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spk05: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Irene, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Aventer's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Results Conference Call. I will now turn the call over to Christina Jones, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mrs. Jones, you may begin the conference.
spk00: Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Our speakers today are Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tom Slozek, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The press release and a presentation accompanying this call are available on our investor relations website at ir.avonturesciences.com. A replay of this webcast will also be made available on our website after the call. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. During this call, we will be making some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our SEC filings. Actual results might differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we make today. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or other developments. This call will include a discussion of non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures can be found in the appendix to the presentation. With that, I will now turn the call over to Michael.
spk02: Thanks, CJ, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. I'm starting on slide three. As we announced in our press release, we delivered another outstanding quarter with strong results across all key financial metrics, including core revenue growth, margin expansion, earnings growth, and free cash flow generation. Our results kept a strong first half of the year and highlight our exposure to attractive end markets, our differentiated product and service offerings, the resiliency of our business model in a dynamic macro environment, and our continued track record of execution. Continuing our momentum from the first quarter, we achieved 6.4% core organic revenue growth on an 18.4% comparable from a year ago, driven by continued strength in biopharma and advanced technologies and applied materials. Once again, our core bioproduction business grew over 20% in the quarter, and we are set up for continued growth with a robust order book, reflecting the ongoing strength of the biologics pipeline and our broad exposure to all modalities. We expanded EBITDA margins by over 140 basis points, including strong expansion in our core business and benefits from our 2021 acquisitions. Through the first six months of the year, our core organic revenue growth and margin expansion are tracking our 2022 guidance and above our long-term targets. As we execute our operating plan, we also continue to progress our long-term growth strategy through product innovation, exciting new collaborations, and ongoing capacity expansion projects. In the second quarter, we launched new products in several areas, including JT Baker high-precision consumables, viral inactivation solutions, as well as a new line of MasterFlex pumps with an advanced user interface to support customer fluid transfer needs in both lab and production environments. We also entered into collaborations with Gemini Bio to provide plasma DNA, and Cytobance to provide custom hydrated solutions and soil culture media to biopharma customers. With these collaborations, we have expanded our bioproduction offering and enabled our customers to utilize custom CGMP products through the full development cycle, including early stage research, scale up, and commercialization. We have several capacity expansion projects in flight and recently started construction in our Phillipsburg, New Jersey manufacturing site to significantly increase our global capacity for process ingredients to support growth in our bioproduction platform. Our M&A integrations remain on track, and we achieved several critical milestones for MasterFlex this quarter, including successfully executing on our planned ERP implementations in Europe, India, and China. At this point, all ERP integrations outside of the Americas are complete, and we remain on schedule to wind down all TSAs before year end. Ritter is now integrated into our portfolio, and we remain focused on executing on new product launches and commercial synergies. Looking ahead, we have good momentum in our end markets. Our order book is strong, and we continue to leverage the Avantour business system to drive execution in a challenging operating environment. We remain confident in delivering another year of strong financial results. Given the dynamic macro environment, we thought it would again be helpful to provide a brief update on some of the factors impacting our space. and how we are leveraging the Avantour business system to manage through these challenges. Starting on the left side of slide four, the global economy has become a bit choppier, with slowing GDP growth, tighter financial conditions, and the ongoing geopolitical conflict in Ukraine. Despite these headlines, we continue to see strength in our end markets. Notably, in the second quarter, we experienced more than 20% core organic growth in our bioproduction business, and strong growth in our semiconductor platform, that drove double-digit growth in our advanced technologies and applied materials and market. The order books for our proprietary businesses remain strong, highlighted by bio-production and biomaterials, where we have nearly a full year of demand on order. Moving to foreign exchange, U.S. dollar has strengthened considerably against most currencies since the beginning of the year. This presents incremental foreign currency translation headwinds for the roughly 40% of our business outside the U.S. In the second quarter, FX was a 4.4% headwind to reported revenue and impacted earnings per share by approximately 2 cents. Based on the expectation that the U.S. dollar will remain strong through the balance of the year, we have updated our full-year EPS guidance to reflect this impact. Regarding interest rates, our financing structure and strong free cash flows have enabled us to maintain our 2022 interest costs at the originally forecasted level, despite the escalation in U.S. LIBOR and URBOR indices. We also expect interest cost reduction in 2023 and beyond as we continue to delever and we have no significant required debt repayments until 2025. COVID headwinds increased in the second quarter to approximately 4%. Looking ahead, we