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spk01: Welcome to the Waters Corporation fourth quarter 2021 financial results conference call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode until the question and answer session of the conference call begins. This conference call is being recorded. If anyone has objections, please disconnect at this time. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Casper Tudor, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
spk04: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Waters Corporation fourth quarter earnings conference call. Before we begin, I will cover the cautionary language. During the course of this conference call, we will make various forward-looking statements regarding future events or future financial performance of the company. In particular, we will provide guidance regarding possible future results of the company and commentary on potential market and business conditions that may impact Waters Corporation over the first quarter of 2022 and full year 2022. We caution you that any and all such statements are only our present expectations and that actual events or results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of some of the risks and contingencies that could cause our actual performance to differ significantly from our present expectations, see the risk factors included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, in Part 1, under the caption, Risk Factors. and in our most recent quarterly report on form 10Q for the quarter ended October 2nd, 2021 in part 1A under the caption risk factors, both of which are on file with the SEC as well as the cautionary language included in this morning's press release, including with respects to risks related to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business. We further caution you that the company does not intend to update any of its predictions or projections except during our regularly scheduled quarterly earnings release conference calls and webcasts, or as otherwise required by law. The next earnings release call and webcast is currently planned for May 3rd, 2022. During today's call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are attached to our earnings release issued this morning and in the appendix of our presentation, which are available on the company's website. In our discussions of the results of operations, we may refer to non-GAAP results which exclude the impact of items such as those outlined in our schedule titled Reconciliation of GAAP to Adjusted Non-GAAP Financials, included in this morning's press release and in the appendix of our presentation. Unless stated otherwise, references to quarterly results increasing or decreasing are in comparison to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020. In addition, and less stated otherwise, all year-over-year revenue growth rates, including revenue growth ranges given on today's call, given on a comparable constant currency basis. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Udit Batra, Waters President and CEO. Udit.
spk03: Thank you, Kasper, and good morning, everyone. Along with Kasper, joining me on this morning's call is Amol Chobol, Waters Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We've ended a very successful year at Waters. In markets with sustainable growth drivers, we have revived our resilient business and are now focused on growing our portfolio. Despite higher comparables, we saw strong growth continue with an acceleration on a stacked basis as the year went on. The strength we've seen in our instrument portfolio is a positive indicator for the future, as our new products have gained traction, and this all supports the sustainable future growth we expect to see in our consumables and service. Before summarizing the quarter and full year, let me start by thanking my colleagues around the globe who've represented the indomitable spirit of Waters throughout 2021. They've remained focused on supporting our customers and delivering exciting new products despite the challenging conditions of the pandemic. Achieving these results in a normal year would have been quite an accomplishment, but to do so while balancing the continued ups and downs of the pandemic with a major transformation and a new leadership team is indeed quite remarkable. Now I'm turning to slide three. We have three messages. We have a resilient and attractive portfolio of instrument systems, chemistry, consumables, and services in end markets that are supported by sustainable growth drivers. We've revitalized this goal by engaging our customers, progressing on a number of growth initiatives and continuing to innovate across our portfolio while launching exciting new products. And now we're focused on growth of our core business, as well as accessing high volume applications and faster growing adjacencies. I will now provide a brief overview of our fourth quarter and full year operating results, as well as commentary on our end markets, geographies, and technologies. Amol will then review our financial results in detail and provide comments on our financial outlook. We will then open up the phone line to take your questions. Moving on to slide four. In the fourth quarter, our revenue grew 6% as reported and 8% on a constant currency basis, reflecting broad strength across our end markets and geographies with double-digit year-end demand for our instruments and continued growth in our recurring revenue products. This translates to a 7.5% two-year stacked CAGR for the quarter versus 2019 on a constant currency basis. For the full year, revenue grew 18% as reported and 16% in constant currency as we saw strong growth in 2021 across all our regions led by pharma and industrial and markets. This translates to a 7% two-year stacked CAGR for the year versus 2019 in constant currency. Our Q4 non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share was $3.67 per share, up 1% year on year and 7% stacked. Excluding the effect of our prior year COVID cost actions and effects, EPS grew 8% versus last year. For the full year, non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share grew 24% to $11.20, and 12% on a two-year stacked basis. Now looking more closely at our top-line results for the quarter on slide 5, in constant currency, first, by operating segment, the waters division grew 7%, while TA grew 16%. By end market, our largest market category, pharma, grew 8%, industrial grew 7%, and academic and government grew at 5%. In pharma, we saw continued broad-based strength in sales across segments, geographies, and applications. Biopharma and contract organizations grew well above 20%. And industrial growth was led by our TA business, which saw strong global strength in thermal as well as microcalorimetry and rheology. Within the waters division, we saw broad demand for LC instruments across our geographies as well as our customers, as well as our customer segments who continue to invest in new capital