Azenta, Inc.

Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call

8/8/2023

spk09: Greetings and welcome to the Aventa Q3 2023 financial results. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, August 8, 2023. I will now turn the conference over to Sarah Silverman, Head of Investor Relations.
spk01: Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon to everyone on the line today. We would like to welcome you to our earnings conference call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023. Our third quarter earnings press release was issued after the close of the market today and is available on our Investor Relations website, located at investors.azenta.com, in addition to the supplementary PowerPoint slides that will be used during the prepared remarks today. I would like to remind everyone that during the course of the call, we will be making a number of forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Litigation Securities Act of 1995. There are many factors that may cause actual financial results or other events to differ from those identified in such forward-looking statements. I would refer you to the section of our earnings release titled Safe Harbor Statement the Safe Harbor slide on the aforementioned PowerPoint presentation on our website, and our various filings with the SEC, including our annual reports on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We make no obligation to update these statements should future financial data or events occur that differ from the forward-looking statements presented today. We may refer to a number of non-GAAP financial measures, which are used in addition to and in conjunction with results presented in accordance with GAAP. We believe the non-GAAP measures provide an additional way of viewing aspects of our operations and performance, but when considered with GAAP financial results and the reconciliation of GAAP measures, they provide an even more complete understanding of the event of business. Non-GAAP measures should not be relied upon to the exclusion of the GAAP measures themselves. On the call with me today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Schwartz, and our Chief Financial Officer, Lyndon Robertson. We will open the call with remarks from Steve on highlights of the third quarter. Then Lyndon will provide a more detailed look into our financial results and our outlook for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. We will then take your questions at the end of the prepared remarks. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Steve Schwartz.
spk06: Thank you, Sarah. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We're pleased to report on a solid third quarter with results that show a strengthening position across our business units that we believe will set us up to outgrow the market once again. We've spoken to you over the past few quarters about our actions to reinvigorate growth in revenue and profitability, and today we're pleased to report meaningful results and evidence of strong traction. We can say unequivocally that the steps we've taken were the right ones. We restructured our go-to-market approach to align sales with customer decision makers and purchasing patterns. We've recruited more incredible talent to our sales team, and we're seeing results wherever we've added these targeted resources. We're substantially aligned to implement a new reporting structure beginning October 1st, which we expect will significantly improve our operating efficiency while better aligning our offerings to customer needs. We've initiated two tranches of meaningful cost reduction since the start of the calendar year. One is complete, and the other is on track to meet our committed objectives over the next three quarters. These actions are improving our operating leverage while bolstering operations capability to meet any and all demands. Today, we report on the status of these important initiatives, but before I do that, it's noteworthy that in Q3, the combination of a return to growth and our cost reductions allowed us to demonstrate positive free cash flow for the first time as a standalone life sciences company. We're proud of this accomplishment and recognize it as an important milestone in our growth trajectory. Now, let's look at the business by segment. In services, we delivered strong organic growth of 8% year over year. Genomics was up 8%, led by strength in next-generation sequencing, as well as continued strong growth in gene synthesis. We're pleased by the performance of this business, especially in what's become a more challenging macro environment. We've added roughly 20 new sales specialists who are rapidly coming up to speed on our Zenta offerings and will continue to make targeted investments in the business where we see opportunities for growth. Gene synthesis delivered a second consecutive quarter of sequential improvement with 9% growth. We're winning because of our ability to manufacture all manner of complex constructs and deliver with exceptional speed. We're confident that we're back to a sustainable growth pattern in our synthesis business, and though we don't necessarily expect a linear path of growth from here, we do believe we've taken the right actions building a business for growth over the long term. Our next-generation sequencing business grew by double digits over last year. We're ramping this business on the newest Illumina, NovaSeqX, and PacBioRevio platforms. and our proteomics offering continues to advance as we look to remain at the forefront of technological advancement in the market. This quarter, we also launched