Henry Schein Dental Group reported sales of $622 million for the third quarter of FY2009 (end-September 26), a 3% decrease over sales of $645 million for the same quarter a year ago.
The company attributed the drop to lower equipment sales and service revenues. A 2.5% decline in local currencies included 1.3% growth in dental consumable merchandise sales and a 12.8% decline in dental equipment sales and service revenues.
"As expected, our decrease in sales of dental equipment has improved from the previous quarter's rate of decline," said Stanley M. Bergman, chairman and CEO of Henry Schein, in a press release.
Overall, Henry Schein reported net sales of $1.7 billion for the third quarter of 2009, an increase of 0.9% compared with the third quarter of 2008.
"We continue to believe that the market for dental consumable merchandise has stabilized," Bergman said in a conference call following announcement of the financial results. "More specifically, we believe this market contracted by low single-digit percentages compared with the prior year third quarter, but was largely flat sequentially. Our third quarter dental merchandise results are consistent with this trend.
"Aesthetic and elective procedures, we believe, continue to be impacted to a greater extent by the macroeconomic conditions. We believe we are beginning to see signs of improvement in the dental equipment market. Although sales are declining versus the prior year, our third quarter equipment sales are up modestly compared to the preceding quarter. "