equipment. Turning to academic and government, we saw an improvement with growth across most of our geographies into the year end. We're actively revitalizing our relationships with KOLs, which is an integral part of achieving long-term success in academic and government. While it takes some time for us to regain traction, Waters has familiarity and a fan base amongst KOLs, who have often used instruments throughout their careers. Just last week, I was talking with the head of a leading core lab at one of the top medical institutions in the United States. He's worked closely with Waters for the better part of two decades to build up proteomics capabilities at this institution and currently has over 40 Waters LCs and 20 mass spec instruments from our company. Moving now To our sales performance by geography, on a constant currency basis, sales in Asia grew 9%, with China up 13%, America's 8%, with U.S. up 8%, and Europe grew 5%. In China, we saw strong demand throughout the quarter, with growth led by contract orgs, biopharma, and a strong recovery in clinical. We also saw strong growth in food testing and chemical assays. In the U.S., growth came from ongoing strength in our pharma and industrial end markets. And pharma sales were strong in LC and mass spec, which combined grew in the mid-teens with chemistry up low double digits. In industrial, our TA business saw strong instrument placement across applications led by advanced materials, chemicals, and battery tests. In Europe, all end markets continued to grow led by pharma and industrial with food and environmental businesses growing resulting in strong demand for our tandem quads. Meanwhile, pharma sales remained solid with growth led by large molecule applications. By product and services, customer demand for our instruments finished the year strong, continuing the trend of instrument growth that we saw throughout the year, while demand for recurring revenue products remained strong. Overall, instrument sales grew 12% for the quarter with robust demand driven by our commercial execution and new product contribution. In LC, ARC HPLC continued to see strong global growth in our core segments as demand continues to ramp. Meanwhile, our Acuity and ARC Premier instruments continue to see strong adoption driven by applications in large molecule and novel modalities such as mRNA. In mass spec, we saw growth in our high-end tandem quad portfolio led by Zevo TQ-XS and Zevo TQ-XS Micro. We also saw strong demand from our biopharma and CRO customers, as well as for food safety applications. In our high-res mass spec portfolio, we saw the demand for cyclic with drug discovery applications. We're also encouraged by the early adoption of our new Select Series MRT time-of-flight platform, with customers using it for biopharma, discovery, and omics applications. For recurring revenues, despite the quarter having six fewer days than the fourth quarter of 2020, Chemistry sales grew 5%, led by continued high utilization by our pharma customers. Our new MaxPeak premier columns continue to provide incremental growth for our chemistry business. This technology provides important benefits in separation and purification of mRNA, oligonucleotides, peptides, and glycans, which is effectively answering the needs of our customers as they work with more complex molecules. Service grew 2% despite a tough double-digit comparison a year ago with strong growth in both China and in India, which has been a theme throughout the year. Finally, TA had another great quarter with sales up 16% led by strong growth in thermal analysis, microcalorimetry, and rheology. Demand for TA products continues to be strong in all regions with growth driven by advanced materials and chemicals, including batteries and electronics. Looking now at our top line results for the full year on slide six, in constant currency, the waters division grew 15% while TA grew 25%. By end market, pharma grew 19% and industrial grew 15% while academic and government came at 5% for the year. Pharma, which is our largest market, has grown 10% on a two-year stack basis driven by strong demands in our instruments and recurring revenues with strength in both large and small molecule applications. We've also seen ongoing strength in our industrial and applied market, which has grown 6% on a two-year stack basis, led by China as well as North America and Europe. In academic and government, which has been our slowest market to recover, sales in Europe and the U.S. are close to pre-pandemic levels, while China has further in its recovery as university spending continues to be constrained. By geography, Asia grew 19%, China growing 25%, America grew at 16%, with the U.S. growing at 14%, and Europe also grew 14%. For the full year, on a two-year stack basis, our three largest geographies, the U.S., China, and Europe, grew 6%, 7%, and 8% respectively. What is especially pleasing is that the demand is balanced across all geographies, including a robust recovery in the U.S. By products and services, instruments grew 23% for the year, chemistry 15%, and service grew 9%. On a stacked basis, instruments grew 6%, chemistry 9%, and service 6%, showing strong performance above our historical averages. The strength we've seen in our LC instrument portfolio throughout the year remains a positive indicator for sustainable future growth in consumables as well as service. Our growth in recurring revenues has also been supported by the progress we've made in e-commerce as well as delivering higher attachment rates in service. Given the global nature of our business, we are certainly not immune to the ongoing supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures, but we are proactively addressing these challenges, leveraging our global manufacturing footprint and working closely with our customers and suppliers. Now, moving on to slide number seven, we covered this in our Q3 earnings call and also at the recent JP Morgan conference. Our initiatives across instrument replacement, service attachment, contract organizations, e-commerce, and new product launch excellence have all been important components for us regaining our momentum and delivering strong performance in 2021. We've continued to exceed expectations and milestones on these initiatives and believe that each has further runway, not just in 2022, but in years beyond, providing an average incremental growth impact of roughly 100 basis points annually across the base business in the next two to three years, as our transformation program is firmly on track. Moving now on to slide eight, the strength of our business is being supported by instrument innovation with recent product launches that have revitalized our core. Waters continues to build on its robust base, deep customer relationships, and importantly, its highly technical team of scientists and engineers with deep understanding of our customers' problems to solve. For example, Arc HPLC, which was launched in 2020, allows customers to increase the performance and