several new multiomics services, including AAV viral packaging and gene synthesis, and Plasmid EZ in our next-generation sequencing business, which provides efficient plasmid sequencing using Oxford Nanopore technology. In the sample repository solutions business, we grew 6% year over year, led once again by double-digit growth in storage. We also announced that later this year we'll be opening a new biorepository location in the greater Boston area. This 40,000 square foot facility will be our second largest biorepository in terms of sample capacity, after our flagship location in Indianapolis. We measure relative size not in square footage, but rather in the sample capacity that will be enabled by state-of-the-art automation, which will define this highly differentiated capability. We also announced our collaboration with the Lupus Research Alliance, to support the advancement of lupus research and discovery. We're pleased to report that we've received initial samples for this partnership. This project is notable as it reinforces once again our ability to support customers in active trials, which in this case will start small in terms of collection size, but will grow and establish a healthy base of samples for us over time. Moving to the product segment, as expected, the products business declined 9% year-over-year on an organic basis, reflecting continued softness in the consumables business. However, excluding the consumables and instruments business, the rest of the products segment delivered 10% organic growth. A significant contributor to the growth was store systems, which grew 15% year-over-year and 23% quarter-over-quarter, reflecting record performance in our large automated stores business, stemming from the strong backlog we've accumulated over the past few quarters. We expect to deliver another record quarter in Q4 as well. BioStor's revenue was essentially flat quarter-to-quarter as we continued to see some softness due to budget uncertainty. The good news is that quarter-to-quarter we're seeing an increase in our sales funnel, but it's just going to take longer to convert these opportunities into sales as compared to 6 to 12 months ago. The dynamic in the sample management business continues to move toward Aventa, With each quarter, we're changing the sample management landscape as we bring dependable, automated sample management to a market that demands higher efficiency, better economics, and safer handling and connectivity to more effectively manage precious biosample assets, which, by the way, now measure in the billions of individual samples around the world. It's clear to us that over the coming years, large scale manual freezer farms will be retired in favor of automated systems as the only means for safe sample handling and high volume sample management. The increasing demand for large-scale workflow automation is clear, and we're uniquely positioned to support this paradigm shift. Toward that end, over the past eight quarters, we've won automated system orders that will add more than 60 million samples of automated sample storage capacity. Automation for sample management at all temperatures, including cryogenics, is the future, and we're ready to meet the market demand. In consumables, we continue to see high levels of inventory at our customers, and while this effect is temporary, we have limited visibility into how long the channel may be slower. That said, we're encouraged by what was a relatively strong quarter in our instruments business, and our recent acquisition of Zyath is performing well. Instrument sales are a good indicator that investments in workflow automation continue, and as our instruments tend to be closely tied into our consumables, we expect that these sales will support future growth in consumables once inventory levels normalize. Finally, B Medical provided $27 million of revenue, and the team did a great job delivering on several additional cold chain solution orders that were received and shipped within the quarter. We continue our business development activities to leverage B Medical's geographic footprint in fast-growing emerging markets in support of Azenta capabilities in biological sample management. We remain confident of meaningful synergy opportunities over time. Before we conclude the call, I'll give an update on our disciplined capital deployment strategy. As of today, we've completed more than three-fourths of the $1 billion share repurchase we announced in November last year, which has allowed us to retire approximately 20% of our outstanding shares to date. We're investing in new strategic capacity additions for which we see strong future demand, and we have an exciting pipeline of new product and service offerings in development. And we continue to evaluate a healthy pipeline of potential acquisition targets, which remains an important element of our growth strategy. As I conclude my remarks, I want to emphasize the progress we've made and the strength of our execution this quarter, where our top line performance and operational execution contributed to both EBITDA and EPS. Encouraged by the positive results of our actions, our team remains laser focused on sustaining this momentum as we move toward 2024. Our enthusiasm stems from our incredibly strong portfolio of products and services, combined with a balance sheet that will support continued growth in our existing markets, expansion into new geographies, and innovation that will bring new markets into existence. We thank you for your interest and support as we work to deliver value to our customers and shareholders. And I'll now turn the call over to Lyndon.
