Waters Corporation (WAT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Perfect. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Rachel Vatnsdal with the life science tools and diagnostics team here at JPMorgan. Today, I am joined by Udit Batra from Waters. So as we typically do, this is a 40-minute session. First half roughly will be a presentation followed by Q&A. And so with that, I will hand it over to Udit. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to listen to us. And thank you, Rachel. 4 years ago, I stood here and introduced our transformation plan, and that consisted of basically regaining our commercial momentum, revitalizing our innovation and entering faster-growing areas. And since that time, the world has seen lots of ups and downs. So I joined the company smack in the middle of the pandemic. We came through a rebound, a supply chain crisis and then the economic slowdown that we're all too familiar with, with all the geopolitical crisis, the slowdown in China, the slowdown in biotech. And through that time, through that turbulent time, we've stuck to our transformation plan that I introduced to you here 4 years ago. And we have traversed from the bottom of the league table of total shareholder return for the life science tools and diagnostic peers to somewhere close to the top for the -- consistently for the last 4 years. So before I get into the details on our transformation plan, I want to bring everybody up to speed on the Waters story. So I have 3 messages. We have a strong business model that operates in highly attractive and resilient markets. We have executed the transformation plan that I talked about in a very disciplined way through the ups and downs, and I'll show you the results. And then finally, I'll share my excitement about what we think is in front of us and how well poised we are for the next phase of growth that is yet to come. So starting with the markets. Waters serves regulated markets with significant unmet needs, and if you traverse your eye from the left to the right-hand side of this chart, you basically find, first, it's a $12 billion total accessible market growing mid-single digits. On the left-hand side are the 2 life science segments. First, pharma, which grows roughly high single digits over the long term, more recently being driven by novel modalities and biologicals. Second is our clinical segment, also grows high single digits, which is a specialty clinical segment where we are introducing the testing, the use of mass spec for specialty diagnostics, and it's driven largely by early disease detection of small analytes. In the middle of the chart, you see our industrial and applied segments, starting with food and environmental, which roughly grows in the mid-single digits, driven by global population and the need for safe food and clean water, and more recently being driven by the need for PFAS testing and reduction of impurities in our food and environment. Then the next one is materials, again, mid-single-digit grower over the long term, more recently being driven by the increased electrification of our economies, largely the need for electric vehicles. And then if you traverse your eye all the way to the right, it's our smallest end market, grows low single digits over the long term. This is the academic and government segment, which is driven by government funding. So in all, sort of $12-ish billion total accessible market, growing mid-single digits. In these regulated markets with significant unmet needs, Waters has a repeatable and robust business model. Let me walk you through this chart from left to right. We spend a lot of time trying to understand the unmet needs of our customers, and then spend roughly 10% of our product sales in R&D, converting complex instruments into simplified instrument systems that you see on the right-hand side. And it has 4 that -- our business model has 4 parts. First, instruments, roughly 170-ish thousand of those installed with many customers around the world. They get replaced every 7 to 10 years. Second, now I'm on the top right-hand side of the wheel, is our compliant informatics systems. So the data that comes out of these instrument systems is submitted to regulators using a compliance software that assures data integrity of any tests done on these instruments. And the poster child in this case is our Empower software, which is used to submit roughly 80% of the dossiers for medicines that are submitted to regulators around the globe. Bottom right of the wheel is are our consumables. We are an innovation leader in chemistry that moves along with the complexity of the molecules that we are trying to purify, from small molecules to monoclonal antibodies, to antibody drug conjugates to PFAS. You name it, we are an innovation leader in that space. And we are the only manufacturer in our industry that has complete control of the full value chain, which our customers appreciate, especially in the QC segment where they pay for reproducibility. And then finally, all of this works because we have roughly 2,000 people who are service engineers around the globe servicing instruments. And these are folks with advanced degrees, often people who have