We're going to go ahead and kick it off. I'm Tycho Peterson from the Life Science team. It's my pleasure to introduce our next company, Agilent. Before we jump into Q&A, maybe, Padraig, I want to give you a chance to reflect back a little bit on your time as CEO.
Yeah, it's been a busy year, but it's been a very exciting year in Agilent. We've really set out a new strategy, which is market-based. We've a new leadership team, which are working extremely well together, and we have a new market group structure on it as well. We're well set up in how we're looking at strategy. Then we set off and ignite transformation. I'm sure we'll get into that, Tycho, which is across the company in terms of how we're making ourselves more effective as a company. In this environment, it's really important, as you see with tariffs, that's a real engine that's going to deliver value over time. We deployed $1 billion of capital by a vector, which is going extremely well. I'm sure we get into that as well in it. I think we're very well set up for the future.
A lot of excitement, I would say. The world around us is changing quite a bit. Our markets, we're in a lot of really good secular drivers in growth markets, and we've had some really good standout businesses in our first quarter, and we see that going through the second half. That is the year.
Great. Maybe just to look back on last week's results, quarter was above expectations. Book to bill was above one. Orders up a single digit. Everything seems to be fairly solid. No real evidence of Pharma pull forward. Maybe just talk about some of the gives and takes as we think about the back half of the year here.
Yeah, so we had some really standout results. We beat the bottom and top line in this environment, which I think is just fantastic. We were able to kind of look at our PFAS business, for example, that grew 70% in the quarter. We see that continuing. That is a modality that is continuing in different areas, different geographies driven by regulation and, of course, sometimes litigation, but great business for us. Our Infinity III replacement cycle has well and truly kicked off. The system is out six months now. We are seeing that take off, and we will see that continue through the second half. Our CDMO business, NASD, of course, we went through a reconfiguration with the IRA in terms of the business there, but high single-digit growth. We expect double-digit growth and, of course, BioVectra.
Those are the real momentums that we have in the second half.
Innovation has obviously been a theme of late with Infinity, as you touched on. You also have a new GC, the 8850. Maybe just, you had ASMS this week. Talk a little bit about some of the messaging around that.
Yeah, so first of all, at a high level, innovation is we're turning our guns on innovation, looking at how we can improve and, of course, accelerate innovation. We just hired a CTO, a Chief Technology Officer, August Specht, who's come from Thermo, but really exciting, and he will lead the innovation track in transformation. What's changing for the future is that we don't want to be two inches deep across the company in innovation, but we want to be asymmetrically investing in key areas and, of course, looking at outside innovation. The ProIQ single-quadrupole mass spec was launched. Great response from our customers, both small molecule and large molecule modalities, but using a lot of smart technologies that help productivity in the lab. Sometimes people don't think about LCMS as a productivity system versus LC, but now it's becoming very prominent within labs.
Of course, we released the Seahorse XF Flex, which is really important cell analysis over time. Great response from that outside ASMS. The 8850 GC with our GCMS is a critical launch because the combination of that mass spec and our GC is actually going to be critical for new modalities in PFAS air testing. Currently in the PFAS market, 2% of that market is doing air testing. We expect in the next two to three quarters, that's going to move to 8%-12%. GCMS is the technology that's used in that, and we generally have a 50% win rate, so we're very excited about that.
We touched a minute ago on the quarter you just reported. Book to bill was above one. Orders up low single- digit, and you're up mid for the first half of the year. Maybe just talk about the key areas where you're seeing strength in the order book and what gives you comfort you aren't seeing Pharma pull forward. I mean, that's been a question I think every company's gotten throughout this earning season.
