Waters Corporation (WAT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the 2022 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. I'm Tycho Peterson. It's my pleasure to introduce our next company this morning, Waters Corporation. [Operator Instructions] And with that, let me turn it over to Udit.

Good morning, Tycho. Good morning, everyone, and a happy new year. While the pandemic is still very much with us, I do know that if you make decisions based on science, do them with compassion and collaboration with each other, we'll see the other side of this, hopefully, very soon. I, for one, am very thankful that I'm surrounded by colleagues at Waters, who take our mission very seriously to get us out of this pandemic rather rapidly and safely. Slide 2 is -- it contains our cautionary statements, for your benefit. I'm now on Slide 3, which has our 3 messages for today. Number one, we, at Waters, have a resilient and attractive base, which we have revived. And this is message #2 with our transformation, and I hope to share some evidence of that with you today. And finally, we are starting to focus our attention more on growth. Now to our attractive base, Slide 4, has a company snapshot. Chances are, if you've had a cup of coffee, if you had breakfast this morning or taken any medicine, you've already benefited from the value that our great company offers. We are a leading player with liquid chromatography, mass spec and thermal analysis instruments, and an industry leader in service and informatics. On the right-hand side of the chart, you'll see some basic facts. On a trailing 12-month basis, our revenues are roughly $2.7 billion and we have an industry-leading margin -- EBITDA margin of over 35%, roughly 7400 of us spread around the globe, and we often receive awards for our work with the environment, social and governance area. On Slide 5, we do a slightly deeper dive on our portfolio, customer and geographical segments. From a portfolio segment, portfolio perspective, and now, we've taken the $2.7 billion and divided it on these pie charts. For our portfolio segment, you see roughly 47% of our business is in instruments, and this is a large installed base of over 150,000 instruments that are replaced roughly every 5 to 7 years. And over 50% of our business recurs every year, and this is around service and chemistry or consumables. Moving to the middle of the chart, you see our -- the distribution of our customer segments, which are really in sustainable and attractive segments, with pharma being the largest of our customer segments at 60%, industrial and applied at 30% and academic and government, the smallest segment at around 10%. Again, attractive sustainable -- sustainably growing customer segments. And then finally, from a geography standpoint, again, a very diversified -- very diversified distribution, with the U.S. and Europe being slightly less than 30% of our revenues each, and exposure to attractive faster-growing markets like China, which still constitutes roughly 18% of our revenue base. So a diversified and attractive portfolio of customer and geographic base. Let me do a little bit of a deeper dive on Slide 6, on our end markets. And on the left-hand side of this chart, of this pie chart from the previous page, you see pharma and the right-hand side, industrial and academic. In pharma -- first, in the pharmaceutical industry, which has an end market, grows high single digits for us, and is expected to do so largely scaling with the manufacturing volume of small and large molecules and more increasingly driven by biologics and novel modalities. Mind you, small molecules are still over 80% of the volume of the pharmaceutical industry, but biologics and home modalities continue to drive this market further. Second is our clinical market segment, which grows mid- to high single digits, really scaling with the need for early disease detection and the volume of testing. Moving to the right-hand side is the industrial and applied segments, are basically food and environmental materials, both growing roughly mid-single digits. The food and environmental segment, of course, with sustainable trends with needs for safer food, cleaner environment and clean water and population growth. And then, the materials segment, increasingly driven by faster-growing segments like battery testing for electric vehicles or polymers that are required for sustainable applications or recycling. And then, our smallest segment at the bottom, which is academic and government, usually grows low single digit to mid-single digit and it's highly dependent upon government funding. So Waters operates in highly attractive end markets that are growing mid to high single digits. In this market, and now, I'm on Slide #7, we've perfected a simple business model that has existed for many years since Waters was first put together. On the left-hand side, you'll see that we start with a deep understanding of the unmet need of our customers with the intent of taking sophisticated technology, like we did with HPLC, with UPLC, with mass spec, with thermal and mechanical analysis, and moving into the right-hand side where our customers value simple, compliant and efficient instruments, consumables and services for high-volume applications. So our business model is rather straightforward. It takes sophisticated instruments and complex instruments and strives to make them simpler and more applicable for high-volume applications in regulated environments. So we start with a deep understanding of our customers' needs and invest over 10% of our nonservice revenues in R&D to basically develop our portfolio, which you see on the right-hand side of this circle, starting with first, the top left, which is our instruments. We simplify sophisticated instruments, and there's roughly 150,000 of such instruments out there, replaced almost every 5 to 7 years. So recurring every 5 to 7 years. We are a leader in LC, in mass spec and thermal and mechanical analysis. As you move towards the top right, we have informatics portfolio that is uniquely designed for regulatory submissions. And the biggest case in point here is our Empower software, which is the leader -- which is the leading chromatography data system used by top pharma -- by the top 50 pharma companies. Moving