Great. Thanks for joining us. We'll kick things off. My name is Mike Ryskin. I'm on the Bank of America Life Science Tools and Diagnostics team, and joining us for our next session, I'm excited to host, Michael Stubblefield, Chief Executive Officer of Avantor. Michael, thanks so much for being here.
Yeah, thank you. Happy to be here again. Good to see you all.
Great. You know, the usual format, as always, we'll run through with a fireside chat. Just to kick things off, I mean, you reported 1Q just a couple of weeks ago, a solid start to the year. Any quick comments you want to make, any opening remarks on how the quarter played out?
Yeah, I think, as you suggest, it was a good start to the year. I think we're pleased with how fast we're out of the gates here. So the top line came in line with expectations, and it was really good to see what I would consider to be the Avantor model at work, which is to say that you start to see consumables momentum, particularly in bioprocessing pickup, flowing through to margin expansion. Really excited about getting our new operating model up and running. We're out of the gate strong there.
And then, as you saw from the margin outperformance, really good, you know, traction with our cost transformation initiative, where we were able to pull forward, you know, some of the savings into Q1 and deliver, you know, some nice expansion on that front. So, a good start to the year, and, you know, I think we're encouraged by the setup.
Great. I'll take it from there. You know, one of the components was you reiterated the fiscal year 2024 guide, which is organic sales decline of -2% to +1%. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you're assuming for underlying market conditions, you know, what's built into that, into that outlook?
So we did reaffirm our full year outlook at the ranges that you described, and you know, really based on a continuation of the trends and run rates that we exited 2023 with. And as we you know, got into Q1, the quarter played out you know, largely as we had anticipated, consumables a little bit stronger, you know, equipment instrument a little bit weaker, but you know, net-net, you know, run rate, similar. So I think the assumptions that we had you know, coming into the year on you know, daily rates of sales and run rates is still the assumption that we're carrying through the full year.
That, you know, results in kind of 49%, you know, first half of the year, 51%, second half of the year, which is right in line with, you know, kind of pre-pandemic, you know, splits in the business.
Okay. And I have to ask at least one short-term question, I'm going to get yelled at. So, you know, where... You went through April, we're a couple of weeks into May. You know, you guided for 2Q, for LSS to be down a little single digits, BPS to be down, LSD to MSD. You know, can you talk about orders, customer activities, just sort of like, you know, what you've seen the first couple of weeks of the quarter and how that's framed your view?
Yeah. So on the call we had a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the quarter, the second quarter being, you know, -3.5% to -1.5%, really reflecting a continuation of the trends that we saw in Q1, which, you know, in that case would be, you know, continued momentum in consumables and, you know, a little bit of headwinds here in the equipment and instruments. We made those comments. We also had the benefit of seeing what April was looking like, or at least the first month of the quarter, and, you know, we've kind of reflected that, you know, through the balance of the quarter.
Okay. All right. Next, I wanna run through a couple specific end markets or customer groups. First, you know, we have to start with bioprocessing. Can we just dive a little bit more deeper into your customer product exposure here, you know, instruments versus consumables, you know, how that's fared to start the year, maybe versus your expectations?
So we have a really attractive, you know, bioprocessing platform, and I would say we're, you know, the leading supplier of ultra-high purity materials, you know, end-to-end across the workflow and across modalities. From a customer standpoint, you know, we're going to be lined up behind virtually every commercialized molecule that's in the marketplace, which means then we're serving, you know, large pharma. Certainly, you know, we're well positioned with the CDMOs as directed by, you know, our OEM partners. And, you know, although the biotech revenues for us, you know, get sorted out in our lab business. Certainly, that exposure as those programs, you know, move through the pipeline and ultimately get commercialized, really gives us access, you know, across the board.
From a product standpoint, you know, I mentioned, you know, our ubiquitous position in materials, a lot of process ingredients, buffers, you know, high-purity chemicals, the leading supplier of excipients, and, you know, the only player in this space with an end-to-end aseptic fluid management, you know, solution, which, you know, given the growth of single-use platforms and their use, and particularly as we move towards more personalized medicine solutions, really has us positioned nicely.