designed these instruments or were customers on their own. So in an attractive market, Waters has a very simple and repeatable business model where a lot of the business is recurring, either instruments over the 7- to 10-year time frame or recurring revenue every single year. Now this simple and repeatable business model, followed diligently, results in roughly a 6% average growth, and this is from the pre-pandemic era of roughly 10 years pre-pandemic, 6% average growth, average revenue growth, but what is even more interesting is that our operating margin is at the very top in the industry. And what I show in the middle of the chart are our mid- to large life science tools peers across the industry, and you see 30.7% operating margin. So 6% growth, 30.7% operating margin and $0.25 of every dollar is cash that comes out of sales, right? Give me a business like this that recurs every year, and I take it any day, roughly $3 billion in sales. Now let me dig a little bit deeper into our geographic footprint and our customer segments. So starting on the left-hand side of this chart, this is the same $2.93 billion that I showed you earlier. These are the end markets. Roughly 60% of the revenue is in the pharma segment. Remember, I told you that it's driven largely -- by these days, the growth is driven by biologics and novel modalities. Second is our industrial segment. This is basically roughly 30% of our revenues, and the smallest segment is academic and government. I'll talk more about this in a minute. In the middle of the chart, you see a nicely balanced geographic footprint, roughly 38%, 40% coming from APAC. Second is Europe with 33%, and the U.S. slightly shy of -- or Americas slightly shy of 30%. And all the way to the right-hand side is our portfolio, over 60% of which is recurring every single year, and this is services and chemistry. And close to 40%, 38% on this chart, roughly 38%, 40% are instruments that recur over a 7- to 10-year time frame. So a nicely balanced geographic footprint with roughly 60% or so recurring revenue. Let me talk a little bit more about the customer segments and how resilient they are. This is the same wheel that you saw on the previous chart. Now we have sort of broken it down slightly differently. So let me walk you through it. On the right-hand side of the chart, it's the same pharma segment, 58% of sales coming from it. Roughly 80% to 85% of that comes from late-stage development and manufacturing applications, which have a lot of resilience. So even as the economy goes up and down, people still buy medicines and you have to test them and you have to produce them. So that is a highly recurring part of the business. A small portion of the pharma business is in pharma discovery. Traverse your eye to the bottom left. This is the food and environmental segment. Roughly 2/3 of this is rather resilient, right? So half of it is food and environmental applications. Again, the need for safe food and a clean environment does not diminish if the economy is going up and down. So the testing there is recurring. And the remaining portion of it is materials and chemicals, which moves with the economy, right? So bulk of the sales are still highly resilient. You add that all up, roughly 75% of our end market applications are resilient and independent of what's happening in the economic environment. And a small portion in materials and chemicals, which is dependent upon the macroeconomic conditions; academia, which is dependent upon government funding; and pharma discovery, which is dependent on research funding, is rather volatile. So attractive end markets, a simple and repeatable business model with the highest operating margin in the industry. So it is a strong business model in highly attractive markets. So that's what I wanted to cover on just to bring everybody -- to bring everybody up to speed on the Waters story. Let me now turn to the transformation plan, which we have executed in a highly disciplined way through the ups and downs in the economy. For those of you who were here 4 years ago, you will recall it has 3 steps. First, we wanted to regain our commercial momentum. Remember, as I said earlier, we had lost our commercial momentum and our position on the podium in the previous 3 to 5 years. So we wanted to regain our commercial momentum as step one. Then we want to invest organically and revitalize our innovation; and number three, once we have that under control, we wanted to enter faster-growing adjacencies. We have stuck to this plan in a highly volatile environment. Let me orient you to this chart. The panels are the years. The legend on the top right are: the bars are the instrument growth rate versus previous year, and the dotted line is recurring revenue growth rate versus the previous year. Two obvious takeaways. You can see that the instrument growth rates are highly volatile and correlated with macroeconomic conditions and external conditions. However, equally, recurring revenue, which is 60% of our business, is growing mid- to single digits irrespective of the economic conditions, right? Quite an important takeaway. Now let me walk you through each of the panels. 