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spk00: Thanks for joining us for our next session with Hydex Labs. They're a leading provider of diagnostic solutions for the animal health industry. Very pleased to have Jay Mazelski, president and CEO, with us today, and John Ravis from IR in the audience. My name is Nathan Rich, and I cover the animal health space here at Goldman Sachs. Maybe to start, Jay, just keeping it high level, you know, could you frame the company's performance in 2023? And then looking forward, kind of what do you see as the state of the industry and kind of strategic priorities for the business in 2024? Sure.
spk01: Glad to. Glad to, Nate. And thanks. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. Yeah, I always like, let me just first start off by providing some context that preceded 2023. You know, we came through the pandemic. with a remarkably, I think, steep step up in number of pet adoptions over that period of two years, 2020 to 2021, 10% additions in number of pets. That's a U.S. number, but we saw similar performance outside of the U.S. And then on top of that, it built with a 2% increase in 2022. So that compares benchmark-wise to about a 1% annual increase. increase pre-pandemic. From a clinical visit standpoint, you know, same type of numbers, 10% step up in clinical visits over those, you know, two years. That compares to approximately 2% to 3% annual. So you saw a very significant step up in the number of pets, the clinical visits, and the whole veterinary, you know, profession, I think, surged to support those increased number of pets as folks stayed at home and they were looking for companions and really members of their household. That was not sustainable, I think, as the pandemic came to an end. We saw some moderation, obviously, in 2022, in 2023, as capacity constraints within the practice forced and, I think, focused veterinary practice owners to really focus on retaining staff and creating more sustainable work-life balance and investing in technology. Against that backdrop, IDEX had a very strong performance, three-quarters in. I'm only going to talk about Q3. Year-to-date, we're in the blackout period for Q4. Very strong performance, and it was really built on execution drivers in the business with double-digit premium instrument placements, Great retention across all of our modalities. Very strong execution. We saw frequency and utilization of diagnostics increase. So very pleased with, you know, how we've performed three-quarters into the year.
spk00: And then for 2024, just kind of high-level strategic priorities for the company and kind of where your focus is.
spk01: Yeah. You know, as a company, we always focus on what we call making the day, which is, you know, delivering data. quarterly and annual numbers, but also secure in the future. And by secure in the future investing, we think that this is a very investable business with multiple decades of runway still in front of us. So we focus on really investing in innovation that drives sustainable value for our customers and therefore for IDEX as a whole, across the entire portfolio, point of care, platforms, reference lab, software, and by the way, At Monday, January 15th, at BMX, we'll announce our new point-of-care platform. So if you're interested in attending, please reach out to IDEX Investor Relations. We continue to invest in commercial capability of the organization. We indicated, shared with you that investors that we've had a modest increase in our commercial footprint in the U.S., invest in customer experience and continuing to digitize our operations as a company. And then in 2024, it's really on executing the plan of record, which is to drive relevant testing of diagnostics with our customers through awareness and education and ultimately utilization.
spk00: Great. You know, being a week away from the, you know, new analyzer launch, you know, you're welcome to tease any details if you want today. But, you know, maybe just high level, you know, how do you think about opportunities to deliver incremental value to a vet practice and what forms of that value could take?
spk01: Yes, let me talk about specifically with respect to point of care. That's a very important testing category for us. We have a very, I think, fixed set of first principles when we bring a new point of care platform or analyzer to our customers. It starts with performance, accuracy, and it should be as good or even better in some cases as what you can find in the reference labs. From a workflow standpoint, it needs to fit within the workflow of the practice and really optimize for how veterinarians and their staff practice medicine. Easy use and user interface are important dimensions of our value proposition. Practices have never been busier, capacity constrained, so we focus on really, to the extent possible, a plug-and-go type of arrangement. And then obviously we want a test result within an eight or 10 or 15 minute time window. And when we can achieve all of that for our testing category and it's a real-time care test or profile, we work on, from a technology standpoint, really developing that and bringing that to the marketplace. And so we believe that when you do that well, there's a lot of customer interest and uptake, which then drives utilization of testing as I've described it, and then ultimately the business forward.
