize our full year performance, we delivered Healthcare revenue growth of 10%, consolidated operating margin improvement of 170 basis points, and non-GAAP earnings per share growth of 16%. As a result of our strong earnings performance, we generated $196 million in operating cash flow for the year. Now I want to lay out the initial framework for our fiscal 2025 financial guidance. First, starting in 2025, the Sound United business will be classified as held for sale and moved into discontinued operations. As a result, we will be removing this business from our non-GAAP financials and no longer providing guidance for the non-healthcare segment. Second, our guidance does not include any use of proceeds from a sale of Sound United. Any potential benefits from new tax policies and any potential impact of new tariffs on our business, which could be material. For example, our products sourced from Mexico and potentially subject to US tariffs represent approximately 25% of our healthcare cost of goods sold. While the implementation of tariffs remains a dynamic and uncertain situation, it is worth noting that medical devices have historically received exemptions from increased tariffs. We have taken the necessary steps to have appropriate contingency plans in place and will continue to reassess and modify our plans as the situation merits. Third, our guidance incorporates the financial impact of one additional calendar week for the healthcare business, which occurs every five years or six years based on our fiscal calendar. The incremental revenue from the one additional week is mostly offset by product line removals, the impacts of ASC 842 lease accounting, and other factors. Based on our 2025 guidance framework, we are projecting healthcare revenue of $1.5 billion to $1.53 billion, representing approximately 8% to 10% reported growth and 8% to 11% constant currency growth. We expect to ship 240,000 to 260,000 technology boards and instruments this year. And as a result of our strong fourth quarter performance, combined with the benefits we're seeing from our cost improvement initiatives, we are increasing our non-GAAP operating profit range to $413 million to $428 million, representing 27.5% to 28% operating margins. In turn, we are also increasing our non-GAAP EPS guidance to a range of $5.10 to $5.40, representing approximately 22% to 29% growth compared to our fiscal 2024 results, excluding Sound United. With regards to divesting Sound United, we are in the later stages of the process. We will not be commenting further on it during this call, but we do reiterate that we remain pleased with the level of interest and our general expectations around timing remain unchanged. In closing, 2024 was a great year for Masimo as we achieved a record level for incremental new contracts and realized a substantial increase in our unrecognized contract revenues, which provides good visibility for growth as we continue to ship products to our hospital customers for those contracts. I'm also excited about the actions we've taken to improve our cost structure and refocus on our core healthcare business, which produced stronger-than-expected earnings and cash flow performance in the fourth quarter and has set the stage to optimize our earnings power in 2025 and beyond.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Marie Thibault with BTIG. Your line is open.

Marie Thibault, Analyst

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on a very nice quarter. And Katie, nice to be working with you again. Welcome. I wanted to start here and ask a little bit about operating margin guidance, in particular, that definitely stood out to us it's higher than the 26.5 that you talked about earlier this year. And I just want to understand what's changed? What has become incrementally more positive? Have you been able to find new cost savings? Any more detail you can give us on that, certainly very impressive.

Micah Young, CFO

Thanks, Marie. Let me discuss the margin expansion. Earlier this year and late last year, we mentioned operating margins of about 26.5%. We are now raising that to 27.5%, with a target of 28% for 2025. The underlying reason for this adjustment is that we were still examining some R&D projects and our portfolio review late last year. As you may have noticed, we achieved strong results in the fourth quarter, which allowed some of our margin improvement initiatives to have an earlier impact than we anticipated. We ended the year robustly with the cost structure improvements we implemented and completed the rationalization of those projects. This progress gave us the confidence to update our guidance to reflect higher margins. If we look at the year-over-year changes, when we normalize for where we stand with the healthcare business, we expect to see operating margins around 23.7% in 2024 when excluding Sound United. That represents a 400 basis point improvement. About half of that improvement is attributed to project and portfolio rationalization. A third comes from corporate cost and facility consolidation, and the remainder is due to a reduction in consumer health marketing spend. These are the key factors driving our outlook into 2025.

Marie Thibault, Analyst

Okay, very helpful. Maybe I can ask a follow-up here about hospital census, flu activity, some of the market share commentary you gave us. What's being assumed in 2025 guidance in terms of hospital census? What are you seeing so far with flu activity, and what's being assumed in terms of market share gains? Thanks for taking the questions.