to the bottom right-hand side of the chart, we basically take these instruments and informatics, arm them with customized consumables starting first with small molecules and are now increasingly increasing our portfolio for larger molecules and novel modalities. And we are widely considered a leader in analytical chemistry. And then finally, our service business, our service engineers are there to maximize the productivity and efficiency and utilization for our customers. This is #4 on the bottom left, and our service engineers are highly technical and have won several awards in the industry. So a very simple sort of business model that has been perfected over many years, that leads to an industry-leading margin and a cash flow conversion in excess of 25%. So this well-developed business model would be nowhere if we were not contributing back to our environment efficiently and effectively. And on Slide 8, I'll show you our environmental, social and governance commitment. Starting on the left-hand side, just taking an example, roughly 50% of our direct procurement spend is with suppliers who share our value system and want to contribute more to the environment. From a social standpoint, we have collaborated with several external institutions to increase the access for STEM education for underrepresented minorities. And from a government standpoint, over the last few years, our Board has seen a renewal where we have a nice mix of experienced and new board members and the diversity of the Board is fairly significant. And we separated our CEO and Chairman role in -- back in 2020. so as I conclude Chapter 1 on Page 9, you'll agree with me that Waters has a resilient, repeatable business model with exposure to highly attractive end markets. You'll recall from last year that I shared some facts with you, how we had lost momentum over the last few years and lost track of our simple flywheel. And over the last 16 months or so we've focused on reviving our focus on this flywheel with our transformation, which is very much on track. Let me share some facts. I started last year by showing you the 3 steps of our transformation. And now, I am on Slide #10. So there were 3 steps: first, to regain our commercial momentum; second, to strengthen the performance and leadership, so we can sustain this commercial momentum eventually; and then third, enhance our portfolio for growth. In this chapter, I will focus on #1 and #2 and in the next chapter, focus on growth. On Slide 11, I'm sharing with you the 5 initiatives that I discussed with you last year, and we've been hard at work to gain momentum across all 5 of these to regain footing for our business. Let me take each of these in turn. The first one is instrument replacement, where we said we have roughly 13,000 to 14,000 instruments that have not been replaced in that regular 5- to 7-year cycle and we intend to replace them over the next few years. In 2021, we expect a $30 million or so impact from this replacement cycle. Next year, probably around $40 million or so; next year or 2022, about $40 million or so. And this is expected to continue for the next few years. I would say, until 2024, we still expect an impact of this replacement cycle in addition to now having the discipline of not losing focus on replacing the rest of the fleet every 5 to 7 years. Second is our service attachment rate, which we measure as a planned coverage of our install base, which is probably in the mid 40%, higher in developed markets in the U.S. and Europe and lower in China and faster-growing emerging markets. And here too, there's been significant progress. so versus 2019, our attachment rate has increased by 200 basis points. We still see roughly 10% upside on the attachment rate, especially in Asia. so this should continue for the next several years as an initiative. Number 3 was reaching additional customer segments. These are contract manufacturing organizations, in particular, and to some extent, contract research organizations with our value proposition. Waters had roughly 15% to 16% of our pharma business going to these customers, whereas an industry average is in excess of 30%. This year alone, we have increased that portion of the business by over 40% on a 2-year stacked basis year-to-date. We still have significant runway. We've only reached 20%, 21% penetration. We think there's another 10% or so -- 10% to 15% or so to go. So roughly 2/3 of the way along in our penetration. So this should continue for the next several years. Moving on to the next initiative is additional channels, is the implementation of an e-commerce platform. When I came in, we were roughly 15%, 16% in terms of penetration of our consumables business through e-commerce. We're today at 27%, 28% of our business, our consumables business going through e-commerce. Industry average is between 55% and 60%. And by the end of next year, we will be in the mid- to high 30 percentage. So you can see, there is still runway with that particular initiative. And number 5 is the most endearing, and this was initiated as we did a cross examination of our launch of our product, BioAccord, we realized that we needed more discipline in the launch process, and we've implemented the new launch process for products like Arc HPLC, like ACQUITY Premier, like our Premier Columns, and we've seen roughly a $45 million impact this year. And with the full pipeline, I expect this to continue to yield significant incremental benefits over the next few years. So if I put it all together, over the next 2- to 3-year period, '22 to '24, we should expect 100 basis points incremental impact from these initiatives alone across the base business. So indeed, our transformation program seems to be very much on track. So where does this -- what does this yield from a financial standpoint? And here, I'm showing you Slide #12. This is, on the left-hand side, organic growth of Waters and that of our peers, who share a similar portfolio on a 2-year stack basis versus 2019, and this is Q3 year-to-date. And on the right-hand side, you see the EBITDA margin, and this is average over a 3-year period just to overcome any sort of volatility in our EBITDA profile. So the EBITDA results are rather obvious. We are a margin leader in the industry, so 35% versus an average of roughly 