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

My name is Mike Ryskin. I'm on the Bank of America Life Science Tools and Diagnostics team. And I'm excited to welcome everyone to Las Vegas for our Healthcare Conference 2025 edition. To get things off for our team, what better place to start than with Thermo Fisher Scientific, and we're excited to host Marc Casper, Chairman, President and CEO. Marc, thanks so much for being here.

Mike, it's great to be here. Nice to see everybody in the audience, and I'm joined by Raf Tejada today from Investor Relations.

Great. As always, I want to thank everyone for their support and their attendance for this conference, it obviously means a lot to us, and we're hoping you find the next couple of days of events helpful in these turbulent times. To kick things off, Marc, I think great place for us to start would be sort of ask you for a state of the union or state of tools for this sector. There's a lot that's transpired in the last couple of weeks and months from a macro and policy perspective. So maybe you could walk us through how the first quarter played out, maybe some key takes and just sort of again your latest thoughts on where tools sits today.

Yes. So Mike, when I think about first, the setup coming into 2025, right, recovering end markets. Us as a company, raising our ambition on earnings growth because we expected that the markets will continue to improve, but not yet be fully normal and so a real intense focus on productivity and cost and continued share gain. First quarter was actually quite solid in terms of strong execution. We came in ahead of revenue. We came ahead of earnings, really strong product launches. And in a way, the kind of quarter that I would expect in terms of us doing strong performance. And so uneventful from that perspective. Obviously, the macro backdrop changed during the quarter. And obviously, we mobilized quite quickly to both navigate potential policy changes from the U.S. administration as well as after the quarter end, start to mobilize to respond to tariffs and put the right actions in so that we could deliver strong performance not only in 2025 but set ourselves up for excellent performance in 2026 in a bright long term. So it's certainly on the one hand, kind of a quarter where straightforward. On the other hand, mobilized into a new environment and set ourselves up to deliver strong performance this year.

Okay. I mean, on that point, let's dive into the guide update. There are a couple of moving pieces there, a lot of it tied to the macro and the policy. Can you take us through how you thought about the moving pieces in the guide and sort of what's embedded from a policy perspective and what's embedded from a mitigation offset perspective?

Yes. So I think one of the things that as I was looking at companies that reported early, nothing to do with even health care and just reading how they thought about the environment. Every company took a different approach. So there was no wisdom in the early reporters whether banking or consumer. But what I came away with is one of my core principles is just be incredibly transparent about what you know and what you don't know, what the implications are, right? So Stephen, our CFO, and I, we basically laid out everything that we knew based of April 25 or so when we had our earnings call, right? And that transparency basically broke the environment into 3 things. The execution of our business strategy, the cost focus, nothing has changed, right? In fact, kind of business as usual on the fundamentals of what we were seeing. For many of our businesses, all of the things that are going on in the broader world, really no impact, whether it's specialty diagnostics or our customer channels, pharma services, in terms of the environment, kind of business as usual, bioproduction. So a number of our businesses, even with a changing policy environment, a changing tariff environment, less effect. A couple of businesses more meaningful effect, our analytical instruments business as well as our lab products business. And so we try to frame it that way, first of all, so it's concentrated and then broke the environment into 2 different areas. What's going on from a policy focus, of which not much has actually been implemented, but more of the -- what the administration is focused on. And we talked about a little bit about academic and government. We talked a little bit about vaccines and some of the government-funded work there. And we talked about the headwind that we would expect that, that would have. I'm sure we'll delve into that in more detail. And then we talked about tariffs. And we split tariffs into 2 different buckets, right? China and then everything else. For everything else, we have the actions in place already to offset all of the impact of 10% inbound tariffs on the U.S., right, in terms of pricing, cost reduction, minor supply chain adjustments that's sort of a nonissue. And on China, at that point in time, it was almost like a trade embargo at 125% tariffs inbound into China, 145% tariffs into the U.S., much more material, and we talked about the impacts of that. The net of all of that was for the year, at the midpoint of our guidance, we said that's about $1 impact. That's for all of the policy changes or about 3% or so in terms of the impact on our EPS growth. And that's what we do then, things have changed, and we can talk about that as well and changed, I would say, more favorably since then. But -- so we would expect this year that our growth would be about 2% adjusted EPS growth, with no adjustments to the current environment and revenue will be about the same because FX has been favorable and slightly more muted outlook on organic growth. So that was the net of the guidance where we just want to be super transparent so that investors could understand what's going on in the business and where the health of the business is.