Micah Young, CFO

Absolutely. In terms of our guidance for inpatient admissions growth this year, we are expecting a constant currency growth between 8% and 11%. This estimated range is influenced by our expectations for consumables and service growth. It is largely dependent on the performance of sensors across both ends of that range. Essentially, we are projecting low-single-digit growth in sensors and inpatient admissions, which contributes to that range. Regarding our contracting, we have experienced two strong years recently, achieving significant market share through our contracts. This positions us well for future growth as we approach 2025, and it provides us with confidence in the range we've presented. We anticipate this momentum will carry into 2025 from 2024 as we continue to fulfill our contracts, thereby generating revenue throughout the year.

Operator, Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Jason Bednar with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Jason Bednar, Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Katie, I'll echo the comments. I'm looking forward to working with you. You do have the unique position where you're coming in here at Masimo and inheriting both 2025 guidance and an LRP that was set before you arrived versus like having your hand and influencing that outlook. So maybe can you talk about how you envision applying your skill set and deploying resources to execute against or better than that financial framework? And if you could add on just how you see things like Masimo's product pipeline, just your experience for critical care and continuing to drive sustainable above-market growth here at Masimo?

Katie Szyman, CEO

Thank you for the question, Jason. Firstly, regarding the guidance and existing plan, Michelle, Micah, Bilal, and the team did an excellent job last quarter in executing and refocusing the company on healthcare, particularly in patient monitoring, which I find to be the most exciting area for us. In the short time I’ve been here, it’s clear that Micah and Bilal have a deep understanding of this business, and they developed the current plan, so I have strong confidence in its ability to drive profitable growth moving forward. For the next quarter, my focus will be on understanding how to enhance our leadership position in our core markets and concentrating on healthcare innovation. This company possesses remarkable technology and innovation, and now that we've directed our attention to healthcare, I will collaborate with the team to determine how we can effectively achieve commercial excellence with our innovations. Additionally, I believe the team here is incredible, and I’m eager to build on the strong talent, gaining insight into future opportunities. Drawing from my background in patient monitoring, I genuinely believe every patient in a hospital should be monitored, a practice that isn't fully realized yet. Together, we will explore ways to broaden the use of non-invasive monitoring across various areas in hospitals. I’m truly excited to partner with the team on this and confident that the plan they created is achievable, even as we work to increase our growth.

Jason Bednar, Analyst

Micah, I wanted to revisit your comments about tariffs. Could you provide more details on the contingency plans you have? Are you able to increase manufacturing in Malaysia if tariffs affect Mexico? Can you meet a significant portion of your U.S. business from Malaysia? If there aren't any possible exemptions, do you have contracts that allow you to pass on the increased costs from tariffs?

Micah Young, CFO

Yes, thank you, Jason. As I mentioned earlier, the situation is quite dynamic. We've observed shifts and changes in the plans discussed this year. The outcome will depend on which products the government specifies for tariffs, the applicable rates, and the timing of these decisions. However, a positive aspect for us is that we've broadened our global manufacturing capabilities, now including Malaysia. This expansion allows us increased flexibility to relocate more products to Malaysia. We're currently producing high-volume sensors there, while in Mexico, we still maintain our instruments, cables, accessories, and lower-volume sensors, which we have the chance to assess and possibly transition. These are part of the contingency plans we've developed in case action is needed. It is still too early to gauge the extent of what we can transfer, but our establishment in Malaysia provides us with significantly more flexibility than in previous years. Regarding pricing, we will continue to assess our strategy, and we're excited to have Katie join us, bringing her experience in pricing to the team. This will be a factor in our contingency planning as we move forward, but it's still in the early stages.

Jason Bednar, Analyst

Okay, understood. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Rick Wise with Stifel. Your line is open.

Rick Wise, Analyst

Hi Katie, hi Micah. I'm excited to have you with us, Katie. I have a question for you. I know it might be early to ask, but given your unique insights into the hemodynamic monitoring technology space, how do you see that area for Masimo? Bilal and Micah expressed a lot of enthusiasm about the Masimo project a few months ago at the Stifel Healthcare Conference. Do you think this represents a significant opportunity? I realize it’s early to gauge, but are you intrigued or excited about any new directions that could be promising for Masimo?

Katie Szyman, CEO

Yes. So, thanks a lot, Rick. I mean first of all, I'm right now just laser-focused on Masimo and the great opportunities for growth we have here and just kind of learning the core markets and Masimo competes in. I mean when you think about hemodynamics, there is just a huge amount of patients that are not treated today. So, I don't think it's a matter of thinking about it only in terms of like how does hemodynamics look versus other people in the space, but really just about how do we find ways to treat more patients. And so I do think broadly monitoring more patients in all areas, but in particular, also in hemodynamics, there's just an opportunity to monitor more and more patients out there. And so that's the way I'm thinking about it right now.