spk05: Thank you, Steve. I now refer you back to the slide deck available on our website. Turning to slide three for some highlights. Third quarter revenue was $166 million, up 25% year over year, and up 2% on an organic basis. This reflects strong growth in each of the key areas of large automated store systems, sample repository solutions, and genomics. The offsetting area of softness was in the consumables and instruments business, which continues to experience an oversupplied market. Excluding the CNI business, our organic growth was actually up 8% year over year. Our sales and marketing alignment actions are gaining traction, and our customers continue to subscribe to the high value we bring as a critical sample-based solutions and multi-omics solutions provider. And I should highlight that B Medical provided results above our prior guidance and above the prior quarter. The higher level of revenue in the quarter combined with the recent cost actions we have taken are showing through in the improvement in profitability. Non-GAAP earnings per share was 13 cents in the quarter, and adjusted EBITDA was 7.8%. We are now into our fourth fiscal quarter, and when we get to the guidance section, you will see this quarter will support revenue growth for the full fiscal year in the range of 17 to 20% year-over-year. This includes a flat-to-down 4% organic projection. If we exclude the soft C&I business, the balance of the business is supporting organic growth of approximately 4% for the year, led by strength in large automated stores and sample repository solutions. More about the guidance later. Now I would like to turn to slide four to take a deeper look at our results for the quarter. As I already mentioned, total revenue is $166 million, up 25% year over year, and up 12% sequentially quarter to quarter. Looking at the GAAP P&L on the left side, SG&A expenses were higher year over year driven primarily by operating structure we added from acquisitions. On a quarter to quarter basis, the SG&A expense increase was primarily driven by the 17 million decrease in the contingent consideration related to B medical that we took in Q2. We reduced the remaining 1.4 million of the earn out accrual in Q3. Below the operating income line, we generated 11 million in net interest income this quarter. following the similar trend of previous quarters. GAAP earnings per share for continuing operations was a loss of 4 cents compared to a loss of 3 cents last quarter. Now, looking over to the right at our non-GAAP results, gross margin was 45.6%, which was higher by 4 points versus second quarter, with both segments showing improvement. The margin benefit came from the cost reduction actions, the 12% higher revenue, and certain non-recurring cost adjustments in the product segment. Operating expenses were $77 million, up $2 million quarter-to-quarter. The operating expense line also realized the benefit of the cost reduction actions, but was offset with higher revenue-driven sales commissions that be medical and performance-based compensation accruals. On a year-over-year basis, operating expenses were up $20 million. Roughly $11 million of the $20 million year-over-year increase was related to the acquisitions while the remainder was primarily driven by investments in sales in R&D net of the cost reduction actions. Non-GAAP earnings per share was 13 cents per share. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 7.8% as we once again see the leverage in the model as revenue increases and cost reduction actions are realized. Now let's turn over to slide five for a review of our life science product segment results. Total segment revenue was $75 million for the quarter, up 57% year-over-year, driven by acquisitions, which contributed $32 million in the quarter. $27 million of the revenue from acquisitions was from B-Medical, with solid delivery of the orders we previously disclosed plus additional orders booked and shipped. The product segment organic-based business declined 9%. The CNI business experienced continued headwinds and declined 27% year-over-year on an organic basis. The rest of the business was up 10% on an organic basis, led by a record quarter of large automated store system installations. The product's third quarter gross margin was 44.9%. The sequential improvement was supported by higher revenue, which drives improved cost absorption. the benefit of the cost reduction initiatives and non-recurring cost adjustments in the period. These items result in an adjusted EBITDA for the product segment of 7.8%. Next, please turn to slide 6 for a review of our services segment results. The services segment generated third quarter revenue of $91 million, an increase of 7% year over year, and 2% quarter to quarter. The organic revenue for the quarter was up 8%, with genomics up 8% and sample repository solutions growth of 6%, once again led by double-digit growth in core storage as we continued to accumulate samples stored. The genomics business reported growth of 8% year-over-year and 3% sequentially, reflecting a continued recovery in gene synthesis, which grew 9% compared to the second fiscal quarter and 6% year-over-year. NGS was up 13% year to year. We saw growth in every region compared to the prior year, with China showing the highest growth, albeit comparing against a period impacted by COVID with market constraints in 2022. The services business delivered 46.1% gross margin, down one point year over year, though up one point quarter to quarter. