Thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. I'm Vijay Kumar. I cover Life Sciences and MedT ech here at Evercore. Pleasure to have with us Agilent Technologies this morning. From the company, we have CEO Mike McMullen, CFO Bob McMahon. Mike and Bob, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
Thank you, Vijay. It's a real pleasure to be here, particularly in this year's warmer venue, as we were talking-
Yeah
But I think it's really great to be here. The timing is wonderful. We just finished off closing out a very challenging 2023 with better-than-expected Q4 results. And as I mentioned in our earnings call, very proud of the Agilent team in terms of how they pivoted and really went after the market. And we're able to deliver leverage earnings for our shareholders, while really continuing to stay very close to our customers, and I think we'll probably get into it a bit today, Vijay, but also a view that we can get back to growth in 2024. So again, happy to be here with Bob.
Fantastic. I almost expected you to come out with the One Agilent T-shirt, but that makes sense.
Of course, that's our secret sauce.
So you did bring up, you know, Q4 came in slightly above, despite China, you know, being down in the 30s, pharma was down in the mid-teens. You know, when you think about those different buckets, pharma, China, and non-pharma, so what, what business came in above, you know, which drove the, I guess, slight, slightly better performance versus guidance?
Yeah, I think obviously, China's been a big source of, of discussion and variability on outlook, throughout the year. We saw the results come in about where we expected-
Yeah
... so we're very, very pleased with, with that. You know, kind of, as we said in our call, you know, signs of potential stabilization. But to your question, I think it was really the, the U.S.-based business-
Yeah
... that really drove, you know, the better. Then again, the better than planned performance-
Yeah
... on the revenue side.
Yeah. I would say China, China was within kind of our expectations, a little better, but still down, you know, it was down 31%. We were-
Mm-hmm
... expecting it to be kind of down mid-30s. But the big outlier was really the performance, as Mike said, in the Americas-
Mm-hmm
... which performed better than we expected.
Then, as you know, we had a you know, EPS beat, and that really, I think, we're really pleased with the impact and results of some of the work we've been doing relative to the cost structure of the company as well.
You know, historically, I think typically Agilent is seen as being a more conservative company. Mike, I think your comments on book-to-bill really created some noise in the group-
Mm
... if you will. And everyone has their views. But I'm curious, you know, when you made those comments on book-to-bill, you know, talk about, like, how the Q progressed. Like, do you see month-on-month improvements or-
Yeah, sure. So I'm not sure conservative is the right term for us, but what I will tell you is we call it like we see it. And we do our best to be transparent to the investor community. And we thought, you know, kind of if I was in the investment world, I'd say, "Wow, there's a lot of different noise out in the environment. What really is going on in the marketplace?" So we thought it was very important to talk about something we typically don't talk about, which is the order book.
Yeah.
And because as Bob can attest, you know, we have been really eating the backlog for several quarters. And we thought it was really important to highlight to the outside world that, hey, in the fourth quarter, we actually saw, well, we saw encouraging signs of potential stabilization because we had more instrument orders than we had shipments.
Yeah.
So we built backlog, and we had a book-to-bill over 1 for the first time, what, Bob, in several quarters, I think.
In several quarters, yeah. What we saw was a kind of a trough in Q2. It still started with a, you know, a 0.9, and then, you know, a sequential improvement in Q3 and Q4 was the first time, and as Mike said, several quarters, that it was above 1. And we thought that that was... You know, it's-
Still down
... to be very clear, orders are still down YoY, but obviously not down as much as revenue was. And we see that as a good sign of potential stabilization in the marketplace. And that was not just in overall instrumentation, it was also the same situation in China, which I know has been a-
Mm-hmm
... a topic of conversation, let's say.
And just on, you know, those trends that you mentioned, how book-to-bill progressed from, you know, 2Q bottom to-
Mm
... you know, sequential step up, maybe a little bit more color on Q4. Was in Q4 month-on-month, did things improve? Is that-
Yeah
... what's giving us the signs of
Yeah, so I think one of the things is, we kept an eye on was how was the flow of business throughout the quarter, and the business improved each month through the quarter.
Yeah.
Albeit down, if you will, the degree of impact was lower as we went throughout the quarter.
Yeah.
We actually finished, you know, fairly strongly in the month of October, which is, as you know, in Agilent, that's the end of our fiscal 2023. So I think,
Yeah
... we were looking at it on the growth rates each month versus the prior year.
Yeah.
