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

Okay. Thank you. We're going to kick it off here. I'm Tycho Peterson from the life science team. Pleased to have Revvity with us. Welcome, Max. .

Maybe we can jump in right with 3Q and just talk a little bit about some of the gives and takes in the quarter. Diagnostics looked a little bit better, I think. Maybe start by unpacking what you saw and any kind of real surprises relative to expectations?

Yes. Sure. So for the third quarter, and I'm assuming you're talking about from a revenue standpoint, look, things mostly, I would say, played out as anticipated. So we finished the quarter with 1% organic growth. Life Sciences came in at roughly flat and Diagnostics grew in the low single digits. I think when you look at some of the moving pieces you alluded to on the Life Sciences side, I would say reagents were a little bit weaker than what we had anticipated from a run rate perspective heading into the quarter, but that was offset by strength in both instrumentation as well as our software business, which again led to Life Sciences being flat overall. And then from a Diagnostic standpoint, the low single-digit growth was a little bit better than what we had anticipated, really driven by the strength in newborn screening. Immunodiagnostics business played out as anticipated, given some of the China headwinds, which I'm sure we'll get into later here.

And maybe we could just unpack on the reagent side, maybe what you've seen year-to-date in the 2 end markets, academic and biopharma and maybe just touch on the relative exposure to each of those for reagents?

Yes, sure. Maybe just answering the exposure one first. So for our reagents business, roughly $750 million of revenue. About 2/3 of that portfolio is pharma biotech and 1/3 is academic and government. I think when you look at the performance year-to-date, we've got about low single-digit growth year-to-date overall for the reagents business. Pharma has done a little bit better than that. Academic and government has been a little worse, down maybe low single digits so far year-to-date. And so I think the third quarter trends were again relatively consistent with what we had seen where pharma was a little bit better than academic and government.

And maybe just touch on that pharma improvement. Obviously, a lot of investors focus on the downstream side of it, but maybe just touch on what you're kind of seeing across the portfolio and how impactful was the ramp-up of GMP capabilities year-to-date?

Yes. Again, maybe tackling that second piece first. When we look at our reagents portfolio, GMP is definitely something that we're very excited about for the medium to long term of the business. It's not something that's a material revenue contributor for us today. But over the next, call it, 3-plus years, we do expect it to be a meaningful contributor. It just won't be a gradual ramp. You'll sort of see a step change once that comes online just based on the nature of how GMP sort of unfolds. We finished our GMP build in about halfway through 2024. So we've been up and running for about a year now. We've seen really good traction from a commercial and customer perspective. It just takes time. It takes time from going of -- using your antibody from an RUO to the early stages, then to GMP into Phase I, Phase II. And you don't really see -- start to see sort of meaningful contributions until you get later into the clinical trials. So it's again, something we remain excited about. We're actively engaged with our customers and what their needs are, and we think it will be a meaningful contributor. We're just not seeing it maybe not as of today.

And then A&G, obviously, government shutdown here in the fourth quarter. Can you maybe just touch a little bit more on how you're thinking about next year and consumables have continued to flow here in the meantime. So touch on that, too.

Yes. Sure. So again, from an academic and government standpoint, 75%, 80% of what we sell into academic and government is reagents. So our performance is much more predicated on just general research activity as opposed to CapEx or some of the, I would say, the more budget flush-type dynamics that others talk about. That's not really an indicator for us. It's really just about underlying research activity. I think when you look at 2025, there's been, I would say, several body blows that the A&G market has had to absorb, whether it's at the beginning of the year and the talk of 40% budget cuts or the indirect caps and even some of the lawsuits with specific universities and now with the longest government shutdown. And our academic and government is still down low single digits for the year, which I think is a testament to our portfolio and the ability to weather that storm. And I think we'll, again, continue to see it relatively muted until some of these, I would say, overhangs from a policy standpoint really get ironed out.

And then I guess, pharma more broadly, I think you've talked about an uptick in activity late in the quarter and into October, still concentrated on larger customers. Maybe how has that activity been kind of playing out? And any incremental movement or a tone change from biotech?