Yeah, so it's our fifth consecutive quarter of book to bill greater than one, actually instrument book to bill greater than one. It's a continuation of what we've seen. If you go back in terms of markets, 2023 was a real low point in Pharma. Improvement in 2024 really improved in the second half, and it continues to improve. We were very pleased with it across the board. CDMO business doing extremely well. Infinity III really doing well on the replacement cycle. We did not see any pull forward. We did see a minor pull forward in consumables in China, $15 million, which actually has worked itself out almost immediately. That's been very good to see. We did see a slight disruption in China around instruments, around customs in terms of delivery in April, but again, that's back to a baseline. No pull forward.
When we talk to our customers, and you talk to them about their fleet and the improvement in Pharma, they're in a steady replacement cycle. Of course, you have the possibility of reshoring in time. That drives a lot of conversations about how we're going to address that, but no pull forward.
You had the benefit of having April in your numbers relative to your peers. Was there any difference pre-post Liberation Day?
No, not really. I mean, if you talk to our customer, we have a strategic account program where we're at very high levels in Pharma. Talk to our customers, we expected maybe some discussion around tariffs. Of course, Pharma, we're moving supply chain and inventory around, but that doesn't really affect our testing. It's the same amount of testing, so that was really steady. The only anomaly we did see was around the instrument orders in China, given the delivery times with the customs in the free trade zone that took time for people to process those orders.
I guess honing in on LCMS, how do we think about the back half of the year for that part of the business in particular, and how much could you actually get from Infinity III?
Yeah, so for LCMS, we're largely in the QAQC or downstream environment. That's an area where, of course, I think in this environment continues to be strong and will continue to be strong. The productivity that we're hearing from our Infinity III launch, which makes it 30% more productive in labs for customers, which is a real resonance, and linked with the ProIQ single- quad, it really means that we're going to continue to accelerate not only the replacement cycle, but also new labs that are being set up in different areas.
Do you think this is a driver of share shift within?
Yeah, I mean, share shifts generally do not move a huge amount. In LC, you have seen it over the years. Tycho, it is pretty stable. You have the two main players, which we are one of, and then you have players on that side. We have been extremely pleased with our market share gains. We look at our Alder report, which is our market share report, three months in arrears, but it showed across those product lines that we are still gaining share. I think as the pie grows and as this replacement cycle continues, we will continue to keep that position.
Maybe just spend a minute on ACG, up 9% in the quarter. There are some timing-related elements, I think 2% or so. You are up maybe 7% backing that out. Just talk about the momentum you are seeing on the ACG side. Obviously, U.S. academic and government is a smaller piece, but how are you thinking about that as well?
ACG, 9% growth in the quarter. We have, of course, reconfigured that group to now have services, consumables, software, and automation, which is a really important enabler for the business on it. 70% of our service business is on contracts growing double- digit, which is really sticky. The areas where we see immense runway going forward is around lab productivity. Our enterprise service business, which is now $150 million, which means we can service all competitors' equipment and run their labs from a productivity standpoint. We see that resonating and actually accelerating through the year and continuing on. The consumables business, as I said, there was a slight pull forward on it, but we were still high single digits even with that pull forward on it. As I said, we have seen that already stabilize out.
ACG is a really important growth driver going forward. If you look at our long-range plan, that 9% growth is higher. It is one of the areas that we can continue to expose.
The academic government, smaller piece, but it's a doom and gloom for NIH, obviously. How are you thinking about that?
Yeah, I mean, I've been out with two major institutes in the last few months, and it's not nice out there in terms of funding. It's 1% of our business. Academia in general for Agilent is 8%, 3% for the Americas. I would say let me talk about the market in general in normal times. It's generally low to mid single- digits over time. I think it will go back to that. Clearly, U.S. is very depressed where no big capital equipment has been really spent on. We're less exposed because we're not in the higher-end research type of modalities, but we still see it in see a softness. And we're expecting to see that continue. We've ring-fenced that for the rest of the path. We're expecting it to decline 20%, and we've mitigated around. I will say in the rest of the world, academia is doing just fine.
