Bruker Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Bruker Corporation third quarter 2020 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Miroslava Minkova, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Miroslava Minkova Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone to Brooker's third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. My name is Miroslava Minkova, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Joining me on today's call are Frank Laukian, our President and CEO, and Gerald Herman, our Chief Financial Officer. In addition to the earnings release we issued earlier today, during today's conference call, we'll be referencing a slide presentation. The PDF of this presentation can be downloaded from the Latest Results section on Brooker's Investor Relations website. During today's call, we'll be highlighting non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and are posted on our website at ir.brooker.com. Before we begin, I would like to reference Brooker's Safe Harbor Statement, which is shown on slide two. During the course of this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events and the expected future financial and operational performance of the company that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks and uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's actual results may differ materially from projections or scenario estimates described in such statements. Factors that might cause such differences include but are not limited to those discussed in today's earnings release and in our Form 10-K and subsequent Form 10-Q filings, all of which are available on our website and on the SEC's website. Also note that the following information is related to current business conditions and to our outlook as of today, November 2nd, 2020. consistent with our prior practice, we do not intend to update our forward-looking statements based on new information, future events, or other reasons prior to the release of our fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results expected in February 2021. Therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views or outlook as of any date subsequent to today. We'll begin today's call with Frank providing a business summary. Gerald will then cover the financials for the third quarter of 2020 in more detail. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Brooker's CEO, Frank Laukin.

Thank you, Miroslava. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. I hope you and your families are well. We continue to navigate a challenging environment among a global pandemic. While the majority of our academic and research customers worldwide have returned to business under a new normal, some still operate at productivity levels that are below pre-pandemic levels in an effort to accommodate safety protocols. Against this backdrop, Bruker delivered a good third quarter with sequentially strengthened financial performance compared to the first two quarters of 2020. In Q3 2020, our revenues still declined slightly year over year, but our non-GAAP operating margins and non-GAAP EPS improved significantly compared to Q2 or Q1 of 2020 and approached prior year Q3 19 levels. We are pleased with the way our teams have delivered under the circumstances. During Q3, we continued to support initiatives to understand the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease. These include functional structural biology studies by Highfield NMR, so-called long COVID patient studies by NMR and MassSpec Metabolomics, as well as viral protein and disease patient proteomics research by mass spectrometry. And finally, we support the discovery and development of diagnostics, therapies, and vaccines with our tools. Moreover, our Bruker Hein Diagnostics business continues to serve the COVID-19 PCR testing market with nucleic acid extraction and PCR test kits and equipment. In Q3 of 2020, this grew further and we generated about 8.5 million of revenues from these PCR products, primarily in Europe. Together with partners, we also have been piloting COVID-19 rapid antigen tests at some of our own European sites and in customer labs with a goal to broaden our COVID-19 test portfolio further. From an operational standpoint, our major factory sites in the US, Europe, and Malaysia are operating at their new normal. We are currently not facing any significant operational constraints, although we are monitoring the resurgence of the virus in Europe and the US carefully. Turning to financial results, our third quarter 2020 revenues rebounded sequentially as academic customers returned. Q3 2020 revenues were still slightly below prior year levels, down minus 1.9% year-over-year and down 4.6% organically. Sequentially, we generated 20% more revenue in Q3 compared to Q2 of 2020. We continue to carefully manage expenses and monitor our cost structure. As a result, our Q3 2020 non-GAAP operating margin even improved year over year, while our diluted non-GAAP EPS approached Q3 2019 levels. Year-to-date, and including the third quarter, our key proteomics, diagnostics, and biopharma initiatives continued to grow nicely, and we now anticipate that Bruker will return to healthy year-over-year revenue growth and margin expansion in 2021. I now go to slide four, where we show the financial highlights for the third quarter of 2020. Q3 2020 revenues declined 1.9% year-over-year to $511.4 million. Acquisitions added 0.3% to revenue growth in foreign currency. Translation was favorable by plus 2.4%. On an organic basis, brokers' Q320 revenues declined 4.6% year over year, which was comprised of a 3% organic decline in the three broker scientific instrument groups and an approximate increase 20% organic decline at best net of intercompany eliminations, with best negatively impacted by reduced demand for superconductors by MRI OEM companies. Our Q320 non-GAAP gross margin decreased 90 bps year-over-year to 49.6, while our non-GAAP operating margin improved 30 bps year-over-year to 18.6%. Lower volume at nano and best, together with unfavorable foreign currency translation, negatively impacted the gross margin performance year over year, while meaningful OPEX savings resulted in an operating margin gain relative to Q3 of 2019. In Q3-20, Bruker reported gap-diluted EPS of $0.35 per share compared to $0.39 in Q3-19, and on a non-gap basis, Q3-20, EPS was $0.42 compared to $0.43 in Q3 of 2019. On slide 5, we show brokers' performance for the first nine months of 2020. Revenues decreased by $113 million or minus 7.7% year-over-year to $1.36 billion. On an organic basis, Revenues declined 8.3% year-over-year in the first nine months, comprised of a 7.9% organic decline in the scientific instruments groups and a 12.6% organic decline at best net of intercompany