capabilities for their high-volume workhorse instruments without revalidating their existing methods. This is absolutely critical in compliant environments and helps us provide the benefits of newer technology to our customers while ensuring backwards compatibility. Meanwhile, our MaxPeak Premier technology provides important benefits and applications where sensitivity and reproducibility is key by virtually eliminating the metal-binding affinity of compounds like mRNAs, oligonucleotides, peptides, and glycans. On the instrument side, Acuity Premier is a UPLC that was custom designed for biologics and novel modality applications, providing 100 times better detection sensitivity than non-Premier instruments and a 50% reduction in peak tailings. Within our chemistry portfolio, MAX-B Premier columns, which also offer this high performance surface coating, have set a record in terms of uptake for new columns as this technology continues to be well received by our pharma customers. Turning to our mass spec portfolio, one additional example of innovation is our Select Series MRT, which is a high-resolution, multi-reflecting time-of-flight instrument that provides remarkable accuracy at high speed with outstanding clarity. This instrument is setting the benchmark in mass accuracy. Its high throughput is enabling large sample studies of proteins and metabolites, which previously would have taken too much time to conduct. Additionally, you may have seen our announcement this morning. Waters' acquisition of charge detection mass spec technology, CDMS. CDMS overcomes limitations of conventional mass spec in characterizing, analyzing, and quantifying complex large molecules. These investments will allow Waters to develop and commercialize CDMS technology to solve significant unmet needs in novel modality settings such as cell and gene therapy for drug development. With the discipline my colleagues John Pratt and Jianqing Bennett have brought into launches, new products have meaningfully grown in their contribution this year. And with our product vitality index around 150 basis points, up around 150 basis points to approximately 15% in Q4. Turning now to slide nine. A key element of our informatics strategy is to provide customers with tools that help them better manage their workflows and achieve faster, easier results with high-quality, compliant data. Last month, we extended our next-generation informatics platform, Waters Connect, to our tandem quad mass spectrometers for core quantitation, starting with food testing. As any scientist who works in mass spec will tell you, Current software across the industry is powerful but designed to fit all purposes and as a result can be complicated and difficult to use. Our new software is built around the purpose and end market application for which it is being used, delivering on our key principle of providing advanced technology that is fast, robust, and easy to use. It reduces review times by up to 50% compared to the current market leading platform by allowing labs to meet their compliance and data integrity requirements. The overriding benefit here is that analysts can reduce review time to a minimum, which is one of the largest bottlenecks in the lab. Improving workflows for quantitative LCMS and mass spec data review is critical for our customers as it helps improve the throughput and efficacy. I spent time with our launch team last week. And the rollout has begun with food testing applications, and we plan to extend it to other applications in the near future. Now turning to slide 10, let me turn to the critical problems in higher growth adjacencies that we identified this year and believe we can solve over time. First, in bioseparations, we see an opportunity to take our chemistry expertise from small molecule separation and apply it to novel modalities and large molecule separations. Despite their rapid growth, there are significant challenges in characterizing and confirming the quality of these large, complex molecules. Take mRNA as an example. The industry has a key unmet need of sustaining analytical control when measuring molecular integrity. Current practices for newer modalities like this are not as reproducible as desired because there is not enough precision. So by advancing our biologic capabilities, we can unleash our chemistry expertise and our engineering expertise to better characterize and separate these molecules and then identify items such as process-related impurities and degradation that are critical in later stage development of high-volume manufacturing. In this area specifically, we're looking at bioseparation solutions for mRNA and other nucleic acids, proteins, and lipid nanoparticles, as well as viral vector gene therapies and vaccines and adeno-associated viruses. Second, in bioprocess characterization, one of the key differences in bioprocessing versus small molecule processing is that once you define the manufacturing process, you're effectively stuck with it and cannot optimize it without completely revalidating the process because it is tied to the drug master file. By providing analytical techniques that are powerful enough to characterize the product sufficiently, We believe that we can overcome this barrier and separate the process from the product. This is a significant need in the industry and has the potential to be a very attractive market. Our partnership with Sartorius is a key step in this journey, and as we bring the processing power of LC-MS at line with BioAccord in a workflow that is simple, powerful, and fast, and can be easily used on-site by bioprocess engineers. The third application is is of LC-MS and diagnostics, where we need a fast, unbiased detection of multiple biomarkers to enable early disease detection. We believe MassPAC has a significant role to play here, and we've already demonstrated a proof of concept with the UK government in characterizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus with excellent sensitivity and selectivity, leading to a lower false positive rate than many other techniques. In review, our strong fourth quarter results capped a very successful year for Waters with broad-based growth across our end markets and geographies. We sustained our momentum with strong two-year stacked revenue growth throughout the year, with our transformation now embedded in how we operate. Our core business has been revitalized with growing contributions from innovative new products and initiatives. We're laser-focused on our commercial execution. The markets we serve remain in a healthy state, and our regions have rebounded solidly from pandemic lows. Meanwhile, we see opportunities in higher growth adjacencies that will raise our exposure to faster-growing market segments as we start to solve the critical problems we've identified over time. With that, I'd like to pass the call over to Amol for a deeper review of the fourth quarter and full-year financials, as well as our outlook for the first quarter and the full year of 2022. Amol.