23% in the market. But the left-hand side shows you the benefit of our transformation program. We're on a stacked basis, we're traversing between 6.5% and 7% in constant currency organic growth. Whereas the market range, on a weighted average basis, is roughly 5% peers ranging between 3% and 7%. So indeed, you can see the benefit of our transformation program in our financial results as well. No transformation program is possible without a great team. And now, I'm on Slide 13. This is the team, as you see, starting with Jon Pratt on the left, ending with Keeley Aleman on the right, that was handpicked based on their expertise in execution, M&A and transformation and a deep understanding of technology. I'm really, really excited to work with this team to continue to build our great company. So now, I'm on Slide 14. So I hope I've given you enough evidence to suggest that Waters has a resilient and attractive base. Our transformation is very much on track, and it has started to bring us financial benefits already. Now let me turn my attention and your attention to growth. Now moving to Slide 15. On the left-hand side of this chart, you see our core customer segments, which basically benefit from high-volume applications that are simplified, that are compliant and that are efficient. Remember the flywheel, this is pharma QA/QC, late-stage drug development, food environmental safety, materials testing and clinical diagnostics. We intend to apply the same logic of taking high-end technology, sophisticated technologies, simplifying it so that it can be applied to high-volume applications in faster-growing adjacencies like bio separations, like bioprocess characterization, like the application of LC-MS and diagnostics. And in particular, in the materials segment, use it for testing of batteries that are used in electric vehicles or testing thermal and mechanical properties of polymers that are designed for recycling. Let me start first on the core, what we are doing to continue to revitalize our core and our pipeline. And here, I'll start by sharing a few examples of the launches -- of recent launches of instruments, and this is Slide #16 now. So on the left-hand side, our core business, which is supported by instrument innovation starts with an example of Arc HPLC, which was launched in 2020 and with the idea of taking high performance, increasing the performance of the instruments without revalidating the existing methods, which is absolutely critical for our customers. And we were able to do this by reducing the carryover versus legacy HPLC methods by 5x, increasing the injection precision by over 2x versus the best competitive instruments out there. And it is no mystery that Arc HPLC has done extremely well as a product. The second product I highlight right in the middle of the page is ACQUITY Premier. This is taking our Premier technology, which was custom designed to reduce the adhesion of metal binding, adhesion of metal-loving compounds like mRNAs, oligonucleotides, [ complex ] proteins and reducing their adhesion so we can get better results. And so ACQUITY Premier is a UPLC instrument that was custom designed for biologics and novel modality applications, giving us 100x better detection sensitivity versus non-Premier instruments and 50% reduction in peak tailing. And now, moving to the right-hand side of this chart, is an example from our spec portfolio. This is the multi reflect -- the launch of our multi reflecting Tof instrument that focuses on increasing accuracy at high speed and providing outstanding clarity. So for instance, it is now setting the benchmark in terms of mass accuracy versus Tofs and Orbitrap with less than 500 parts for 1 billion in terms of accuracy, while keeping the speeds as high as they've historically been. And so again, this is a sophisticated instrument that has gone into high-resolution mass spec. For instance, and now, I'm standing in our Immerse lab in Cambridge, next door is the Broad institute. One of the researchers from the Broad Institute had come over to see me here. And he mentioned that they had thousands of samples that they wanted to analyze and wanted to examine the protein and metabolite structure in these samples, but they were reluctant to do it with current mass spec technology, given the time it takes to do the experiment. The MRT now provides them a solution to process many samples without compromising on the accuracy and increasing the speed. So really excited about MRT. The goal is to simplify it and move it, also, into high-volume applications. On Slide 17, I then show you a similar example from our chemistry portfolio, from our consumables portfolio. These are Premier Columns. Premier Columns, again, the technology was designed to coat metals in the columns so that you reduce the affinity of metal binding substrates. This has done extremely well since launch. And I remember, I talked to you about the initiatives. One of the initiatives was to launch with excellence. This particular product increases the sensitivity for metal binding analytes like mRNAs, like complex proteins, results in better feed shapes and capacity. And you'll see that on the right-hand side in 12 -- and 12x improvement in sensitivity for oligonucleotides as a case in point. This has done -- this product has done so well that it has beaten all records that we had in terms of uptake for new launches for columns. So really excited about our core portfolio, just giving you examples from our recent launches that we're customizing for high-volume applications. Now, let me turn to solving critical problems in higher growth adjacencies. And here, I've decided to focus on just 3 in the health care space. The first one is bio-separations. Here, basically, what we want to do is take our separation expertise from small molecules and apply it to relevant problems in large molecules. For instance, even though mRNA vaccines have grown at a rapid pace, there are still significant issues in agglomeration for plasmids, for mRNA molecules, for mRNAs that are formulated with lipid nanoparticles and our customers want to work closely with us to resolve these separation problems so that these molecules can then be tested on high-performing columns in QA/QC labs. We think this market is already roughly $1.2 billion