Azenta, Inc. (AZTA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting for Brooks Automation, Inc. Our host for today's call is Joe Martin, Chairman of the Board. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Martin. You may begin, sir.

Thank you very much for that introduction. Good morning. I am Joe Martin, Chairman of the Brooks Board of Directors. Thank you for joining us virtually today, especially those of you that are our shareholders. We appreciate your taking the time to attend the Brooks Annual Meeting. I'd like to just make a few comments about the past year before we begin the formal part of the meeting. As we all know, 2020 will be remembered for the COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted and continues to impact people all over the world. It has affected not only how we live but also how we work. This virtual meeting is a prime example of how we have all had to adapt to this new COVID-19 world. Despite all of the challenges presented, fiscal 2020 was one of the strongest years in the company's 40-year history, and we are proud to be playing a meaningful role in overcoming this crisis. We were deemed an essential business because of our role in support of a cure for COVID-19 in our Life Sciences business and for what we do to help to sustain the remotely connected economy with our semiconductor products. Since March, the safety of our employees has been the #1 priority, and in adhering to all the recommended safety protocols, we have not only kept our business running, but we have achieved new heights. Our revenue grew 15% to $897 million, with almost equal growth in both Semiconductor Solutions and Life Sciences, while non-GAAP earnings per share grew 65% to $1.26 per share. These would be outstanding results in any year, but the company's performance during fiscal 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic was truly incredible. We want to thank you again for taking the time to virtually join us today and for your continued support of the company. In the formal part of the meeting today, we will consider the proposal set out in this year's proxy statements. My colleagues, the members of the Board of Directors who are here with us today virtually include Dr. Stephen Schwartz, our CEO; Robyn Davis; Erica McLaughlin; Dr. Krishna Palepu; Dr. Michael Rosenblatt; Al Woollacott; Dr. Mark Wrighton; and Ellen Zane. I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge a former Board member who is not here today. Clint Allen, sadly and unexpectedly, passed away in early December. Clint was a valued Board member and a colleague who served on this Board for over 17 years. He will be greatly missed. Clint, I know you're looking down on us today, and we remember you and we thank you. I will now ask Jason Joseph, our Corporate Secretary, to lead us through the formal portion. Jason, please?

Thanks, Joe. Good morning, and welcome to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Before beginning, I'd also like to acknowledge members of senior management who are attending virtually today. These include Lindon Robertson, our Executive Vice President and CFO; Dave Jarzynka, President of Brooks Semiconductor Solutions Group; Robin Vacha, President, Brooks Life Sciences Products; Bill Montone, Senior Vice President, Human Resources; John O'Brien, Vice President, Corporate Development; and Linda De Jesus, Chief Commercial Officer of Life Sciences. Also attending this meeting virtually is Paul Dinunzio who represents PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, who has been appointed by the Audit Committee to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2021. The polls for each proposal are now officially open as of 10:06 a.m., and I'd like to confirm that we have a quorum for this meeting. [ Frank Aaron ] from Broadridge Financial Solutions is the inspector of elections. Frank, can you please tell us how many votes are present?

Mr. Secretary, thus far, we have 69,771,776 shares of common stock present in person or by proxy out of 74,209,875 shares outstanding and entitled to vote at the meeting.

Thanks, Frank. A quorum is present, and I declare this meeting duly convened. Can I have a motion to vote on the 4 proposals? They are: one, the election of 9 directors; two, the nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation; three, the approval of the company's 2020 equity incentive plan; and four, the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as independent auditors for fiscal year 2021.

I so move.

Do I have a second?

I second the motion.

Is there any discussion on any of these proposals? I see no questions. We have now called to vote all matters on the agenda. If there's anyone who wishes to vote or to change their vote concerning any of the proposals before the meeting, please so indicate through the portal. I hereby declare the polls closed at 10:07 a.m. I have received the report of the inspector of elections and can confirm that each of the proposals has been approved by the requisite vote. Can I have a motion to adjourn the formal part of the meeting?

I so move.

Seconded.

