Haemonetics Corp (HAE) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Haemonetics Corp (NYSE: HAE) Q3 2026 Earnings Call dated Feb. 05, 2026

Corporate Participants:

Olga Guyette — Director, Investor Relations

Chris Simon — President, CEO

James C. D’Arecca — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Rohin Patel — Analyst

Marie Thiebaud — Analyst

Joanne Wunsch — Analyst

David Reescott — Analyst

Anthony Petrone — Analyst

Mike Matson — Analyst

Michael Patuski — Analyst

Andrew Cooper — Analyst

Presentation:

operator

It. Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the third quarter 2026 Humanetics Corporation earnings Conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker’s presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you would need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised to withdraw your question. Please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Olga Gyat, Vice President Investor Relations and Treasury.

Please go ahead.

Olga Guyette — Director, Investor Relations

Good morning and thank you for joining US for Humanetics third quarter fiscal year 2026 conference call and webcast. I’m joined today by Chris Simon, our CEO and James Dureca, our CFO. This morning we released our third quarter and year to date fiscal 2026 results and updated full year fiscal 2026 guidance. The materials, including our earnings release form 10Q and the supplemental earnings presentation are available on our Investor Relations website and in this morning’s press release. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that we will use both reported and organic revenue growth rates that exclude the impact of fx, the divestiture of the whole blood product line and the exit of certain liquid solution products.

Organic growth ex CSL also excludes the impact of the previously disclosed transition of CSL’s US disposable business. We’ll also refer to other non GAAP financial measures to help investors understand Humanetic’s ongoing business performance. Please note that these measures exclude certain charges and income items. A full list of excluded items, reconciliations to our GAAP results and comparisons with the prior year periods are provided in our earnings release. Our remarks today include forward looking statements and our actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results. Factors that might cause our results to differ include those referenced in the Safe harbor statement in today’s release and in our other SEC filings.

We do not undertake any obligation to update these forward looking statements and now I’d like to turn it over to Chris.

Chris Simon — President, CEO

Thanks Olga Good morning and thank you for joining us Today we delivered a strong quarter and we are raising our full year revenue earnings and free cash flow guidance. Nexus and TAG delivered outsized growth driven by sustained share gains, innovation based pricing and durable end market demand demonstrating the strength and resilience of these core products in our increasingly productive operating model. Third quarter revenue was 339 million bringing year to date revenue to $988 million. Reported revenue reflects the $153 million impact of last year’s portfolio transitions allowing for these non recurring items. Underlying performance remains strong with organic growth ex CSL of 8% in the quarter and 10% year to date.

Adjusted earnings per share increased 10% in the quarter and 11% year to date to $1.31 and $3.67 per share respectively, underscoring both the quality and the durability of our earnings. With that context, let’s review our businesses in more detail. Hospital revenue was 144 million in the third quarter and 429 million year to date, down 1% in the quarter and up 2% year to date organically as strong performance in blood management technologies offset softness in interventional technologies. Blood management technologies delivered solid growth up 8% in the quarter and 11% year to date driven by sustained double digit growth in hemostasis management.

Momentum was fueled by TEG6s disposable sales and rapid adoption of of the global heparinase neutralization cartridge which continues to accelerate account conversions and penetration. We have significant Runway to upgrade legacy TEG5000 systems, increase TEG6s device sales and utilization and expand share within current indications. The launch of the HN cartridge in EMEA and Japan further strengthens our global leadership and adds international growth vectors to the $400 million plus serviceable market. Growth elsewhere in BMT was modest with transfusion management gains largely offset by a decline in cell salvage driven by a tough comp following last year’s customer migration to higher margin technology offerings.

Interventional technology revenue declined 12% in the quarter and 8% year to date, driven primarily by softness in esophageal cooling amid accelerating PFA adoption and OEM related headwinds in sensor guided technologies which together accounted for most of the year over year quarterly decline. Vascular closure revenue declined 4% in the quarter, reflecting a 3% decline in MVP and MVP XL in electrophysiology and softness in Vascade in lower growth coronary and peripheral procedures. Performance in electrophysiology was influenced by prior share loss, order timing in several of our largest accounts in December and ongoing shifts in the procedural dynamics that temporarily impact the growth of our addressable market.

Our confidence in IVT franchise is unchanged. We believe in the clinical and the economic differentiation of our product portfolio and we are enthusiastic about the anticipated MVP Excel label expansion and the US launch of Percoceal Elite. The vascular closure sales force is asserting itself and taking targeted actions to strengthen execution. These commercial initiatives are gaining traction and we expect interventional technologies will return to growth in FY27. Accordingly, we now expect the hospital business to deliver reported and organic growth of approximately 4% at the low end of our prior 4 to 7% range. Moving to Plasma and Blood Center Plasma performance continues to accelerate with another quarter of growth driven by our category leadership and superior innovation.

