Revvity, Inc. (RVTY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

March 5, 2024

New York Stock Exchange US Health Care conference_presentation 32 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#1

Good morning, everyone. I'm Andrew Cooper, the Life Science Tools and Diagnostics analyst here at Raymond James. Happy to be joined by the team from Revvity. We're going to do a little bit of presentation and then have some fireside chat as well. So with that, I'm going to pass it right over to Max, Chief Financial Officer and take it away.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#2

Thanks, Andrew. And I appreciate you having us here. And for those of us that haven't followed Revvity as closely over the past year, there's been a ton of change that has happened. And so hopefully, today, we'll spend the next 10 minutes kind of giving you a high-level overview of that transformation and why we're so excited about the future of our company. I'd encourage you to read our safe harbor statement. You can also find additional disclosures on our website for any forward-looking statements that we'll make for today. So a question of what is Revvity? So I would say over the past handful of years, again, as I mentioned, there's been a ton of transformation at the company. So within those handful of years, we've completed more than 10 acquisitions. And then lastly, we divested 30% of our company, which represented our analytical instrumentation and services business. And as a result of that divestiture, we also divested the PerkinElmer name, which is maybe some of you in the room might have heard. But so we divested that with our legacy analytical business. And as a result of that transformation, we really took the opportunity to have a brand name that we felt more appropriately reflected our new company culture and objectives as an overall company, really focused on how we can help continue to revolutionize human health across the globe. So when you look at our company, we're roughly $3 billion in revenue, and we are split roughly evenly between our preclinical Life Sciences business and our Clinical Diagnostics business. It's not just that we're also in attractive end markets, but it's also an attractive product mix. It's 80% of our portfolio is what we call reoccurring in nature. So reagents, services and our software business. So if we double-click into our Life Sciences business, again, it's roughly 50% of the portfolio. Within our Life Sciences business of roughly $1.3 billion, about half of that is reagents. About another 25% of it is our instrumentation business, and then we have roughly a $200 million software business. I would say more holistically for our Life Sciences business. We are positioned predominantly in preclinical research and development. We do not sell any routine or custom -- or excuse me, routine or commodity-type instrumentation or consumables such as plastic tips, plastics wear. We sell highly specialized reagents, instrumentation in software, predominantly focused in the preclinical research and development areas with our pharma biotech customers. If we look at our Diagnostics segment, again, also roughly $1.4 billion. The breakup of our Diagnostics business is majority in our immunodiagnostics business, which is autoimmune and allergy testing as well as latent TB. Second biggest piece of our portfolio is our reproductive health business in both neo and prenatal screening. And then we have a sample prep for sequencing business that's roughly about $250 million in revenue. I think the theme you'll notice with our Diagnostics business, again, is intentionally differentiated. We do not play in general areas such as respiratory diseases. We are in highly specialized areas of diagnostics that have underlying faster growth rates as well as really unmet clinical needs around the globe. I think our areas of diagnostics, we've got a ton of opportunity of continued geographic and menu expansion as well as leveraging our internal innovation to expand into new disease areas. So within revenue, I think you might have already heard, I've mentioned the word differentiated a handful of times, but that differentiation is very intentional. And there's really 3 pillars that we focus on from a differentiation standpoint that we believe leads to differentiated financial performance through various macroeconomic cycles. Those pillars of differentiation on our approach with our customers and moving from more than just a supplier but a true partner of choice for our customers. It's with our products, as I've touched on, highly innovative products, high mix of reoccurring revenue and it's with our positioning in the market. Again, we do not play in the general or more commoditized areas of Life Sciences and Diagnostics. We are in higher underlying faster growth end markets within those 2 industries. So from an approach perspective, again, as I mentioned, our vision is that we are much more a partner to our pharma biotech customers in trying to solve the greatest challenges and unmet needs. And the way we are able to do that is really sort of bridging the gap between our Life Sciences and Diagnostics businesses. And so if you think about it from a pharma biotech perspective, we can help them all the way through their preclinical and discovery research work in getting the therapy to the clinical trials. Once it is in the clinical trial phase, we are able to leverage our global genomics lab network. We have a genomics lab in every major continent around the world to help them identify patients for their clinical trials and increase their chance of success. And then we're able to leverage our internal innovation around our diagnostics business and rare disease assay development to help them with the companion diagnostics to bring patients on board as well as monitoring them for their therapeutic. This is a true differentiator for us and one we are extremely excited about going forward, and I think it really shows the power of the Revvity store and how we can be a partner to our customers. From a product standpoint, again, I've touched about it a little bit, but I think the simplest way to think about our portfolio is between our instrumentation, our reagents, and assays, and then our software business. And again, across each one of those, we do not sell commodity products. That's what we divested when we sold our Analytical and Services business. So starting from an instrumentation