Yes. Look, I think if you go refer back to the calls, the commentary we made on our third quarter earnings call, we had mentioned that we did see an uptick in customer activity as it relates to our instrumentation pipeline and funnel, particularly in September and the first couple of weeks of October. I would say that was predominantly with large pharma, to your point in your question, and really focused on our high content screening instrumentation portfolio. That generally has a 3- to 4-month lead time. And so for us, we started seeing, again, that pickup of activity in September and October, and that kind of gave us the, I would say, proof points of what we needed to see for our fourth quarter expectations where we do expect instrumentations to potentially return to growth here in the fourth quarter of this year, which will be the first time in a couple of years and it's definitely a good data point, but it is just 1 quarter, and we'll have to see how that sort of plays out where if it's a new trend or just sort of a one-off dynamic within the fourth quarter. And then to your second point on biotech, just in terms of framing up the exposure to biotech or what we consider sort of pre-revenue biotech for us, it's less than 5% of our total company revenue. It is coming off significantly easier comps, so it doesn't take a lot to move the needle there. But at least from what we've seen in the months of September and October, it looks like there's been some improvement from a funding perspective. That's obviously a positive sign for us, and we'll need to see if, again, if that's just a blip here, if that's a new continued trend, but investment in biotech is definitely a positive for us and where we're indexed to the industry.

And is that what the biggest swing factor, what we should be watching kind of biotech funding for the next year for that part of the business?

Yes, I think for that part of the business, I would say there's a couple of different things right, whether it's around the biotech funding discretely, whether it's around pharma returning to, I would say, more normal levels of M&A activity, which we've seen a couple of announcements here in the past couple of weeks, which is, I would say, a positive sign for us. We're agnostic to whether pharma does the investments in R&D on an organic basis or on an inorganic basis. Investment in R&D is a good thing for us. And then also with the M&A activity, you just get the recycling of funds back into biotech and the VCs, MPs, et cetera. So from that standpoint, any M&A activity, we generally do view as a positive sign for us.

And then how about geographically for pharma? And obviously, there's been a whole trend of kind of out-licensing compounds from China. Is that a tailwind, headwind? How do you think about that dynamic? And maybe just touch on kind of Europe pharma as well.

Yes, sure. Well, I think we've said we're kind of agnostic to where the work gets done, and we'll follow the molecule "around the globe" in terms of where the innovative work is being done. And I think you raised China specifically. If you look at our China Life Sciences business, we've grown on China and Life Sciences over the past 2 years. I don't think there's many in the industry that are able to say that. And I think that's really a testament, one, to our portfolio and that we're focused on innovative science and preclinical R&D, but also where the industry is kind of going, particularly as it relates to China and that big focus on innovation. And so for us, that has been a discrete tailwind for us. And I think, look, I think the rest of world, our thesis is that it will snap back here at some point in terms of the preclinical R&D. Obviously, that's been a little bit of a headwind over the past couple of years. But we are excited, I think, over the medium term here that there will be continued investments from a preclinical R&D perspective.

And then maybe just thinking about instruments because you are expecting a return to growth here in the fourth quarter. Maybe just talk about what you're seeing in the order book that gives you confidence in a stronger fourth quarter. And then anywhere in particular, is it sample prep? Is it in vivo imaging where you're seeing kind of a stronger incremental demand?

Yes, sure. So I think from an instrumentation standpoint, again, really the pickup in activity that we saw in September and October was really from large pharma and related to our high-content screening business. High content screening is roughly 25% of our instrumentation portfolio. You mentioned the other pieces of it, 25% is also in vivo imaging. You've got about 25% is in liquid handling or workflow automation and then 25% is in sort of detection and plate readers. And so where we're seeing, I would say, the largest shift right now from customer activity, again, is on the high content screening side. These are generally larger ticket instrumentations that's made to order or custom instruments. ASPs can range from anywhere from about $0.5 million to $1.5 million. And again, it has a 3- to 4-month lead time. So the fact that we saw that increased commercial activity in September, October, historically, based on funnel conversion rates would lead to a stronger performance within the fourth quarter.

And is this all greenfield or is a replacement cycle dynamic here, too?