We've seen growth across different areas, and we continue to see that. Of course, the NIH funding is going to have a knock-on effect in innovation, particularly in biotechs and so on. I think over time, that for me is the broader concern. I would say with Pharma, that would not have any big impact for a few years, I would say.
Tycho, maybe to add to what Padraig is saying, one of the benefits and beauties of the ACG business is it truly is across all of the end markets. If you think about the end markets there, it is really 50/50 kind of life sciences and applied. We have the ability to cover all the labs, and we are seeing strong connect rates to these new products that we are offering and a big opportunity to continue to drive that growth.
Just one question to follow up on that. As we think about the academic kind of belt tightening budget pressures, I mean, people obviously think about instrument delays, but are you seeing switching to third-party columns, switching to third-party service providers, anything beyond kind of just instrument pause?
Yeah, look, the topology of a service business in academia is quite different, right? You get a lot of self-maintainers, PhD students that are there can help run the system. There is less contracts, I would say, more per incident. Contracts are generally sold upfront, so we still benefit from those contracts. Very little switching on the chemistry side, I would say, and the supply side. Yeah.
Maybe talk about the organizational changes you just mentioned within the ACG business, centralizing automation and software. What was the rationale? What are you hoping to accomplish?
Yeah, it really started with strategy, Tycho, and as we laid out on our investor day in December, the four pillars of our strategy are really clear going forward. It's market-driven. First of all, it's increasing innovation. That's external and internal. Secondly is attaching to high-growth markets. Third pillar is really automation and productivity. It doesn't matter what lab you are in the world and what market. Automation and productivity is right at the top of the agenda, and that's why we elevated it up to that area. The fourth area is software. Those two last pillars, we really felt to have an enterprise group that's working across all product lines and all areas to really help with that was the right thing to do.
I have to say it's allowing us to make much faster allocation decisions both in innovation, but also it's honing our ability, looking potentially outside for opportunities.
Maybe just shifting over to NASD, you've got real momentum here. I think you're even taking orders for 2026 at this point. Talk about just visibility and demand, confidence that you could kind of potentially move numbers higher. I think easier comps in the back half of the year imply something like 20% growth to hit the 10% for the full year. And then on clinical versus commercial, you're now 60/40. I want to make sure that's commercial outgrowing as opposed to clinical slowing.
Yeah, yeah. I'll start off, and I'm able to hand over to Bob on this one. We grew 9% in NASD. We're expecting double-digit growth, high single- to double-digit growth for the year. We're bucking into 2026. We're bucking out that capacity. We're seeing a lot of demand. In terms of the clinical versus commercial shift, that's not an either/or. We're just very pleased with the projects that we have in commercial, and that's going to, of course, move on through the different years. Overall, we're well poised. Went through a very difficult phase, of course, with the IRA rebalancing, but the energy around our customers and the partnership with our customers going forward is very strong. Bob, I don't know if you want to.
Yeah, just to build on that, Purek [guess], when we look at the second half of the year, we feel very confident because we have the orders in-house. We have the ability to do that. As you said, we're already booking orders into 2026 and beyond. When we think about the commercial volume, what that allows us to do is actually have diversification across the programs. We have basically a little over 50 programs, both in clinical as well as commercial. Our client base continues to expand as well. You add those two things on, and then you look at the therapeutic areas that our clients are going after, it's actually larger patient populations.
That is why we are being able to see the skew towards commercial net helps diversify our business and actually gives us confidence about why we continue to invest in capacity expansion in NASD. You have the benefit, and I am sure we will talk about this, of being able to leverage the capabilities that BioVectra has combined. We are very excited about the NASD facility. You are right. Your math is right as usual. It would be 20%. We do have a benefit of an easier comp in Q3. We are actually seeing strong momentum and expect sequential growth Q3 to Q4 based on the production plans that we currently have in place and would expect that momentum to continue into 2026 and beyond.
Are there margin implications that we should be thinking about as commercial outpaces clinical?