standpoint, we no longer have our chromatography, mass spec or spectroscopy systems, that's what we divested. We are left with truly unique and customized high-tech life sciences instrumentation that are purchased to solve specific problems as opposed to adding additional capacity to either their research or their manufacturing lines. From a reagents and assay standpoint, both across our life sciences and diagnostics. Again, these are not common pieces of plastics like tips or plasticwares or things that you just need to run your lab on a day-to-day basis. These are intentional, highly customized, highly scientific assays and reagents that are used to solve specific problems. And then our software business, again, roughly $200 million of our portfolio, probably one of the areas that's most appreciated, I think, of the Revvity portfolio, this software is not tied to our instrumentation. This software is actually used in every preclinical lab for the scientists every day in doing their preclinical research. It acts much more as an ERP for the scientists and is really dissented from our installed base from an instrumentation standpoint. And the third area of differentiation is really around our positioning. As I've mentioned, we are in intentional areas and end markets that we believe are higher growing end markets. One way to look at this in our portfolio is 60% of our portfolio made up of our Life Sciences reagents, immunodiagnostics and software, we believe should be growing double digits. Those areas of business also comes with higher operating margins. So as we continue to grow those business, there's natural mix and accretion to our overall portfolio before we even start working on a lot of the operational initiatives that we have in front of us as we bring the whole recent acquisitions into the broader portfolio. Then we have our complementary portfolios of our platforms business across Life Sciences and our sample prep businesses as well as our reproductive health business. These businesses might not be as fast growing, however, they are critical components to our overall strategy, from a financial profile perspective, with strong cash flows and operating margins, but also from a strategy standpoint in the sense of our internal innovation and our reproductive health business is one of the best rare disease assay development teams we have, but also with our customers. If we do not have the sample prep in our Life Sciences instrumentation, we are really not fulfilling their full needs that they need from a preclinical research and discovery standpoint. I'll say the last piece on this one is I mentioned the strategic partnerships. For us, long term, it's something that we remain incredibly excited about. But as we think about our general growth algorithm, it's not something we've contemplated, and it's going to be additional upside to overall market performance for us as a company. So we recently, at the beginning of this year, launched our new long-range plan for 2025 and beyond. And the purpose of this long-range plan is really to give a flavor for what we can accomplish through varying macroeconomic cycles. And for us, we believe that we should be growing a couple of hundred basis points above market growth rate throughout that long-term growth plan. We believe that the long-term growth rate for Life Science diagnostics industry is mid-single digits. And so that kind of leads you to a 6% to 8% long-term organic growth. I think if you look at 2023, that was a perfect proof point for us. We finished 2023 on a 2% non-COVID organic growth basis. The overall industry was probably down low single digits. So that's at least a 200 basis point spread, if not more. As we look at the operating margin expansion, I talked about it that we should get some additional benefit just where our growth is coming from, but we are also just in the early innings of all the acquisitions and integrations that we need to do, and we have a long runway, I think, from a margin perspective. So we've pegged it at about 75 basis points of OMX per year. If growth is better, it would provide additional tailwind from a margin standpoint. And on the flip side, if growth rate in a specific year is a little bit less that would give us left room from an OMX standpoint, but we believe over the long term, we still have a long runway to go to sort of get to our goal of mid-30s operating margin. This all leads to double-digit EPS for us as an organization. And I think for us, we really believe that this financial profile is going to be differentiated over time. So as we move to 2024, as I mentioned, a lot has been going on within the company over the past couple of years. And I think we've proven the ability to execute through that transformation that is probably a decade worth of transformation stuffed into 4 or 5 years. And so for us, we're going to continue to execute across our initiatives throughout the year of 2024. Our big focus areas are going to be on innovation. Again, that's a critical pillar for us and what we want to accomplish in solving our customers' greatest problems. It's going to be another big area of a year of efficiency for us. Again, as I mentioned, we're still only in the early innings from really bringing the whole portfolio together. And then lastly, from an investment or capital allocation standpoint, we are in a very favorable position from a balance sheet perspective right now. We're sort of hovering around low 2sx net debt to leverage for us. We're going to continue to be acquisitive over the long term. And we've got the capital to do so. We also have a bunch of areas now internally that we are incredibly excited about, whether that's the recent launch of our new global e-commerce platform. We've talked publicly also about our investment into GMP reagents. So I'm happy to talk more about in the Q&A. But from our standpoint, we are in a -- still in a cycle an opportunity of strong investment over the next couple of years. So in closing, hopefully, I know there's a quick rundown here. But hopefully, in the 10 minutes, you've heard sort of the key messages of a ton of transformation in the company, we're incredibly excited about the execution we've been able to do in a short period of time, and we believe we're just sort of scratching the surface of where we can go as a company. So with that, Andrew, I don't know if you want to open it up for Q&A.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#3