or so in size, high single digit to double digit in growth. The second area that we are spending a lot more time in is on bioprocess characterization. As an engineer who started in the pharma industry roughly 25, 26 years ago after my PhD, I'll forever remain frustrated that we cannot optimize a manufacturing process for biologics once it is filed with regulators without having to go back to regulators. This is unheard of in every other industry. Engineers -- and again, sorry. As a reminder, I'm on Slide 18. Engineers take pride in perfecting processes, applying latest and greatest technologies to make processes much more efficient. And here, we are hamstrung because of, one, regulatory barriers, but more importantly, not having powerful enough analytical techniques that allow us to separate the process from the product. Meaning, if you characterize the product, who cares what you do with the process as long as you assure people that the product that you're producing is the same. And this is a significant need in this industry. If we're able to crack this, this should be a very attractive market, and you see some dimensionalization on the right-hand side. And the third is application of LC-MS in Diagnostics. LC-MS is an unbiased, multiomic, multiflexible, ultra-high sensitivity diagnostic solution that must be applied in diagnostics. So we already showed a proof of concept by working with the U.K. government and the NHS for characterizing the COVID -- the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And we're able to show that the sensitivity and selectivity from LC-MS is equivalent to PCR, with much lower number of false positives. That development of the workflow for a very high-volume application, simplification of LC-MS to be applied in diagnostics, gives us confidence that we can do the same in oncology and in endocrinology. And there is a significant program underway in our labs to make that a reality. This market is already over $1 billion and is projected to grow high single digit to double digits. So you can see that we are taking our expertise from our core business and applying it to -- and logically applying it to high-volume applications in faster-growing adjacencies that are well in the high single digit to double-digit range. We'll do a slightly deeper dive on bioprocess characterization. Several months ago, when we initiated our conversations with Sartorius, both of us shared a deep need to solve one of our customers' largest problems. It was clear to both of us that separating the process from the product was rather important in biologics manufacturing. We decided to apply our expertise to one of the highest volume applications in the early stages of developing processes for monoclonal antibodies. This step is called clone selection, where one selects the most productive cell line to produce monoclonal antibodies. And it is relevant for each and every lab in the industry, and you can do the math on what volume that yields. So, we basically took what was a 6-week process with 1 week of culture and 4 to 5 weeks of analysis and results and call -- and reduced that time frame for testing to less than 2 days, from 4 to 5 weeks to less than 2 days of testing, which basically then allows you to optimize your experiment as you go along as opposed to waiting for results for 4 to 5 weeks and do other experiments at risk. A significant advancement in reducing the time for development of cell lines and optimizing cell lines. We intend to take this further. The initial proof of concept has been very attractive, and our customers are also super excited. To dimensionalize this, I mean, if you think about it, there are roughly 800 to 1,000 benchtop bioreactors that Sartorius alone has. Several other vendors have similar sort of smaller bioreactors. And then, the next step would be to take it to pilot and to manufacturing scale where there are thousands of bioreactors. I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves. We're excited with the proof of concept. We're excited with the early stages of technology. Both companies are, but we're taking it a step at a time, and there will be more updates on this as we go forward. So now, moving on to Slide #20. So where does all of this lead us? I hope I've given you evidence that we have a resilient and attractive base, that we work very hard to revive our focus on our base business and execute our transformation, which will still continue to pay off for the next few years, and we have exciting growth initiatives. If I put it all together in the near term, we think a 5% to 7% organic growth, which is market plus is entirely possible. Provided the market remains mid-single digits, and we don't see any shocks. Over the midterm, we think this can be accelerated as our -- as the adjacencies I mentioned to you start to contribute to our baseline growth. And from a margin perspective, we command one of the highest margins in the industry, and we think there is still possibility for a modest margin expansion with volume leverage. Our productivity initiatives, still giving us room to invest some of these productivity gains in higher growth adjacencies. And over the midterm, as the growth initiatives start to pay a dividend, the volume leverage should rise, but we also think there is room for additional investments, so we will not commit to much more margin expansion than 20 to 30 basis points, and we'll see how that goes as we go through the midterm. So in conclusion, I'll remind you where I started, and this is Slide #21. Resilient and attractive base of Waters, now back on track and is going to pay dividends for it, at least in the midterm. And our growth initiatives are here to help us be a substantially growing company in the mid- to long-term period. Thank you very much for your attention. I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right. Thanks, Udit. Maybe I'll jump in with some of the updates on your, kind of, turnaround initiatives. And I'll start with the replacement cycle. You talked about 13,000 to 14,000 systems still out there. What do you think it takes to penetrate the next leg of the replacement cycle? Is that dependent more on new innovation? More of a targeted selling effort? Can you just talk to what drives that next leg of replacement cycle?

