Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (TMO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Welcome, Day 3 of the TD Cowen Global Health Care Conference, 44th Annual. I'm Dan Brennan. I cover tools and diagnostics here. Really pleased to be joined with me on stage here, Marc Casper, Chairman, President and CEO of Thermo Fisher. So Marc, welcome.

Thank you, Dan. Great to be here.

Terrific. So Marc, maybe to kick it off, as you reflect on 2023, would proved to be a challenging year for Thermo and the life science tools industry, what did the organization learn? And in what ways does this influence your future performance and strategy?

Yes. Dan, thanks for having us. I'm here with Eileen Pattinson, who's on our IR leadership. As when I think about last year, so the pros or the positives, right, which is we delivered differentiated performance in terms of share gain, in terms of how our financials played out relative to the industry. You saw the benefits of our PPI Business System in terms of really navigating a challenging environment. It was a good year on capital deployment. So those are the positives. I'm sure there are others. We didn't make our numbers. All right? So I acknowledge that some things went well, but the learnings from my perspective is really the energy, right, which is I've never been more excited. And I think -- I love what I do. It's a privilege to serve. I've never been more excited than 2024 because when you don't have the year that you want to have, you either get super energized to make the year you're in the one you want to have or you don't. And I and our leadership team and actually, all of our colleagues just know that '24 is our year, and we're going to do a great job. And we're going to deliver results that our investors are super proud of, and that's the lessons learned. And that means that our commercial execution will be better. The benefits of PPI will be better. And it doesn't mean that they were bad, but they didn't meet our goal. So this year, we're going to deliver 4 great quarters.

Sounds like a good kick-off point. So maybe can you discuss the 0% core organic growth guidance for '24, right, you offered back in January at the 4Q results versus the initial framework management is calling for, call it, 1% core organic in '24? That was discussed back in the third quarter of '23. So that 1 point delta, maybe just give us a sense of how we should compare the 2.

Yes. So first of all, it feels like ancient history in terms of guidance. I think that it's actually really quite straightforward. We, in the third quarter, wanted to frame an outlook where on sell-side consensus was many points higher for the industry and for us. So we sort of gave a number just to get people's heads around that. We decided, because we feel like we have a pretty good handle on what the year will bring, is that going back to the convention of ranges was better than points, right? And if you go back over the last 20-something years, up through the pandemic, we always gave a range, right? In the pandemic, a range would give a false sense of accuracy. When you're beating your numbers by $2 billion, $3 billion or $4 billion of revenue, you can't have a range saying plus or minus $5 billion of revenue, right? So we went to point estimates. And in this environment, which is -- I just call it the environment that we're going to be in for a bit, we want to get back to a range. And we set the range at plus 1 to minus 1, the midpoint at 0. And our goal is to drive as high in the range or above the range if -- when we execute well.

Okay. So maybe kind of starting with the outlook for '24. Can you just give us a sense of what you're seeing occurring in the end markets? How do you think this evolves over the course of the year? And how does your guidance incorporate like the end market view?

Yes. So if I say first about the -- what's embedded in the guidance, then I'll talk about what's happening in the first couple of months of the year, I'll sort of segregate it out. What the guidance is really assuming is that the segments we serve or the different end markets have similar rates of growth, right? And the 2 that have the remainder of the pandemic unwind, which is pharma and biotech and health care and diagnostics, slightly slower. The 2 that don't, industrial and applied and academic, slightly faster, but they're not particularly different. And when you look at the segments, it's the same dynamic. Those segments that have some level of COVID runoff will have slightly less growth, businesses like the Analytical Instruments business, which doesn't, it's going to have -- or Specialty Diagnostics will have a little bit stronger growth, but not that different than the average. That's what's assumed. When I think about what we're seeing and less about sort of where we are in the quarter, but clearly, first quarter relative to the second half of last year, the tone in biotech is much more positive. That doesn't mean that the spending is different, but actually, the dialogue is not anymore about will I get funding, but it's much more about when funding will close. There's a lot of excitement around the transactions that happened in the pharmaceutical industry of buying some of the smaller companies. The valuations were robust. That creates a positive aura and is -- and you feel that tone in terms of the biotech industry. And if you think about how funding then flows, it's typically, I don't know, it's like a 6-month lag, so between when funding closes and when it actually gets spent. So I think that sets up for -- to be in line with what we assumed in the guidance is that the markets improve as the year unfolds. And then the conditions in China, yes, I would say, we're expecting that it will be a relatively muted environment, what's embedded in the guidance. And that's the upside should the Chinese government decide to stimulate at some point and our expectations is that's not likely a short-term activity, but at some point, you're likely to see some investments in our space.