Notably, the franchise has returned to growth with revenue of $139 million up 3% on a reported basis despite the last remnants of customer transition headwinds. Organic growth excluding CSL was 20% in the quarter and 22% year to date, with approximately half of quarterly growth driven by share gains and the remainder from collection volume and the full annualization of innovation benefits. Plasma fundamentals remain attractive underpinned by durable immunoglobulin demand across a broad spectrum of indications that strength is evident in the market as U.S. plasma collections grew in the low double digits in the third quarter. With approximately 50% global market share and a differentiated integrated platform, we operate from a position of strength and expect upcoming innovation in FY27 to further advance our competitive advantage given year to date performance.

We are raising our full year reported revenue guidance to a decline of 2 to 4% from a decline of 4 to 7% previously and organic revenue guidance x CSL to growth of 17 to 19% from 14 to 17% previously. Blood center revenue was $57 million in the quarter and $165 million year to date, growing 3% in the quarter and 4% year to date organically driven primarily by international plasma demand and market leadership, partially offset by order timing and continued portfolio rationalization. We are raising full year blood center reported revenue guidance to a decline of 16 to 18% from 17 to 19% inclusive of the whole blood divestiture and increasing organic growth to 1 to 3% from flat.

As international plasma demand is expected to more than offset ongoing portfolio rationalization. Sustained strength across plasma, blood center and blood management technologies has improved our total company outlook. Accordingly, we are increasing our full year reported revenue guidance to a decline of 1 to 3% from 1 to 4% previously, reflecting the impact of last year’s portfolio transitions, the majority of which are now behind us and fully reflected in our year to date results. This translates to raising our organic revenue guidance x CSL by 50 basis points at the midpoint to a range of 8 to 10% up from 7 to 10% previously.

Over to you James,

James C. D’Arecca — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

thank you Chris and good morning everyone. We delivered another quarter of strong financial performance marked by sustained margin expansion and improving cash flow. While we continue to take steps to recapture growth momentum in interventional technologies. Our results highlight the benefits of our portfolio transformation, structural improvements supporting profitability and the multiple performance levers supporting continued progress toward our long range plan objectives. Adjusted gross margin was 60.2% in the third quarter and 60.5% year to date, representing increases of 250 and 390 basis points respectively. Similar to the prior quarters, margin expansion was driven by the adoption of nexsys with Persona technology, divestiture of the whole Blood business and blood center, and our expanding share in both plasma and blood management technologies.

These same drivers are expected to support similar gross margins for the remainder of the year. Adjusted operating expenses in the third quarter were $115 million, up $3 million or 3%, primarily reflecting adjustments in performance based compensation due to continued outperformance across the consolidated results. We have also remained deliberate in prioritizing targeted investments in R and D and innovation to support long term growth. Year to date, adjusted operating expenses were $343 million, modestly above 339 million last year, largely due to the same Factors impacting the third adjusted operating income was flat versus the prior year in the third quarter at $89 million and adjusted operating margin expanded 60 basis points year over year to 26.3% in the third quarter.

Operating margin expansion was driven primarily by the improved margin profile of our plasma and blood center businesses supported by share gains on Nexsys PCs with Persona and the divestiture of the whole blood business. This was partially offset by modest margin pressure in hospital, reflecting continued softness in interventional technologies and the resulting impact on operating leverage. On a year to date basis, all segments contributed to adjusted operating margin expansion despite some volatility in the quarterly segment. Performance for the total company adjusted operating income increased 4% year to date to $254 million, with adjusted operating margin expanding 200 basis points to 25.7%.

Based on performance to date and continued margin tailwinds across the portfolio, we continue to expect approximately 26% to 27% in adjusted operating margin for the full year. Updated guidance also includes modest near term dilution from the vivashure acquisition as we invest ahead of a planned commercial launch in fiscal 27. The adjusted tax rate was 24.9% for the quarter and 24.8% year to date. We anticipate a slight step up in the adjusted income tax rate in the fourth quarter and expect to finish the year with an adjusted tax rate of approximately 25%. Adjusted net income increased 2% to $61 million in the third quarter and 3% year to date to $175 million.

Adjusted EPS rose 10% to $1.31 in the quarter and 11% year to date to $3.67 which included benefits from recent share buybacks and FX. In the fourth quarter we expect interest and tax to be a headwind reflecting a lower tax rate in the prior year and and incremental interest expense related to the repayment of $300 million of zero coupon convertible notes. We now expect our adjusted EPS for fiscal 26 to be in the range of $4.90 to $5 a share which reflects our strong performance to date. Coupled with the acquisition of vivash, turning to cash flow and the balance sheet, cash generation has reemerged as a defining strength of Haemonetics and a core source of strategic flexibility.