eliminations. Acquisitions added 0.5% to our top line, and foreign exchange was insignificant, up 0.1%. Year-to-date 2020 order bookings for Bruker Scientific Instruments Group declined low single digits organically. Order rates improved sequentially and had positive year-over-year growth in the third quarter as customers returned to labs and research activities continued to recover. During Q3 of 2020, BSI's biopharma and diagnostic markets remained solid and and academic markets continued to recover, while industrial research and applied markets continued to show softer trends due to the pandemic-driven economic slowdown. On the brighter side, BSI semiconductor metrology markets remain in an upswing. Year-to-date 2020 non-GAAP gross margin decreased 240%. compared to the same period in 2019, while non-GAAP operating margins declined 280 BIPs. As Gerald will discuss, both growth and operating margins improved significantly when we look at them sequentially from Q2 to Q3 2020. On a GAAP basis, Bruker reported EPS of $0.57 in the first nine months of 2020 compared to $0.82 in the first nine months of 2019, And year-to-date 2020 non-GAAP EPS was 77 cents compared to $1.04 in the same period in 2019. Please turn to slide six and seven now, where we provide further highlights on the year-to-date 2020 performance of our three scientific instruments, groups, and of our best segment, all on a constant currency basis and in comparison to the same period in 2019. Year-to-date 2020 BioSpin group revenue declined mid-single digits to $398 million. The revenue decline at BioSpin was due to COVID-19-related customer lab closures and installation delays, primarily in the first half of 2020. BioSpin's performance improved sequentially, and revenues were up year-over-year in the low single digits in the third quarter as the academic market recovery continued and biopharma remained robust. During the third quarter, BioSpin received customer acceptance for a second 1.2 GHz NMR system, which was successfully installed at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. BioSpin continues to ramp up its manufacturing and shipment activities for GHz systems. During the first nine months of the year, BioSpin's NMR and PCI systems revenue declined year-over-year due to the delayed order and installation activity as expected. BioSpin's aftermarket revenue increased slightly year-over-year, and scientific software revenues were higher, although of a low basis. Turning to the CalEd group, year-to-date 2020 revenues of $445 million were approximately flat compared to the same period in 2019. Molecular spectroscopy revenues declined year-over-year as FTIR and NIRR markets were affected by the pandemic and economic slowdown. However, this was more than offset by solid growth in CALIT's Daltonics microbiology and diagnostics and its life science mass spectrometry business. CALIT's performance also strengthened sequentially with revenues growing mid-single digits in the third quarter of 2020 year-over-year. For the first nine months of 2020, CALIT's microbiology and COVID PCR testing consumables grew significantly year-over-year, Our TIMSTOF proteomics business had a solid uptake in revenue growth year-to-date, despite the challenging conditions for instruments and customer installation delays. Finally, revenues for our FT-IR, NIR-IR, and Raman molecular spectroscopy products declined year-to-date, with weakened applied and academic demand. Please turn to slide seven now. Bruker Nano revenues declined mid-teens to $393 million in the first nine months of 2020, reflecting slower academic, industrial, and industrial research demand. This is all true for nanos X-ray, nanosurface, nanoanalysis tools, and they all declined in revenue year-to-date. Year-to-date semiconductor metrology revenue for the nano group grew year-over-year, as semi-markets remain in a rebound. Finally, year-to-date 2020 best revenue declined low teens net of intercompany eliminations on reduced superconductor demand by MRI companies. Turning to slide eight now, Bruker continues to make investments in innovation that we believe will position the company for long-term profitable growth. This September, we acquired Canopy Biosciences, a leader in HyPlex biomarker imaging for immunophenotyping using multiplexed fluorescence microscopy. Canopy's offering strengthens Bruker's position in spatial omics and targeted multi-omics research. It complements Bruker's fluorescence microscopy portfolio and also helps our Bruker Nano Group expand its life science footprint. Canopy's chip cytometry manual and automated platforms and related consumables and services provide high-resolution, multiplexed imaging of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, or PBMCs, or of tissue and again with applications in immunology, immuno-oncology, cell therapy, and targeted proteomics research. The CellCraftWork chip cytometry platform, that's our trademark, CellCraftWork, which is part of Canopy, has advantages listed on the slide. We are very pleased to have the Canopy and CellCraftWork team join Bruker. Please remember that for high-resolution spatial biology, we also recently had a very important new product introduction as we launched our Butara Voxel super-resolution fluorescence microscope for industry-leading single-molecule localization and for subcellular targeted multi-omics imaging. Turning to slide 9, we continue to make excellent progress with TIMSTOF 4D proteomics. At the recent Human Proteome Organization, or UPO World Congress, Brookers Melvin Park and Oliver Rater were awarded the UPO Science and Technology Award for the commercialization of TIMS trapped ion mobility spectrometry and of the passive proteomics method. We also announced significant additional innovations at UPO, including the PACER proteomics search engine, new work in progress, true single-cell 4D proteomics workflow, this was the first, the PRM passive method for targeted quantitative proteomics for translational applications, and the CAPS passive workflow for cross-linking in structural 4D proteomics. We remain very excited about Tim Stoff and our opportunities in 4D proteomics. So in conclusion, Bruker's performance strengthened sequentially in Q3 as academic markets and customer research activity continued to recover. Our core growth and margin initiatives are progressing well, and we are excited about our opportunities in biopharma, microbiology, and viral diagnostics, in proteomics, targeted multiomics, ultra-high-field NMR, software, and aftermarket. Brooker remains fundamentally healthy, and we expect to return to solid year-over-year revenue growth and margin expansion in 2021. And with that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Gerald Herman, who will review our financial performance in more detail.