spk00: You know, and I think You know, historically, I think we've become conditioned to, especially at point-of-care, system placement, consumables, revenue stream. I'm just curious if you're thinking differently these days about what the revenue model could ultimately look like. You know, I'm thinking integration with reference lab or digital services, things that might be incremental revenue streams versus what we've become used to when we think about, like, point-of-care.
spk01: Yeah. So with that... Commenting specifically on this new point of care platform, let me just describe generally how we think about the economics. There's direct economics and there's indirect economics. So the direct economics are there's revenue from the instrument, the premium instrument, service contract, and consumables stream. And that, when you place an instrument, you create and install base, which grows over time and has a flywheel impact of multi-year horizon of creating revenue associated with that So that's the way to think about that is those are the direct economics. Then there's indirect economics. Instruments tend to be placed through some type of marketing program. In the U.S., for example, the majority of our instruments are placed through an IDEXX 360 program, and that's a dollar volume commitment over a period of years. And the customer can satisfy that commitment through reference labs, rapid assay, software as a service, diagnostic imaging. service and software revenues. And so that may inspire them to use all of IDEXA's portfolio. And we know that when customers use all of our portfolio, they do better in terms of delivering better patient care, faster practice revenue, faster diagnostics revenue, and we in turn do better as a company. Those are the indirect economics.
spk00: Got it. Okay. And I guess when we think about what the rollout will look like, you know, with the launch at VMX, are you planning to kind of take orders from customers? When will the system be on the market in the U.S.? And then what does the international launch look like?
spk01: Yeah, so we'll talk to those specifics on the 15th of January at VMX. So I can't and don't want to get into specifics now, but, you know, the point of care – You know, business as a whole follows, you know, it's tended to follow a pattern, and we'll put some quantification and specifics to it on that Monday.
spk00: Okay. You know, maybe one just around, you know, what investors can expect from a guidance standpoint around this launch. Will you guide to placements or revenue contribution or, you know, some metrics that investors can use to kind of track, you know, your progress against, you know, this launch?
spk01: Yeah. So we'll, as part of our Q4 earnings call in February, we will provide guidance for the year. We tend to, you know, it goes to a certain level. We don't always break it down. at the instrument level, but we will talk about what our economic expectations are and how that is incorporated in guidance. So more to come on that front.
spk00: Got it. Okay. And then anything that we should kind of keep in mind from a margin standpoint as it relates to a product launch like this, whether it's gross margin impact or sales and marketing investment associated with the launch, that we should just keep in mind as we're thinking about?
spk01: Yeah. I mean, one of the – from an R&D standpoint, we've talked about our R&D spend up to Q3 and provided guidance for the year. Our commercial organization – And the footprint of our commercial organization is designed to be able to support constant innovation. And that's our model, which is a reach and frequency model. And we've expanded seven times internationally since 2020. We shared our intention to have our US commercial expansion, which is modest, completed by the end of 2023. So we'll provide an update. that on the earnings call the the as I indicated earlier our premium instrument business builds over time so when we come out with the new analyzer especially one which is a new testing category we place those and it takes time to be able to there's a time and distance dimension to be able to generate consumables with that instrument and that that develops over time based on test based on the pace of of the roll-up and the growth of the installed base, as well as the testing behavior or the testing profile and price of the consumables associated with that. We'll provide some details that help folks understand that.
spk00: Got it. Well, thanks for entertaining all those questions on the analyzer out of the launch. Maybe moving on to the existing business and looking at the U.S. clinical visit performance in 3Q softened a little bit, you know, I think didn't quite get back to the level of flat in the back half that you guys had expected at the outset of the year. I think wellness visits was maybe one of the drags in 3Q. Could you maybe just talk about, you know, how you interpret the possible drivers of that softening in visits and what might have been capacity-related versus macro-related?