With our major device Build Out Complete and a series of company wide productivity initiatives now largely behind us, the business has returned to the robust cash flow profile it has historically been known for. In the third quarter we generated $74 million of free cash flow bringing year to date free cash flow to $165 million, driven by $94 million of operating cash flow in the quarter and $222 million year to date. This represents more than a threefold increase versus the prior year period, reflecting both the normalization of capital intensity and and continued discipline in working capital management.

Free cash flow conversion reached 121% of adjusted net income in the third quarter and 95% year to date, reinforcing our ability to convert earnings into cash. As a result, we are raising our fiscal year 26 free cash flow guidance to 200 to 220 million dollars from 170 million dollars to 210 million dollars previously and now expect full year free cash flow conversion to exceed 80%, positioning us with significant flexibility to deploy capital in a balanced fashion. Cash on hand at the end of the third quarter was up 18% to $363 million since the start of this fiscal year.

Despite deploying 75 million towards share repurchases earlier in the year and making additional strategic investments subsequent to quarter end. We also invested $61 million to acquire VivaSure, further strengthening our Interventional Technologies portfolio and repurchased approximately 360,000 shares of Haemonetic stock for $25 million. Our capital structure remained unchanged at the end of the third quarter with total debt of approximately $1.2 billion and no borrowings under our $750 million revolving credit facility with a net leverage ratio as defined in our credit agreement at 2.37 times EBITDA. Back to you Chris for closing comments.

Chris Simon — President, CEO

Thanks James. Before we open the line for questions, I want to share a few summary thoughts. We are executing with discipline, delivering solid revenue performance, expanding margins, growing earnings and generating strong cash flow while advancing our strategic priorities and transforming our operating model year to date. Our results are anchored by strong execution across two of our three growth engines, Plasma and our hospital based blood management technologies. These businesses are delivering consistent sales growth, continued share gains and increasing profitability. That strength provides both stability and flexibility as we take targeted actions to strengthen the interventional technologies franchise.

We remain firmly committed to returning this franchise to sustainable growth and in fiscal 2027 the actions required to restore growth momentum are fully funded and largely within our control. As comparisons improve and our commercial organization rallies, the targeted actions underway will translate into stronger results. Supported by the anticipated MVP XL label expansion and the US Launch of Percoceal Elite, we expect this business to drive growth and operating leverage while strengthening its competitive advantage. Looking beyond revenue, Our portfolio transformation continues to deliver meaningful results across the P. And L. Since the start of this. Transformation nearly four years ago now, we have expanded adjusted operating margins by 770 basis points including 200 basis points year to date, enabling earnings growth despite the non recurring plasma and divested blood center revenue. This earnings leverage reflects a structurally improved business model and it is both durable and scalable, positioning us to continue generating earnings growth ahead of revenue well into the future. Lastly, our strong and consistent free cash flow conversion supports a resilient balance sheet and long term value creation. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged, investing in organic growth, meeting upcoming debt obligations and opportunistically returning cash to shareholders while preserving balance sheet flexibility.

Thank you operator. Please open the line for questions.

Questions and Answers:

operator

Question Please press Star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again and our first question is going to come from Rohin Patel with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Rohin Patel

Hi, thanks for taking the question. Good morning everyone. I just wanted to start off with plasma and you had a nice quarter here and maybe if you could just help parse out kind of the delta between collections recovery and what the market growth looked like underlying as well as your share gains and looking forward I guess I think we’re turning our as we turn our attention to fiscal year 27, obviously you’ve had a big benefit from share gains this year, so how are you thinking about that next year and kind of coupled with the collections growth, what can we expect to see on a more sustainable basis for plasma? Looking forward to.

And then I have a follow up.

Chris Simon

Good morning, Rowan, it’s Chris. Thanks for the question. Yeah, plasma. And I don’t mean to sound boastful on this, but I don’t think we’ve ever been in a better position on the plasma business than we are today. We talk about the trifecta which is a combination of share gains. And to your question specifically for third quarter and most of this year share gains have carried us and that comes in two flavors. It’s both us picking up share from. Our direct competitor, but it’s also our. Customers enabled with the best technology gaining share from their competitors. And I think the dual benefit there is fully half of the growth you see here from us in the quarter we still have. And this will really be the final quarter of annualizing the price benefits associated with rolling out that new technology. And then the third piece is collection volume. And what we saw on collection volume in the quarter is a further uptick above seasonality of demand there. We’re now growing double digits both in the US and internationally in terms of collection volume. So the trifecta, if you will, of price, share and volume as we turn to FY27, this is a point in time I just remind our listeners this is our third quarter earnings call.

We’ve got. We’ll talk more in May when we issue guidance for the broader business for FY27. This is a point in time where we have detailed sit down discussions with our customers and get a clear picture for their demand. What I can tell you at the early stages of those discussions, they’re enthusiastic about the environment, both their end market demand as well as the collections environment here in the US and internationally where they continue to outpace. So we’re confident in plasma’s ability to play its role as part of our overall growth engine going forward.

