Waters Corporation (WAT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome day 1 of the TD Cowen Global Healthcare Conference, 44th Annual, Dan Brennan, tool diagnostics analyst here. I'm really pleased to be joined with me on stage, Udit Batra, President and CEO of Waters Corp. Feel free to send questions through. If I see enough, I'll hope you be able to ask 1 or 2 maybe during the presentation, but we have a long list to go through. So first off, Udit, welcome, and thanks for being here.

Thank you, Dan.

Awesome. Maybe we'll just jump right in here on, you'll have some building block questions and then we'll dig into some of the end markets and the businesses. But your guidance for '24 flat comes in at maybe ahead of a lot more consumables-focused peers a bit ahead and puts you on, I think, around 4.5% multiyear CAGR, if you look back to 2019. Maybe like kind of how would you characterize the way you've thought about your guidance in terms of -- there's a lot of volatility in the markets a lot of push and pulls. But just kind of walk through some of the basic building blocks of that guidance now.

Thank you for the question, Dan. Firstly, Awesome to be here with you. And let me just start by saying a big thanks to all my colleagues for landing 2023, the way we did. We're very happy with how the year landed. And let me start there, and then I'll answer your question on '24 because it gives you clues on how we thought about '24. So '23 landed actually outside the -- outside of China, exactly how you would expect, right? So there's really no drama, right? Low single-digit growth and across all end markets, across all geographies outside of China and that too after 2 years of mid-teens growth, right? So that's normal for Waters, right? If you go back almost 15 years for Waters, our overall business, on average, grow 6%. Instruments grow 5%, but no single year in the last 15 years for instruments has grown 5%, right? So the volatility in our business comes from instruments. Consumables grow roughly 7% every year, 6% to 7%, right? So instruments are pretty volatile. If you look at the last 15 years, roughly 5 years, we've been well below average. And I mean not instead of 5%, 2% or 3%, I mean negative, seriously negative. Then if you look at another 5 years, it's well above average. And I'm not talking 7%, I'm talking double digit. 5 years out of the 15, we've been plus/minus delta [indiscernible]. Okay. So if you're investing in Waters, it's a fantastic investment. 59% gross margin, really low SG&A, highest EBITDA, great ROIC, but you've got to be used to the instruments going up and down. And after 2 years of incredible growth, Europe and the United States and rest of APAC was low single digits, so no drama. The drama was in China, right? And China went down by 22%, 23%. And most of that was in the LC part of our business. So as we looked at 2024, we said, look, whatever trends we saw in the latter half of 2023, we're going to project that for 2024 even if we start to see some stabilization happening in China, we're not counting on that. So next year, as in -- or this year 2024, we're assuming low single-digit growth ex China. And China, instead of being down minus 22%, it's going to be mid- to high teens, largely because of a lower base, right? So when we started the year 2023, China was roughly 19% of our business. We ended the year at 14%, 15%. So it's a lower base, latter half of the year, a bit lower than the first half. So same assumptions, but just that -- same assumptions as the second half of the year projecting into '24. And I think one other comment you made is on consumables peers. Our consumables, our recurring revenue is very different than some of the other peers that you talk about. Insofar as our recurring revenue is largely levered to late-stage development in QA/QC. So it's remarkably stable. Even last year, if you were just comparing recurring revenues to recurring revenue peers, when you brought this up, you'd find that we are 6% to 7% growers, whereas many of the others are negative. And that's largely because, again, QA/QC versus discovery or early stage.

Right. Okay. No, all good points. Maybe just building upon the instruments and obviously, that's such a key focal point. You described it very well in terms of kind of understanding the cycles that Waters goes through. So this year, I think just your instrument guide, right, a slight improvement, I believe, like maybe you're thinking mid-single, high single decline. Maybe just -- you talk a lot about stock comps. You gave the reason why -- just help us think through just that instrument guide itself and kind of where are we in that evolution of the recovery?