And, uh-
Yep, exactly.
Yep.
When you look at those exit rates on instrumentation orders, I'm curious, what is your instrument revenue CAGR versus pre-pandemic levels? Like, I think there's been some noise about perhaps customers who were spending during the pandemic years. Is that all out of the system? Have we... Are we at a normalized level?
So I'll leave the actual number to Bob. I think you may have it in your notes, but while he's looking through his notes, what I'd say is a couple things. First of all, customers don't stock instruments. They don't buy instruments before they need them. What we have been seeing during the last several years, and something we've talked about on prior calls, is there's been an accelerated catch-up in deferred fleet upgrades, if you will, for the QA/QC environment.
And I think that's been a big, big part of the story for Agilent and for the industry, which was we had been foreshadowing this likelihood, which was, "Hey, you know, we've been seeing 20%-25% growth rates in core small molecule." That's more of a mid-single digit marketplace. What we hadn't anticipated was both the steepness of the ramp, but also the steepness of the decline we've seen over the last several quarters. That being said, we know that this the customers will continue to want to invest over time to keep their fleet up to date so they can support their QA/QC efforts around the production of pharmaceuticals. So again, we think that's a mid-singles. We don't think it's a double-digit decline market either-
Yeah
which is what we're experiencing right now.
And Mike mentioned this on the call a few weeks back. If you looked at our four-year compound annual growth rate as a company, it was at 7%, which is at the high end-
High-end market
... of our long, long-range plan. And if you kind of double-click on that and say, "Well, what was instrumentation in that?" It was mid-single digits-
Yeah
... as Mike just talked about.
That's always been our thesis of our long-term growth outlook for Agilent, which was the core instrumentation business, which is just one—it's a big part of the company, but not the only part of our company's business and portfolios. It's a mid-single digit kind of market environment. So we think we're right there. Obviously, there's been some variation around that mean, over the last several years.
Mike, I think in the past you've mentioned, qualitatively, Agilent's order book is different versus peers. Just remind us on how you define orders.
Mm.
'Cause I guess that book-to-bill, it matters for some companies, it doesn't matter for some companies. So I think we're all trying to figure out, like, how important is that metric?
Yeah, I can't speak to the order booking policies of other companies, but when we book orders, we book orders that can only be shipped within the next six months. So, and so we're not--we're... Expectation is our with our order acceptance policy is, it's gonna be revenue within the next six months.
Yeah.
So, what I also can tell you is, you know, clean orders is a really big part of what we want to do here. Because we don't want to have a situation where, oh, your salespeople, you know, have a great year to close off the year, get paid their compensation, and then come November, December, you have a bunch of order cancellations. So we're very diligent about making sure these are real orders, they have all the right documentation. So when it's in our order book, it's real order.
We have very few cancellations, and I think that's why we have a lot of confidence about our ability to have an outlook, at least for the next quarter or so, of what revenue looks like, because we can count on that order book to be real.
Yep. What have been cancellation trends? I think, you, you've also sort of hinted, look, even before cancellation, sometimes a pause or push out of customer deliveries could be an indication, I'm curious.
Yeah.
Yeah. So Bob, I know that's an area we're really watching-
Yeah, it's a great question.
... really closely.
We watch both of those. And one, we haven't had any increase in cancellations above trend, which—and it's extremely low for-
Very low
... the pieces that Mike just talked about. And then even, kind of the second question around extended delivery dates or taking dates and delivering later, we haven't seen any push outs of deliveries either.
Mm.
So that gives us confidence that, you know, people are. That's usually kind of an early indicator that potentially they could cancel them, and we haven't seen any of that as well.
And, yeah-
The fidelity of our backlog, we feel, is very strong.
Yeah. Maybe just to kind of build on Bob's response, when we think about kind of the longer-term outlook for the company, this really gets back to what's in the deal funnel, right? The not yet orders, but the potential orders. And we're not seeing deals come out of the funnel either.
Yeah.
So that would also be a precursor to a slowdown, more significant slowdown, if active deals were actually going and just being cancelled, and we're not seeing that. In fact, if you would go visit one of our sites in the U.S. or Europe or Asia, you'd see they're fully booked for customer demos. So Bob and I are always getting requests for more demo equipment and more lab space. So there's a lot of activity out there in the market environment, but obviously not yet releasing. And listen, I don't want—we don't want to get too far down on our skis here, so to speak, because, you know, the market still is challenged.
