We're going to kick it off. I'm Tycho Peterson from the Life Science team. It's my pleasure to introduce Agilent this morning. Padraig, maybe great quarter. Why don't we start there? A lot of momentum. LDG, AMG both nicely ahead. Strong growth for C&AM, diagnostics, forensics, semiconductors, pharma. You're kind of humming along on all fronts. Nice margin expansion, too. Maybe with that in mind, just talk about some of the messages coming out of 2Q and what gets you excited about the remainder of the year.
Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Tycho, and thanks. Great to be here. Great quarter with a 6.3% growth. We had 130 basis points year-over-year margin expansion, which was just great, and that was really fueled by our Ignite transformation. 14% EPS growth, which was well ahead of guidance. Clean beat across the board. If you look at the markets, we had high single digits in C&AM diagnostics, environmental and food. Pharma was in line, still really strong. Broad C&AM growth. Of course, we had a semicon part in there that was really great as well, that helped. When you think about it, when you put it all together, it's really a number of things. I think the replacement cycles continues to grow. You see low double-digit growth in our LC and LC-MS business that shows our replacement cycle is really humming along.
Books to bill is greater than one for a ninth consecutive quarter, momentum continuing. Innovation, this is all underpinned by innovation. Infinity III, of course, driving that replacement cycle, Pro iQ and a number of launches at ASMS this week. 9500 ICP-MS, which is right in that semicon space as well. I think every company talks about share gains, but we look at our objective share gain data from ALDA. We had a really super strong share gains across our instrument portfolio. I think you look at our Ignite operating system now being able to mitigate tariffs, fully mitigated our 200 basis points of pricing. Our enterprise pricing model is really working. I think you see digital growing extremely well. Actually, digital would have grown 20% ex China and 9% growth in our digital orders. That shows the flywheel.
Of course, our integration playbook with BIOVECTRA done and now Biocare coming up. You put it all together, I think it was an extremely good quarter.
You touched on the ASMS news, 9500 Triple Quad, first big refresh in our ICP-MS in a decade. Talk a little bit about how you're thinking about the opportunity. Is it new market unlocks, share gains, replacement cycle?
Yeah. I would think about it as tech refresh rather than replacement cycle. If you think about ICP-MS, that's really, we have about 80% market share in semicon and fabs, and actually not only fabs but also high purity chemical companies around the fabs. It really is a technology jump. There's two areas of the patent, the dual cell system that really helps with workflows, and also we have this revolutionary air mode that helps on the analysis side. With that 80% market share, I think customers with these new capabilities are now going to do a tech refresh with the 9500. We're really excited about it. When you think about companies like TSMC, where we have a huge install base in Taiwan, we have a huge install base in the U.S. where there's been reshoring in semis.
We've been working with those customers over the last number of years in those reshoring opportunities. People think it's just pharma, but actually the semi reshoring has been happening quite quietly over time and for a long time, and we're right in that space. We had a great response at ASMS. We've taken a lot of orders now, so we're very excited about it.
If we think about ICP-MS being a $275 million business or so, how much does this tech refresh kind of impact that install base? How do you think about, you talked about GC replacement cycle being a few % of the business. Could this be comparable?
Yeah, I think, look, if you think about it, semis represents about a $400 million market opportunity for us. By the way, it's not just ICP-MS, it's GC-MS products that are in those fabs as well. Our total semi exposure is about 3%-4% of Agilent's revenue. I think overall we grew double digits in that side of it. We expect that to continue. I think it's going to be above that in terms of growth rates as we do this tech refresh.
On the column side, just kind of rounding out on ASMS. Agilent Altura columns, you launched last year up 50% sequentially, now 75% penetrated the top 20 pharma. Maybe talk about momentum, how much this is allowing you to recapture share, and then you're launching new products into the family of Altura columns? Maybe just talk about that?
