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

So we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm Catherine Schulte, I cover life sciences and diagnostics here at Baird. Very excited to have Azenta here with us today. Here from the company, we have the CFO, Lindon Robertson. He's going to run through a presentation. And if we have time at the end, we'll take some questions. If you want to send in a question, I think we are Session 2, so [email protected]. Thanks.

Thank you, Catherine. It's very nice to be here and it looks to be a very robust day today. The halls are full. So we're looking forward to the one-on-one meetings. But here -- thank you for your attention on Azenta here at the Baird Conference. I'll highlight the safe harbor statement. Of course, we'll be making forward-looking statements in our presentation. We'll also be using non-GAAP metrics. We always encourage you to compare those to and use those in combination with GAAP-based metrics. And in the safe harbor, of course, we're not obligated to update those statements. Quickly, the outline for today is really to highlight the track record that we've long established. Some people think of us as a newborn company as we separated from our legacy Brooks Automation company almost 2 years ago now, but it's really a decade in the making. And secondly, we've got a focus on the markets, the end markets that we both have been servicing for this past decade and continue to develop. And those markets are taking a very fast shape ahead of us. And in the creation of value, it really has been a path of continued sustained growth already, and we're focused on ensuring that this brings higher profitability in the future, and I'm going to show you some of the actions that we're taking as we're on that journey. So quickly as a -- at a glance, if you hadn't heard about Azenta, this would be the page I would show you. Our purpose and our mission is to help our customers and enabling their breakthroughs to come much faster. And in doing so, if you look at the offerings on the left, you'll see that we're very focused on the analytics and the multiomics space, but we're also a very comprehensive cold chain management company, both in providing automated infrastructure as well as outsourced services. And that has extended us into sample sourcing and informatics. As you can imagine, servicing tens of millions of samples that we hold on behalf of customers requires the most demanding of software capabilities. We're already, as you can see across the headlines, servicing more than 9,000 customers. We're all around the world, have more than 3,500 employees now. And after we complete a very profound amount of buybacks, we still have about $1 billion of cash available for investment and/or further returns to shareholders. The company is comprised of a very balanced portfolio, and it's one that's been expanding continuously. But it's about half and half products, and that includes some services related to those products but it also includes a lot of services that complement that. In other words, services that directly support our customer, either in the analytics of multiomics or in the outsourced services of storage. The growth has been quite consistently sustained. This is a combination of organic and acquisition growth. You could see on the year-to-date, we've been showing 18% growth this year or 4% organic after we exclude our C&I business, and I'll show you just how much that is. That's a smaller piece of our business but in the plastic space, COVID and the oversupply in that space has really flattened that space. But if you exclude this -- and I'll -- again, we'll get to the specifics on that but it's a 4% organic growth, excluding that. And in this last quarter, we showed 25% or 8% on that organic, excluding C&I. And so you can see momentum wins in our sales here. And over the last 4 years, you could see that we've almost doubled our revenue from $334 million up to -- approaching a $700 million revenue numbers. So at a glance, you can see high-growth company, broad and comprehensive portfolio and coverage around the world. We'll say more about the offerings in a moment. If you looked at the history, this is our annual revenue across the years. And it took us about the first 5 years to get this portfolio up to about $100 million. That took us from the stages of pure automation in the ultracold environment. Think of this minus 80 degrees, primarily minus 20 degrees Celsius, minus 80 degrees. And we developed a minus 190-degree automation that was really first of kind and stands alone in the market really is a viable alternative for automation in the vapor phase stage of liquid nitrogen. In the last 7 years, you've seen quite a build out on top of that platform. You have the addition -- not an expansion, not just of that outsourced services in 2016, but then you had the Genomics acquisition in 2019. So those are the 2 primary steps. But we built out the portfolio in terms of capabilities of C&I. We built it out for informatics. We built it out for sample sourcing. And in this last year, in 2023, you see the results of the acquisition at early October where we acquired B Medical. That puts us into the emerging markets that is not in the automated phase yet of cold storage but in a very demanding cold storage phase, and they have the primary footprint of relationships and capabilities in those emerging markets and are a leader globally in the space they serve. So it's been an exciting journey. As an update, just somewhat of a report card here, progress to date. It's been exciting. The accomplishments that the company has achieved but more importantly, how we serve the customers has been critical. It's demonstrated -- obviously, you don't get to $600 million-plus revenue without servicing customers in a delighted way. But we've actually captured the last -- the top 20 pharma. So you noted that we serve over 9,000 customers but the top 20 have subscribed to our services or products. And many of those are really enterprise partnerships supporting them globally. We're committed -- we had committed a year ago -- almost a year ago to provide $1 billion of cash toward buybacks of our shares by the end of this calendar year. We're well on our path to do that. At the end of this last quarter, we had reported a