I will now hand the conference over to Tejas Savant, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Thank you, Karina, and welcome everyone to Agilent's conference call for the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. With me on the line are CEO, Padraig McDonnell, and CFO, Adam Elinoff. Joining for the Q&A will be Simon May, President of the Life Sciences and Diagnostics Markets Group, Angelica Riemann, President of the Agilent CrossLab Group, and Mike Zhang, President of the Applied Markets Group. This presentation is being webcast live. The press release for our second quarter financial results, investor presentation, and information to supplement today's discussion, along with a recording of this webcast, are available on our website at investor.agilent.com. Today's comments will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP measures are supplemental and should not be considered a substitute for GAAP results. You'll find the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations in the press release and on our website.
Unless otherwise noted, all references to increases or decreases in financial metrics are year-over-year, and references to revenue growth are on a core or organic constant currency basis. All references to profitability metrics are on a non-GAAP basis. Core or organic constant currency revenue growth is adjusted for the impact of currency exchange rates and any acquisitions and divestitures completed within the past 12 months. Guidance is based on forecasted exchange rates. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about the financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are only valid as of today. Agilent assumes no obligation to update them. Please refer to the company's recent SEC filings for a more detailed description of the risks and other factors that would cause our performance to differ from these forward-looking statements. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Padraig.
Thanks, Tejas, and welcome everyone. We delivered an excellent second quarter with stronger than expected revenue growth, significant margin expansion, and double-digit EPS growth. Importantly, the quarter demonstrates that the operational and P&L benefits from our Ignite operating system are increasingly becoming structurally embedded in the business. For the second quarter, Agilent reported $1.83 billion in revenue, growing 6.3% on a core basis and exceeding the high end of our guidance by 80 basis points. The strength was broad-based across our largest end markets and supported by continued replacement cycle momentum, innovation-led share gains, and improving operational execution. Operating margin of 26.4% for the quarter represents a year-over-year improvement of 130 basis points and 180 basis points on a sequential basis, well above our guidance despite the macro and geopolitical environment.
Earnings per share of $1.49 represents 14% year-over-year growth, which also exceeded the top end of our guidance by $0.07. We delivered at or above our long-term plan on all metrics, revenue growth, margin expansion and EPS growth. As we enter the second half, I want to highlight the key dimensions of our strategy that are driving our performance. First, we continue to build on the extraordinary level of customer intimacy and trust that we have worked hard to gain and differentiates us from the competition. This differentiation is increasingly translating into share gains across the key workflows and geographies. Second, that trust translates into insights that inform our innovation flywheel, leading to products and services that drive success for our customers and Agilent. That includes the exciting launches coming up next week at the 74th American Society for Mass Spectrometry Annual Conference in San Diego.
Next, we have increased capabilities and the level of talent throughout the organization, improving speed, agility and operational discipline. This is driving a step function improvement in execution. Finally, the significant benefits of Ignite are increasingly plain to see. These include strategic pricing that is aiding our top-line momentum, productivity initiatives such as simplifying our structure and generating greater value through strategic relationship management, a centralized focus on project outcomes that drives business results, and increasing supply chain agility and operational discipline that is strengthening margins and business resiliency while providing flexibility to fund our most critical innovation efforts. With our diversified and geographically balanced portfolio and healthy momentum across key end markets, the strong foundation we have built through Ignite provides us with the resiliency to compound our success and deliver results in any environment.
Importantly, we expect these operational improvements to increasingly support higher quality and durable earnings growth. Before getting into the specifics of our second quarter results, I want to spend time on the key growth drivers going forward. These include superior commercial execution combined with improvement we're seeing across our end markets, the instrument replacement cycle, our exciting slate of launches at ASMS, and our recent agreement to acquire BioCare, and how Ignite is fueling Agilent's performance. We are seeing continued health in our key end markets, aligned with our expectations at the start of the year. Combined with commercial execution, our differentiated portfolio and best-in-class service, that health is driving our results. Pharma continues to deliver with 6% growth in the quarter. This includes another quarter of low double-digit growth in biotech led by large caps, while positive demand signals from small to mid caps begin to emerge.
Chemical and advanced materials grew a robust 8%. It was fueled by strong semiconductor demand and healthy chemical CapEx investments in the Americas. Diagnostics and clinical grew 11%. Driven by the strong performance of expanding cancer and diagnostics offerings. Finally, our unique technology is helping us win outsized shares of forensics, where we delivered greater than 50% growth in the quarter. That includes the TSA security contract we mentioned during the last call, as well as multiple competitive large tender wins in Asia and Europe. Regarding the TSA contract, we are delighted to be able to share more details, as you might have seen in our recent press release. The TSA will deploy our new bulk alarm resolution technology at airport security checkpoints at the FIFA World Cup host cities in the U.S. This unique technology provides the ability to screen larger quantities of liquids, powders, and solids.
With the implementation going very well, we are excited about the opportunities to deploy this technology more broadly. We also had another very strong quarter of instrument revenue, resulting in high single-digit growth. This included market-leading low double-digit growth in LC and LC-MS and in GC. Our replacement site momentum continued. That plus share gains driven by the customer-centric innovation that is embedded in our new Infinity III LC and our 8850 GC are delivering exceptional growth as customers are looking to upgrade their fleets to see how new instruments solve their most challenging workflow problems while improving efficiencies. Looking ahead, we see continued instrument strength. Our commercial excellence delivered a book-to-bill above one again this quarter, marking the ninth consecutive quarter where instrument orders met or exceeded revenue.