It really is a family. We launched a GLP-1 column last year. We actually launched a PFAS column on a short chain this year as well. We're continuing building on this site. We're early days, but we're in about 15 of the top 20 biopharma companies growing extremely well. For context, that column business is about 5% of ACG across that group. We're seeing a lot of broad new applications around peptide therapeutics, large oligos, and gene and cell therapy. Putting it all together, we're going to continue to launch and we're seeing a really strong take-up in labs and companies that already have the family, and we're going to see that continue over time. It helps, of course, with our instrument connect grid.
Maybe just focusing on C&AM for a minute. Obviously, a lot going on the macro. Maybe just unpack what you saw and just talk a little bit about mix dynamics, how you're thinking about the rest of the year. Comps get tougher, but a lot of positive underlying momentum.
Yeah. C&AM was performance high single digits for Q2, really strong and low double digits across the Advanced Materials and battery side. If you think about it, Chemicals & Advanced Materials, about two-thirds of that is the chemical and energy side. One third is the Advanced Materials side. That's how it breaks out. We're really seeing strong momentum over a number of quarters. Again, we're going into tough compares. Again, batteries and semis, about $400 million opportunities. We see in batteries about $250 million opportunity, $400 million for semis. On the chemical side, it is a very topical area. It's an area, if you think about the chemical business and chemical energy ingredients are heartland of our install base. You have a GC replacement cycle going on there that's going to about 100 basis points on top of what we're seeing.
I would say about 15%-20% is related to exploration production, and about 50% is related to chemicals. Of course, people were saying, "Well, are we seeing just a slowdown on CapEx?" Actually, CapEx spending was very strong during the year in refinery and production side. It depends if you're going to see that continue over time. You're going to see on the chemical side, of course, we get a good downstream effect from semiconductors, so it's used in a lot of the semiconductor workflows. There's a reverse is true where declining prices help refiners while deepening demands on upstream production. It's kind of give and take, but overall, we feel really good about that business.
Just to circle back on batteries and semis, appreciate the TAM numbers you threw out. Should we continue to assume these are outsized drivers here?
Yes
These two businesses?
Yeah. With our market share position, those are. When you put a new technology that leapfrogs the competition in that you're going to see that as an outside driver for sure.
Anything on chemicals by geography that might be helpful to share?
No. I think we saw broad strength across it. I think China was a little bit slow for us, and we were expecting that. We saw broad strength in the Americas, Europe and Asia outside China.
You are talking more about share gains overall. Talked about having some of the best market share in 2Q. Was this specific to LC-MS and GC or are you starting to see outsized share gains?
Yeah. The three areas, it's all our instrument product lines. Just for context, every company submits the units and dollars for each of their product lines. We saw outsized share gains in LC spectroscopy and GC were the top drivers, I would say broad-based across it. I would say if you look at regions outside share gains in North America and Japan. Now Japan, we had a relatively low market share historically because we've had a local competitor there. We put a lot of focus in there and now we're seeing a lot of share gain advantage. North America was extremely strong for us.
Obviously, we touched on innovation. Are there things you're doing differently from a commercial execution standpoint too, that are driving share gains?
Yeah. Before I took over the role as CCO, as Chief Commercial Officer, actually we did a lot of transformation before I took the position. We spent a lot of time looking at our digital connection with customers. Sometimes, we want to have one central account manager, and we invested heavily in application support, application engineers and product specialization. Why is that important? It's important in an area like semis where actually the application science means everything and the product support of that moving forward. I think our investments back then are really paying off now, and we have one leader that controls our service, sales, marketing and digital. It means we can move really quick on the deployment of AI and also our connection with customers.
I think the one thing we've centralized, Tycho, which is kind of unique, we have a launch excellence team now that's central for every one of our product lines. Each product line isn't launching in a separate way. We have the same methodology. How we do pre-launch, how we do launch, and then how do we make sure we get our ramps on our ramp to volume targets. Overall, you put that flywheel together of improved innovation and a commercial engine. I think that's a key reason why we're gaining share.