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin for services was 6.8% and improved one point sequentially. Now, let's review Azinta's balance sheet in slide seven. As of June 30th, we had 1.3 billion of cash, restricted cash, and marketable securities, both short-term and long-term. We have no debt outstanding. We began a significant share repurchase in the first fiscal quarter, committing to $1 billion to be returned to shareholders in this fashion by the end of this calendar year. Against that objective, by the end of the third fiscal quarter, we had expended 672 million year-to-date for 14 million shares. And since July 1st, we have expended another 92 million for 2 million additional shares. We will keep you updated and can confirm we remain on track to complete the $1 billion buyback commitment by the end of this calendar year. With the balance of the $1 billion in repurchases earmarked, we still have roughly $1 billion of cash available for deployment to operations, investments, and return to shareholders. Our track record and plans continue to underscore disciplined capital deployment for generating long-term value for shareholders. Let's turn to slide 8 to address the current period cash performance. Cash flow from operations was $17 million. The improved cash performance aligns with the improving profit performance. Capital expenditures for the quarter was $8 million, resulting in free cash flow of $9 million. Let's turn to the final slide for our guidance. Our Q4 guidance reflects a mix of strong backlog and a softer market as highlighted by others in our space. Fourth quarter revenue is expected to be in the range of 155 million to 173 million with a midpoint supporting growth of approximately 19% year over year on an as reported basis. This reflects B medical confirmed orders of approximately 24 million and the balance of the business excluding B medical to be up $1 million sequentially at the midpoint. We expect the softness in CNI to continue, and if we exclude CNI, the fourth quarter organic revenue for the rest of the portfolio is expected to be approximately 3% year-over-year at the midpoint. We estimate foreign exchange to be a 1% tailwind, and the revenue from acquisitions to be a tailwind of approximately $25 million, or 18 points of growth. We expect products revenue, excluding B-Medical, to be in the range of $45 to $55 million. Including B-Medical, total product segment revenue is expected to be in the range of $69 to $79 million. We expect services revenue to be in the range of $86 to $94 million, and adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to be approximately $2 to $9 million, or approximately 5% margin at the midpoint. Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be in the range of minus 2 cents to positive 6 cents. As we said previously, the actions to achieve the first round of 20 million annualized cost reductions were implemented prior to Q3 and did affect our spend by 5 million in the quarter. And we have made the investments we also outlined primarily in sales. We had also announced a second phase of cost actions to support 15 million of additional annualized spending reduction by the end of the calendar year. This effort is underway and we expect to show those savings in our second fiscal quarter of 2024. For the full year, we expect to deliver revenue growth in the range of 17 to 20% year over year and have narrowed our guidance range to 648 to 665 million. which includes approximately $108 million from Be Medical. In closing, we are encouraged by the progress we have made this quarter. We continue to drive toward further growth and profitability across the business and expect to see further improvement as we move into the next fiscal year. We have a strong balance sheet, tremendous portfolio, a best-in-class team, and are serving the world's premier life science customers, enabling breakthroughs faster. We're winning. and are committed to delivering long-term sustainable value for the shareholders. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.
spk02: To rewind.
spk09: Thank you very much. If you would like to register a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. You will hear a three-tone prompt to acknowledge that request. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your registration, please press the 1 followed by the 3. And your first question will come from the line of Jacob Johnson with Stevens. Your line is open.
spk02: Hi. This is Hannah on for Jacob. Thanks for taking the question. Since you're realigning your segments and combining SRS and Lifescience products, can you remind us of the synergies between these two businesses? And then conversely, what does this mean for the effort around cross-selling genomic services to FRS customers?
spk06: Sure. Hi, Kenna. This is Steve. I'll be glad to do that. So on the sample management side, as we continue to evolve the business from the repository standpoint, we see more and more repositories really need to be automated. So this is a capability that we're bringing in. not just to the customers with automated stores, but also to our own internal operations. And when we go to approach a customer now, we talk to them about management to their assets, management to their sample collections. And what happens is we likely will put automated stores on site, we'll take archival samples off site. And so the offering that we bring to them is a combination of the repository services and the automated stores that we have. And so it's a natural Without a breakpoint, it's a natural way that we can help them to perform asset management in a more effective way. It also continues to drive the means by which we develop automated stores to manage workflows for customers. So this is a natural evolution of the way the product and services portfolio was moving, and it's a really appropriate time for us to get this aligned so that when we start fiscal 24, these business units become one. It's really an ample management play. From the standpoint of our ability to sell the OMICS capabilities to these same customers, as we build the capability and knowledge across the OMICS business and across the sample management business, there's a skill set that we've been developing where people have the ability to connect the customers to the people inside the the end-user customer who both manage samples and are responsible for preliminary measurements, if you will, on these samples, and also the management of the clinical trials. So this is a natural one. It requires a little bit different sales capability inside the company, but as we mentioned, we've been adding sales resources that have these particular skills to help us to do the cross-sell. So the cross-sell's been effective. It'll become more effective as we have specialists we're able to connect both the sample management and the omics capabilities. And you'll see more of this as we move into 2024. Thanks.