spk01: Yeah, you know, we think if you take a look at you know, 2023 through Q3, we think that the overall story of capacity-constrained practices has still been sort of the primary driver of clinical visits. And it really comes back to the context I provided as part of the opening here, where there's just been this big step up in clinical visits, net pet additions, and then practices reacting to that in a way that, you know, wasn't sustainable, and they've pulled back and and really rebalance their workforce. So the way we believe the practices have tried to address those capacity constraints are through investment in their staff. So we've seen overall employment levels, and I think we provided some BLS-type data at Investor Day that showed the employment levels have increased within veterinary practices. That doesn't necessarily speak to the number of hours that they've worked. They've invested in technology. Software is a very big piece of the technology equation for them. And obviously, they're looking for means of becoming more productive. If you take a look, just to maybe more directly answer your question, if you take a look at non-wellness versus wellness, we did see some moderation in Q3 that potentially could lead to some macro impacts. You know, the important thing to keep in mind is the overall frequency and utilization of diagnostics within wellness visits did increase in Q3. And so we think that that's a positive trend. It supports the use of diagnostics as part of screening. And keep in mind, even though that 40% of overall critical visits are wellness visits, they represent only about 25% of diagnostics revenue. Because the menu, the minimum database, for wellness visits, tends to be a bit smaller than when non-wellness or sick patient visits.
spk00: Yeah, makes sense. And I guess, like, longer term, you know, you have the 2% to 3% growth in patients you know, visits for practice as part of the long-term model. You know, do you feel like practices are in a position today where they can kind of find that additional capacity to continue to add, you know, appointments to their practice so that they can see that growth in visits longer term?
spk01: Absolutely. We do believe that. You know, pre-pandemic, that's what they were, you know, doing. And they were very comfortable in terms of the pace, whether it's adding staff or productivity, to be able to support that two to three. percent. We published earlier in the year, earlier in 2023, a finding the time study. And what it looked at is the capacity models within practices, and it was divided into three separate cohorts, low, medium, higher productivity practices. And there were three primary drivers of differentiation between these practice cohorts. It came down to workflow. In workflow, you know, this is a catch-all, but it could be the number of practice or exam rooms you have, could be how you're organized, do you use, you know, electronic forms of intake, technology, and then culture. Culture being, do you invest in training? Are folks practicing at the top of their license within the, you know, the practice, those type of things. And the interesting set of takeaways is that there's a 30% potential improvement between low and medium-sized productivity practices, 30% between medium and high, and even of your best performing practices through that productivity lens, they could further improve by 30%. So you just go through the math of what that means, is they can easily support the 2% to 3%. Now they need to make some changes, and practices, I think, have a real appetite for making those changes to be able to support your patient visit.
spk00: Got it. Okay. And maybe just going back to the demand side of the equation, do you feel like that had a factor in 3Q? And, you know, I think that there's been kind of debates about kind of health of the consumer and their willingness to continue to spend, you know, on their pets and more on their pets every year. You know, do you think we've started to see any natural limit in terms of that, this limiting growth, or is it not really about demand in your view?
spk01: Yeah. I mean, I think there's – I think the – The demand of the pet owner is there. They love their pets. They consider them members of their family. They prioritize the care of their pets vis-a-vis things like entertainment and going out to eat and travel and those type of things. So we don't think that that's really a driver. The back rock economic impacts, as I indicated, could at the margin have affected wellness visits to an extent, and some pet owners may have deferred that. We think the principal... The issue continues to be capacity constraints, in which practices, you know, I think are investing in people and training and technology and doing the things that we as a company can help them with. And, you know, consequently, we see some really nice demand for our solutions, including software. And it's part of this, I think, investment appetite to be able to do more and not necessarily have to rely on just continuing to hire in a, you know, in a employee supply-constrained world.
spk00: Yeah. Made it almost 20 minutes without asking about price.
spk01: Thank you.
spk00: I thought maybe we could go there next. So, you know, we've heard some numbers from the VET community. You know, it seems to indicate that pricing growth for 24 will be slightly higher than that 3% to 4% longer-term range. I guess, could you maybe just talk about, you know, how you think about setting price, the factors that go into a decision in any given year, you know, as we think about, you know, from the company's standpoint, how you make that.