2020, when the new management of the company came in, we were smack in the middle of the pandemic; 2021, we introduced our 5 growth initiatives, and I'll give you an update on that in a minute. We executed those with discipline, but you can see instrument revenues went up as high as 45% in Q1 of 2021. And then through the year, they remained in the double-digit territory. We finished the year with about 16% constant currency growth overall. 2022, the momentum continued, but there was a supply chain crisis. So in order to support our customers, we had to work extremely hard. But again, we maintained our commercial momentum, and you can see that on this chart, both on instruments and recurring revenue, we finished the year with roughly 12% constant currency growth. And then in Q1 of 2023, we had a confluence of events that slowed down the economy first, with the biotech funding dramatically dropping; then China slowing down; global macroeconomic conditions coming under pressure; inflation rising; and, of course, the geopolitical crisis, all conspired to slow down the growth in 2023. But again, you can see that the recurring revenues are in the positive territory through that time frame. And for the first 2 quarters of 2024, that continued. And in Q3 of 2024, we returned back to growth, and I'll talk more about that in a few minutes. So during these turbulent times, we stuck to the transformation plan that I shared with you back 4 years ago and with, I would say, rather remarkable results. So just a bit of update on each of the different buckets that I talked about. First, on commercial initiatives. You remember these were 5 initiatives. Replacing instruments, roughly 15% of the original pent-up demand is still pending. Second, we said we were going to increase our service attachment rates. We went -- we had said we will increase it by about 10% from 43% to 53%. We've already -- we're already over 50% on that initiative. Number three, we said we're going to increase the amount of chemistry revenues that comes from e-commerce. From less than 20%, it's gone to over 40% in a matter of 4 years. And then we said we will increase our exposure to contract organization, be it contract manufacturing organizations, contract research organizations. We were -- less than 15% of our pharma revenues back in 2019 came from these customer segments. Now it's over 25%. And finally, we said we're going to launch new products with excellence. So that is a quick rundown and an update on the 5 commercial initiatives we talked about 4 years ago, and we have stuck to them in that time frame. The second initiative was around revitalizing innovation. Let me just give you 3 examples where, with that focus, our innovation is setting new standards in the industry. Starting with the left-hand side of the chart, we introduced our Alliance iS instrument over a year ago. It is the single most meaningful advance in HPLC in over a decade. It reduces user-related errors by over 40%, a significant unmet need in QC for many of our customers. Second, in the mass spec space, we introduced the Xevo TQ Absolute, coinciding with the need to detect and remediate PFAS from many different types of materials. It is the most sensitive instrument for those applications. So again, showing significant growth over the previous year, in fact, 70% growth like-for-like for that particular instrument. And then finally, on the right-hand side is our chemistry portfolio where we launched our MaxPeak Premier technology, which resulted in much sharper peaks out of the tests and decreases testing time by about 17-fold. So speeding up experiments with better results, and that particular line of products is growing over 45% for the first 3 quarters of 2024 and was launched now 3, 3.5 years ago. So incredible progress on launching new products and gaining traction with our customers. That brings me to our third initiative. We said, look, we will regain our commercial momentum behind those 5 initiatives. We will revitalize the innovation, and then we will start moving into these adjacencies where our business model is relevant. So let me walk you through this chart. On the left-hand side, you see the $12 billion TAM that I showed you earlier growing mid- to high single digits, and you see those resilient end markets that I talked about earlier, QA/QC late-stage development, et cetera. Our simple business model that I talked about earlier, repeatable, with instruments, compliant informatics, chemistry and service, we wanted to see where we could apply it, and we selected the segments on the right-hand side. First, just take a step back, that adds about $7 billion to the total accessible market, and likely growing high single digit to double digits. And there are 4 of these: bioseparations, bioanalytical characterization, application of mass spec in diagnostics and battery testing. Let me walk you through the progress on each of these now. On bioseparations, our deliberate focus has yielded results. So much so as you see on the left-hand side of the chart, over the last 4 years, roughly 40% of our revenue comes now from novel modalities and biologic applications in our chemistry portfolio, up from 20% just a few years ago. On the right-hand