Rohin Patel

Thanks, Chris. And maybe the next one question for James, I think as we look at margins in the quarter, you saw a sequential kind of step down in adjusted operating margin this quarter. I know you kind of mentioned some incremental expenses. By month, mass hospital margins were about 200 basis points lower versus last quarter and about 100 basis points lower year over year. So that could have also contributed a bit. So I guess as you look ahead and specifically, I guess longer term, where do you expect the leverage to come from with kind of a more challenged hospital business? And are you expecting kind of the same level of margin expansion that you saw in fiscal 26 next year and beyond.

And just maybe it’d be helpful if you could help frame kind of the puts and takes. Thanks.

James C. D’Arecca

Yeah, sure, Rohan. So I mean overall we are pleased. With our margin expansion this year as it really underscores the quality of our portfolio. As you mentioned, we’re up 60 basis points in the quarter. It’s up 200 basis points year to date and all businesses contributed to that expansion. I would just caution you on the quarterly performance by segment that could be uneven just due to product mix and revenue timing, expense cadence and so forth. So we’d like to look at that. More on a a year to date or a trailing 9 month to 12 month basis. But overall we’re pleased with the way. This has played out. Now as we move into the future, we’ll look to see smaller increments in margin improvement. So like the 200 basis points improvement that we saw this year, that is going to begin to slow down as we get into the future. The increments in operating margin improvement will be less, they’ll be 50 basis points or 100 basis points, something more in that range. But overall there’s still room to grow here operating margin. And I’ll just touch on the point that you brought up. So yes, I mean if the hospital business is having a slower quarter, you’re going to see a leverage impact on us.

And we saw a bit of that in the quarter, but plasma was so strong it was able to overcome that. We also were able to overcome. We had a performance based compensation increment in this quarter due to the performance. Of the company overall for the year. And that also was a dynamic versus the quarter in the previous year as well. So that added to it as well. Just to close out, as we finished the year, we held our operating margin guidance at 26 to 27% range that we came out with at the beginning of the year. We may be towards the lower end of that range. And that’s all pretty much related to VivaSure and the timing of expenses around the launch of Percoceal Elite.

operator

Thank you. And the next question will come from Marie Thiebaud with btig your lines out.

Marie Thiebaud

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions and nice job on the quarter. Just wanted to ask one here and it’s really on the IVT business. I know that we’re expecting to see a return to growth in fiscal year 27. Maybe you could just give us kind of more of a peek into what’s actually happening on the Ground is the competitor who was rather aggressive with pricing and free product, is that sort of out of the market at this point? How has your sales team sort of found its footing? Any more details on all of that and then any timing, I guess, on the MVP label expansion that you referenced? Thanks for taking the question.

Chris Simon

Great. Marie, it’s Chris. Thank you. Yeah. In the quarter, if I step back and look at IBT holistically, it’s important to understand and we, we’re focused on this as much as anything in the company right now in terms of returning that franchise to growth and a positive contribution. The negative in the quarter was fully 70% of the 12% decline that we experienced was a function of esophageal cooling and the disruption from PFA coupled with a leveling out of the OEM agreement that we think largely annualizes at this point. So it’s just important to keep that in mind. Eight and a half of the 12% decline is attributable to those two factors for vascular closure.

It’s our number one focus. I’ve said this recently. I want to make sure I just reiterate. We are confident we’ve got the right team. The strategy and the tactics they’ve put forth are the right ones to return to growth. That effort is fully funded and you see that kind of in our current P and L. And at this point, we’re just putting steps together to do the things that we need to do to be able to return and see that in our operating results. As we get into FY27, we’re confident that we have the right things in place to do that.

We definitely woke up the competition and that comes in different flavors. But from where we sit, and I happen to be sitting with a group of our advisors last night in electrophysiology, there’s no question that the product is highly competitive. It’s a superior product to what’s out there, and we’ve got the clinical support to back that up. One of the things that we’re looking forward to is that MVP Excel label expansion, it’s with fda. The dialogue has been very constructive. Not going to try to handicap exactly when the release might come, but it opens up a number of things for us when it does.

And I think it will allow us to more broadly promote the product. It lets us work with a number of the IDNs and increasingly with the ASCs to be able to get the product on contract. And we think that top down as well as the bottom up grassroots work that we’re already doing. Bodes well for being an important part of the recovery to come.

Marie Thiebaud

Very good. Thank you so much.

operator

Thank you. And the next question will come from Joanne Wunsch with Citi. Your line is open.

Joanne Wunsch

Good morning and thank you so much for answering the question. Could you give us a little bit of color on the vivishare acquisition? You talk about bringing the product to market in 2027. Anything that you learned from your initial investment that helps you position for that product launch or is there anything on the financial aspect of it that you can share at this stage? Thank you.