spk01: Sure. I mean, from a pricing philosophy standpoint, we think that this is a really terrific investable market. And the type of horizons we typically think about are 20 plus years and really being at this just tremendous runway in front of us. So we don't want to be too far over our ski tips and make sure that, you know, pricing reflects the value that we deliver as a company, the differentiation of our, you know, solutions. And obviously, in this inflationary environment that has come down a bit, you know, now, but it's higher than what we've, I think, seen for a very long time, the cost of running the business has been higher. So, you know, we've priced to really be able to continue to reflect the value that we're delivering you know, to our customers, as well as the fact that the, you know, inflationary effects on labor and components and services have been higher. You know, and we make sure we have a number of, I think, ways of monitoring the fact that we're not getting too far in front of where that value equation is. Obviously, we look at are diagnostics still being used? Are they still growing? And what we saw in Q3, as I just cited for the wellness visits, frequency and intensity of diagnostics continues to grow, and it's been a long-going trend. We look at retention. Our retention levels across all our modalities are in the high 90s. And so we look at customer satisfaction surveys, net promoter score, all of those things. And then we look at product sets that may have more of a screening profile to them. Like if you think about vector-borne disease, 4DX screening, that's a test that Typically, the dog may appear to be well, but they aren't yet exhibiting clinical symptoms. So if we were too far in front of the market there, you might see some pullback on that, and that business has been strong. So that's our side of it, but then there's the veterinarian side of it and the practice side of it, which is diagnostics for them is a profit center. It's not a cost center. So from a profit center standpoint, they mark it up. They're capturing medical activity. within the practice, that's how they recover those costs from an activity costing standpoint. So it drives their medical services envelope within the practice. So it's a core part of who they are, why they got into medicine, what the practice exists. And then we look at it from the pet owner, all of our perspective, you know, pet members, beloved members of our family. We want to make sure that as a pet owner, you're still prioritizing this over other things you can spend your money on. And so we're very comfortable with where we are.
spk00: And just following up on that, that concept of sort of the value equation, not wanting to get too far out, is competitive analysis also a part of that value equation?
spk01: I mean, it's a very competitive equation. marketplace customers have a lot of choices so we you know we do look at what the overall marketplace as a whole is doing you know it often comes down to from a customer when you talk to veterinary customers they'll tell you diagnostics is a performance category it's not the accuracy the usability the support once they get a test result are their primary factors in which they judge our solution vis-a-vis others, you know, in the sector. So our focus is on making sure we get those pieces right because it's a profit center, because it drives their medical services piece. They tend to be more sensitive to that than whether they're paying, you know, a couple plus percent more for a solution.
spk00: And just lastly on this – you kind of touched on it, but the potential like price elasticity that the consumer might have to what they spend at the vet, you know, and how that maybe factors in. And I don't know if you can frame, you know, the spending on diagnostics for an appointment versus what they're spending overall. And because I imagine that's kind of an important piece because diagnosis is only one component.
spk01: Yeah, there's two pieces to your question. We do look at overall spend on pet costs. let's say, a pet envelope, pet spending envelope. And we shared those at Investor Days. It represents about 2% of personal consumption expenditure across different demographics. And then we look at the spend on pet health care, and then as a subset to pet health care, diagnostics. And diagnostics is about 0.2%, not really much more than 0.2% of the total PCE envelope. So it's a fairly small piece of the whole, but it's still real and we look at that. The interesting thing is, just to add some additional color to this, as a pet ages and they advance through different life stages, they consume more healthcare. As mammals, they're not so different in that respect than humans. But the percentage that is spent on diagnostics proportionally grows. So you may have a young adult where on average, those that visit the vet, $325, $340 spent on health care, about 12% of that is spent on diagnostics. These are average numbers. Now you go out to seniors and geriatrics, maybe $650 or plus is spent on health care, about 20% is spent on diagnostics. So all those things factor into it. And then not to draw this out too long, we also look at, from a scatter plot standpoint, spend by urban, suburban, rural pet owners, different zip codes, different economic demographics, and what we find is there isn't a good correlation. In other words, the person making $50,000 a year living and working in a rural area spends proportionally the same on diagnostics as somebody More than 200,000 a year living and working in an urban area. So it's just fascinating at that point.