expect full-year COVID headwinds of around 3%, reflecting approximately $100 million less COVID-related revenues than planned at the beginning of the year. as vaccine-related revenue is moderating faster than anticipated. We expect our core bioproduction business to offset this incremental headwind as we redeploy production capacity, and we are maintaining our full-year guidance for Avantor of mid-single-digit organic growth. We are encouraged by the recent improvements in China activity levels. However, the strict lockdowns in the quarter did create a roughly 50 basis point headwind to our top-line results. Excluding this headwind, our EMEA business grew high single digits on a core organic basis in the quarter. While inflation continues to impact nearly all our cost categories, we delivered over 140 basis points of margin expansion in the second quarter and first half. The Avantor business system is helping us deliver commercial excellence and productivity. And together with the favorable impact of our 2021 acquisitions, our first half margin expansion is above our 2022 full-year guidance of 125 basis points and above our long-term algorithm of 50 to 100 basis points per year. The final point on supply chain. The global supply chain has been constrained since the start of the pandemic. For example, in the second quarter, we faced printed circuit board and resin shortages which impacted our single-use revenues. We continue to leverage our global network to mitigate episodic supply chain issues and expect modest improvements over the course of the year. We remain confident that our investments across the network will enable us to continue to improve service levels and shorten lead times. While the macroeconomic situation is challenging, the resiliency of our business model and our track record of execution give us confidence in serving our customers and delivering strong financial performance. Moving to Q2 performance on page five. Second quarter core organic revenue growth was 6.4% on top of an 18.4% growth comparison from the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA on the quarter was up 10.2% driven by commercial excellence, a stronger weighting of proprietary offerings, and the favorable boost from our 2021 acquisitions. Our strong operating results drove adjusted net income growth of 11.1% and 37 cents of adjusted earnings per share this quarter. We generated free cash flow in excess of $190 million in the quarter while continuing to ramp investments in the business to support our growth. Our adjusted net leverage of 3.9 times adjusted EBITDA is in line with our two to four times target leverage, supporting our ongoing focus on building a robust M&A pipeline. With that, let me turn it over to Tom to walk you through our financial results in more detail.
spk13: Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I'm starting on slide six. Building on Michael's comments, we generated total revenue of $1.91 billion in the second quarter, representing a 2.8% reported growth rate. Our underlying core organic growth rate, excluding COVID headwinds, was 6.4%, despite the challenging 18.4% comparable. Over the last three years, we have averaged 5.8% core organic growth in the second quarter, which is at the high end of our 4% to 6% long-term target. Our COVID-related headwinds were higher this quarter, coming in at 4.1%. COVID vaccine-related revenues are moderating faster than anticipated, and we now expect COVID-related headwinds of approximately 3% for the year. You'll see in a minute that we expect to offset these higher COVID headwinds with core growth and are maintaining our full-year organic revenue growth guidance. Our 2021 acquisitions increased our revenues by 4.9%. More to come on this in a minute. And the stronger U.S. dollar created foreign currency translation headwinds of roughly 4.4%. On to page 7. From a regional perspective, America, which represents approximately 60% of annual global sales, achieved an 8.1% core organic revenue growth driven by continued strength in biopharma and advanced technologies and applied materials. Within America's biopharma, our bioproduction business grew more than 20%, on a core organic basis, with strength across process ingredients, excipients, single-use, and serum. Reflecting a strong research environment, our biopharma R&D revenues were up high single digits, driven by strength in lab chemicals and equipment and instrumentation. Within advanced technologies and applied materials, double-digit sales growth was driven by our proprietary offerings to semiconductor and electronic device manufacturers. Europe, which represents approximately 35% of annual global sales, achieved 4.7% core organic revenue growth. Despite a challenging economic climate across Europe, underlying demand remained strong. Proprietary materials grew high single digits, outpacing growth in all other categories. Bioproduction grew over 25% in the region, driven by demand for our processed ingredients, excipients, and single-use solutions. Advanced technologies and applied materials grew low single digits, driven by strong sales of equipment and instrumentation. EMEA, representing approximately 5% of annual global sales, declined 0.3% on a core organic basis, with lockdowns in China impacting sales for the quarter. Excluding China, EMEA core organic sales increased high single digits. Advanced technology and applied materials sales grew double digits, driven by sales of our proprietary offerings to the semiconductor industry and strong industrial demand in the region. Slide 8 shows our core organic revenue growth for the quarter by end market and product group. Biopharma, representing almost 55% of our annual revenue, experienced high single-digit core organic growth in the quarter, including more than 20% core organic growth in bioproductions. Our strong order book for proprietary offerings reflects a healthy bioproduction pipeline across MABS, cell and gene therapy, and mRNA. With attractive end market dynamics and incremental capacity coming online over the course of the next 18 months, we expect continued momentum in this business. Healthcare, which represents approximately 10% of our annual revenue, declined low single digits on a core organic basis in the second quarter. against the more than 30% growth comp from last year. The growth in our medical-grade silicone offerings was offset by declines in third-party offerings, in part relating to supply chain challenges. We