Tycho, it's really 2 things. One, operationalizing what we've already started. So we have a database of these instruments. We've already approached most of the customers, especially on the HPLC side. To some extent, on UPLC, and to some extent, on the mass spec side. So they are in our CRM system. The sales teams are already out there with the conversation. So that's the first and the most important step. Second, with products like Arc HPLC, like ACQUITY Premier, they offer an alternative to several customers, and that initiates a conversation. But internally, what we found is as we have these conversations with customers and offer a better product like Arc HPLC, they still want to go back to our -- to the newer version of Alliance. So nice runway going forward. What gives me confidence is that we have it all systematized. We have leaders who know how to make this work, and Jon and Jianqing Bennett, who have a lot of experience in running sales organizations with CRM systems.

And then how fast do you think the LC market is growing? I know you've talked about mid-single-digit market growth overall, but it seems like there was maybe a broader instrument replacement cycle happening anyway around LC. Has that market stepped up? And is it right to think you're about 60%, 65% LC versus mass spec?

So first, to your first -- to the first part of your question. Historically, if you just look at the -- if you look at Waters, it's been a mid-single-digit growth company with instruments roughly in the 3 to 4 percentage range over -- during our best years, excluding '16 to '19 -- including 2016 to '19. Consumables, being slightly north of 5%, 5.5%, 6% even in our best years and service being 5% to 6% as well. Weighted average, roughly 5%, right? So that's the weighted average across our portfolio. On a 2-year stack basis, we've been seeing growth, which is between 6% and 7%, right, where instruments are closer to mid-single digits, year-to-date, quarter 3, year-to-date versus on a 2-year basis, so, rough 5%. Consumables, almost double digits, service between 6% and 7%. So these are well ahead of what Waters has seen in our best years. Some of this, of course, has to do with a very dynamic market. And you see that -- and I showed you the range of our peer group, right, between 3% and 7%, weighted average being roughly 5%. So some of this definitely has to do with the market. But some of it has to do with our specific initiatives around the transformation and around the traction of the new products. So it's a mix, right? It's very difficult to discern. I do think the market is more dynamic, but we are growing in excess of the market, if we just look at the trailing 2-year basis. And from a product mix perspective, yes, 70-30 is probably -- or even more, like 75-25 is the right mix.

