Q1 2024 LeMaitre Vascular Inc Earnings Call

Presentation

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the lawmakers vascular First Quarter 2024 financial results conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. JJ Pellegrino, Chief Financial Officer of LeMaitre Vascular. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on our Q1 2024 conference call. With me on today's call is our CEO, George LeMaitre, and our President, Dave Roberts.
Before we begin, I'll read our Safe Harbor statement today. We will make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which is subject to risks and uncertainties wherever possible. We will tried to identify those forward-looking statements by using words such as believe, expect, anticipate, pursue, forecast and similar expressions. Our forward-looking statements are based on our estimates and assumptions as of today, May second, 2024, and should not be relied upon as representing our estimates or views on any subsequent date. Please refer to the cautionary cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information and the risk factors in our most recent 10 K and subsequent SEC filings, including disclosure of the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.
During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which include organic sales growth as well as operating income, operating expense and EPS. Excluding special charges. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is discussed in this call is contained in the associated press release and is available in the Investor Relations section of our website, www.lemaitre.com I'll now turn the call over to George with me.

Thanks, JJ. Q1 was an excellent quarter with 14% sales growth, a 68.6% gross margin and 62% EPS growth. We posted record sales for each of our three geographies and nine of our 12 product categories. I'll focus my remarks on the top line. Our sales force and some regulatory updates. Allografts were up 31% in Q one, bovine patches, 13% and carotid shunts 27%. Ipaq was our strongest region, up 44% in Q1, driven by $600,000 of Q1 sales growth from our new sales offices in Korea and Thailand. Amea sales were up 17%, while the Americas were up 10%. Notably, Canada was up 31% and the UK was up 29%. We ended Q1 with 137 reps, including 62 in North America 52 in Europe and 23 in A-Pac. We expect to have 150 reps on staff at the end of 2024 with most of the hiring in North America, where our average territory size is 2.2 million. In Europe, the average territory size is 1.1 million and A-Pac is $700,000 we also continue to add international sales offices. Last Monday, we had a ribbon-cutting ceremony at our new power sales office. France is our sixth largest country opening. This office should improve our connections with French surgeons and hospitals as well as our eight French sales reps, which experienced a strong link between opening an office and sales growth. A Zurich office might be next, we seem well positioned for the 2027 MDRC. mark deadline. Based on recent discussions with our notified bodies, we now expect to receive an additional 11 MDRCE. marks by September 30th. In total, we should possess 14 of our 22 MDRCE. marks by the end of the third quarter and we expect to receive the remaining eight approvals by the end of 2025. Our Artegraft CE Mark filing was made in December 2023 when we acquired Artegraft in 2020, it was cleared for sale only in the US, so receiving European approval will be a nice opportunity for our largest US product line. We sold 33 million of autograft in the U.S. in 2023. We now believe that Artegraft will receive its CE Mark by Q4 2025. In the meantime, we're also submitting Artegraft for approval in Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Singapore. Separately, we continue to pursue allograft approvals in Ireland and Germany. We believe that one of these approvals will happen in 2024 and another one in 2025. These are not MDR CE marks, but rather individual approvals by each country's human tissue authority.
To conclude, Q1 was an excellent quarter with 14% sales growth, a 68.6% gross margin and 62% EPS growth. We believe our profitability and cash balance provide us strategic optionality. With that, I'll turn the call over to JJ.