expect this end market to return to growth as comparables moderate in the second half of the year and expect continued strength from biomaterials given the strong order book for our proprietary silicone offerings. Education and government representing approximately 10% of our annual revenue experienced a low single-digit core organic revenue decline in the second quarter, and like healthcare, was up against a challenging comp of nearly 40% in 2021 that included project-related spend, which is not repeated. We expect this end market to also return to growth in the second half. Advanced technology and applied materials, representing approximately 25% of our annual revenue, achieved double-digit core organic revenue growth in the second quarter, driven by growth of proprietary materials to semiconductor and electronic device customers. By product group, proprietary materials and consumables offerings achieved double-digit core organic revenue growth, driven by strong demand for our process ingredients, chromatography resins, excipients, single-use solutions, and serum, as well as for our electronic chemicals platform. Sales of third-party materials and consumables increased mid-single digits, reflecting broad chemicals and consumables demand across our end markets. Equipment and instrumentation sales remained strong in the quarter, and services grew low single digits, reflecting strong demand for clinical services, offset by reduced spend on specialty procurement services. Let me turn to slide nine to offer some perspective regarding our other key financial performance metrics. Michael previously mentioned the 10.2% growth in adjusted EBITDA, were about 14% without the foreign exchange translation headwinds, and over 140 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion to 21.2%, reflecting expansion on our core business and contributions from our 2021 acquisitions. Core margin expansion was driven by commercial excellence and favorable mix from double-digit growth in sales of our proprietary materials and consumables. These positive factors were partially offset by increased cost of materials and freight, as well as investments in our workforce made over the course of 2021 and into 2022. Adjusted earnings per share in the second quarter was $0.37, and adjusted net income was up approximately 11%, or closer to 15% when adjusted for FX. Free cash flow in the second quarter was $191 million, compared to $265 million in the prior period. Our working capital performance was strong and was, as planned, offset by higher capital spending to support our growth, higher interest relating to the 2021 acquisitions, and increased income tax payments as a result of higher pre-tax income and timing. Turning to slide 10, I want to provide an update on the progress of our 2021 acquisitions. We deployed approximately $4 billion for M&A in 2021, principally for the acquisitions of Ritter and MasterFlex. Similar to our legacy platform, these businesses have a highly recurring, specification-driven revenue profile and expand our proprietary offering to the biopharma and healthcare end markets. This is our second full quarter with MasterFlex in the portfolio, and the integration is progressing on track, including recent ERP cutovers in Europe and EMEA and excellent traction on cost synergies. The demand for the MasterFlex offering is strong. We continue to collaborate with our biopharma customers, and the order book is growing at an attractive rate. Q2 revenue was up high single digits on a like-for-like basis while absorbing adverse impacts from the China lockdown and supply chain constraints, most notably printed circuit boards for our peristaltic pump offerings and resin-based materials for the tubing product lines. The Ritter business is fully integrated into our portfolio, and we are excited to provide these high-precision, liquid-handling consumables alongside our existing offerings for diagnostic and drug discovery applications. Ritter revenues were less than anticipated in the quarter, driven by continued foreign exchange headwinds and COVID-related declines. We continue to focus on executing our commercial synergy pipeline, which leverages the Avantor distribution channel to create an aftermarket stream of revenues for this traditionally OEM-focused business. The lead time for this transition is considerable, as the products must be formally approved and specified by our customers via an extensive sampling, testing, and qualification protocol. We also continue to invest in expanding the product line through new product introductions to leverage Ritter's capabilities as our high-precision, consumable center of excellence. Our opportunity pipeline continues to progress, and we remain confident in achieving the targeted returns on this investment. We have incorporated these developments into our full year 2022 expectations and are now forecasting over $450 million of revenue, greater than $155 million of adjusted EBITDA, and more than $0.06 of earnings per share. The first half is in the books in line with our guidance. We delivered 6.8% core organic growth and expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by approximately 140 basis points. We grew adjusted net income by about 13%, resulting in 75 cents of adjusted DPS in the first half of 2022. Given ongoing business momentum and less aggressive comparable growth in the second half, we anticipate modestly stronger core organic growth rates in Q3 and Q4. and attractive margin expansion in line with our original full-year guide. Our 4% to 6% organic revenue growth guidance remains intact. Including COVID headwinds of 3%, we expect to deliver core organic revenue growth of 7% to 9%. We are encouraged by healthy demand patterns in our end markets and remain confident in our ability to offset higher COVID-related headwinds by continued strength in our core business. On adjusted EBITDA, we anticipate continued commercial and operational execution and an attractive weighting of higher margin proprietary offerings, including those in bioproduction, to drive margin expansion in excess of 125 basis points for the full year. We are updating our adjusted EPS range to $1.43 to $1.49, principally reflecting foreign exchange translation headwinds as well as the updated outlook we provided on our recent acquisitions. We have modestly reduced free cash flow to reflect these factors. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now hand the call back to Michael.
