Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Thermbell Fisher Scientific 2024 Third Quarter Conference Call. My name is Ezra and I will be your coordinator today. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. I would like to introduce our moderator for the call, Mr. Rafael Tejada, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Tejada, you may begin the call.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me today is Mark Casper, our chairman, president, and chief executive officer, and Stephen Williamson, senior vice president and chief financial officer. Please note this call is being webcast live and will be archived on the investor section of our website, thermofisher.com, under the heading News, Events, and Presentations until November 6, 2024. A copy of the press release of our third quarter 2024 earnings is available in the investor section of our website under the heading financials. So before we begin, let me briefly cover our safe harbor statement. Various remarks that we may make about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which are on file with the SEC and available in the investor section of our website under the heading Financials SEC Filings. While we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so, even if our estimates change. Therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today. Also, during this call, we will be referring to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the press release of our third quarter 2024 earnings and also in the investor section of our website under the heading financials. So with that, I'll now turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Raf. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for our third quarter call. As you saw in the press release, we delivered another quarter of strong financial performance. We're seeing the benefit of our trusted partner status, which is resonating strongly with our customers. And we're continuing to deliver differentiated performance in the short term while further strengthening our long-term competitive position. So first, let me recap the financial. Our revenue in the quarter was $10.6 billion. Our adjusted operating income was $2.36 billion. Adjusted operating margin was 22.3%. And we delivered another quarter of strong adjusted EPS performance, achieving $5.28 per share. Our performance in the third quarter is allowing us to raise our adjusted EPS guidance once again and continues our track record of delivering differentiated results. Turning to our performance by end market, in the third quarter, underlying market conditions played out as we'd expected, and we delivered another quarter of sequential improvement in growth. Let me provide you with some additional context. Starting with pharma and biotech, we declined in the low single digits in Q3, including a five-point headwind from the runoff of vaccines and therapy revenue. This marks the third quarter in a row of sequential improvement in growth for this customer segment. Performance in the quarter was led by our research and safety market channel and our clinical research business. In academic and government, we grew in the low single digits during the quarter. We delivered strong growth in our electron microscopy business and in our research and safety market channel. In industrial and applied, we grew in the low single digits during the quarter highlighted by strong growth in our electron microscopy business. Finally, in diagnostics and healthcare, growth was flat for the quarter. As a reminder, the reported growth in this end market is impacted by the runoff of COVID-19 testing-related revenue. During the quarter, the team delivered good revenue growth in our transplant diagnostics and immunodiagnostics businesses, as well as the healthcare market channel. As I reflect on the end market's underlying conditions, have modestly improved each quarter as the year has progressed. This is in line with the framing we provided as part of the guidance at the beginning of the year. Let me now turn to an update on our growth strategy. As a reminder, our strategy consists of three pillars, high impact innovation, our trusted partner status with customers, and our unparalleled commercial engine. Starting with the first pillar, it was another great quarter of innovation. First, we continue to see the impact of our innovations launched over the past couple of years. It's gratifying that our innovations continue to receive industry recognition. This is a true testament to our teams. Most recently, the R&D 100 Awards, which recognizes the most revolutionary products in science and technology, honor two of our products, our GIFCO CTS detachable dynamides, which launched last year, as well as our thermoscientific Orbitrap astromath spectrometer, which won gold in the market disruptor special recognition category as one of the most significant advancements in mass spectrometry in 15 years. Adoption of the Orbitrep Asheville continues to be incredibly strong. During my customer interactions, I've had the opportunity to hear direct feedback on how significant our continued innovation is in helping our customers move science forward and advance their important work. The second point on innovation is we also have the benefit of the number of number of high-impact new products this quarter that we launched. To enable the development of advanced materials, we launched the thermoscientific ILLiad scanning transmission electron microscope, which integrates a number of our advanced analytical technologies into a seamless and user-friendly workflow. This offers researchers deeper insights into the chemical nature of the most sophisticated advanced materials down to the atomic level. The ILLiad incorporates our most innovative high-resolution spectrometer to accurately determine the composition of materials, as well as our proprietary energy filter for detailed imaging and chemical analysis of samples. We recently unveiled ILIAD at the European Microscopy Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the feedback has been incredibly positive. Turning to innovations in life sciences, within our biosciences business, we launched the Applied Biosystems MagMax Sequential DNA RNA Kit. which maximizes the isolation of DNA and RNA from blood cancer samples, helping researchers identify unique insights of cancer-causing genetic alterations. And we also launched the in vitrogen vivofectamine delivery solutions, a novel method for delivering nucleic acids into multiple targets with therapeutic effect, paving the way for