The motion has been duly made and seconded. All those in favor say aye. [Voting]

The motion is carried. And the formal portion of the meeting is adjourned. I would like to say -- it looks like we have -- we may have a few shareholders attending. Could you please -- first, I'd like to say, if you have any questions, I'll give you about a minute if you want to log any questions in through the electronic portal. Also, if you would like us to proceed with a short presentation, please indicate by submitting a question to that effect. Otherwise, we will wrap up with concluding remarks and adjourn the meeting. Again, I'll give you about 1 minute if you want to submit a question or confirm whether you would like a short presentation. Okay. Thank you for your patience. It looks like we do have a shareholder who would like us to proceed with the short presentation, so I'm going to turn it over to Steve Schwartz -- we have a second shareholder who'd also like to hear. So Steve, take it away.

Okay. Thanks very much, and I'm delighted to be here. Actually, I'm sitting distance from Lindon Robertson. We're both in PPE. And Lindon and I will share a very brief update for you or presentation, which I believe you have the link to online. So I'll advance actually to the Slide 2. Just to remind everyone about our safe harbor statement, we will be making forward-looking statements even in this presentation. I call your attention to our website, www.brooks.com, for more detail. But I'll switch to the next slide just to outline the brief remarks that we'll make today: first, give a brief overview on the company and talk specifically about the 2 strong growth drivers that are propelling the business. As Joe Martin mentioned in his opening remarks, 2 essential businesses, Life Sciences and Semiconductor, serving the world quite well during this time. And then Lindon will follow up actually and talk a little bit about the model for growth and the updated numbers that we put out in the prior quarter. We are in a blackout period right now so all of the comments that we make are comments that we put out to the marketplace before. So I'd just remind you our earnings call is scheduled for next week when we'll provide a little bit more detail about the future. So just as a reminder, we are a global company serving 2 strong markets, Life Sciences and Semiconductor Solutions. In fiscal '20 -- we're a September 30 fiscal year-end. In fiscal '20, we concluded a year that was approximately $900 million of revenue, a 15% year-over-year growth, and that was coming off of an '18 to '19 growth year that was more than 20%. So we're focused on the opportunities presented by Life Sciences and semi, and we're able to capture very strong growth. We are a global company. We sell in 50 countries. And we're a dividend payer. So a very healthy profile of the company, very healthy growth businesses that we're in. And I'll show on this slide what we believe to be some really outstanding performance. In a 4-year period from 2016 to 2020, cumulative annual growth rate of 20% with operational execution improvements year-on-year. So we've improved the gross margin performance by more than 600 basis points as we've penetrated both Life Sciences and Semiconductor, and it's led us to a sixfold increase in earnings. And the thing that gives us the most confidence here is that there's a tremendous amount of revenue growth potential for us in the markets that we're in. We're less than $1 billion company in a market opportunity that's in excess of $10 billion, and so we really believe that we've just begun from a penetration standpoint, from the ability to deliver outsized returns to the marketplace. And then I'll outline for you just briefly the opportunities that we have in Life Sciences and semi. Starting with Life Sciences. Very simply, what we do is we manage the critical assets for companies, which are samples. So in and around the cold chain management of samples, we preserve them, we format them, we track them. And we provide services for the measurement and annotation of these precious samples. So this is a market opportunity that's grown from chemical compounds that are stored at minus 20 degrees now to biological samples and ultimately, to the care and treatment of samples for cell therapy that require precise tracking and temperature control and the measurements of these samples as well as Gene Synthesis that have been instrumental in the cure for COVID-19. So we've played a very important role in the entire process of COVID-19, but we have a very sturdy business in and around the research and now building on a clinical business in Life Sciences. We truly believe we're best in class from a science and technology standpoint, and we pride ourselves on our customer capture, our ability to deliver high-quality results in a very short turnaround time. On the far right, you could see tremendous revenue growth from an organic and inorganic compilation, but primarily in the '19 to '20 time, a 16% year-over-year growth, which was majority organic. And as of late, we've been able to demonstrate tremendous growth as we leverage the capabilities in a portfolio that we think serve the biological and life sciences industry particularly