Yeah, it's a really good question. If you think about the facility, this is one of the areas where we do have high level of fixed costs. The more production you can actually run through that plant, the incrementals are quite accretive to the company. Commercial allows you to do two things. One is you have a more steady volume, but also the batches are larger, and you can actually campaign those batches lots at a time, which is very efficient in the factory. We expect this; it's already an accretive business to the overall company at the operating profit. It's lower gross margin just because of the different business model. As we think about more commercial filling that plant, the more efficient that plant becomes, the higher the incremental operating profit is.
That's one of the reasons we feel confident about continuing to drive margin expansion into 2026 and beyond.
Maybe just thinking about CapEx a little bit, $450 million, I'd assume about half that's NASD. I mean, how do we think about run rate CapEx?
Yeah, it's a good question. This year is kind of our peak year of investment as we're building out the facility, train C and D. We will have some capacity. It will step down in 2026 and then become more of a maintenance CapEx. When we think about maintenance CapEx, it's usually about 2.5%-3% of sales for the company. We've had a step up above that to take advantage of the capacity and the opportunities here in NASD. We would expect us then to be able to fill that capacity over the end of the decade and to be able to leverage that going forward.
Just, I guess, as we think about capacity expansion, you mentioned train C and D, but just in general, how much of this is built and then will come versus kind of a bottoms-up analysis where you've kind of got some of that already committed as you move forward?
Yeah, I think, of course, as you get into 2026, you get closer, we have a very good line of sight. You're always beholden in terms of some of the therapeutics moving ahead, but we're in deep relationships with the customer. That commercial, I would say, move up to 60% is a really positive momentum on it. We're not just building it and waiting for them to come. We're expecting to fill that in going forward.
Yeah, you can imagine that we're having those long-term conversations with our customers because they also want to ensure that they have capacity available when those products do, in fact, hit the market. We do have a very robust funnel of opportunity. Obviously, not all of those are going to make it, but when we look at that, we actually discount it in order to actually size the opportunity. That's one of the benefits of actually being in the NASD business is actually a much deeper relationship with our customers downstream. We've got relationships already kind of planned out towards the end of the decade based on the opportunities that potentially could come forward based on the discussions that we have today. I want to pivot to China and maybe just spend a minute on what you saw in the quarter, just unpack some of the trends.
How are you thinking about it for the rest of the year? We kind of assume $300 million per quarter or so ex stimulus. Is that the right way to think about it, or is there a path to accelerate that?
Yeah, I mean, China is really interesting. I mean, if you look at the pace of innovation there and everybody can see the number of clinical trials and molecules that are drugs that are coming out. Let's talk about the longer term. That pace of innovation will need tools. Now, the question is, of course, made in China, et cetera. We'll get into that. We have seen this very stable business in China. The stimulus was highly successful for us in the first round of the GACC. We won 50% of $70 million. There is a second stimulus coming on. What is really important in China during this tariff situation is being really close to the customer, making sure that your manufacturing is on point and making sure you are keeping very close to competitive moves in China.
Our long history in China, our technical expertise, and our med in China make us very resilient in this environment. It is a very difficult market, so I do not expect it to rebound in the second half. Over time, I think this market will become a mid to high single-digit grower, not back to where it was, but our capability there is very important. The second stimulus is probably another area we are getting good luck on. We are thinking it is about $120 million. It is broken into three areas. The first area is the administration regulatory body. The second area is the second GACC customs, and the third area is EPA. We are looking at our funnels in that, and we are seeing that will probably be revenue in Q1, orders in Q4. That is not in our guide.
Are you assuming similar win rate?
Yeah, a little bit different because our win rate was very high in GACC because of the topology of the instruments. It was about 50%. This we expect lower, probably about 30%, just because of the topology between EPA and the AMR section, but still a very high win rate, much higher than our normal win rates.
I think is it 10% of the first orders went to the Chinese companies? Is that about right?