Rick Wise, Analyst

Got you. Thanks. And Micah, maybe you could help us think through the quarterly flow, particularly the first quarter, is to get us all set up right to start the 2025 year. Help us think through the first quarter and the flow and anything you'd have us reflect on as we reflect about your 8% to 10%, 8% to 11% guidance. Is this unusually back-end loaded year or fairly ratably spaced? Help us think through that. Thank you.

Micah Young, CFO

Yeah. Thank you, Rick. So the best way to put it, I think the one unique item that sticks out would be is we have an extra week. We have 53 weeks in our fiscal calendar this year, which I mentioned that occurs every five or six years based on our calendar. So there’s one extra week that’s in the fourth quarter. If you kind of back that out of the fourth quarter and use normal seasonality, that’s kind of how we’re looking at the year. It’s based on our historical seasonality. And if you kind of go back and look at that, you see the first three quarters are somewhere, give or take, 24.5% of revenues, and then the fourth quarter is about 26.5%. So I think you just have to adjust out the extra week, and that's contributing about one percentage point. And then to the full year, probably four points on the fourth quarter. And then you start to apply the normal seasonality. I think that’s probably the most unique thing in the guidance for the year.

Rick Wise, Analyst

In the first quarter, Micah, just to confirm my understanding, how would you describe the situation? I assume there will be a sequential decline in dollar terms, but can you provide any additional insights on that?

Micah Young, CFO

Yeah. I think, like I said, if you kind of pull that extra week out of the fourth quarter and then apply about a 24.5%, which is kind of our historical seasonality for the first quarter, I think that will get you somewhere in the zone. And you can kind of triangulate that with even the kind of year-over-year growth rates as well, just to make sure those are pretty consistent throughout the year.

Operator, Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Michael Polark with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Michael Polark, Analyst

Welcome, Katie. I have two. I was thrown through a little bit of a loop when your competitor announced a high single-digit decline in their pulse ox business with a recent update. Respiratory has been strong of late. Maybe it was a little soft year-on-year earlier in 4Q. You posted high single-digit growth. How would you true that up for us? What dynamics do you think might be at play?

Micah Young, CFO

If you examine our business, we've experienced robust contracting over the past couple of years, increasing our share of contracts. Additionally, respiratory-related illnesses linked to hospitalizations surged in late December, slightly later than the previous flu and respiratory season. These illnesses have remained notably elevated into early February. We've observed a significant increase in late December, which has continued strongly into the first few weeks of February, surpassing the previous season. This is the current situation we are observing.

Michael Polark, Analyst

I have a follow-up question regarding the cost initiatives. Have any of the savings been redirected to enhance areas of strength? I understand what has been cut, but I’m curious if there have been any proactive investments elsewhere. If so, where? Thank you.

Micah Young, CFO

Yes. So I'm not sure what you're referring to on the net benefit. But I think you got to keep in mind that all the initiatives we went through last year, a lot of those came from reducing corporate overhead costs. We were consolidating facilities. We were eliminating spend on marketing for product lines that weren’t generating meaningful revenue or returns. We’re laser-focused back on the core business. We want to drive those projects and investments going forward that are going to give us the best return on those investments. And I think that’s what you’re seeing is a much more refocused organization where the margin has been the output, not the input of those efforts. And I think you saw the strong earnings power of the business in Q4 and that’s where we believe that’s going to continue into 2025, and it gives us a good entry point at the end of the year.

Operator, Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Vik Chopra with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Vik Chopra, Analyst

Hey, good afternoon and thanks for taking the questions. Katie, nice to be working with you. Maybe just talk about some of your key priorities over the next three months. And then I had a follow-up, please.

Katie Szyman, CEO

So thanks, Vik, for the question. So, as I mentioned before, really where I'm focused is trying to develop more of the long-term growth strategy. So as Micah mentioned, we have done a lot of planning and a lot of refocusing back on healthcare. And now what we’ve got to do is figure out how within the healthcare space we can build a long-range plan that's going to accelerate our growth over time. So looking at the innovation projects that are in the pipeline, working with the R&D teams and trying to understand where we have opportunities and then working with the upstream marketing team. So I'm spending a lot of time on that. The second thing is really working with the leaders in getting to know the team. And then the last thing, and probably most importantly, is getting a chance to go out and visit customers and get feedback directly from our customers and some of our partners in this space. It’s just an amazing kind of space to be able to have a chance to interact externally as well. And so my priority really for this quarter is to work with the team, start to build that long-range focus, and then listen and learn as much as I can. I didn't come in here with some big agenda. I really want to take everything that I know and really get a chance to listen to all these inputs and then start to build that long-range growth plan.