well. On Slide 8, we show a breakdown of the Life Sciences business. It shows a very diverse portfolio, very healthy subsegments inside the Life Sciences space. In the blue segments, you see the storage products. These are storage -- ultracold storage systems, consumables and instruments for formatting the samples that ultimately go into the cold stores and a services business that services this installed base, which is distributed around the world. We have 7,000 customers in the Life Sciences business. The bulk come from the services that we provide. And you could see a very healthy distribution of sequencing, both by next-generation sequencing and Sanger Sequencing; a Gene Synthesis and oligo synthesis business which is of particularly good size, 15% of the revenue. And we combined -- in the April time frame, we combined the sample and repository solutions as part of the services offering so that we can offer to customers for whom we perform genomic analysis the ability to store and track and put those samples into a repository. And similarly, the customers for whom we store samples off site, we provide the ability to do annotation and further deep dives on the samples in their collection. As I mentioned, we have a $10 billion market opportunity, and that's what -- these offerings are contributing to an extremely high-growth rate. We've just begun to penetrate, and we believe that the offerings that we have are unique indeed in their portfolio. And our ability to continue to grow, we think, is, for this period of time, without any boundaries. A little bit about the Semiconductor business. In a very similar fashion, the movement and tracking and protection of critical assets is what we also do in the Semiconductor business. But here, it's around the movement of the semiconductor silicon wafers into and out of the process tools. We perform wafer-level automation. It is literally moving the payload through a very complex manufacturing process. And at the same time, we're -- we have key offerings in and around contamination control as the essence of yield in a semiconductor factory is ability not just to move the wafers and control the process but to make sure that there's no contamination added to any process step. The value that we have includes precision handling, reliability and yield enhancement. But also, we have 30 years of experience in this space, and to build on the experience and the capabilities that we have has served the industry particularly well. The knowledge base that we've built up, the trust that we have with customers and the fact that we win business often years in advance of actual production volume is a testament to our ability to stay in front of customers' road maps and provide critical needs to them in the semiconductor space. Here, again, a very strong growth profile, double-digit CAGR from over the same 4-year period that we showed earlier. And most importantly, in a cyclical environment of semiconductor, we haven't shown any dips in the business over this period. So the businesses that we have are attached to secular growth drivers in the semiconductor space. Our opportunities outgrow the industry. Our market share outgrows that. And even in the period of fiscal '18 to '19, when the wafer fabrication equipment market actually decreased somewhere between 10% and 15%, we were slightly up over that period, and we resumed very strong growth in fiscal '20. The product portfolios that we hold are driven by strong opportunities presented by the semiconductor market. And these are compounded by 2 factors: first, the sheer volume demand. The number of applications around 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles will continue to propel the sheer volume of silicon that's manufactured. And at the same time, mobility and the life of batteries and the speed of communication dramatically increases the chip complexity. And the complexity of the process steps, the sheer number of processes and the chemistries that are involved use more and more vacuum processes, which is the sweet spot for the company. So this year, number of process tools that are out and the number of process tools that are performed -- that perform processes under vacuum compound our market opportunity. And we've served the markets particularly well with #1 positions in vacuum automation; in contamination control and carrier cleaners; and in a new space, advanced packaging. Where formerly wafers were diced up and put into packages, now the wafers remain whole deeper into the manufacturing process. It's open to brand-new opportunity for us in and around the advanced packaging solutions space. And we have strong #1 automation positions there. It's important to note that in the semiconductor space, our business grows irrespective of the type of technology, whether it's logic, foundry or memory. Any capacity addition utilizes high tool content from Brooks Automation. And with that, I'll turn the remainder of this presentation over to Lindon who will talk to you about how we've capitalized on this market, captured market growth and how we've leveraged it into an extremely profitable business. And he'll also give an outlook as to why we're so bullish on the future of the company.