You kind of somewhat answered the next question, but maybe you can elaborate a little bit since it's -- when you think about the 0 guide, particularly after the weak '23, you have an LRP of 7% to 9%. So we can look at it and say, "Wow, it looks like there could be some cushion there." So you just talked about biotech. But maybe can you speak a little bit more on some -- what could be some of the notable areas, excuse me, of upside opportunities to the guide? And then on the flip side, obviously, like what are the areas that we should be watching the most in terms of risk and uncertainty?

Yes. When I think about guidance philosophy first, right, which is when we put out numbers, we don't want our investors to say, "Wow, these guys are sandbagging," right? I mean we actually want to put out numbers that if the market conditions are in line with the assumptions that investors would say, "That's actually a reasonable outcome," right? And our assumptions on the market for this year is basically the same as last year, so down low single digits in terms of market growth. And it has the inverse or the mirror in terms of phasing, right, because of the comparison. So the first half is going to be below that, and the second half would show return to modest growth. And it actually should mean that we exit this year with reasonable momentum into 2025. So if you say sort of how you think about the longer-term market, we should be entering the year in a spot where the markets are getting more normal. I don't know whether they'll be normal or not, but certainly, not depressed like we saw last year. So that's the sort of high-level view. And the upside to me is certainly going to be China, and it's certainly going to be biotech, right? I think those are the things. I also think this is the kind of a year, and many of you have heard me say this in years past, every day that something really bad in the world doesn't happen actually will help also, right, which is we're in a world where there's lots of things to worry about, whether you worry about the Middle East, you worry about Eastern Europe, or you worry about whatever it is, it's not a world where you say, "My God, look at these great things," right? And therefore, every day that something is just a worry and not actually a reality of getting worse, that actually helps as well. So hopefully it gives you a viewpoint on.

Great. So maybe kind of shifting in some of your kind of customer kind of end market groups. We've already hit upon biopharma a few times in the opening remarks, but it is your biggest business, so I kind of want to unpack it a little bit. So it was down 3%, I think, organic. Last year, you had a really tough comp. It's kind of 14% or so thereabouts in '22. So when we think about like you talked about in the opening remarks, a little bit more of a COVID drag, so I guess you're assuming that business maybe is a little weaker in '24. But just begin to unpack that segment, and what's the right way to think about kind of what the overall segment will do for you in 2024?

Yes. So Dan, if you think about relaxing the year for a moment, just to put it in context, right? We talk about being the trusted partner. What does that actually mean? We have decades of track record of making an enormous impact on the success of the individual biotech and pharmaceutical companies, in their best times, in their most challenging times. When they have scaling up because they have the most impactful medicine or scaling down because they have a patent cliff, we're there. And we're in the C-suite, and we're at the lab bench. Depending on the scale of the company, we often could have hundreds of employees actually working in one campus for some of these companies. I mean, so we're truly there as a key enabler to our customer's success. That sounds super good, but the impact of that is substantial above-market growth for the last 50 years in serving pharma and biotech, right? And you can look at the different periods. You look at the rates of growth that we've had. We've delivered incredible performance there. And then you take it down to last year, right? So you start to get to sort of the high-level talk points. But you get to the last year and you say, okay, we're down 1 point organically in pharma and biotech. There's a 7-point headwind on COVID roll-off in those numbers, right? So that's not an excuse, but it gives you a sense of the magnitude of the growth that we were able to drive in the underlying business as COVID activities have unwound, right? And so when I think about this year, this is really the last year that we will have the COVID unwind of any materiality in that segment in terms of the vaccine and therapy activity coming down to a low level by the end of the year. So that will dampen growth this year, but the underlying momentum is super strong, right? And so that's the sort of big picture view. So what does it actually mean at the detail level? We have an incredible position in pharma services in terms of both drug substance and drug product. And as there's been a desire to have more supply chain resilience in the world, that bodes really well for a well-capitalized company serving that market. We are the second largest on clinical research set of capabilities and have great momentum with our customers there. The Fisher Scientific channel has gained share since 2006 in terms of supporting that customer base. And we provide the life science tools and the analytical instruments that are used to enable the breakthrough research that goes on. And we scale up in bioproduction for those molecules in terms of producing them. So we are -- throughout the value chain, have an incredibly strong position, and both businesses are all leading positions. And therefore, when customers work with us, they're getting the very best. And so I'm very bullish about the long-term prospects of the industry. And the science is awesome, right? If I say what's going on, the science underneath the pharma and biotech industry, you've got some of the other investor meetings that are here and the other companies presenting, it's phenomenal, right, in terms of what's going on. And when you think about things like GLP-1s, right, the dream is alive in the industry, right? If you think about it, a huge unmet medical need, profound health benefits. Not only does it have a human health benefit, but it inspires every biotech company to go out and say, "Yes, I can be rewarded for doing great science and great clinical trials and design." And so I'm unabashed and bold about the midterm and long term in pharma and biotech.