spk05: Thank you, Udit, and good morning, everyone. As Udit outlined, we recorded net sales of 836 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 8% in constant currency, and an increase of 6% as reported. We had a record instrument sales this quarter, which increased 12% versus prior year and 8% on a two-year stack basis. Despite six fewer calendar days, our recurring revenue, which represents the combination of chemistry and service revenue, increased by 3% for the quarter. Chemistry revenues were up 5% and service revenues were up 2%, both of which had tough comparisons in the prior year. The six fewer calendar days in the quarter translated to a growth headwind of approximately 6% for recurring revenue and approximately 3% for total revenue. For the full year, sales grew by about 16% in constant currency and 18% as reported. Recurring revenues grew 11%, with chemistry up 15% and service up 9%, while instrument sales grew 23%, driven by strong customer demand and new product introductions. Our two-year stacked constant currency sales growth was 7.5% for Q4 and 7% for the second half of 2021 versus 6.5% for the first half. This acceleration underscores our good commercial momentum heading into 2022. Looking ahead, comparing 2022 to 2021, there is one fewer day in the first quarter no change in the second or third quarters, and one additional day in the fourth quarter. Now I would like to comment on our fourth quarter and full year non-GAAP financial performance versus the prior year. Gross margin for the quarter came in as expected at 58%. On a full year basis, gross margin was 58.5% compared to 57.4% in the prior year, with improvements driven primarily by volume leverage and a 30 basis points tailwind from FX. Moving down the P&L for Q4, operating expenses increased by approximately 12% on a constant currency basis and include an increase of approximately 7% due to the normalization of our prior year COVID-related cost actions. For the year, operating expenses were approximately 18% higher in constant currency and include an increase of 15% due to the normalization of prior year COVID-related cost actions. In the quarter and for the full year, our effective operating tax rate was 14.4% and 13.8% respectively. For the full year, our effective tax rate decreased by 100 basis points due to a favorable change in our income mix by jurisdiction. Our average share count came in at 61.4 million shares which is about $1.1 million less than the fourth quarter of last year. Our non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share for the fourth quarter increased 1% to $3.67 in comparison to $3.65 last year. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange and the normalization of prior year COVID-related cost actions, non-GAAP EPS increased 8%. On a GAAP basis, our earnings per fully diluted share increased to $3.52 compared to $3.49 last year. For the full year, our non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share was up 24% at $11.20 versus $9.05 in the prior year. On a GAAP basis, Full-year earnings per share was $11.17 versus $8.36 a year ago. The increase was driven primarily by sales volume, partially offset by the normalization of our COVID-related cost action. A reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP earnings is attached to the press release issued this morning and in the appendix of this presentation. Turning to free cash flow, capital deployment, and our balance sheet. We define free cash flow as cash from operations, less capital expenditures, and excludes special items. In the fourth quarter of 2021, free cash flow was $187 million after funding $45 million of capital expenditures. Excluded from the free cash flow was $9 million related to the investments in our content precision chemistry operations and $5 million in costs relating to one-time litigation settlement. For the full year, free cash flow was $675 million, with approximately 24 cents of each dollar of sales converted into free cash flow. In the fourth quarter, accounts receivable DSOs came in at 66 days, down four days compared to the fourth quarter of last year, and down five days compared to the last quarter. Inventory DIO decreased by nine days compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Given higher sales volumes and our proactive measures to secure supply, inventory increased by 52 million in comparison to the prior year. We maintain a strong balance sheet, access to liquidity, and a well-structured debt maturity profile. In terms of returning capital to shareholders, we repurchased approximately 448,000 shares of our common stock for 156 million in Q4. At the end of the quarter, our net debt position was 945 million with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of about one. Our capital deployment priorities are investing for growth, maintaining balance sheet strength and flexibility, and returning capital to shareholders. along with focus on deploying capital to well-thought-out, attractive, and adjacent growth opportunities. Now, as we look towards the year ahead, I would like to provide you with our thoughts for 2022, which is on slide 11. In 2021, our momentum has progressively accelerated, driven by robust end-market demand and strong commercial execution across our geographies. As we head into 2022, we expect our momentum to continue and that we will be able to address supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures and believe that our near-term growth initiatives will continue to contribute to our performance. These dynamics support full-year 2022 guidance of 5% to 7% constant currency sales growth. At current rates, A negative currency translation is expected to subtract approximately one percentage point, resulting in full-year reported sales growth guidance of 4% to 6%. Gross margin for the full year is expected to be approximately 58%, and operating margin is expected to be approximately 30% to 30.5%. We expect our full year net interest expense to be approximately 35 million and full year tax rate to be approximately 15.5%. Average diluted 2022 share count is expected to be approximately 61 million. Our share repurchase program will continue into 2022 and we'll provide quarterly updates as appropriate. Rolling all this together and on a non-GAAP basis, Full-year 2022 earnings per fully diluted share are now projected in the range of $11.75 to $12. This includes a negative currency impact of approximately 2 percentage points at today's rates. Looking at the first quarter of 2022, we expect constant currency sales growth to be 6% to 8%. At today's rates, currency translation is expected to subtract approximately three percentage points, resulting in first quarter reported sales growth guidance of 3% to 5%. First quarter non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share are estimated to be in the range $2.25 to $2.35. This includes a negative currency impact of approximately four percentage points at today's rates. Now, I would like to turn it back to Udit for some summary comments. Udit?