So like you said, a lot of things have changed already just in the last couple of weeks changing every day. So maybe on the China front, you outlined what you incorporate into your guide, obviously really big news yesterday with at least a temporary reversal or a pause on the China tariffs. So can you talk us through how that's going to play out? I mean are you going to talking about 145% being an embargo, 30% is a lot more manageable. So how do you think about those revenues potentially coming back? And what would be the net EPS benefit of that? Will you reduce some of those mitigating actions you previously talked about in terms of cost actions and price. So how will those moving pieces balance out?

Yes. So if you look at what's happened in China. First of all, super encouraging in terms of the governments are talking and have at least temporarily for a 90-day period significantly reduced the tariff rates. Of the 2 rates, the inbound into China is the more important rate for us than the inbound into U.S. So the reduction to the 10% rate on China effectively reduces a lot of the revenue headwinds that we would expect. We're still taking the mitigating actions because we don't know whether this is temporary or not. And our customers in China, in particular were very pleased to hear the pace at which we're able to make adjustments to supply chains and other actions that we can take to continue to have continuity of supply. So we're aggressively managing that. And I would expect that if this environment continues, then obviously, the magnitude of the headwind, which we said was about $400 million of revenue would obviously be lessened fairly meaningfully. So I think that's where we are. And what we'll do is in our guidance in July when we update, we'll obviously have not only almost the 90-day period expiring, but we'll also have a sense of where that's landing. So that should give us pretty good visibility into the second half of the year, and we'll incorporate those changes into our outlook.

Okay. That's encouraging. Obviously, there's going to be other factors, too, in terms of FX swings and sure it's not that straightforward. It's hard to parse that out for 24 hours, but it sounds like, at least on that front, it's directionally possible.

We'll use the same methodology of looking at what FX has done, what mitigating actions we've already put in place and are putting in place and update the outlook appropriately so that we're holding ourselves to a high standard of performance.

Okay. Just while we're on China, I mean let's just talk about China on the whole. What's performance been like? How has it varied over the last couple of months? Any volatility and just any thoughts on China stimulus or sort of the underlying demand beyond the tariff situation?

Yes. So when I look at China, our view coming into the year is relatively muted growth this year, right? We weren't expecting a recovery embedded in our guidance. First quarter played out pretty much exactly in line with what we thought it was going to be. It declined mid-single digits, which was kind of the combination of phasing and the days -- less days in the quarter. So sort of it played out okay. When I think about the outlook for the year, we're still not assuming an economic recovery. We're expecting muted conditions. We'll see stimulus was strong in the second half of last year, and we'll see how that flows as the year progresses. Economic outlook in China continues to be muted. So I think over time, the government is going to do something to stimulate the economy, and that should be a positive for our industry.

And in terms of the reduction in the tariff and the trade war, should that theoretically improve the economic situation as well and just sort of help things on the ground in terms of make it easier for local businesses.

Yes. What I would say is the high tariff rates lead to odd behavior. So because some of the products we owe the tariffs, some of the products, the customers owe the tariff depending on the exact mechanism. So actually, orders have been very strong in China long before the change over the last week because the customers -- those customers think of we're going to bear the tariff, they place the orders. If they're bearing the tariff, they're saying hold on a minute, right? So we'll see. I don't think we have a good demand signal right now, but there's been quite a bit of dialogue with our customers, and they understand that we're working with the Chinese government to help them navigate the situation. So I would expect it to improve modestly as the year unfolds.

Okay. The other area you touched on is where there's significant policy impact on the end markets is U.S. academic and government obviously, a lot of exposure and a lot of concerns there via cuts from DOGE and from the new administration. So can you walk us through what you saw in that end market in the first quarter? And how fair relative to the expectations and maybe sort of what you're seeing from some of those demand trends more recently?