Thanks, George. We continue to apply pricing floors to more geographies and more devices. Pricing floors are possible because of our high quality differentiated devices, selling into niche markets. Average selling price increased 8% in Q1 2024, while units increased 3%. This follows our full year 2023 ASP increase of 12% and unit growth of 5%. In Q1 2024, we posted a gross margin of 68.6%, up 33 hundred basis points year over year. The increase was driven by higher ASPs and productivity improvements. More specifically, a more efficient manufacturing team continues to benefit the P&L in Chicago. Our allograft manufacturing group had a strong Q1 and in Burlington quality costs remain in check. Average selling price increases improved the gross margin by approximately 2.5% in the quarter and our guidance calls for a 68.6% gross margin for the full year. Operating expenses in Q1 2024 were 24.8 million, an increase of 8% versus the Q1 2023 increase was driven largely by more employees, including 12 more sales professionals. The 8% increase compares favorably to our 20% adjusted operating expense increase in the full year 2023 and reflects our shift from post-COVID rehiring to a more restrained hiring posture in 2024.
Q1 2024 operating income increased 51% year over year to $11.9 million and resulted in an improved operating margin of 22%, up from 17% in the prior year period. Eps was $0.44 in the quarter, up 62%. We ended Q1 2024 with 108 million in cash and securities, an increase of 3.2 million in the quarter. The increase was driven by cash from operations of 5 million. Separately, our new ERP system went live in the US in Q1 2024. The system should improve real-time reporting streamline financial processes and provide more sophisticated analytics implementation at our overseas entities will take place in 2025 and beyond. This project should cost seven to 10 to 10 million and the annual P&L impact will be about 1 million.
Regarding guidance, we are focused forecasting improved operating leverage in 2024, driven by restrained operating expense growth and an improved gross margin. Our updated guidance includes an operating margin of 22% in 2024 versus 19% in 2023 and 17% in 2022 for more details, please see today's press release, but a few to Q2. Highlights include sales growth of 10%, gross margin of 68.6% and EPS growth of 31%. And for the full year 2024 guidance has increased to sales growth of 11%, gross margin of 68.6% and EPS growth of 33%.
With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one one. Again, once again, if you have a question or comment, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Our first question or comment comes from the line of Rick Wise from Stifel. Mr. Weise, your line is open.

George, maybe first, I guess I must say in fact, the proverbial Congratulations on another excellent quarter and thank you to start off with the questions, let's let's focus on the sales force. You said you're at 137. Still hoping to get to 150 by year end on is that a stretch target. Are you feeling good? Do have people lined up? Just maybe talk us through that process? You said folks are going you're sort of aiming more in the US, is this territory splitting or you started opening new areas, just just some larger perspective there?
Thank you, Joe. Thanks for the good question, Rick. And yes, it's been a little bit slow probably inside your question, you're pointing it out one 36, one 36 the last couple of quarters. Now on 37, we have 14 open on the board that have been recruiting for, I don't know, one, three months on average for those guys. So we definitely feel like we're going to get those people. Of course, there's always some turnover. And then probably in the summer, we're also going to be opening up some new expansion territories. And to the to your point and also from the script, we're definitely hiring in North America almost exclusively there's one or two in Europe and one or two in Asia right now. So no, I think we'll get there. You know, it's still we still have eight months left in the year to get there and hiring is not that hard. It's doable.

So feel comfortable where we are.
And as per how we're getting news, I think to stylized, I think we're largely splitting the territories that are already out there. We called out is $2.2 million average size. We have a sort of rule of thumb inside a limit that once something gets that big, you probably should split it in half. And on average, all of our all of our territories in the U.S. are at that size now.
And Jay, a question for you on gross margin.
Thanks for the detailed color on the breakdown on the price contribution. Maybe talk to us about the productivity side, is this just is it volume? Is it mix or is there something happening that should drive in addition to price and volume expanding gross margins of maybe longer than we are appreciating?
Yes, I would say it's sort of three things were price average price increases, deal efficiencies and quality costs. And I would expect those to continue as we go through the year.
Yes. And so Rick part part of the story here is that the quality, if you look back over the last four years, it feels like there's a pretty simple story in gross margin where quality costs have gone. We have added about four or five points of cost on our gross margins over the last four or five years. And we feel like we've kind of put up a top or ahead on that. And it feels like we've got that in control and it's not going to get a little not going to get worse?
Yes.
And in terms of the price increases work, I would say those are probably adding to 2.5 percentage the gross margin. So if we get an eight or 9% price hike in a year. It's probably adding something like that. So a really nice tailwind.
And then the direct labor efficiencies piece, that's the story of hiring manufacturing folks post COVID. And then that process was kind of difficult and sloppy. And so we had trouble getting people in the door and we had trouble keeping people turnover was a little bit higher. And then we had trouble training folks. And so as we got through that, those manufacturing efficiencies, i.e., the direct labor folks being in there sort of stations longer more utilization, if you will, and then being more efficient making devices quicker, if you will, that all started to come through to the P&L. And I think we're seeing that those sort of three favorable trends happening through the rest of the year as well, Catcher.
And maybe just a last one for me for now. I mean, there's so much to choose from here, but I'm really struck by the incredibly impressive, a OUS growth performance. And again, my theme here is just the sustainability of the kind of impressive growth you're turning in at 44% and Asia Pacific, et cetera, opening new offices in France, the new product approvals and rollouts talk to us about the sustainability of the kind of growth we're seeing and I mean it I mean, is there upside from here or just any incremental perspective there, George would be welcome.
Sure, thanks. Thanks for Great question, Rick, Tom and I appreciate how you frame that. I think particularly the Asia Pac. What you're seeing over here in the last five years is a repeat of what we did in Europe back in the I'm going to call it that, that item tends I don't even know what your source to callers anymore. But I think right now you're sort of shifting your focus a little bit over there and to simplify this for everyone on the call, I think this is just a virgin territory hypothesis and we just keep finding new places to go Korea is going crazy right now in a good way for us on Thailand. We hope we'll start with that as well. And even think some we didn't mention here today was China actually, you know what? We started not using the word China on these calls because things have been so delayed with regulatory, but operationally and organically, it's going crazy. It's going great. We had a 92% quarter in Q1 in China. So I would say simply put it's virgin territory for Asia. And then I think when you flip your eyes back over to Europe. It's about getting these approvals for RSA and Artegraft, a really big product lines for us in the US, the number one product line is autograft and RFA is not that far behind or allograft. So these two words, very close Artegraft, an allo graft are the two biggies in the US and we don't have any approvals for those two products in Europe. So I think the sustainability may not even be next year for both those products and maybe the year after. But I think you've got a nice runway of bringing American devices overseas.
Thanks so much.

