Image source: The Motley Fool. Orthofix Medical Inc (NASDAQ: OFIX)Q4 2019 Earnings CallFeb 24, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ETContents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks: OperatorLadies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Orthofix Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mark Quick, Senior Director of Business Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.Mark Quick -- Senior Director of Business Development and Investor RelationsThank you, operator and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Orthofix fourth quarter 2019 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are President and Chief Executive Officer, Jon Serbousek and Chief Financial Officer, Doug Rice. I'll start with our Safe Harbor statements and then pass it over to John.During this call, we'll be making forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than those of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including any earnings guidance we provide and any statements about our plans, beliefs, strategies, expectations, goals or objectives. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, as there is no assurance that the matters contained in such statements will occur.The forward-looking statements we make on today's call are based on our beliefs and expectations as of today, February 24, 2020. We do not undertake any obligation to revise or update such forward-looking statements.Some factors that could cause actual results to be materially different from the forward-looking statements made by us on the call include the risks disclosed under the heading Risk Factors in our Form 10-K for the year-ended December 31st, 2019, as well as additional SEC filings we make in the future. If you need copies of these documents, please contact my office at Orthofix in Lewisville, Texas.In addition, on today's call, we'll refer to various non-GAAP financial measures. We believe that in order to properly understand our short-term and long-term financial trends, investors may wish to review these matters as a supplement to financial measures determined in accordance with US GAAP. Please refer to today's press release announcing our fourth quarter 2019 results for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to our US GAAP financial results.At this point, I'll turn the call over to Jon.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThanks, Mark and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you joining us on today's call. My first Orthofix earnings call since transitioning to President and CEO. The agenda today is to walk through the key aspects of our strategic plan, after which we will provide commentary around our fourth quarter top line results, before handing the call over to Doug to discuss the remaining financial results plus our outlook for 2020.Since joining Orthofix, I have spent significant time with our global teams as well as many surgeon customers, distributor partners and the industry administrators. As a result of these conversations, I'm even more enthusiastic about the opportunity in front of us, than before I joined the Company.First and foremost, we have well-defined market and/or our technology leadership positions in bone growth stimulation, cellular-based allografts, extremity deformity correction, and of course, artificial cervical disc. There is significant opportunity for us to enhance and build around these strong offerings. In addition, we have the most comprehensive offering of cervical products. And with the recently announced asset purchase of FITBONE, we will be the only Company offering both internal and external limb-link options. Collectively, these are impressive positions for the Company of our size.We used say -- I'd like to amplify how excited I am to be here at Orthofix and express my gratitude for the patience you've delivered during our quiet period leading up to this call. During this time, we've been working to assess the Company's current and prepare strategic plan with key strategic initiatives to create accelerated growth and take Orthofix to the next level. While this transformation won't happen overnight and will take some investment, I am certain the Company can execute on these objectives, and I'm pleased to say we can fully fund these initiatives that I'm glad to talk about.Apart from our product and technology strengths, the talented team at Orthofix has done a great job creating a solid business foundation from which we can grow. With our strong infrastructure, legal, finance, accounting, order to cash and compliance programs, Orthofix is well positioned to execute commercially. I've been impressed by the spirit and enthusiasm that I have personally seen in the team at Orthofix across all geographies and all business units and at all levels.I would like to thank everyone at Orthofix for their support as we collectively developed a strategic plan to take the Company successfully into the future.Now let's move on to areas where I see substantial opportunity to improve our commercial performance and financial results. As we discussed on the third quarter earnings call, the distraction from the CEO transition combined with leadership departures in the Spine business over the last year, negatively impacted our performance. Some of these challenges carried over into the fourth quarter, as I will discuss in a bit. However, I'd like to -- I think it's important to remind everyone that the leadership departures occurred, but we are also implementing a 2018 strategic initiative to realign the legacy businesses of Bone Growth Therapies, Biologics, Spinal Implants and Motion Preservation into a single Global Spine business unit and leadership. As a result, we experienced a great deal of organizational uncertainty and a lack of clear path forward.So let me tell you about the strategic plan. I'm going to outline four key strategic areas of investment and focus which are: structure and leadership, operational execution, new product and procedural innovation and commercial channel development.I'll start with our first strategic initiative, which is focused on structure and leadership. In terms of structure, we will complete the previously announced business unit realignment efforts to focus our Spine and