Even as recent launches like the Infinity III LC and Omnis family continue to drive growth, we are looking forward to our next wave of innovations that will further support our durable growth, strengthen our install base, and support recurring consumables and services pull-through. We will showcase these new launches at ASMS next week. I'll start in spectroscopy with a revolutionary new 9500 Triple Quadrupole ICP-MS. This launch brings advanced triple quad capabilities to a broader customer base by directly addressing key customer pain points around throughput, workflow complexity, and operating costs. The 9500 solves these challenges with a patented dual cell system that provides increased throughput, a revolutionary air mode that eliminates the need for dedicated oxygen gas, lowering operating costs, an intelligent OpenLab ICP-MS software that reduces complexity and automates method migration, lowering the technical expertise required to operate the system.
This versatile instrument will be relevant across our customer base in advanced materials, mining, food, and environmental labs. Importantly, the innovations embedded in the 9500 were a direct result of customer feedback about their most pressing problems and will serve as a differentiated architecture for ICP-MS growth well into the future. Moving to our gas phase business, we are launching the upgraded flagship GCs. These launches further strengthen our position in high productivity analytical workflows where our customers increasingly prioritize efficiency, automation, and total cost of ownership. Highlights of our new GCs include improved performance with up to 30% faster oven cool-down and higher throughput, built-in intelligence features to monitor performance, track parameters, and assist in proactive maintenance, and the technology to conserve or eliminate helium gas with real-time gas and power usage tracking.
We have been a long-standing leader in providing helium alternatives for GCs in response to customer needs. In the current helium supply environment, these productivity and resource efficiency benefits are becoming increasingly valuable for our customers. Turning to our consumables portfolio, our Altura ultra inert LC columns continue to see strong traction. They grew more than 50% sequentially, reaching 75% of the top 20 biopharma accounts. This rapid adoption reinforces the strength of innovation engine and unified commercial organization. We will continue to build on that strong initial momentum with additional waves of column launches. Our newest Altura columns debuting at ASMS are targeted to address workflows for protein and peptide therapeutics, large oligos, gene therapy, and vaccines. On the software front, we're also expanding our capabilities in OpenLab CDS with version 3.0.
This important release provides a unified platform to support analysis for chromatography, mass spec, and spectroscopy systems across our portfolio, including for the first time our high-resolution mass spec. The continued expansion of OpenLab further strengthens workflow integration across our portfolio and enhances the strategic value of our install base. We are also delighted to announce that we are building upon our long history in China with the launch of our China Innovation Center. Leveraging the country's deep base of technical talent and a vibrant innovation ecosystem, we intend to strengthen our R&D capabilities across multiple emerging areas, including digital, AI, and automation to better support our customers. We are particularly excited about automation, where we see excellent potential to build on our in-house capabilities with unique automation development expertise in China.
Turning to the fourth pillar of our strategy, I want to provide an update on the impact of our Ignite operating system that is building enterprise capabilities and driving a culture of accountability and execution excellence. Ignite had a significant impact on the business on both the top and bottom lines during the quarter and is poised to deliver compounding benefits in the years to come. Our strategic pricing capability delivered approximately 200 basis points of pricing in Q2, putting us on a path to exceed our initial full-year goal of 100 basis points. We also reached an important milestone during Q2, with the tariff task force achieving full mitigation of the incremental tariffs that began in late spring. The combination of strategic manufacturing moves and targeted price adjustments have now fully offset the operating profit impact of these tariffs.
This task force also helped us build a playbook for addressing trade and geopolitical challenges, which has been a critical resource in navigating the current Middle East conflict. Our digital initiative is driving accelerated growth of our e-commerce platform, delivering ease of use for customers and lower cost per transaction for Agilent. In Q2, new digital orders grew 9%, including more than 20% ex-China. IGNITE has transformed our supply chain capabilities, making it a competitive advantage. A recent example of this is our quick response to the logistic challenges and material shortages arising out of the conflict in the Middle East. IGNITE is providing incremental procurement savings and supply chain resilience that gives us confidence as we work to absorb inflationary cost pressures during the remainder of the year. On the M&A front, we're excited to announce the BioCare acquisition in March.
I am confident that the robust long-term growth, strong strategic fit, and opportunities for synergy realization make the financial returns on this transaction highly attractive. Ignite is driving our pre-close preparations for the Biocare integration, ensuring we are ready to hit the ground running as soon as the transaction closes. I look forward to welcoming our new colleagues to Agilent later this year. While it's been tremendously satisfying to see Ignite's impact to date, there's a lot more to come. This includes our push for manufacturing excellence, where we are being front-footed in building resilience across our business and setting up the organization to deliver durable long-term growth. We built our AI-enabled supply chain control tower to create greater prediction and adaptive calibration of our supply and demand plans, leading to inherent resiliency, faster issue response times, and much higher schedule attainment.
After implementing this new capability, we have seen continued meaningful improvement in schedule plan attainment, order conversion ratios, and overall cycle times. We have also reconfigured our operations organization to add greater depth in planning, lean manufacturing, and digital engineering. All of this contributes to improved delivery, greater agility, and optimized cost structure. That, in turn, reduced manufacturing overhead by more than 50 basis points versus last year. The 9500 ICP-MS we are featuring at ASMS is a great demonstration of how our Ignite operating system is accelerating our innovation, expediting the launch by a full quarter. Our optimized approach to innovation enable faster decisions and more focused capital allocation. We clearly established the 9500 as the top priority and dynamically reallocated resources to accelerate timelines and outcomes. We reinforce this through focused discipline, cross-functional execution across sales, R&D, and manufacturing teams.