Thanks, Frank, and welcome to everyone. I'm pleased to join you today and review Brooker's third quarter 2020 financial highlights, starting on slide 11. Brooker's reported revenue decreased 1.9% year-over-year to $511 million in the third quarter of 2020, which includes an organic revenue decline of 4.6%. Despite the slight revenue decline and a headwind of 60 basis points from foreign exchange, we delivered a roughly equivalent level of non-GAAP operating profit compared to Q3 2019, and our non-GAAP operating margin recovered to 18.6%. about 30 basis points above the Q3 2019 level. We reported gap EPS of $0.35 per share compared to $0.39 in the third quarter of 2019. On an on-gap basis, Q3 2020 EPS was $0.42 per share compared to $0.43 in Q3 2019. Overall, our Q3 revenue performance was favorable to the revenue decline scenarios we outlined in our Q2 2020 earnings call. while operating profit and earnings approached prior year levels as we again drove cost discipline and operating expense savings throughout the business. We exited Q3 2020 with $617.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. This reflects solid cash generation in the third quarter and year-to-date 2020, as well as our strength in cash position following our December 2019 debt financing. During the third quarter, we paid down $208.5 million of borrowings on our revolving credit facility. Our net debt position at the end of Q3 2020 was comparable to the end of Q3 2019. During the third quarter, we used cash to fund our strategic capital investments, acquisitions, dividends, and buybacks, as well as the revolver debt repayment mentioned earlier. In Q3 2020, we repurchased 127,000 shares of broker stock for a total of $5 million, bringing our total buybacks year-to-date to 1.34 million shares for $55 million. As of September 30th, we have $102.7 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization, which is valid until mid-May 2021. At the end of Q3 2020, our working capital to revenue ratio was elevated relative to the prior year as we carried higher inventory levels to address supply chain risks related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Slide 12 shows the revenue bridge for Q3 2020. As noted earlier, organic revenue in the quarter declined 4.6%. We had a positive revenue contribution from foreign currency translation of 2.4% and a modest positive contribution from acquisitions of 0.3%. From an organic BSI revenue perspective, Q3 2020 BioSpin revenues increased low single digits year-over-year as BioSpin's academic markets continued to recover and biopharma activity remained strong. CALID revenues increased mid-single digits with double-digit growth in CALID's microbiology and mass spectrometry businesses. Nano revenues declined mid-teens due to continued softness in nano's academic, industrial, and industrial research markets. Bruker's biopharma revenues, multi-biotyper consumables, Bruker high molecular diagnostic consumables, and Tim's top proteomics revenues all had robust year-over-year growth once again in the third quarter, while broader academic and industrial research revenues continued to be impacted by the slowdown. Third quarter semiconductor metrology revenues grew year over year. For our three BSI groups, third quarter systems revenue declined in the low double digits, while aftermarket revenue grew high teens year over year. Our book-to-bill ratio in Q3 2020 was 1.1. We exited the third quarter with higher BSI backlog year over year. Best revenues declined 20.3% year-over-year net of intercompany eliminations due to reduced superconductor demand. Geographically, and on an organic basis in Q3 2020, our European revenues grew low single digits year-over-year. North America revenue declined low teens. Asia Pacific revenue declined low single digits. This included a steep decline in Japan, but growth in China and the rest of Asia Pacific. The rest of the world saw a revenue decline year over year. Slide 13 reflects our P&L results for the third quarter of 2020 on a non-GAAP basis. Q3 2020 non-GAAP gross profit margin of 49.6% decreased 90 basis points from 50.5% in Q3 2019. The year-over-year reduction in gross margin was principally driven by lower volume and reduced productivity at nano and best, and negative foreign exchange translation effects, which outweighed improvements in our BioSpin and CALID groups. Although below the prior year level, our gross margin recovered sequentially from the low level experienced in Q2 2020. Q3 2020 non-GAAP operating expenses were 5.2% below Q3 2019 levels. This was due to continued cost control and certain cost reduction measures implemented earlier this year, including a restructuring in the BSI nano segment. As a result, our Q3 2020 non-GAAP operating margin increased 30 basis points compared to Q3 2019 to 18.6%. And our non-GAAP operating profit was approximately flat year over year, as lower operating expenses offset the Q3 2020 revenue decline. In Q3 2020, we also absorbed an approximate 60 basis point negative foreign exchange translation impact year over year on our non-GAAP operating margins. Q3 2020 non-GAAP interest and other expense of $5.9 million was slightly unfavorable compared to Q3 2019. During the third quarter and year to date, a net loss on foreign exchange transactions associated with unfavorable currency movement has more than offset lower net interest expense on our borrowings following our December 2019 debt financing. For the third quarter of 2020, our non-GAAP effective tax rate was 26.5%, 110 basis points above the prior year quarter, which had included a significant favorable discrete tax item. Weighted average diluted shares outstanding in the third quarter of 2020 were 154.3 million, a reduction of approximately 1.3 million shares from Q3 2019 following our share repurchase activity. Finally, Q3 2020 non-GAAP EPS of 42 cents decreased 2% year-over-year, as operating expense savings partially offset the revenue decline. Slide 14 shows the year-over-year revenue bridge for the first nine months of 2020. Revenue declined $113 million, or 7.7%, including a year-to-date 2020 organic decline of 8.3%. This includes a 7.9% organic decline at the three BSI groups collectively and a 12.6% organic decline at BEST, native intercompany eliminations. Geographically and on an organic basis, in the first nine months of 2020, brokerage European revenue was down low single digits year over year. North American revenue declined low teens. Asia Pacific revenues declined high single digits with double-digit drops in China and Japan. Our revenues in the rest of the world were also lower year over year. On slide 15, our year-to-date 2020 non-GAAP gross profit margin of 47.3% decreased 240 basis points year over year. Lower volume and reduced productivity from COVID-19 disruptions earlier in the year and the ongoing economic slowdown drove the decline relative to the first nine months of 2019. Year-to-date 2020 operating expenses declined 6.5% year-over-year on cost control and cost reduction measures. All in, our non-GAAP operating margin in the first nine months of 2020 of 12.9% was 280 basis points below the prior year period. Finally, non-GAAP EPS of 77 cents was down 26% relative to the first nine months of 2019. Turning now to slide 16. Free cash flow in the first nine months of 2020 was approximately $61 million, an increase of about $28 million compared to the first nine months of 2019. During the first nine months of 2020, an increase in customer advances and favorable other items more than offset reduced cash generation from lower net income, working capital inefficiencies, and our continued capital expenditure investments in higher capacity and productivity. Our cash conversion cycle at the end of Q3 2020 of 263 days worsened from 227 days a year ago with a step-up driven primarily by an increase in DIO as we carried higher inventory balances due to supplier and customer lab disruptions from the pandemic. Turning now to slide 18, In March, we suspended our guidance for 2020 due to the uncertain business conditions created by COVID-19. Business uncertainties related to the pandemic remain in many parts of the world, and our visibility as it relates to customer operations and spending patterns in certain markets is still reduced. Our 2020 guidance, therefore, remains suspended. Although we're not providing guidance as we've done in the past few quarters, I'd like to offer some directional color on the fourth quarter. While the recovery from COVID-19 in our global academic markets is expected to continue, we still see challenges with customers operating at reduced capacities and still negatively impacted by the pandemic. Similar to Q3 2020, we believe it's better to think about a range of scenarios for the fourth quarter, with the potential for a revenue decline of between 2% and 6% year-over-year compared to a strong Q4 2019. These scenarios assume favorable foreign currency translation of approximately 2.5% based on foreign currency rates as of September 30th, 2020. Baked into our revenue expectations for the fourth quarter are also challenging prior year comparisons in our BioSpin and CALID groups. Please note that actual results may be outside of these scenario ranges, but this gives you our good faith estimates at this time based on information currently available to us. While we continue to carefully monitor the resurgence of COVID-19 in Europe and here in North America, our current assumption is that this will not lead to renewed broad-based lockdowns for our customers in academia and industry or significant deterioration in operating conditions. To conclude, we continue to manage through a challenging environment created by the pandemic. We're pleased with our sequentially strengthened financial performance in Q3 2020 and remain confident that Brooker will emerge from the pandemic a stronger company with an exciting product portfolio and a promising long-term outlook. We look forward to updating you again on our quarterly progress during our Q4 2020 conference call anticipated in early February 2021. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Miroslava to start the Q&A session. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Gerald. I'd now like to turn the call forward to the operator to begin the Q&A portion. In order to allow everyone time for questions, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Operator, we are ready to begin the Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press R1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and two. Again, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Dan Leonard of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Just a question on the bookings. I'm calculating a low single-digit bookings growth in the quarter. Can you confirm that was the case? And then, you know, secondly, can you offer up some color on bookings by both academic customer segment as well as the European region, as these seem to be the, you know, customer group and region that our investors are most concerned about? Thank you.