spk00: You mentioned that the diagnostic frequency and utilization components of growth have remained pretty robust. What do you kind of see as the key factors of being able to sustain that growth? Obviously, it's a key component of the company's overall growth is that growing utilization of diagnostics. Maybe just, you know, what are the kind of biggest opportunities in your mind to continue to see the same level of growth as we do?
spk01: Yeah, this falls under what we consider to be in our control. Once a pet comes into a practice for a clinical visit, whether or not diagnostics gets used or prescribed, you know, as a function of have we – Do we have the right innovation that addresses the clinical problem the veterinarian may be looking for? Have we created awareness in education? And that advocacy that the veterinarian decides from a diagnostic standpoint makes a lot of sense. Let me benchmark this a bit in terms of the opportunity and gives us confidence that there's a lot of runway still in front of us. in the U.S., which is the most developed market in the world, and by the way, it's still tons of runway, still in early innings to use a baseball analogy, 19% of clinical visits include chemistry and or hematology. Now, if you just took a look at any diagnostics, which might be just a heartworm test or a fecal test, it's a little bit south of 50%. So it's much higher, but in terms of actual blood work, chemistry or hematology, it's 19%. Now, if you go a level deeper into non-wellness, it's about 25%, and wellness is less than, you know, 19%, 10% or so. But very, very, very underpenetrated. If you look at, if you go to AHA or any of the professional associations, you know, all the clinical guidelines will tell you 70% to 80% of these clinical visits, especially the non-wellness ones, should include diagnostics. If you go outside the U.S., so let's take Europe as a geography, only 7% of clinical visits, 7% of clinical visits include chemistry and or hematology. And the reason for that is that it's a test rule out market. So as a pet owner, you bring your dog to a veterinarian in France, and she may suspect based on vomiting and lethargy that your dog has pancreatitis. So she'll use a CPL test, which is an enzyme test for pancreatitis, and see if that comes back positive. Whereas in the U.S., you'd have chemistry, hematology, you might have urinalysis, and a specialty test all at once. And so you're moving forward with a broader database. So our strategy as a company is through innovation and subject matter expertise to create these commercial and customer partnerships. that drive relevant testing of utilization. Better outcomes, healthier pets, happier pet owners.
spk00: And how do you go about kind of figuring out what the unmet needs are from the vet population in terms of either additional tests or additional ways to drive utilization given that it's such a key component of growth?
spk01: Let's take SDMA because I think that's a fascinating example. For those of you who may not be familiar with SDMA, it's a renal test. It tests kidney impairment, GFR impairment. And if you talk to veterinarians when we were developing, you know, that test, they would say, you know, creatinine is fine. And, you know, and they were using creatinine for decades. I think it was invented or discovered over almost 100 years ago. The problem with creatinine is that 70% of the kidney is damaged, 70% GFR impairment before your creatinine level goes above your reference ranges. It's too late at that. The kidney can't self-repair. And so by the time the pet owner and the veterinarian discovers that there's a problem, you almost have both kidneys destroyed or impaired, which creates, obviously, a very sick patient and a shortened life. But veterinarians would never tell you we need a better kidney test, a GFR impairment test. But we understood the science behind what creatinine, in this case, was measuring. And we set about to really do the research and do the science in developing a new test, where it was much earlier. You could actually do something at that point. We could all live off one kidney from a physiological standpoint. It detected even earlier than 50%, you know, 40% or lower. And so it was an example of really just bringing science to bear. in a way that was very cost-effective, that was included at no additional cost in every chemistry panel that was sent to the reference labs. Now, how do you get, how do you develop, which is the second part of your question, that advocacy and that use behind it? Well, in this case, we included in all reference lab panels. We published a host of scientific papers that demonstrate that science is real, the efficacy was proved out, It provided answers to the follow-on questions. If it's elevated, then what do you do? What stage does it indicate? What stage of kidney disease does the test tell you you're at? What are the therapeutic options? And we worked with the International Renal Interest Society, IRIS, in this case, to have this test incorporated in staging guidelines. And in other cases, to continue to develop the marketplace, We let customers use it for free. And when we came out with a point-of-care solution for Catalyst, they got to run trials. They used it for a month or two months, decided it really worked as well as we said it would work, and the scientific paper supported that. And then they started to use it. We do the same thing with fecal antigen. So fecal is the most commonly used test, diagnostics test, in the marketplace today. It's done through an OMP, which is a central fuel float where you're looking for eggs. The problem is patients get infected before eggs are produced, invisible under a microscope. So we developed fecal antigen tests, which looks for the protein before that egg. It's called the prepatent period, between three and four, six weeks before. So just a great example of, again, looking at the problem. Sometimes the customer tells you what the problem is. Sometimes, because we have over 750 veterinarians that work, they know what the problem is. They've been practicing veterinarians. They've experienced it, and they're helping to guide our product development efforts.