Chris Simon

Thanks, Joanne. Appreciate the question. We’re excited about vivishorp and the Percusseal Elite product coming to market here shortly. We consummated and acted on our option because we really believe that this will meaningfully extend our leadership in vascular closure. It gives us credible path to category leadership across small, medium and now large bore procedures as well. It puts us squarely in structural heart with both TAVR and EVAR procedures. You know, French openings that push into the mid-20s. And the product’s going to be indicated for that. It’s a really meaningful advance versus what’s in the market today.

So we’re excited. We sized that at roughly a $300 million addressable market. Two thirds of it’s here in the US it sits, as I said, at the intersection of vascular closure and structural heart, which should be a true tuck in opportunity for us. So we’re gearing up for the launch. We are learning from things that went well and less well in our prior launches. And so we’re taking a very measured approach and it’ll be a stepwise progress as we go. Once we have the official approval from fda, we’ll be very clear about our plans. But it’s going to be step wise.

We’re excited about the longer term potential, but we’re going to take the steps that we need early to position this product for long term success.

Joanne Wunsch

As my follow up question, there’s a phrase you used during your opening remarks to deploy capital in a balanced fashion. And I was hoping you could provide some color on how you think about deploying capital at this stage. And thank you so much.

James C. D’Arecca

Hi Joanne, it’s James. Maybe I could take a pass at that. So when I think about capital deployment, we strive to be disciplined, balanced and returns focused. That’s how it, you know, that’s how we think about all starts with strong and growing free cash flow that provides us the flexibility. We had 95% free cash flow conversion to date, over 200 million in free cash flow this year. So we’re well positioned and for the future that should continue. The most capital intensive phase of our transformation is largely behind us, so our priorities remain clear and really they’re unchanged in the near term.

We prioritize organic growth. We have some debt reduction coming up here with the convertible notes that are due here in March and we also prioritize share buybacks. You saw us do some of that just here at the end of the quarter. So longer term, once IVT execution is restored, we then will look more towards the opportunity for additional MA like vivashure. But that’s the overall framework about how we’re thinking about capital deployment.

operator

Thank you. And the next question will come from David Reescott with Bayard. Your line is open.

David Reescott

Great. Thanks and good morning. I wanted to follow up on some of the comments around the plasma collection and a broader market growth and curious to understand maybe the metrics or visibility you have into the forward looking outlook for that segment. I think in the past you’ve talked about how there can be ebbs and flows to the business or to the collections market. And I think prior to the past two quarters you were maybe in that ebb period of low to no growth and now you’ve got two quarters of high single and now low double digit seemingly market collection growth.

So I’m curious one on and again how you’re gauging the sustainability of this accelerated period. And I guess if the ebb period was six or so quarters, if that’s right, why would it be unreasonable to think that this elevated collection market growth you’ve seen now for two quarters should not sustain in the flow period? We’ll say for a few more quarters. Thank you.

Chris Simon

Thanks for the question. I think you’re right and I think that’s not dissimilar to how we are thinking about it. We work backwards from the end market. When we look at the demand for immunoglobulin based therapy, both primary and secondary immune deficiency as well as autoimmune diseases, there is meaningful unmet need where IG is unequivocally still the first line therapy for a whole host of reasons. It works very well, it’s cost effective, et cetera. So we look at the end market demand, we listen carefully to what our customers are saying to their shareholders and work backwards from that.

That bodes very well near intermediate and longer term for this industry when we step in and now look at what that will translate to in the inevitable cyclicality of collections and inventory levels. Our view is that this meaningful uptick in demand actually began six quarters ago. And we met the early stages of that when we rolled out Persona and a 10% yield enhancement across the industry. So that gives us confidence that where are we in the cycle? We’re in a building phase and we’re absolutely enabling that for our customers with our technology. In terms of where we go from here, we’ll have those discussions.

We’ll get very clear how many new centers, what’s the volume demand, what are they looking at? And we’ll back that into our forecast for FY27 at this stage. And I think we established this earlier in the year. We’re going to guide to the things that we can control and that’s the share uptick in terms of new centers coming over and it’s a function of the price annualization. So that’s what you see reflective in our guidance. We’re very happy that we’ve been able to guide upward with each successive quarter here. But in terms of the volume, I don’t disagree with anything you’ve asserted, but we’re not going to put that into our guidance at this stage because we don’t control it directly.

David Reescott

Okay, that’s helpful. And on Vascade, I’m curious more on the vascular closure market. I think you again called out increasing PFA as part of a headwind in the bascade business, if I heard that correctly. I think the latest updates we have at this point maybe is PFA and AF is 70% or so of the market in the US and so therefore the increasing utilization of PFA is now in theory should have less of a magnitude of an impact on the broader electrophysiology market growth that’s eligible for a vascular closure device. So interested to hear what your views are on maybe some of those PFA headwinds beginning to lap and whether the vascular closure market or the interest in vascular closure devices is continuing to step higher.

And so that as you lap the PFA conversion, maybe the VCD kind of market growth on a blended basis should begin to step back up to higher levels.