So, Dan, this is Frank. Hi. So, that is correct. For BSI, we had – Low to mid single-digit BSI order growth year-over-year in Q3. And best was different because best, we had some very, very large multi-year orders last year, but for BSI, that trend was correct. And then generally, customers in Europe and academic customers in Europe were doing really quite well. Maybe, you know, in most major countries in the U.S., the academic market is still somewhat constrained, although we do note, you know, some universities are struggling with lower state budgets and perhaps also – or state budgets. funding constraints, perhaps lack of reduced tuition or housing, maybe less hospital income. Those are the headwinds that we're all aware of. Federal funding, I think there's generally optimism in the U.S., and, of course, the endowments are up, so that's actually a positive, and that in some larger universities has led to a little bit of less belt tightening. Keep in mind that for us, 75% of our academic markets are outside of the U.S., And so it's a mixed picture, but, you know, it's clearly improving sequentially.

Thank you. The next question comes from Jack Meehan of Nephrons Research. Please go ahead. Mr. Meehan, your line is open. Is it perhaps muted on your side? Please go ahead.

Sorry about that, I was muted. Still learning with remote, clearly. Frank, I was hoping to dig a little more into the progress with the TIMS ToF Pro. Is there any color you can provide with us now on the size of the installed base and how, just given the backdrop with everything going on with COVID, how you expect the shape of new placements to trend over the next couple of years?

Yeah, sort of, you know, we tend to give annual updates rather than mid-year updates on the installed base and all. But Tim Stuff Pro adoption, despite the academic challenges, academic funding and accessibility challenges, has been really quite positive with both orders and bookings year-to-date growing in the double digits. So proteomics is a very good market, and the TIMSTOCK Pro does really well within that market with its many innovations and new capabilities. I would maybe highlight that it's not only going into, you know, government and med school and academic research labs, but also quite a bit of adoption in pharma and biopharma labs. So we're satisfied with that and tend to give an update on installed base more often. hopefully at the end of the year.

Great. And one clarification and the scenario that you laid out for the fourth quarter, I believe you previously talked about a third 1.2 gigahertz system in Germany. Is that included in terms of revenue recognition within that scenario?

We're including one ultra-high field gigahertz class system. It may not be a specific one in a specific country because we have multiple systems that are in various degrees in the installation process, but one gigahertz class system is included, although it could be the system that you have mentioned. It also could be another one. So one is included, yes. Thank you, Frank.

The next question comes from Brandon Couillard of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Frank, just sticking with the NMR segment for a moment, to what extent, if at all, have you begun to see some of those ultra-high-filled orders come from U.S. customers? And as you look out to 21, you still think three of those units a year is kind of the top ceiling of the capacity of which you're able to ship, or do you think you could maybe do a little bit more next year?

So, good question, Brandon. In the U.S., we had delivered a 1.1 gigahertz some time ago to St. Jude's, and we have an order in the backlog for Ohio State. But basically, the U.S. funding hasn't come through yet is the answer, at least not in a significant way that would match the more than 10 orders in Europe. We think that's only a question of time. But, you know, in the last six months, that just wasn't the top of the priority for NIH and NCI and places like that, you know, for obvious reasons. Everybody's fighting the pandemic. But it is pretty high near the top of the priority list, we understand. So we're optimistic that in the next you know, one to two years, there will be hopefully much more significant U.S. funding for additional orders, which would then be, you know, 2022, 23 revenue. To your other questions, we still have quite a bit of backlog. We have a lot of backlog for the next two years, and we expect to be at higher than three systems per year. We don't want to give 2021 guidance, but indeed, as we're looking at three systems this year, 2020, we expect that to be higher next year.

That's great. And then, Gerald, as we look out the fourth quarter, you do have a tough profitability comp, you know, considering FX and, you know, perhaps some OpEx spend that's coming back in the model. Do you still think you can deliver year-over-year operating margin expansion in the fourth quarter? Just help us understand some of the puts and takes to think about in the P&L. Thanks.

Yeah, so I'm not sure that we're going to deliver operating margin expansion year-over-year in in the fourth quarter. Overall, our expectation is, and we can talk about this in a little more detail, when you look at our operating expense performance in the third quarter, we benefited from a number of factors. One, of course, was cost control and cost reduction measures, some of which will be relaxed or have already been relaxed in the fourth quarter. Secondly, we have some some headwinds, as you've already pointed out, relative to the foreign exchange side. Third, we do continue to invest in our strategic project accelerated investments, and that's not changing actually in the fourth quarter. So fundamentally, we do expect there's going to be more pressure on the fourth quarter relative to the fourth quarter of 2019.

Great, thanks.

You're welcome.