Operator

Thanks, Rick, and thank you again, ladies and gentlemen. And if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star one one on your telephone keypad.
Our next question or comment comes from the line of Suraj Kalia from Oppenheimer. Start your lines.

Good afternoon, everyone.
George, can you hear me all right, I can, Suraj.
Perfect. So gentlemen, congrats on a nice quarter. George, forgive me shuttling between many calls on. Did you talk about value to Tom growth?

And I just wanted to get a sense where we are at least on a macro level for valvular Tom's case, given the intense debate on endovascular versus surgical, of course, of course, we didn't bring it up, David Toms were up 2% in Q1 last year was a much bigger growth number. Maybe if I could say this is so typical, but we had a really tough comp in Q1 to beat up on for Valmet times, but they were still up 2%. If you look out over the year and the annualization of everything, units and stuff I feel like it's a last year was a nice year for Valmet times this year is not quite as nice, but there's still we still should be a little bit of growth with value at times.

Got it. Fair enough. On the other thing, George, in terms price impact in the quarter and how should we think about average sales rep can newer versus a year ago.
And interesting, we haven't really discussed that much in the prep for this meeting on it feels to me like sales force turnover has not been a problem for us over the last, I don't know, 18 months ago or so 24 months. So it's not something we're on that much right now. And I would say unchanged versus a year ago, sales force turnover.
Got it. And George, one final question. Obviously, there's been a large strategic that has it just surprised everyone with takeout multiples and you guys have been relatively very disciplined on M&A and basically showcasing to the Street in terms of your strategy. And David, as you don't have been very articulate in that, George, I'm curious if you could just shed some light on how you see the potential target landscape, just the M&A environment, how you all are seeing it. What should we think about as the year progresses.
Thank you for taking my questions.
It.
Suraj, it's Dave, if you don't mind, I'll jump in on. You mentioned the multiples you're probably referring to J&J Shockwave and roughly 18 times 2023 revenue. That was obviously a huge announcement in our space. I would say we're always cognizant of valuation on a very high valuation because another lower one Advanced Medical Solutions spot, a division of Peters surgical in Europe for less than two times sales. So valuation-wise depends on what you're buying. Of course, I think I read your reports and I see small-cap medtech valued around four to five times sales. So I mean, we are I'd say we are very on we do focus on valuation. What I'd say more than that we focus on strategic fit. And so for us, finding the right target, which ideally isn't open vascular targets, they're about 25 of them with more than 5 million of revenue. That's that's where we're really counting on. In terms of this year, you never know where I'd say we've got two targets are a little bit larger that we're talking to but on the other things come and go. So but we're always hunting. So I guess I'll leave it with that unless you have a follow-up. So that should be good enough gentlemen, thank you for taking my question and congrats again.
Thanks lot thrash.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Daniel Schrider from Citizens JMP. Mr. Strauss, your line is now.