spk02: And then as it relates to China, it looks like you saw strong growth during the quarter. Can you just talk about some of the trends you're seeing in China?
spk06: Yeah, so it's a little bit different from what we've been hearing from other companies. The genomics capabilities in China have been strong. They were strong in the third quarter. And we're going to pay close attention to it, but we've gotten off to a good start here in the fourth quarter as well from very strong growth in China. And so when I say strong growth, the Q3 growth was something close to 20%. And we're seeing really good momentum here as we start the fourth quarter as well.
spk02: Great. Thank you. I'll leave it there.
spk09: And your next question comes from line of David Saxon with Needham. Your line is open.
spk08: Oh, good afternoon. Thanks so much for taking my questions and congrats on the quarter. Steve, maybe I'll start with the CNI part of the portfolio. I'd love to hear how you're thinking about debt recovery, if you're seeing any early signs that could point to stability in that part of the portfolio. And then, sorry for the multi-part question here, but I think the last quarter you said destocking wasn't impacting all customers. Has that changed at all? And I'll have a follow-up for London.
spk06: Yes. So, David, I wish I could tell you it's different. It's not. It's pretty much the same. There are customers – I mean, we still have a healthy CNI business, but there is destocking that continues. But there are customers – that we were selling product to in the second quarter and again in the third quarter. And I think they've managed their inventory to not be so dramatically large. So it's a similar situation. Indeed, we had expected that maybe we'd seen the bottom from a destocking standpoint. And although it's still soft, we're hopeful that we'll get out of this pretty soon. So it's almost a similar environment, a similar look that we had a quarter ago. Still a healthy business, but we haven't seen the uptick that we would anticipate – that we'll anticipate that customers will have once the inventory has been burned off.
spk08: Okay, great. And I guess just a quick follow-up to that, Steve. So it doesn't sound like it's worsened at all. Is that correct?
spk06: Not really, David. Let me tell you one thing that was interesting for us, a different dynamic. The instruments business was strong in the quarter, and we do see that as an indicator that automation continues, the fact that there's continued workflow automation being put into place, and we think that's a harbinger for an opportunity for more and healthier consumables business as we move forward because our consumables industry are adapted precisely for the instruments that we put in place for automated workflows. So we're anticipating that that's a good sign for us. And we're hopeful that before we get out of 2023 that the business ultimately will pick up. But we do guide a similar, we do see a similar fourth quarter as we saw in the third quarter.
spk08: Okay, super helpful. Thanks for that, Steve. And then, Lyndon, You know, just on the P&L, EBITDA, you know, that was pretty strong, 7.8%. I mean, I get that you started to benefit from some of these cost reduction initiatives. It doesn't sound like you'll see the benefit of that second phase until early next year, next second quarter. I guess why... The fourth quarter obviously implies some contraction. Why is that? Any color into kind of, you know, if that's conservatism or if you're pulling forward some investments? Thanks so much.
spk05: These are good questions. So on the EBITDA and the 7.8% in the quarter, there's substantial performance improvement as we've highlighted in our remarks. There was also a cost adjustment in there that won't reoccur going forward. So think of that as a couple points of pressure, about a point and a half to two points of pressure in the results itself that won't reoccur. But setting that aside, performance, you're right, it's got a lot of momentum, and it's exactly on the absorption that we get with revenue increases. It's also the cost reduction actions of the first phase being completely in the P&L And while we're making some investments as we go across the quarters, we are working on the cost reductions by the end of the calendar year. So I would emphasize when you're looking for those benefits of the next phase, we're being pretty thoughtful on this next phase of reduction. It's about integration. It's primarily, as we said before, about integrating some of the structures that we've acquired over the years in our manufacturing locations and And we're being careful with those structures. So we think that will take some time, and we'll give you an update. But for now, we believe we're on track to deliver that by the end of the calendar year. I do want to go back to the CNI, because there's a data point I think will be helpful. And per David's question, I think it's good for you all, as we gave some data points, the CNI is the one outlier of our business. The rest of the portfolio showed growth throughout. And the CNI being down, it was actually down 24% year over year on a as reported basis. And just to put a pinpoint on it, it's a little bit less than 19 million of revenue in the third quarter, about 11% of our portfolio. So if you set aside that, which I would like to emphasize, as I've said many times in the past, we love having the CNI business because it's a revenue and profit multiplier business. It's not what differentiates us. It's a highly fragmented space. We are glad we have it because it provides us additional revenue and profit and leverage as markets are good. But, you know, you get bit when it comes down like it is at 24%. We continue to take some leaning actions on that business as we had before. But with that said, if you remove that, our organic growth is quite remarkably different than the rest of the market, and this is where Steve had emphasized in his remarks. We really believe that the marketing and sales actions and the value of our portfolio across the other 90% is really standing out in the market, and we couldn't be more pleased with how the market's accepting and taking it. So we really believe we're back on the 90%. The CNI is going to take us a while to work through that in the marketplace. So, David, thank you for your questions. I think they're spot on to the key items in the release. Great.