Chris Simon

Thank you, David. The effect you’re calling out is really important. I think the PFA launch has been a defining event in electrophysiology for AFIB for sure. And some of it is just we talked about it earlier kind of sucking out all the oxygen from the room and being all consuming in terms of getting clinician mindshare. A lot of that has played through. As you highlight, there is an effect ongoing with the number of access sites exactly where that will land. We’re still understanding, because it’s new therapeutic adoption, we know that in some cases it’s a reduction in the number of access sites.

It’s certainly a change in the sizing, which is why the MVP XL product and the upcoming anticipated FDA release is so critical to be able to compete in that space. We are seeing an uptick in concomitant therapy between AFIB and left atrial appendage. That’s a net negative in terms of the access sites. I say all that because it will affect the overall size, it affects the overall growth rate in the category in the near term. But as you highlight as that levels out, and I’ll leave it to you and others to kind of forecast exactly when that plays out.

But as that levels out, what you will see in terms of access site availability for us, which really determines the time, is it’ll regress to the category’s growth rate. And as near as we can tell, that category growth rate is at least mid teens at this point, which is an uptick for us going forward and gives us optimism about our ability to return to growth in 27 and beyond. So we’ll see, we’ll work our way through it. We think we’ve got a really good product and the main thing we need to do is execute in particular head to head against our competition where we have lost share.

Given the underperformance we’ve experienced year to date, we think it’s entirely addressable. We think we have a better product and we need to make sure our execution matches that.

David Reescott

Thank you.

operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Anthony Petrone with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Anthony Petrone

Thanks and good morning everyone. Just making sure you guys can hear me. You have me coming in okay?

Chris Simon

Yes, we do.

Anthony Petrone

Okay, great. Two questions, one plasma, one ivt. Chris, on plasma, we’re hearing, you know, the competitor in the U.S. there have been issues. You mentioned in your prepared remarks that one of the flavors of share gains here is actually at the center level and presumably donors moving away from the competitor wanting to, to donate on Nexus. So when you think about that, that’s a risk for csl. What’s the latest thinking on the potential that csl, you know, comes back to Nexus in some way. Is that a potential? If so, you know, what do you think that can look like? And then I’ll have a follow up on ivt.

Chris Simon

Anthony, thanks for the question that. Yeah, I made the assertion up front that I don’t think plasma has ever been stronger across multiple dimensions and that starts with the quality of our relationships. And I think a number of things that the team did really well through the pandemic and the recovery is they were there for folks, no stock outs, no backorders. We never failed to make a delivery on the devices or the capital, the disposables that continues. We value our relationship with CSL as we do with all of our customers. We’re delighted to have 100% of their international business, to have their US software on a long term agreement.

And so we’ll continue to earn all of our customers trust day in, day out. And I think that bodes really well for our trajectory going forward. Let me just leave it there.

Anthony Petrone

Very helpful. And then on ivt, one of the drivers going forward here is site of service. And ASCs are, you know, sort of a new channel here for electrophysiology. Pulmonary vein isolation specifically. It feels like that’s where those surgeries are headed, but that seems like it’s greenfield for vascular closure as well. So maybe just a little bit on ASCs, like how penetrated are you there at the moment? And are those like new sites where really you can kind of gain new ground here going forward? And how does that play in the growth trajectory for Bascape? Thanks.

Chris Simon

Yeah, thanks. I mentioned that we had our electrophysiology advisory board here with us in Boston yesterday, and several of those clinicians are running some of the largest ASCs in the country. There are customers. We’ve done a bunch of things with them that I think bode well for our presence in the ASCs. When I take a step back just to put a little flesh around the efforts we have underway, one of the critical gaps that we identified earlier in the year is corporate accounts presence, both for ASCs as well as for IDNs. And we’ve meaningfully strengthened that capability over the course of the year.

We think what we offer in vascular closure, particularly now that we have this full spectrum from 6 French to 25 French, is the opportunity to be their partner on vascular closure and increasingly push venous and arterial across the board. So the conversation is, how does this fit in their operations? The speed of ambulation, the absence of narcotics, the significant reduction in re bleeds is all very powerful value prop for the ases. We think that establishes a new growth vector for us heading into FY27 and we’re going to be excited to capitalize on it.

Anthony Petrone

Thank you.

operator

Thank you. And the next question will come from Mike Matson with Needham and Company. Your line is open.

Mike Matson

Yeah, thanks. So wanted to ask One on interventional technologies, the Savvy Wire product. I didn’t really hear any commentary on that. So can you talk about maybe what the growth was with that and what you need to do to kind of make that become more of a growth driver? Because it seems like a pretty unique and interesting product within that portfolio.

Chris Simon

Yeah, Mike, thanks for the question. Savvy Wire is a mixed story for us at the moment. I called out this, you know, 70%, you know, fully eight and a half points of the 12 points of decline in interventional was attributed to esophageal cooling and the OEM portion of Savvy Wire.