Yes.

Great. Thanks. So I'm sorry, a quick question on the operating margin profitability in 2024. And correct me if my math is wrong, but if we look at the gross margin and revenue guide for 2Q in the year into that operating income number, it seems like there's a good amount more of OpEx leverage then we were anticipating. So I guess know if that is the case, where is this primarily coming from on the income statement? Is it mainly from sales rep utilization and how are you continuing to drive the strength there?
Tom, I feel like at a really high level, the leverage that we're going to get this year is about the extra sales growth versus what we're expecting. You see the guide here is changed I think from two 12, the last time we spoke to you guys in February, and here we are now at a two 15 for the whole year and then buried inside of that as we've lost some to the the dollar, the strengthening of the dollar. So I think that's a little bit mostly where the leverage is coming from in the P & L. And then also on the gross margin, we come and actually last time with a 68% gross margin starting to feel a little bit more comfortable about our gross margin. So we're giving you the 68.6 now for the year instead of the 68.0 as we were preparing our guidance and everything, we kept op expenses exactly the same.

And Danny, I would say on the gross margin piece, we beat a little bit in Q1 by 10 basis points or so. And FX is actually hurting us and by about 0.2 0.3% since our last guide for the rest of the year, so the 0.6 increase that you're getting on gross margin is actually closer to 1% maybe or so. And part of that, I think is because when we did guidance. Last time, we thought ASPs were going to be in the 6% to 7% range. Maybe they're more like the eight or 9% range. And so there's nice tailwinds there. And then those pieces we were talking about earlier in terms of direct labor efficiencies and quality costs and all that helping us as well in the second half.
Well, I hope that gets to your question, Daniel?
Yes, that was great. And then just one follow-up more along the lines of the revenue guidance and the cadence in the back half, typically 3Q steps down from 2Q? Are you still expecting that normal seasonality or could that be a little more modest from what you're seeing given the strength thus far and what you've guided to and I know you had some pretty tough comps in 3Q and 4Q. So just wanted to get your thoughts on your confidence in second half sales growth as you sit here today?
Yes. So you know, when we do guidance, we sit in the room for for two days, basically going through all this stuff on each of the lines and sales is obviously the number one driver. And so I would say we look at that from a lot of different angles. Seasonality is certainly one of those. And Q3 is generally sort of the weaker quarter of the four quarters, particularly in Europe as folks go on vacation and go to the mountains and the beach and all that kind of good stuff so I would say, yes, you would expect that cadence where Q2 would be higher, Q3 would go down and then Q4 would come up and maybe feel a little bit more like Q2 ish sort of thing. If you do that by day, you wind up getting some pretty sales per day, get some pretty logical answers there. And if you look at it percentage wise through the quarters?
I think you get some some good answers there. There is an FX topic that's hurting us as we go through the rest of the year. And certainly since last guide, I think it was like $1.1 million or so that FX has gone against us. So our increase in guide is actually, you know, maybe a little bit a little bit more robust than it seems. We've built big beat by 1.71 0.8 in Q1 and now are given an extra come up to $3 million and then really it's up to four, 4.2 million because of that FX piece. So I think we're signaling that we feel more confident about about the sales answer driven by ASP.s and hospital cases and some of the good results in these individual product lines as well as the geographies that we talk about Thailand and Korea and other places that are sort of popping up and doing doing well also.
That's great. Thank you for the questions and congrats on a great quarter.
Thank Daniel.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Michael Sarcone from Jefferies. Mr. sarcoma, your line is now open.

Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. Just like or from the DASP.'s that you're getting 8%, I think JJ said, you know, this year now you're expecting closer to eight to nine, really impressive. Just wanted to get a feel for how sustainable you think that level of price taking is as we look beyond 2024?
Right. So Michael, I tried to make a real point of not guiding past Q4 of 24 here. But in sort of answer to your question as much as I can, I feel like we're in about the sixth inning in a nine-inning baseball game people that have been asking this question a lot, and we've come back to that. We're in the sixth inning of these price hikes.