Yeah, about, yeah, you're correct. So when you do the tender, you see everybody's performance. You see who submits. About 10% lower-end equipment. I'm talking about molecular spectroscopy, GC, about 10%.
Okay. In general, is that where you do see local substitution?
Yeah. I mean, and by the way, that's nothing new. We've seen that probably for the last five to seven years. I mean, we compete with local Chinese companies on the lower end, but we compete extremely well, and we watch it very closely for competitive moves.
One other thing I think is important, Tycho, on that is one of the requirements to be able to bid is actually being able to produce the product in China. We have probably one of the most extensive in China for China opportunities on the platform side, which has enabled us to be very close to not only our customers, but drive that win rate as well.
Got it. How about the drug industry in China? China generics, how are you thinking about that? I mean, your exposure overall.
Yeah, I mean, we have a very good exposure in QAQC, I would say. That was a part of the market that grew extremely well over many years. I think it's been challenged currently, of course, with some of the moves outside China and Asia, but we expect that to come back. About 80% of that is private, 20% kind of government-owned, and we see a lot of runway. You just need to look at the announcements with the partnerships with Pharma, the co-marketing agreements, and so on. Our tools are really critical in all of that. I would say about China, though, it's not only about Pharma, Tycho. PFAS, two quarters ago, was our fastest growing region. The business has actually doubled in China.
If you look at the China strategic plan around safe water, food, and now, of course, PFAS is a really important business for us. Of course, semiconductor and batteries in our CAM business. We had a little bit of, I would say, a subdued demand this half, but looking at the market and the equipment market for semicon, high-purity chemical plants around semicon and actually batteries, China, we expect next year to have a real tailwind on that.
I guess just thinking about PFAS overall, there's been, I think, new regulations around drinking water out of the EPA here. Do you see that business accelerating?
Yeah, I mean, we're working through that at the moment. First of all, there's some discussion about less molecules being tested or less parts of PFAS, but the number of tests will be needed. There is no doubt about it. It's going to continue here through regulation and continue globally through regulation. Actually, a bigger part, one big emerging part of the business here is litigation, polluter pays. Litigation is driving a lot of testing. A little-known fact, every semiconductor fab, every high-purity chemical company around those fabs are all testing now for PFAS on the inflow and the outflow. We get a significant business around that. As regulation changes, as it moves to air and as it moves to different modalities, we are very well positioned.
That's why we really believe we're in the early innings of PFAS on the curve, and we believe it can grow to a $1 billion opportunity in the market in 2030.
Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things that we're really seeing and we're really excited about is if you looked at our Q2, you said it grew 70%. It's tracking to well over $100 million on an annual basis. It added 80 basis points to our growth. If you look at it, half of the business now is actually outside of the environmental and forensic market. It actually shows the expansion into food and chemical and advanced materials. The air opportunity that Padraig mentioned, we're uniquely positioned because that's GC and GCMS. We have an outsized share in that market. We're very excited about the long-term growth opportunities in PFAS.
I want to touch on pricing quickly. I think you'd originally talked about 100 basis points. Maybe it's a bit more now with tariff surcharges.
Talk a little bit about traction with pricing initiatives. How do we think about gross margin lift in the back half of the year?
Yeah, so in pricing, we did 100 basis points plus in the first half. We have an initiative in Ignite Enterprise Pricing. And to kind of bring into how that's different, so before every individual product line would have set pricing, but now we're looking at the enterprise level, and we're putting more tools in the hands of the salesforce around profitability, not just on one product line, but a suite of offerings. It allows us to really advance our price. I mean, this year, we've taken more price already than the whole of last year. Of course, there's a headwind with tariffs, and we continue to see it, but we expect our pricing initiative to really gain traction over the next three years in Ignite. It's a new muscle that we've developed.