Any way to quantify share gains, like in any of the product categories or most of them?
Yeah. If you look at share gains, I'll give you an example. In LC, you don't see that move huge amounts, but 1% or 2% on the upside is a lot of business on that side. I think we've seen that. If you look at all our product lines, except for one which was just stable, we saw outsized gains.
Biopharma, overall fifth straight quarter of mid-single digit growth. Obviously some nuances there. Biotech growing low double digits, large cap fine, mid-cap still soft, small molecule up low single digit. Can you just talk on the exposures to these categories and talk about the barriers left for some of the lagging segments?
Yeah. We're about 50/50 small molecule versus large molecule, both growing well. Small molecule was low single digits this time, biotech was low double digits. Again, when you look at the M&A deals that have happened, it's removed a big overhang from our customers. We've reshoring coming in 2027. That's progressing very well. We're doing more quotes. We're getting closer on those numbers of what we put out. We feel really good about those numbers we put out. When you think about that, I think overall pharma spending, there's an aged install base in pharma, particularly where we are downstream in QA/QC. That replacement cycle momentum and the reshoring coming is a really great sweet spot for us. Then in the small, mid-cap size, it's been very muted for a number of years.
Through April, you see the number of deals that have been done and the number of dollars that have been deployed, I think over $40 billion being deployed in that area. We're expecting some benefit for that in 2027. We're not expecting it this year, but overall, we really believe that the kind of licensing and the M&A activities going on, as we've seen in previous cycles, is going to prove very, very important for us in terms of our cell analysis equipment, et cetera. We're going to see that.
Why do you think it hasn't converted yet? Biotech funding has been strong here for a little while.
It's kind of similar to the last time. I think there's just the funding generally takes probably 12- 18 months to come through to our side. I think we're getting to the mid-size of that. I think really we're going to see that at the start of 2027. I wouldn't say there's anything very different from this time. There's been a large, I would say, air pocket in that market for a long time. We need to see that work through.
Advanced Therapeutics, the old CDMO business, 2Q was up high single digit. You reiterated the guide for the year of mid-teens. Just talk about what's underpinning that acceleration going forward.
Sure. Yeah. I'll take that. First of all, you saw solid first half growth in our CDMO, which we're calling ATD now, which is Advanced Therapeutics Division. We had solid growth in the first half. That's low double-digit, as I said. The nice thing is we have visibility into the second half growth and that acceleration. We remain confident in our ability to deliver that mid-teens growth for the full year, which we've talked about. The revenue for the year was always weighted to the second half of the year, and that's just based on our production schedules. The nice part about CDMO is you do have visibility into the production schedules. The challenge with it is sometimes those production schedules are lumpy from a quarter-over-quarter perspective.
The nice thing going into the second half of the year and ATD Colorado in general is that that mix commercial and clinical. Last year we finished the year about 60/40 commercial to clinical, and we're seeing that shift more toward commercial mix over time. The last piece I would just highlight is in that second half acceleration implied underneath that which you can't see is a very strong Q3 with a flattish Q4. That's once again based on comparison production schedules.
How about margin lift as utilization improves?
You can expect over time as those ramps to margin will continue to expand. We've said, the margin of our ATD business is accretive to our overall margin once they're fully up and running.
We had the pleasure of going out and seeing the facility. Train C goes live in 2027. Just talk a little bit about how much that adds once fully ramped? If you go back to Train B, it added $150 million. Can this be closer to $200 million with yield improvements?
Yeah. I'm very excited about Train C when we start there. We're a leader in NASD, it's always good when you can invest behind a leadership position. We also hit an important milestone earlier this year with the mechanical completion of Train C, that happened in Q2. That positions us to start generating revenue sort of in the spring of next year. The way I would think about that is Train C over time and once it's fully ramped, will double our revenue capacity once fully ramped. The way I think about that is it's about $350 million in total, once again, there'll be a variability from time to time based on just the general mix. It should start to skew more commercial than clinical, as we've seen in our other lines. Really excited about it.