Perfect. Feel free to stay at the podium if you want to come over here.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#4

I'll come join you.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#5

Maybe first, just want to start with a high-level view. -- like you mentioned, back in January, adjusted the -- or I shouldn't say adjusted, put out a long-term plan like you laid out. Previously, you had a midterm plan, it was 10-plus percent top line. Maybe just help bridge the gap here on what assumptions changed or kind of philosophically the difference between that prior sort of multiyear, but not quite in perpetuity sort of outlook.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#6

Yes. I would say the biggest change for us really came down to the underlying market growth rate assumptions, particularly in the life sciences market. I think the thesis that we should be growing above market rate was true in the MRP. It's true in the LRP. I think for us, it really took a little bit more of a reflection of what is a true longer-term growth rate for the Life Sciences industry when we had put that MRP out there, it was during the heightened period of the pharma biotech cycle from 2020 to 2022. And there could have been a little bit of, I would say, rose colored there in terms of a long-term growth rate. So I think for us, it was really just adjusting some of the underlying growth rates from the Life Science market perspective.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#7

Okay. Perfect. And the other thing I think is a big challenge for tools investors and sort of the market as we think about it is. We think of portfolios as being very similar when we say tools. And the reality is that's not the case. You definitely touched on some of those dynamics already, but when we think about that Life Sciences portfolio for you guys because you think Diagnostics is a little kind of easier to understand. But what parts of that business do you think are maybe most differentiated? And then maybe if it's a different answer, what parts do you think are most misunderstood when you talk to investors about who Revvity is?

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#8

Yes. So I would say, again, I think across our entire Life Sciences portfolio, each one of them, what I would say is "different". If you look at the instrument side of things, again, we divested, I would say, a lot of the more commodity or common type instrumentation, where we really focus from an instrumentation standpoint around our preclinical imaging, high content screening as well as sort of our cell imaging accounting. Those are instrumentation that are purchased for a specific workflow. It's not for additional capacity. It doesn't have a general replacement style. It's really designed to meet new areas of science. I think on the reagent side, if you look at some of our biggest competitors, a big differentiation there for us is: one, I think we're the leader from a technology and innovation standpoint; but two, we are not trying to be the broad Amazon of reagents and OEM-ing everything. I think for us, we manufacture in-house. We have next-day delivery timelines. So for us, I think it's really a differentiation around our approach with our customers in the portfolio we have. And then the third piece, which is probably the most underappreciated, I think, in our entire portfolio is our $200 million software business.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#9

Okay. Perfect. And we're going to get into software in a minute. But maybe first, thinking about the piece that is instrumentation and you touched on it a little bit. But when we think about the end market and what's happened over the last 12 months and kind of the coming months and years ahead, how much of that business is we need to see some capacity expansion versus, to your point, replacement cycle, maybe of more, let's just call it, more mature adoption of a particular product. And so maybe just remind us, I guess, first at a high level, the instrumentation mix and then how you think about that macro piece impacting different parts of that part of the portfolio.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#10

Yes. So from an instrumentation standpoint, it's roughly 25% to 30% of overall Life Sciences business. I would say the way we generally think about the demand cycle there, again, it's just a really stay -- I would say, a little bit more stable environment from a preclinical research and development budgetary standpoint. I think what we've seen really over the past 9 to 12 months, it's been extremely choppy. There are some customers that are still, I would say, robustly investing from a preclinical R&D perspective, and there's others that have definitely, I think, been more budget conscious, that's a dynamic we really kind of expect to play out through 2024 based on our guidance. But I think long term, again, it's why we position ourselves to be focused preclinically is because that's the beginning of their innovation funnel for our pharma biotech customers. They can't keep that contained or compressed for too long. It's just going to lead to further revenue and growth challenges for them down the road. So it's why we positioned that portfolio today. We think we're more insulated from the macro concerns, but it definitely doesn't mean we're immune to them.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#11