Great. So maybe jumping into some of the kind of subsegments. So on the CDMO side, would love to get a little bit more color, if you could, just on the Patheon business. There's several moving parts as you -- COVID headwinds washing out, you have the potential upside from GLP-1, which you just said. And I'm also interested to see to what extent the announced Novo acquisition of Catalent impacts Thermo?

Yes. So we've been in the clinical development capabilities since 2006, and we've built that business steadily over time. And one of the things that we have demonstrated is doing great work for our customers to help them develop medicines and scale them in a cost-effective manner so that they can meet demand. And that reputation has helped us well. That business had an excellent 2023 in terms of growth, so strong performance. We played a meaningful role in COVID, but we also managed it because we didn't want to disrupt other medicines. So we didn't have the desire to have every possible demand, but rather, the demand we could handle without losing the trust of the customers that have selected us over the previous decades, right? So when I think about the dynamics right now, one of the things about trusted partner, Dan, which I think in the practical side, right, we had a reasonable level of capacity reserved for the future for COVID demand, right? And while there'll clearly be some level of COVID demand, it was not nearly at the level that the reservations were, and those reservations were real reservations. And when you're the trusted partner, you try to find win-wins for your customer, right? And one of the really interesting win-wins was we were able to relax some of the commitments in exchange for some firmer payments in terms of timing, not per se how it shows up in the accounting, but to effectively get cash earlier because it derisks the future in a certain respect. And we were able to repurpose that capacity for a very large class of medicines that there's a shortage of drug production supply. And you create a win-win, right, which is effectively you have a customer that says, "Wow, Thermo Fisher actually listened to our concerns and helped us navigate it." And you have another customer that says, "Wow, world-class company that can meet your short-term needs." And that will ramp up in 2025. It actually is a negative to our 2024 numbers because we have to go through a tech transfer process. You don't recognize revenues, and we incorporated that in our guidance. But effectively, it's a long-term win, and it gives you an example. In terms of the Novo Holdings announcement, great company, tells you about the shortage of capacity that exists in the industry. And it takes a -- one of the pure-play players that has capabilities that have some similarities to ours, and it takes them really out of the market. And so I think that it's a congratulations to Novo, and they're an important customer that we support and are proud to support. And at the same point in time, I think it creates opportunities for us to leverage the great relationships and capabilities that we have and drive growth in the future. So I think it ultimately will play out very well from [ here ].

Okay. Maybe sticking on the kind of drug production piece, but moving into the bioproduction business. Just for -- how did that business do in 2023 for you? And when we think about the outlook for '24, what kind of impact does the inventory destocking have upon your current and forward outlook?

Yes. So this is the only question that I have to like have my body language perfect because it's like -- bioproduction is an awesome business. I mean it is a phenomenal business that has had amazing historical growth. It will have amazing growth going forward, right? I have no doubt, having spent my career at this point in this industry, in terms of the intensity of the demand for the products. So when I think about the '25 and beyond, right, so sort of -- and I'm not smart enough to call quarters and all that, that's why I'm saying the body language has to be perfect. I worry 0 about bioproduction and our position in terms of leadership. In terms of the shorter term, our assumption embedded in the guidance is, obviously, you don't have -- you just don't have the meaningful headwind that -- in this year that you had last year, right? You had an incredibly strong 2022. You had a very challenging comparison industry, just talking about all the different things that others have talked about. So you have a tremendous headwind in the numbers. That eases as this year goes on, and I've seen what others have said, and I don't think we're seeing things particularly differently than some of the others have commented on.

So I mean I had a follow-up to that here. But -- so just kind of on that same point, if you will, like order trends are being scrutinized as the best lead indicator when the industry climbs out of the current downturn. I mean can you say have you seen orders trends grow either year-over-year or quarter-to-quarter that would support revenue recovery?