The last piece I would just highlight on this, as you think about the ramp of Train C, the revenue will start in the spring, and it'll take about six to eight quarters to get to that full revenue that I just talked about, that $350. What excites me even more is we have visibility to the majority of the capacity we have available, in 2027 now. We're in a really good position. You can see that our customers appreciate the service and the quality that we deliver. Investing behind that leadership position, before I got here was a great move and we're going to reap the benefits of it.
I guess similar question on the margin trajectory for next year as you're kind of scaling Train C up.
Yeah. What we've talked about is of course, there's a margin implication as your new train is fully on, starts appreciating it, et cetera. What we've said is we'll manage that within our broader profile. Once again, we have the Ignite operating system, which helps us think about those things, prioritize, and find incremental efficiencies to offset.
Maybe we can go back to replacement cycle. We touched on it a little bit. LC-MS, both have low double digits in 2Q. Just talk about where we are in the cycle. It's been humming along for a couple of quarters here and just where you think about 2027, 2028, as we think about the remainder of the cycle.
Yeah, look, I think the cycle probably, I'd say we're one third through the cycle. I would say that's where we are. I think you see our instrument numbers versus our peers, in terms of delivery. We're doing extremely well. It's not only in our install base, but on the competitive view side, it's a very competitive landscape. Being able to take competitive views drives that. We expect it's going to add about two to 300 basis points as we go forward on that replacement cycle. It's kind of interesting. People think it's just one lab or one site, but we have lots of equipment, 1100s, 1260s, 1290s that are installed that are replacing at different times. Strong momentum and really good uptake with the Infinity III. We expect that to keep going. Of course you've got reshoring coming along.
I think that's very important. I think on the GC replacement cycle again, you see that across all our markets, but you see that in our C&AM markets particularly. That's going to add about 100 basis points on top of where we are. The GC replacement cycle is longer. I would say we're very early on in that. We just launched a new GC platform and ASMS as well. We have the 8850 and the new platform. That really helps us as we're moving forward and replacing, and even over our install base on the GC side. Again, our market share in GC is extremely high.
Any pockets lagging, whether it's CDMOs or China, just on the replacement cycle specifically?
No. I would say it's pretty broad-based. I think our CDMO and our CRO segments where we look at that, I think it's pretty broad-based. I think the breadth of our business is QAQC, development of QAQC, and that's moving along. I would say not really any laggards on that front.
China, that was one of the areas that was soft in the quarter, down 9%. Just unpack what you're seeing there, how you think about the remainder of the year. Obviously, some focus on stimulus, biopharma being a bright spot of high teens.
Yeah. Look, it's the old Lunar New Year effect. Of course, we had SARS-CoV-2 last year, which pulled in a lot of orders in CSB that created a tough compare on that side. We're extremely committed to China. What we see in the market is that our small biopharma doing extremely well. You see the investment that's happening in there in terms of the deployments of capital. The one area that's really important for us is the speed of innovation in China in our sector. We'll be announcing more investment in an innovation center in Shanghai, where manufacturing is to tap into that innovation, not in China, but China and beyond. Overall, I think the market is humming along at $300 million a quarter. We expect that to continue. I do see that improving in 2027.
All the factors are there for it to improve. We think of China as the China business, and we think of stimulus separate because it's got variable timing. It can happen at different timings and so on. We were expecting the SAMR stimulus to happen in 2026. It's going to happen in 2027. We're actually quoting there now. That's a $50 million opportunity. We expect about a 30% win there, like we've seen in the past. That's not in our guide currently. We'll see that coming true. Overall, I think we feel China is stable. We're going to see that improve in 2027 to get up to that mid-to-high single-digit growth rate again in time.
Last round of stimulus skewed food heavy. Is that kind of similar assumptions this time or how are you-?
