Danaher Corporation

My name is Lori and I'll be your conference facilitator this morning. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Danaher Corporation's first quarter 2021 earnings results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Matt Gugino, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Gugino, you may begin your conference.

Thanks, Lori. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on the call. With us today are Reiner Blair, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Matt McGrew, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to point out that our earnings release, the slide presentation supplementing today's call, and the reconciliations and other information required by SEC Regulation G relating to any non-GAAP financial measures provided during the call are all available on the investor section of our website, www.danaher.com, under the heading Quarterly Earnings. The audio portion of this call will be archived on the investor section of our website later today under the heading events and presentations and will remain archived until our next quarterly call. A replay of this call will also be available until May 6, 2021. During the presentation, we will describe certain of the more significant factors that impacted year-over-year performance. The supplemental materials describe additional factors that impacted year-over-year performance. Unless otherwise noted, all references in these remarks and supplemental materials to company-specific financial metrics refer to results from continuing operations and relate to the first quarter of 2021, and all references to period-to-period increases or decreases in financial metrics are year-over-year. We may also describe certain products and devices which have applications submitted and pending for certain regulatory approvals or are available only in certain markets. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate will or 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, and 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, and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. As a result of the size of the CITIVA acquisition and its impact on Danaher's overall core revenue growth profile, we're presenting core revenue on a basis that includes CITIVA sales. References to core revenue growth include CITIVA sales and the calculation of period-to-period sales growth comparing the current period CITIVA sales to the historical period CITIVA sales prior to acquisition. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Reiner.

