Qiagen N.V. (QGEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Julia Qin. I work on the life science tools and diagnostics team at JPMorgan. It's my great pleasure to welcome you to our next company presentation today by QIAGEN. As a reminder, there's a breakout after this session in the Olympic Room right down the hallway. And with that, I'll turn it over to Thierry. Welcome.

Thank you so much, and good afternoon, and thanks for this opportunity to assess and highlight the situation of QIAGEN starting 2020 after what I could qualify as an eventful, I would say, 2019. And what I'd like to insist on, and we are really striving the company now to execute on what we consider to be a very differentiated Sample to Insight portfolio. If I had 3 takeaways for today, I would insist on the following. As I said before, despite the different events that we have been through, and I will come back to that in '19, I believe that the fundamentals of the business models of QIAGEN are still extremely solid. The second message is that leveraging on those fundamentals, we are bringing to the market a set of extremely differentiated solution that will help our growth. But the third, also message, as you might have seen in the Q3 transcript of last year, is that we would like to take a more realistic ambitious view on our sales growth while at the same time making sure that our earnings are going to grow ahead of sales. So let's take a look back at what is QIAGEN doing. For those who are not that knowledgeable, our company, for the last more than 25 years, QIAGEN has been focusing on advancing molecular science and medicine. Molecular is probably the most active, dynamic growth sector in health care, especially in diagnostic. And every year, more than 5,000 of our employees are helping 500,000 customers to unlock molecular challenges from Sample to Insight. And we do that, trying to bring, every year, easier solution, faster solution, more reliable in a different set of customers from purely science customers, academia to clinical diagnostic customers. And you see here what I qualify as a kind of virtuous circle of QIAGEN portfolio. First, it starts with sample technology, where we are absolutely #1 in the world. Now it's very key in molecular because everything starts with sample tech. The quality of the final result will highly depend on the quality of your sample technology. And then when you master sample tech, then you can move to be able to interpret and analyze the final result, which is your assay technology. And you do that every year by obviously automating your solutions to make the life of your customers easier. And since this era of genomic has generated a tremendous amount of data, it is every -- it is extremely important to be able to make sense of those data. And this is why we have also invested into bioinformatic solutions. And we do that across different sets of synergistic customers, as you can see here, from academia to molecular diagnostics. And as I said before, I still consider that molecular solution are probably the most dynamic life science and molecular diagnostic growth sectors. You can see here that we are targeting a total market of around $11 billion between life science and clinical diagnostic at quite a healthy growth of mid- to high single digit. We do that, trying always to take, and this is going to have -- something that we are going to reinforce in the coming years, to take #1 position wherever we invest. We are in a typical razor blade business with 88% of our activities being completely recurring revenues but generating different #1 position. Across life science, for example, as you can see here, #1 position in sample tech for microbiome, for liquid biopsy, for CRISPR; but also to molecular diagnostic, #1 position in companion diagnostics, I'm going to come back on that, QuantiFERON and our interferon gamma technologies and obviously, in bioinformatics as well. We do that, diversifying the risk. This global presence all over the world allow us obviously to take advantage of diverse opportunities or obviously balancing the risk coming from some geographies year after year. And I would like to insist here what we try to do and strive to do at QIAGEN is bring our manufacturing and R&D capabilities closer to customer, in the U.S., for example, with manufacturing and development sites but as well in China and other geographies in the world. So coming back to what happened in 2019. And I'm not going to follow, if you allow me, the order of that slide, but there is no doubt that some events in '19 did impact our growth outlook but did not prevent us from continuing to grow and, above all, despite some disappointing quarters, delivering on profitability. First event, obviously change of management around the third quarter of this year. Second, and it will probably be a significant year for us and a significant partnership, we drastically changed our strategy in next-generation sequencing with a partnership announced with Illumina and with the discontinuation of development of a proprietary platform at QIAGEN. At the same time, this investment from this proprietary platform is allowing us to free up resources to support future growth. And this is a key message