We expect the, at least from an Agilent perspective, we expect the first half of 2024 to look a lot like the second half of 2023. That being said, we really wanted to communicate this, our, our perspective that we're seeing signs of stabilization, and we can dig into some of the details later on, where that's coming from, so that we're not anticipating a significantly worse market environment as we go into 2024.
Understood. I did have some questions on the cadence, you know, what the guidance is implied. But before we get there, Mike, I think you were in China recently.
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Just maybe, on the ground, sort of, what are customers telling you?
Yeah
... and why are we seeing some dramatic difference in China?
Yeah, so thank you for the opportunity to talk about the recent trip to Shanghai. As you may recall, I was a pretty regular traveler to China. You know, I have lived in Asia for a number of years and used to be there multiple times during my tenure as CEO, but I hadn't been there since October 2019. I made my first trip this past September, and, you know, you immediately get off the plane and you're like: Wow, you're reminded of the sheer size of the country, the economy, the market, and lots of things going on in the streets, you know, lots of new electric vehicles. You know, the country is even more green. So you can see there's a lot of things that happened in the four years that I've been there.
But I think the one constant I saw, or a constant I saw really was, you know, the commitment to their initiatives around the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan. We heard that directly from government officials who we met with, as well as our key government customers. And despite a lot of the political tension that may be existing with the two countries, on the ground with our customers, they really want to continue to work with companies like Agilent, and specifically Agilent, we're the leader in this space. We had a number of MOU signings. But I will tell you is, though, you're gonna have to compete different in the marketplace. So my view is that the life sciences market of China will still remain important to the industry in the coming years.
It will return to growth. We're not calling for that return to growth in 2024. We expect the market still to be down in 2024, but we do think that market will return to growth. But, as we're seeing in many other countries, there's a real push towards regionalization, in-country sourcing. So, you may be familiar with Made in China 2025. We think that's a real initiative that we're really, we think we're ahead, and we're doing the right things here. We're in the process of actually incrementally investing in China, you know, the Made in China for China. So the market, I think, has remained robust. Customer relationships remain strong.
I have to say, after you know, 16 or 17 quarterly Zoom calls with our China team, it was just great to actually be there and talk to them, see what's really going on. You know, you really find out, you know, how the team's feeling about the market, what are they seeing in terms of macro issues. You know, one of the things we talked about was the whole anti-corruption campaign that's really been focused in the healthcare industry. Our teams, although it had a limited impact on our direct business because we don't have a lot of business directly in hospitals, the message basically was it sort of caused a lot of people to be cautious. Oh, and by the way, Mike, a lot of that's past us.
You know, they, they really have done a lot of the actions against, you know, officials who they felt weren't doing the right things. And I also would say that if... I think this anti-corruption effort by the government is a really a long-term plus for the industry because if you've ever looked at a P&L for some of the Chinese-based pharma companies, a lot of money is going into marketing. And maybe some, over time, some of the money will go into R&D, and you, you could see that happening in the, in the outer years. And then Agilent, in particular, we have an impeccable relationship in terms of how we do business, high integrity, and I think that bodes well for our ability to continue to be a leader, leader in China.
So I gotta say, it was really fun to be back after so many years, and things just change very rapidly in the country and kind of gave me a renewed sense of just the sheer size of the economy, the sheer size of the market, but obviously, they're working through some challenges as well.
Off of those comments, I think China down, you know, in the thirties in Q4, what was pharma versus non-pharma? Can you give a sense of what your exposure in China is?
Well, Bob's looking for the numbers. The two numbers that stick with me are Q4 last year, we grew 44%. And in the Chemical and Advanced Materials market, we grew 70%. So we had some really, really tough compares-
Yeah
... we were going up against in Q4.
Yeah, and if you think about that, down 31%, pharma was the largest decliner, it was down 44%. Everything else was better than that decline of 31%. So followed by, you know, CAM, which was down 27%, but as Mike mentioned, we were up 70% the year before. And, so some of this was a function of comps. If, actually, if you look at sequential in China, in CAM, as an example, it actually increased Q3 to Q4, and so forth. So it really is, you know, it has impacted the broader market, but it's centered in pharma.
And I can imagine it's really hard to follow, right, with all these significant quarterly quarter variations for a lot of external events, such as the Shanghai shutdown and other things that we worked on last year.
Yeah. And Vijay, maybe it's helpful, given-
Mm-hmm
... China is such a topical point that we can kind of walk through the cadence of how the business went in Q4-
Mm-hmm.