Extremities business, while we seek to improve coordination between these businesses to maximize revenue across our entire organization.Filling some of the vacancies and adding to our talented leadership team has been a huge focus for me since I have arrived. And I'm pleased to share with you some of our early progress. Let me start with Kevin Kenny, our new President of Global Spine. Kevin, has successful general management and commercial expertise. He has considerable Spine and Biologics expertise, and has built many high performance teams throughout his career. In fact, at Medtronic Spine and Biologics, he was part of the team that built the largest and most successful sales channel in Spine. I believe the combination of his Spine market knowledge, leadership skills, channel creation expertise and key relationships will give us a huge advantage in the marketplace.We've also made great progress in bolstering Kevin's Spine team with the addition of Joe Ross, as Senior Vice President of Motion Preservation. Joe has spent his entire career in Spine, and I consider him one of the foremost experts in commercializing spine products and procedures. Importantly, Joe has significant experience in artificial discs. He was part of the first commercial launch of the lumbar disc in the United States, then most recently he was at LDR Spine, where he took the artificial cervical disc to one of the fastest growing product and most sought after disc in the market. Joe, is excited to join the team and we think he can generate success on our next-generation artificial disc.Another significant addition to the Spine team is Paul Kosters, who recently joined as Senior Vice President and Managing Director of International Spine. Paul comes to us having held similar roles at NuVasive and Medtronic Spine and Biologics. We have a significant opportunity in our international markets, and Paul's relationships and experience will maximize their potential.We are close to filling our US VP of Spinal Sales position. We have identified a number of excellent candidates and others have reached out to me directly based on the opportunity at Orthofix. I'm pleased to report these candidates are experienced spine leaders looking for a new opportunity.I'm very excited about the Spine leadership team we are building. These executives have tremendous Spine experience and have done this before. We are already making a big impact, and I know this is just the beginning.At the corporate level, Ehab Esmail has been hired as our newly created Global Head of Quality, Regulatory and Clinical Affairs to support existing and accelerate new product introductions. He is an experienced MedTech executive, who has previously worked at Zimmer Biomet, Wright and Smith & Nephew in similar capacities.To build our operational excellence, Roberto Donadello has been promoted into a newly created Global Operations role. Previously, he was managing our Extremities Operations Group, where he built a high performance group in our Verona, Italy business starting in 2007 and truly embodies a flawless execution culture, we seek to have globally.Taking the new additions and rolls, combining them with the existing strong Orthofix talent will position us for success, and I look forward to this team coalescing, as we execute commercially within our new streamlined structure. That will segue us into our second strategic initiative, which is operational execution. To me, this means ensuring that we get our high quality products and tissue to our customers when they want it, and how they want it. The wind is pretty obvious and primarily entails optimizing our supply chain. While this will have financial benefits down the road, my immediate focus is on creating an aggressive, agile, competitive culture, focused on flawless execution and winning.Our customers want their products and tissues, it is just as important as when. We aim to have a market-driven customer service, which will be defined by our customer. We are currently in discussions with many customers, who include physicians, patients, hospital administration and payers to understand their views and assist us in defining our future direction. This something I'm very passionate about and will focus on going forward. We are creating the view that everyone at Orthofix owns the total customer experience.Now let's move to our third strategic initiative, which is product innovation and differentiation. Those of you on the call, know how competitive our markets are, and how difficult it is to develop disruptive technologies. Having been in spine and orthopedics for over 30 years, I can tell you that there are market trends today that are creating unmet needs that require solutions. We are going to be laser focused on both developing and acquiring high value products and procedure solutions that solve these unmet needs.As we will discuss later, this is where you will see the bulk of our investments in the short term. It is easy to talk about new product innovations, but executing on these initiatives requires a focused plan. We've not fully invested in research and development over the past few years and rebuilding the Spine pipeline will take some time. As we focus on accelerating our new product innovation cycle, it will be done with intense engagement, talent additions, changing the processing used, redefining the delivery expectations of development groups and alignment with Spine and Extremity thought leaders around the world.We will also invest in our clinical and regulatory execution with the launch of our new M6-C two-level study to expand our future market opportunity. Additional studies in our Spinal and Extremity businesses are also planned.On an inorganic front, we will continue to be disciplined acquirers of assets that have strong strategic fits, and we can purchase at a reasonable price and add significant value. Both our acquisition of Spinal Kinetics, as well as the recently announced acquisition of FITBONE, that will discuss in a moment are good examples of the types of deals that we are looking to execute on. In both case, we acquired products that fit well, strengthen our portfolio and where Orthofix can add significant value. We also believe that both of these acquisitions will drive significant revenue in the future.Now, I'd like to