The next question comes from Tycho Peterson of KPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. This is Casey on for Tycho. When speaking on cash flow, the slides say that the lower net income and increases in CapEx and working capital were more than offset by increases in customer advances and favorable other items. Can you just talk a little bit about what those favorable other items were? And I'm assuming customer advances means that you're getting more upfront payments. Can you just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in this regard?

Yeah, sure. So first of all, we're quite pleased at at the cash flow performance and generation for the third quarter and actually on an overall basis, our cash position for the company generally through the pandemic has been very positive. That's been encouraging for us because, of course, at the very beginning, we all, like many other companies, had concerns from a liquidity perspective, and that's not played out. So what I would say is the cash advances or customer advances we see are generally a reflection of of stronger order performance in the third quarter, as well as what we've seen in prior quarters. Customers typically need to provide, you know, significant customer advances to us for our instruments. And then relative to – there's a number of puts and takes that fit into the sort of favorable other items, and I don't think it's necessary to go through them in too much more detail. But just generally, we're quite pleased with the overall cash flow generation as it's played out through the the third quarter. You likely know that the fourth quarter, we also typically generate more profitability and cash flow compared to other quarters in the year. So our expectation is that we'll be moving the direction there as well.

Gotcha. And then just on academic, on the 2Q call, you quantified that it was down high teens. What was that in 3Q, and what are you sort of embedding in the academic market in that 4Q scenario that you laid out? Thanks.

Go ahead. No, go ahead. So, academic market segment performance for the third quarter is down. I'd say it's high single digits or low double digits, maybe is the best way to put it. And that's not surprising, particularly given what you've seen specifically for the U.S. markets, I guess.

It was better than it was in the second quarter.

Eventually better over Q2 of 2020 for sure, yes.

The next question comes from Dan Brennan of UBS.

Great, thanks. I was hoping maybe just to follow up on that academic question. Frank, I know you gave some color during the prepared remarks on instruments. Could you just tease out what you're seeing from academic labs for instruments versus consumables? I know you don't have a big consumable service orientation, but nonetheless. And then secondarily, in terms of the funding outlook, I know you were somewhat hopeful that we could see some more stimulus towards academic budgets. What are you seeing today, and what are the prospects for a more significant rebound as we get into 21?

Good question, Dan. So actually our consumables and aftermarket business was up pretty nicely in Q3, maybe with a little bit of service catch-up from Q1 and Q2 as lab improvement was Lab access improved, you know, compared to Q2 for sure. And, of course, our multi-biotyper business has a very good consumables growth, and our COVID testing and PCR testing is almost all consumables, plus we have some growing software. So while we're not primarily a razor blade company, our aftermarket business is growing rapidly. In terms of many aspects, our aftermarket and consumables and even software business are growing nicely. As to stimulus, that's not clear yet. We do generally expect, and our customers are pretty optimistic about life science research funding in the hopefully multi-year aftermath of this pandemic because we've obviously been caught flat-footed. So it would seem that for most countries there are – Life science research investment and pharmaceutical biopharma research remain high priorities. There's, of course, a lot of equity funding going into that. Having said that, there are some near-term constraints. We touched on U.S. academic markets. Some Chinese universities had temporary budget cuts, but now we hear that the next five-year plan, again, is for very significant investment in life sciences and biopharmaceuticals. and healthcare technology, as well as other technologies in general in China. So near term, maybe still a little bit mixed in China and the U.S., pretty strong in Europe. And I would say medium to longer term, while it may not be specific economic stimulus, so much as it was maybe in 2009, 2010. Our customers are quite optimistic about at least federal or similar country spending on life science research and academic medical school research and translational research in general. Mixed near-term still, but I think pretty healthy trends are likely in the major geographies in the mid to longer term. I wouldn't call it stimulus so much, but more a strategic prioritization rather than stimulus funding.

Got it. And then one unrelated follow-up. Just on the HyPlex biomarker imaging market, can you just give us some color there? I know this is a market that you've been beginning to roll up some new products in, and now you have the acquisition. Just give us a little flavor for what your – how do you think about the addressable market there for you and – What's the competitive profile of your offerings there? Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, the markets are obviously very, very large for that targeted multi-eomics, multi-targeted proteomics. So far, we've been only, and we continue to be, you know, pretty strong. We're getting stronger and stronger in so-called unbiased, untargeted, mass-spec-based, bottom-up proteomics, if you like, and many different flavors of that. So we were quite keen on also getting to target it omics and targeted proteomics in particular, and very often you need that to combine that with spatial biology and spatial imaging. So doing that hyplex imaging with a chip cytometry platform was a very, very important technology acquisition. The business does have revenue. It's not enormous revenue. We think it has a very competitive technology base and product line, and we'll hope to tell you more about that into next year as we begin to integrate and accelerate that business.

Great. Thanks, Frank.

The next question comes from Dan Arias of Seafold. Please go ahead.

Bethany and guys, thanks. Frank, are you able to give a snapshot on where we are right now with respect to the percentage of U.S. and Europe labs that are open to system installations by engineers? It sounds like the order book is hanging in. I'm just trying to understand sort of the state of affairs on access and just revenue recognition for some of the bigger pieces of equipment in the portfolio.

Oh, I'd say in the U.S. and in Europe, Europe, at least until recently, all apps were open. But, you know, it's much more work in terms of planning, getting access, getting the health forms in and planning the access. They're not running necessarily at full capacity, but I'm not aware of any U.S., lab closures. I mean, could there be one or the other? Maybe, but, you know, that would have to be a local outbreak and a local quarantine situation. Generally, labs are open, and the same is true in Europe. Although in Europe now, the travel between countries and even within countries is becoming a little bit more challenging. Now, of course, we have important reasons to go, so this is not leisure travel, so we expect to continue to have access to but things are coming up a little bit in Europe. We hope that doesn't affect our December, but December is more than half of our or about half of our revenue. So we're keeping an eye on that presently. We assume that that will not have a material effect on our Q4.

Okay, just to make sure I got that right, you're saying on the U.S. side, I mean, it sounds like the labs are open themselves, but you're saying you're not seeing any issues with access to installations in U.S.? ?