The teams work closely to accelerate technology transfer and improve yields, pulling our production readiness forward. AI is a key FY 2026 enterprise focus area for us. AI has the potential to be a tremendous growth driver for the life sciences industry. Pharma customers are leaning into AI to accelerate drug development and reduce the odds of expensive late-stage failures. There is a growing need for a large-scale multi-modal datasets to train AI models, which will require significant investments in the wet lab. By moving the needle on drug development ROI, AI holds the promise of putting our largest customer constituency on a better footing. A higher number of approvals coming through the drug pipeline should be a strong tailwind for us, giving our leading position in downstream manufacturing QA/QC workflows.
In light of the regulatory and patient safety aspects of commercial scale drug manufacturing, we believe this part of the value chain will meaningfully benefit from AI use upstream. Beyond being accretive to our top line in the medium term, we are also deploying AI within our own business. I look forward to sharing more details on our AI efforts very soon. Let me share some additional details on our Q2 results, starting with our end markets. As I mentioned earlier, pharma grew 6% this quarter, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of growth in the mid-single digit to low-double digit range. Within pharma, biotech grew low double digits for the third consecutive quarter, while small molecule grew low single digit. Our GLP-1 momentum continues, delivering about 20% growth year to date, with a robust contribution from the analytical lab business in the second quarter.
We also remain engaged with our large pharma customers about their plans to reshore operations to the U.S. We continue to expect initial orders at the end of our fiscal year, with revenue starting in FY 2027. CAM grew 8% and diagnostics and clinical grew 11%, both exceeding expectations. Environmental forensics delivered 13% growth compared to the low single-digit guide, with the upside in forensics as I mentioned earlier. Environmental delivered low single-digit growth against a challenging double-digit year-over-year compare. Food, our second smallest end market, declined 3% with softer-than-expected results in Asia due to funding delays in China and India. Academia and government, our smallest end market, declined 5% in line with expectations. Most importantly, our customer-centric approach is working, and we continue to win against the competition in all major geographies with share expansion, again, validated by industry market share data.
Turning to updated guidance, building on an excellent second quarter and with the outlook for our end markets broadly consistent with our original expectations, we now expect core growth of 4.5%-6% for the full year. At the midpoint, this represents an increase of 30 basis points versus our prior guide. We are also increasing our expectations on the bottom line. With updated EPS guidance of $6-$6.10 for the full year, an increase of $0.08 at the midpoint. With that, let me hand it over to Adam, who will provide additional details on the quarter and our financial outlook for the remainder of the year.
Thanks, Padraig. Good afternoon, everyone. In my comments today, I will provide additional details on revenue in the quarter, as well as walk through the income statement and cover other key financial metrics. I'll then cover our updated full year and third quarter guidance. Starting with Q2, revenue was $1.83 billion. On a core or organic constant currency basis, we posted growth of 6.3%, while reported growth was 10%. Currency had a favorable impact of 3.7%, a slightly larger tailwind than our February guidance. At a business segment level, AMG revenue grew 11% in the quarter on a core basis, well ahead of expectations. Growth was again led by double-digit performance in spectroscopy. That business continues to see strong demand for its market-leading tools to support semiconductor production at the fabs and with their downstream supply chain.
During the quarter, AMG also benefited from the TSA airport security contract that Padraig discussed earlier. LDG revenue grew 9% on a core basis, nicely ahead of expectations. Low double-digit growth in LC and LC-MS and in our cancer diagnostics business drove the upside. We also saw high single-digit growth from specialty CDMO, which we recently rebranded as our Advanced Therapeutics Division. We continue to expect our Advanced Therapeutics Division to deliver mid-teens growth in fiscal year 2026, with our production schedule set up to deliver a pickup in growth in the second half. Notably, we recently achieved mechanical completion of our Train C build-out, positioning us well to begin revenue generation at the new facility next spring. Our cancer diagnostics business, including our clinical pathology products and companion diagnostic services, grew low double digits this quarter.
This growth was led by the performance of our new Omnis family, which continues to gain traction. We also saw strong double-digit growth in pathology reagents driven by our expanding instrument installed base. This business is performing extremely well and will get even stronger with the addition of Biocare's clinically focused antibody menu. ACG grew 2% in the quarter on a core basis, in line with guidance, due to Lunar New Year timing and a challenging consumables compare driven by pre-tariff stocking in China last year. Ex-China, ACG grew at the high end of mid-single digits and consumables grew high single digits. On a geographic basis, we saw our strongest results in the Americas with 11% revenue growth. We saw broad high single digit plus results in all end markets except academic and government.
Europe and Asia ex-China revenue grew high single digits with excellent diagnostics momentum in Europe, while pharma and semiconductor investments were strong in Asia ex-China. China declined 9%, a bit more than we had expected. On a first-half basis, China was roughly flat, very much in line with our full year guide. Q2 gross margins were 55%. On a year-over-year basis, gross margins increased by 90 basis points from nice leverage on incremental volumes, Ignite momentum, and favorable regional mix. Operating margin was 26.4%, an increase of 130 basis points year-over-year. Well ahead of guidance driven by our healthy gross margin performance and continued realization of Ignite operating system efficiencies. Moving below the line, we had $11 million of other income, while our tax rate of 14.5% was as expected. Finally, we had 283 million diluted shares outstanding in the quarter, in line with expectations.