spend a moment sharing my excitement about the recently announced agreement to acquire the FITBONE platform. This is a highly strategic asset for us, as lengthening nail technology has been a gap in our Extremities pediatric deformity correction portfolio. This is clearly an area where we want to maintain our market leadership. With this technology, we will be the only company offering both internal and external limb lengthening options along with the eight-plate for angular deformity correction.While the FITBONE motorized active implant technology is the only one of its kind in the market, we are very excited about where we can take it. We will work to innovate our HEX-ray preoperative planning software, which is currently used in our TLX products into our FITBONE product offering in order to make these complex Extremity procedures simpler for the surgeons and their patients.In addition to the FITBONE lengthening now, there is a Scoliosis application technology called FITSPINE. While the clinical and regulatory efforts are very early for the use in deformity care, this along with future applications have us excited about the platform technology for years to come. We've just made the market opportunity for this technology at roughly $300 million today, growing high single digits and only about one-third penetrated by one competitor.We only expect the sales contribution from FITBONE to be approximately $1 million in 2020. We believe this technology will generate significant revenue for us in the future. We will purchase these assets for $18 million, which excludes a tax benefit of almost $4 million. As Doug will touch on in the bit later, we expect this deal to be approximately $2 million dilutive to 2020 adjusted EBITDA. We expect to close the transaction in late March 2020.Lastly, and definitely not least, our fourth strategic initiative is our commercial channel. With the leadership teams we have created in both Spine and Extremity business, we intend to transform and invest in our commercial channels. Over the next 24 months, our plan is to focus on adding or developing long-term strategic partnerships. These partners will share our vision for differentiation and growth and sell multiple Orthofix product lines. This will enable us to realize inherent synergies across our product lines and realize sustained growth.At this point, we are agnostic to model, whether it be sales agents, stocking distributors or direct reps, our focus is on commercial talent. The fundamental thread to our sales partners is that we are highly aligned to collectively grow our businesses together over the long term. That requires a great deal of trust, commitment and delivering on expectations from both sides.As we execute on our four strategic initiatives, we know we have significant work ahead of us. Here are some tangible goals and metrics, we will be looking at for 2020. In structure and leadership, we must fill the vacancy of a VP of Sales for our Spine business, and transition to our new structure. In operational execution, we intend to implement supply chain improvements to reduce the lead time and said availability for our sales organization.With respect to product innovation and differentiation, on the organic side, our goal is to implement a new product development process. Our objective is to our concept to commercialization time, while increasing the volume of new product introductions. On the inorganic side, we expect to close the FITBONE acquisition and initiate integration.For our commercial channel initiative, we intend to increase the number of Extremity distributors selling Biologics by 10%. In addition, we will target increase in a number of our US Spine sales distributors to carry more than one of our product lines by 5%. We have areas that will require more time and effort than others to reach our expected performance levels, and I look forward to updating you on our progress.Now let's shift and discuss the fourth quarter sales performance. Overall, the results of the quarter illustrated a continuation of the trends from the third quarter, which caused us to come in at the low-end of our guidance range.On a constant currency basis, we grew 0.9%. Revenue growth was muted by the distraction from the leadership changes and business structure transition, which was offset by growth driven by the success of M6-C US launch. In our Global Spine segment, the revenue decreased 0.7% over prior year.Let me provide you a little color on each of our key product families. Starting with Bone Growth Therapies. The business was down year-over-year 3.5%, which was at the low-end of our expectation. This was due mostly to normal churn in the commercial channel and a loss of two key distributors, which are now being backfilled. We have taken steps to rectify this disruption, and early 2020 sales reflect stabilization. However, I do expect the recovery in this business to be very gradual throughout 2020.I would also like to address an item with respect to our Bone Growth Therapy business, as some of you may have questions about this in the coming weeks. Today, FDA published in the Federal Registry a notice announcing an advisory committee panel meeting on April 23rd to consider whether bone growth stimulator devices should be reclassified from Class III to Class II medical devices. You may recall that in 2006, FDA convened a panel and openly determined for safety and efficacy reasons to maintain the Class III status of these products. We continue to be very confident in our position that these devices should remain Class III in order to ensure efficacy of the therapy. We, together with other manufacturers of bone growth stimulators will participate in the hearing and submit testimony.Orthofix has the market-leading bone growth stimulation platform. We enjoy the only cervical indication granted by the FDA, and we are the only Company investing in IT studies to expand indications for years. BGS devices encompass a range of intended users, distinct technologies, wave parameters, functionalities, design and dose symmetries. Given the nature and of the dissimilarities among BGS devices, a single set of special controls could not reasonably assure the safety and effectiveness of each distinct type of BGS device. Simply stated, these are not 510(K) devices, even