So Mike, probably helpful to frame the scale of our academic and government business is probably the first thing, right? So globally, it's about 15% of our revenue. U.S. is about 7% of our revenue. When I think about the first quarter, actually it played out as we expected. It was -- we were -- just really no story there in terms of the environment. When I look at the outlook, what we've assumed is that it will be 10% less growth than what we had embedded in our guidance or about a $300 million headwind based on our experience in terms of the environment. Now the big factors here is what is Congress going to do with its budget, right? It's not what the administration does on its budget proposal, but actually what the budget is from Congress and then how the appropriations actually work, which we should get better visibility into as we get into the summer in terms of what that is. That should be a point of confidence. If it goes the way that certainly the dialogue has been happening in Congress at this point, but we'll see. In terms of potentially stabilizing the outlook there. And then obviously, there will be negotiations with the NIH on indirect rates, and we'll see how those play out as well. But right now, in a way, nothing has changed other than sentiment. Sentiment has changed within that customer base are very concerned, but funding mechanisms generally are continuing at a moderate pace and we'll see ultimately what the outlook is.

And you spent a good amount of time in Washington. You've got great policy contacts over there, administration contacts. There's obviously a little bit of a lobbying effort on the behalf of tools and the entire pharma industry. What's sort of been the feedback you've been getting in terms of how Congress is thinking about it this time around?

Yes, I think it's very clear from a congressional standpoint, of the importance of the innovation-led economy in the United States and the importance of the role that the government plays in supporting that innovation-based economy, and it's important to all 50 states. So there's very good support. And historically, both parties have been supportive. So in the dialogue with Republic of members of Commerce, it's about the leadership they need to take. And certainly, with the Democratic members of commerce, it really is about the importance of bipartisanship. And so there's an active discussion. There's not a big debate on the importance. It's going to be how does it all get come together ultimately in the budget.

And what about outside the U.S.? What about -- in terms specifically A&G, Europe, China, there's a little bit of talk of brain drain and maybe some international markets using this an opportunity to entice talent and spending from the United States. Do you see that as a potential offset? Is there any traction there in terms of a global scientific community.

Yes. Certainly, you're seeing in the U.K., some focus on this area. Let's talk about the brain drain as much as just some of the funding mechanisms, China, there's clearly with the stimulus programs that they've enacted to support academic and government. So when I think about the dialogue here, it's largely a U.S. issue. It's not really a global issue in terms of what's going on. So the 8% of the academic and government globally is kind of business as usual.

Okay. Sort of related to the last 2 topics, really to the A&G and China. I want to talk about analytical instruments because there's heavy overlap there. A lot is going to be impacted from those policy changes so can you talk about how that segment has performed for you recently? And how you see the macro environment impacting that growth for the rest of the year?

Yes. So we have a leading position in analytical instruments. And when you look at it, it has a very strong innovation-driven leadership, whether it's our chromatography and mass spectrometry business, whether it's our electron microscopy business, we bring out cutting-edge instrumentation that revolutionizes the understanding of science and ultimately, customers fund that even in more challenging times, the innovation portion of the portfolio typically is very healthy because if you're doing academic research, if you're doing applied work, if you're using not the best tools, effectively, you're wasting your time, right? And therefore, if I think about the cycles that we lived through, those businesses are pretty resilient from that perspective. We had 3% growth in the first quarter across the business. And we would expect that because of the innovation that we launched in the first quarter, very strong, a new set of technologies for the semiconductor industry, which has been well adopted by the early customers there. We have a very strong lineup coming up at the American Society of Mass Spectrometry in June. And so I feel good about the underlying health of our business. The 2 drivers of that business in terms of where some of the policy focus and the tariff focus is, it's more affected, right? China is an important end market, much more important for analytical instruments than it is for the rest of the company. So the reduction in tariff rates helps and academic and government has a higher level of penetration in that customer base as well. So we'll see how those things play out. But it's a business that's well positioned competitively. And we'll navigate this environment in a way that allows us to continue to gain market share.

And relative to some of your other businesses, you have a longer lead time and more visibility for this business, just given the ordering patterns. So have you seen anything there in terms of giving you confidence that, that innovation will set you apart from peers, maybe you can find some pockets to take share.

The mass spectrometry, we haven't launched yet, but that's Interestingly enough, the customers are aware of it so that they don't place orders yet, but those orders will come as soon as we launch it in June. Under electron microscopy, the order book has been very strong. So in terms of the products that we've launched, there's really been quite strong adoption. So I feel good about that in terms of what the outlook is there.