spk08: Yeah, thanks for all the color and congrats on the quarter.
spk09: As a brief reminder to all to register for a question, it is 1-4 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
spk07: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on a good execution here. Steve, maybe my first one here on some of these numbers and markets, you know, starting with genomics. And you mentioned gene synthesis on the service side up nine, NGS up 13. Does it imply Sanger was down? So can you talk us through why NGS was up 13, Sanger was down? Is that NGS strength being driven by new product sets or any color on what's driving that? And sort of biopharma, I think some of your peers have spoken about cautiousness on capital budgets. Can you talk about booking strengths within the storage business and be medical, any sensitivity from a CapEx cautiousness?
spk06: Yeah, thanks, Vijay. Gosh, if that was the first one, I'm curious how many questions you got, but let me try. So a few things. You had it right. So the synthesis business up 8% is, we think, a really healthy look for us, two consecutive quarters of increase. You know, from where we'd been, I think you recall we'd had a downward trend, and I think we had issues to resolve from a delivery standpoint. So we feel we're in a good position there. Just to put some color on that, we'd seen a lot of aggressive price pressure in the synthesis business that we did not chase down, and we had some delivery issues as we communicated to people. But we've resolved those. We continue to deliver extremely high-quality products. high-speed, and we do really complicated things for customers. So we're really confident about that. The China business in synthesis has also been pretty healthy. On the NGS business, the 13% growth is – so I'll give you a couple pieces there. One is just strong across-the-board capability, and Vijay also every once in a while will win a project that allows us to have a good slug of NGS customers. business in a particular quarter, followed by digestion from that same customer until they come back for another study. But we had a good, solid growth period in NGS, and we continue to be healthy there. We're making investments on new tools, continue to be aggressive about winning customer business, and we anticipate that the investments that we make will allow us to continue to grow that business over the long term. The Sanger business was flat. So just to give you an idea, so Sanger was zero. So when you do the arithmetic there, indeed Sanger was flat. One of the things I will say is we announced a plasmid EZ capability where we do the measurement of the plasmid in the NGS business, and that was formerly some Sanger. So same customers, but the measurements that we're doing now, we don't put those into the Sanger business per se. We put some of those into the NGS business. It was relatively small, so it's not a It's not a big swinger here, but in the past when you've seen the Sanger business grow, you know, 3% and 4% year over year for us to have zero there, that would put a little bit of that what would have been otherwise Sanger growth into the NGS business. And then, Vijay, if you could remind me of the next question.
spk07: Sorry, on bookings on the capital side, Steve, just given some of your peers talking about cautiousness and biopharma spending.
spk06: Yeah. So, Vijay, we saw a flat on the cryo business, just to give an idea. So, different from, you know, the past when we've been on upward trends. So, I presume that's equivalent to some of the softness people are seeing in that regard. And we're seeing, again, we mentioned on prior calls, there's business that we know requires automated cryo, for example, but some of those things have been delayed. And so we had anticipated growth at about this time of year. When we started the fiscal year, to have it be flat is different from the plans that we had at the beginning. So, indeed, there's some softness there and some projects that we believe are just being delayed. And as they come, we'll be in – you know, we're in position to win. But that's what we're seeing. On the large automated stores, we have pretty significant backlog. We see that business continuing to be very strong. And so at the cryosite flat, large automated stores, we continue to see that business growing significantly. And for the next few quarters, we'll continue to work to get the capacity of our factory up so we can deliver. We're on time for customers, but if that business grows, we're going to need to continue to make improvements in operational capability to make sure that we can deliver.