spk02: Thanks, Tom. I'm now on slide 12. We delivered another solid quarter with strong results across all key financial metrics in a dynamic macro environment. I remain encouraged by the strength of our end markets, the resiliency of our business model, and our team's ongoing traction with commercial excellence and productivity initiatives that will enable continued growth and margin expansion. The integration of our 2021 acquisitions is progressing well, and we are excited about the growth potential of our combined portfolio. Given the continued momentum of our business and ongoing deleveraging, we continue to actively build our M&A pipeline. We recently announced that Kitty Sahin has joined Avantor to lead strategy and corporate development. We are excited to have her on the team and look forward to her contributions in helping us shape and execute our enterprise growth strategy. In May, we released our 2022 sustainability report, which highlights significant progress across Avantor's four ESG priorities. As a company focused on advancing science to create a better world, we recognize our immense responsibility to invest in sustainability for all our stakeholders, and we remain committed to delivering our sustainability goals. I want to thank you for your interest in Avantor and for your ongoing support. I will now turn it over to the operator to begin the question and answer portion of our call.
spk05: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad now. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. In the interest of time, we ask that participants limit themselves to one question only. Dear participants, it seems like we have lost connection with our speakers. Please bear with us until we reconnect them. Thank you. Dear participants, our speakers have joined back us. And we can now retake our question and answer session. Our first question comes from Vijay Kumar from Evercore. Vijay, your line is open.
spk03: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I have a two-part question. I think there's some confusion on acquisition revenues. They were cut from 500 to 450. There were two different numbers. There was a 90 million acquisition contribution, and I think the slide deck had a 100 million number. Can you reconcile the 90 versus 100? And this cut from 500 to 450, how much of this is FX? Was MasterFlex revenues cut down? And I think related to that, Michael, for you, I mean, the stocks right now are 13, 14 turns forward EBITDA. You guys just put up 6 plus percent core growth. Is the, I mean, the stock's pricing in a massive growth slowdown from that share. Are there any sensitivities, variables we need to be aware of when we think about 23-week comps? Is it any slowdown in customer activity, economic activity? Any comments would be helpful.
spk13: Yeah, thanks, Vijay. This is Tom. And I apologize for the technical difficulties. We, somehow our line got cut when we started. So thank you for your patience. On your first question, yeah, we – I'll just tell you that the $102 million that we show in the slides is the Q2 revenue from RIM, Ritter, and MasterFlex. When you look at the 10Q, which will be out shortly, you'll be at – we disclosed the Q2 revenues for both RIM and Ritter – sorry, for both – Ritter and MasterFlex as we normally do. The total of those two will show $97 million. The remaining portion up to the 102 represents RIMBIO, as well as the revenues that go to third parties through the Evonter channels and not through MasterFlex or Ritter. So, again, I can understand why that wasn't clear. The press release tables that show the $90 million That really is a reconciliation. The 90 is the growth, year-over-year growth from last year's starting point in the revenue for the acquisitions. And that excludes organic growth, but the bulk of the growth, as you know, given the timing of those acquisitions, was inorganic year-over-year. So hopefully that clarifies the 102. But again, the 102 is what you'll see in the Thank you. And Michael's going to touch on that.
spk02: I'll take the second part to your question there. On the walk from the 500 that we had previously for M&A down to 450, I think the principal factors there, as we noted on the call, were certainly FX as well as stronger COVID headwinds and then some of the supply chain constraints that we noted. I think the way I think about it is our internal plan rolls up to certainly higher than the 450. If you take MasterFlex, for example, we actually have line of sight to demand to our original plan. And maybe being a bit conservative here, not wanting to take an aggressive stance on how the supply chain constraints might play out in the second half, we thought it would be prudent to be a bit conservative here. On the Ritter front, again, we're really encouraged by the momentum we have in our pipeline. We have several thousand opportunities that we're in progress of qualifying. And as that end market adjusts from the COVID focus that it had in 2021 to a more normalized environment with more normalized inventory levels, we're confident that we're going to see the growth going forward. And as we think about 2023, obviously a bit arduous for us to speculate on how that might turn out. We're operating in a pretty choppy macro environment at the moment with a lot of things moving around, whether it be FX or inflation, certainly GDPs around the world. But as we say here today, there's certainly nothing in our end markets, as you can see from our strong core growth in the quarter, you know, that gives us any signals that we're headed for, you know, an environment that would deteriorate. Now, having said that, one of the things that I think is important to understand about our business is it is a very resilient model that's built to withstand, you know, the storms of the marketplace that can come from time to time. We have a consumables specification-driven, you know, model that yields more than 85 percent recurring revenue. you know, has performed historically well, you know, through the previous downturns. And since those downturns, you know, I would say that the quality of our business has improved substantially when you look at the percentage of our revenue that's exposed to biopharma, the amount of our revenue that's specked into production platforms, and certainly we're starting from position strength here with a lot of momentum.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Brennan from Cowen. Dan, your line is open.