On some of the other initiatives, you talked about service up 200 basis points in '21 and then stepping up to 1,000 basis points this year. What's going to drive that? I think you alluded to Asia being a big part of that strategy.

So, not to 1,000 basis points. Not so fast, Tycho, not only this year, it was 200 basis points on a [ 2-year ] basis, but 1000 basis points over a longer term. Look, the penetration in China is roughly 20% or the attachment rates in China is roughly 20%, where our install base is growing at the fastest rate, right? And we need to implement the excellence that we've got now in the U.S. and in parts of Europe and apply that to China. So China is a significant portion of it. India is a small portion of it, which is also a pretty significant LC market for us. But there's also room to improve in both the U.S. and Europe. So it's across the globe but significant focus on China.

And then, you flagged e-commerce as well, kind of get to mid- to high 50s. What does that do to your chemistry mix, you're about 18% of chemistry revenues from chemistry today? Will that drive more consumable mix overall?

Yes, it's a great question. Look, for every $4 to $5 that you see on e-commerce, $1 is incremental, right? And that's because it's more efficient, customers get better content and your -- the launch of your new products is much, much better, right? And so, there's a significant benefit on having run one of the largest e-commerce platforms before this. I feel that's reasonable and credible, right? So we do expect, as the penetration of e-commerce increases over the next few years, we should have incremental growth on our consumables business. I'm loath to put exact numbers on it, but you should expect incremental benefit that we will hold our teams accountable to. Now that said, in e-commerce, it's not just simply replacing the front end and getting more customers on to your site, which is what we've already done. It's also about going a bit deeper, developing a data layer that can be updated regularly and connecting it to our distribution centers and our manufacturing sites, which takes several years. So, that's why I said this is something that will stay with us for the next few years, and it's a long-term growth initiative that should make Waters much stronger and a great partner for others who want to bring their consumables on to our channel and a great collaboration partners for reagents players. Remember, one of our high-growth initiatives is bio-separations. And we're looking to collaborate with reagents players who deeply understand the molecule while we understand the chemistry and the engineering of creating these columns. So, really, a lot of hope and a lot of energy being spent on e-commerce.

Maybe looking just a little bit more near term. I know you haven't officially guided for this year, but can you just talk a little bit about -- you gave the 5% to 7% for 2022, '23. How much of that is pricing? And what did pricing look like overall in '21?

Sorry, I can't break that down for you in any more detail at this point. But in general, a percentage point, 1% or so pricing, backward looking, is obvious. But as now, with inflation, with inflation both in labor and in materials, we're looking at that even more carefully. So we'll talk more about it when we guide. But at this point in time, all I can say is pricing was a contributor in 2021, and it's going to be a more significant contributor in '22 and beyond.