Yes. So again, let's break it up into China versus ex China, right? So ex China, and you brought up the stacked numbers, stacked growth rates for instruments, but for LC is mid-single digits. -- mass spec is way higher. Mass spec is 7%, 8%, maybe even 9%, right? So we expect LC to be a bit better and mass spec to be a bit worse. That's about it, right? So again, normal within fluctuation for Waters. In China, the story is very different, right? In China, LC on a 4-year basis is down 10%, on a 4-year basis, right? So that's a very significant decline. Mass spec is flat. So let's talk about LC, which is really the challenge. And I think you might ask this later, so I want to address it right up front. LC in China, the 10% decline is largely localized to generics, right? 50% of our pharma market is generics in China, right? 50% of Waters is pharma business is generics. And roughly 70% of that is instruments, most of it is LC. And you do the math, and that's down versus our 4-year average by 50%. So over a 4-year period, if LC is 100%, in 2023, it was at 50%, right? So you're operating well below long-term averages, right? So -- we've -- that is at a sort of a low point. You should expect a recovery, but we have not assumed a recovery in 2024. So the basis is still the same as I answer to the first question. We expect the trends in ex China to continue and in China also to continue even LC not starting its replacement cycle, which is imminent.

Interesting. Okay. So yes, I have questions on LC and mass spec. Maybe just on China, right? Maybe can you differentiate between your pharma business in China and the rest of China, Agilent, when they printed 4Q, they talked about China got better for them. The biotech, I think, was down 50 for them, but they said the rest of the business got better. I don't think they point to one particular thing. It was still down 9, but just maybe speak to kind of differentiating pharma versus nonpharma in China and kind of what are you guys seeing there?

So let's talk at an aggregate level and then we go deeper. At an aggregate level, in fact, if you look at sequentially, I mean we usually when we comment on growth rates, we look at previous year because our business is pretty seasonal, right? And by seasonality, I mean Q1 is 21% of sales, and Q4 is 29% of sales, right? That's the normal seasonality that we see. So it makes really no sense for us to talk sequentially by quarter. But since you want to talk about it, let me just answer the question. If you look at it sequentially, Q4 was up 6% versus Q3 for us in China. Remember, we had this big discussion on ramp and this and that towards last year and some of you are smiling because you probably remember that, overall, our ramp was 15%. We landed at 15%. In China, we said we will grow about 4%, 5%. We grew 6% versus Q3. So quarter-on-quarter, we are seeing improvement in China, yes. Now if you dig a bit deeper, the weakness in China started with pharma at the beginning of the year. Remember, academic and government was much stronger at the beginning of the year. And then as the year progressed, as the effect of the stimulus went away, academic and government went down to a lower base, and that started to decline more rapidly and pharma started to stabilize towards the latter part of the year. So now to dig into pharma a bit, pharma quarter-on-quarter has been rather flat for us. And if you look at the customer segments, and I think that's where there's more insight rather than just looking at the numbers, if you look at biotech, biotech slowed down dramatically in Q1 of 2023, and then it bottomed out. And since then, it's been slowly growing in China. Second, we set CDMOs, which was a significant portion of our business and we had won a lot of share in '21 and '22, became a pretty significant portion. That declined in Q1 and part of Q2, right? And that since then has started to grow, especially on the consumables side. The generics segment, the branded generics segment, which is 50% of our business in China in pharma, that basically is now slowly starting to recover, but we're not counting on that recovery in 2024, right? So in pharma, you see a bit of stabilization quarter-on-quarter if you look at it this way, but we look at it usually year-on-year. And year-on-year in Q1, we're assuming a 35% drop, right? We're not saying versus Q4, it's still down, but it's -- there's a seasonality in it. Outside of pharma, in food and environmental, that segment saw weakness towards the latter part of the year, largely because the government stopped funding some of the reimbursed tests. And academic and government, I spoke about initially already was very strong in the first part of the year and then weaker in the second half of the year. So I think you'll start to see a bit of a flip in China for 2024. Again, we're not assuming that any of that is improving in our guide in 2024, although we see sequential improvement quarter-on-quarter.

And maybe just staying on that for a moment. So the other parts of the business, food and environmental, academic and government. Is that more a comp basis? Or are things changing there? Just trying to connect...

Comp, largely comp, right? Not assuming any of the dynamics have changed.

And maybe just zooming out for a moment, just on the biosecure bill, just kind of taking a super high level of China, which we're trying to address it to each of the CEOs or executives. Like how do you think about our DC experts really feel this is going to be like a microcosm, what we saw in semis. It'll start with this biosecure if they can get it through. They'll target certain industries where they're not going to allow customers to buy from certain companies. But then the next stage could be that could impose kind of trade restriction and not allow certain products to get there. So just your high-level view on U.S., China and kind of if you're thinking about 5 years out from Waters in China, is it still a pretty vibrant market? Or are there real risk to that?