for us in the future: expect QIAGEN which is going to streamline its activities and focus only where we can take leadership position, #1 or #2 in the market. We are a mid-cap company. If we cannot take #1 and #2 position, then we need to be out. And as you have seen, obviously as we announced at the end of November, we had indeed strategic discussion with third-party companies that were interested in acquiring our company. This was disclosed. But we decided after a long discussion and intense discussion in December together with our Board to stop those discussions and continue as a stand-alone company with one, obviously, caveat: continue that objective of streamlining your portfolio, focus, focus; and obviously, very strict financial discipline. So what does it mean? That after an eventful year, the business fundamentals of QIAGEN are still very strong. And we are going now to leverage on those business fundamentals to launch a set of new platforms that are clearly, in my mind, not only differentiated but opening market opportunities. The first one is around QuantiFERON. I'll come back to that. We are clearly #1 in this market of latent tuberculosis. But you know the problem of being #1 is always the same. You're #1, you become complacent or you become arrogant. And this is not what we did in QuantiFERON with automation, I will come back to that, and with the launch of a new solution by the end of next year. So we are continuing to open this market and protect our activities. In infectious diseases is where we are already present with what we call QIAsymphony RGQ. Especially in the Europe -- in the European market, we continue to expand the success of QIAsymphony with 2 solutions: one for the syndromic testing, QIAstat; and what for -- one for the PCR core lab with our partnership with the American-based company NeuMoDx. Very, very exciting step for QIAGEN this year, the second half of the year for our life science franchise, the launch of a very differentiated digital PCR solution, which is going to open a market, digital PCR only of more than $200 million but a potential market total of more than $4 billion; and complementary to our QIAsymphony for sample tech, the launch of the QIAcube Connect. So let's try to deep dive a bit in each of those segments. Sample technologies, first of all, where we are absolute #1, where we could be, again, complacent but no, where we continue to invest. You have to bear in mind that this is a revenue of more than $400 million alone without instrumentation, just on consumable going to sample tech. And we continue to innovate in very esoteric applications, such as liquid biopsy, CRISPR. And this is exemplified again by the success this year of our 2 flagship instrument. First of all, QIAsymphony, you have seen the press release last year where we are going to -- we have celebrated #2,500 of our system. It's an average placement of more than 200 QIAsymphony per year. QIAsymphony is still definitely the leading sample tech technology, the most versatile solution available on the market. And we now complement the market coverage of QIAsymphony with the launch of QIAcube Connect, the new generation of QIAcube, which is leveraging on the already 8,000 QIAcube placements in the world but obviously to extend that potential market. Digital PCR, as I said before, a tremendous challenge and exciting challenge for QIAGEN. Launch is confirmed so far for the second half of the year. And why do we believe that we have a play in this digital PCR? Because we come with this tremendously differentiated solution. It's not just about mimicking what some people are doing. And you can see here very explicitly that in time to result, in multiplexing capabilities, in easy-to-use platform, we are not going just to bring one platform at the end of 2020 but 3 platform at the same time, all of them being integrated. And this makes us believe that we will become an extremely serious player in that field. Coming back to QuantiFERON, as I said before, another growth driver of our company where we could have been complacent, and we know that some companies in immunoassays are thinking about trying to launch a latent TB test. We have developed a core lab solution for the last years to not only protect that $250 million franchise growing at double-digit for QIAGEN, not only protect it but conquer new opportunities. Protect how? Automating it, forcefully automating with the partnership back end with DiaSorin and front end with Tecan and Hamilton. The choice of DiaSorin is not just [ hazard ]. We partnered with DiaSorin because they are very good at selling esoteric assays, assays with very high medical value. Conquer, we go further. Latent TB is a key detection in the fight against tuberculosis, a killer in the world, and now endorsed by the WHO and other organism (sic) [ organizations ] as a key step in the fight against TB. But the latent TB test that we know today was not really suitable for emerging countries, what we call the high-burden, low-resources country, because you need a core lab to run the test. We partnered with an Australian company called Ellume. And at the second half of the year, you will see the launch of what we call QuantiFERON Access, a rapid test format with