I would say, for the most part, our instruments aren't on a huge replacement cycle. Generally, you'll have 1 or 2 of our either high-content screening or in vivo imaging systems within a lab. And generally, what drives the replacement is when we come out with a new innovative suite of instrumentation or an upgrade to the fleet. And I think you saw that a couple of years ago with our in vivo imaging. Generally, we do an upgrade, I would say, every 5 or 6 years. The last time we upgraded high-content screening was actually in 2020. So that would be the next piece of the portfolio that's due for an upgrade. That's not what's driving, I would say, the short-term demand here, but I would say that there's probably going to be some announcements in the near term on an upgrade to the high content screening portfolio. I'd also say from an instrumentation standpoint, we've been very focused on AI applications. If you think about what we do from an imaging perspective in Life Sciences, it is a very, I would say, a good fit from a use case perspective with AI and the ability to interpret and analyze those images for scientists. And so I think we -- over the past year, we've launched now 3 different AI applications for our instrumentation and are seeing good commercial uptick there.

I want to shift over to software, up 25% year-to-date. It really kind of has been going on a year now. So talk a little bit about the strength there. How much of that is share gains versus your 2 big competitors? Is this more of a market uptick in software spending? And how durable is this acceleration you're seeing?

Yes. Look, I think we're incredibly excited about our software business. I think, again, this is a true differentiator for us versus the broader peer group in Life Sciences and tools. And I think it goes a little bit to just what our software business is. It is a true ERP for the scientists in their preclinical R&D work and really has everything from designing their experiment and the molecule to executing the experiment and then running analytics on it. And so it's incredibly sticky. And I think when you look at the long-term growth algorithm of our software business, the LRP assumes 9% to 11% growth. I would say over the past 4 or 5 years, it's been growing above that. And we are now about to enter into the largest new product cycle that, that business has ever had since its existence. And when you look at what's going to drive that growth in the future, I would say about 6% to 7% of it is based on our retention rate with our -- net retention rate with our customers. And then as you grow above that 6% or 7%, it's really driven by 2 things. One is expanding our customer base. So it's moving both further downstream in pharma biotech versus historically being focused on Tier 1 and Tier 2 pharma. And then secondly, getting into material sciences, which we've spent a lot of time talking about externally and how a lot of our products and software offering we have on pharma is very synergistic with what is needed from a material science standpoint. And so we've been building out our commercial team to take advantage of that market and have seen really good orders performance there, both in '24 and in '25. And then I think the third leg of your sort of growth algorithm is the new products. And we've come out with 2 recently in 2024 that moved us a little bit further downstream with Signals Synergy and Signals Clinical. And now in 2026, we will have 2 additional launches in the large molecule workflow, so BioDesign and then also LabGistics, which is helping just run the operations of a lab with inventory management, et cetera. So I think we believe this business has a tremendous amount of runway in front of it, and we're really excited about its current prospects with both its product innovation, but also expanding its customer base.

And I know obviously, you've got the difficult comp dynamic, but mid-single-digit range for next year for that business in light of the new products, material science, just underlying momentum. Why is that the right neighborhood?

Yes. I mean organic growth is a tough metric for a software business. I think we generally like to talk about APV or the annualized portfolio value, which sort of normalizes for rev rec, which is the biggest reason why we're calling for mid-single digits. It's just the timing of rev rec and contract renewals. But when you look at things from an annualized portfolio value perspective, we still expect the business in 2026 underlying to be growing low double digits if you were to normalize from a rev rec perspective. So I would just say it's more timing rev rec dynamics than anything else going on with the business. The underlying performance is still very strong.

And do you maybe just want to touch on where you are in the SaaS journey with that business, too?

Yes, sure. So I think we've made tremendous progress from SaaS. I think we are ahead of the 2 competitors in the space from a SaaS perspective. We have about 1/3 of our portfolio with SaaS now. Entitlement, we believe, is probably 65%, 70%. So with that, you can say we're about halfway through the journey, and we'll probably look to complete it over the next 3 to 5 years. I'd say why is it not 100%? One, some customers will never move over. They've created too much of a customized solution and they prefer to stay on-prem. Or two, some of the products that we have, it would cost too much money to move them over to SaaS and isn't worth the economic trade-off. So I think some piece of the portfolio will always be on-prem, but we do believe that we're about halfway through the entitlement journey getting to 65%, 70% SaaS.