side, you'll see several examples where I talked earlier about the MaxPeak Premier technology, which decreases the adhesion of large molecules, thereby decreasing the amount of time that you need to do the same experiment. That technology has been applied across many different modalities. And you see that at the bottom of the chart, starting with AAV-based gene therapy applications; oligonucleotides with our OligoWorks SPE workflow; with the GTxResolve Premier SEC columns for mRNA and LNPs; and then finally, the most recent launches for in-house developed enzymes and reagents for novel modalities. So you see very specific examples of progress in improving our portfolio for bioseparation applications. Let me now turn to bioanalytical instruments. Our ambition here is to do what we are doing for small molecules and replicating that success in compliant informatics for large molecules. Now when you think of compliant informatics in the QC space, you can break it down into instruments and software. On the top of this chart, you see software called Empower, which we introduced earlier, which you can use to submit data to regulators. On the bottom, you see the different instruments in a QC lab. Starting on the left, you first see LC, which is the predominant instrument used in order to separate and purify molecules before they are detected, before the molecules are detected using several of the different detectors you see on the right-hand side. In a small molecule lab, you usually have an LC and a UV detector, right? This is what you see on the left-hand side of the chart. And in this setting, you can detect the purity profile and the identity of the different molecules and submit that data through Empower to regulators. A large molecule lab is quite different, right, where you need several other detectors, not only to elucidate the chemistry of these complex molecules, but also their physical properties, right? So you, of course, have a UV detector. But in addition, you have a mass spec. And there are 2 characteristics that are required for them to be introduced into a QC lab. One, these instruments have to be simple, so you and I can use them. And second, they have to be compatible with Empower, right? So our ambition is to have an armamentarium of these instruments that give us the physical and chemical properties of these large molecules, and you see several examples on this chart. Starting with mass spec, we introduced the BioAccord several years ago. It is a simple version of mass spec that gives you several other chemical characteristics, and we're working hard to have it be more compatible with Empower. Second, you see mass detection. This is our QDA II line. This is the only mass detector in the industry that is compatible with Empower, and customers use data to submit -- use it to submit molecular weight data to regulators. Then you see light scattering. This was a justification for acquiring a company called Wyatt 1.5 years ago, and we're working pretty hard now to have the data from Wyatt multi-angle light scattering instruments to be compatible with Empower. In fact, later this quarter, you'll start to see that being introduced. And then finally, not to be left out, we've opened up the ecosystem to many of our peers, and you see an instrument from one of our competitors for measuring electrostatic properties of large molecules. So the ambition is twofold: to have an armamentarium of simple instruments that you can use to characterize the physical and chemical properties of large molecules; and have the data be compatible with Empower, so you can submit it to regulators. We're making significant progress on this front. Taken together, bioseparations and bioanalytical characterization have increased our revenue from less than 15% from large molecules a few years ago to now over 35% as of this year. Moving right on, and let me talk briefly here about clinical and batteries and what progress we've made on that front. Again, you see our -- on the top of the chart, you see our simple business model. Here, as we separated our clinical diagnostics business with mass spec applications, we've seen growth grow from low single digits to well into the double digits for an end-to-end LC-MS solution for clinical diagnostics. On the instrument front, we've adapted our Xevo TQ Absolute for analysis of trace level analytes. We have a compliance software with waters_connect, and we have increased our offering of consumables that are relevant for endocrinology and immunosuppressant drugs in addition to newborn screening. As you go to the bottom of the chart, similar idea, similar 4-part business model for battery testing where the growth has been well into the double digits. I'll just give you the example of instruments here. Our TA Battery Cycler Microcalorimeter detects the earliest signatures of runaway reactions that cause explosions in batteries, right? Again, as the need for battery testing becomes higher and higher, that ecosystem is no different than testing a tablet out of a batch of pharmaceutical drugs. So you can see we've been very deliberate about taking our business model and applying it to adjacencies that look very different with similar unmet needs, all of this while delivering a very strong operating performance in a turbulent environment. 