extremely good analytical performance to detect latent TB. Protect, conquer and expand with the development of new applications for our interferon gamma technology, and this is the partnership with DiaSorin, to tackle one of the main undiagnosed or poorly diagnosed medical issue, Lyme. And this will be the partnership between IgG, IgM from DiaSorin and our QuantiFERON product available in the market by 2021. In infectious disease, as I said before, where we are already present with our QIAsymphony RGQ, we extend the potential of the market. Our QIAsymphony RGQ is a system which is not integrated, and we all know that the market for infectious disease, PCR testing, is moving to a fully integrated system; sample in, result out. We moved QIAGEN into the syndromic market with QIAstat diagnostic, an $800 million market growing at double digit, at least 20% per year, once again, with a differentiated solution: quasi no sample prep, not only yes/no answer but also quantitative results. And we prolonged the success of our QIAsymphony RGQ system with the partnership with NeuMoDx, addressing a $2.5 billion market core lab PCR with our partnership with NeuMoDx, a U.S.-based company with a platform that is also once again, tremendously differentiated: much faster, an hour result for a DNA test, for example, against 3 hours for the competition but not at the expense of the analytical performance. And the feedback we have from our customers is the following: with NeuMoDx, with QIAGEN, you are bringing the simplicity of clinical chemistry to molecular testing. NGS. As you have seen end of 2019, the announcement of the partnership with Illumina. The way you have to read it is very simple. We are bringing together 2 leaders: one, QIAGEN, leaders in chemistry for NGS testing and leaders in companion diagnostic, again, as exemplified, if you have seen the press release issued 10 minutes ago, with our new deal for lung cancers with Amgen; and the leader in instrumentation for NGS, to bring new CDx, new companion diagnostics to the market. But in NGS, this is not only what QIAGEN is doing. We have been in NGS for much more many years around 3 other dimensions. Universal chemistry, chemistry that we are selling to any kind of system, it's platform agnostic. It can be Illumina. It can be Thermo Fisher. It can be BGI. Tremendous investment in what we call QIAGEN Digital Insights, the ability to make sense of those data, the ability to transform a result into a clinically relevant solution; and our proprietary solution, NGS GeneReader 1.1 dedicated to small, short oncology panel. This is a key investment for any company wanting to be successful in molecular biology in the future. If you want to make sense of the data that the genomic revolution is generating, you need to have a strong bioinformatics portfolio. 2019 has been -- has seen the rebranding of our bioinformatics portfolio into QIAGEN Digital Insight. And it's not just a fluffy marketing terminology. It is showing that thanks to all our acquisition, Ingenuity to N-of-One in 2019, we are now covering all the step of an NGS workflow, from discovery for life science to the analysis and the interpretation of data for the clinical diagnostic. I said before that we continue to pay an extreme attention to becoming leaner, more agile and financially efficient. This is proven and exemplified again by our tremendous investment in digitization of any kind of activity at QIAGEN, not just the back office. Digitization is in our DNA. 43% of our sales are already going, in '19, through a digital channel. And we are currently creating a kind of complete ecosystem to make the life of our customers much easier. And that means that with digitization, you can achieve a much more efficient cost of sales in your different activities. This is translated into a continuous improvement of our profitability. You can see here the adjusted operating margin at 21 -- 27%, I think. 27%, it's even in the low end. We should be a bit higher than that. And despite -- again, despite the hiccups in sales, Q2, Q3 of '19 that we need to obviously address and that we are addressing, the preservation and the improvement of our EPS, beating consensus and guidance in Q3. We will continue this very disciplined capital allocation. We took a commitment some time ago, and it was officially to bring back, basically, $400 million from 2000 -- of shares from 2020, 2023, and this is confirmed. As a conclusion and looking ahead to the coming years, we emerge from 2019, I think, with clear objective of focusing our portfolio where it can be #1 on the market with a very sound financial position. We strive into 2020 as a stand-alone company. But obviously, we remain open to interesting strategic opportunities. We have built a portfolio of solutions that are ideally leveraging each other from life science to molecular diagnostic, to bioinformatics. We are becoming probably the only company able to offer solution from PCR -- qPCR to DPCR and NGS, from life science to molecular diagnostics, from LDT to regulated assays, from small labs to core labs, from emerging countries to developed countries. And we continue to do that insisting, again, on a very strict financial discipline. Thank you very much.

