Bruker Corporation (BRKR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. We'll get started. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to the Jefferies 2023 Global Healthcare Conference. I'm Brandon Couillard, I cover the tool space, here at the firm, very happy to have Bruker with us at the conference this morning. And here to give us an update on the CALID business, specifically, the President of that division, Juergen Srega, as well as Justin Ward, who heads up IR. Turn it over to you, Juergen.

Wonderful. Thanks, Brandon, for inviting us and opening the call. Good morning to all of you. My voice may be a little bit instable. I'm just coming from Houston with very cold hotel stay and heat outside. So it was a little bit of a challenge for my voice, I admit. But let's go quickly through updating you where are we at CALID. So I will have a focus on the group I am heading here and we'll give you some perspectives how we are doing and later on, of course, ready for taking questions as well. So our safe harbor statement. I jump over that. Typically, Justin is taking you through all of that, you are aware of that. Let me jump right on. Also on this slide, I'm not going into the details. Those who follow us closely, you know this slide. We have kicked off a couple of years ago a program, which we called Accelerate 2.0. What it means in a nutshell, it is to convert through organic and inorganic investments, our portfolio at Bruker to a life science, to a fast-growing life science exposure and focus proteomics and spatial biology in its heart and focus. And beside of that, of course, we took a lot of measures to drive operational excellence in our business. You have seen nice improvements in our P&Ls as an outcome of that. So and that includes, of course, very early on, 10 years ago when I joined Bruker from Thermo Fisher back then, we started to build systems, SAP systems, customer relationship management systems, functions and people up in our organization. We consolidated our factory footprint and there and all of that is put together under operational excellence. And I'm happy to confirm and stayed in a robust way so that we are at par with our peer groups out there, all excellent companies. So yes, we have been making a lot of strides and progress on the operational excellence while focusing building one of the leading footprints and technology base in the proteomics and spatial biology space. Here you see the group, I've been building over the last couple of years. We have delivered and aim for [ $0.9 billion to $1 billion ] in revenue this year. We are about 34% of the Bruker's total revenue with about 2,800 employees globally and one of the growth drivers. So our mandate in the Bruker Universe is to drive organic and inorganic growth, inorganic growth through investing in start-up technologies, next-generation technologies and developing sustainable business, profitable business out of that. We operate out of 5 factories. So after a lot of consolidations in the 2013, 2014 years, we are down to about high-focused, lean operating 5 factories. And we have 4 headquarters -- strategic headquarters to run the business. One is in Germany, Ettlingen, this is our optics business, where all of the optical technologies are combined. In Bremen, we have the headquarter for our microbiology and infectious disease. In Fallanden, we have the headquarter for our life science. Fallanden in Switzerland for our Life Science MS. And in Billerica here, near to Boston, our new division, which we just recently created, a Bruker Applied Mass Spectrometry division. You see our leaders there, who head for me these businesses. And with that setup, we have been building a quite dynamic environment for growth and, of course, translating growth into profitability at the end of the day. Here, you see a little bit of slide I created for the last -- or this week's ASMS, Applied Mass -- American Society of Mass Spectrometry. And it explains a little bit when we talk mass spectrometry. Bruker has a little bit a different approach, a differentiated approach into mass spectrometry. There are 5 vendors out there, large vendors out there competing on a very lively and fast-growing end market. And we have chosen a different approach into this. We have large -- the largest installed base of mass spectrometry in applied clinical use. This is what we call our microbiology or the MALDI Biotyper, at the very left side with more than 7,000 instruments as an installed base. It's still a fast-growing business for us, creating a lot of consumables, pulls through in consumables revenue as well beside of the instrument sales. The instrument sales these days due to the large installed base of more than 7,000 units, of course, is composed, half we sell per year into market expansion and the other half is already replacement business. So very healthy, very steady fast growing, nice business for us. Our Bruker Life Science Mass spectrometry is known for its innovation. About 7 years ago, we launched a very new technology developed in our R&D centers. So all the IP and protection is owned by Bruker in-house. And that product is still, I believe, it's fair to say the star in its universe. It's the leading mass spectrometer in the world, competing at the high end of its performance and it's transforming deep proteomics and best-in-class sensitivity with speed and robustness and the best coverage to sequence peptides and reconstruct and model the protein composition of the things, so to say. So very successful, very fast-growing business, certainly the leading instrument in its space and recognized as such, just on the recent conference again. We have been building about 12 months ago, the Bruker Applied Mass Spectrometry division, a very small and a sort of a start-up and we launched this week at ASMS, our first product. It is triple quad -- very compact, triple quad-based instrument with the direct analysis technique of a new source technology, which we acquired a year ago, 1.5 year ago and we combined this technology now to a frozen sample of how [ chromatography-free ] end point of need focus mass spectrometry could look like. And we have launched this week this product and hopefully, they will contribute soon to additional growth in our Mass Spectrometry business. On the other slide, you see the other part of the CALID Group, about 1/3 of our revenues are