spk14: Great, thanks. Thanks for taking the questions. So Michael and Tom, I feel like a volunteer stock has been penalized in the past maybe for a lack of clarity on maybe some specific guidance items. So maybe with that in mind, I hope to ensure we understand kind of how we think about the pacing of revenues in the back half of the year. Namely, could you just give us some perspective, Q3, Q4, how we should think about COVID and organic growth on the core, plus EBITDA margins and free cash flow pacing, and maybe connected to that, you know, maybe give us some color on what your visibility is like towards the back half of the year in terms of you talked about your backlog, and what, if anything, you are baking in for weakening economy. It sounds like you're not seeing anything yet, so perhaps there's nothing really baked in. Thank you.
spk02: Thanks for the question, Dan. If you go back to kind of what we've said about the second quarter as maybe as a starting point, We indicated that our core organic revenue growth would be in the range of the first quarter performance and similar on margins. And I think as you see the results here, I think we delivered on both of those. Looking at the second half of the year, as I refer you back to Tom's prepared comments, by holding our full year organic guide at 4% to 6%, We're trending right in the middle of that through the first half of the year. So you'd see second half kind of playing out in a similar way. But with stronger COVID headwinds in the third and fourth quarter compared to, say, maybe the first quarter, you're going to see modestly stronger core organic growth in the third and fourth quarter on principally weaker year-over-year comparables. And we would anticipate roughly 3% COVID headwinds in each of the third and the fourth quarter. We're sitting at about 140 basis points of margin expansion at the midpoint or midway through the year here. And with our guide coming in about 125 for the full year basis, I think I would see Q3 and Q4 playing out a lot like we saw the first half here to get us above our guide. Looking at... visibility, there's probably a couple different ways I think about that. Firstly, on our proprietary offerings that are specced into our customers' production platforms, whether that be in bioproduction or in biomaterials for medical devices or even in things like the semiconductor end market. Our order books are at historically high levels, which is to say that You're close to having a full year of demand on order. So we have really great visibility into that part of our business. And the production part of our business, to remind you, is roughly 40% of our overall revenues. On the lab portion of our business is where we principally leverage our strong customer access and global footprint. to service a customer base that is quite agile in that most of the revenue that we generate there is ordered and shipped within a 24 to 48-hour period. So that business runs more on a momentum basis and kind of a daily rate of sales basis with not a lot of forward visibility into the second half of the year. But the momentum is good certainly as we progress through the second quarter. saw momentum improve and as we sit here today, having nearly finished the first month of the quarter, that momentum has continued into the third quarter.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Sagat from Barclays. Luke, your line is open.
spk12: Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions here. Two-parter for me. First one on pricing. So, Michael, it gets you over the conferences you were talking about and from last quarter that you weren't able to get the full pricing from one queue, and that would – basically bleed into 2q and the rest of the year and so that's what we were looking for a step up sequentially here from growth and just kind of talk about how that played out in the quarter were you able to get as much as you were expecting or did some of that get pushed out and then how that impacted volumes essentially you know what was a volume offset and then the second part here Can you talk about the underlying growth within MasterFlex? With the $50 million guide done, everybody's kind of a little skittish on that, so we want to know how that's been growing. I know you gave some color on the order book there, but should we see extra upside here in case that the supply chain releases and those components sourcing that you guys sell through that channel, is that source upside? Just give us some sense here where that can go.
spk02: Now, Luke, thanks for the questions. On the pricing front, I think the second quarter played out in line with how we had anticipated. And you are correct in that, you know, the proportion of our orders in the second quarter that we satisfied at, you know, current pricing relative to, you know, the first quarter certainly did, you know, step up. And, you know, the pricing that we put into the marketplace, you know, played out as we had anticipated. And that was in part, you know, you know, reflected in the strong, you know, core organic growth that we delivered. You know, of course, the offset at the organic line then is the stronger COVID headwinds that we realized in the quarter. In the first quarter, COVID headwinds were roughly 2%, and they stepped up against, you know, the strongest COVID tailwind that we had in 2021 to about 4%, 4.1% headwinds with, you know, very little contribution from PPE, significantly decline in contribution from COVID testing. We were probably at a quarter of the level that we were at in the first quarter. And then vaccines starting to moderate meaningfully as well. So net contributions from pricing playing out as anticipated, strong underlying demand fundamentals helping us achieve stronger core organic growth to offset the stronger COVID headwinds. On MasterFlex, we remain super excited. That business is essentially performing as well as our legacy businesses, which as you've seen, we've been printing on a core basis more than 20% growth for bioproduction over the last number of quarters, and this quarter was no different. Specific to MasterFlex, great order book, similar to our own As I indicated on one of the previous questions, we got line of sight to the original kind of demand plan behind our original guidance. Certainly, there was some impact from China. There's a bit more exposure in China for that business than maybe our legacy business. And there were some unique supply chain constraints, things like printed circuit boards that we don't face in the rest of our business. Depending on how those things play out, how much of the China demand recovers, you know, do we see some relief from the supply chain constraints? We certainly have the demand to deliver something stronger than what we've signaled here.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Rachel Vettensdal from JP Morgan. Rachel, your line is open.