Let's begin.

All right.

Okay.

You want me to ask the question again? Or you think you got it?

No. I think we got the question. So the question was about, can we say a bit more about the strategic discussion that we had in Q4. And so my name is Thierry. I'm the interim CEO of QIAGEN and the VP for Molecular Diagnostic. And I'm here with Roland Sackers, our CFO. So in a nutshell, so as you've seen, we disclosed end of -- towards the end of Q4 that we were indeed entering strategic discussions with partners or companies interested in acquiring QIAGEN. First of all, I mean this is a situation that can happen in every moment. I mean we are a publicly listed company, so that proves that, again, QIAGEN has built an interesting asset or portfolio for different players. And when we entered those deep discussion in December that were very intense, I would like to insist on several things. First of all, it was several discussions, not just one discussion. So there were several interested parties. Second, reviewing the different proposals, we had different criteria. It's obviously important to focus on shareholder values, but it's not the only criteria. We had also to focus on the potential certainty of the deal. I mean will the deal finally come through and in how many months or how long? I mean this is obviously posing the question of regulatory challenges. And there are also other, what I call, stakeholders that we need to take into account. Obviously, what is the future of our employees? What's the future of the brand QIAGEN and the solution that we have been building for so many years? Are they going to be promoted in such a potential deal? And reviewing all those options and, again, after very intense discussions, we had a Board meeting on the 24th of December. It's not a joke. And we took the decision to basically walk away from those discussions because, however interesting, they were not fulfilling all the criteria. And I'm sorry if some of you had to work on the 25th of December, but by regulation, we had obviously to communicate immediately to the market that we stopped those discussions. So we enter 2020 as a completely stand-alone company. This shows, again, the confidence of our Board in our portfolio and in our solution and in our team. But at the same time, as I said today, QIAGEN is business as usual. I mean we remain completely open to any opportunity as long as it makes sense for our brand, for what we have created, for our employees and for our shareholders. And that remains and will remain the motto of the coming months.

And was it more -- not to probe too deep on this, but was it more around the kind of the regulatory challenges at the time of close or...

I think as Thierry just said, it's a combination of factors we included in that. And of course, with different parties, there were different reasons to come to that conclusion. So I don't think it was like one which was addressing it was the same for all companies. It was really different from company to company.

How about just shifting then to CEO search? How's that?

Oh, that's a question that -- I'm never asked about that. So first of all, I must say, in a very humble way, it's not in my hands. We have a Board. And we said at the end of Q3 that we were starting a process for a permanent CEO. Translate permanent the way you want. And I think it's a very fair and healthy process for such a company, listed company of this size, to have a clear assessment of who could be the best profile to lead QIAGEN in the coming months and years. So the process continues and, as we said in Q3, should be ending at the latest I think by the end of semester 1.

I think what is important to add is, and as we said before, it's quite obvious that Board is looking for a candidate who, again, has a strong operational background. I think the Board, as Thierry said before, feels strong about the portfolio QIAGEN has on hand. So it's looking for somebody with rather strong execution criteria. So you shouldn't expect that the company gets turned upside down.

And as we kind of think about steps that you see you can take on in terms of turning the business around, I mean how much portfolio pruning [ you think there would be conversation [indiscernible]?

So Tycho, that's a good question. We -- clearly, Roland and I, we really insist on the fact that being a mid-cap company, we really have to focus where we invest. We cannot be everywhere. We need to really, as I said before, to invest where we believe that we have #1 to #2 positions. This has been exemplified by the decision on the GeneReader. So it's a significant expense that we are taking away obviously from QIAGEN that we can now reinvest into different opportunities. First of all, some of our growth opportunities, it would be stupid not to invest marketing, for example, into the launch of digital PCR. We need to continue to fuel the menu of new platforms, such as QIAstat or our, also Digital Insight bioinformatics portfolio, and some of it will also go to improve profitability. So the way you should see the coming months, it's not a question of new or not permanent or new or permanent CEO. This is not the point. At the moment, it's purely business as usual. We manage the company. There is a company. There is a team. There is an executive team. There is a CEO in place at the moment. There is an extraordinary tandem between Roland and myself, and there is a Board which is supporting us. So this is how we need to strive in the coming months. We will continue to prune, as you said, any activity that we don't see really relevant. You have seen last week, we, I mean dropped our NeXtal activities. We sold it to a third party. And we will continue to do so any time we believe that it's not really bringing to the overall value of the company.