number that basically was a reduction of -- in excess of 20% of our shares already. And we're still had $180 million plus to go in the balance of the calendar year. The Board, along with the company, has evolved tremendously. This year, we added 2 more very deep and broad experiences in the life sciences space, and the Board is comprised of decades of experience in life sciences as well as business acumen expertise. And so it's just been a delight to work with them in a constructive and progressive fashion to make sure we ensure the returns to shareholders and the build-out and capabilities for our customers. Equally important, though, is where we're headed. We're well positioned for the future. We've announced several cost reduction initiatives, 2 primarily. The first half of this year, we completed a $20 million reduction, already enabling some investments. We said would enable 2-point enhancement to our EBITDA. We started to see that in the third quarter results. And -- and we also announced another $15 million reduction of cost and expense by the end of this year, again, set toward margin expansion and ensuring that we have the leverage model, so the growth brings higher profitability. The portfolio addressing our markets is positioned specifically towards secular growth trends. And I'm going to highlight that in a moment, so I won't spend a lot here but know that we were focused and zeroed in on what's ahead of us. And that's where our portfolio is positioned, and I'll bring that to light. The scientists selling to scientists has been a key for us. And while we had a lull in 2022 in some of our spaces, particularly our multiomics space, we have put reinvigorated hiring in place, in other words, bringing higher skills in our sales team, ensuring that our sales team understands the problem of our customers and bringing solutions to those problems. And it's a consultative sale, in many cases. And that adds significant value to our customers in their labs, and that's bringing results. That's the momentum that you're seeing in the second half of this year. And so it's reaccelerating the organic growth rate. And again, we've got a nice balance sheet of in excess of $1 billion. And $1 billion of that is remaining with flexibility for continued investment and return after we finish the buyback within this calendar year. So now let's move to the growth markets, the end markets that we see developing. These are 3 really key trends. In the very primary, you would be well aware, I'm sure that life sciences, especially in R&D, have moved and accepted broadly an outsourcing trend where it's not very critical to their IP, it's critical to their operations. It's critical, but it's not core to the IP that they're developing. So the cold chain and the services to supply samples is something that has moved toward outsourcing. And this is our space. We're a leader among -- in the industry of the most accessible and fast turnaround of samples. So we store in excess of 50 million samples on behalf of those customers, and that's been expanding continuously. The second phase here just highlights the trend on the cold chain requirements. More than 30% of FDA approvals now require an ultracold temperature and monitoring of that environment to ensure those approvals. And in our space, I want to emphasize, we're not selling manual freezers, that's not the space. If you're selling manual freezers, you're probably getting a little bit of contraction as automation picks up because it's the automated environment that's enabling throughput and specific connection to your software of inventory. When you're dealing in thousands, you might be able to handle that manually. But when you're dealing in tens and hundreds of thousands and no exaggeration here, in millions of samples at a customer level -- individual customer level, then you can't do this without the software capabilities, and the automation helps with the throughput. The future is here, and it's developing fast, and we're the leader in the automated ultracold space. And then finally, well, it's still small. The approvals are very clear, and the leading edge of the development phases that are already in the industry are clear around cell and gene therapy. So while there has been some slowness in the past year on selling gene therapy in general, there's no question that the future is there. So as that develops, we're positioned to capture that environment with the most precise and accurate tracking as well as the automated integrity care for those samples that are developed in cell and gene therapy. And that could be both in the clinical as well as the manufacturing development and delivery distribution of those samples. So we're excited about these growth trends that the market is developing, and that's where our portfolio is anchored. I'll highlight that if you listed a customer that came to mind, it's very, very likely that they're in our customer list. We give you just a few at the bottom that are household names. And we're proud of these but we're proud of all 9,000-plus customers that we serve and delight in enabling their breakthroughs. These metrics at the top aren't intended to be trophies but they're proud milestones in terms of testing the dimensions of value because of -- well, how do we know you're servicing the deepest science? Well, 33 of Nobel Laureate labs use us. 24,000 scientific journals have referenced us or our products and services. Out of the many thousands of customers that use us, the top 5 in terms of the best-selling pharma clinical or best-selling products have used us for the clinical management of samples. And then finally, as I highlighted, the top 20 pharma are not only on our customer list but many of these are -- we're the primary partner for their cold chain. So it's a proud page for us, but it's there to demonstrate just how deep the value is in the industry. This is zeroing in on 1 customer example. So this is the development of 1 customer. It's a very healthy customer. By the way, to date, we haven't had a single customer exceed 10% of our revenue. So concentration is not our issue. On an annual basis, I should highlight. But if you follow the history of this customer, most biobanks, more -- the vast majority of biobanks didn't exist until 2000. But Pharma was actively storing chemical