spk03: Thank you, Amol. In summary, we are pleased with our performance this year. Our core business is re-energized, our transformation is on track, and we've built really good commercial momentum going into 2022. We're now laser focused on our commercial execution and accelerating innovation through our portfolio while reaching higher growth close adjacent markets. With a new leadership team in place and our transformation well underway, we're also expanding our focus on environmental, social, and governance topics. We've initiated a complete materiality assessment which will allow us to look at areas where waters can contribute and ensuring we do our part to leave the world better than we found it. I look forward to sharing an update on this later this year. With that, we will now begin the Q&A session. Operator?
spk01: Thank you, sir. At this time, we'll begin our Q&A session. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our first question is from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
spk06: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I had one on the Q and one on guidance. Maybe we'll start with the Q, Udit. I look at the insurance growth to 12%. That came in well above expectations. Was there any year-end budget flush, or is this a continuation of the execution momentum we've seen throughout the course of FRAC 21? Can we talk about what happened in Q4, why instruments came in so strong?
spk03: Yeah, so Vijay, thank you for the question, and good morning. We've seen strong instrument momentum, instrument growth momentum throughout the year, and Q4 is no exception. And this is largely attributed to our commercial initiatives, especially the replacement initiative, and the successful launch of new products, especially the RKH PLC, the Acuity Premier, and more recently the HiRES mass spec platform. The full year numbers from an instrument perspective are, I would say, even more interesting. I think their instruments have really led the growth with mid-20s sort of growth rate with LC coming around that range, mass spec a little bit slower, and PA really endearing in the high 20s in growth rate. So instruments have really led the charge in terms of our recovery, and that bodes, as you know, very well for the future for our service and recurring businesses. So to summarize, really, it's commercial momentum, new products that we've seen throughout the year, and nothing sort of dramatic that was taking place at the end of the year that was very different from what we've seen throughout the year.
spk06: That's helpful, Udit, and maybe one for Amol and the guidance. it looked like Q4 gross margin came in a little bit late. And I thought I heard you say it was in line with expectations. Is there anything on the gross margin line for fiscal 22? Because I look at your revenue growth, reported revenue growth of four to six, earnings growth of five to seven. You do have some share repercussions going on. So that implies maybe perhaps margins increasing. are flat to down. You know, what would cause margins to be down and is that a gross margin issue?
spk05: Good morning, Vijay, and thanks for the question. So, look, I mean, you know, the gross margin for Q4 came in as we had guided. And if you compare it versus prior year, the gross margin is lower because of three factors. There is a 50 basis points headwind from exchange rate But then there were also prior year COVID cost actions that normalized this year. And then the quarter was heavier on instruments. And instruments have lower margin compared to other elements of our portfolio. So when you put those three things together, it sort of reconciles with the gross margin last year. Where we are guiding for 22 at approximately 58% is in line with what we did this year, you know? And on the operating margin side, we are saying about 30 to 30.5%. So it's sort of slightly better than 30.2% at the top end of the range. What is in there is also the tax rate. We are saying tax rate, we are expecting 15.5%. That's higher than the tax rate we had this year, primarily because, you know, the 2017 regs have, a provision in place which requires capitalization of R&D expenses and our ex-US R&D expenses when capitalized will have an impact on the GILTI provisions. So that has added about a little over a percentage point to the tax rate. That's included in our guidance.
spk01: Thank you so much for your question. Our next question is from Dan Brennan with Cowan. Your line is open.
spk02: Great. Thanks for the question, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Maybe just to start off just on the overall biopharma market, just could you give us a sense, Udit, in terms of what the addressable market is growing at today, how what is it doing from a share perspective, particularly across your LCM aspect portfolios?
spk03: Sure. Good morning, Ben. Let's Overall, the best way to look at this is to look at stacked growth rates. If you just look at the stacked growth rates, we finished the year around 7% overall in the business, where pharma came in higher at double digits. And what we've seen on the pharma side is really strong uptake, not just the increasing demand in the market, so it's slightly higher than historical averages. but also water-specific execution, first from a commercial perspective across our five commercial initiatives, as well as new product introduction, which has had very good uptake, especially in pharma. Our THPSE has done very well, especially in China and increasing in the U.S. and Europe. The Acuity Premier, WID, the max peak technology has really hit a real sweet spot with novel modalities which have higher affinity to metal surfaces. So new products, especially on the instrument side, and now we have introduced our next generation of informatics platform for mass spec. So we expect new products to continue to do well. So to summarize this, The pharma end market has been a bit more robust than historical averages, but in that robust market, we have been executing extremely well from a commercial perspective, as well as with new product introduction. So that bodes well for what we think about in the future for this largest end market.