spk07: Hey, thanks for taking the questions. Two here on Ritter. First is really how it could be, and just a follow-up to Vijay's question. So Ritter closed intra-quarter during QQ of 21. So can you just confirm for us that difference between the PR and the slides? Was that 90 million reference in the press release reflected the inorganic M&A contribution during the quarter? And then the slides that showed the 102 was really that total contribution from M&A, which included, you know, the month or two of benefit from Ritter that's now looped into organic M&A. And then secondly, just diving a little bit deeper in Ritter, follow up to Luke's question. So can you just walk us explicitly through the numbers there? How much of a headwind was FX and then separately, really how much of that was COVID roll-off? And do you still expect to hit that high single-digit core organic growth for Ritter?
spk02: Yeah, great questions, Rachel. Let me take those. Your commentary there on the 90 versus the 102 was spot on, good commentary. good explanation there. It's really just the difference between what was reported last June as inorganic and what we're now showing as inorganic. Now that we've lapped the one-year milestone there, some of that is starting to be shown as organic. On the reconciliation here, a little bit challenging to try to allocate the various factors that we've outlined here to get back to the 450. Principally given, our internal plan actually rolls up, as we've indicated, to something stronger than that. There's obviously been some noise around the numbers here the last couple of quarters. We're trying to be a bit cautious here and put out maybe a conservative guide here so that we can put the focus on the long-term outlook for this business, specific to Ritter, the core business continues to grow high single digits. We're plagued by stronger COVID headwinds than maybe what we had understood. It's probably more in the range of 20% to 25% of revenues at the jump-off point are proving to be somehow linked to COVID. And given a business that's principally denominated in euros, given its legacy, you know, that business is being disproportionately impacted by FX compared to, you know, the rest of our business. And, you know, when you look at the synergy plan, which is really where our focus is, we're on track to deliver our, you know, year one synergy plan, you know, for 2022. Now, given that the headwinds in COVID, we're obviously, we're hopeful of trying to pull ahead, you know, some of our 2023 synergies into the year and, we're just facing the practical realities of, you know, there is a specific timeline that needs to be followed here as you, you know, qualify these products with your customers, as well as, you know, the reality that there's a bit of inventory overhang in the channel, you know, just given the drop-off in COVID testing. But the opportunity pipeline looks great. Again, several thousand opportunities. We've got great traction. We're going to hit our synergy plan for the year and You know, we're alongside that, you know, aggressively expanding the product portfolio. We've been making investments, you know, literally from day one that will roll out, you know, over the course of this year and into next year. In my prepared remarks, I mentioned, you know, some of the JT Baker branded, you know, consumables that we launched in the quarter. Those are, you know, coming from Ritter. So a lot of momentum there. The core is in great shape. We're super excited. remain confident in the long-term potential of this business.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Tejas Savant from Morgan Stanley. Tejas, your line is open.
spk01: Hey, guys. Good morning, and thanks for the time here. Two-parter for me, one on COVID and another follow-up on the tuck-ins here. So on COVID, Michael and Tom, I mean, can you share some color on what you're embedding in the second half outlook in terms of boosters? I know you mentioned seeing a bit of a moderation here, but Pfizer earlier and now Moderna overnight both announced large U.S. government orders. Would that potentially lead to a little bit of upside here, though I can understand why you want to be prudent about how you frame the outlook? And then on the M&A piece, this is more of a philosophical question, really. I mean, in terms of some of the issues here, you know, agreed they've been largely sort of factors beyond your control, including COVID and the supply chain. Are there any sort of like key learnings, you know, from the past 12 months that you'd like to flag? And are there any implications from that on a go-forward basis in terms of either perhaps a near-term breather on the deal front or how you approach forecasting and integration next time around?
spk02: Yeah, Tejas, thanks for the questions. On the COVID vaccine front, things have moderated probably quicker than what we would have anticipated coming into the year. And that is the principal driver for why we were maybe early in the year thinking about you know, something closer to, you know, $250 million of COVID-related revenues, and we're now signaling at a 3% headwind, you know, something closer to $150 million. A big part of that, if not most of that, is certainly, you know, a takedown in the vaccine contribution from, you know, from the year. And that's, you know, really backed by you know, discussions with our customers, the order books that we have and, you know, the work we're doing to transition some of that capacity to, you know, to our core business. So, you know, to the extent that, you know, there is another massive wave of vaccination, you know, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily reflected in our current order book and, you know, to the extent that that would We don't have line of sight to that as we sit here today. Relative to M&A, as we've said, we're super excited about the capabilities that these acquisitions have brought to us. I think it strengthens our platform, and certainly the feedback from our customers has been really terrific, and the traction we're getting on synergies is as expected. Certainly the macro environment has injected results you know here that we're you know facing and unfortunately the you know the benefits of the acquisitions you know principally the the core organic growth and the margin expansion from these deals you see the impact of those things on our on our business as I indicated in my prepared remarks we've you know hired a new head of corporate development and strategy which you know we're super excited to have her on board She brings a really deep background across a lot of our end markets, including biopharma, and a tremendous amount of deal experience over the last couple of decades. With the balance sheet where it's at, we remain active in continuing to build that pipeline, and we would still see our principal capital allocation strategies continuing to deliver and be opportunistic here as we think about M&A.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Sykes from Goldman Sachs. Matt, your line is open.