compounds, and they started developing libraries of biologics. This particular customer, 1 of the leading customers in the early 2000s started storing in an automated environment very early, we were there for them. In the GENEWIZ or genomic analytic services, they were doing advanced analytics at that time. We were there for them. And then by 2020, we saw this start to expand quite aggressively. And in other words, they added Sample Repository Solutions. That's the outsourcing of us storing their samples in the -- outside the walls of their premises on their behalf. And that means samples are coming not just for archive but also in and out into their third party and back into their research center for further testing. In 2021, we expanded the genomic services to them, became a preferred provider for their RNA sequencing. And in 2022, this is a monumental installation, installing automated stores at their primary location in excess of 100 million biological samples. So that's the epitome of the volume. And when I say software becomes important, you can see it's a total comprehensive installation that's required to satisfy that. Today, we've already reached more than 5 million samples that we store on our premises for them, and that relationship continues to grow. So this is the evolution of 1 customer. And it's 1 of our premier, but 1 of those in the top 20 that I referenced. The portfolio that we bring is comprehensive and balanced. If you look at this, you can see that in the turquoise on the left, products makes up about 45%. And that's our ultracold store systems as well as our B Medical in the developing market. And also the C&I business. So as you highlight -- as you can see there in the bottom -- the very bottom, about 12% of our business is C&I. So when I talk about that organic growth excluding C&I, I talk about the organic growth of the remaining pipe of the 88%. And the C&I space is plastics primarily, along with some instruments that helps to automate on top of the benchtop. But in that space, we saw a significant oversupply of plastics as people built up for what was required in COVID testing. Now on the right side is the broad services. And I'll highlight that if you go to the very bottom right, that's the Sample Repository Solutions. That's the piece that will be moving as we reorganize the company. And I'll reference this later but that piece combined with the products really makes your cold-chain management complete. And on the analytics, that's the multiomics. The other 3 slices, Next Generation Sequencing, Sanger Sequencing and Gene Synthesis. And so we're a unique player in multiomics in that we provide all of these services on all platforms, by the way, so we can optimize for the customer. We talked about B Medical. I mentioned it but there's a lot of questions on this. What does the B Medical do for us? It's not in the automated space. So this is what makes it different about our portfolio. Here's what's key. They serve over 150 countries. I'm not talking customers. They serve many more customers than that but over 150 countries. They had exceeded $100 million or will exceed $100 million in revenue this year based on our current guidance in our fiscal year finishes September 30. They got 0.5 million devices installed already. 350 employees but a few hundred agents and distributors also around the world in those markets, providing a footprint in a very established cold chain presence in those markets. And this leads us then toward future opportunities. As we think about bringing samples and breakthroughs into those countries. And these are countries that are lesser developed. And R&D has not really analyzed those indigenous people in those countries to the degree that they have in the more mature markets and wealthy countries. And so this is a space that we see as future that our pharma customers have confirmed for us as part of their future road maps, and we expect that we will be there and we're engineering our support for the innovation to map our services and our technology into those markets. So now I'm going to spend the last few minutes here on what are we doing to create value as a company. This is the key. So in terms of the first portion, I've talked to you just about how many customers we serve, how deep our portfolio is, how broad our capabilities are and how fast those markets are moving. But let's look at what we've done as a company. We've grown on an average of 33% since the fiscal year 2015. And you can see every year, we have added to the company. And the purple gives you the organic change year-over-year. So every year, we take out what we had acquired in the previous 12 months. And you can see there's been organic progression as well as inorganic acquisitions. The gray stripes in '21, '22 give you a view of the COVID-based revenue -- COVID-related revenue. So those are definitely different years. But if you look at FY '20 to FY '23, it's a very significant trajectory. And you quickly start to see in perspective what the company is doing despite those COVID years. I mentioned the reorganization. This is about retuning our company toward faster growth and more effective service support to our customers. So we have taken our Sample Management Solutions. And we're looking at combining those. This will be, in total, formally effective October 1, but many of our investments and some of our actions have started to tailor in this direction. So specifically, we see more synergy and more light speed of servicing our customers when we have the conversation around our automation at their site and our ability to outsource on our premises for them in the cold chain environment. Multiomics, on the other hand, has been analytic services, and that's where we did have the outsourced services, thinking we were developing some synergies there. But what we found was the conversations were different places in the customer set. And so it's been about 10 months ago, we started energizing and changing our marketing approach in the multiomics space to free them up, let them not be so concerned about the outsourced services of storage. What we have found to date and you can see this in our earnings reports over the last 3 quarters that we have returned to a momentum of growth in the multiomics space. And so we're very pleased with what that had given us as evidence. And so we're taking this to the next step to reorganize our business around Sample Management. That's the entire cold chain. With the exception then, B Medical is at the bottom. So we're keeping B Medical on its own management environment, meaning that there continue to address the developing markets. As I said, that's not the automated space as of yet but they'll continue to develop and grow in the needs for vaccines as well as start to develop that footprint for the R&D space for us as we bring innovation to that market. So we're excited about this trend -- this change in the company, the approach and support to customers because we're already starting to see the results as we tested it in the multiomics space, in particular. As I mentioned, we're taking cost out. And in total, it enhances our EBITDA capability by the time we get into the next calendar year by a total of 4 points. 