Because I think it's really helpful.
Yeah.
For one, we had a book-to-bill that was greater than one in China, which was positive. We saw at the end of Q3, you know, a real challenging July. And I think, you know, in our Q3 results, we mentioned that July was down 35%, and that's kind of what we had forecasted Q4 to be. And there was all kinds of questions about, well, why is it not gonna get worse? And so if we look at it, I'll give you two frames. The first is YoY growth by month. So August was very similar to July, and so down, you know, in the mid-30s. September was better than, or August was better than, August was better or the same as July, excuse me, I'm getting my fiscal and calendar year.
September was better, and then we exited October in the mid-20s decline. And that's kind of what we're forecasting for Q1, if you think about our Q1 guide. But when you look at the dollars, the dollars have been fairly consistent on a month-to-month basis in terms of revenue. And so what we're seeing is a stabilization of the dollars, a book-to-bill that's, you know, greater than one, and the improving, you know, is a function of comps as well. And so that's kind of how we're thinking about this, and we're expecting 2024 to kind of mirror what 20, you know, Q4 of 2023 looked like. So if you take Q4 2024 and multiply by four, assuming kind of a book-to-bill of kind of one-ish, that gets you to kind of how we're thinking about the full year.
Yeah.
Obviously, with Q1 being lower than that, given kind of the, some of the seasonality.
... and similar to the Q4 dynamics of pharma versus non-pharma,
Same.
Mm-hmm.
Everything, you know, while I was talking about the business in aggregate, what you saw in, I would say, the end markets followed that same pattern, where things got progressively better on a growth rate perspective, month-over-month.
Mike, I think in the past, you've made some comments about these cycles, how long they last in China, maybe some hints about a stimulus in China. Any thoughts on if we do see a stimulus, whether that's going to be meaningful for life science companies?
Yeah. So maybe there are two questions here. So one might be, what have we seen historically, not only in China, but globally, in these replacement cycle aspects of our business? And we're primarily talking about, you know, the small molecule segment of pharma. And as you know, those instrumentation that fill up, if you will, a QA/QC lab are just crucial for the ongoing production of safe on-market drugs. And there's always a replacement cycle going on in the pharma space as our customers really try to keep their fleets up to date and modernized. Because if you allow your fleet to get too aged, you start to have issues not only in terms of the support costs, but also, most importantly, your ability to have uptime in the lab.
So, where this whole thing is heading is that, we've seen these cycles before, which is not with this degree of variation, but we've seen this cycle before, 2018, 2019. You know, customers withheld replacing their QA/QC equipment so they could put more money into biopharma R&D. And then, what you saw in 2021 and 2022, right, was this big catch-up, which is driving growth of north of 20% for LCs. So those type cycles tend to be, like, 18 months or so, 18-24 months. And when I say cycle, we start to get back, going back to what we believe the long-term inherent growth rate of this market is, which is kind of mid-singles. And we think we're probably, what? Maybe nine months-
Yep
... nine months into it, so, based on what we see in the order book. So that's one of the aspects of why we think there'll be a level of modest recovery in the second half of next year. Now, in regards of China's stimulus, it's love to see it. But we've been pretty a contrarian on this view, which is we're not expecting... We didn't expect any stimulus in 2023, and we're not expecting any stimulus in 2024.
Yeah.
We don't hear any rumblings about it.
Yeah.
Um-
To add to what Mike's saying, if there is, that would be upside to our-
It'd be upside.
Um, and-
We're not against it. We're not against it, but we're not just hoping for it either. So, as Bob mentioned, you know, that would be, that would be good news for us, upside to our outlook.
Fantastic. When you look at pharma, and they're down 14%, assuming a lot of this was overlap with China, but ex-China, did instrument purchases by global pharma customers increase? I'm just trying to parse out what is China versus non-China within pharma.
Yeah. Yeah, so if you, if you looked at-
Yeah
... total pharma, pharma was down 14% globally in Q4. China was down, you know, much more significantly than that, but ex-China, we were down 4%. So it was down YoY. I think what you may be referring to, which was a positive sign, was if you look in biopharma, or the large molecule business, that actually grew 7% ex-China in the quarter. And by the way, it grew both ex-China and including China-
For the full year.
... globally for the full year. And so while people have talked about biopharma and having, you know, challenges, it still grew 7% for the full year-
Yeah
... inclusive of China, for us.