And so we have a very good relationship that we inherited with the OpenSense acquisition where we’re providing the product for the Impella pump. There’s been some re leveling of that. There’s a dual manufacturing site and kind of rebalancing that’s largely played through. We may have one more quarter of that that we have to work through, but that will ultimately regress to the growth of the underlying pump market, which we think is mid teens or better. And we’re excited about that in the near term and in the quarter. It was absolutely a headwind for us. If I flip over to the other side of the guidewire business, the actual structural heart play very powerful, and we see good uptake there.

The bifurcation of our efforts between closure and structural heart Guidewire has helped, although it’s still, in fairness, early innings from into that focus. We’re cautiously optimistic. We think that’ll be a big part of what drives us in 27, but we need to see that come through. Interestingly, we don’t talk much about Optiwire, which is the other part of the Guidewire business. But one of the things we’re hearing back to the prior question about the ASCs, we. Optiwire is very attractively priced for what it delivers. It has a really clean value proposition and seems to be gaining early traction with the ASCs.

We hope to be able to build upon that going forward.

Mike Matson

Okay, thanks. And then Blood center was positive this quarter, and I think you said it was positive year to date. So are we now at a point where that business can stay in the green in terms of growth from here? Especially given this, the plasma part of the business seems like it’s seeing stronger growth.

James C. D’Arecca

Yeah, it’s a tale of two halves as we go through that. I think as it pertains to plasma apheresis, this is done by the blood center customers. So as an example, it’s Egypt. But I could say the same thing about France or Canada or Turkey.

We are working with local blood center customers that have partnered with one of the larger sourcing fractionators to help collect them, you know, help them get collected and kind of drive forward. And so we offer them a turnkey proposition. That’s what’s going to drive the continued performance in blood center globally. The other half of the business is the remaining apheresis on platelets and red cells. And invariably that toggles up or down. It’s very subject to order, timing, and in general it’s a stagnant market. We do well in that market. They’re making a really through the rationalization, their contribution.

You’ll see that in some of our breakout tables has meaningfully improved. So they’re playing their role in our corporate strategy for margin expansion, but they just don’t have the long term growth potential because the market doesn’t have the long term growth potential. So we’ll take a hard look at that before we guide for 27, but we will see a relative difference between paths to that business going forward.

Mike Matson

Okay, thank you.

operator

Thank you. And the next question will come from Michael Patuski with Farrington Research. Your line is open.

Michael Patuski

Good morning. Hey, Chris. So the guide for hospital for fiscal 26 seems to imply that you guys deliver the best quarter in hospital on a reported basis of the year. And I’m just curious, is that mostly a function of sort of the order timing issue reversing, or are you seeing meaningful sort of clawbacks on some of the business that you may have lost in vascular closure? I’m just curious. It’s a fairly bullish forecast relative to what you guys just reported. I’m just curious what’s driving that thing.

Chris Simon

Yeah, Mike, thanks for the question. You’re exactly right. It is a bullish forecast for the fourth quarter. We felt comfortable guiding to the low end of the existing range because predominantly of the strength that we’re seeing in blood management technologies this quarter. Right. TAG continues to push forward. We’re midstream here in this TAG 5000 system upgrade. We have line of sight to the capital there that has us enthusiastic. And then we’re seeing this really meaningful uptake on a TAG disposable basis. We’re generating roughly twice the usage from the existing tag 6s that we did even just two years ago.

BMT is going to have to carry the water for us for sure in the fourth quarter, well into the double digits. But to your question, we also need to see a beginning of the stabilization in ivt. And I think some of that is order timing, some of that is head to head competition where, you know, we’re clawing back things we lost or stabilizing. And you know, we talk a lot about the investments we need to make in interventional technologies. I’ve called those out repeatedly. I feel like we’ve made the investment. We’re not looking at further dilution or outflows there.

You’ll see certain things. We’ve, we’ve guaranteed some of these highly competitive territories on a quota basis to get the right people in the seat and get them motivated. So there’s some expense associated with that that’s already reflected in our P and L. We’re also being purposeful about things that would encourage new usage without wrecking our margins. So we’re going to continue to make those investments. We think we’ll begin to see the stabilization of that in the fourth quarter. So we pare the losses, not entirely, but partially. And the combination of those two things, really strong, continued strong performance in BMT with a, you know, the beginnings of stabilization and IVT should get us to land, you know, where we want to land for the year, but also set us up nicely for growth in FY27 across the hospital franchise.

Michael Patuski

Okay, great. And if I could follow up, and you may have, you know, partially answered this question in your response just now, but you know, you guys, a couple quarters ago, when you sort of ran in, you know, ran into, you know, meaningful issues in vascular closure, sort of called out 50 accounts where you felt like, hey, we sort of got our lunch in some of these account, you know, in these 50 accounts. And obviously you put in a lot of changes very quickly as a response. And I’m just curious, I assume that you’re probably tracking data from those 50 accounts that you guys identified, you know, six months ago.