with special controls.Now let's move back to Spinal Implant performance. In Spinal Implants, sales were up 2.3% in constant currency over prior year with M6-C US sales driving the growth for the quarter. Let me give you a little more detail around the product performance in Spinal Implants. In Spine Fixation, our core Spine hardware products, sales were down 8.4% in constant currency over prior year, which was driven by the slow ramp-up of new distributors and continued void in sales leadership. As mentioned earlier, with our new tenured Spine team, we have significant attention on this business, and have a good understanding of the current dynamics. We are currently crafting a plan for success and feel positive about the future of this business.Moving on to Motion Preservation. Sales grew 68.5% constant currency over prior year due to the success of the US launch. US sales finished above our guidance at $4.1 million for the year. We are very excited about the early adoption and what the new team can do to continue to propel the trajectory. We're continuing our focus on education and training to ensure long-term success of this novel technology.In Biologics, we demonstrated a solid quarter with 4.2% year-over-year growth. A deceleration from previous quarters was due to tougher comps, after the anniversary of distributors that were added in the fourth quarter 2018. We do expect some headwinds for this business as we progress into 2020, given the continuation of our realignment efforts. However, with the strong MTF Biologics partnership and the Trinity ELITE tissue, I believe we have a solid platform to build on. Additionally, we continue to roll out fiberFUSE DBM with handling characteristics like Trinity ELITE, which should continue to contribute to these sales over the coming years. Our Biologic portfolio is built around Trinity ELITE. And this competitive offering meets the needs of our surgeon customers.In our Global Extremities segment, sales grew 6.4% at constant currency during the quarter. This was buoyed by a large international tender, which was offset by weakness in the US. The trailing 12 month constant currency revenue growth was 0.3%. While FITBONE acquisition is not expected to materially contribute in 2020, having the product available will relieve some of the competitive pressure we've been experiencing in certain geographies.With that, I will now hand over the call to Doug for further commentary around the quarter's financial performance and 2020 guidance.Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerThanks, Jon. I'd like to begin by saying, it's been a great few months already and on behalf of the rest of the team, we want you to know how excited we are that you are here. With that, good afternoon, everyone. I will provide some additional details into our net sales and earnings results, along with our outlook for 2020, and then discuss some of our other financial measures.Starting with revenue. Total net sales for the quarter were $121.5 million, up 0.3% on a reported basis and 0.9% on a constant currency basis when compared to the fourth quarter of 2018. Based on the current outlook for our business, we expect full year 2020 revenue to be in the range of $467 million to $477 million, representing 1.5% to 3.7% year-over-year growth on a reported basis. On a constant currency basis, growth is expected to be between 2.3% and 4.5%, given an estimated foreign currency headwind of approximately $3.5 million. This growth was led by our Global Spine segment, which we expect to grow at 3% to 5% in 2020.Going through each of our Spine product categories. Bone Growth Therapies is expected to be flat to 1% growth, due to the gradual recovery expected throughout the year that Jon mentioned. We expect Spinal Implants global revenue to grow at approximately 10% to 14%. Within this category, we expect our Motion Preservation US sales in 2020 to be between $15 million and $17 million.In Biologics, given the headwinds and realignment initiatives that Jon mentioned, we expect flat to low single-digit revenue growth for the full year. Finally in Extremities, with the majority of the $3.5 million foreign currency headwinds negatively impacting this business, we expect reported 2020 revenue to be approximately flat to down 2%. This includes approximately $1 million of contribution from FITBONE as Jon mentioned.Considering the cadence impact from these moving parts, we are providing first quarter 2020 net sales guidance of $106 million to $109 million, which includes approximately $2 million impact from currency headwind stabilization and recovery through the year in Bone Growth Therapies and Spinal Implants. On a reported basis, this represents a decline of 2.9% to flat from the prior year. On a constant currency basis, this reflects a decline of 1% to growth of 1.7% from the prior year.Gross margin in the fourth quarter 2019 was 78.4% compared to 78.8% in the prior year period, in line with our expectations. For the full-year 2020, we expect margins to be in the 78% to 79% range, approximately flat to 2019.Sales and marketing expenses were 48% of net sales in the fourth quarter of 2019, up from 44.5% in the fourth quarter of 2018. This increase primarily reflects both product mix as well as increased training and education programs to support the M6-C US commercial launch. For the full-year 2020, we expect adjusted sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of sales to be roughly flat with 2019.GAAP G&A expenses were 18.2% of net sales in the fourth quarter of 2019, up from 16.2% in the prior year period. This increase was due primarily to higher spending on succession and transition expenses as well as legal settlement expenses in the fourth quarter of 2019.R&D expenses for the fourth quarter were 7% of net sales, down from 7.3% in the prior year period, due primarily to decreased clinical studies. For the full-year 2020, we expect adjusted R&D expenses as a percentage of sales to be between 9% and 9.5%, as we significantly ramp up our efforts to drive organic innovation and differentiation. Including the initiation of our M6-C two-level study, the M6-C post-approval study continued enrollment in our BGT Rotator Cuff study, investments in next generation tissues and building a robust product pipeline and