Maybe shifting over to Diagnostics. Reproductive health was strong in the quarter, I think up high single-digit growth in newborn screening. Just even backing out the gel contract, by our math, it still grew mid-single digit in newborn, so nicely above the kind of 3% to 5% LRP. Walking against the delta of declining birth rates, what's the real growth driver of that business as of late? Is it new geographies, adoption of existing assays, any new expansion?

Yes, for sure. Look, I would even say that for our newborn screening business, it wasn't just a phenomenon in the third quarter. I think if you look at newborn over the past 3 years, it's been growing mid- to high single digits consistently over the past 3 years in excess of the LRP, as you called out. And I think when you really think of the drivers there, right, yes, you have the declining birth rates. But the reason why we've been able to grow so far in excess of it is really 3 factors. One is geographic expansion as there's still 100 million babies born every year that don't get any level of screening. Two is getting states and countries that already have screening programs to adopt new assays. And I would argue that's probably the biggest driver of excess growth. And then the third reason is related to new assays where we're coming up with new disease areas to add to our existing menu. And so I think the combination of those 3 is what's really driving the growth above the birth rates. But if I had to point the biggest one, it's really when we can get an existing program to add an additional market to test.

And maybe just double clicking on Genomics England. How has reception been so far? How is the partnership influencing the strategy in rare disease detection and whole genome sequencing? And maybe just talk about some of the tailwinds?

Yes. Look, I think the program is going fantastically. I think we really appreciate the relationship we have with Genomics England. And I think we've already really started to see the benefit really to society as a result of the program. Prahlad on the third quarter earnings call, talked about Baby Freddie, who, as a result of this program, they were able to identify with no signs that the individual had cancer in their eye and would have lost sight if not for this genomic screening program, and they were able to get Baby Freddie on medication and ultimately save his vision. So it is paying real dividends. Again, we really appreciate the relationship. And I think about -- as you look forward, one, we're going to continue to work with Genomics England to see how we continue expanding that program for them within the U.K. But then secondly, this was kind of the first country that really moved the needle from a screening program on a genomic standpoint. And I think at least we're in active discussions with other countries and them adopting a similar program. So hopefully, this is just one of many examples of a genomic screening program that, again, can provide real benefits, not only from a diagnostic standpoint, but also tremendous amounts of data that can help the ecosystem from a drug development standpoint.

And what about beyond country level, like in the U.S., you have Florida Sunshine, you have Beacon. Talk about maybe the momentum behind some of those initiatives?

Yes, totally. Again, I think for those 2 specifically, look, we're also in the business of doing things when it makes sense from an economic standpoint. I think those 2 programs, in particular, didn't really necessarily maybe fit that strike zone, although they are aligned to what we want to do strategically. And I think you'll continue to see us involved in different types of genomics programs. But again, at the end of the day, it has to make sense, too, from a financial standpoint.

And anything to call out on the rest of reproductive health? I mean it's a smaller portion of revenues, but you've got cord blood in the U.S., maternal testing. And any kind of notable trends there?

Nothing that I would call out in particular. I think when you look at newborn -- or excuse me, reproductive health, our main 2 focus areas are really on newborn screening and then the larger screening programs or specialty partnerships with pharma, like the one that we just announced with Sanofi around type 1 diabetes, which, again, we're very excited about. But those are probably going to be the 2 bigger areas of focus for us with reproductive health.

And then in immuno, maybe we'll step away from China for a minute and just talk about kind of the high single-digit growth ex China. You've talked about getting to double digits in the LRP. What are the drivers there? How much is autoimmune, infectious disease, allergy?

Yes. Look, I think when you look at immunodiagnostics and the LRP of 9% to 11% growth outside of China, to your point, is a low double digit. I would say, for the most part, over the past 3 or 4 years, it has been executing in the low double digits outside of some quarterly noise. And I think that will be true when you look back on 2025 in total. But I think when you look at the big drivers there, the biggest driver is really the U.S. penetration. And the U.S. penetration for us, if you go back when we first acquired EUROIMMUN, which is the biggest part of our immunodiagnostics franchise, they only had 5% of the revenue in the U.S. Now that is up to closer to 20% of total immunodiagnostics revenue. We think entitlement is probably closer to 40%, which is in line with where the U.S. market is as a total piece of the pie. And so I think you'll continue to see really big focus in the U.S., and that's across all the areas, whether it's autoimmune, allergy or even TB is a big focus for us in the U.S. And that continued, I would say, sort of mid-teens growth in the U.S. is really what's driving, I would say, the biggest piece of that low double-digit growth outside of China.