spk07: That's helpful, Steve. And maybe a quick one here for Lyndon, I think. B medical outlook came up slightly. I think at the midpoint, the base business is down slightly. Can you just talk us through your assumptions for base business in the Q4?
spk05: So, yeah, if you look off of what we finished Q3, our base business is actually expected to be up about a million dollars quarter to quarter. And in our In our very specific look at this, and of course there's a range around it, we see services being flat to down a million and products being up a million. And we still see a lot of deliveries ahead of us on the large automated stores. So we've got that business being relatively flat quarter to quarter, but up just a touch of a million. So in the B medical, In our guide here of 24 million, this is centered, I mean, it's a single number, not a range around it. It's based on the firm orders that we have scheduled in the quarter. And I would emphasize to everybody, we've got a range of history here. So this, in the Q3, we were pleased that they were able to get almost $6 million above what we had projected at this time last quarter, booked and shipped. In the previous quarters, it ranged from, you know, we had one quarter that was less than $2 million done in the final, I'll say, 50 days. And the other quarters were close to that, $2 to $3, $4 million. So it ranged, Q3 stood out as being $6 million, but so far in our short history with them, that's been the standout. So we'll look for $24 million to be a solid guide. And if we get more orders, we'll expect that to ship as well.
spk07: Understood.
spk09: Thanks, guys.
spk04: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Vijay.
spk09: Your next question comes from line of Yuan Shi with B. Riley. Your line is open.
spk03: Congrats on a strong quarter, Tim, and thank you for taking our questions. I'm curious, for the genomic services, can you comment on if the recent flood in China has any impact on the operation and demand in 4Q? Then I have a follow-up question.
spk05: So that's not been an aspect of business impacts for us, and you ought to appreciate the very specific question. We pay a lot of attention to China. Just to remind people, our genomics business has a significant operating center in Suzhou, China, and it has done tremendous for us in terms of not just the delivery globally of gene synthesis, but also development of an unusual successful business inside China providing the services across Sanger NGS as well as synthesis on the ground in China. As Steve mentioned, not only Are we not seeing that impact that you asked about? But we're not really seeing the softness that people have called out in China. So we're watching it, you know, but right now we're fairly bullish on China. So appreciate the color.
spk03: Got it. And I'm glad to see the growth of gene synthesis at 9% and the NGS 13%. I'm just curious, can you provide more color on the market share, whether you are gaining or losing market share in the genomic services sector? And, you know, how does that compare to your peers? Thank you.
spk05: You know, it's a really tough one. I would highlight to you that, as I mentioned in our remarks, China grew faster than the other areas. We saw growth across each region, though, in genomics. And I think if I look at total life sciences space, we've seen a lot of announcements that have saw numbers down. But the genomic space, services space, doesn't have a tremendous amount of publications that would highlight to us in this somewhat fragmented business whether we were able to gain share. I do believe when you're in this level of growth year over year, high single digit, you're in this particular space, area of the market where we're seeing softness, we're seeing challenges, but we're able to grow through it, we would anticipate we may be taking a little share, but it would be a little share based on the size of our business and the growth rates now. Come back and ask me that question when we get up into the teens, double digits, and I'll have fun answering that question.
spk00: Got it. Thanks for taking our questions.
spk09: And there are no further questions pending. I'll turn the call back to Lyndon Robertson for closing remarks. Thank you.
spk05: Yeah, we really appreciate everybody tuning in and the questions and always are insightful ones to help add color to our announcement. We couldn't be more delighted with the progress that the business has shown year to date. If you recall, when we reported this time last year, we disappointed some people. at that point. But since then, I think our assessment, our realignment of the business, our focus on sales and marketing, our investments have been what's been driving our results. And we're seeing that momentum. As I highlighted, you take out the CNI, which is about 11% of our revenue. The other 90% has got handsome growth in a market that's struggling a bit. With that said, we'll continue down that path and we'll continue to take some costs out as we've committed on the second phase to be done by the end of this year, the calendar year that is. And we look forward to giving you an update. And before that, of course, at the end of our fiscal year, which finishes September 30th. So we'll see you, which traditionally comes in the first week or so of November. So that report out. So we look forward to seeing you Meanwhile, in some conferences, but thank you for tuning in today.
spk04: Appreciate it.
spk09: And that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you very much for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your line.
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-