They were down 2% globally in the total pharma business, but up 7% globally, including China, for biopharma.
Yep.
That's the full year. But was it up in Q4?
It was.
Yep, yep.
Yeah, ex-China.
Ex-China.
Ex-China.
And that large molecule, is that because I think there's been some noise about stocking dynamics, destocking? I'm not sure if that's relevant for you guys. Like, what's—
I think you stock and destock consumables. I don't think you stock instruments. I mean, I've never seen in my career where people buy instrumentation and just put it in the closet. So...
That seems reasonable to me, Mike.
Well, I mean, because you know, if you're trying to manage your P&L, as soon as you get it, you start depreciating it. So, particularly in the biopharma space, which is often a lot of the spends are being driven by R&D, you always wanna have access to the latest technology. So I don't think you would buy something and then say, "Well, maybe I'll use it in a year.
Yeah
... and this doesn't make sense now. I think the different dynamic may be on the consumable side, for example, where at one point in time, a lot of concerns about supply chain issues, so customers would maybe buy and hold consumables, you know, so they could support their ongoing operations. But I think that thesis doesn't apply to instrumentation.
Yeah.
This spend in R&D by you know large molecule customers, is that a sustainable trend, or was that perhaps some year-end phenomena which you know drove those numbers?
No, we don't believe it's a year-end phenomenon. We would've called that out if we did. I mean, it has been pretty consistent across, you know, throughout the course of the year. And, you know, there is always some seasonality there, but, you know, I think one of the areas of strength has been our services business in biopharma as well. And so, you know, these are higher-end instruments that typically have a higher connect rate of services. And so even if they're not purchasing new equipment at the same rate that they had, they still need the service of the existing equipment, and so we're seeing a strength there.
But I wouldn't, you know, our view is not that this was kind of a one-quarter phenomenon or a one-time phenomenon in Q4.
I think the point that Bob makes around the services not only speaks to, you know, the growth factor we have, but also lab activity. So, when the service business is robust, it also says the labs are running.
Yeah.
The labs are running, and activity is high.
And your overall guide for fiscal 2024 at the corporate level is almost flattish at the-
Mm-hmm
... at the midpoint.
Mm-hmm.
Is pharma expected to be, you know, flattish? If so, then is large molecule expected-
Mm-hmm
... to be, like, positive or any dynamics within those different pharma buckets?
Yeah. So, maybe to kind of parse out, pharma, which is our largest end market-
Mm-hmm
... you know, roughly 35% of our revenue. Last year, or FY 2023, it was down 2%, first time it's ever been down. With, as I mentioned, biopharma was up 7%, small molecule was down 8%, to get you to that -2%. For FY 2024, we're expecting a kind of modest improvement, so low single-digit growth, with both of them improving. You know, we don't expect two years of, you know, down high single digits in small molecule, but it will still expect... Our expectation is it will still be down-
Mm-hmm
... but improving throughout the course of the year.
Yeah.
You know, again, you know, modest improvement from the 7% here in biopharma, and for FY 2024. So that's, as Mike said, we're not expecting a kind of a immediate snapback, but the slow and steady kind of recovery-
Mm-hmm
... throughout the course of the year. Benefiting from not only, I think, you know, this cycle that Mike talked about, but we also benefit from easier compares in the back half of next year as well.
Mm-hmm. In a pharma, that's the largest end market that's up low singles. What are the offsets here, which is, you know, dragging, dragging it-
Mm
... back to, like, flattish corporate?
Yeah. So we are expecting probably more moderate growth in our Chemicals and Advanced Materials market.
Yeah.
So that grew 3% this year, all in, with the advanced materials side, which is about 35% of that, and we've talked about it. That's just where the lithium-ion batteries and semicon was growing double digits-
Double digits
... and, the Chemical and Advanced Materials market roughly flat. We are expecting that to be more moderate next year, probably down low single digits. We're taking a more measured approach to that, particularly in Europe, with some of our large chemical companies. And, so that's one of the offsets, probably the biggest offset.
Yeah.
We hope we're wrong.
Yeah. Indeed. Mike, related to that, I think, we've seen some headlines about, you know, Ford, you know, scaling back on, on their battery, new battery manufacturing plant. Like, is that relevant for Agilent? Does it matter?