spk11: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Good morning. My first question is just on The COVID vaccine revenue tailing off faster than you expected. How fungible is that demand? Meaning given your strong order book where every year worth of orders, are those customers, maybe the same customers or new customers looking to secure that freed up capacity as COVID comes down? So meaning, can you just translate that capacity into your order book or is there a period of transition that needs to take place within bio production for that to happen?
spk02: Matt, one of the things we really like about our portfolio here and how things have played out, particularly during COVID, is, you know, the applicability of our solution set across all modalities, you know, whether that be the traditional monoclonals or, you know, in some of the new emerging therapies, cell and gene therapy and mRNA, as we've seen here in COVID vaccines. So in many cases, you know, the infrastructure and the products are the same. And so throughout the pandemic, we've actually been on a daily basis, sometimes even an hourly basis, these lines are modulating from producing both COVID and non-COVID solutions. So to that extent, it's almost infinitely fungible here. Probably the one governor as to, at a moment in time, how fungible it can actually be is just the scheduling of raw materials for the specific orders you're trying to satisfy, which could inject a few weeks to a few months delay on some of those orders. But generally, we view it to be quite fungible. And as you look at our core organic print here on bioproduction of well over 20%, Again, I think we're doing a really nice job of, you know, kind of winding down the support for the vaccines and ramping, you know, satisfaction of our core order book, which, you know, again, remains, you know, extremely robust. So we're certainly driving core growth well ahead of the market growth there, which I think is another proof point for you on the success we're having in, you know,
spk05: maximizing capacity utilization you know to meet the demand for our for our customers thank you our next question comes from paul knight from key bank paul your line is open yeah michael i guess you know when you're talking you have a year backlog in a bio process um
spk08: I think the summary is that the supply chain is limiting to a certain degree how quickly you can deliver that. Is that a fair way to say it? But you're still at the same token growing above market. Is that the right way to think about it?
spk02: In our production business, no doubt, we continue to outpace supply. and take share in the marketplace. You know, we view ourselves as the leading materials supplier to a pretty attractive and robust space with a great outlook. You know, probably a couple of factors here that limit us being able to maybe even do more than that. You know, certainly there are supply chain issues. And I don't want to, you know, maybe put too bright of a spotlight on this. We've had supply chain issues, you know, over the course of the last couple of years and throughout the pandemic. they might move around a bit in terms of where the hotspot happens to be at any moment in time. But as you saw from our slide on the macro environment, supply chain in aggregate was probably somewhat of a push in the quarter with maybe some acute hotspots that we called out. But certainly, there were some episodic raw material constraints that did prevent me from doing even more in bioproduction, which also had the practical reality of You know, our customers, you know, for these things, you know, there is a limit to how early, you know, they might, you know, be willing to accept these materials. They're highly regulated materials that need to be stored in, you know, controlled environments. And so there is some practical limitations as to how much of the demand you can pull forward. You know, certainly our customers are interested in getting product in advance of their, you know, batch cycles. But, you know, they're not probably going to be too excited for me to ship it six months early, for example.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jack Meehan from Nefron Research. Jack, your line is open.
spk09: Thank you. Good morning. Michael, there were some questions coming in in the quarter around inventory in the channel with customers. I was curious to get your thoughts on just how much visibility you have into this and what you're seeing as it relates to that.
spk02: Yeah, I think our view today is still consistent with what we said before, Jack, in that we don't have line of sight to any meaningful inventory builds in the channel. There's certainly going to be the one-off category or customer here that would be the outlier, as there always is. But we have a pretty interesting seat at the table in a lot of our customers, particularly some of our larger lab customers, in that in many cases it's our associates through our service offering that are managing stock rooms and inventory and managing the supply chain. And certainly there's no signals coming from that population that would indicate that our customers are intentionally trying to build inventory. And then on the production side of our business, there's just a lot of practical constraints that would keep our customers from building meaningful amounts of inventory, including storage space and the fact that these things have to be stored in a controlled environment and there are shelf life considerations that need to be accounted for. So, as we said here, I don't think we see inventory, you know, billed as a particular concern.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Riskin from Bank of America. Michael, your line is open.
spk10: Great, thanks. This is Mike on for Director Brown. I want to follow up on some of the COVID questions. Can you go into a little bit more detail of, you know, how much is COVID, you know, how much COVID is left in the model, right? Based on what you've done year to date and your guide of 3% headwind for the year, you know, it looks like you're kind of assuming a similar run rate, 2Q, 3Q, 4Q in COVID. Is that sort of the baseline level going forward? Is that... Is that de-risked for next year, or, you know, is there a chance of another COVID headwind to revenues next year as we try to sort of reconcile that 4% to 6% underlying growth with what we could see overall?
