OM sees ‘power’ in Byram, Apria brands 

RICHMOND, Va. – Owens & Minor execs say they remain “bullish” on the company’s Patient Direct segment, which has posted double-digit growth for four consecutive quarters, but the home respiratory category, specifically, isn’t where they’d like to see it. 

Patient Direct’s revenue for the second quarter of 2023 was $633 million, up 10.5% over the same period in 2022. 

“It is clear that the powerful brands of Byram and Apria are working well together with a broad offering to serve the patient in the home,” said Edward Pesicka, president and CEO during a recent call to discuss the company’s earnings. “We remain bullish on the outlook for the Patient Direct segment for the remainder of the year, as well as the long term as demand for chronic condition health care in the home continues to increase.” 

Diabetes and sleep apnea remain the strongest categories for Patient Direct, while home respiratory is getting dragged down by both a post-COVID lag and the Philips recall of certain non-invasive ventilators, which required the company to invest more capital in new equipment, says Alex Bruni, executive vice president and CFO. 

“The long-term benefit of that is, though, we're comfortable that Philips over time is going to get it fixed,” he said. “When we get it fixed, we're not going to need to spend the capital because those machines will all be refurbished and ready to go.” 

Looking ahead to the end of the year, execs predict that the strong performance of Patient Direct will boost fourth quarter earnings to potentially twice that of the third quarter. 

“As patients hit their deductibles, the increase in the demand for products escalates at a pretty rapid pace in the back half of the year,” said Bruni. “In addition to that, it’s just the continued strong performance in our Patient Direct business. So that's the normal traditional ramp there. And we expect that to continue at the pace if not accelerate from where it's been historically.”