Maybe shifting into that 2024 outlook, 1% to 3% organic, obviously, a little bit lower than the LRP you talked about, but in a time with a really noisy end market. So when you think about kind of fine-tuning that internal model, maybe give us a sense for where there is the most disruption, right? Is it the million-dollar high-content screening instrument? Is it somewhere else? Just how do we think about that high end versus some of the things that are a little bit lower dollar spend even if differentiated, where that disruption has shown up.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#12

Yes. So I mean I think if you look at maybe 2023 results in the Life Sciences business, our instrumentation business was down 6%, I think, in 2023. So obviously, that was hit by some of the macro backdrop. I think if you look at our reagents, our reagents grew mid-single digits in 2023. So that's a little bit short of what we've just kind of outlined from the LRP, but clearly, that business is more insulated, and that is the largest piece of our Life Sciences business. And I think really partially why you saw, I would say, a delineation between our results and the broader peer group.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#13

Perfect. And then kind of sticking with that macro piece a little bit, it feels like we've seen some green shoots, right? We've seen some IPOs. We've seen some signs of hope for some of those players, but maybe just remind folks, the amount of sort of preclinical pre-revenue -- I shouldn't say preclinical, pre-revenue type end customers for you. And to me, it feels like the bigger surprise was, frankly, that more mature customers also pulled back on their spend. So what have conversations been like as you think about, again, kind of seeing some of these green shoots as you talk to these customers?

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#14

Sure. So I'm just laughing because green shoot seems to be like the ...

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#15

It's popular word, yes.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#16

Popular word and buzz word of the day here. But I would say just again, more broadly, as we look at the exposure we have from a Life Sciences standpoint. So about 75% of our Life Sciences revenue is tied to pharma biotech. The other 25% is academic and government. Within the 75% of pharma biotech, 15% of that revenue is tied to pre-revenue sort of biotech pharma customers. So that would only be 5% of total company revenues. So within that 15%, yes, we were definitely impacted, I would say, in 2023 for the pre-revenue customers. But again, they were down sort of mid-20s, 15% or 5% of the overall portfolio. I mean it was a 1% OG headwind for us in 2023, which is definitely not the biggest piece. The majority of our pharma biotech exposure, 85% of it is tied to those larger, more medium-sized customers. Obviously, there was a lot of headwinds there for 2023, and that's where we felt more of the brunt of the impact.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#17

Perfect. And maybe shifting a little bit to what I look at as some of the upside kickers for the portfolio that I think you've largely pulled out from the expectations you set. So when I think about Horizon, I think about SIRION and things like that. Maybe just first touch quickly on what some of those are for folks that are a little bit newer and how they got into the portfolio and how they fit.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#18

Yes. And again, maybe just tying this into the broader transformation piece. In 2019, when we were looking at our Life Sciences business, we were predominantly small molecule-focused. We knew the future of pharma was going into more large molecule and biologics. And so for us, we had to go and acquire that inorganically. There was really, I would say, 3 big acquisitions from an organic standpoint that really fit the needs that we need to get to from a biologic standpoint. It was BioLegend, right, around their content development with antibodies. It was Horizon, which does a lot of content development, but also does has a licensing portfolio around base editing, which we signed the first deal last year with AstraZeneca. And then the third one you mentioned was SIRION, and so SIRION does viral vector. So basically the delivery method for biologics. They also leverage more of a licensing and technology type business model. So I would say from that standpoint, for us, it is an area of extreme excitement. I think it's an area that's also a little bit lumpier. And so from that standpoint, we did pull it out of the LRP and basically assume 0% growth. It doesn't mean it's not a big strategic focus for us. It's something that we do think can add meaningful upside to the long term.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#19

I feel like as a CFO, it's probably exactly the thing that gets you excited. So maybe just a little bit of flavor for, what is a successful licensing deal or a deal look like for SIRION or Horizon in terms of -- look, if you're tied into a blockbuster drug, what can that look like? How incremental can it be above and beyond, let's call it, 6% to 8% in a given year?