Putting it all together, Q2 earnings per share were $1.49 and grew 14%, a reflection of our superior execution and operational excellence. Let me turn to cash flow and the balance sheet. Operating cash flow was $277 million in the quarter, and we invested $76 million in capital expenditures. Q2 cash flow reflects a tax deposit that will largely be offset by a related refund anticipated around the end of the fiscal year. We purchased $65 million in shares and paid $72 million in dividends in Q2, and we ended the quarter with a net leverage ratio of 0.7 turns, maintaining our strong balance sheet. Let me share some additional details on the updated outlook for the year and the guidance for the third quarter.
Based on the strong performance, we now expect fiscal year 2026 revenue to be in the range of $7.39 billion-$7.49 billion on a reported basis. This range represents growth of 4.5%-6% on a core or organic constant currency basis, an increase of 30 basis points at the midpoint versus the prior guide. Currency is now expected to be a 1.8% tailwind during the year. Turning to our end markets, business segment and geographic growth assumptions. We continue to expect high single-digit growth in pharma and a low single-digit decline in academic and government. Based on strong results in the first half and our outlook for the remainder of the year, we are raising our expectations for chemicals and advanced materials as well as diagnostics and clinical from mid-single digit to mid to high single-digit growth.
With our momentum in forensics providing upside, we are raising our guidance for environmental and forensics from low single-digit to low to mid-single-digit growth. In food, we are lowering our guide from roughly flat to a low single-digit decline due to delays in government funding in China and India and inflationary headwinds related to the Middle East conflict. We now expect mid-single-digit growth for all three business segments, increasing AMG from low single-digit to mid-single-digit to reflect the strong Q2 performance. Regionally, our only update to our prior full year guidance is in Asia ex China, where we are increasing our assumptions from mid-single-digit to mid- to high-single-digit growth. Moving down the P&L, we are also raising our full year operating margin expansion target to 85 basis points at the midpoint of our revenue guidance, driven by continued operational momentum.
Our expected tax rate is unchanged at 14.5%. We now expect $31 million in other income and 283 million diluted shares outstanding for the year. FY 2026 earnings per share are now expected to be between $6 and $6.10, an increase of $0.08 at the midpoint, representing earnings growth of 7% to 9%. For your modeling, let me share some additional expectations we have incorporated into our guidance for the year. While the Middle East conflict and the demand for memory chips puts upward pressure on our costs, we are confident that the Ignite operating system will deliver meaningful efficiencies and help absorb those inflationary impacts within our H2 outlook. There is no change to our operating cash flow range of $1.6 billion-$1.7 billion. We are now expecting to invest approximately $450 million in capital expenditures, down $50 million versus our prior guidance.
Now moving to the third quarter. We expect our reported revenue to be in the range of $1.83 billion-$1.85 billion. This represents growth of roughly 4.4%-5.9% on a core or organic constant currency basis. While currency is expected to be approximately a 0.6% tailwind, our guide assumes 283 million diluted shares outstanding in the third quarter. EPS guidance for the quarter is $1.48-$1.50, representing growth of 8%-9%. While our second half core growth guidance is roughly similar to our first half performance, it comes against the backdrop of increasingly tougher comps. The sequential quarterly two-year stack growth implied by our guidance demonstrates our accelerating momentum through the year, as shown in slide 10 of our presentation. Finally, I want it to be clear that our guide does not include the impact of Biocare nor any benefit from potential tariff refunds.
With that, I'll turn the call back over to Padraig for closing comments.
Thanks, Adam. I couldn't be prouder of the way our team executed in the second quarter, once again demonstrating our ability to perform in all market environments. In the near term, our improved full year outlook reflects healthy demand in our key end markets and stronger underlying operation performance across the business. That includes pricing realization, productivity gains, and replacement cycle momentum. Longer term, our broad and diverse portfolio across end markets and geographies provide differentiated resiliency and enables multiple avenues to success. With a market leading services team that cultivates unparalleled customer intimacy, a deep bench of talent, an impressive cadence of innovation launches, and our Ignite operating system that has come into its own and is delivering compounding results, Agilent will continue to sustainably outperform the competition.
Before we close, I want to take a moment to thank our customers for their trust and express my gratitude to the Agilent team for delivering a fantastic result. With that, I'll turn the call back to Tejas for the Q&A. Tejas?
Thanks, Padraig. Karina, can you please share the instructions for the Q&A?
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Your first question comes from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my question. Padraig, congrats on a fine print here. Maybe my first one on, if you look at some of the moving pieces here, CAM was standout for us. On the instrument side, LC-MS, GC, double digits was standout, but it looks like overall instruments, high signals implies your cell analysis was still down. Maybe talk about, is that A&G? What are you seeing in A&G trends? On the CAM side, I know with the Middle East situation, there's been some talks about end market concerns. Maybe talk about how CAM progressed and your confidence in that CAM outlook.
Great. Thanks, Vijay. First of all, we're delighted with the results, a really strong result from the team where we're taking share across the board and Ignite really running on all cylinders. CAM was 8% growth in Q2. That beat our mid-single digit guide plus mid-single digit guide. We're mid-single digits in chemicals, high middle single digits, and low double digits in advanced materials. We had actually low teens CAM growth ex China. After a strong high single digit growth in H1, we're going to see how it plays out with the Middle East going forward on it. It's really driven by a number of things. I think increased CapEx spending likely returns late in the calendar year, but we're seeing that continue. Investment in the semiconductor space, that continues to be a real sweet spot for us.