Vik Chopra, Analyst

Great. Thank you. And maybe one for Micah. You raised your operating margin guidance for the year when you previously pre-announced your earnings. I'm just wondering if that operating margin upside is a pull forward of the future cost out; I think you gave a long-term target initially for about 30%. Is that a pull forward? Or does that change the long-term operating margin target?

Micah Young, CFO

Yes, Vik, I'm not going to comment really on the long-term right now because we do need to work with Katie on those new plans on how we're thinking about the next three to five years. And I don’t want to get ahead of that process but what I can tell you, though, is this business does have good leverage capability to it. I mean we do believe we can continue to leverage and drive operating margin expansion. We've got probably the biggest opportunity and where a lot will be focused around will be gross margin expansion moving forward because we think there's a lot of potential there in the years ahead. So, I don’t want to get ahead of our next Investor Day. But we do see great operating leverage and earnings power in this business. And as we partner with Katie and really focus on innovation-driven growth going forward, that also gives us the ability to leverage and drive great earnings power in the future. So, I think that's where we'll kind of leave it for today. We're ready for the next question, operator.

Operator, Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Mike Matson with Needham. Your line is open.

Mike Matson, Analyst

Yes. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, I didn't hear a lot about hospital automation. So I was wondering, if you could give us an update there. Is that still a focus? Or is that something where you sort of deemphasized as part of the strategic read?

Micah Young, CFO

Sorry, can you repeat that, Mike?

Katie Szyman, CEO

About automation and whether we're still expanding in that area.

Micah Young, CFO

Yes, Mike, I didn't mention it in the list of product lines because we were discussing some of our major platforms. However, automation has been a significant growth area for us. Our long-range plan target for automation has been over 20% growth, and we observed strong performance not only for the full year but also in the second half and fourth quarter. We are seeing robust growth in our automation category and platform, and we plan to continue expanding and investing in that area. We have a great opportunity with one of the largest device libraries available, connecting to numerous devices in hospitals and managing the data we receive from patients. This data will assist clinicians with decision support, presenting an exciting opportunity for us as we look towards the future.

Katie Szyman, CEO

I would like to add a comment regarding the significant investment Masimo has made over the last decade in hospital automation and its role as a key partner for hospitals in terms of connectivity. We're beginning to see positive outcomes from this, which is essential for the future of healthcare. It's nearly impossible to be involved in this field without also offering a solution in this space.

Mike Matson, Analyst

Okay, got it. And then just in terms of the Apple litigation, I was wondering if you could give us an update there. Is that something that you're going to continue to pursue? Is there a potential for some sort of settlement there? Or is that something that would be kind of moved into the consumer health business as that's separate from the company?

Micah Young, CFO

Yes. Regarding Apple, we are pleased with the progress we are making. Recently, Apple has appealed the ITC's decision concerning the exclusion order for Apple Watches with pulse oximetry. Next, we are awaiting the judge's decision on the retrial of the trade secret theft case in California. Additionally, trial dates have been set for two different patent infringement trials, one in Delaware and one in California, where we are the plaintiff asserting multiple patents against Apple. That's the current status of our situation with Apple, and we prefer not to comment further on the Apple litigation at this time.

Mike Matson, Analyst

Yes, I understand. But that would be related to the Masimo Healthcare business that remains with Masimo, not from the parts being separated from Apple.

Micah Young, CFO

Yes, right.

Mike Matson, Analyst

Okay, great.

Eli Kammerman, VP of Business Development and Investor Relations

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

And there are no further questions at this time.

Katie Szyman, CEO

Okay. So I just want to say as the new CEO, and just for my first call, I want to say thank you all for joining the call today. And special thanks to Micah and Eli for leading the call this quarter, doing a great job. Personally, I'm very excited about the year ahead and the opportunity we have at Masimo to improve patient outcomes by taking monitoring into new areas. I look forward to speaking to all of you again next quarter, and we'll see you then. Thanks, everyone.

Micah Young, CFO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.