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#20

Yes. And I think everyone hates this answer, but the reality is from like a competitive advantage standpoint, we probably won't divulge what we're getting at in terms of royalty rate or even really potential of what they could be, just given where they are in the clinical stage pipeline perspective. But I would just say maybe stepping back more broadly on how it works, right? So generally, these partnerships are licensing agreements that we'll sign. Essentially, what happens is there's a large sort of upfront payment for the technology itself. And then as it goes through various stages of clinical trials and then ultimately to commercialization, you'll get milestone payments. And then once it becomes commercialized, you'll get a royalty rate off of that. And so right now, we've probably signed a little bit more than a dozen of these agreements. They're through various stages right now, and we actually did have our first one approved by the FDA for commercialization late last year.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#21

And from a margin perspective, these are particularly accretive, correct in terms of ...

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#22

They definitely don't hurt.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#23

I'll leave that there then. Shifting gears, I did want to talk about the reagents business. One thing that kind of catches my eye right, and a lot's happened on the macro I think you talked about it being a $700 million business when you bought BioLegend and combined it with what you already had. We're still sort of around there. Again, a lot of macro. But when we think about the synergy capture and things like that. Has that disruption had an impact on what those businesses have been able to look like over the, now, call it, couple of years that since you've acquired BioLegend.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#24

No, I don't think I would say there was -- the biggest disruptor is obviously the market. I think we remain incredibly enthusiastic about the BioLegend acquisition. I think we've publicly talked about the fact that we're not really integrating BioLegend into Revvity. We are taking our legacy reagents business in giving more to BioLegend just from the sense that honestly, we think they're the best at what they do, whether that's around innovation, customer service, the next-day delivery. So we are empowering them with more responsibility. And so from that standpoint, I don't -- I think the disruption has probably been a good thing in terms of the synergies and really just scratching the surface of what we can do.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#25

Helpful. And one thing I think you mentioned it in the prepared remarks as well, but the move a little bit downstream in the GMP, maybe just give a little bit of sense for maybe the spend included and how you think about that. And you've also come out and said, "Hey, we don't think we're going to go aggressively into CGMP and all the way downstream." So a little bit of flavor for how you think about those decisions and where it makes sense to go or to not go?

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#26

Sure. So from a GMP perspective, this actually really started from our customers. And so from today how it works is essentially a customer will use our antibody or content that we've created for them. It will go through the preclinical research. But then once it gets to the clinical trial, we essentially bab out and we leave money on the table. And so then our customers have to call somebody else to make our antibody GMP grade. And so the customers are like, "Hey, this is killing us from a time perspective and the delay -- we'd really rather have you just make the GMP content upfront that we can buy from you, and we'll pay you the higher price for it." So for us, the strategy here is it's actually a relatively low dollar investment. It's not the same thing as building out a commercial grade manufacturing site. And so from that stance, it's relatively low investment. We should really start to see some, I would say, meaningful results in early 2026. And so we'll continue to listen to the customers. If there's enough volume for us to do the CGMP, we're not going to say no. But it's going to take, I would say, a strong stable so that we don't overbuild capacity and hope it comes.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#27

Perfect. And kind of leads into one software question I wanted to ask about, I think about a month ago, you announced kind of the broader move into clinical there with signals clinical. So maybe a month in, can you give a sense for how that's been received and how it ties into pushing into GMP and moving a little bit kind of downstream with those customers who are already there using your products, but maybe you have some other applications that you can help with.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#28

Yes. Maybe just start again, a little bit of a -- just sort of refresh 2 on the Signals business. So it's roughly $200 million software business. Again, we think it's the most underappreciated asset of the portfolio. It's got nearly 40% operating margins. We expect it to continue growing in the double digits. I think that business still has a ton of runway. And that business, really, it's innovation comes from its customers. So today, our software is actually in 19 of the 20 top pharma biotech accounts. So what we have every year is basically a customer conference where we come in and we discuss where they need our software to go to better fit their needs. A couple of them we've talked about. One was getting a little bit further downstream and clinical, which came from our customers. So the feedback is really just giving them what they've asked for. But there's also areas in terms of our preclinical research workflows are more designed for small molecule. They're begging for the same software offering for large molecule and biologics. And so that will be another product refresh we really launch that we'll have as well in the short term. And so that is the, I would say, the beauty of that business is we're so ingrained with the top customers. They're our best source of innovation, and we've got the internal capabilities to meet their needs.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#29

Perfect. I want to move into Diagnostics. I spent more time on the Life Science side than I maybe intended. So maybe just as a start, you think about 2023, there was a lot going on the diagnostics side as well. And as we look into '24, so maybe just level set some of the puts and takes there in terms of sort of immunodiagnostics in China recovery, some of the puts and takes kind of across the business.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#30