Yeah. As you said, on gross margin, the second half, because of the tariff work that is going on, gross margins are probably going to be flat sequentially. We were expecting an improvement. Going into 2026, we are expecting full mitigation. We are actually going to avoid the tariffs through the work. We are already starting to see that through the movement of the supply chain, but it will scale up through the second half of the year. That is where you will actually start seeing, re-seeing some of the margin expansion into 2026, that coupled with the pricing and then some of the benefits around volume as well.
I guess as tariffs have kind of gotten dialed back, are you kind of recalibrating any of those moves or?
Yeah, I mean, we went into this with a very strategic view about what were the no-regrets moves. Actually, we started nine months before the tariffs were announced at optimizing our supply chains. Like, for example, we already had plans to move our LC production or have similar LC production in Delaware and the U.S. I think in the long term, if you think strategically, we want to be close to our customer with manufacturing. We want to be in regions. There is no, I would say, movement, different moves if tariffs go up and down. Of course, around the edges, we'll have to see if there's a big difference between one country and another. I have to say I'm extremely proud of the team. Our previous record for moving supply chains was three months. Under the Ignite transformation, we moved six weeks for one supply chain.
We've built a lot of capabilities around that.
I guess, Bob, how do we think about that flowing through into operating margins next year? I mean, at the analyst day, you talked about 50 to 100 basis points kind of longer term. Could next year you overshoot on the back of pricing and?
Yeah, certainly not giving guidance yet, but there certainly is an opportunity when we think about the momentum that we have on pricing as well as some of these supply chains. Now, you could ask, by duplicating supply chains, does that actually increase your cost? That's actually where Ignite actually comes in and really helps us because one of the other areas that we've been looking at is how do we look at our supply chain in a very rigorous process around manufacturing excellence. We've redoubled down in continuous improvement opportunities on a plant-by-plant basis. We've done three plants to date. We're expecting to go through many of the other plants going forward. That's actually going to drive costs down.
Anything that you would say, hey, maybe there are some incremental costs associated with this, we are going to be able to offset that and then some going into 2026 to this manufacturing supply excellence activity. We do have some mixed dynamics there with NASD and the services being lower. If you took that out and looked at it on an apples-to-apples basis, we do expect margin improvement on a go-forward basis, more so in 2026 and then even potentially even more in 2027 as these things get fully ramped and annualized.
Yeah. Maybe just to add quickly, Tycho, we have taken out $130 million in annualized costs through Ignite this year, $80 million through organizational health, and about $50 million through procurement. They are only two tracks of a 13 track. Not all of them are margin. Some of them are, of course, based around growth.
We've got that priced out for the next three years and also incentives in the company based on that. We have a high degree of certainty.
Maybe in the closing minutes, we'll hit on capital deployment. We were chatting before this about how investors think there's going to be consolidation in the space. I mean, how are you thinking about M&A and are there areas you're prioritizing?
Yeah, so I kind of laid out the four pillars of our strategy. It's going to be based on strategy. It's not going to be what company is available in any particular time. If you come into our discussions in Agilent, you would see a small list of very high-quality assets that are linked with our strategy. We have a leverage of owner balance sheet is very strong. And we're going to be doing more allocation towards M&A going forward. It will have, of course, the financial hurdles that we will have to do, but it will be really driving us into faster-growing areas and expanding our recurring revenue. Lots to come in that space.
Has the volatility brought stuff into your kind of field of view that may have been out of range, out of scope before from a valuation perspective?
Yeah. I mean, valuations in general have come down quite a bit. There is a lot of talk around consolidation around the mid-cap. We're not reacting to any of that talk. We're very focused on our strategy, but definitely the valuations are helpful.
Any view on kind of products versus services from a high level?
Yeah. I mean, if you were to kind of, if you look at our strategy, what we're really interested in is upping our recurring revenue. It doesn't mean we won't look at key products that are going to help drive the pace of innovation. Clearly, more content and areas about recurring revenue around services are important to us because we already have a really significant engine in services and also a really significant commercial engine that we need to put more things into.
Great. We're out of time, so I think we'll leave it at that. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Tycho.