What we're seeing is also substantial leadership in our key platforms. When you look and see what are multiple factors, I think the chemical sector driven by demand from downstream material industries like semiconductors and batteries, continued investment in semiconductor and investment in supply chains. Overall, really strong across the board. We don't read too much into the Middle East in terms of what's happening. We're going to see how that goes. We're seeing good momentum in our funnels continued on the CAM side. I think on the academia and government side, I think you had a question in there. We expected a decline. We had a decline of -5% in Q2. Americas revenue was flat. Americas instruments comp start to ease, actually, and we see a return to stability on that side.
You see that the OMB requirement to fully redistribute appropriate funds is starting to happen. Overall, we see it continuing as a steady state, and we see ongoing, I would say, ongoing muted in AMG, but overall, I think an extremely strong result.
That's helpful. Let me add one for you on the margins. Pretty impressive margin print here. It looks like volumes were slightly above the high end of your guidance, but the leverage was pretty impressive. How much was pricing? Maybe talk about what drove margins and how you're thinking about progression here. It looks like Q4, we're looking at a pretty big quarter for margins, maybe visibility into Q4 ramp.
Thanks, Vijay. A couple points. The margin beat this quarter was driven by a couple things. One, Ignite, and I say that in the broadest sense of the word, so that includes the pricing. You heard over 200 basis points of pricing in there, as well as execution excellence from the team and structural improvements we're seeing. We talked about in the script, specifically in operations, as well as productivity from our procurement team. All of the Ignite savings you're really starting to see run through the P&L now. There's volume leverage. The other piece I would point out is the geographic mix, as we had a larger SKU in Q2 toward the Americas, which helps our margin. If we look ahead, what you see is two things.
You see a flat sequential Q2 to Q3, that's really driven by a couple of pieces. You see the favorability that we have in Ignite, once again, that's the broadest sense of the Ignite operating system there. That's partially offset by some inflationary pressures that we're seeing in geographic mix, returning back to a little bit more of a normalized mix. What you see is the expansion happening again from Q3 to Q4 up about 220 basis points, which is very normal from what we've seen in previous quarters. When I look at it and take a step back, our H1 to H2 ramp is about 47.53 from an operating profit perspective, this is very much normalized to what we would normally see H1 to H2. The ramp here is fully in line with historical norms. Feel very confident about it and really excited about the second half of the year.
Understood. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. Maybe one on the specialty CDMO, I guess it's Advanced Therapeutics now. It sounds like high single-digit growth in the quarter, pretty healthy there. Obviously talking still about the mid-teens. I think you talked about the production schedule has this uptick in 2H. You just talk about the visibility? Is that all contracted and covered at this point? It sounds like Train C next spring, so maybe not this year. Just talk about the visibility on the second half uptick of that business, what you saw in the quarter, how much go forward revenue is covered by some of the contracts that you have in place here.
Yeah. Thanks, Patrick, and thanks for the question. I'll start off, and I'll hand it over to Simon for more details. Just to ground people, we're a specialty CDMO business focused on sRNA, peptides, GLP-1s, and of course, high-potency APIs. The Q2 growth at the high end of high single digits was within expectations with batch cadence resulting in a normal quarter-to-quarter variance. We see that over and over again. We continue to expect to see mid-teens growth guide for FY 2026 based on our production schedules and demand dynamics. Simon, some more color on the trends, et cetera.
Yeah. Thanks, Padraig. This is Simon. Just to add a little bit more color there, the short answer to the question is we've got really strong visibility in the second half of the year. The phasing of production schedules point towards very strong year-over-year growth in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, we've got a tough compare in the fourth quarter, but it all adds up still to mid-teens growth for the year is what we're projecting. As you heard already in the script, we had a major milestone here in the second quarter with the mechanical completion of Train C. Very pleasing to see that. We remain on schedule there for go live in the spring of 2027. We're a little further out there with demand into 2027, but some very encouraging signs already with Train C in particular.
We've got strong line of sight to demand there for the bulk of FY 2027. As is always the case, the further out you get in the timing, the production schedules and the bookings, they proceed accordingly.
Okay. No, that's really helpful. Porry, maybe one of the instrument strengths, just following up there, nice to see low double-digit growth in the LC-MS. Can you just talk about what markets you're seeing that strength in? I know you guys have the replacement cycle going. How much of it is replacement cycle, share gains? What are you hearing from the field on the instruments, and how durable is this low double digits for the LC-MS program. Thanks.
Yeah. Look, I think continue to see strong momentum on the LC-MS and GC, low double digits for both businesses. We expect the LC replacement cycle to be a 200-300 bps tailwind to the LC growth. We've seen that normal trajectory of the replacement cycle, but continued momentum and funnels look really strong. I will say it was actually the best market share data I've seen in what we're seeing. Not only are we replacing, but we're also taking share in competitive accounts, which again, continues the momentum. If you break it down, I think it's really driven by three factors, I think underinvestment, fleets of age, you see U.S. and Europe CapEx conditions are favorable, and of course, customer-focused innovations are compelling reasons to replace. We expect that to continue, and we're seeing it across all markets.