I think if the whole industry, there may be some particular issues or actions relative to one particular competitor in that space, but we think the long-term secular trends towards more vehicles being battery-powered, fact that people still aren't satisfied with the capabilities of batteries today, these are long-term secular drivers. And I was just traveling for a family vacation through the Carolinas, and I saw one of the new battery plants being expanded. So, you know, I think that's something to look at, but it didn't change our thesis about long-term outlook.
Yeah, our 2024 forecast has no bearing on whether or not Ford builds that plant.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Good point, yeah.
Just to round out the CAM discussion, Bob, so we're expecting some of these secular drivers to still be-
Yeah
... a hostile Kelvin in 2024, with perhaps chemicals being down?
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Yep.
Yeah.
And what are we assuming for oil and gas? I know there's some exposure on that side.
Yeah, it's, that's to, you know, less than 10% of that segment, so it's a relatively small piece, and we're expecting that to be kind of in line with the chemical side, down slightly.
Yeah, it's probably 2%-3% of Agilent's revenues.
Yeah.
Yeah, relatively small number. The chemicals ones will be, will drive it-
Yep
... one way or another.
Gotcha. In NASD, Mike, I think, your business has been unique, just given the scale-
Mm
... GMP scale that you provide within a very niche segment of the market. But I think the question I get from investors is: "Isn't that all exposed to cell and gene therapy in Agilent expanded capacity? Is there an issue of excess capacity in the industry?" I think your guide conflated mid-singles growth-
Mm-hmm
... for NASD. So is there any risk to the NASD outlook? Why is NASD slowing down?
Yeah, we don't think it's gonna slow down long term. What you're seeing in the 2024 outlook is really a change in our mix of business for 2024. So, in 2023, we had more of our business being commercial. In 2024, which we actually think is very good news long term, more of our business is gonna be clinical. So I think we're going from what, 30 to 50 programs?
30, yeah, in the 30s to in the 50s.
In the 30s into the 50s. Thanks, Bob.
Yeah.
Thanks. And why is this important? Because this is, this is a, a precursor to what... And by the way, I think we also need to be very clear, who are we talking, who are we working with?
Yeah.
We're working with well-capitalized large pharma companies, very broad-based customer base, who have a number of really significant and expanding programs in this space. Because the view is there's gonna be a time when you're gonna have a number of new therapeutics on market with larger patient population size than we have today. So we think what's gonna happen in 2024 really sets ourselves up for really significant long-term growth on the commercial side, hence why we're staying with our expansion-
Yeah
- expansion plans.
Yeah, and, Vijay, you mentioned something or you referenced cell and gene therapy, and I want to be clear, this isn't that same... That this is a different market than that. So this doesn't have any of those dynamics around whether or not it's gonna get approved and so forth. So I think if you look at the number of products that are, you know, going through the clinic, you know, continues to increase, collectively. And these would be, you know, cell and gene therapy typically are tuned either to individual patient or very small patient populations, so the volumes and quantities are small. The difference here is actually what people are going—you know, what our customers are going after, are actually larger patient populations, so broader expansion, and so it requires more volume.
Mm-hmm.
So that's actually one of the things that's, I think, something that we're very excited about going forward. And all you have to do is either look at the number of clinical trials or even go and look at some of the major pharma companies today, and where they're putting their R&D efforts. And increasingly, they're doing RNA-type therapies. Not necessarily, not just siRNA, which is where we play, but across, you're seeing-
Mm-hmm
... you know, multiple companies kind of looking and placing bets in this area, not just emerging biotech.
Right. And as Bob mentioned, we have kind of two data points, right? We know what we're learning and what our customers are committing to on the NASD front. We're also seeing our LC-MS business, where oligonucleotide workflows have been a real source of strength and growth for us.
Yep
... as our customers are investing in these areas within their pipeline work.
In that customer segment, NASD, I think in the past, you made some comments about capacity being-
Mm-hmm
... booked well, well in advance. Like, are we still at the booked capacity utilization, you know, at close to 100% capacity utilization?
Yeah. What I would say is, our capacity is fully utilized. What we had said is before we were, you know, we had more demand than we had capacity.
Mm-hmm.
That's not the case now. I mean, I think we're able to fill the factory, which is exactly what we want, is to be able-
Mm-hmm
... to recognize that opportunity.
Sure. And then, switching gears to DGG, Mike-
Mm-hmm
... was flattish in Q4. I, I thought diagnostic volumes were up, so the implication was genomics was down, like,
Yeah
... high singles doubles?
Yes. Yes, if you look at the overall print for diagnostics, I mean, our DGG segment, you're exactly right. We had strong double-digit growth in the diagnostic piece.