So for some of the pipeline opportunities, including digital PCR, QIAstat and NeuMoDx, are you reaffirming that you're confident you can attain #1 or #2 market position in these new markets?

We believe that they are differentiated, as we tried to show, to take significant market share and leadership position. I mean some of the markets are different. Obviously, the core lab PCR is different from the DPCR at the moment. But we come with clear differentiation. When I see the feedback on the NeuMoDx launch in Europe, it's clearly very encouraging. Of course, we need to continue to execute on menu. If we don't have menu on the platform, okay. The same for QIAstat. QIAstat at end of 2019 is coming close to 1,000 instrument sold, 1,000 instruments sold with 2 panels but only 1 panel available in the U.S. so far, the respiratory panel. You have seen that we have just submitted the gastro panel to the FDA in December. The 1,000 system means, basically, a rhythm of roughly 200 systems per quarter, which is very close, not to say comparable, to our main competitors with a larger menu. So it says a lot on the quality on the system. So yes, we remain confident.

Kind of piggybacking a little bit on Tycho's question there. Just kind of help resolve the disconnect that we see in the market, the investment -- in the investment market and the Supervisory Board and its advisers. Before Q3 -- or as Q3 happened, the market was implying you all were a $25 to $30 NAV, low growth, impaired CEO search, China issues, lots of things to work through. The market now is perfect, but a logical suitor is rumored to come to you all. Stock price goes into the mid-40s, stock that has not been reached in 20 years. I understand that there's regulatory issues. Why not go further down the road with that, pursue it at all costs even if it takes more time, acknowledging that, that would catapult you into probably the 1 or 2 position in a lot of markets, which bring some of the market inquiries? But you'd mentioned value creation. And so when we think about value creation, what the market was thinking about pre the suitor coming and post it, the market's in between. What are -- what kind of confidence -- or what are the things that the market is missing from a value creation standpoint that you all and the Board think is worth going without a suitor in this case? And then secondly, with that, you had mentioned twice that you ended the discussion with folks or you walked away from the discussions. Well, does that mean that you are not open to further discussions?

No. So we said exactly the contrary. But thanks for the question. And we can take this one, the 2 of us, Roland and I. So first of all, from a market valuation, we really believe that entering a process where we would have no visibility on the feasibility and the execution of that potential partnership, from a regulatory standpoint, for example, that we could have had that kind of Damocles sword on QIAGEN for many months, not to say more than a year, which means you have no ability to do anything, no significant recruitment, you might have some of your people also leaving because not having confidence in the company, no ability to continue to clean your portfolio and polish your portfolio. I think from a value creation, that would have been the worst for QIAGEN. And a recent example in our business, announced at the end of the year proves that, basically, a deal that has been announced many months in advance is not necessarily going to go through, and we did not want to do that clearly. As long as we had uncertainties, we were not ready to take the risk because we have also a stand-alone business plan which is perfectly acceptable, especially since we changed a bit the tone of our communication, Roland and I, at the end of Q3, becoming much more realistically ambitious from a sales growth standpoint. That doesn't mean that we don't want ambition but realistically ambitious from a sales growth standpoint while at the same time delivering profitability. Would you -- you might want to add something here.

No, no, I think perfect. But I think also just in terms of comparison of stock price, I think it's fair to compare the stock price before all the announcements came out. So I think end of September, which -- the stock price was around $34. Today, I think we are, not sure exactly, let's say, $35. So I think it's more or less -- again, I think that is probably a fair level we are trading on right now. Again, that doesn't mean that we're happy based on what we have seen over the last couple of months. I think you also hear from us that we clearly are not -- again, it is clearly also a disappointment with the outcome of that process. But I think we are quite open to what we discussed also the last couple of months.

Are you able to say whether you had follow-on discussions?

I'm sorry?

Are you able to say whether you've reengaged with anybody?

Right. If it would be material, we would have disclosed it, and so no. But as we said during the presentation, we remain open as long as it makes sense strategically and from a value creation. And we translate value creation, again, it's shareholder values and also stakeholder values obviously, but also visibility of the feasibility of the deal.

