Bio-Techne Corporation (TECH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Bio-Techne Corporation Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Chuck Kummeth, President and CEO of Bio-Techne. The floor is yours, sir.

Welcome to our Annual Shareholder Meeting. It is 8:30 a.m. Central Time on October 29, and the meeting is called to order. Today's meeting will be limited to the business matters outlined in the proxy. After the business meeting concludes, we can take any questions shareholders may have. [Operator Instructions] Before we turn to the business agenda, I want to let you know that the members of our Board of Directors are attending today as well as a representative from KPMG. Also joining me is our CFO, Jim Hippel; our Corporate Secretary, Brenda Furlow; and of Investor Relations, David Clair. Brenda will serve as Secretary of this Meeting and Inspector of Elections. Let's turn our attention to today's business. Brenda informed me that the mailing of our proxy statement and card began on September 15 to shareholders of record of September 3, 2020. 93% of those shares are represented at this meeting by proxy. A quorum is present. We will cover 5 proposals today. First is to set the number of directors at 9; and second, the election of directors. As you may have noted in the proxy, Mr. Harold Wiens, who has served as a director for the past 6 years, is retiring today and will not be standing for reelection. We thank Harold for his board service. All the other current directors have been nominated for reelection. Third is an advisory vote on executive compensation for the named executive officers as described in the proxy. Fourth is to approve the amendment and restatement of the company's equity plan. The fifth and final proposal is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the company's public accounting firm for the 2021 fiscal year. We will now turn our attention to the voting of shares. If you've not yet submitted a proxy card and wish to vote on these items or wish to revoke a proxy card you have previously signed, you may vote your shares by clicking on the vote here button on your screen now. You will need your control number to vote your shares online. We will now pause to allow shareholders to vote. [Voting]

The polls are now closed, and here are the results: All director nominees have been reelected, and all proposals have passed. Thank you for participating in today's meeting. The meeting is now adjourned. At this point, we'd be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] There is a question. Question is, what effects do you anticipate from the most recent European lockdown? Actually, we've been monitoring this very closely. And it isn't quite the same as it was last spring. So whereas like Germany started off very good and now has troubles. Places like France had troubles, and there have been troubles again. But what we've been reading is that the schools and universities are probably not going to lock down. That's what we know so far. But you're going to see business lock down. The rest will be a traditional lockdown, but it won't be quite the same as before. So if that all holds, then our academic business will hold up pretty well. Biopharma in Europe will be fine. The lockdowns really don't affect biopharma. They're working, and they just work in shifts, and we're all doing that already anyway. So it's really a risk around academia. And right now, it looks like universities aren't going to lock down, but that could change. And of course, as academia flows, a portion of our business flows. And remember, we've mitigated a lot of our academic risk over the years, where that used to be 35%, 40% of total global revenues, now it's roughly around 25%. So we're much in a much better place. So that's the only question we see. Okay. I guess with that, there are no questions, then we are concluded. So thanks to all our shareholders, and this concludes our meeting today. Thank you.