Exactly. You said that correctly. Other than it's a slower process and requires much more planning and back and forth, you can't just show up.

Okay. And then just as a follow-up, on NMR, is there a difference if we look at the growth rates between applied market usage versus large magnet research? I'm just curious whether when we think about the food applications that you guys are pushing into NMR, There is sort of a difference to be had there, and maybe we can think about portions of the market being a little bit resilient, given everything going on on the academic side.

Yeah, I don't know that there is any new trend worth mentioning. I mean, generally, some of these applied and clinical research markets in NMR for us are important growth drivers in addition to aftermarket, in addition to gigahertz applications. high-field systems on which we simply also have backlog. But, you know, certainly in Q2, some of the order activity there did see delays, and some of the orders did delay into Q3. Some may go into Q4. And as you know, if in NMR we get an order, we don't deliver it right away. It can be typically four to six to 12 months for large systems in timing difference between orders and orders. and um and and revenue q3 nmr and biospin order activity was really quite good um so we did not just live off our backlog or something like that and um you know after after a dip and clearly delays in q1 in china and q2 worldwide um so um hope that answered your question so um I think there's multiple growth drivers to the NMR and BioSpin business, and, you know, they all took a dip. But they're clearly in recovery mode, and we think we'll see growth next year, good growth.

Thanks, Frank.

Good growth in revenue this year. We're seeing some growth in orders, at least in Q3.

The next question comes from Doug Shankle of Cowan. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Chris for Doug today. Thanks for taking my questions. Frank, I believe you mentioned broker should return to healthy revenue growth in 2021. Appreciate you don't want to be too granular, but at a high level, what are the key assumptions behind this forecast? Is it based on what you're seeing in the order book and backlog and would it be reasonable for us to assume that broker could return to at least the 2019 revenue level in 2021?

Yeah, we're not prepared to try a 2019 comparison, although it's a fair question. So, of course, you're right. Some of the healthy growth in 2021 or year-over-year growth, of course, part of that will have to do with weaker comparisons, especially in the first half of 2020. We're aware of that. But, you know, we've also had improving all the trends, and our backlog has been improving and getting healthy, quite healthy. And the outlook that we have is, you know, that our Project Accelerate strategic initiatives, by and large, are doing well, and some of them in proteomics and diagnostics are doing particularly well. Some of them are literally being added this year. Obviously, we're not a huge COVID testing company, but we have COVID testing, something of which we had, you know, that type of testing we had zero at the beginning of the year. So we're developing that into, you know, maybe a 10 million per quarter run rate business. Not quite there yet, but getting there. Plus, we're getting into that high spatial biology and multi-omics targeted proteomics world. So we're adding to our initiatives. even during the pandemic. So there is enough, you know, and our biopharma business, as you would expect, is doing well. So from a smaller basis, but it's growing really very nicely, both NMR and mass spec and some other tools. There are some headwinds out there. We've discussed them, you know, industry, industrial research. We don't expect that to recover quickly. And there'll still be some noisy recovery in the academic markets with some countries having temporary constraints. But I think that's going to sort itself out mostly by, certainly by the middle of next year. So now I've given you lots of qualitative arguments and no numbers. But we do expect really healthy growth next year and resuming our margin expansion. So more on that with hopefully with guidance by early February when we report on Q4 and the full year and then hopefully barring a very severe second wave that is economically disruptive, which we presently may disrupt our social lives, but hopefully not the economy or our customers hopefully will be in a position to give guidance. And right now we expect healthy growth, healthy year-over-year growth and margin expansion next year for all these reasons. Okay. Okay.

Just for my follow-up question, maybe going back to slide nine, could you talk about what technical hurdles you need to resolve to achieve single-cell proteomics? Historically, I think mass spec-based single-cell analysis has been limited by sample prep, including single-cell isolation and also data interpretation software. So could you just maybe talk about what efforts are being made on those fronts, and when should we expect you to launch a commercialized single-cell mass spec workflow? Thank you.

Very perceptive questions. Yes, indeed, the true single-cell work. There had been true single-cell results out there before, but pretty good and reproducible true single-cell work has been demonstrated by the lab of Matthias Mann, our collaborator, who's also cited on this. And this was, I'd say, a bit of a breakthrough result that was shown at the UPO meeting. And now that is somewhat of an experimental setup still, so we're working closely. That's not a product yet, so correct on all of that. It's work in progress, but we hope to make further commercial progress with some of the It has to be in the sample prep, which is not necessarily what Bruker does, plus the analysis on the instrument. Those have to come together. For once, the software is actually there, and we've made software improvements, so it's not a software limitation. But some things still have to come together and then become, you know, sort of specialty research products for single-cell proteomics, for true single-cell proteomics, and we hope that can occur, you know, in the next year or two. Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question.

The next question comes from Patrick Donnelly of Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Frank, maybe one for you, you know, just in terms of the academic side. I guess where are the gating factors in getting that back to growth? I mean, it sounds like the order book is trending well. Is it just a matter of lab productivity getting back towards pre-pandemic levels? I mean, is it just these delays around the actual installations you talked about a bit earlier? Is that just causing growth to lag longer from order timing to revenue conversion? Just trying to get a better handle on when we should think about that.

Yeah, again, good question. Some of it is just timing. Better orders in the second half of this year tend to help revenue next year mostly. I mean, there's some things that we, you know, deliver in the same quarter or a quarter later, but often it's two quarters. And, you know, improving backlog is helping with that. And then, you know, it's still funding issues. I mean, there's still some funding noise. Some Chinese universities and some U.S. universities, you know, some state universities or those have the financial drag of having a big hospital that probably has not been making money in the last six months. So there's some selected academic funding issues that need to sort themselves out. In the U.S. and in China, in Europe, not so much, and in many other parts of the world, not so much. Japan, academic funding had been weak, or Japan funding had generally been weak so far this year, so I would add that to the mix. I think you'll get back to good general academic growth rates in most of the world next year. I'm optimistic, but it's not always based on hard data yet. And certainly the optimism of the customers and the really good life science focus in that funding in Europe and elsewhere is encouraging. So some of it is a little bit conjecture, and not all of it is based on funding yet. But I think these things will sort themselves out. Plus, you know, I mean, proteomics is hot in academia, and so that's a good driver. Spatial biology and spatial targeted omics are very hot areas. Within the rising or flat or not quite, you know, recovered tide yet, we are just in very, very good funding areas.