Yes, what we said at the fourth quarter is we saw the sequential improvement in orders, and that we hadn't called the bottom or anything. And I think I've literally said that it's a taboo topic, and therefore, I will wait until it actually happens and then report that the bottom has happened as opposed to forecasting when it does.

Okay. Maybe just on pharma R&D, can you just speak to what kind of demand you've been experiencing there? I'm wondering if you consider small, medium, large biopharma companies? Like what have demand trends been like? And what have you baked in for '24?

Yes. So when I think about how we serve the R&D, that's going to show up in our life science tools, it's going to show up in our Fisher Scientific channel, it's going to shop in our Analytical Instruments and it will show up in our clinical research on the development side. So it's a meaningful set of activities. When you take -- you have a COVID runoff there, which is certainly on the clinical trials coming to an end. So you got that headwind, I'd say, a relatively normal environment in large pharma. And as funding flows to biotech, that should be an improving environment is the way I would characterize it.

Okay. I mean IRA, is that a topic that comes up a lot with the large pharma companies in terms of pacing spending? And is that factored in, in some way for '24?

I don't think IRA is a big factor for '24. I think IRA is sort of incorporated in the spend raise and incorporated sort of in the outlook. I think for the view of IRA, my advice is you have to think about it from 2 totally different lenses. There's a PR lens and a legal lens, which is the world is coming to an end because of the IRA, right? And that's just -- right, you have a number of companies suing the federal government. So you kind of have to ignore that and then you have to say, what does it actually mean practically, right? And my general view is it's not going to be significantly challenging. It does encourage rephasing how you do your clinical studies. You wind up actually doing some of your larger studies earlier in the development of a molecule as opposed to typically you pick a smaller indication and expand. Here, you are encouraged to get your larger indication first. So it probably frontloads a bit of the clinical trial activity, and that's a short-term positive. That would be a longer-term negative in terms of it doesn't the change the spend rate. So I think most of our customers are navigating through it. And it'll have some headwinds, but I don't think it's significant.

And maybe before we jump into China, just on your AI business, the instrument business, results have been rebust, right -- robust, excuse me. I think you grew -- we have 10% in our model for 2023. It's kind of like a 13% like multiyear stack. So kind of what's been driving that growth? And it sounds like this segment can grow above the corporate average in '24. Maybe can you discuss kind of how you're thinking about what's implied for this year?

Yes. So our team has done a really good job, right? When I think about it's an innovation-led business. We play in -- chromatography and mass spectrometry is our largest business, and our electron microscopy is our second largest business. And those are instruments that -- bringing out relevant innovation, drives adoption irrespective of the market environment, right? And if you look in the life sciences mass spec business, you look at last year, excellent year of growth. And it's really driven Astral, which is our latest mass spectrometer. It's super profound in terms of its capabilities and the adoption has been very strong. There have been many other products beyond that, that have driven innovation over the last few years. In electron microscopy, we really are a key enabling technology for the semiconductor industry in terms of when you want to go to the next node, if you want to develop a chiplet, those things, you need to use our electron microscopes to actually do that. And we have enjoyed very strong growth there because of the uniqueness of our capability. So it's a business that's got a lot of momentum. In last year, we got -- some of the results are slightly flatter by the supply chain disruptions that happened in 2022 because of COVID, and so that doesn't repeat. So we're expecting growth to moderate. And certainly, China is an important market, and that moderates growth. But the midterm here should be excellent in terms of where the instrument business is positioned.

Okay. So maybe jumping into China then. Low double-digit percentage of your revenues, and I think you were down, by our math, high single digits in '23, after growing double digits the last 3 or 4 years. Just kind of can you get a -- can you give us a sense of like unpacking like how that kind of growth last year and kind of what you're assuming for this year like the different buckets in China?