Well, thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter of 2021, we got off to a very strong start, delivering better than expected core revenue growth across our portfolio. Our broad-based performance was driven by double-digit core revenue growth in our base business, our ongoing contributions to the development and production of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, and strong demand for Cepheid's point of care molecular diagnostic tests. Our record top line performance also contributed to outstanding earnings per share growth and free cash flow generation. Our well-rounded first quarter results are a testament to the unique positioning of our portfolio and our commitment to continuous improvement. We have an exceptional collection of market-leading franchises and technologies, all powered by the Danaher business system that serve attractive end markets with durable secular growth drivers. We believe that this powerful combination differentiates Danaher and reinforces our sustainable long-term competitive advantage. So with that, let's turn to our first quarter results. We generated $6.9 billion of sales in the first quarter with 30% core revenue growth. All three of our reporting segments delivered better than expected growth, led by life sciences and diagnostics. We believe we continue to capture market share, particularly at some of our larger businesses, including Sativa, Paul, Radiometer, Leica Biosystems, Hawk, and VideoJet. Over the last several years, we've prioritized high impact growth investments in innovation, sales, and marketing to ensure that we're well positioned both near and long term. Through new product introductions and the impact of our Danaher business system growth tools, we've enhanced our competitive advantage and believe we've achieved notable market share gains. Geographically, revenue growth was broad-based across both developed and high-growth markets. We saw over 20% growth in the developed markets, led by North America and Western Europe. High-growth markets were up more than 45%, largely driven by the recovery in China. Our gross profit margin increased 580 basis points year-over-year to 62%, in the first quarter, largely due to higher sales volumes and the positive impact of higher margin product mix. Our operating profit margin of 29.1% was up 1,300 basis points year over year, including more than 900 basis points of core margin expansion as a result of higher gross margins and lower operating expenses as we continued to see limited travel and other related costs. Adjusted, diluted net earnings per common share of $2.52 were up 140% versus last year. We generated $1.6 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, an increase of 135% year over year. Now, in the first quarter, we deployed more than $400 million of capital towards mergers and acquisitions across all three segments. Most notably, IDT and Cytiva completed their first bolt-on acquisition with IDT adding Swift Biosciences, which brings complementary capabilities and a broad portfolio of next-gen sequencing library preparation and enrichment solutions for DNA and RNA, and methylated DNA samples. And Cytiva acquired VAN-RX Pharma Systems, which provides innovative automated aseptic filling technologies used to fill vials, syringes, and cartridges, a critical final step to complete the bioprocessing workflow. We also continued to make significant organic investments in high-impact growth initiatives across all of Danaher. Over the past six months, we've invested in a meaningful expansion of production capacity at Cepheid, Cytiva, Paul Biotech, and Beckman Life Sciences. Near term, these investments will support COVID-related demand, but they're equally important to support the long-term growth of these businesses, where we see tremendous runway ahead, given the underlying growth drivers and the durability of the markets they serve. Between these four businesses, we're investing more than $1 billion in 2021 to continue to meet our customers' needs today and well into the future. So now let's take a look, a more detailed look, at our results across the portfolio. Life Sciences reported revenue increased 115% as a result of the Cytiva acquisition, and core revenue was up 41.5%. We saw strong double-digit core revenue growth across all of our largest operating companies in the platform, led by Cytiva, Paul Life Sciences, Beckman Life Sciences, and IDT. In our bioprocessing businesses, accelerating demand for COVID-related vaccine and therapeutic development and production drove a combined core revenue growth rate of more than 60% at Cytiva and Paul Biotech. Excluding the impact of COVID-related activity, our underlying biopharma business grew in the low 20s range. We believe that our ability to continue meeting customers' needs across their bioprocessing workflows enabled us to gain market share in the quarter, particularly within our cell culture media and single use product lines. Moving to diagnostics, reported revenue was up 34% and core revenue grew 31%. Each of our largest operating companies in the platform achieved high single digit or better core revenue growth, led by Cepheid, which achieved more than 90% core revenue growth. In response to the unprecedented demand for Cephia's rapid point-of-care molecular tests, the team again increased production capacity and shipped over 10 million respiratory test cartridges in the first quarter. Roughly half of the tests shipped were COVID-only tests, and the other half were four-in-one combination tests for COVID-19, flu A, flu B, and RSV. We also saw increasing demand for non-respiratory tests across Cepheid's market-leading test menu, including sexual health, hospital-acquired infections, and virology, demonstrating the broad applicability of Cepheid's molecular diagnostic offering. Moving to our environmental and applied solution segment, reported revenue grew 6.5%, and core revenue was up 3.5%. Our water quality platform was up slightly, and product identification was up high single digits. Our water quality businesses support customers' day-to-day mission-critical water operations, providing water testing, treatment, and analysis across a variety of applications around the world. We saw good underlying demand for our analytical chemistries and consumables during the quarter and were encouraged by the improvement in equipment sales, which returned to growth as customers got back up and running at more normalized levels. In product identification, we saw mid-single-digit core revenue growth in our marking and coding businesses and double-digit growth in packaging and color management. ESCO and X-Rite benefited from the underlying market recovery and saw good momentum from customers initiating new projects and investments in the first quarter. So with that context for what we saw by segment during the quarter, let's take a walk through some of the trends we're seeing across our end markets and geographies. Customer activity around the world is approaching pre-pandemic levels as we all collectively adapt to working in this new environment. We're seeing this in the form of strong sales funnels and order book growth, service levels at or near pre-pandemic levels, and an uptick in equipment revenues. While some of this dynamic is the result of pent-up demand in the wake of widespread lockdowns, we're starting to see underlying recovery across most of our end markets that were impacted. Now, if we take a closer look at these dynamics by geography, China appears to be the furthest along in terms of reopening, with activity levels largely back to normal. The U.S. is not all the way back just yet, but is moving in the right direction, and an increase in vaccination rates across the country appear to be driving some of this progress. Europe is improving broadly, and while certain areas have recently experienced setbacks in the process of reopening, we've not seen any material impact. In life sciences, activity in the broader biopharma market remains robust. There has not been any slowdown in the double-digit growth trend we've seen over the last several quarters across non-COVID-related biopharma activities. Within COVID-related biopharma activity, the significant ramp up of vaccines and therapeutics is driving record bioprocessing demand. We're involved in the majority of COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutic projects underway around the world today, including all of those in the US that are currently on the market or in later stage clinical trials. Our operating companies are playing a significant role in the development and production of new therapies and vaccines across the biopharma pipeline. And given the breadth of our offering and the production capacity we're adding in 2021, we're uniquely positioned to support our customers in their mission today and well into the future, which is to make more life-saving treatments available to more patients faster. In clinical diagnostics, we continue to see heightened demand for rapid point of care molecular testing. As we look across the COVID-19 testing landscape and consider the durability of the demand that we're seeing, we believe that Cepheid's positioning is the strongest amongst the various testing modalities and settings. Cepheid's leading presence at the point of care combined with the speed, accuracy, and workflow advantages of their molecular offering uniquely positions the business to support customers' testing needs not only for COVID-19, but beyond the pandemic as well. Across hospital and reference labs, patient volumes are at or near pre-pandemic levels in most major geographies, as elective procedures and hospital visits have rebounded from last year. Consumables growth is accelerating as a result, and we're encouraged by the momentum of instrument placement. Finally, in the applied market, consumables remain solid across essential business operations like testing and treating water and safely packaging food and medicine. And growth is picking up on the equipment side as customers get back to more normal operations and initiate capital investments. Now let's briefly look ahead to our expectations for the second quarter and the full year. We expect to deliver second quarter core revenue growth in the mid-20s range. We anticipate low double-digit core revenue growth in our base business and a low double-digit core growth contribution from COVID-related revenue tailwinds. Additionally, we expect to have operating profits fall through of approximately 40% in the second quarter and for the remainder of 2021. For the full year 2021, we now expect to deliver high-teens core revenue growth. We anticipate that COVID-related revenue tailwinds will be a high single-digit to low double-digit contribution to the core revenue growth rate. This would include an estimated $2 billion of 2021 revenue at Cytiva and Paul Biotech associated with vaccines and therapeutics, which is higher than our previous expectation of $1.3 billion. And at Cepheid, we'll continue ramping capacity through the year and now expect to ship approximately 45 million tests in 2021 compared to our prior estimate of 36 million tests. And in our base business, we now expect that core revenue will be up high single digits for the full year. So to wrap up, we had a very strong start to the year and feel good about the momentum we're seeing across all of Banneher. Our first quarter results are a testament to the commitment and capability of our team and the durable, balanced positioning of our portfolio. We believe this combination differentiates Danaher and sets us up well to outperform in 2021 and beyond. In our pursuit of continuous improvement, we'll strive to keep building an even better, stronger company and to positively impact the world around us in meaningful ways for all of our stakeholders. We see tremendous opportunities ahead to do just that. So with that, I'll turn the call back over to Matt.