2023 and '24 have presented a lot of challenges, from volume headwinds to FX headwinds to inflationary pressures, and our response has been pretty straightforward. We're focused on improving productivity so we could manage and maintain margins, we've passed on pricing in a robust and operationally excellent way, and we have done proactive cost management, so much so that over the last 12 months, our gross margin has expanded by 210 basis points, and our operating margin has expanded by 80 basis points. This, on top of being the highest margin player in the industry. This -- of course, I've just changed the right-hand side of the chart. If you compare it to our peer group, this, with the highest margins in the industry, expands our lead in terms of expanding the gross margin and operating margin. And again, here I show the same 6 peers that are in the same peer group, mid- to large life science tools players. So in summary, from a transformation perspective, we've regained our commercial momentum, we've revitalized our innovation, and we've entered faster-growing adjacencies, so much so that for the past 4 years, we maintained one of the top TSRs in the industry from being at the very bottom about 4 years ago. So quite a nice progress and implementation of the transformation plan. Let me now shift to my third message in the remaining time. I'm extremely excited about how well poised we are as we enter this new phase of growth. Let me show you why. Starting with Q3 of 2024, after about 6 to 7 quarters of instrument decline, for the first time, we saw instruments gain positive growth. Overall growth rate was roughly 4% in constant currency. All end markets, all geographies and all portfolio segments grew in Q3 of 2024 for Waters. What is most interesting is LC came back to growth after 7 quarters of decline. That, too, in our largest customer segment, where the next replacement cycle for LCs is beginning, right? That bodes extremely well as a starting point for Waters. Talking a little bit about this replacement cycle. On the left-hand side of this chart, you see our long-term growth rate. I talked about this earlier, roughly 6%. During this time -- this is a 10-year period pre-pandemic. During this time, our recurring revenues are like a Swiss clock. They grow mid- to high single digits, and you see that at the bottom of the chart on the left-hand side. On the top left, you see our instrument growth rates. Again, over a longer period of time, they fluctuate, but grow roughly 5% during that time. Traverse your eye to the right-hand side, first to the bottom right. Recurring revenue is well into the positive territories. If you look at the top of the -- top right of the chart, what you see is the CAGR over a 5-year period for instruments is well below our long-term average, right? So instruments over a 5-year period are roughly 1%. LC is flat. Mass spec is 2%. So there is pent-up demand, right? In the short term, we think we're very well set up to capitalize on this pent-up demand. Second, if you look at the long-term view now, I've only changed the right-hand side of this chart, there are additional drivers that did not exist in the previous 10 years when we looked at the 6% growth. First, from a volume perspective, prescription growth rate is expected to be faster over the next 5 years than it has been in the previous 5 years. Over the next 5 years, over $200 billion of revenue will go off patent, and we are very well positioned to capitalize on it with our broad portfolio and our broad customer footprint. GLP-1s is a category that's adding to this growth that did not exist previously, and more about that in a minute. Outside of pharma, applications such as PFAS testing and battery testing will also add to the volume growth in the segment. Second, I talked a bit about bioseparations and bioanalytical characterizations. Many of these techniques are today present in late-stage development. As they move into Q3, you will see a higher volume of consumption there, and that did not exist in the previous 10-year period. And then finally, through operational excellence, we have been able to command higher pricing. We expect that to contribute roughly 100 basis points more than it has in the past, on the back of a fully revitalized portfolio. Digging a little bit deeper into those volume drivers which are highly relevant to Waters, and we call these idiosyncratic growth drivers for our company. First, on GLP-1s, we expect that to add roughly 30 basis points to our historic growth rate; PFAS testing, another 30 basis points; and India, where we have a strong presence, has grown over the last 4 to 5 years, well into the mid-teens. In fact, year-to-date Q3 2024, the growth rate in India has been in excess of 24%, 25%. So we're very excited about what we are going to see in the next few years in India, given the rapid genericization of a large portion of innovative molecules. Add that all up, that is roughly 130 to 160 basis points of additional growth on top of what we've seen historically. On the bioanalytical side, remember I said as molecules move from