I really want to call out our GC replacement cycle as well. It's sometimes under-talked about, but on our GC, we're low double-digit growth. It's a longer lived nature of the GC. You see a typical lifespan of 10 years, and we see relatively LC, the replacement cycle will drive more moderate annual uplift over a longer period of time, but very compounding. We expect that to be 100 bps of a tailwind. Instruments are really good, funnel's really strong. The CapExes are being released, and none of this will be possible without a commercial team that can really execute on these innovations.
Great. Really appreciate it.
Your next question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Padraig, I want to probe a little more on the semi strength. This is something you haven't talked a ton about. Maybe just quantify the size of the semi business today. I think you're more levered to logic than memory, if that's right. Just talk a little bit about sustainability of double-digit growth and spectroscopy, how we should think about new fab construction and pricing power. I think there seems to be a fair amount of pricing power in this market right now.
Yeah, there's a really strong pricing power. Of course, we have a new system being released at ASMS that's going to start its own replacement cycle in this area, which is driven by the technology with new capabilities. Our advanced materials market is, if you split it out on the chemical and advanced materials, semiconductor is about 30% of that market as we look at it. We're seeing continued growth on it. We're seeing it in the fabs, also in the high-purity chemical companies around fabs that need these systems as well to do it. We're seeing it across the board. We've actually saw that over a number of years, Tycho, as you see CapEx being deployed, our systems are being placed inside then, of course, are qualified with the fabs going forward.
As that cycle continues to move, you're going to see that business continue to grow on it. We're very optimistic.
On chemical, you did kind of buck the trend here. I know Vijay kind of asked a question earlier, but are you kind of not seeing what others are on the chemical side because of the GC replacement cycle? Is that kind of the right way to think about it?
I think it's a mixture of both. I think we've seen strong CapEx demand. The GC replacement cycle is certainly a tailwind we're seeing, and very competitive with the new innovations that we bring across. We haven't seen a slowdown in that area. People still have aging fleets that need them replaced and so on. Of course, it's kind of a bifurcation. Chemical sector is driven downstream on the materials on semiconductors, batteries, and advanced polymers. Of course, we continue to see that continue under replacement momentum after several years of underinvestment in CapEx. We don't see that stopping anytime soon.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Tycho.
Your next question comes from the line of Puneet Souda with Leerink. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Padraig. Thanks for taking my questions. First one, if I could continue to follow up on the semi side and the CAM side. Can you elaborate how CAM improved throughout the quarter? Your confidence here, is this more semi-driven or instrumentation versus the overall improvement in chemical? Obviously, the start of the conflict, but then the conflict has eased a bit. Maybe just talk about how the trend line has been and what gives you continued more confidence in that core oil and gas business as well.
Yeah, look, our momentum has been really steady and increasing. We are very pleased with the high single digits in Q2. If you think about it, our differentiation in terms of the technologies are driving share gains in advanced materials, where we saw low double-digit growth. Of course, inflationary pressures from the Middle East may affect capital spend. We expect a strong recovery to be even accelerated before that. We're not seeing that on our numbers. Just to kind of ground people, we're number one in the CAM market by far. We have substantial leadership positions in GC and GC-MS and spectroscopy. We're pleased with the really strong performance. Now, CAM customers tend to be more cautious in a dynamic macro environment. We're watching closely on the inflationary pressures that may have on our customers.
I would say overall, if you pull it together, there's a degree of prudence embedded in our H2 outlook. We grow it accelerating from high single digits to mid-single digits in H2, but still very robust.
Got it. A broader question for you on the Agilent differentiation. You're clearly outperforming versus the rest of the broader tools market, the diversified market. Your diversification beyond healthcare seems to be helping you. Could you take a minute and provide a view into the pharma and the biotech business, how you're serving those customers from discovery versus more pre-clinical. Are you positioned more into the later stages of drug development that is actually helping as capital funding is returning into the biotech? Maybe if you could, along those lines, talk a little bit about the biotech follow-on and capital raises. How is that flowing into your business? Thank you.
Yeah. I'll take the first one. In general, what's different, I think you see these numbers and you see the 130 basis points year-over-year operating margin expansion, 14% EPS growth. You're really seeing driven by a number of factors. Replacement cycling continues to grow, but winning teams and being able to take market share in that environment. Innovations are really resonating, Infinity III, Pro iQ, LC-MS, and the upcoming launches at ASMS will only drive that forward. The share gains in this environment is really important, so that drives a lot of capacity as well. I would say, services remains a key differentiator for us. Our scale around services is super important. When you look at our operating system at Ignite, and I do want to take a minute on this one.
It's a compounding effect that you see in the numbers this quarter, all three metrics above. This is not a coincidence. What happens when transformation is done right, when capabilities are not just piloted or incubated, but deeply embedded in the system, that's what you're going to see compound over time. On the pharma side, I think what you're seeing is really strong replacement cycle. You're seeing, of course, we have a tailwind with GLP-1s in those areas. Of course, the innovation's resonating. You look at the long-term drivers in pharma, you see redistribution of supply chains, expansion of biologics, and of course, you see many other factors really helping. What I would say is that we're very much downstream in QA, QC. We're in development as well.
We're right in that sweet spot for reshoring, replacement cycle, and any capacity or supply chain resilience around, feel really good about that. Of course, mid-size biotech is a little bit challenged, as you see, but you see the number of deals that are happening from an investment point of view, and we expect that to improve as well. Overall, really positive.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Dan Brennan with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Congrats on the quarter. Maybe just on diagnostics, super strong quarter. You highlighted the Omnis and some other things. I know you bumped the guide a bit, but it does imply a decel versus what you just printed. Was there anything unusual in this quarter on the Omnis that's not going to repeat? Just walk us through a little bit because it was so exceptional.