I think many questions in one. So on the biosecure bill, firstly, with Wuxi and large contract manufacturers, and we talked about it about a year ago, by the way, right? About a year ago, we talked about this topic of CDMO slowing down. And due to geopolitical tensions, a lot of the pharma folks pulling out volume and putting it in Singapore and in Ireland. That remains the case. We are seeing no change from Wuxi. No change from many of the large manufacturers. Yes, there is a biosecure bill. People are talking about it, but at a ground level, there is zero change. right? And if I were to project in the future, I mean I'm not an expert at this, I think you can't apply the same rules to medicines that you apply to many other things, right? You'd have to make some draconian assumptions to be able to do it. Now to turn to your questions on -- to your question on, okay, so what happens as a consequence in China, right? So as a consequence, in China, I mean, there are 2 or 3 things happening. First, China has a buy-local push meaning that even if you're a multinational player, you must have a portion of your value chain in China to participate in government-based procurements right? And we are well on that train, right? We started with the LC. We started a bit later than some of our peers. We started 2 years ago. We started localizing LC. We started to localize mass spec, while keeping some of the IP out, but we're still localizing and we believe that, that will benefit us. Second is the push to have more innovation in China, right? And this is basically the development of the whole translational medicine frame and there, we think it's a significant opportunity. So ironically, we're actually going to increase our investment in technology development in China. And third, we believe that China is further ahead than many other economies on automation and use of AI. And in the clinical area, we are collaborating with a large player to build a fully integrated LCMS system that is automated for China, right? We manufacture it in China, we build it in China, and we will supply it to Chinese customers. So I think it's paradoxical. I mean you can sit at a distance and say hey, it's going to get worse and I shouldn't invest in China, as a business person, you can't afford to do that. I mean you see an opportunity and you analyze it and all the things that at least lead us to believe -- all the things that we see lead us to believe there is a significant opportunity in the midterm, and we're going to invest right? While in the short term, when the revenue declined, we took some cost out, right? So I've spoken to you about the whole China strategy in this answer, but it is a multifactorial answer, right? So you invest in localizing, you invest in technology development, you invest in collaborations while you pull out resources where you see the demand slowing down. It's that simple.

Okay. Maybe just back on the China pharma piece for a minute, you kind of really dissected in a different piece. But in terms of the stabilization and the slight improvement you're seeing, how much of that is like we went back and looked and it was hard to do, but there was just a bubble in China, right? There was a lot of money they import into China biotech, there's a lot of venture capital money in there, a lot of me-too drugs and as interest rates went up and you saw it, obviously, in the Western world, you saw it in China, too. Just what's driving the stabilization. Again, they're obviously committed to science, but is the government doing something different -- or do you just hit a point again numbers?

Again, I wouldn't -- so the quarter-on-quarter stabilization, I would not get too excited about it, right, because it's a seasonal business, right? And I mean we don't -- because you asked, I answered the question, but we don't spend a heck of a lot of time saying, well, one quarter to next quarter. What we spend more time doing is looking at it deeply and saying what's happening in the biotech segment. So biotech went down by 80%, right? And that's not a cyclical change. That's a structural change. There were not so great molecules being funded, and they are not being funded anymore. But good science is, they're 20% left and that portion of the business has been growing ever since, since the end of Q1 or middle of Q2 last year, right? So then you go to the next segment, CDMOs. There was overcapacity. So they're not buying any more equipment in the short term, but the chemistry revenue and the service revenue is going up, right? And then you come to the final segment, which is the branded generics, which is where I think you have to pay the most retention. So let's just spend a couple of minutes on this because this helps you understand how you're thinking about the business. Branded generics is 50% of our pharma business, and I started with this comment earlier as well. That's largely an LC replacement business. If I take the number of LCs that were installed, and I'm repeating myself, just to make the point, if I take the number of LCs that were installed in 2023, that is 50%, not just of 2022, but 50% of a 4-year average, right? So 50% instruments forget the growth. 50% of the instruments that are servicing the medicine needs of the Chinese population are now overdue for replacement. And you said, well, maybe you lost share. And it's you, not really because you can look at the next level of data and you can look at your chemistry revenues to those customers, they're going up. You can look at your spare parts revenue to those customers, those are stable, while the volume has gone down for the LCs. That means there is activity. These instruments are getting old. And the instruments that have to be replaced the most and the fastest are instruments that are used by generic players because they're used 24/7. I mean LC is nothing but it's a very high-tech instrument, okay? I'm just oversimplifying it, for those of you who were paying attention to the technology-intensive nature of Waters. It's basically a bump and tubes and then there's a column. And so I'm an engineer, I think of pumps and tubes and there's a column that separates. That's all it is. The longer you pump corrosive fluid through the pump and the tubes, the earlier you have to replace it. Where is it used the highest? It's used in generics. This is where we are delinquent on 50% of these instruments. So unless the Chinese government decides that it is going to risk providing medicine to its people for the medium term, this is coming back. right? So that makes us feel confident that we have to invest in China, and you can quantify it yourself. It's a very significant number, right? Take the number of instruments multiply that by 50 to 100,000, you come up with a substantial number that makes a difference to Waters, right? So I think just to dimensionalize it, and I wanted to go deeper rather than sort of looking at the sequential growth.