late-stage development into QA/QC, you will see higher volume. This is a repeat of the previous story that I told you about LC being a separator and different instruments being detectors. All in all, with the acquisition of Wyatt, we expect another 40 basis points of accretion to the historic growth rate. So fairly significant volume drivers that did not exist in the past. Now moving on to our recurring revenues and taking you back to our growth initiatives. Our service attachment rates, remember, our target was 53% attachment from 43%. There's been -- the initiatives have been so successful, we've decided to increase our target by 200 basis points. On the chemistry side, we have roughly 40% of our chemistry portfolio being derived from novel modalities and large molecules. With disproportionate R&D spending, roughly 70% of R&D in chemistry going to large molecule applications, and additional penetration with e-commerce, we expect that number now to go to 50%. So over 50% of our revenue in chemistry should come from large molecules and novel modalities. And finally, on the informatics side, I already talked to you a little bit about what our ambition is in the QA/QC space: to have a lot of instruments to be compatible with Empower. We also are introducing different tools using AI and machine learning to make our customers' lives easier. So that was on the top line. If I just continue down the EPS track, let's talk a little bit about profitability. We have industry-leading profitability, but it is far from optimized. It is industry-leading because we have a simple, robust business model that we have gone back to, and we are executing on replacing instruments and having the recurring revenue that we do rather diligently. As we go forward, Waters in general, with 5% growth, has volume leverage that adds about 50 basis points to the operating margin. Second, with pricing and mix, we expect to add about 25 basis points. And from a productivity standpoint, Waters is highly successful, with high operating margins, not because we have introduced significant number of productivity initiatives, it is largely because we operate downstream with a very recurring business model. These productivity initiatives, like business systems that you hear about from many of our peers, have not been present at Waters. We did not have a global capability center in India. We introduced all of these in the last year or so, and we expect roughly 300 basis points of additional productivity over the next 8 to 10 years. So you add that, assume about 25 basis points to the margin there. So that's 100 basis points that you should expect at steady state if we grow roughly 5-ish percent. And I walked you through how we think the growth could be even higher in the next few years, short and midterm. We expect to invest 70 to 80 basis points in the high-growth adjacencies that I mentioned earlier, so that leads to about a 20 to 30 basis points of margin expansion. So growth faster than history, 20 to 30 basis points of margin contribution, and then the third arm is capital allocation. Historically, Waters has been very active in share buybacks. With the acquisition of Wyatt and its successful integration, we're highly confident that we can participate in accretive M&A, largely because we're -- our free cash flow generation is exceptional, $0.25, as I said, of every dollar is free cash flow -- $0.25 of every dollar sold is free cash flow. So we pay down debt rather rapidly. Our strategy is super clear. We know where the gaps are. We know what the targets are. And if they make sense financially, we will act on them. And finally, given our highly focused portfolio, a lot of the targets are highly complementary and we don't expect much regulatory barriers. So that's the third arm of our value creation lever. And so if I just put this all together, again, for those of you who have been following the Waters story for decades, you'll know we used to have something called 6-2-2: 6% long-term growth, which I showed you earlier; 2% contribution to EPS with margin expansion; and 2% with share -- largely by share buybacks and capital deployment through that level. That's about 10% in EPS growth year-on-year. I hope I have given you enough evidence to show you that the long-term growth could be higher than 6% with the volume drivers, large molecule entry, pricing and entry into different adjacencies. The margin can be even more attractive with our productive -- implementation of our productivity initiatives with mix and pricing. And of course, with accretive M&A, we can add on top. So highly attractive value creation algorithm. So now summarizing what I've been talking about for the last 25 or so minutes, 3 simple messages: Waters operates in attractive markets with a strong and repeatable business model; we've executed against a transformation plan that I introduced to you 4 years in a rather resilient way; and I am excited about the next phase of growth that will be driven by all these new products and entry into these adjacencies. Thank you for your attention, and I'd like to invite you to our Investor Day in New York City on March 5, 2025, to hear more. Thank you again for your attention.