It's a little bit more broad-based. I think there's four segments in SAMR. There's food, drug, industrial products, and metrology. It's a bit more broad-based. When you think about those markets, that's a real sweet spot for us, Tycho. Funding and bidding timeline, funding is going to materialize in Q3, bidding timeline in Q4, orders and revenue in Q1. We've seen that happen in every previous stimulus in the same type of cadence.
One of the things I think you've focused on, which maybe doesn't get as much attention is software. Just be curious to talk about some of the AI deployment initiatives that you have underway.
We had an announcement today with OpenAI and BCG as one of the deployment areas. First of all, maybe I can break it down into a few parts. First of all, for our customer segments, we really believe that AI is going to drive a lot of efficiencies in pharma. You see the numbers that are coming out from clinical to discovery clinical onto commercial. You're seeing 40%-70% reductions in terms of molecules getting through that pipeline. Again, when you think about that, we will be the net beneficiary of that in terms of downstream testing, and it's going to be a tailwind over time. That's the customer side. We spent a huge amount of time thinking internally about AI and not just giving flashy headlines, but thinking about how it's going to reshape our business going forward on it.
I think when I think about AI, the first bucket we think about is our product and customer connection. That's where growth evolves. We're really looking about how it's going to help us with our software and acceleration of our software products. With Agilent CrossLab Group now we've put software into one place. We've done a lot of movements in the organization. AI coming in at this time is a really important enabler for us as we go forward on it. Second is kind of reimagining our internal and end user workflows. How do we shape what we do? I think some companies make a mistake by just layering AI over the top of existing process. You probably get a 5%-10% incremental benefit.
If you reshape process about how you're connecting with customers and how you connect inside, I think you get an oversized benefit. That's going to be self-funding as we go along and as we move forward. I think what's going to be different at Agilent when you see the headlines in different areas and sectors and different companies, first, we create a huge amount of signals that's necessary for AI. You think of our install base. There is no AI without data and signals. Our analytical tools feeding into that creates a lot of opportunity for us. I think second, building an owned enterprise-wide capability, not just buying disjointed AI tools, but connecting operations, product, and a customer experience in one area creates a really strong dynamic flywheel. We have really strong partnerships.
It's one thing to announce partnership with a frontier model, which we're really excited working with the OpenAI team. Having BCG help us with the deployment and the execution across the company is super important through the Ignite framework. This is going to be very top-down. It's going to be all numbers driven. We're leading with that growth area. I think it couldn't be better timing for us.
I guess how do we think about the implications of the deal today then? I mean, is this something that's going to result in a definable revenue stream? Is it more touchpoints with customers?
Yeah. You're going to see that over time. We're going to be announcing that. You're going to see revenue both on the product side and software side that we're going to be increasing over time. We expect our market share gains to improve on the customer connection side. We're only beginning on that side. We'll be able to release those numbers over time as we deliver those numbers. It's going to be really important. I think one thing we were very careful not to do was trying to just have a flashy announcement and just do a little thing because tokens are expensive. You can see companies now are running into areas where tokens become prohibitive over time. We want to be very clear with our key use cases that are driving growth so we can self-fund this amazing opportunity we have over time.
Adam, from your perspective, AI, just on procurement, supply chain, just margin levers, how are you thinking about that?
It's obviously a great opportunity, and we're working to deploy it in the right spaces. There's some clear use cases and some very straightforward use cases. We're using one, the finance team. Procurement was one of the initial Ignite transformation areas. Part of coming out of that were some of the AI opportunities as well. The other area is pricing and supply chain, where we're seeing good opportunity. You've heard a little bit about our control tower that we're using on supply chain, which has been such a help, not just to the planning and reliability of the supply, but also as we start to think about driving efficiencies going forward. It really helps us think about our network differently.
In shocks to the network, things like that, when you have that forward-facing outlook, it's much easier to plan and actually think about how you're building out that footprint. It's been a real win for us.