Yeah.
Non, non-
In pathology, really.
Pathology.
Yeah.
As well as NASD, I think, had a double-digit print, where with the genomics being down.
Correct.
And what’s... I guess, genomics can mean different things to different customers. And obviously, you know, Illumina, they’ve spoken about some, a macro challenge. Is that what’s impacting your genomic business as well?
I think there's two... 'Cause to me, it's just worth parsing this out. So we have roughly, what, Bob, about a $500 million, what we call genomics business, about half of it's instrumentation. We're the leader in this space for QA/QC work around, you know, NGS workflows. The TapeStation is a leading product in this space. Just like we've seen in the LC and GC and mass spec world, very cautious on capital spending. So there's been, you know, a slowdown in terms of willingness to buy new instruments in that space, although the consumables piece of that is going well.
Then the chemistry side, which is roughly the other half of our genomics business, this is where we've seen the pressure, particularly in our, in where we are providing, the, if you will, the ingredients into LDTs in the diagnostics space. We've seen a lot of disruption in the customer base, particularly in the U.S. I mean, there's some well-publicized situations where companies have either have failed or restructuring, exiting service. So we've been under a lot of pressure, you know, particularly in the U.S., relative to the diagnostic segment for, for LDTs. It's not a share issue, it's really a, you know, a sort of seems to be a, a.... Well, not seems to be, there's a restructuring going on in the marketplace right now.
I don't know if there's anything else you'd add to that, Bob, but so, yeah.
And in the genomic business, what signs should we be looking for to look for signs of a bottom here in genomics?
That's a great question. I think the resumption of purchasing of new equipment, so that would show—that would be indicative of our customers wanting to expand, you know, their capacity to handle more applications, more runs, if you will. Which, by the way, as you see more indications of the cost of sequencing going down, we think that's a real net positive for our business. So anything that will drive more volume. So I think looking at things such as, you know, the pricing of the NGS workflows. For us, what we're gonna be looking at are what's happening with the capital purchases on the instrumentation side, is that starting to pick up?
And then on the chemistry side, are our major accounts, you know, are they back buying again, like they were in the past?
Yep, yep.
...Just maybe, switching gears to your cadence, and guidance assumptions for fiscal 2024. I think I'm trying to match a book-to-bill commentary, right, in Q4. But when you look at the dollar revenues for LSAG implied for Q1, there is a sequential step down. Is that just normal seasonality or?
Yeah, normal seasonality. That's—When you think about, you know, the way that our, our Q4 or our Q1 always happens, it happened, you know, it includes a January. January is usually one of the weakest months of, of the year for instrumentation because everyone's budget's resetting, they're digesting, and people are getting back from the holidays. So that, that's a normal occurrence, that happens every year.
Gotcha. When you think about the—so for starting Q1, if -9, -10-
Mm-hmm
... to end the year flattish, it would imply, like on a YoY basis-
Yeah
Some pretty big numbers in the back half, sequential step up. And I think this is where, like, I think the streets are struggling a little bit on the sequential cadence.
Yeah
And what gives the visibility if the order book is, you know, six months or under?
Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things. One is, I think we used the word prudent in our Q1 guide.
Yes
...to make sure that we're getting ourselves off to the right foot. And certainly if things, you know, continue the way that we saw in Q4, we'll be in good shape. And so that, that'll help. And then I think it gets back to this notion around the opportunity and the funnel continuing to grow.
Yeah.
And our view is that the deliberation times have started to stabilize as well.
Mm.
So you know how long it's taking-
Mm
from people to get from, kind of an order proposal to an order book, you know, had lengthened during the course of this year. It actually continues to be higher than where it had been pre-COVID, but it, that increase has kind of slowed down. So if you look at a book-to-bill of one coming out, assuming that we would have a book-to-bill, kind of a one for the full year, you will end up getting into easier compares in the back half of the year as well. And so while we-
Mm-hmm
... I would say Q1 is prudent, and, you know, if we are able to continue our momentum, we'll be in good shape for Q1, and that will help for the rest of the year as well.
When you look at how Q4 played out, you saw month-on-month improvement-
Yeah
... and I think Q1 is assuming your exit period of, I think mid-20s in China.
Yes.
I'm curious, has November played out pretty much in line with expectations or how the macro-
Well, we're not done yet.
Mm-hmm.
Stay tuned. But, nothing would change at the ends-
Nothing
... or forecast right now.