groundbreaking new medicines. Let me give you a quick update on our progress and building on the trust of partner status that we've learned with our customers. Last month at our investor day, you heard us highlight this element of our growth strategy, and I'd like to bring some additional context to bring into life. During the quarter, I had the opportunity to meet with many of our customers. As you know, we have an unparalleled customer access, and this helps us understand their near and long-term priorities. Our scale, depth of capabilities, and accumulated experience is truly resonating with customers as they rely on us to accelerate their innovation, enhance their productivity, and advance their important work. This translated into meaningful commercial wins with customers during the quarter, which speaks to the ongoing strength of our growth strategy and our ability to gain share now and in the future. I also visited China in August and spent time meeting with government officials and customers. We have strong relationships there based on our track record of positive impact and our long history in the country. Our conversations were focused on how we can collaborate to enable our customer success. I came away from the visit seeing firsthand how well positioned we are to capitalize on the market opportunities when the economy picks up in China. Let me now give you an example from the third quarter and how we advance customer partnerships and collaborations. In our clinical next-gen sequencing business, we announced our partnership with the National Cancer Institute on MyloMatch, precision medicine umbrella trial. That's going to leverage our next-generation sequencing technology to test patients for specific biomarkers so they can be matched more quickly with optimal treatments based on their unique cancer profiles. We also continue to expand our capabilities to meet our customers' current and future needs. to enhance our old solid dose formulation capabilities for our pharma and biotech customers, we expanded our pharma services manufacturing footprint in Cincinnati, Ohio and Bend, Oregon. In our clinical research business, we announced the expansion of our global laboratory services network with a new bioanalytical lab in Gothenburg, Sweden, which will support pharmaceutical and biotech customers with advanced laboratory services to support all phases of development. So it was an excellent quarter of advancing our growth strategy. Let me give you a quick update on the impact of our PPI business system in Q3. PPI is embedded in our culture, and there are many examples that I could share from the quarter. As always, our PPI business system and our mission-driven culture enabled our success during the quarter. PPI engages and empowers all of our colleagues to find a better way every day to enable outstanding executions. Ultimately, you see the positive impact of PPI reflected in the strong profitability and cash flow that we delivered in the quarter. During the quarter, we further enhanced our supply chain in Asia Pacific by optimizing inventory across our network. While in Europe, we further streamlined and automated our manufacturing processes for high-end analytical instruments to meet strong demand. Now let me turn to corporate social responsibility. We have a CSR strategy that delivers competitive advantage. As a mission-driven company, we help to make the world a better place by enabling the important work of our customers. We also create a positive impact by the environment we create for our colleagues, how we support our communities, and being a good steward of our planet. Today, I just want to spend a moment on our colleagues because none of our success is possible without the work of our amazing team around the world. Our colleagues' safety is always our top priority. And the impact of Hurricane Helene was especially concerning to me, as we have about 1,000 colleagues in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the hardest hit areas. In Asheville, we manufacture lab equipment and have a customer service center. I'm so grateful our colleagues there are safe. I'm also thankful for the support of our extended teams who have provided assistance to those colleagues impacted. It's truly heartwarming to see how our team comes together to support each other. Turning now to capital deployment. We continue to successfully execute our disciplined capital deployment strategy to create tremendous value. We do this through a combination of strategic M&A and returning capital to our shareholders. Let me update you on our recent acquisitions. The binding site, now our protein diagnostics business, continues to perform exceptionally well. In the quarter, we achieved an IVDR claim extension in the European Union for our OptiLite FreeLite MX Kappa kits. Until now, these kits have been solely used in multiple myeloma diagnostics and monitoring. The extension now allows for the product to aid in the diagnosis of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. This is an excellent example of our M&A approach enabling a great business to be even better under our ownership, creating value for all stakeholders. As a reminder, we closed the acquisition of Olink at the beginning of the quarter. The integration is progressing smoothly. The businesses will all position for a bright future. As you heard at our investor day, we're excited by the role we're playing in advancing proteomics research. As I reflect on the quarter, I'm proud of what our team's accomplished and grateful for their contributions to our success. Let me now turn to our guidance. Given our strong performance in the third quarter, we're raising our adjusted EPS guidance, which we now expect to be in the range of $21.35 to $22.07. And we continue to expect revenue to be in the range of $42.4 billion to $43.3 billion. Stephen will take you through the details in his remarks. So to summarize our key takeaways from this week, we delivered another strong quarter of financial results driven by our proven growth strategy and PPI business system. We continue to enable our customer success, and this reinforces our trusted partner status and industry leadership. Our growth has been steadily increasing as we've gone through 2024, And we once again have raised our adjusted EPS guidance for the year. And we're well positioned to deliver differentiated performance in 2024 as we continue to create value for all of our stakeholders and build an even brighter future for our company. With that, I'll now hand the call over to our CFO, Stephen Williamson. Stephen?