Spine and Extremities.As a reminder, due to the significance and the varying timing of the underlying compliance initiatives associated with the recent EU Medical Device Regulations, we will continue to adjust for these implementation costs. We expect to incur $5 million to $5.5 million of these implementation costs in 2020.Adjusted EBITDA decreased to $22.5 million or 18.5% of revenue, down from $24.4 million or 20.2% of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019. This decrease reflects our continued investments toward accelerating top line growth primarily related to the M6-C commercial launch that are reflected in sales and marketing. For the full-year 2020, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be in the $65 million to $68 million range, which reflects increased R&D spending, as well as approximately $2 million of dilution from FITBONE as Jon mentioned.Now turning to tax. We had income tax benefit for the quarter of $7.5 million or negative 176% of income before income taxes, as compared to income tax expense of $2.7 million or 24% of income before income taxes in the same period of 2018. The tax provision for this quarter was significantly impacted by the timing of earnings during the year, including the impact of the Spinal Kinetics contingent consideration expenses recorded in Q3, which are largely non-deductible for tax purposes and did not recur in Q4. For our non-GAAP results, we will continue to use 27% as our adjusted effective long-term tax rate in 2020.For the fourth quarter 2019, we reported GAAP EPS of $0.60 per diluted share as compared to $0.46 per share for the fourth quarter 2018. After adjusting for certain items and when normalizing for tax using a non-GAAP long-term effective tax rate, adjusted EPS for the fourth quarter 2019 was $0.51 compared to $0.56 in the fourth quarter of 2018. The majority of the decrease was due to the investments in the M6-C US launch.For the full-year 2020, assuming weighted average diluted shares outstanding of 19.7 million, we expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $1.00 to $1.10, which includes approximately $0.08 of expected dilution from FITBONE. Consistent with our historically lower volume in the first quarter, we expect our Q1 2020 adjusted EPS to approximate $0.09 to $0.12.Moving onto the balance sheet highlights. Days sales outstanding or DSOs were 66 days at the end of the fourth quarter 2019, up from 59 days at the end of the fourth quarter 2018. We expect this increase to be temporary and to improve in the coming quarters. Our inventory turns at the end of the fourth quarter 2019 were at 1.2 times, compared with 1.3 times in the fourth quarter 2018.Cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash at the end of the year 2019 totaled $70.4 million compared to $72.2 million at the end of the previous year. Cash flow from operations for the quarter was $11.9 million, down from $21.1 million in the fourth quarter 2018 due primarily to increases in inventory and other working capital investments to support our top line growth initiatives, including the commercial launch of M6 in the US.Capital expenditures were up in the quarter to $5.6 million from $4.5 million in the prior year, due primarily to investments in manufacturing capacity expansion for the M6-C artificial cervical disc. For the full-year 2020, we expect capex to be approximately $25 million, a year-over-year increase of about $5 million that is mostly due to the deployment of additional instrument sets.Free cash flow, which we calculate by taking cash flow from operations and subtracting capex, was $6.3 million during the quarter compared to $16.6 million in the prior year. This reduction during the quarter was primarily due to changes in working capital with a ramp in inventory to support our growth.I will now turn the call back over to Jon.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThanks, Doug. On a closing note, I would like to thank all of our team members, customers and investors for their patience during this leadership transition period. Change is hard, it would have been easy to come here and not make the necessary hard decisions. But I did not come here to do that, I came here to do the work needed to make this Company a growth organization, one step at a time, and I'll try to inspire every member of the Orthofix team to do the same.Orthofix already has a strong margin profile for its size and scale. The easy path would be to continue slowly expanding margins and growing in low single digits. However, I don't that this is the path that maximizes shareholder value, rather I see an alternative path where we invest to accelerate our organic growth rate that will provide us with scale and then ultimately future higher margins, free cash flow generation three to five years down the road. I look forward to discussing the strategic plan and sharing our successes with you over the coming quarters.As Doug highlighted, we are stepping up our investments to implement our four strategic initiatives. I want to be clear, that I'm carefully monitoring all spending going on throughout the organization. To my previous roles working in and advising private equity owned companies, I have developed an acumen for prudently managing expense to drive future value. Furthermore, we have cost rationalization programs in place in certain areas to help offset some of these investments.We are seeking to build a culture of passion here at Orthofix. Passion for developing innovative and differentiated Spine and Extremities solutions that help surgeons provide superior care for their patients. Passion for delivering these solution to our customers with flawless execution. Passion for all the hard work behind the scenes that facilitates these efforts. And last but not least, passion for growing markets and growing Orthofix.Finally, I just want to reiterate my excitement to be here and thanks to the current and new team members, the future at Orthofix is very bright. With that, operator, we are ready to open up the lines for question.Questions and Answers:Operator[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Raj Denhoy of Jefferies. Your line is open.Anthony -- Jefferies -- AnalystHi. This is Anthony in for Raj and congratulations on the first call here and look forward to working with you, Jon. Maybe just a few on Bone Growth, and then I'll have one on M6, just to follow-up. But we will look at Bone Growth, obviously last quarter facing a number of headwinds, it was partially sales leadership related, also sales force turnover and then as an extent of that, just lost market share. So, if you look at the 1% constant currency, we're off that historical sort of mid-single digit growth range, when you look at those three categories, leadership, sales force turnover and just share, can you kind of just frame to what extent the business is facing pressures from each three? And then your sort of outlook for when we should see a turn in some of those drivers? And then I'll have a follow-up. Thanks.