Yeah. Good question, Understoon. I had to ask Mike.
Sure, sure.
I didn't want to ask since the last earnings, like, how have things progressed, just given-
That was only 10 days ago. What? It's not like that.
You know, one of your peers brought up this concept about service attach rates and how it's a big opportunity. I'm curious, what is your attach rate on, on, for instrumentation? Is there, like, a big service play for Agilent?
Absolutely. So, as you know, when I started my tenure, we made a big bet on ACG. And, you know, the narrative that connect rates are so an opportunity, that's an old story at Agilent. It's something we've been working on for a number of years, and you see it reflected in the results. In fact, we had double-digit contract growth rate in our ACG business in the fourth quarter. We announced, what, $1.5 billion or so business, high margins. And while I say it's an area of focus for us to improve our connect rate, and we've methodically been doing that year in, year out, we still have lots of room.
Yeah.
I would agree with the thesis, which is, you know, the connect rates will still continue to grow for Agilent, probably in the low thirties?
Low thirties.
Low 30s. What I can tell you is our connect rate of new instrument placements going out, when we define connect rate as, you know, you know, if you've got an instrument from Agilent, you're also getting your services from Agilent. And you know, those connect rates on our new instrument placements continues to be much higher than the overall average. Another thing I would point out, too, is we also, our service capabilities go beyond the Agilent install base. So the whole construct of ACG, Agilent CrossLab, was we take care of the entire lab. We've been doing very, very well on the enterprise service as well. So we've been winning a lot of multiyear, large engagements where we're going to take care of the entire fleet of the lab.
We're also going to provide a lot of other services, in addition to that, asset management and other services that our customers increasingly are looking to companies like Agilent to provide. So I'm very bullish. I agree with. I'm not sure who you spoke to, but I'm very bullish, along with this person, that there's a lot of opportunities for service. And for us, it's become a quite meaningful business for us.
Would the thesis be if instrumentation longer term is mid-singles, given higher attach rates, you know, ACG should be-
Absolutely
... high singles?
Yep. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's how, that's the math we're using.
Fantastic.
I think, I think the history would show you that as well. Even, even though, like, if you look at the last four years of Agilent's CAGR over the last four years, core has been around seven, which is at the upper end of our long-term growth for during that period of time. And instruments, I think, are close to mid-singles. There's been obviously some ups and downs, but the mid-singles is right where we thought we would be.
Yeah.
Obviously, getting more growth in services and-
Yeah, and ACG was double digit.
Double-digit, yeah.
Don't pencil that in, but high single digit is-
Bob, on the margins for fiscal 2024, what is the guide assuming? I think you announced new cost action. Is pricing still expected to be positive in fiscal 2024?
It is, yeah. We, you know, we ended Q FY 2023 with a little over 3% pricing, which was kind of right in line with where we expected we would be. We're building in—we've contemplated roughly 2% pricing in our FY 2024 numbers, which is again where we had kind of expected. We didn't expect to have the kind of same elevated rates, just given that inflation has come down-
No
-and so forth, and that's still above kind of historical rates. You know, historically, we've had 50-75 basis points of price per year, so it's still roughly about double where historically, or more than double where we have been historically. And what we're expecting kind of is some modest expansion of margins-
Mm-hmm
-to get to that leveraged earnings, next year.
Yeah. But the overall commitment, as you've probably heard us say a number of times, Vijay, is what we call leveraged earnings. That's how I opened up my comments. You know, we grew earnings faster than revenue in 2023, in an unexpectedly more challenging market environment than we had anticipated. The team can move very quickly. We've been working on lowering our cost structure, you know, for several quarters prior to 2024, so I'm quite confident ability to deliver on those numbers. And again, the goal here is to deliver leveraged earnings, grow earnings faster than revenue in 2024. And I would just say, you know, as you think about long-term margin expansion opportunity for Agilent, some of the things we're doing right now to our cost structure are permanent changes, and the cost won't come back.
So you think about rationalization of your, of your real estate footprint. So we've done some additional moves this year. Costs will come out in 2024, and they won't come back in 2025 or 2026 when the revenues are going to be growing much faster than next year.
Fantastic. I think, with that, we're almost at the end of time here. Mike and Bob-
Guess there's two seconds left, I guess.
I had a five-minute question, so I didn't want to put out... No, thank you guys for spending the time.
You're quite welcome, Vijay.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone, for coming out today.