Yes. Yes. Super helpful. So maybe just shifting over to -- maybe just shifting over to pharma, just broadly outside of China, we spent a lot of time on, which is great. Just you already talked about the stability of the QA/QC and the consumables side. What are you seeing large pharma? We've heard this still mix feedback from different tools customers or tools players on IRA, it's still slowing things down. We look at R&D trends. Just kind of how would you characterize the overall environment for kind of large pharma.

Once in a while, just good to look at facts right? I know we've all talked to our customers. But if you just look at the facts, again, no drama in pharma outside of China, low single-digit growth after 2 years of well into double-digit growth. right? And as I said earlier, Waters is a business that goes a bit up and down. So this was expected, right? There's nothing unexpected about our business outside of China and pharma included. Now yes, there is a lot of discussion on, well, Pfizer's cutting down on head count and somebody else's, but Lilly is going up. Nova is going up. Novartis is going up. So I think you can pick, but as a tools player, you are especially one that is predominantly in QA/QC and late-stage development you're only hostage to the total volume of medicines being produced, nothing else, right? And the total volume of medicines being produced is only going up. And GLP-1 is just one category, but there are others as well. So no real drama there, Dan, right? And I understand, we've talked a lot about it and we talked about it as the funnel velocity has decreased, right? So we had a -- we installed our CRM system 2.5 years ago, and so we got excited, and we started looking at funnels and funnel velocities, and to have funnel velocity is lower. Yes, people are taking longer to order, and they are taking longer to order. But it's not elongated since Q1 last year. And I bet you, if you looked at the last 15 years, and John Lynch is our resident historian so he has it memorized. But if you looked at the data, you would see that the funnel velocity elongates and shortens based on just CapEx constraints that people are feeling at one point or another. That's all it is, right? So it's not elongated anymore. There is no real signal that we see that people are getting more cautious than they have been in Q1 last year. And Q1 is our smallest quarter, 21%, and people are taking just as long as they did last year to order.

Right. We heard from a couple of your peers. Agilent talked about this on their call, and we heard from another one saying, Typically, pharma starts to kind of spend their budget like in first quarter, like it starts. And I guess I haven't started yet. Again, you're saying it's -- nothing's really changed. You've kind of already answered, but I'm just wondering, is that something that's typical for you from an instrument basis? I guess, I don't know when in the first quarter, how this process works.

I mean I won't comment on intra-quarter trends. I'll just give you a general answer that it -- and I've been in pharma, and I was just telling John earlier that half of my career now has been in pharma and half in tools. So I can't call myself a pharma guy anymore, right? But having been subject to the CapEx constraints in the past, Usually, at the beginning of the year, Jan and Feb, the CEO and CFO, are waiting to see what happens in Q1. Once they have visibility, then the CapEx budgets start getting released, right, for an instrument player that is pretty difficult because every day that they wait is a day that you lose in closing a deal, right? And we're in that zone now, right, where people are in that sort of discussion, right? So it's no different than any year. It's just that Q1 is 21% -- it's smallest quarter, large CapEx can move from one day to the other. So you'll see things going up and down. But no real -- no real difference. And as I said, overall, the quality of the orders, and in fact, I was with our reps from the U.S. and Europe just late last week, right? So we have regular calls with the top reps. And it's super clear that the quality of the orders is very high. So they've said, "you know what, I need to replace these 30 LCs here and 20 LCs here and blah blah. The quality is very high, and it is Waters's account. We just will tell you exactly when we'll give you the money, that's all. So the orders are very high quality, and it has been the case for the last 3 quarters already. And the quality of the orders is high, it's just when they get consummated is being decided now. So no -- again, no real change. And our Q1 guide contemplates this.