All right, great. That's helpful. Thank you. And just a question around the new ERP system. You've talked about you mentioned a real-time reporting financial processes and more sophisticated analytics. Was wondering if you could speak to know, does that help at all on boost sales force productivity in any way? And then, you know, on the expense side, are you going to be able to ring any expense efficiencies from some of the analytics you may be getting from the ERP system?
So it's a great question, and it's a big project in Burlington, even though it doesn't really poke out too much on calls like this. We have this very strong belief that better accounting leads to better decisions everywhere in your business. So the answer to all of your questions is yes, we probably can watch the sales folks more closely. And yes, we can wring some efficiencies out of the operations. We've never installed the program. This big we were still on sort of what I'll call a junior Velocity platform until until February of this year. So this is a big switch for us. We're really excited about it.
We all feel strongly that better accounting will lead to better decisions and better results for the Company, make it as an example, on our analytics tools, homegrown and the analytics tools on run by our IT folks who did a phenomenal job. And it does a really nice job of getting data to folks quickly and slicing and dicing, but there's an even better answer out there that Microsoft has been working on for the last 20 years. And so eventually will replace that analytics tool. And it will pump out even more sophisticated data and make it easier to get just one example of how it might benefit us in the future.
That's helpful, Jay. Thank you. I was going to say it's impressive. There's no shortage of companies that have sales force or commercial disruptions while they're implementing larger ERP systems.
We just one last one for me that I hope within. Could you just give us an update on how things are going with the deal and how you're thinking there?
Hey, Mike, it's Dave Roberts. Sure. Happy to of in Q1, we did about 1.25 million sales of the ZO., which was right at the guidance on the sort of performed where we expected. That was down from the $1.5 million in Q4 on and we don't really guide on on the product line going forward, but had a good it had a good April. So we'll see where it comes out. But I would say at a high level, it's a little bit under what we expected when we signed the deal a year ago, but not too far under And Q1 was the first quarter where a deal was normal, may reps commission plans. So it's still sort of early days at the moment.
Got it. Thank you.
Thanks for your questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of James Sidoti from Sidoti & Co., Mr. Sidoti. Your line is now open.

Thank you. This is Alex on for Jim. Congrats on the quarter. And thanks for taking questions. Couple of quick ones for me. We spoke about it GLPs, you don't need effect on cardiovascular event reductions in the fall. Sounded like there wasn't a meaningful effect. And I just wanted to check in on that and see if that's still held?
Yes.

Okay.
Thanks for your question, Alex. It's George. I we have not seen anything in the whole sort of things kind of came and went as a source for our perspective, sort of as a Wall Street brouhaha, we feel comfortable that our business proceeds with or without GLP.

So no effect up here.

Thanks for the update. Appreciate it. And I wanted to check in on AM the manufacturing operations. So you guys had spoken about thinking of adding additional shifts or opening up another facility maybe in Burlington. Just wanted to check in on how you're thinking about that these days.
Hi, Alex. Yes, okay. So it's bit of an old topic in some ways, which is we did this project called small ball about a year-and-a-half ago and instead of renting a new building, what we did is we went into one of our buildings. We carved out another 50% of clean room space and that online maybe about 12 months ago or so. And then we went and hired a lot of people for that. And we also hired a second shift, I would say in a hopeful analysis, the better gross margin here is a little bit impacted by all of that, but not exactly. So yes, we have a much bigger floor plate for manufacturing, and we also have second ship now there's really no constraints to manufacturing appear. I switch the topic a little bit. You didn't ask about this, but maybe we talk about a little bit. But in Chicago where we process our allo graft and we felt a little production constrained out there and we've been adding bodies and our resources out there recently, and we seem to be turning the corner on some production issues out there. So we're excited about that. It might lead to more allo graft growth going forward. But we shall see and we don't really guide by product line.
So thank you. We appreciate the clarification and a lot of good questions today, and that's all from us. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Alex.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Brooks O'Neil from Lake Street Capital Markets.
Mr. O'Neill, your line is now open.