spk00: I wanted to move over maybe to the software side. I think that's another one of the longer-term growth drivers that you see. You raise your guidance for revenue growth from the segment to 15% from 10% at the analyst day in August. I guess, where is there opportunity to bring additional value? You have a very deep installed base. How do you maybe maximize the amount of revenue that kind of the software component can drive?
spk01: Yeah, I mean, software has been a fast-growing business for us. We were reported as part of a diagnostic imaging and software sector, but we've provided some insights. The way I think about this is practices, whether they're corporately owned or independent practices, are just businesses. They're in the business of providing medical care. But there's also, there's a cash register side of it, and then there's a medical or clinical side of it. And the software, just like in any business, has a foundational role to play in terms of supporting workflow, optimizing workflow, client communications, internal staff communications, charge capture as part of a cash register. you know, function. And the better software you have that supports this workflow that's integrated with diagnostics, which is the data point, you know, I think the more optimized your practice is going to run. So we've been investing in software for decades as a company. You know, I would say that the animal health and veterinary profession has historically been a little slow in terms of adopting software. cloud-based software, and for very good reason, by the way, it's not a criticism, it's just it comes down to the fact that their whole practice, the value of their practice is on these patient records, and they were very nervous about migrating data to a completely new system for all the reasons that you might be nervous. What happens if the data gets lost? What happens if the format is different? What about all these customized reports that they created? And so we've invested in a company from a technology standpoint of being able to provide cloud-based software products that support this optimized workflow that allows them to do this data migration that supports quick onboarding and training that, you know, just helps them run their practice better. And what we have seen as a result of that is they're more productive. They're able to, when they use all of our solutions, it's sort of like this, the Apple ecosystem, it all works better together. They grow faster. They grow diagnostics revenue faster. They do more clinical visits. And we as a company, obviously, benefit from it. And so we've seen that faster growth. And in this capacity-constrained world, software is one of the go-to technology solutions that customers are looking for.
spk00: In the time we have left, I want to hit a few additional topics. I want to touch on international specifically. A lot of the discussion has been U.S. International, I think, has been under a bit more macro pressure the past year plus. It actually outperformed the U.S. for the first time in two years in the third quarter. I guess, does that kind of suggest maybe a thawing of some of that macro pressure? Obviously, you've had the ProSite 1 launch that's been big in that market. Can you maybe just break apart the components of maybe where you're seeing that?
spk01: Sure. We started, and we shared this, we started to see what we thought, they had the same capacity challenges in Europe that we've seen in the U.S. We started to see some potentially macro pressures in Europe in Q4 of 2021. If you think about the Russian-Ukraine conflict, the impact that had on gas and natural gas prices, energy inflation, all of those things. So it's a little bit sooner than what we saw in the U.S. in terms of similar impacts. But taking a step back, the market, the sector opportunity, we think is very attractive. It represents two-thirds of the addressable population. sector opportunity that we've talked about in Invest Today, where two-thirds of the actual business is actually happening in North America. So it's flipped in terms of where the longer-term opportunity is. And it really comes down to the 7% of critical visits where diagnostics is used. And so as a company, we've made some very sizable and, we think, wise investments. We've expanded our commercial organization seven times. Since 2020, our biggest reference lab in the world was opened in Kornwestheim, Germany, 50% bigger than the next biggest lab. We've invested in customer experience and really all those pieces from an infrastructure and enablement standpoint that allow us to tap into this opportunity. And so we've seen a premium instrument placement growth. We've seen, to your point, relatively better performance. We've seen sequential improvement in CAC diagnostic recurring revenue, you know, three-quarters in a row, and we think there's just excellent longer-term opportunity to continue to develop that sector.