Right. Is -- I mean, being an election year, is there anything you've incorporated into your guidance? Hard to know, but like is that -- we're just wondering, is that tiny things at all from a typical pharma spending cycle...

I mean, it's already -- so remember, 2023 was low single-digit growth. It's already on the lower end. I don't anticipate much more than that. The reason I laugh is we spend a lot more time on looking at individual segments and geographies and virtually, every country you pick, there's something or the other happening politically, right? It's not just the U.S. where there are elections.

Right. Maybe staying on instruments, maybe on mass spec, kind of what percent of your instrument revenue is mass spec and kind of -- how does your portfolio -- I mean, I know you -- we haven't really hit upon this, but I will get there towards the end about what you've done and the main takeover orders, if you will, if that's the right word. But just when you think about mass spec, how important is it? What kind of contribution could you have in mass spec as we look forward the next couple of years?

So instruments is roughly 45-ish percent of our revenue. And Waters division is bulk of it, right, so 85%. Out of the 85%, 2/3 is LC and 1/3 is mass spec. And typically, mass spec on a long-term basis grows slightly faster than LC. LC is 4.5%, mass spec is slightly higher than 5%. What we've seen on a stack basis now for the last 4 years, mass spec is significantly outpacing LC, right? LC is roughly 4.5%, 5%, as you said earlier. So nothing different than long-term average is, it's just a little bit down if you account for pricing, but mass spec is significantly higher. And that has to do with the innovation that we brought for, right? I mean mass spec is a very innovation-sensitive business across the board. And if you look at -- this is an interesting fact, as I was sort of looking at our full year in '23 on a 4-year basis for mass spec, the product that contributes the most in volume to our mass spec is the BioAccord. They often vilified BioAccord when we launched it in 2018, has become the most popular product, and that has been totally deliberate. It's happened in the last 2, 2.5 years. Basically, we've taken it from the QA/QC product to upstream to downstream. We've taken it everywhere where process engineers can use it. And we've simplified it, and that's making the difference. That's just an example of not just coming up with a new product, but taking it to the right segment and growing it in its life cycle, right? Other mass spec products is Xevo TQ Absolute is the most sensitive testing PFAS. So that's doing well. Obviously, our Xevo G3 QTof now has the waters_connect software that allows us to transfer data from development into QA/QC much more easily. So I could go on. I mean, mass spec has been terrific in terms of bringing new products in. And the interesting thing is when you bring new products in during a slow CapEx cycle, customers have a chance under all the noise to give you feedback because you're not seeing incredible volumes. And this is one of the questions that came up at a different conference where the people said, "Well, if you launch so many products just now, what happens then" and you're seeing so much increase in volume, not really, we're not seeing as much increase in volume as we would have expected because customers are still pretty reticent to take out their CapEx dollars. But they are helping us improve the products as we go along. And when the CapEx cycle starts, I mean, we should see even a stronger growth right? Super happy with mass spec.

Right. So the point is mass spec strength now isn't like taking -- it's not going to pull forward anything. You feel like it only will be maybe further aided as...

And I think the only thing I wonder always is, I mean, you should not -- you should [Technical Difficulty] be in statistics, right? So when you look at long-term statistics, you basically see mass spec also has that sort of cyclical behavior and we are operating well above long-term averages. So in 2024, we've contemplated a slowdown in mass spec, right? And for the full year, we've said low double-digit decline based on last year's growth rate versus 2023. And for LC, we've said a low single-digit decline -- sorry, a mid-single-digit decline.

Right. The low double digit is just taking some multiyear stack and you're getting it back to the trend line, I guess?

Exactly right.

Right.

Exactly right. So I mean the way we looked at it is we said whatever happened in the second half of the year, whatever that stacked growth rate was, is going to be the growth rate for 2024, right, from '23 to '24. And the difference in first half versus second half is just the denominator.

How about the industrial part of our business, I mean, we have like 3 minutes left here, so I have a bunch to hit here. But just you've guided for low single-digit guide. You've seen some noise in the chemical companies. Just like what -- you also have the PFAS, which is a great offset to that. Just kind of -- is that a worry or do you think that's adequately derisked?

Adequately, derisked because it has growth drivers like PFAS and battery testing, and our TA business is executing very well. I mean, while the rest of the business declined, TA grew 3% even in 2023. So really feel good about it. I think the only thing that I would watch out for is the macroeconomic trends in China, which basically industrial business, and we've contemplated that in the guide already. It just goes up and down with the macro trends.