This is Aaron on the line for Brooks and congrats on the great quarter. Did you mention what percentage of the Q4 sales growth was related to price versus versus volume more specifically, you know how that was sort of split?
And then maybe just in addition to that, any thoughts around changes within this split moving forward throughout the year, if you have that info and you want Q1 or Q4?

Sorry, Q1?
Yes, Q1 8% price, 3% units. And we're trying not to guide for the whole year. We don't quite know. But maybe that's the answer about. We're in the sixth inning of price hikes.
Maybe we still have some to go with that and if you want a little more color on that, the higher the heavier hitters in terms of ASP. increases this quarter were Artegraft and RestoreFlow and some of our catheters and Omni flow. And if you thought about it, last year was more of valvular homes and shunts was more of a broad-based ASP. increase this year. In Q1. Anyway, we'll see what happens as we go forward.
Okay. Actually, that's helpful. And then back to the sales reps, you mentioned you plan to hire a few more this year. And I'm assuming that the reps that you have hired in the past and getting them properly trained has been a bit challenging and maybe time-consuming, how have you sort of approached this? And would you say that you're starting to see some tangible benefits in that?
Yes.
On you mean in terms of I would say, I generally feel like we haven't changed that much in how we train them over the years. So there hasn't there's been no gap between old reps, hired a new reps hired and you're right to point out though add that it is a time-consuming project, I would say we have never been the number one trainer for medical device companies in United States to sort of get at this right now, we actually have a job requisition open and being filled for a sales train, our dedicated sales trainer. And that will be the first one that we've had. And I it feels like five or nine years here. So there's some there's some hope that we can sort of close down on that gap or that area of opportunity at the company got you.
Appreciate that color. And again, congrats on the quarter, guys.
Thanks a lot.

Operator

And thank you.
Our next question or comment comes from the line of Brett fish from from KeyBanc. Mr. Fishman, your line is now.
Hey, guys.

Thanks very much for taking the questions. A follow-up on Artegraft. It's been a very successful acquisition. Just considering the US performance mean you mentioned a bunch of potential new markets, and I understand it's still very early in that process, but curious how you're looking at that opportunity from a TAM perspective across the markets that you're looking to launch in. Maybe just I understand it's still like more than a year out, but maybe like a directional range of outcomes if those launches right, are in fact successful.
Yes, Brett, that's a fantastic question. And we think about this when we talk about this a lot, maybe if I limit my comments to Europe, it's easier Europe being sort of 50% of the rest of world besides the US and Canada there, you'd love to say, Oh, it's exact Europe, as you know, have, as I say, it's half the size of the US and you love financially, let's say, let's say it's half of that, but then it cut that in half again, for one reason, which is in Europe. They don't use as much PTFE and prosthetic arm implants in AV access cases as we do in the United States. It's a little bit of a different practice pattern by the vascular surgeons over there. So if you took out 33 of revenue in the U.S., let's say that kind of fall level, we still plan on growing that. But let's take 33 in the U.S. to go to 16 and then cut it in half 16 being geographically financially, Europe's always about half as big as the US and they cut that in half again. So maybe there's an eight TAM there. And then maybe if you want to be really high level, you could say there's another eight TAM away from that in places like Japan and Korea and China.

I know super helpful color. I appreciate that. And then I'm one follow-up on the product area. Another good quarter for allograft, not too surprising, but the trends in carotid shunt looks like they bumped up again this quarter to 27%. Just curious maybe on what was underlying that on that level of growth and how sustainable that might be?
Right. I mean, it's just a fantastic story that's going on with Xience, which is the main competitor or one of the two main competitors, Bard left the market because they were frustrated with Brussels and the whole new CMDR. thing. So they just said we're not going to support this product line. So you know, we're just taking all of the old units from those guys. In addition, since you know, the C barriers have gotten higher and higher, we are taking the opportunity to put in some price changes on that product line. So you got more units because bar left and then because Bard's gone away and there's no new competitors coming and you probably have better pricing. So I think the number was something like 17% this year.
This quarter, Q1 was 27.
So 27% was our up, Brett in that. So excellent activity going on there despite T CAR despite that stenting and all that, it's been a fantastic run.
I appreciate taking the questions and congrats on the quarter, guys. Thanks a lot.
Brett.

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no additional questions in the queue at this time.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. I would like to thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect and have a great day.