Yeah, it was exceptional, Dan. Thanks for the question. We grew 11% in the quarter, well ahead of mid to high digits guidance on this side and very durable in that way. I'm going to bring in Simon to give more color on what he's seeing on the Omnis, et cetera.
Thanks, Padraig. Simon again here. I think in diagnostics, we've got two or three dynamics going on. First and foremost, we've identified this as one of our enterprise growth opportunities, and we've been focusing and investing there accordingly over the past 12, 18 months now. The Omnis family continues to ramp very well. We're very pleased with the trajectory that we're seeing there across all regions, and we're also now starting to see similar growth in our assay attachments. It was a very pleasing quarter from that perspective because we saw double-digit growth in both instruments and assays. We also continue to do very well in companion diagnostics. We've got great capabilities there, and we're seeing a lot of demand in modalities like antibody drug conjugates. Across the spectrum of our pathology and companion diagnostics business, I think we've got strong execution.
As Padraig mentioned, we've got durable market dynamics and a bit of a tailwind right now.
Perfect. Maybe as a follow-up, Padraig, you highlighted that slide in the deck, maybe it's slide 10 on the comps. You're bumping the guide, but you are saying, "Hey, comps get harder, but we're up against that and we feel good." Can you just elaborate a little bit on within the guide? Because people stare at that. Where do you think ideally you've left a little cushion because the comps are getting more difficult and Wall Street's intoxicated on beats. Just walk us through a little bit more on the guide and how we should think about the back half of the year. Thank you.
Yeah. I'm going to start off and hand it over to Adam. When you see the top-line strength, the confidence in Ignite drives incremental outlook for revenue growth and margin expansion in EPS. 30 basis points increase in the core growth side, 10 basis points increase on the year-over-year margin expansion, and EPS up $0.08. I think the strong H2 results are really creating momentum out of it. Adam, do you want to give some more detail about what we're seeing and what we're taking into account?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. I would look at it a couple ways. First of all, one, as you said, the compares get more challenging in H2. You do have to look at that stacked growth view. When I think about it, the four drivers that give me confidence going into it is, one, the execution excellence. Two, you see we have market momentum. Three, the structural improvements that we've embedded through Ignite, they're in place and they're going to continue to compound. Four is innovation, and you see that coming out shortly. Those four are going to help drive us through the second half of the year and what gives me confidence. When I think about the guide, I'll just give you how I think about potential upsides and downsides for the full year of the guide.
Recall the last time we talked about it, there were three, the first being small and mid-cap, the second being academia and government, and the third being a China stimulus. China stimulus is now looking like the orders will happen toward the end of the year, but the revenue will come in the first part of next year. We're taking that as an upside or a downside off the table. What we would be left with is the small and mid-cap and what Padraig had talked about, is we're seeing all the green shoots there and it just has to convert into revenue. Second is academia and government continuing to stabilize. We saw it in the U.S. We see the right signs there. We're cautiously optimistic as well there. You see the Middle East start to normalize.
That's a potential source for upside as well as tariff refunds. They're not embedded in our guide right now, but if we get tariff refund, that can also help. Overall, I just want to say, we're confident going into the second half of the year, and the stack comps kind of tell the story.
Terrific. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ryskin with Bank of America. A kind reminder to press star six to unmute. Mr. Ryskin, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hopefully you guys can hear me. Thanks for the question. I want to follow up on China. I think you called out a 9% decline in the quarter. Maybe first half is in line, but just anything specific to call out. You talked about slower funding, delays in funding in China. Anything more specific than that, or is it really that focused?
Yeah, thanks, Michael. First of all, I think we see the China market as stable, doing around $300 million a quarter. We saw larger than expected softness due to the Lunar New Year, but H1 was flattish. We remain confident in our flattish guide. I think when you look at it, I think we are under-indexed to DX and pharma and over-indexed to applied as a company in China. I think biotech overall is still a small share of the overall China pharma market, but nicely growing in high teens, which was a really bright spot for us, which shows the innovation that's happening in pharma, et cetera, on it. When you look at China overall, we're making an investment in innovation. We're very highly committed to China. The speed of innovation there is really important.
Of course, the stimulus will come in at the start of next year. Overall, I think we continue to be optimistic. We expect mid-single to high single-digit growth for the long term. The reasons why we feel that actually is not just because what we're seeing currently, but we have the largest install base, the pace of innovation, everybody can read the details on that, and we're fully aligned with the China's 15th Five-Year Plan around AI, healthcare, green and sustainable developments, and of course, new regulations around PFAS. Overall, I would say pretty muted in the quarter, but I would say very, very stable, and we're continuing to have a great team and really working with our customers there.
Okay. Maybe for my follow-up, I think on the last question, you kind of talking about U.S. academic stabilizing, if I understood correctly, as one of the areas of upside for the year. If you could talk about A&G a little bit more globally, including China, just sort of what you're seeing there and what the assumptions for the rest of the year are. Thanks.
Yeah, China A&G is very soft in the quarter on tightened and delayed government spend, leading to lower academia stimulus. I think that's what we're seeing. As I said, Americas was roughly flat. I think everywhere else is reasonably muted. In Europe, actually recovering on key markets. We're seeing reasonable business out of Germany, U.K., Spain, and then I think the Ukraine war impact is now budgeted in. I think overall, just to put it into context, U.S. is about 3%-4% of sales. There's a lot of uncertainty around multi-year grants and higher concentration of funding. Of course, you can see that we're working through that at the moment.
