Trade wars are not so easy, it turns out. Now healthcare giant Philips is moving production around from the U.S. to China and vice versa worth "hundreds of millions" of euros, in order to escape tariffs, CEO Frans van Houten announced to the press on Tuesday.

"This is not peanuts,” he said, according to Reuters, adding that the changes slated for the first six months of the year “are serious changes to our supply chains.”

It also kept with its earlier prediction that the tariff war would shave nearly $69 million from 2019 profits.

Moreover, the conflict is dinging consumer confidence in China, which is a drag on the company's consumer sales in that nation.

The retail woes, however, are being offset as hospital demand is still strong for its professional products, and van Houten said on the earnings call Tuesday that total comparable sales growth should stay at 4 to 6 percent yearly to 2020. In fact, strong hospital demand has been evident not only in China, but in Europe and Latin America, which helped the company beat Q4 2018 forecasts – with comparable sales up 5 percent and core EBITA profits up 10 percent to 971 million euros, said the news service.

“On headline numbers, Philips reported a decent update,” ING analyst Marc Hesselink wrote in a note, according to Reuters. "Underlying, the quality of the beat was lower [as] Connected Care & Healthcare Informatics was, like previous quarters, well below expectations."

During the earnings call, van Houten expanded on the strategy behind the company's health tech “journey,” according to a Motley Fool transcript.

“Our value-creation story is built on the three key levers of driving growth in the core business, innovating solutions and driving operational excellence,” he explained.

Expanding on this, he added, “we do this with innovative solutions that deliver on the quadruple aim objectives of improving health outcomes, patient experience, staff experience, while improving productivity of healthcare. And we form stronger relationship with customers through this methodology to help them transform the way healthcare is being delivered. You've seen customers where we start with an initial long-term strategic partnership in radiology and subsequently expand into other clinical areas such as integrated patient care or vice versa. We continued with strong growth in long-term strategic partnerships.”

For example, during 2018, more than 50 new multimillion strategic partnerships were signed, including an agreement with the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K. for imaging and cardiology solutions across their sites. In the Netherlands deals were done with the Erasmus University Medical Center; in Rotterdam, a multi-year partnership was formed to supply hospitalwide ultrasound needs.

In terms of global growth, “positive momentum” continued for diagnostic imaging needs in China, including CFDA approval for the advanced Vereos Digital PET/CT system.

The company is also realigning its internal business structures to better meet customer needs, van Houten said during the call, noting that, “effective as of January 1, 2019, this will lead to changes in the composition of our reporting segments. The most notable changes are the shift to Sleep & Respiratory Care business from the Personal Health segment to the renamed Connected Care segment. The Connected Care businesses focus on patient care solutions, advanced analytics and patient and workflow optimization, both inside and outside the hospital, and aim to unlock synergies from integrating and optimizing patient care pathways, leveraging provider, payer, patient business models to positively impact population health and value-based healthcare.

“Additionally, we will shift most of the Healthcare Informatics business, consisting of informatics related to diagnostics and treatment planning from the Connected Care segment, to the Diagnosis & Treatment segment. This segment unites the businesses related to the promise of precision diagnosis and disease pathway selection and the businesses related to image-guided minimally-invasive therapies. Recognizing the importance of an investment in the Image-Guided Therapy business, I'm happy that Bert van Meurs has joined our executive committee reporting directly to me. The Personal Health businesses will focus on healthy living and primary preventative care.”

Philips made news earlier in January when it unveiled the Azurion angiography system with FlexArm positioning, designed for hybrid ORs for multiple specialties, including minimally-invasive cardiac procedures.

The system, powered by what the company calls a “smart kinematic engine,” moves on eight different axes, controlled with a single “Axsys” controller, allowing it to come in at any angle around the table, said Ronald Tabaksblat, business leader for image-guided therapy systems at Philips.

“As procedures have gotten more and more complex, it’s becoming harder to find room for people around the table,” Tabaksblat told HCB News. “Everybody can have his or her preferred location around the table and the imaging equipment can come in where the physician needs it, not where the technology dictates.”