2 points is already there, and you saw that in this last quarter. And we expect that the realignment will further the enhancement of the growth of the top line. So as you take the cost out, you lower the centralized cost, you enhance the leverage capability of the business. And as we add top line, you'll start to see this fall through in addition to just a static EBITDA enhancement that this brings the static enhancement of 4 points. But with growth, we see the leverage adding more than that into next year. We've provided some financial metrics for you all to understand just where do we use our cash. It's a very balanced approach to capital deployment. If you looked over the history, and we think this is indicative of the future, about 6% to 9% of our revenue goes back into CapEx environment. And some people will ask me, is that maintenance CapEx? Or is that growth CapEx? It's both, predominantly growth. So we do provide -- obviously, we do maintenance CapEx. But as you're expanding, outsourcing for customers, you're adding incremental freezer capacity. As you grow your multiomics business, you're adding capabilities in the analytics platforms, and we keep our platforms up to date with the latest technology of multiple platforms, not just the [ aluminas, ] but all of them. On the research and development side, we have a 4% to 6% history of revenue being plugged back into our business on developing the edge of innovation. Much of this going into the automation and the advancement of ultracold environment, but also in the informatics as well as proprietary solutions in the multiomics. Shareholder value is obviously our mission in life as a company and in our governance. We have committed last November that we would expend $1 billion by the end of this calendar year in share repurchases. As I highlighted at the last quarter-end, we had already -- we reported on 16 million shares being purchased to date. That's in excess of 20% of our share count compared to last November. And we still have more than 180 million to go beyond that last quarter readout. And so we are pleased about the returns that we're giving to shareholders. But importantly, we still have another $1 billion after that's finished to consider. And of course, we've been acquisitive, and we'll continue to consider what our portfolio needs and we're well regarded in that space and our track record to add value. But obviously, we'll continue to consider those returns to shareholders as well. I'll highlight that beyond this $1 billion, we have another $0.5 billion of share repurchase authorization already in place. So as we step into the calendar year 2024, that will be something to listen for as an update. I always provide this update on guidance. This is not an update today but it's reflective of what we said on August 8. We do highlight that while we have long been a double-digit grower in this past year, you've seen single-digit growth rates in an organic level. And when you exclude the C&I, which really helps to clarify where the core capabilities, differentiation of our portfolio is on the 88% of our revenue, you're seeing this in the high single digits this last quarter with momentum. And we've got a range around the 3% on this. So it could be in the high single digits. It could be in the low single digits. But this is positive growth. And I think this compares what we got the strongest response from our shareholders and investors and question is, while this is starting to look different than your peers and in the space, and I think this points exactly back to the secular growth positioning that we have on the automation and the outsourcing on the multiomics toward the development and enabling breakthroughs in the more advanced basis. So -- and clearly starting to see some of the results of the reorganization and the autonomy we've given our multiomics business to advance. EBITDA continues to develop, as I highlighted, we've got some enhancement measures there. So we think these quarter points are interesting but we'll be excited to report on our year-end by -- as we finish September 30. We'll do that in the early weeks of November and talk to you about what comes in 2024 as well. So in summary, you've got a business that's approaching the $700 million REIT. While we're only in our second year as Azenta, we're 12, 13 years into a life sciences company here with a really strong track record. We're positioning this company not just for the high growth but with a lower cost center and finding our feet on that currently to enhance our leverage. To ensure that as we grow, that brings back more margins. And we're excited to tell you in the near future what that will look like over the longer term. Our global platform is really capable. It's comprehensive already but we've also got a balance sheet to add to that and a lot of experience in doing so. Over the past decade, we've added tremendous capabilities and value in the ROIC measures of the company, which is our focus. As we invest, we're very much an ROIC-driven company. And so with that, I'm excited to summarize, that's Azenta. And I look forward to seeing you in today's one-on-ones, and I hope you all enjoy the conference. Thank you very much. Cathy, thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you very much. With that, we are out of time. But thanks, everyone, for joining. Up next, we have [ Revedi ] in the Grand Ballroom [indiscernible].