Okay. All right. Let's pivot to pharma and biotech. Obviously, another really important end market. Can you walk us through what you saw in the first quarter and then maybe differentiate a little bit between pharma and biotech in terms of demand trends across the various businesses?

Yes. So it's our largest customer base. A little over half of our revenue service pharmaceutical and biotech. We have a very unique scale position in serving these customers. We have a set of offerings that nobody else has. And we bring that to life for our customers to accelerate their innovation and drive productivity. And when you look at what we do, we've gained share over many years in serving this customer base. And so the year started out fairly normal in terms of the outlook. When I look at it from a fundamental perspective in terms of just looking at calendar, looking at COVID all those kind of things, it kind of was a mid-single-digit growth quarter, right, in terms of the outlook, led by bioproduction, it did very well. Pharma services was strong, and the channel was strong, more muted growth in clinical research, but that was pretty much as we expected. And so actually, the first quarter really was a quarter that would be characterized by how I thought that the industry was going to play out in terms of the recovery that we're seeing. And we're well positioned in that sector.

And in terms of the exposures between the different customer baskets for a biotech, biotech funding continues to look really weak. It continues to decline as the year goes on, some challenges in the capital markets there. Just what's your exposure there? And are you able to offset it from maybe strength from pharma?

Yes. So when I think about our set of capabilities, we serve both customer sets, and we have a very strong offering for both and they're both important. Actually from how they -- we actually had pretty solid momentum in biotech to start the year. Clinical research, in particular, had really good strength there. So we'll do a good job serving our biotech customers. You get the bulk of the revenue actually from the midsized biotechs that actually have revenue. So not everything is a start-up that's capital market dependent. But obviously, the funding trends have been more muted with the IPO window effectively shut right now. So we'll see how that plays out. But that's an important customer set, and we're going to do a good job serving our customers and helping them navigate this period of time.

You mentioned bioprocessing did very well. One of the questions we keep getting is maybe ahead of the pharma tariffs or expectation of pharma tariffs if there was any pull forward on bioprocessing or on consumables demand, maybe even broader across the -- beyond just bioprocessing with a view that maybe pharma wanted to stockpile and produce as much as they could to get ahead of tariffs, there's data about increasing exports or imports out of Ireland, things like that. Did you see any unusual order trends or any fluctuations in that drug manufacturing side of the business?

Yes, Mike, I think it's a great question, right? I think everyone has long memories of sort of the implications of COVID. We didn't see anything to our knowledge, meaning that what we saw is our customers repositioning where their actual manufactured drugs are to avoid potential tariffs. So there are no pharmaceutical tariffs that have been put into effect. So you're seeing a lot of rebalancing, but we haven't seen a surge in demand beyond the normal recovery that we would expect or the normal growth that we would expect in the industry. So that's how we've been seeing it play out. So actually, business performing quite well and it's been global in terms of that recovery. So nice to be back to normal in bioproduction.

Okay. Just maybe on the -- you mentioned companies being very aware of where they're based. One of the questions is in the light of tariffs or some of the reshoring debates? How is Thermo positioned from that? Could you be a potential beneficiary with pharma services or either directly or indirectly as pharma serves that. So could you talk about what you're seeing in the Pharma service business?

Yes. So when you think about scale and when you think about industry leadership, there are huge advantages, right? And if you go to any of the major markets around the world, we are the largest domestic player by far, whether it's Finland, the U.S., China, you can go through West Germany, wherever it is. We are literally the largest with very significant footprint, and that allows us to be able to serve our local customers in a very differentiated way. When you think about what's going on and the desire to have more manufacturing in the U.S., we're very well positioned. Our contract development and manufacturing capabilities are very strong in terms of our U.S. footprint, both for our biologic drug substance and our drug product capabilities. And we're seeing very significant demand, from our customers to leverage that capacity because that's the quickest way to be able to mitigate tariffs if you are a pharmaceutical or biotech customer, right? So we're seeing demand. We're also seeing that demand from our diagnostic customers. We have a large set of capabilities supporting the large OEM diagnostic customers. We're seeing very strong demand there as well. So our manufacturing footprint will serve us well. We are also helping our customers that are looking to navigate any productivity requirements that they might have in the environment and actually growing our market share position and helping them get better economics as well. So I think there's always opportunities and I'm excited about that because we're seeing the commercial momentum, and that should build as the year unfolds.