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThanks, Anthony. Regarding those three items, the the leadership is being addressed now as we basically bring on the new spine team. And that was a gap that has been open for a number of quarters. And so, from the that basically focusing on the sales and then competitive conversions and also market expansion for those products, was basically -- more in a dwell mode, and that was part of the issue.Regarding the point on constant currency, we sell BGT only in the US right now. And so I think that would address that matter.Anthony -- Jefferies -- AnalystI guess, the follow-up here would be, again, can you quantify how much share has actually been lost in Bone Growth, one. And then you mentioned the panel coming up, the potential classification shift to Class II status from Class III, can you just sort of maybe frame the risk around that attracts us that it's mostly around the competitive front, as a risk, but on the other hand, we are in the camp that the moat around this business for Orthofix is sort of expansive and durable. So how much of a risk is the panel? But on the other hand, how durable is the competitive positioning for Orthofix within Bone Growth stem?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerWell, on the on the competitive risk, we see a number of -- a portion of this is just normal churn as far as moving customers around, basically and distributors around. So that's a part of the issue that we were not addressing, and so we'll look to get after that, just a normal churn and then basically make more strategic acquisitions as available.Regarding the risk, as I said in my prepared remarks, we -- I -- the team believes this is a Class III device. And we've gone through this with the FDA since 2006, and because of the safety and efficacy requirements and the diversity of those products that are in this BGT category, our Bone Growth category, we see it as a hard position decision to move off of Class III device.Anthony -- Jefferies -- AnalystOkay. And then the last for us here would be just on M6, obviously, better than expected. Can you maybe describe a little bit in more detail, how much of that in the quarter specifically was from new surgeon adds, as opposed to just deeper utilization within early adopter accounts? Thanks again.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerYeah, Anthony, at this stage we are adding surgeons at a rapid pace. And so, we look at not only surgeons added, surgeons how do their first case, and surgeons who do multiple cases after that. And we see increase in all those categories. So it's a combination of all of the above.Anthony -- Jefferies -- AnalystGreat, thanks.OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Craig Bijoub of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.Craig Bijoub -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- AnalystHi guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Jon, you obviously laid out a number of strategic initiatives in your plan. And from a high level, wanted to get a sense for how much of what you're planning to do is getting Orthofix kind of back to normal or status quo, basically, status quo versus some of the future growth initiatives that maybe new, you brought in with your experience? And I guess just kind of the timing on getting back to a normalized business?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThanks, Craig. The way I would approach that is that, bringing the talent on is a key component of getting back to a state where this is an operational spine business. When you have gaps, especially the gaps that were there, it basically takes away from the growth or even the future view of that business. So we're bringing the talent back and then also to basically, just capitalize on our existing portfolio, just through execution, just through sales and commercial execution is really key. And then as we move on into the out-year -- out periods, is looking at new technologies or new additions to the portfolio, organic and inorganic. And as you mentioned, my background for the previous four years of joining -- prior to joining Orthofix, I spent in a space where working with venture and private equity, looking at how do we disrupt these markets, and we think there's really good avenues, not only product and procedure based that can help disrupt these markets and basically take and transition them to where healthcare is being provided in these procedures in the future. So we will look to explore all those.Craig Bijoub -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- AnalystGot it. That's helpful. If I can ask on guidance in 2020, obviously, the Q1 is a little bit softer than the overall guidance -- revenue guidance for 2020. So just wanted to get a sense for your confidence that you can see that acceleration throughout the year, and I know you touched on it in the script, but maybe just a little bit more detail on what specific products or segments are going to be driving that full-year 2020 guidance?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerSo our our initial activities are to make sure that we stabilize leadership, and just start executing on our core. And basically that will be the process that will happen in the near-term, and then mid -- in later in the period, in the year, we look forward to executing and driving top line with M6, and then also we have some new additions that are coming in the market with an expandable interbody. And then also moving into BGT and its performance, with some of the STIM On Track initiatives that we have in place as well.Craig Bijoub -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- AnalystGreat, that's helpful. Last one for me, just on the PMA study for two -- sorry, the two-level study. I wanted to see is, is that a PMA study?Any help on timing or maybe spends on that study?