spk13: Yep. And, Mike, did you have a second question, too, because I don't want you to get cut off before you get it in? Okay, maybe he did. So thanks for the question. Yeah, I think you have it right. When we entered the year, we were coming off 2021 when we had about $400 million of COVID-related revenue. About half of that was vaccine-related, and the rest was split between PP&E and diagnostic testing. As we look at our latest, well, our initial guidance was that, you know, we saw about 2% overall impact organic growth. So the 400 would come down to, you know, call it 250. We've just based on the trending in the first quarter and the second quarter, you know, we're seeing that additional, you know, 100 come out. So, you know, by the end of the year, we'll probably be in the 150 to 180 range in terms of, you know, remaining, you know, COVID revenues, you know, for the full year 2022. I would characterize that as the absolute maximum exposure for 2023 because, again, this was built on specific revenue offerings in those three categories that I mentioned. And so once they're fully exhausted, once that revenue is fully exhausted, you're at a point where everything is organic and there's no difference going forward. hopefully that, uh, that helps. And I think it's also important to remember that, that, that 400 million or so, um, of, of COVID revenue last year, it was, uh, you know, first half versus second half, the comparisons were, uh, you know, pretty enormous. We had, we had, you know, probably, uh, you know, close to two, two 30 to two 50, but the first half, uh, the remainder of the second half. So the COVID comps in the second half, um, you know, begin to moderate a bit, uh, And that's, we think 4% headwind is probably the high point for the year. And it'll average out to the 3% we mentioned.
spk05: Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Donnelly from Citi. Patrick, your line is open.
spk04: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a two-parter. Tom, maybe just to follow up quickly, you kind of touched on it there. Just let me think about the second half organic. I think you guys did about three and a half, a little more. In the first half, obviously the guidance is staying for four to six. Is that second half? bump up is that mainly just that covid piece easing you kind of talked about there uh quickly and then second just on the m&a strategy michael you touched on earlier um how are you guys balancing you know doing a large deal in the near term versus paying down that debt getting the leverage to kind of a more reasonable level and then becoming more active obviously kind of hiring new leaders you talked about i'm just curious in terms of the appetite in the near term versus debt pay down how we should think about that balance thanks guys
spk13: Yeah, thanks, Patrick. I think you have it right on the first one. As I said, you know, at the tail end of the comment, I think we've hit sort of the high peak on COVID headwind impact in a given quarter. So second half, you know, first half was, you know, call it 4% in the second quarter, probably closer or under 3% in the third and fourth quarter. The the absolute revenues and quantum revenues in the third and fourth quarter for those COVID-related offerings in 21 had moderated as we had disclosed. So the comps get a little bit more moderate, as Michael said, and so the impact on organic growth is more limited. But we've got that factored into the guide. We do think Q3 picks up, even on a core organic basis, ignoring that. COVID headwinds and in the fourth quarter as well.
spk02: So that's what we've baked into the updated guide. And Patrick, on your second question regarding kind of M&A strategy, we continue to delever in line with our expectations. With the deleveraging in the quarter, we're now within the two to four times target leverage. And quite purposefully, we've finance the MasterFlex acquisition with a bit of equity to preserve, you know, flexibility and optionality, you know, that we could participate if the right deal came along. Obviously, it's a little bit of a muted M&A environment right now with probably a pretty big gap between, you know, buyer and seller expectations right now and probably even more so in the private market. So, We remain focused on integrating the deals that we've got. There's a lot of work going on on Master Flex. We've got TSAs that we're looking to wean ourselves off of by the end of the year and making some really terrific progress there. In the meantime, we're fortunate that we can create a lot of value for our shareholders by continuing to de-lever. If the right deal comes along with the right you know, strategic, you know, value to us. I think we've got flexibility to do a deal this year. But if we don't, you know, we'll obviously be disciplined and, you know, that will just give us more firepower going into next year. So would, you know, couch it as, you know, continued, you know, focus, a lot of activity, and, you know, we'll be disciplined about it as you would expect and perhaps even more so in this environment.
spk05: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, currently we are not taking any further questions. Therefore, I would like to hand back to Michael Stubblefield for any closing remarks. Michael, over to you.
spk02: Yeah, thank you all for participating in our call. Obviously, we're excited about the momentum in our business in a challenging macro environment. And I think the strong core growth really does highlight the resiliency and the positioning of our of our business. We've got a great order book that will support our views into the second half here. And we remain very excited about our acquisitions and have a lot of confidence in the long-term contributions from our 2021 acquisitions. Certainly would want to express my continued gratitude for the ongoing efforts of our associates around the world who are living our values every day and executing extremely well in an especially challenging environment. We're confident in our full-year growth plans and certainly look forward to updating you when we meet next. Until then, take care and be well, everyone.
spk05: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for being with us today. You may disconnect your lines now.
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