Okay. Yeah, it sounds like some of it's based on kind of the sentiment. I mean, have you seen a change in tone in the conversations with customers in terms of their kind of willingness to spend dollars and get back towards, you know, actually using the funds on hand there?

Yes. I mean, none of our customers are holding back funds on hand. It's in their interest to obviously place that or encumber those at least with orders as soon as they can. Yes, I do have seen a change, an incremental change in tone, and that had to do with some very famous universities in this country that initially were really belt-tightening quite a bit throughout their expense structures. They had then noticed that in addition to everything else, their endowments are doing really well. well, probably really quite well, and so they had relaxed some of the belt-tightening a little bit, and there have been memos at some very famous universities to the faculty that had indicated that in recent weeks. Plus, of course, now officially all labs being open, albeit with all the social distancing and working from home as much as possible, and all the new normal, as we all say, but all labs are open at the major research universities. Nobody's closed down anymore.

That's helpful. Thanks, Frank.

The next question comes from Steve Willoughby of Cleveland Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Frank, I have a couple for you, if you don't mind. I guess first... maybe i'll just ask them all up front if that works uh your comments about the the gigahertz system in the fourth quarter is there a possibility we could possibly get uh you know two or three potentially installed in the fourth quarter or you know with those other ones that are sort of in process more likely fall into into next year and then secondly um you know i know your exposure to the farm and market you know, has been growing. You know, wondering if you had any thoughts at this point, you know, as we sit here in early November, as it relates to what their end of year spending, you know, might look like. And then finally, just if you could provide any more color on what you're seeing from a geographic basis, because you had, you know, wider, pretty wide variation in results from a geographic perspective. So just wondering, you know, a little bit more color there on the strength in Europe and, you know, China returning to growth. Thank you.

All right. Steve, okay, gigahertz in Q4, we expect one. I mean, there is also a risk that we might have none, in which case we think we can make that up otherwise. But, you know, we're aiming for one, and it's very unlikely that we would have two or three. Biopharma has been good for us in terms of orders, you know, for most throughout the year. particularly in the US and also in China. But Europe, not bad either. So for us, the year-end spend or year-end budget flush isn't something that we talk about much at Bruker because it doesn't have much of an effect, maybe more of a consumable, say, if I have budget left over, maybe I'll stuff my refrigerators for a while. We don't see that as an important trend. But biopharma funding has been good. We expect it to continue to be good given the strong equity market and other funding trends and valuations in that space. It's pretty broad-based. We were surprised all year long that it's not just COVID drugs or vaccines. It's pretty broad-based strength, and that seems to continue. I don't expect a special year-end effect. And as to geographies, I mean, right, the China recovery seems to be healthy, and there's a lot less restrictions in China than in the U.S. or in Europe right now. So China seems to be strengthening, although, as we've said, some universities have had temporary budget cuts. It sometimes also seems to be at the headline level, and then they're funding anyway in orders. So our China NMR orders have been quite good, despite some of the noise. We're belt tightening. So it's a little bit of noise that's not always so clear to us. Japan, we... has nothing but potential for improvement. It's been so weak throughout the year in almost every aspect, and countries that were locked down, like India and so on, or even Australia, are eventually coming out of the lockdown. Yeah, you know, I mean, there... There is a bit of a concern about Europe, right? Europe had been doing quite well, but Europe is now being hit pretty severely. And so far, all the schools are in closing and the companies are in closing. And essential travel, which a service engineer installing a mass spec is essential travel, are all good. And the factories aren't affected. We have very, very good procedure and safety procedures at our factories in this new normal. So we've had essentially no cases, none of them that were transmitted at the factory, and so we don't expect any factory disclosures. But I also, months ago, wouldn't have expected cases to go, you know, to increase as rapidly as they are increasing right now in Europe. So it's hard to predict how that will be another month or two months from now. From what we see right now, we think, yeah, that gives you the overview. We also think the U.S. will sort itself out more. But, you know... Who knows how long we will have uncertainty after the election. It could be for quite some time. I don't know whether that has an effect on U.S. spending, but I probably have nothing other than things that you know already. Thank you very much, Frank. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Next question comes from Derek DeBruin of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Just two questions. So just to clarify, you said down negative 2 to negative 6 for total sales plus 2.5% FX tailwind. What did you say for the M&A impact for the full year? It's not material.

It's negligible. Less than half a percent for sure, yeah.

Got it. So Canopy didn't add anything.

No.

Well, it added a modest amount, but not material at this stage.

Great. Okay. Less than half a percent is a good way of bracketing it.

Gotcha. Less than half a percent. Fine. So we talked a lot about academic and government, but obviously nano has been down pretty significantly, ex-semiconductor. Can we talk a little bit about the dynamics in nano? And I know there's a chunk of that that's academic, but there's also a big chunk of that that's industrial research. And can we talk about What are you sort of seeing trends in the industrial research markets, and how should we expect that to trend, or what are the signs there? Thanks.

Yeah, there we don't have the visibility yet that we would like to have, so industrial research is down. Some of it is down pretty significantly. We're separating out, as you've pointed out, the semi part, which is about 6% of our revenue in most years. That's doing really quite well. And we expect the slowest recovery in that industrial and industrial research. We think that's going to recover more slowly than academic, which we think will recover fully by middle of next year. And we cannot predict yet when industrial and industrial research – it will come out of its deepest hole for sure, but how far that will recover or what the growth rates for that will be next year – Because of the weak comparison, we're still likely to see that up next year, year over year. But that's the weakest part and the one with the least visibility.

And that's being driven by what? I mean, obviously, because the industrial research has been mixed depending on what company you're at. I mean, some chemicals are doing fine, some are not. It's like what sort of is the biggest problem? impact that they're just not selling product or just being conservative? What's the biggest?