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerSo, it's an ID amendment that we just submitted to the FDA few days ago. And we did, we went to an amendment, because for economic reasons, we found a pathway, where we think we can economize portions of a two-level study. And so we're looking at doing that as well as, we put together a fairly aggressive plan to have patient enrollment. So, it will be at the typical IDE pace, hopefully, we'll basically take some of that off the front end of it, but it will be at a relatively rapid pace for a full IDE study.Craig Bijoub -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- AnalystGreat. Thanks for taking the questions.Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerThanks, Craig.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThanks, Craig.OperatorYour next question comes from Ryan Zimmerman of BTIG. Your line is open.Ryan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystAll right, great. Thank you for taking the questions. Jon, welcome to Orthofix's team. So I want to touch on a few items here that have already been asked about, and ask a few others. Just as a soft to Anthony's earlier question, is the FDA giving you any indication in terms of timing around the decision? I know when this last came up, it kind of pattered along for some time and kind of dissipated. But do you have any sense for timing on when we could hear about reclassification for Bone stem?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerWell, we know certainly the April date that they gave us today. But after that this goes through a process, and determining what happens on the April date, and if its positioned back to the agency, it will take months. The historical, on the four that have gone before in that area has taken between six and 20 months to actually go through the agency and make a ruling. And so from that standpoint, we will monitor it closely. We are all part of the bone growth coalition. And so we'll manage that very closely in the upcoming periods.Ryan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystAnd then Jon, just there has been quite a bit of disruption in the business late in 2019. You're resetting numbers here meaningfully. What's your confidence that disruption is behind you, because when I think about kind of, some your commentary too, around the commercial channel and working agnostic to sales agents or stocking agents, does that imply that there is more churn that you have to go through on some of your distributors over the course of this year?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerWell, first it leads with -- starts with solidifying the sales leadership. And with that, then you start basically -- they bring a great deal of their own channel that brings new distributors or agents and reps. But for me, we have good -- we have very good distributors right now. And we are -- they are motivated, and driven to basically align with us. We will basically develop and go with them. And we also need to expand that pool to basically people who want to be dedicated and aligned to our objectives. And so from that standpoint, it's a combination. The reason why I say agnostic is because, I think there is opportunities in certain geographies to go with direct reps. That doesn't mean that we're moving away from distributors at all. It means, basically, it's an opportunity we have, and I've done in organizations, where we have hybrid models, and they work very, very effectively, depends upon geography and location and timing. So, it's a matter of investing in these distribution channel and finding the best commercial talent out there.Ryan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystAlright. I'll hop back in the queue and let some others ask questions. Thank you, Jon.OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Cohen of Ladenburg Thalmann. Your line is open.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystHi, Jon and Doug. Thanks for taking the questions. Turning the hold into a couple, so could you talk a little bit about the large Extremity order from the quarter look like, given a 28 handle versus 25, what we specific from? And what geography was that specific to?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerAt the end of the quarter, we had some stocking distributors sourced out of our Italian branch that with total just right around $1.1 million, Jeff.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystOkay. So, part of it was strength for the quarter even outside of that, those large orders?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerFor Extremities?Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystYeah.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerYeah, we had good performance outside of the US, I think we continue to look internally at some challenges and in the US with our Extremities business. But, overall we were pleased to get the stocking distributor orders there at the end of the year.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystOkay, got it. So, can you talk a little bit about the tax benefits. So from the quarter was [Indecipherable] change. And with the close of FITBONE, you're saying it will close in by the end of Q1. And when do you expect that $4 million tax benefit from that?Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerYeah. So with regards to our tax rate, this year, we got a large benefit from eNeura and the writedown realized loss that we had on eNeura. And so that drove a lot of the tax rate. And in the fourth quarter, our tax rate is lumpy. For example, in the third quarter, we had a lot of Spinal Kinetics contingent consideration expense that wasn't deductible that drove a lot of book-tax differences. But in terms of FITBONE, we expect a lot of that to be deductible over time, but it will take probably several years to realize the full tax benefit on that spend.