Just to be precise, as long as there's no discussion and they're not leaked, you don't have to announce it.

You mentioned about [indiscernible]. You mentioned, yes, you were going to launch 3 platforms. Can you elaborate a bit more on the 3 platforms, please?

Yes, you have -- I mean I could because you have 3 different kind of throughput. But our Head of Life Sciences who is the great master in this launch is here. So Thomas, if you want to elaborate on the [indiscernible]...

It's a little bit short. Yes. Hello, everyone. Thomas Schweins is my name. Yes, we will launch a total of 4 platforms. It's a 4-play platform, an 8-play platform and a 1-play platform. The 1-play platform comes at a range of about USD 30,000 price. So it's competitive also with QPCR. So we will not only enter here the digital PCR market against the big incumbent, but we will also be, hopefully, able to convert a lot of customers in the QPCR field. We are very excited about this. We launched this together with about 1 million predesigned in silico assays and about 200 wet lab-tested assays, so this will be a complete portfolio. We believe it will be sometime launched around mid of the year.

So to your question, so you can address different kind of throughput of patients with 3 platform. And a common, let's say, trait of those platforms is that it's always one box. You see, they are fully integrated as we presented today.

So what's going to be your customer segments you are playing to? Is it biopharma? Is it...

So -- yes, we -- so we consider 2 targets: academia target but also pharma. You have a lot of very interesting applications that are immediately jumping to our minds. Obviously, it's copy number variation, quantification or -- of DNA or RNA. It's detection of very rare mutations. So this is going to be our play. But again, what we insisted today, some people sometimes say yes, but DPCR, it's a $200 million market. This is not $200 million market that we are targeting. We target the old, basically, DPCR, QPCR and end point market, and this is a $4 billion playground. Now does it mean that we are going to cannibalize our offer? I don't think so. As much as I don't believe that NGS necessarily cannibalize PCR, I believe that some pharma, academia will basically add DPCR to their portfolio for some specific needs, and we will be there to fulfill those needs.

So you mentioned you'll go clinical. Are there any plans to [ port ] the application you'll be targeting first?

Probably, it's going to probably be essentially oncology at the beginning. But again, we don't want to take false expectation here. The play at the beginning is fully life science. We believe that there will be, especially from an LDT standpoint, some potential in clinical applications as well, but we want to go step by step. And we will also analyze deeply if we make this platform an IVD-accepted platform as well, but this is coming in the coming years.

My name is Moshe Alafi. I am the one who started QIAGEN, who started Biogen, Amgen and 60 other companies. I want to congratulate you on your talk. It was very good. But I really wanted to ask one -- a couple of questions. What is the difference between your talk and Peer if he would have talked? Peer built the company up to here. Everything you say was done by him. What is the crime that you -- a coup was -- pushed him out of the company. A lot of shareholders are mad. I am upset as to what did he do. What's the crime that you changed? And you -- and what are you going to do different than he was doing? Zero. It was all his vision. And everything you have talked in this are what Peer would have talked. So 2 questions. What was this, you had a coup? And what are you going to do different now?

Moshe, as you know, I've worked with Peer for the last 20 years. And of course, there was nothing because as you -- as we all know, he stepped down early October and left QIAGEN. And of course, all the achievements over the last couple of years were clearly driven by Peer and the whole team. So I would say the overall team is clearly very much committed to what was started. And again, as we just talked about, we feel strong about the overall portfolio. I think the change, what happened in parallel, and as we all know, Peer was clearly part of that as well, is we signed a significant deal with Illumina around NGS. And that is clearly, I would say, a plus for QIAGEN because instead of building our own next-generation sequencing platform, I think we have now a strong combination of, I would say, a beautiful sequencer company plus a company which has outstanding consumers also for NGS applications. I think that is probably the single biggest change we have seen today. What we're doing now going forward is, of course, focusing on our strengths. I think we feel very good about our growth drivers. Thierry was talking about digital PCR, about QIAstat-Dx, about bioinformatics and, going forward, hopefully, also on NeuMoDx on a global basis. So there's a lot of execution required. And therefore, I think we all respect Peer's decision and looking for another step in life.