One on e-mail that came in was just around logistic impacts from Omicron. Anything on supply chain that you're seeing that's worth calling out?

Look, Q4 is our largest quarter. And one of the things that's endearing and frustrating about the tools industry is somehow, everybody wants to shop in the last few days of the year. Now that said, our order book is full. Our backlog is at the highest level. So that's excellent, excellent demand, and the demand is really doing very well, both from a market perspective but also from specific Waters perspective. So it's a perfect storm. The demand has gone through the roof. And on the supply side, there have been challenges on the material side, on the shipping side. But that said, we've been able to surmount them in Q4. And I pointed out what happened in Q3 where an order moved for -- in a few -- over a few days. From Q3 to Q4, that was very easily delivered within the first few days of Q4 in China. So difficult, but we've managed very well through this. And I can tell you, I am super, super proud of our supply chain colleagues who manage multiple supply challenges and multiple logistic challenges to get alternate shipping in. So very happy with what we've been able to do in Q4. And Q1 is a small quarter, so should hopefully provide a little bit of relief.

You provided a bit more color on some newer adjacencies in the slides. I thought it was interesting, battery testing, sustainable polymers. Can you just talk to maybe which of these you think might be more interesting and material in the near term? And do you need new technology to kind of penetrate these markets?

Yes. I think -- great question. I think you started to answer the question itself, I mean, from your last piece. Look, our thermal analysis and our mechanical analysis instruments, which are leading in the industry, are perfectly applicable to detect heating and overheating in local spots in batteries for electric vehicles, right? So when you make these batteries, they go through a slurry process, which is relevant for our rheology portfolio. And once they are set in the batteries, there can be local heating in different parts of the battery that is detected through our thermal analysis portfolio. So highly relevant with our existing portfolio. The question is, can we penetrate these customers and these markets well? And that's going super, super well. More on that as we look in the rear view when we get some traction. And the same is true for recyclable polymers. I'm a polymer engineer by training. And I can tell you, as people modify the formulations of polymers to make them recyclable, the mechanical and thermal properties have to be matched to the existing polymers. I mean you wouldn't want the plastics that are used in your car, in your house, in different parts of your life to suddenly lose the mechanical and thermal properties that you used to enjoy with previous polymers. And that is a critical, critical part of qualifying the new polymers that people are developing. So both exciting areas with sustainable trends. And I think this was one of the challenges in the industrial segment that we've seen in the past. It can be heavily cyclical, but we do think these are sustainable trends. As you can imagine, both electric vehicles and the need for recyclable polymers where our portfolio is tailormade and we're not shy to add to the portfolio. So I've been very open about how -- what our posture is on M&A. And if we see technologies that help and accelerate, again, our value proposition, which is rather simple, Tycho, right? I mean we take complex technology, we simplify it and make sure that it is useful for repeated use, high-volume applications, and those are the markets that we like.

Quick question on China, it was a little bit soft in the third quarter, but I think over 30% year-to-date prior to that. How are you thinking about near-term trends around China for the coming year?

Look, from an overall market -- end market standpoint, pharma is doing extremely well in China. It continues to do well, and there was a small blip from Q3 to Q4, but nothing that has sustained. From an industrial standpoint, especially on the electric vehicle side, we feel that we have a very strong position and a strong portfolio to penetrate that market in China. So I feel extremely good about the end markets in China, in terms of execution. We have a new leader in China who's been there for close to a year. She's completely changed the team. She's changed the relationships with distributors and has been doing extremely, extremely well. In fact, they set the benchmark on how we should penetrate contract manufacturing organizations and came up with the right value proposition. And that has then been exported to the U.S. and to Western Europe. So we're very excited about what we see in China. Yes, there are some macroeconomic challenges and geopolitical challenges, but on a long-term basis, this is not something that we're worried about. And in addition, we're looking for opportunities to do much more locally in China itself, be it assembling some of our instruments and having local application labs. So excited about China.

Okay. I think we hit the end of the session. So, I want to thank you for taking the time this morning. It was great to see you.

Thank you, Tycho. Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.