spk02: Great. Thank you for that. And then maybe, like I said, two-parter, just one on China, obviously, Q4 was a really nice stack acceleration. You had some color in the prepared remarks, just wondering what's assumed for 2022 in China. And then on an unrelated basis, just bioproduction. You did the deal today, which is likely a very small tuck-in. You have the Sartorius deal. But how do we think about your organic and inorganic investments going forward over the next few years in bioproduction? Thank you.
spk03: Dan, I mean, China, thanks for the question. Really excited. I mean, it all starts with leadership. We have a new leader in China who's really executing what I've talked about at a global level from a commercial perspective. Overall, I mean, as the overall business grew 16% for the year, China was in the mid-20s, driven again by very, very strong instrument growth rates, well in excess of 30% growth, where LC is doing very well. From an end market perspective in China, pharma and especially our focus on CDMOs there has grown the business in excess of 40%. So excited about what we're seeing in China. New products are doing extremely well, and there's no reason to believe that that should slow down going into the new year. If anything, we expect newer products to gain even more traction, and there's a lot more to do in China, by the way, increasing penetration across the board. And then Turning to your question on bioproduction, look, in general, the two growth initiatives that we've highlighted that are focused on biologics and novel modalities are, number one, on bioseparations, and number two, on bioproduction. On bioseparations, we are a world leader in separating small molecules, and with our chemistry and engineering expertise, we're simply turning that to larger molecules, like mRNAs, oligonucleotides, proteins. And then from a bioproduction perspective, we've talked about first the collaboration we have with Sartorius, where we first focused on characterizing the process for a high volume application called clone selection, where we took the workflow from about six weeks to less than a week. And that has a lot of traction with our customers. We are now adding on other attributes that we want to measure for the process, creating a seamless software bridge between the amber of Sartorius as well as the BioChord that we have. And then looking at other applications, be it scale up to larger bioreactors or other modalities like, again, oligonucleotides and more complex proteins. So a lot of runway on the bioproduction side. And the deal that we announced, a small tuck in, as you know, CDMS, thanks for asking about it. It's something that's near and dear to my heart. And I must admit, I started off as a skeptic when I first heard about the technology. The team sent me some publications and said, hey, it's a technology, and I thought it's another hobby, but it's a really good fit, right? So basically, the CDMS technology takes mass spec to larger molecules where we can now separate mRNA as well as viral vectors, which are larger proteins, intact proteins where mass spec reaches its limits, And what excited us the most is a demonstration we did with our customers several months ago where we expected roughly 20 customers to come in Kendall Square where we have our Immerse Lab. Roughly 40 showed up. I was so excited. I asked Amol and our head of strategy, Dan Rush, to join me to listen to the customers. And that sealed the deal, right? So we basically said, look, this is the technology that our customers really, really want. It's going to allow them to analyze more complex molecules much more carefully, and now we have the development, commercialization, manufacturing rights for the technology. So super excited about what we are seeing in the bioproduction, biosaturations area.
spk01: Thank you for your question. Our next question is from Puneet Sudhi with SVB Learing. Your line is open.
spk09: So first of all, congrats on the strong quarter here. Really strong in instrumentation growth. So have a bit of a question on the guide first. You know, 5% to 7% full year guide, how much are you expecting in terms of contribution from the replacement initiative here? I mean, is this still a $40 million or so replacement initiative for 2022 as you were expecting before, or is it more now? And how much contribution in the full-year guide from, you know, maybe new growth initiatives, the separations, the bioprocessing, clone selection, the diagnostics?
spk07: My first one is around biologics revenue.
spk03: I'm sorry.
spk09: That's a bit of a background noise. Thank you. No worries. Yeah, please. Just those, yeah, contribution overall in the guide from the replacement initiatives and these new initiatives that you have in place now. Because, I mean, you joined in 2020. It's been one full year. of lift that we're seeing in the replacement cycle and just wanting to get as to sort of how should we think about this year and maybe even into next year for the replacement initiatives and these new efforts that you have underway.
spk03: So, Punit, the way I would think about the contribution across the five initiatives, instrument replacement, service attach, e-commerce, CDMO, is about 100 basis points of acceleration beyond what we see in the market. So that's how I would look at that piece, sort of lump it all together, and it's about 100 basis points, give or take. Second, on the new growth initiatives, as I commented in the previous quarter as well as at a recent conference, this is something that we expect to meaningfully contribute in the mid to long term. We are very excited about the traction we have on bioprocessing with our collaboration with Sartorius. We're doing very well on the early stages of adapting SCMS for specialty applications in diagnostics. And we have a very good start on bioseparations as well as some other initiatives. But you should expect that to contribute in the mid-term. So in the short term, about 100 basis points from our initiatives that are already ongoing. And in the midterm, these other initiatives should start to contribute meaningfully. Great start, but I would say midterm starting 2023-2024 is when you should start seeing an impact of these initiatives.
spk09: Got it. And then on the order book and overall demand, just maybe could you update us where the backlog stands? I think that's fairly strong in the fourth quarter, even in third quarters. Maybe just give us, you know, how do you see that conversion in the first quarter and through the year? And just update us, if you could, on the supply chain. Obviously, that's impacting a number of companies, but how should we balance that order conversion versus the supply chain and any other inflation concerns that you're seeing in the market? Thank you.