But he executed for 27 years. Are you're going to execute better?

Nobody is saying that. Again, we have to accept his decision. There's no question about that. And we hope, if we can be as good as he...

I think although we don't understand the technology, we don't understand -- they'll screw up the company. Now you will have no choice but to sell it. Are you going to do anything different?

I think it's more than different. It's -- and I agree with you that the legacy obviously of Peer is tremendously important, and you cannot lead a company as a CEO for 15 years and be a member of the company for 23 years without leaving a significant legacy. I think the only thing, because we are a mid-cap company, is to try to make sure that we streamline the portfolio to make sure that we continue to push where we can grow fast and without impacting the profitability. I think if I see a real inflection, it's here. And it's not a criticism because what was done in the past was perfectly done. Again, it's just trying to be more realistic of what a mid-cap can achieve on its own, trying to bring life science, molecular capacity -- capabilities, I'm sorry, and bioinformatics capabilities. And so we necessarily have to streamline the portfolios. That's the only inflection that we've...

That was Peer's vision. That's what he was going to do.

But then...

You're not doing anything different.

Yes.

What do you see as the kind of the growth profile of the business today based on the current portfolio, long term?

So you remember, Tycho, that when we issued the guidance for Q4, we started with that approach of realistically ambitious because we need to acknowledge that we missed 2 quarters last year. So we need to address the challenges that led us to that failure because it was a failure. And so the market immediately came to us and said, okay, but does it mean that in 2020 you are going to bounce back immediately towards more growth? I think some of the challenge of Q3 are currently addressed. We mentioned China. We believe that China will take probably 2 quarters or until Q2 to be completely clean. We still believe in that market. I think it's a key market to be in. Some of the operational allocation of portfolios, such as the investment into the GeneReader platform, they are currently taking place. So the investment into other growth such as DPCR and so on, we need to basically do it as we speak. So we say that we would probably be in line with what we will achieve in Q4 for our guidance. We are not giving you a guidance as of today because there is something which is extremely important to me: I don't want the team to be chasing the rainbow in 2020 from a sales top line standpoint. And I would always prefer to be in a situation where we issue guidance, and if we deliver because that's the point, delivering, then we might be in a position of raising the guidance during the year, the second half, for example, rather than doing the contrary. So that's the vision. So I feel that QIAGEN has at least the potential to grow at the market growth of molecular. So it's easy to build the models. And I also stick to the numbers that we issued when we did our last Investor Day in June in New York. Because when you look at how the core portfolio, QuantiFERON, QIAsymphony, Digital Insight, QIAcube Connect, is behaving at the moment, is performing and when you look at the added value of our additional investment, I strongly stick to the fact that high single digit is achievable for QIAGEN in the medium term. It's a matter of execution, if we, again, execute and focus on only those projects, and the rest, we drop it.

Even though you divested your [indiscernible]

How do we reconcile your conservatism for 2020, these numbers not to -- in search of rainbows. Yet next sentence, you're reiterating the idea that the company can grow high single digits. You're being conservative optically, but it's clear in your mind when you think after 2020, the growth rate is essentially double than what you're likely to guide.

So no because you translated that into saying 2021, which I didn't say. But what I say is a ramp-up, is a ramp-up. But there is a logic behind that. If you go, for example, from now -- just to give you a couple of examples. If you go from 2 panels on QIAstat now, only one approved in the U.S., which is the main market, for example, for syndromic. In 2001 -- 2021, 2022, say, 4 panels and more panels approved in the U.S., you change already the game already. If you have a launch of a system like DPCR second half of the year, so it's not going to be very material in 2020, but then you have a full year in 2021 and another full year capitalizing on your installed base for consumption of consumables in 2020, makes sense. If you see QIAsymphony -- if you see, I'm sorry, QuantiFERON, we just had the FDA approval with the LIAISON QuantiFERON with DiaSorin. And then we will have access. So you add up points of growth that are material. I'm not just making them up, but I never said that suddenly in 2021, we would double the growth expectation of 2020. I just said we want to deliver step by step. Any time we would be in the position to raise something that we would have issued before, we will do it. But I want to deliver.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Our time has come to a close.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.