Okay. The other you touched on is clinical research, you called out solid biotech overall, it was a little bit muted in the 10-Q, it showed that it was on a reported basis, it was down about 5%. You've also seen reports from peers or other players in the clinical research like IQVIA, ICON, Fortrea. But can you talk about what you're seeing in that end market in the first quarter? And again, what are your expectations for the rest of the year?

Yes. I think if you go back to last year in the second half, one of the things I talked about is each of our businesses or each of the industry segments is on a different cycle, right, not in terms of the same drivers, but how the drivers affect things are at a different pace. And we said that clinical research lags, meaning that we expected this year to be more muted, and you saw it across the industry, you saw it across us because effectively, things that are much shorter cycle businesses like the consumables businesses, you see that quite quickly when spending was reduced. You saw that a while ago, years ago and coming back. And now this business is the last in that cycle of recovery. When I look at what's going underneath the business, biotech has actually been very strong for us. The accelerated drug development capabilities that we launched in the third quarter, compelling, right? And that's able to help our customers effectively accelerate the time and reduce the cost of doing clinical research and progressing the clinical trials. So our share position is strong. And what we would expect is as the year unfolds that business and the industry recovers in terms of what the growth prospects are there.

Okay. And I mean, you just touched on share, do you think you're potentially taking share.

I feel good about our biotech position. I don't think we took any particular share in pharmaceutical in the quarter.

Okay. Got a couple of minutes left. I want to hit some points real quick. One is capital deployment and M&A, always in the cards for Thermo, strong balance sheets. It's a balance of M&A and share buybacks. So given the environment we have today in the world, both from a policy perspective and a potential target valuation perspective, how do you balance those different priorities?

Yes. First of all, we've been active, right? We've bought back $2 billion of our shares. We raised our dividend. We announced the acquisition of the purification and filtration business of Solventum, a great addition to our bioproduction business. So an active start. I love this environment, right? Because when I think about it, our company is over 100 years old, right? So we don't actually have to time it exactly to the quarter on what the right moment is. And many companies are going to struggle in this environment. That creates opportunities and valuations are down meaningfully. And that will also create opportunities as well. So we're active. Who knows exactly what will play out, but I always think that these are the periods where you can get some interesting things done, and we'll continue to explore that.

Okay. All right. Maybe to tie it all together, we broke a lot of ground today in terms of policy impact, macro impact, Thermo's positioning in various markets. As we kind of take a step back and look towards the rest of the year 2026 and beyond. How do you feel about end market as a whole? How do you feel about Thermo's positioning in that end market? And just sort of refresh us on your longer-term views on the space and on your company specifically?

Yes. So Mike, when I think about my 30 years in the industry, right, whether it's -- and what's not changed in any of those 30 years, is the underlying science and the excitement of what's going on in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry and the understanding of biology and the ability to bring medicines that make a difference to the world, it hasn't changed, and the outlook is incredible, right? And our industry is a GDP plus growth industry. So I worry more about what's the long-term GDP outlook and sort of how does trade and these things affect that. And so I feel very good about what the long-term health of the industry is. I don't know whether the long-term market growth is going to be 4% or 6%, but I feel very confident that it's going to be strong. Our ability to gain share in our unique trusted partner status and a growth strategy that is incredibly proven under every environment is as strong as it's ever been, and the management team is totally engaged. And if I think about how our colleagues are just rolling up their sleeves to navigate this environment, wow, it is what a privilege to lead the company in terms of where we are. The standard that we will hold ourselves to is straightforward. We're going to deliver excellent performance this year, right? And when I say excellent, by your judgment, let's actually see how the market plays out over the next few months. We're going to do a great job and we're going to set ourselves up for a brighter future, and that's what we -- our shareholders expect of us, and that's what we're going to deliver. So I think it's really exciting times and we'll help navigate the policy stuff and educate to make sure that the future is bright.

Great. On that, I think we're out of time. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Thank you, Marc. Really appreciate it.