spk00: And, you know, you've been making investments in the sales force, like you said, sort of on a rolling basis. I guess when it comes to margins, can you maybe talk about the balance of, you know, continuing to make those regular investments, Salesforce, R&D, et cetera, against showing, you know, progress on that 50 to 100 basis point constant currency margin goal that you have? And how dependent is it on the revenue line? Because, you know, the last couple of years have maybe been a bit below the, you know, longer-term trend that you'd be targeting. You know, is that... how does that factor into kind of the ultimate ability of the companies to deliver margin expansion?
spk01: Yeah, so what we talked about last August was that 50 to 100 basis point annual improvement is, we believe, very achievable. It represents an average number. There are a number we provided sort of the bridge buildup to it. But keep in mind that some of this comes down to growth, to your point, where the consumables drop through and the margin is very high. And so when we grow and that margin drops through to the bottom line, obviously that benefits us. The mix in the business, we just spoke to the software, is accretive. And so that's very high margin, and we see that growing nicely. Obviously price comes into it to some extent. And continuing to execute well, across productivity and cost-out measures that in any business you would focus on. So we think as a combination of all those things that I've described, we can continue to execute well, invest in the core elements of our business and innovation and commercial and customer experience, like our customers expect us to do, and still deliver that margin improvement.
spk00: Got it. And maybe just as we're looking to wrap up, you know, last year, you know, two competitors of yours that you know very well, Antec and Hesca, merged, you know, Mars being one of the kind of largest owners of animal hospitals. How does... that change your conversation with corporate accounts, if at all? You know, obviously, you work with some of the Mars-owned practices. There's also ones that aren't owned by Mars and maybe don't want to work with the competitor. So just be curious maybe how the conversation in the market has changed, if at all, since that deal went through.
spk01: Yeah, you know, keep in mind, we have excellent relationships with corporate accounts. They see diagnostics also as a performance category, as a profit center. It enables them to help operate their groups, which tend to be distributed in lots of different geographies in a very, you know, I think, coherent way. They value the integrated solutions that we as a company, you know, bring. We also have an excellent relationship with Mars. So we compete and we cooperate, and obviously they see diagnostics as attractive, and they invested in Antec now over six years ago and Haska more recently. And so, you know, clearly over time we think it's a really attractive, large, growing marketplace that, you know, having somebody else in addition to other competitors talking about it is good from the overall development standpoint. You know, our focus really is in supporting our customers, our corporate customers in their mission. We know that, you know, software and how we integrate that with our diagnostic solutions and how we provide support both you know, internal medicine support and specialty services like in radiology and cardiology, you know, it's at the end of the day what they're looking for. So, you know, we think it's overall it's a – it doesn't really affect our longer-term plans in terms of how we work with corporates.
spk00: Great. And maybe just lastly, and then we can wrap up, you know, when it comes to capital deployment, Could you maybe just talk about, you know, you've kind of done bolt-on deals, you know, where the priorities for those might be, kind of how you see the pipeline today, and, you know, you have a pretty prescriptive formula in terms of share repurchases. I guess that probably wouldn't change, but just, you know, how you're thinking about capital deployment.
spk01: Yeah, so in terms of, let me just address your specific question around, you know, acquisitions. We're always interested in, you know, I'd say primarily in bolt-ons. in software, data, reference lab, maybe telemedicine, reading services that fit our business model and support us because we see such an attractive opportunity in front of us. We're typically not looking for things that may be orthogonal or in the animal health space. So really being able to grow our capability, our footprint, or in some cases in licensed technology like we did for our point-of-care platforms, is where we put our acquisition and corporate development dollars.
spk00: Great. All right, Jay. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you having me here today.
spk01: Yeah, thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. Great being here.
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