Okay, thanks.
A kind reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand now. At this time, please limit yourself to one question per person. Your next question comes from the line of Dan Leonard with RBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I'll keep it to one. I have a question on spectroscopy. What does a replacement cycle look like there, especially on the back of a double-digit growth rate? You have a new product launching, you expect it's going to drive a replacement cycle. Is that going to accelerate the growth rate further? What would be just kind of the framing around that? Thank you.
Yeah, I'm going to bring in Mike Zhang here to talk about that spectroscopy business.
Yeah, Padraig. Again, thank you, Dan, for the great question. You're seeing tremendous momentum. We're seeing the momentum from multiple fronts. First of all, obviously, the momentum in semiconductors and also data center. A lot of capacity build-up. This is global based, very good excitement. There's also, think about the very diverse upstreams, downstream applications, a lot of capacity. There's also a lot of pent-up demand because we know in the last several years, the replace cycle is kind of muted. We're seeing now because of the new demand, are we seeing accelerations? I think this is just the beginning. I think we have a lot of momentum ahead. I think there's a lot for us to expect. We also really want to highlight, we're very trusted partner by the customer. We are the absolute leader in the market.
Also now with the new innovation, the product coming out. Multiple fronts, very exciting momentum, and I think this will continue on.
Got it. Thanks, Mike.
Your next question comes from the line of Luke Sergott from Barclays. Mr. Sergott, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. This is pretty complicated there with that star six. Follow up here on the margin commentary. You guys had a really strong quarter like Doc was talking about on gross margin. You're getting the volume leverage, you're talking about some increased investment there or pull forward on the ICP-MS launch. Can you just talk about how much you're being pulled forward on these investments and how that kind of shakes out? Trying to think about from an exit rate margin opportunity, as you kind of roll forward into a more normalized business environment through next year.
Yeah. Let me take this one, Luke. I think the pull forward in investment that you're talking about, it's really was a pull forward in the innovation and in how we focused our investments. It wasn't necessarily a pull forward in investment. The investments were always planned, as we talked about at the beginning of the year, we were going to take some of our margin improvement, invest in innovation. It really wasn't a timing issue around the investment itself. If you think about for the full year, we're guiding a full year increase of about 85 basis points at the midpoint, and once again, that incorporates several things.
It's the structural improvements from Ignite, the volume leverage that we expect to get, offset by inflation, and that's inflation kind of in the broad sense, as well as some of the logistical Middle East costs and the AI and chip costs that we're seeing, as well as then those growth investments. To your question, it was always incorporated into our initial guide, and we're raising our margin guide for the full year up 10 basis points at the midpoint.
Great, thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Catherine Schulte with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. On food, just given that was the one part of the guide that came down, you talked about delays in China and India. Can you just unpack a bit what you're seeing there and how you expect that to play out going forward?
Yeah, no. Thanks for the question. The food market business declined -3% in Q2, and that was against the mid-single digit guide. Really around delayed government spending in Asia was the primary driver of the shortfall versus expectations. America and Europe grew together in high single digits during the quarter. For FY 2026 to reduce guidance from flat to negative low single digits, we're set up, I think, in FY 2027 to see the China stimulus. The China stimulus from last year really set up a tough comp for us in FY 2026 and slower government funding, and of course, pressure from the Middle East conflict on food shipments and testing in Asia is an incremental challenge. I would say overall, what you're seeing driving this market for us is that we're ever-changing food safety regulations. They're not going to change.
You're going to see customer demand continue for healthier, sustainable alternative foods. Of course, contract labs seeing increased sample volumes. I think that's where we're right in our sweet spot with verified workflows. Emerging PFAS in food is going to continue. It's actually a really strong growth area over time. Of course, protection of core food safety and quality testing. Overall, a challenging quarter, but I think the long term looks very strong.
All right. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Casey Woodring with J.P. Morgan.
Great. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the quarter.
Thanks.
Yeah, I'll just ask my two up front. First is just would be curious to hear how much that forensic TSA one-timer you called out was in the quarter, and was that baked into the guide? Second, on chemical within CAM, not to beat a dead horse, but would also be curious to hear if the strong CapEx in chemical is limited to the U.S. or if that's more broad-based in Europe and Asia as well, and maybe just unpack what you're seeing ex-U.S. in that business and what your chemical exposure is ex-U.S. Thank you.
Yeah. First of all, I'm going to bring Mike in to talk about the TSA business because it's something that we're really, really excited about, and I'll come back, and I'll talk about CAM.
Yeah, definitely. TSA, this solution is highly differentiated, and it provide unprecedented precision, but also the efficient throughput. We have been successfully working with TSA, and we have successfully deployed the first contract ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026. The successful deployment of the first contract and a continuous collaboration really position us a very strong position for future tenders. Overall, I think this exciting new opportunity for us.
We called out a $9 million TSA win last quarter with forensics. We recognized $5 million of that this quarter. We're really well-positioned to continue to secure larger aviation security tenders as we go forward. It's important to also kind of continue that that's going to have continued tech refresh in it as well. You go back to AMG as well, it's not one region. We're seeing it across all regions. I think we feel really strong about our funnels as well geographically, too.
All right. Great. Thank you.
This is all the time we have for questions today. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Tejas for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to speaking with many of you in the weeks ahead.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.