And I’m just curious, you know, are you at this point sort of trading punches or are you still losing a little there? But do you feel like you’re sort of seeing some anecdotal evidence of a turnaround or what are you seeing in those accounts that you identified a couple of quarters ago? Thanks.

Chris Simon

Yeah, Mike, the tagline, I assure you we are giving at least as good as we get these days. One of the things we’ve done is really strengthen our commercial operations and we have a much better handle through some of the obvious tools, Salesforce, et cetera, that track that performance. So we are paying very close attention to the individual account. Wins and losses and win backs are super critical for our longer term success, we have two very different competitors. One is the established industry standard and they’ve meaningfully beefed up their commercial presence. They’re working through their corporate account team with their new product launch in afib.

So that’s formidable and we want to be mindful of that. We think there’s a role for us as a more innovative, highly legitimate number two in the category on the other end. Yeah, we talk about the mix product and some of the things they did early on to secure a foothold. We made it easy on them. I can assure you there’s nothing easy about it in that category. Today we have a team that’s, that’s fit for task, that’s out there fighting for what’s rightfully theirs. We value the win backs highly and I can tell you the balance has shifted and that’s what gives us optimism on a go forward basis that it was never the product and it was never the market and therefore we control this outcome if we’re committed to it.

And I assure you we have no higher priority as a company right now than to return IVT to growth. And that starts with vascular closure, especially in afib.

Michael Patuski

Great. Thanks, Chris.

operator

Thank you. And the next question will come from Andrew Cooper with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Andrew Cooper

Hey, thanks everybody. Maybe first I want to follow up on something you just said there, Chris, when you said the balance has shifted. Can you give us a little bit of a sense for what is it that you’re seeing that is telling you that that balance has shifted? Because I think we’ve all sort of known for some time that the vast aid product MVP and XL are well thought of by clinicians. And so when we look at the data, when we look at the performance, I don’t think that piece is what’s changed. So what informs that view that the balance has shifted kind of ahead of seeing the volume and the revenues change, showing that shift?

Chris Simon

Yep. I think the bifurcation that we put in place earlier in the year is really starting to yield the results we anticipated. We have 200 field based representatives who get out of bed every day and think first, second and third about closure. And we know that more than two thirds of that opportunity today is in electrophysiology for MVP and for MVP Excel. So, you know, we’re tracking how those folks are spending their time and you know, their win rates and we’re increasingly confident about that. You know, we still had, we still had gaps in our own field force, open territories where, you know, we had faced the most Stiff competition and our folks weren’t able to respond for whatever set of reasons.

So as we close those vacancies, as we watch these new reps come up, the learning curve, it’s really powerful. I don’t think we’ve said this publicly before, but at this point, fully 60% of our field team has been in their territory in their current role less than six months. That’s an important number to keep in mind as you gauge our competitive response. There is a learning curve. These are very talented individuals when they were hired because they were fit for purpose for the task we need from them, and they have a faster uptick than you would otherwise expect.

But there’s still an uptick and we’ve got to give this team an opportunity to really get traction. I think as I called out earlier, some of the key account work we’re doing with the IDNs is providing them the air cover to be able to go in and pull through the business. And I think that’s another place where we were getting out executed by the competition. We’ve turned the tide on that and I’m pleased to say we’ve turned the tide on that without meaningfully compromising our gross margin, our price points. We have a great product when it’s properly presented and has the appropriate air cover.

We win. And that’s what you should expect from us going forward.

Andrew Cooper

Okay, that’s super helpful and look forward to sort of seeing the fruits of all that come together. Shifting a little bit to plasma. I did just want to ask and I think maybe you touched on it a little. But when we look at the fiscal 3Q going into the fiscal 4Q implied numbers, it looks like a little bit bigger than the typical seasonal step down in fiscal 4Q. So just want to get a sense for is that conservatism? Was there any stocking around some of these fair gains or anything to think about on. I know you had that chunky software renewal earlier in the year.

Just trying to get a sense for. For anything that would explain maybe that step down or is it really just trying to take a prudent approach to close out the year?

Chris Simon

Prudence, the exact right word, Andrew. We had a really good third quarter, obviously above historic seasonality. Number one driver in the quarter and now year to date were the share gains. So there was nothing around order timing or one offs that you need to factor in there. It’s just us guiding on the things we can directly control, you know, further share uptick in the final final stages of annualization from last year’s. Technology rollout. You know, collection volume. You know, we’ll leave it to you guys to figure out what you think is the right number to plug in there.

Our guidance reflects what we can control.

Andrew Cooper

Okay, great. I’ll stop there. Thank you.

Chris Simon

Thank you.

operator

Thank you. I am showing no further questions in the queue. This will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. And you may now disconnect. Sam. Sa. Sam. Sa. Sam.