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystOkay, got it. And then lastly, Jon, can you talk a little bit about Verona, and Italy, and what percent of the Extremity business is related to elective procedures? I'm just trying to get a sense of any kind of risk factors that are associated recently. Thank you.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerCertainly, Verona facility is roughly a little over 20% of the business. And what it comes down to is that, it's highly elective and so the area we work into is specialty trauma, foot and ankle and pediatrics. And so, the specialty trauma, there is there is trauma, the best is addressed, but it's not really acute or hot trauma or late night trauma in that regard. So, there'll be scratcher management with external fixation that's done, because of the severity of the injury and usually they take they put those on -- put those patients off for days. And so they can plan them. But they are planned and executed.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystOkay. I guess my question is on just trying to get a sense of have you seen any types of disruptions or procedures being put off your facilities, particularly in Italy, and can you give us a sense for what percent in Extremity market in Europe is coming out of Italy versus some of the other top three or four countries?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerSo we're heavier in Europe, and Italy is one of our better markets in Europe. So, but we are talking to Italy this morning, they have not seen any disruptions of surgeries to date. And they are still operating that business at full force. They are taking precautions to follow all the governmental regulations within Italy and also outside of Italy. So from that standpoint, we've not seen the disruption yet, and the direction we've heard from them is that they're not going to, especially, in the specialty trauma area and the foot and ankle and pediatrics area is more -- foot and ankle area is more prevalent in the US, so that, we haven't seen that as well.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystOkay. And then lastly for me, could you talk about, for 2020, did you give out any numbers related to any M6 growth rates or top line number? You had some number earlier, you mentioned $15 million to $17 million range. Can you refresh me on what that was referring to?Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerYeah, we were guiding total US M6 revenue at $15 million to $17 million, which compares to $4 million this year.Jeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystOkay, perfect. That's it for me. Thanks for taking the questions.Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerThanks, Jeff.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThanks, Jeff.OperatorYour next question comes from Jim Sidoti of Sidoti & Co. Your line is open.Jim Sidoti -- Sidoti & Co. -- AnalystGood afternoon. Can you hear me?Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerHey, Jim. Thanks.Jim Sidoti -- Sidoti & Co. -- AnalystGreat. Doug, when you gave guidance, you indicated you expected $5 million to $5.5 million of implementation costs, I believe that's related to CE. Can you just tell me where that will wind up on the income statement?Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerIt will be in R&D.Jim Sidoti -- Sidoti & Co. -- AnalystOkay. And why do -- is that because of the changes and CE that you have to recertify things?Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerThe European Union recently came out with some new guidelines on certifying your product. That will require us to invest in some more clinical research and other infrastructure. And so those costs are reflective of that effort. We think we'll take advantage of the early transition period to get CE marks on as many of our products as possible before the first deadline here in May.Jim Sidoti -- Sidoti & Co. -- AnalystAll right. Thank you.Operator[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Zimmerman of BTIG. Open.Ryan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystYes, thanks. Just a quick follow-up for me. The Spinal Implants guidance for the year, I think calls, if I heard you right, Jon, -- excuse me, Doug, it's 10% to 14% for the year. You called on Motion Preservation of $15 million to $17 million. If we just take that and assume, $16 million increase, roughly implies about a 17% step up. So just trying to understand kind of what the underlying Spinal Implant growth implied there is in the guidance?Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerYeah, for total Spinal Implants for the year, Spinal Implants is made up of Spine Fixation and Motion Preservation, which is M6. So Spine Fixation as we guided in the script, we expect to be roughly flat, a decrease of about minus 1% maybe to 1% growth, and then the rest of it is Motion Preservation. We expect Motion Preservation outside of the United States to be roughly flat in 2020.Ryan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystAnd that $15 million to $17 million, Doug, include some OUS sales?Doug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerNo, that's just US.Ryan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystThat's just US. Okay, thank you for that clarity.OperatorThere are no further questions over the phone lines at this time. I turn the call back over to the presenters.Jon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerThank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us on the call today. And I look forward to future conversations throughout the quarter and beyond.Operator[Operator Closing Remarks]Duration: 53 minutesCall participants:Mark Quick -- Senior Director of Business Development and Investor RelationsJon Serbuosek -- Director, President, and Chief Executive OfficerDoug Rice -- Chief Financial OfficerAnthony -- Jefferies -- AnalystCraig Bijoub -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- AnalystRyan Zimmerman -- BTIG -- AnalystJeffrey Cohen -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- AnalystJim Sidoti -- Sidoti & Co. -- Analyst More OFIX analysis All earnings call transcripts 10 stocks we like better than Orthofix InternationalWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. 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