Perfect. Thank you, Udit, for that overview. So to kick it off here, I wanted to ask you about some of the trends that Waters is seeing relative to peers in the sector. A number of your peers have called out that they're actually expecting 2025 to still be below average growth from a market and corporate standpoint. But if we just look at exit rates, if we look at Waters 4Q guidance, it already assumes 5% to 7% organic growth, which, as you mentioned, is in line with your long-term targets. So can you spend a minute talking about your view on that recovery in 2025, and how much of that view is really due to some of the idiosyncratic drivers to Waters versus market-driven and the recovery there?

So I promised you, Rachel, that I'll take notes, and that's why I got a notepad, given your question has many different parts. But thank you. Look, there'll be a lot of time to talk about 2025, and we'll dedicate serious time in our full year earnings. But just to give you some context, from an end market perspective, just starting there first, we've seen steady recovery as we've traversed through 2024, right? I mean Q1 and Q2 were negative, Q3 was 4% growth across all end markets, across all geographies and across all portfolio segments, and we've guided, as you said, to mid-single-digit growth in Q4. As you look at 2025, we expect the end markets to continue to recover, right? And as you've seen in the prepared remarks, we have exposure to high-volume recurring parts of the market, right? So it is rather predictable on what's going to happen, and we're executing along the dimensions that I mentioned. If you look at it from a portfolio perspective, our recurring revenue is like a Swiss clock, right? I mean, you can put in 6% to 7%, and that leaves you roughly 40% of the portfolio, which is instruments. And there, the idiosyncratic drivers are relevant to Waters, and they're quite predictable, right? So GLP-1s, where we have disproportionate share. PFAS testing, where the TQ Absolute and our workflow solutions are gaining a lot of traction. And India, in particular, where we have, again, significant share in the generics market, which is going from strength to strength. And as the genericization of GLP-1 starts, the Indian companies are already preparing their infrastructure, and we are in deep conversation with them. And finally, with Wyatt, we expect 40 basis points of accretion. So you can add all of that up. The only things that are pending in terms of the analysis are what happens with -- what is the pace of recovery with the instrument replacement cycle? And as I mentioned, in Q3, we saw some nice early signals of what's happening with our large pharma customers. And the second one is what happens in China, right? And China, in general, we don't expect 2025 to be super dynamic at a baseline level. We think it's going to be a low single-digit year in China without the benefit of the stimulus. You add the stimulus on top and you can see some more dynamism, but there will be more time to again talk about what impact the stimulus has. We've already seen some early benefit of it. But again, we'll talk more about it in the call.

Maybe just a housekeeping one on 2025, currency movement. I think that's been a big thing. So can you just level set us what should we expect in terms of FX impact, top and bottom line?

So we'll talk more, as I said, in the full year call. I mean 2024, there's been a fair amount of FX headwinds, but you should be comfortable and confident that we have a track record of being able to offset any sort of challenge that comes up, and we'll talk more about it in the full year call.

Then you just called out China as one of the areas that's kind of a swing factor for 2025. Obviously, China stimulus is an area that investors have been really keen to get your understanding on. So walk us through what you're seeing there. You guys have called out some orders. Is that at the provincial level? Is it at the federal level? And have you seen any of that improve throughout the quarter?