Thanks, Steve. So on our strategy page going forward, you can see what guides us every day, the way we operate the business, the way we invest in our business. And when we decide to tune the portfolio, this is what we're thinking about. We're focused on extending the leadership in our core markets, both Semiconductor and our Life Science businesses. We prioritize our investments generally towards the Life Sciences in terms of our M&A, as you would see in our behavior. However, I will highlight to you that we certainly make the organic and occasional M&A investments on the Semiconductor business. But you clearly have seen a shift with more investment into Life Sciences. The -- we're focused on driving margin expansion consistently, and you've seen that materialize in our results. And we're also focused on ensuring that we deploy our capital in a responsible manner. And we have a very strong balance sheet as a result of both the results but also the way we deploy that capital. So if you take a step forward. In the charts, you'll see the results that we've driven in the past has created quite a bit of momentum. And we have a discipline that we've ran for several years where we keep a 3-year model in front of our investors so that you can see where we're headed and you can track us to how we're performing against those models. So first, I'll just highlight that in 2020, you'll notice, as Steve had highlighted, we grew the business 15% year-over-year and we struck $1.26 in EPS. Both businesses grew quite nicely, 14% in Semi and 16% in Life Sciences, to achieve that annual result. But you can see at the EPS level, it was nearly double what it was 2 years earlier. So now if you look forward into the right column. In 2022, we have a long-term model that was established in 2019 at our Investor Day. We keep tracking ourselves to it. And you could see the ramp that we're on to achieve that, to be a $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion company. Now that would point to about a 13% growth rate on a compounded annual growth rate from 2020 to 2022, and that relies on a semi range of -- with a midpoint of 11%. And it's a wider range because it's a cyclical business. And so it doesn't indicate necessarily weakness if we're at the lower end or strength at the high end. The point is it's a cyclical business. And so we feel it's a very strong performance -- we'll deliver a very strong performance relative to the market, but we range it because our investors need to know that we just don't have visibility to the orders in that particular year. But with that, in Life Sciences, we do project about a 16% growth rate. Let me just reflect on that for a moment. In the 2020 period, I highlighted that we grew faster than the ramp that we put out in 2019. So this to-go growth rate, 13% overall, is really solid in our minds. And we have momentum currently, and our recent performance is at this rate and stronger. So we have a lot of confidence where we're headed in 2022. We -- in the most recent quarter, we've been operating at this gross margin level. When you get down to the bottom line here, you can see the potential to double our earnings per share perhaps by 2022, nearly double in the range of $2 to $2.40. And while we've seen strong performance in Life Sciences, we increased the model in Life Sciences a little bit in our last quarter earnings call. I'd refer you to the materials that are still posted on our website for that, and I think you would get a strong sense of our capabilities to get to the 2022 model. So let me move forward off of the results and just talk a little bit about capital deployment. Over the last 5 years, we've deployed $1.2 billion of capital. Let's think about where we put that. Of course, we feed the business, on the right side of this, organically in the R&D. And to continue its reach to the market, we outfit the business with CapEx. And then on the left side, you can see a majority of our cash goes to M&A. And while we do that, it's very focused on an ROIC or return on invested capital basis to do so. And that guides most -- every investment that we make in terms of achieving an ROIC that's healthier than our weighted average cost of capital within a very reasonable amount of time. And to date, we've been returning cash to shareholders at a pretty handsome rate. So 12% of that $1.2 billion went right back to shareholders through the form of dividends. Finally, on the next page, it's a summary of what Steve and I talked to you about. It really is 2 strong markets with 2 strong leadership businesses. In other words, we're leading in each space in the spaces that we serve. We are the leadership automation company and contamination control company in the semiconductor equipment CapEx business. We are the leader in sample services -- sample-based services, both sample management and analysis, in the Life Sciences space. Both markets are ramping and strong. And we felt we have been very fortunate to be deemed essential, and we would say that every day this past year, we have felt that we were essential part of the equation of getting past the current COVID crisis. So we're fortunate and we're fortunate in that the performance of the company has met our expectations. We believe that this long-term financial model is very strong, and it continues to produce results. The leverage in the business is quite remarkable, and we have it positioned for not just leadership in the markets but leadership financial performance. The return on invested capital disciplines and our ability to capture the opportunity has paid off in the past. And as you can see on the right, the proof points are there. And as I've discussed with you, we have high confidence for the future as well. With that, we are finished with the prepared presentation. I'm going to turn it back over to Jason Joseph.

Thanks, Lindon, and thanks, Steve, for that presentation. With that, I'd like to conclude by thanking everyone for attending this first-ever Virtual Annual Meeting for Brooks Automation, Inc. Thank you.

This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.