So maybe on the margins, you've got margin expansion this year, 20, 30 basis points despite like flattish growth, which is really impressive. So obviously, you're doing some cost out. And I think at the Investor Day, you talked about the over investment you made that will pay some space as you get through it. So just give us some color on '24, how much are you squeezing to get there? And kind of what does it mean beyond '24?

I think I would not call it squeezing, I would call it discipline in '23 first, right? 70 basis points of operating margin expansion, 160 million on gross margin. I think everybody talks a good game on pricing. I think whatever shows up in gross margin is what's real. [ I feel ] very good about the discipline in the company to be able to deliver margin expansion. And if you've signed up for 20 to 30 basis points, you'll see 20 to 30 basis points. And if you look at the long-term algorithm, if the business grows 5%, 50 basis points of leverage, 50 basis points, we are adding from productivity initiatives, and we have line of sight on about 300 basis points of productivity initiatives that will roll out over the next few years. So this is not just a 1-year phenomenon. And we continue -- we want to continue to invest in faster-growing areas. We've already seen the benefit, right? So our business has gone from less than 20% in biologics in pharma to over 35% already. Our clinical business used to grow 3%, it's growing 15%, right? So wherever we've invested, not overinvested. Wherever we invested, we are starting to see benefits. And I think we want to continue that. And we're super confident about being able to maintain discipline in the organization to deliver at least 20 to 30 basis points.

So GLP-1, you called out, we were just discussing in the year, 30 basis points of growth a year through 2030. How did they come up with longer range of outcomes around that 30 basis points?

If you do top down, the number is much higher, right? Because 2% to 3% of the volume in the pharma industry in small molecules and even large is likely going to be GLP-1s, right? So if you take that and you say, well, pharma is about 60% of your business, so 6x 212, 1.2 should be 120 basis points. Why is it 30. There's a bit of derisking there. But bottom up, that number was substantially higher, and we also derisked it. So you should expect that 30 basis points is sort of expected. What is more interesting is to understand the basis of it bottom up, right? So for both of the large, and we usually don't talk about individual compounds, this is such a large mover and people have asked, so we did the math and we're sharing it for both the large providers of the GLP-1s, our columns are specked in, right? So any time a product is released, any peptide that is released is going to use Waters column to release it. Second, our LC or #1 in QA/QC. So there's usually 2 vendors. We are the #1 vendor by far. So it's usually 80-20 or 90-10. So we are by far the #1. And third, for in-process testing, there's a system called patrol that part has developed [indiscernible] have adopted, and that also comes with column. So when we took it bottom up with those 3 products, took the volume, we came to a slightly higher number and the risk adjusted it to 30 basis points. Top down, you come to a much larger number. So I started with top down, gave it to the team. They committed to something in the middle, and then we said, okay, 30 basis points as a starting point.

So we're out of time. So what's the message you want to leave investors with here about the Waters story investment thesis, '24 outlook.

Firstly, thank you for having us. Look, Waters is a very resilient business, right? And in order to invest in Waters, you need to really look at our long-term history. And you have to understand the fluctuations. But if you look at -- if you accept the fluctuations in the business, it is the best business that's there in the tools industry with a 30-plus percent EBIT growing roughly 6%. And as you look forward now, as you look forward, what you find is that the volume drivers are much more positive than they have been in the past, right? We just talked about GLP-1s, we talked about volume in pharma, the arrival of biologics and novel modalities, and our role in that gives us an advantageous position. The third, our innovation is at an all-time high, especially in the short to midterm, you should see a benefit of that. Pricing is higher than what we've seen in the past by about 100 basis points. You add all that up, you start to look at a much faster growth rate. And as Waters grows faster, and this is despite the fact that China was lower this year. And I think the last thing I would add is, first, the volume drivers are higher. And the last thing I would add is the operational excellence. I hope you've seen that with the transformation we orchestrated in the last few years. We saw the benefit of that, not just in the uptick in '21 and '22, but when the downturn happened, we were able to withstand it way better than many of our peers, right? With the margin expansion that you saw and the growth rates that you saw in areas outside of China. So really excited to be here, remain excited to be here. We're just in the early innings of setting Waters up for a pretty substantial growth. profile in the future. So Thank you.

Excellent. Way to finish it off. Thanks for being here, everyone. Have a great rest of the conference.

Thank you.