Yes. So if -- how did -- everybody gets surprised by China. It's really what happened after Q1, right, which is every other economy around the world coming out of sort of COVID, and they were the last to come out of COVID just based on the social policies, really saw a rebound in spend in different years. And China didn't. It hit the brakes very quickly on lack of business confidence and other challenges in the economy. So you had a muted environment. As Chair of the US-China Business Council, I spend a reasonable time interacting with both the U.S. administration and the Chinese government at the highest levels. And what I would say is I'm a believer that in the midterm, China will continue to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest-growing end market for our industry, not nearly as fast as it was, say, in the 2010 to 2019. But to say that long-term growth in the high single digit, low double digit, I think is a very reasonable assumption for our industry in the midterm. And we have an incredibly strong reputation in the country. We're a company that has enabled a healthier China and make sure the food supply is safe and that the air that the Chinese breathe is clean. Like our technologies are used for basic societal good. And we have a good reputation with the Chinese government. So I feel we're well positioned to capitalize on it. Short term, it's challenged, right? And it's not different right now than it was last year, which is the government is dealing with a property bubble, they're dealing with provincial debt and they're not pulling the lever of more fiscal spend meaningfully to stimulate the economy, right? So they talked about 5% GDP growth, and you can calibrate that any way you want, but that's lower than what historically they've been talking about. So they're working their way through restructuring the economy. And at some point, business confidence will improve. At some point, the government will stimulate, and that will be the next inflection point, if you will, in terms of growth. There's not dramatically different trends by segment. The material science semiconductor segment is quite healthy. The biotech business definitely suffered because it was a huge speculative bubble around COVID that happened there, but that seems largely behind us.

Got it. And in terms of the BIOSECURE and the fallout from that, is there any direct impact to you? Or just kind of how does that play in your more positive long-term view?

Yes. My view is I don't know whether that will -- whether the company is on that -- will be on that entity list and stay or not. So we'll help our customers both in China and around the world navigate whatever the environment is. And it's our job to just make sure it doesn't have any negative effect on the customers we work with.

Maybe moving to cap deployment. Last spring, you laid out the latest 3-year financial plan that called for $75 billion of capital deployment, and I think you assumed 2/3 M&A, so call it $50 billion. Since then you've announced the acquisition of Olink, which is $3 billion. So one question we get frequently is kind of what can Thermo buy? You're deploying $40 billion to $45 billion of capital for M&A. It seems like certainly a meaningful amount. So just give us a sense of like what you see the opportunity set in the core life science tools and diagnostics sector, what's the attractive areas? And would you consider adjacencies to kind of deploy that much capital?

Yes. So we have a good track record here, and we've been able to consistently deploy capital. We're never in a rush because all we care about is doing good deals. So sometimes we're busier, sometimes we're less busy. We're always looking at things and thinking. I feel very confident in our ability to deploy meaningful capital over the next 5 years. And it's not like something happens in year 6. But I think for the foreseeable future, there's lots of opportunity. I actually like the business definition we have today. So I don't think you'll see us like dramatically change or expand the business definition. There are things that clearly would make sense for us to buy, and we feel reasonable about the regulatory environment in those areas. I'm very excited about Olink. We're working through the regulatory process. And when I think about that, we're on target, we're on track to close that the middle of the year. I cannot wait to welcome our colleagues, our new colleagues from Olink, and just a spectacular team. And we look forward to having them part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, and you'll see us continue to be active over time as well.

And maybe last question here, and you can kind of wrap it up with the LRP, 7% to 9%. You spoke about the confidence in that, recently I think on the 4Q call. But certainly, there are some -- concerns may not be the right word, but given where that was set and given the funding levels then, can you just speak to your confidence in that 7% to 9%, and maybe you can wrap up and kind of give us a summary on the view as well.

Yes. So the super simple, right? We changed the number from effectively 3% to 5% market growth to 4% to 6% in September of 2021. And it had nothing to do with COVID, the change in the market growth. It had to do with the fact that we had a much larger presence in serving pharma and biotech. And we had a much smaller presence in serving academic and government, industrial and applied and the pharma and biotech market growth more quickly. So literally, the 3% to 5% to 4% to 6% was purely the mix of the market. And historically, we said 2% to 3% share gain. And effectively, we have a high degree of confidence that we're able to grow 3% faster. And so the 7% to 9%, from my perspective, is confidence in the benefits of our strategy. That's 3 points of growth, and 4% to 6% is not a particularly significant change from where it was. And the way that I think about and my last thought, I get lots of questions about when you're in a period of negative growth, how do you feel so good about 4% to 6%? And when you go through all of the drivers in the industry, which is very positive, if you're super bearish on our industry, you kind of get to 4%, right? And if you're super bullish, you get to 6%. Can you find a case that the market growth is so? Sure. But then you probably want to invest in life science tools and diagnostics because it means that the global economy is in -- really is in disastrous shape. So when I think about the longer term, I feel incredibly confident about the 7% to 9%. Thank you for having me.

Terrific, Marc. Thank you, and thank you all for being here.