Yes. So I would say from a diagnostic standpoint, look, we do have a little bit of a lower outlook in '24 than we achieved in '23. '23, we are closer to mid-single digits growth from a Diagnostic standpoint and in '24, we have that going down to low single digits. I would say if you look at sort of the 3 pieces we talk about, immunodiagnostics, reproductive health and sort of our sample prep or applied genomics business. Starting with the last one. There's no real change, I would say, year-over-year from a sample prep perspective. Obviously, the end market disruption with the Life Sciences side, they're still going through a lot of what happened from, I would say, the overpurchasing with COVID in terms of the clinical labs. We think that will have similar results year-over-year and sort of be down high single digits. From a reproductive health standpoint, I would say similar expected outcomes year-over-year. Newborn screening last year actually grew double digits. Birth rates declined globally sort of down mid-single digits. So the fact that we had that much spread was encouraging to see. We still expect there to be a spread in 2024, although it will be maybe off tougher comps. So we have our newborn screening, I would say, decelerating a little bit year-over-year. And then on the immunodiagnostic side, we grew mid-teens in immunodiagnostics in 2023. That was a really strong performance. We are really not anticipating it to be that robust year-over-year. We're kind of looking at a multiyear stack. So immunodiagnostics is high single digits, but it doesn't mean we're not extremely excited about the portfolio. It's just I mean that had some sizable comps year-over-year.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#31

Certainly a tougher comp when you think about some of the kind of opening up in some regions post COVID. Maybe just one, you touched on reproductive health and the birth rate. How do we think about your algorithm there? You have 2% to 4% on the long-term plan. In terms of new product introduction versus maybe a little bit of price versus volume from adoption of more testing in general. What's that algorithm sort of look like there?

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#32

Yes. So to your point, we did have in the long-range plan, 2% to 4% growth for our reproductive health business. That assumes sort of a similar global birth rate of down mid-single digits. So there's quite a spread there. And that spread is really driven, I would say, by 2 factors. One is menu expansion, both in getting states to adopt more from a testing panel perspective. But then the second, we continue to come out with new disease areas to test for. And then the second big lever is really our geographic expansion. There's still 100 million babies born per year that get 0 testing. So there is a ton of opportunity there, and it's a portfolio we remain excited about it. In fact, birth rates finally decide to turn positive. That just further tailwind for us. But I think for LRP, we wanted to assume a more tougher environment from a birth rate perspective.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#33

Perfect. And running a little on time here, so maybe skipping a couple of the Diagnostics ones. I wanted to ask to move to the P&L. As we think about kind of the '24 guide, you talked about some discretionary spend coming back into the system, some things that you had pulled out in '23, I think appropriately so, but maybe just size some of those dynamics, you've got sort of flattish margins this year ,size some of those dynamics and put it in context of maybe the 75 bps you talk about in the LRP.

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#34

Yes. So I would say a couple of things on the margin front. One, 2023 was actually a really strong year from a strong margin standpoint. If you take out COVID from 2022, we expanded operating margins by about 130 basis points between 2022 and 2023 and a 2% growth year. I think that's relatively strong results. We kind of accelerated some of the standard cost actions we needed to take. I would say the second piece from a margin standpoint that you're kind of alluding to for '24 and specific is. We took out about $80 million of cost in 2023. I would say half of that was kind of structural and half of that was more variable or a tightening of the belt. And I think what you'll see play out in '24 is half of that cost is more or less going to come back. And then you have the full annualization of the rest of the -- that we talked about to sort of maintain flat margins year-over-year.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#35

Perfect. And we're at the end, but I always like to kind of ask one more time. What is your message, if you could leave one more message to investors before we stop here? Or maybe what you think is most underappreciated as we think about the Revvity story today?

Maxwell Krakowiak

executive
#36

Look, I mean I think we're a new company, right? I think a lot has changed over the past 4 or 5 years. I think we're going to continue to come out and educate everyone why we are so different in a lot of the factors that I mentioned. And we're really just scratching the surface. I mean we're a company that just launched roughly $3 billion in size, upper tier margin rates. I think we're going to have a differentiated financial profile going forward. And so I think this is an extreme amount of excitement for what's ahead of us in Revvity.

Andrew Cooper

analyst
#37

Perfect. We'll head down to Amarante 2 for a breakout. Thank you so much, Max, and we'll see you guys downstairs. Thanks.

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