And on TB for T-SPOT, you've got the Auto-Pure 2400 launch this year. Talk a little bit about how much that could revitalize that business.

Yes. Look, maybe even just to take a step back, too, I mean, I think as you think about the immunodiagnostics market in the U.S., one of the most important things is reduction in hands-on time or reduction in labor, given the amount of cost of labor in the United States, which is maybe not necessarily true outside the U.S., where we have a really good strong market presence or market share in both autoimmune allergy and TB. And so for the U.S., for us, the big focus has really been on automation and how do we reduce hands-on time. So when you look at TB, yes, we have a superior clinical assay, but the challenge for us has always been around the required hands-on time to run our workflow. And so we've now come out with the low throughput offering. We've come out with the mid-throughput offering. The high-throughput offering is going to be hopefully announced here in the short term and one that, again, we're excited about. As we've already seen from the medium throughput, we already had some customer displacements as well as some new placements here. I think by the end of the year, we'll be up to maybe 40 placements of our medium throughput equipment in the U.S. And so that's, again, an area that is critical for us if we're going to start, I would say, continuing to take meaningful share in TB in the U.S.

And then on China, 20% of immunodiagnostics, 6% of total, you've been clear you expect a decline in north of 20% through May of next year and then modest growth thereafter. What's your line of sight on that latter assumption? And what metrics should we be tracking?

Yes. Look, I think from a China diagnostics perspective, again, everyone had always kind of talked about VBP. VBP wasn't really a big factor for us. Really, we got hit with the DRG policy that came out here in the second quarter of 2025. And we had mentioned that it's going to take us about a year to sort of anniversary that or reset the baseline for our immunodiagnostics business in China. And then to your point, our assumption is kind of low single-digit growth after that. . I think the key for us, again, is just working our way through this policy change and having a little bit more stability from a regulatory perspective. I think it was a little bit of a surprise when that came about in 2025. But in order for us to go back to growing in that business, we need a little bit more regulatory stability. And at least from all indications that we're seeing from the local teams, it does appear that once this kind of works its way through over the next 12-month period in terms of annualizing it, we should expect to return to growth.

Maybe just hitting on margins for a minute. The swing factors this year, obviously, were China ImmunoDx, as we talked about in tariffs. As we think about kind of underlying margin expansion next year, well, first of all, what could -- what is the impact of those 2 next year? And then how do you think about kind of core margin expansion or base margin expansion next year?

Yes. So maybe just to frame up the numbers, too. So this year, we should end the full year with operating margins, call it, 27.2%. We've mentioned that for the framework for next year of 2% to 3% organic growth, we anticipate margins being at 28%. And really, the pathway of us getting there is a combination of things. One, taking some specific actions as it relates to the drop in the China volumes. So looking at the China footprint, but also the manufacturing footprint that supports our China volumes. . Second is, I would say, continued execution on rooftop consolidations. We've announced a new imaging center of excellence in North Carolina, but also that we've gone from 4 rooftops of manufacturing in the Northeast down to 1, which will provide a tailwind. Those are just a couple of examples of some of the rooftop consolidation we're driving. And then the third piece, I would say, is just general M&A synergies from like a delayering of management and continued integration of teams. So those 3 things will drive us to that 28% operating margin baseline. If we -- if growth should be in excess of the 2% to 3%, I would expect to be able to deliver above 28% operating margins. But again, we'll have to see what happens from a market recovery standpoint. You'd also mentioned how is sort of tariffs and the China headwinds kind of impact that. Look, the reality is we're not necessarily doing something to completely operationally mitigate the tariffs directly. And there's nothing we're really doing to drive excess new volume in China to offset that. I think what we're really doing is addressing it directly where we can, like we talked about with the China footprint actions, but then also finding other areas of the portfolio to help offset or mitigate some of the things we're seeing from a tariff perspective. So those headwinds are still somewhat embedded in that 28% operating margin framework.

Great. We're out of time. I think we'll leave it at that. Thanks.