The one thing I would just add, I forgot to mention, Tycho, is that when we did an assessment of where companies fail or companies really are successful in this, we've created an AI Center of Excellence. At the center, we have the Chief AI Officer, and he's come in from Verily, Sukhveer Singh. The businesses are required to deliver it and deliver on the numbers. Having that central operating system of how it's deployed when and the sequencing of things and making sure what we said we're going to do, that is going to happen, is really important, and that's going to be a very important central capability for us.
I want to make sure we spend a minute on diagnostics. It's a billion-dollar business. You've done M&A there recently. Just talk a little bit about how you're thinking about market growth and some of the dynamics that's allowing you to put up healthy numbers there.
Sure. Number one, I think you saw the strong diagnostics in clinical in Q2, so 11%. We believe that's been a great business for us over the last number of years. Unfortunately, demographics are in our favor in that business. Aging population, greater incidence of cancer, things like that. That really helps us. The other piece is we're seeing strong traction with our technology. The Dako Omnis family is really regaining traction. You see that in the numbers, you'll see that continue to evolve. The other piece I would layer in here, which is important, is this Biocare acquisition. Number one, it's a great template for the types of deals that we want to do, you see how it layers into that business. Complementary instruments. Where Dako is in the medium throughput, the Biocare instrument is in the low throughput.
Complementary instruments, complementary geographies. They're going to leverage our footprint in Europe. Perfect. Expanding our menu, which you know that's the name of the game here, is menu expansion. It'll also give us access to more tenders globally, things like that. The last piece, which hasn't gotten as much attention, but I'm personally very excited about, is the innovation engine that we're getting out of Biocare. They've been very efficient in creating new antibody tests and doing it efficiently. Big opportunity there. Really excited about Biocare, how that's going to roll through, and it's just going to continue our long legacy of being a kind of a diagnostics leader.
Maybe just in the last minute, we could hit on margins. If you go back pre-COVID, the framework was 30%, 40% core incrementals. As we look ahead, any reason that you couldn't be at the high end of that range or above, given tariff headwinds abating, some of the AI initiatives you talked about?
Yeah. I think it's fair to think of our incremental margins in that way. The one piece I would say is that we will be balancing that with investments in growth and innovation, and that's something we've been clear about all along. I would also say, if you want to think about how the ramp will happen over time, think about the LRP guide that we've given, which is 50 basis points to 100+ basis points on a year-over-year basis margin expansion. I feel very confident in our ability to deliver that, and the confidence comes from three areas, really. If you look at number one is the execution excellence. You've seen our ability to perform under a variety of different conditions over the last several years, several quarters, and it's only getting better. That we can execute. The second is the Ignite operating system.
What started as a transformation is really now an operating system. When we have a challenge or an opportunity, we can run it through and run it through the company very quickly in a cross-functional way. It's very, very powerful, and you see that in our performance in the second quarter, top-line margin and EPS. The last piece, which is what gets me up in the morning, is the customer-driven innovation. With those three elements, I feel very confident we're going to be able to expand our margins, as we've said. You see the innovation that we just launched at ASMS, and I think we're in good position to deliver. Really excited about the future.
Just last one, tariff refunds not embedded in the guide. How do we think about the impact? I think it was a $60 million gross impact when we went in. How do we think about it?
Yeah. As you know, people who pay tariffs, we have the rights to file for a refund. We filed where appropriate, and we'll continue to file so it doesn't happen all at once. We didn't include it in the guide, one, because we don't have any information about the approval and when it's coming, so we don't want to skew that. We'll be transparent about when we get those numbers. The second piece is when we get the refund, we will include it in our adjusted non-GAAP earnings. We'll be transparent about it once again. If you think about what we paid in 2025, it's about $70 million. When we get that back, the last piece I would just highlight is that there will be some impact potentially on our variable pay, so it may not all drop to the bottom line.
When you look back in 2025, there was the same effect, and so we want to make sure that we're treating our employees fairly.
Great. I think we'll leave it at that. Thank you.