related to optical techniques. So it's not all Mass Spectrometry, only about 1/3 and a very profitable business as well is our optical technology business. There we have Life Science and classical FTIR and industrial research type supporting instruments with our FTIR/NIR instrument. We have a portfolio of instruments focused on food and chemical process monitoring devices. And we use some of the techniques in public safety and security applications such as remote sensings and those type of techniques. It's -- the underlying techniques are all the same. It's only the application, which are different. And of course, the instruments design are different. We are very happy and proud of that business, which is typically not so much in the focus of our discussions as the core of our activities is life science related but it is a nice business and worth to be mentioned here as well. Here, you see a little bit what we are especially proud of, we see a lot of recognition in our scientific environment, we are scientific focused. So we translate latest scientific discoveries into products and successfully market these products. So for us, it's important that key opinion leaders in the scientific industry recognize what we are doing, recognizing our power of innovation, our speed of innovation. We maintain with most of the leading technology institution around the globe, very close technology collaborations. And here, you see an example, of course, how that translates to good collaboration and helps us to accelerate our innovations. Here you see an example of what's also different, how we approach by nature. And in the core, we are a technology company and innovator but we have learned over the last couple of years how to build an ecosystem above the core instrument, whether this is a mass spectrometer on an optical -- high resolution microscope. We are thinking in terms to translate businesses out of these. And often, we go out and acquire supporting technologies like sample preparation, like special softwares, like services, diagnosis, the last example, you see there we see in value by being able to offer proteomics, complex proteomics workflows, not only for sales through instrument and supporting material but also as a service offering to customers. Customers like, you have here, when I look on the attendance list, here today, it's almost -- everyone could be a good customer of us either on the instrument side or on the services side. So I said to Justin earlier already, next time, we should bring our sales teams with us and start selling here. So very, very exciting. So beside of having different focus on different applications than our peer groups, we also focus that we grow quickly beyond the instrument only and build a complete ecosystem around. And I believe we have done this very successfully, for example, with the Biotyper business which became a complete clinical business for us these days in life science, we are on our way as we see and show here. And interesting is, of course, a lot of these things to accelerate and by time we do through M&A, we have done in the last 2 years, about 20 smaller M&As to beef up this concept of an ecosystem and a total workflow solution in our hands. And this is working very nicely for us and helps us to drive growth and, of course, have more ownership of the customer needs at the end of the day. As we have been growing very fast over the last couple of years, we have kicked off 3 years ago, a larger investment. Those of you who follow us closely knows that our investments -- capital investments are at a higher range, currently a little bit. A large chunk of that is related to this new, all new large factory build out, it's 100,000 square feet new factory, we are building in Bremen. So not on the same campus we have been so far but about 2- or 3-kilometer away from where our current campus is. We built an all-new factory. It's state-of-the-art factory. It will be opened soon in October and most probably some of you are on our invite list and we'll see invitations coming in, in the next couple of months to participate in our opening ceremony. So we are very proud of that and that will be certainly a next catalyst to ramp up our revenues and outputs and become leaner and more efficient. A little bit more into detail what did we launch this week at ASMS in the applied group run by Jeff Sunderman here. We introduced a product called EVOQ DART-TQ triple quad, a very compact triple quad high-end performance, no compromise but compact in its size. And the real breakthrough is that it's a direct analysis type of source technique we are using. That means you don't need chromatography and a special injection. You have an atmosphere pressure source and you can directly analyze from surfaces with the full capabilities of a triple quad, that means great sensitivity, great quantitative performance, noncompromised quantitative performance. We also introduced an update to our impact with higher sensitivity and higher speed. We launched new TargetScreener software, incorporating and standardizing all of the workflows we are having. And we have done a couple of years ago, I believe it's now 2 years, 3 years ago when we invested in Tofwerk, the leading mass spec vendor in -- based out of Switzerland. We are the largest shareholder in this company. And of course, we drive further cooperation and partnership and share technologies to innovate and drive further innovation in the mass spec field. These guys are experts and leaders in real-time mass spectrometry, so incorporating real-time technique with other capabilities is the objective of this investment here. On the Life Science side, Rohan Thakur, who is leading our Life Science division, has made a tremendous stride and success over the last couple of years. You see here the road map from 5 years ago when we introduced a new breakthrough technique called timsTOF. And we kept launching almost every year new groundbreaking instruments and technologies we kept acquiring, supporting instruments, whether it's on the software side, on the sample prep, on the column side, on the LC side, for nano LC technique and latest Biognosys as a service, a CRO business based out of Switzerland, which we are investing in now to take global and build aside of our instrument offering now and comprehensive proteomics, deep proteomics offering as a service. And with this, I'm done.