spk03: So Punit, you asked two, maybe three questions in one. I'll try to take them each in turn. First, in terms of the order book, it's extremely strong. We don't give specific numbers on the backlog, but it's higher than it's been in the past. You can safely assume that. Orders are growing faster than sales. Now, in terms of challenges that we're facing on supply chain, on pricing, let's take a step back. We're not immune to those challenges like anybody else. especially on the material side where there are material constraints. What I would say on that front, having now extreme transparency into the primary, secondary, tertiary suppliers, deep sort of discussions with those colleagues in different companies, and the fact that we have a nimble organization, and here our size and our simple portfolio is a huge advantage, We're able to communicate any sort of changes rapidly through the organization, through supply chain into commercial, and be able to deal with it. And we've dealt successfully with any sort of disruption in Q3 and Q4. I'm not saying it was easy, but we've dealt with it given the transparency and given the communication we have internally and externally with stakeholders. And by contrast, I think Q1 is like summer vacation versus Q4. So I'm not diminishing the topic. It's still with us, but we have developed that muscle. And in terms of pricing and freight, look, we've had about 100 basis points or so of pricing in 2021. You should expect, say, 150 basis points, give or take. But what I would like to emphasize here, this is not a willy-nilly transfer of pricing to our customers. We have, as I said, many times very, very strong relationships with our customers. We have open discussions, and wherever we see challenges, we discuss with them, and there's a lot of understanding as we pass on some of the increases in pricing that we see. So I think I've addressed several of your questions, and Amol, did you want to?
spk05: Yeah, I mean, just to build on it, as you know, right, I mean, our products are differentiated, and that's not just instruments. I mean, we have very innovative chemistry portfolios, that the customers like. We have a great track record and a seamless service. And we have an informatics platform that's really valued by our customers. So that puts us in a great spot to have these discussions with our customers, walk them through what's happening in the market. And then internally, what we've done is we're keeping a close eye on how prices are moving in the market, especially labor, freight, and electronic components. We are constantly training and educating our sales teams so that they are aware about what's happening on the operation side so that they can have productive dialogues with our customers. And through Q4, we've navigated that well, and that gives us a lot of confidence going into 2022.
spk01: Thank you for your question. Our next question is from Jack Meehan with Nifron Research. Your line is open, sir.
spk07: Thank you. Good morning. Um, so strong end of the year on the chemistry front was hoping you could comment more on customer ordering trends. Do you think there was any stocking benefit in the quarter or any quantifiable budget flush across the portfolio? That good morning.
spk03: Look, um, not really didn't, didn't see, I would say what we saw. Of course there is a, there's always a run up at the end of the year, uh, in, in this business. But I would say it's nothing unusual. And the reason I say that is we're seeing similar trends persist into the year as well. So we're seeing really continuation of what we saw towards the year end. And the orders, as we commented earlier, orders are outpacing the sales. So that gives us confidence that this is not sort of a big pull forward of any sort of products. And when you look at water-specific reasons, right, so we can, and again, I'll draw your attention to the overall stacked growth numbers. We've basically ended the year with the second half being stronger than the first half of the year. Overall for the year, it's roughly 7% stacked growth, whereas where instruments are roughly 6% growth, which is well above our historical averages. And, uh, again, the same thing for consumables, which are close to double digit growth. Uh, this is again above historical averages, but there are water specific reasons driving both of those, right? So in both cases, we have commercial initiatives that have driven that and new products that have contributed. So nothing really that one should look at as a blip. I mean, this is something that we expect to continue both the commercial as well as the new product momentum.
spk07: Great. And then just was hoping either you or Amal could comment on expectations for operating expenses in 2022. So first margins of 58% would be down something like 50 bps year over year. The out margin is more like flat. So just talk about the investments in R&D and sales and marketing for 2022. What's the plan there?
spk05: Yeah, thanks, Jack. That's a great question, right? So as we get into 2022, Our focus is to drive productivity gains through various different initiatives that are in place across service productivity, operational excellence in manufacturing, both direct and indirect procurement programs, as well as things like digitization and building capability center in India. And those will provide a great amount of space for us to fund the high growth adjacencies that we've talked about, right? And so net of that, we think, as we've said at JP Morgan Conference, allows us to deliver 20 to 30 basis points of year-over-year margin expansion, and that's what is embedded in our guide. So we've guided at 30 to 30.5% versus a 30.2 for 2021. So at the higher end of the guide, you do get the 20 to 30 basis points that we had.
spk03: I think just to sort of conclude, the formula is very simple. I mean, we drive the top line with our initiatives. There's a lot of leverage in the P&L. And with the productivity initiatives, we make a bit more room. We're not skimping on the investments. We believe that these are really necessary and helpful for us to set up the future. And hence, we deliver a 20 to 30 basis points increase in margin. So the idea is very simple.
spk01: Thank you for your question. Our next question is from Josh Waldman with Cleveland Research. Your line is open, sir.
spk10: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, Amal, I wonder if you could comment on how you're thinking about growth across instruments, consumables, and service for 2022 or within your 2022 guide. Yeah.