You know, I mean, I think that's where the CFOs, of course, you know, stopped, you know, made sure they preserve cash and slow down or stop CapEx the fastest in pharma, biopharma. That's not the case, of course. They invested more. And now they are, you know, it's so industry by industry. I mean, Obviously, aerospace is not in good shape, but automotive is recovering in many areas because people are not flying, so they may want a new car. Actually, selling cars is not such a bad business. Some of them are hurting financially because they all need to become self-driving electric vehicles, and they may or may not have that yet. So some of that other more... other dynamics going on that helps industrial research. I kind of expect that to recover, certainly compared to 2020 as well, but I don't have the visibility yet to give you a good answer. I don't know. I wouldn't know what Other than directional, it has to recover from this year, next year, by how quickly and how much and with what timing. On that, I do not have visibility yet. However, I mean, if I wanted to be a bit more positive or constructive, clearly compared to the deep hole, it can only go up, but I could not tell you by how much. But having that steep, steep headwind...

that we've been experiencing from industrial removed next year would do a lot for our growth rate and we think it will great thanks frank yeah the next question comes from punit soda of svb lyric partners please go ahead uh yeah hi frank uh thanks uh for the question so first one on project accelerate and and thanks for the updates uh on on that front But wondering what it means, you know, as you've seen the crisis sort of go through the year and evolve. What's your expectation here in terms of where Broker wants to push harder in terms of new product launches versus less in other product lines? Main question is, I mean, since that is within your control, I'm just trying to understand, should we expect Broker to innovate along the same lines? So maybe in extensions of successful platforms such as Tim's Top and other products? because obviously that's within your control despite the academics. So I just wanted to get a sense of that and any other priorities here on Accelerate into 2021. Yes, Puneet.

We haven't slowed down in investing in innovation and in R&D at all throughout the pandemic. And in fact, we have added, I guess you could say within Project Accelerated, we've added viral diagnostics, COVID diagnostics, but also the winterplex, flu, flu A, flu B, RSV, that type of stuff goes into our PCR diagnostics. So viral diagnostics was added to our previous infectious disease focus, which was more bacterial, microbacteria-oriented. And of course, in proteomics, we've added the targeted proteomics with the chip cytometry technology acquisition and targeted multiomics. So Broadly, you could say that was within the six project accelerated areas, although it has fleshed out some of them much more than what we had in our technology and product portfolio even at the beginning of the year. So we're doubling down. We've even accelerated with some inorganic bolt-ons our capabilities, in particular in this case in infectious disease diagnostics and in proteomics, multiomics, but also adding the targeted capabilities. Now, these proteomics, multiomics capabilities that we will continue to innovate there very rapidly, that that's one of the probably fastest growing areas that is at an inflection point and that we think will do really, really well and probably grow much faster than even what I had predicted in New York in June last year at our analyst day. That's emerging. That's probably pretty clear to you, Puneet, and many other observers, and that we're investing in that in a broader sense, also in the ecosystem. That's very strategic for us, as well as the accelerating investments in diagnostics, which, you know, is, of course, bacterial diagnostics, but also viral diagnostics, and also with more and more of a focus on supporting providing tools for cancer diagnostics.

Okay. That's very helpful. And if I could ask on NMR, and you have had a number of installs here for large systems, UHF, gigahertz. Now with that experience, what's the level of confidence in terms of predictability of bringing those magnets up to field and thus giving you more predictability of revenue recognition, a timely revenue recognition there? I just wanted to get a sense from you now that you have had a couple of these installs. Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, over the year, our confidence has increased very significantly. And it is true that not every installation works on first try. And, you know, we've had some examples where a magnet had to be reworked, just as we had predicted. But overall, we have enough irons in the fire that maybe you don't need to worry about that. We worry about that because we have enough irons in the fire to hopefully get one in into Q4 revenue. That was a question that was asked earlier. And also to have enough confidence to say with pretty high confidence that beyond the Three systems that we're anticipating for this year. Next year, we're expecting more than three systems in the gigahertz class in revenue. And how many will go into that when we give guidance for 2021, but more than three. So we have pretty high confidence in that now. But we always need to do a little bit more juggling behind the scenes because it's still, you know, leading-edge technology. But I think overall, I think we've got to have a good grip on it now. Great. Thank you.

And we have a follow-up from Dan Brennan of UBS.

Hey, thanks. Thanks for taking the question. Frank, maybe just one shorter-term question. So I know the comp in Q4 actually gets easier by a couple of points, two points. I'm just wondering at the midpoint, you're not baking in any real change versus Q3. So is that really just conservatism given maybe the COVID cases, or did you see any pacing change as you exited the quarter or started? when you start Q4, and then just back to academic people.

Sorry, are you talking about revenue or margins? Can you just?

Yeah, so the organic down 2 to 6 is kind of stable with Q3, but the comp does get easier. The organic growth comp does get easier in Q4 versus last year, right, by about two points, because I think you grew over 7 in Q3 and 5 in Q3.

Yeah, but last Q4 was very strong. Last Q4 was very strong. So it's not only the percentages. We also look at the absolute numbers. And, you know, Q3 last year wasn't bad, but Q4 was really quite strong. So I don't, you know, it's not only conservatism. It's also the prior comp in Q4 will be difficult. I mean, you know, will be a bit tougher.

And then if you don't mind, sorry, one more on academics. So did academic come in kind of where you thought this quarter was? When you were setting guidance order, kind of how did it trend throughout the quarter? Was it in line, better, worse? I don't want to parse fine points, and I'm just wondering since you have a – Pretty much as we expected.

I mean, the continuing recovery and reopening, and by the end of Q3, customers are generally back in the lab and doing their work with very few exceptions around the world, and essentially all European and U.S. customers are back in their labs with a new normal. That pretty much has worked out as we expected, more or less.

Great. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Miroslava Minkova for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us today. Over the next several months, Brooker will participate in the Jeffries Virtual London Healthcare Conference in November and the J.P. Morgan Virtual Healthcare Conference in early January 2021. We hope you stay healthy and well, and we invite you to reach out to us for a virtual meeting during the quarter. Thank you, and have a good evening.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.