Excellent. A lot to talk about there, Juergen. Maybe just to start off, it's been a big part of the investor conversation, help us understand the mix of CALID between instrumentation and recurring? And what are you seeing in terms of just equipment demand right now?

Yes. Brandon, as you know, our Q1 has, from a demand perspective, we're very strong. We are very happy of what we see around the globe. Certainly, our order book for us, very much driven in Q1 from China. So we had very strong China bookings for our high-end technology. China is investing big in proteomics and the translation from genomics into proteomics for life science and clinical translation. So we have seen all of that. Nothing of these bookings, strong bookings in Q1 are revenue for us yet. Typically, as you know, we have about 9 months, 12 months, sometimes 15 months, depends on the backlogs, we are having translation from incoming orders to orders. So we see globally a healthy situation from the order intake mainly driven, I believe, and this is what you are after, a little bit isolated from up and downs of end markets. We lead through innovation. So everyone who has a need to step up the capability in proteomics is talking to us and considering to buy from us. So we win share. And I think that's the bottom line.

CALID's certainly, I think been part of the operational improvement story of Bruker, which you kind of alluded to, some factory consolidation. What is the margin profile of CALID today, gross and operating margin? How does that compare to the -- CALID average to Bruker?

We, I believe versus Bruker, we are above the average of the Bruker Group and we are a positive contributor there. We are at the levels, you know from the other strong companies out in our field. We are not worse. I would not claim we are much better but we are right on the level where all of the -- our industry sits and we are at that high performance, yes.

You mentioned you created a new applied mass spec division, a few instrument launches at ASMS there. Why carve it out on its own? And is that -- should we think about that business kind of more competing with the more traditional mass spec companies, Agilent, Waters.

Exactly. Exactly. That's -- we look -- when we say we build a division, what does that mean? It means we have a focus on certain application and customer segments out there. And the Applied segments are very different to the Life Science segments. If you talk to a high-end research in a clinical environment wanting to move from genomics to proteomics and do deep proteomics research, this is another sales call then you are going into a lab who does monitoring for dioxins in food and things like that. So we are segmenting these things. You need different knowledge. You need different people. Yes, of course, we are suffering some leverage of our sales force but our belief is with a deep knowledge and the insights and the industry knowledge, we gain more than we suffer and that's why we split the commercialization. The division, typically in our setting, does not include the operational footprint. Our operational footprint is separated from the division and is centralized and supports all division with goods manufacturing, with procurement and all of these. So the transaction-related things are separated and managed differently.

Given you -- do you have a molecular diagnostics business that has a recurring revenue stream to it? What is the instrument versus recurring profile of CALID?

Of CALID, let me calculate in the back of my mind quickly. We're approaching 1/3, mainly driven, of course, by this clinical MALDI Biotyper business which already has 2/3 of its revenue in the recurring space. So that's a different profile than typical life science mass spectrometry. These are numbers which I shared, I believe, 3 years ago in one of our investor meetings back then already, so are driving from about half of recurring in our clinical business, now we are approaching 1/4 of that is instruments only and all the other is almost all recurring revenue. And if I calculate that up for the CALID Group, it's about 25% to 30% of recurring revenues we are having in the P&L for the group.

Got it. How about your government academic exposure? Is that a sizable end market in the NIH exposure in particular?

Yes, we -- in Life Science, certainly, we are heavily exposed to government and all the universities and research institutions. It's in high-end instrument, selling at very high price points typically, so yes, we are depending on that. The size of that business is of such that I think the end market, the robustness of the end market is not of that importance to us. We win market share because of the innovation and the differentiation. So we don't see any backward pressure or decline at all currently for us. The challenge is how we ramp up the output in the manufacturing and the innovation. These are the key driving elements for our success.

I felt like you haven't talked about optics that much recently. Maybe that's been a function of kind of supply chain issues last year. What's the kind of, I guess, growth profile of optics this year? Any messages you'd like share, I guess, with us for that side of the business?

Yes. Yes. Like most of our businesses, we have quite significant backlog. So does our optics business have. They have been suffering most in the COVID decline in this global supply chain because the average instrument prices are lower, so that volume is of much different. So when we talk building thousands of mass spectrometer, you talk 10,000 of optical MRIs a year. So the supply chain is of a critical factor and we had challenges. Most of them are overcome by now and we are ramping up. So optics business will be a significant contributor for our growth this year and certainly also next year, until we have worked through all of the backlog situations.

I guess lastly, did you say you've done 20 tuck-in acquisitions in the last 2 years? Okay. What, I guess, other areas of the portfolio would be, I guess, priorities that you'd like to add to going forward?

As we still -- we still think of our offering, we are in a very steep growth in our life science and proteomic segment and spatial biology segment and we certainly have appetite to add more capabilities, these workflows, you run on -- for the -- these applications are very complex. And most of the customers hate to put this complexity together by themself and look for leading vendors like us, how to assemble a complete workflow and qualitatively high quality workflows and that's what we are doing. And we do that through collaboration sometimes but we have appetite to acquire startups, which bring innovative pieces together and integrate them into total solutions for us. That has been showing -- been very successful model for us. And yes, that's a part of our success story out in the market. There's that customers like to engage with us more than without us.

Super. Well, we're out of time, so I have to leave it there and look forward to seeing you [indiscernible] next week. And thank you, Juergen and Justin for being here. Both of you, have a great day.

Thank you.

Thanks.