spk05: So, look, I mean, as we've traditionally seen, you would see service growth at the midpoint of the guide. Instrument growth is slightly lower than that, and chemistry growth is slightly above that. About two percentage points spread, plus or minus.
spk03: And Josh, not much different than what you would have seen in how we exited 2021, right? So 7% stack growth with consumables being closer to double digit. instrument being slightly lower at 6%, but well above historical averages.
spk01: Thank you for your question. Our next question is from Derek DeBrown with Bank of America. Your line is open.
spk08: Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. This is Mike Ruskin on for Derek. I'm going to ask two quick ones. First, on the academic and government markets, didn't really touch on that in the prepared remarks. You guys had a little bit of a bounce back to end the year, but I know they can be super volatile, and 2020 was an easy comp. So could you give us an update on what you're seeing in that, probably more in the mass spec portfolio, but still, is that... Is that a market across the geographies starting to come back to normal, or is there still some choppiness there? And then the quick follow-on is on M&A, the Mega Dalton deal. Nice technology tuck-in. Is that, you know, something like that, technology or an underlying platform deal, something you should expect going forward? Just given your leverage in the balance sheet, you know, are you willing to look at bigger assets? Thanks. Thanks.
spk03: Thanks, Mike. On academic and government, look, we are pleased with how we ended the year with a 5% growth, but it's still very choppy across the geographies and across the portfolio. We saw a nice recovery in Europe, very much driven by our mass spec portfolio, right? So in there, the business is rather lumpy. So that said, what I'd rather focus us on in that end market is what we're trying to do to establish a base. This is reviving our KOL relationships. And recently I was with a KOL who's been with Waters for a very long time, head of a proteomics institute at one of the top medical schools in the U.S. And he basically said in no uncertain terms that his career has been sort of built together with Waters, especially on the mass spec side. So we are very optimistic on what we will be able to do in that market, but it's early days, right, on the academic and government market. And then on M&A, on the mega Dalton deal, this is a very good fit, right? So for large novel modalities to characterize them better with mass spec and we know mass spec really, really well. You should expect us to continue to look for such technology accelerators, but also we're open to building our portfolio, as I mentioned earlier, both in the core as well as the faster growth adjacencies where we find something relevant But I will remind you that, look, our core business is performing extremely well, and that is the number one focus, to continue the commercial momentum, to continue delivering new products across our base portfolio. And as you've noticed, across the LC portfolio, across the mass spec portfolio, now informatics, we're seeing a drumbeat of new products that are adding on to the globe. So the focus is on the core, and we are very open to looking at M&A that accelerates our and strengthens our position. Amol?
spk05: You know, I just wanted to add on the previous question, right? So on the academics and government, China is one area of focus for us, because if you look at China, we grew on a stack basis in pharma, 13%, constant currency, industrial stack, 16%. But what brought it down was academics and government. And we are laser focused on revitalizing growth in that business. There are two parts to the problem. Part of it is our own commercial execution, which we are focused on, but there's also drag from the VAT reimbursement issue, which we think will progressively resolve over the course of 2022.
spk01: Thank you for your question. Our next question is from Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Your line is open, sir. Great.
spk11: Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just a follow-up on Mike's question there in terms of M&A. You've mentioned the large mall strategy a few times. Obviously, one you seem to have some enthusiasm about. I guess, how do you think about balancing organic versus inorganic investments in that segment? I mean, is the base business, do you feel like the technology is in a good enough place to kind of go after some of those high growth areas? Or do you feel like it really needs to be supplemented inorganically with some deals? Just curious on the strategy on that front.
spk03: Patrick, I mean, look, it's a great question. I mean, we don't have a dogma there, right? But it always starts with what we know how to do, right? So we know how to do analytical measurements, and we've turned that focus towards larger molecules and more complex molecules, both in the bioseparation arena, where there are significant challenges, even if you take mRNA as an example, in aggregation and separation of these molecules, the nanoparticles or plasmids, right? And there, we are perfectly capable of making a difference with our internal focus and collaborations with reagents companies and people who know how to do sample prep for biologics. So I think that for me is a perfect combination. And on the bioprocessing side, we started with a partnership where we wanted our organization to learn the whole bioprocessing domain. And now as we get a better understanding, we will surely be looking at augmenting our capabilities in bioprocessing on the analytical front. So you'll not see us going and buying a bioreactor or a filtration company, but you will see us looking at better analytical techniques to elucidate the structure and properties of these complex molecules. But it's a mix, right? So it's a heavy focus on organic investments, where relevant partnerships, and where we see opportunities that speed up the separations of these molecules or help us characterize bioprocessing better, we will be active in the M&A space.
spk01: Thank you for your question. That does conclude our Q&A portion of today's conference. I will now turn our call back over to Mr. Udad Batra.
spk03: Thank you. Thank you all for your participation and your questions. And on behalf of our entire management team, I'd like to thank you for your continued support and interest in waters. We look forward to updating you on our progress during our first quarter 2022 call, which is currently anticipated on May 3, 2022. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.
spk01: This does conclude today's conference call. We thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect, and have a great rest of your day.
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