Okay. That's actually the next part I was going to go to, was just sort of a deep dive into your bioprocessing exposure. And I guess where I'm going with this is, how does it compare to others in the space? You know, it's a relatively concentrated market. You know, it's yourselves, you know, Thermo, Danaher, Merck KGaA, Sartorius, so, you know, Repligen. There's really a handful of players that dominate that market, and we're all really focused on taking read-throughs from what one company says to another.
Right.
Sometimes that works, sometimes it tends to not work.
Sure.
You know, what's the discrepancy there, and why are some companies seeing something different than others?
Well, I'd say a couple of things. One, all of our portfolios are unique. There isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison that could be had in our space. We each, you know, are attaching ourselves to, you know, the macro play here and in a bit different way. And of course, we're all being driven by, you know, what happens to be a really terrific end market with, you know, pipelines that are as full as they've ever been, a regulatory environment that has been conducive to, you know, the support of, you know, record levels of drug approvals, and then, you know, the promise of all these new modalities that are in this space.
And so one of the things I like about our business is, you know, we're not tied to a particular, you know, modality. We're agnostic from that standpoint. Yes, you know, monoclonal is the core driver of revenues today, but, you know, we're very well positioned in cell and gene therapy, mRNA, you know, the GLP-1s. And, you know, so I like our positioning across, you know, all of the different technologies that our customers are working on. And we're going to be relevant throughout the workflow. Really, you know, intimate relationship with our customers in the upstream, you know, cell culture processes, where we're providing all the ingredients that functionalize the media.
We have a terrific, you know, downstream, you know, platform with a full complement of chromatography resins, certainly all the buffer solutions, high-purity chemicals that that drive, you know, the viral clearance activities, and then the leading, you know, platform for excipients in the space, as I said earlier. So, there's probably not a company out there that touches the molecule itself more intimately than we would. And we would literally have dozens, you know, multiple dozens of specifications on any given, you know, molecule throughout their workflow.
Okay. And, you know, given the breadth of that portfolio, there's been, you know, different parts of it have been exposed to or susceptible to inventory stocking at different levels, and that's been the key debate in the space and for you over the past year. You know, you've given some indications that inventory destocking is coming close to the end. You know, can you talk about your visibility there? What gives you confidence to sort of make those comments, and just how do you see that inventory situation playing out in the next couple quarters?
So in our portfolio, particularly within bioprocessing, the part of the portfolio that was probably most exposed to, you know, excess stocking at our customers were our single-use solutions. And, you know, we've been working over the last, you know, year plus, 18 months plus, you know, through the build-down of those inventories.
And, you know, as we've seen in our order book, you know, particularly in the fourth quarter and again in the first quarter, and we now have two straight quarters of kind of sequential improvement in the rate of order intake, including in our single-use platform, which, you know, to me, you know, together with the surveying data that we extract from our customers, you know, is a great proof point of, you know, we're very, very close, if not at the end of the rope there on this destocking. Now, there is another layer of inventory in the system that's still, you know, creating some friction, you know, for all of us that are playing this space.
You know, one of the other ways our customers were able to de-risk their supply chains was, of course, to, to hold, you know, excess drug substance inventory. And, you know, so when you start doing that, you know, we benefited obviously from the demand when they made it, but that also then impacts some of our chemicals demand as, as well. And you see, at least on the companies that are public, you can look at their balance sheets, you see those inventories starting to normalize as well. And, you know, we talked about, you know, the, the leading indicators and the encouragement we get from looking at our order book. The step up in orders that we saw again in the first quarter was across the portfolio, both in the ingredients, excipients, as well as in, in single use.
So it does feel like, you know, the engine's starting to rev up again.
Okay. You know, as you and others have indicated over the past year, there have been a couple head fakes, a couple of false starts when it comes to, you know, predicting customer inventory levels and sort of a return to that normal growth. Any other data points you can point to that, you know, gives you a little bit more confidence that this is for real, and, you know, this is the, this is the final sort of restart?
Well, you know, we continue to be a bit, you know, cautious in our, in our outlook for the reasons that you, that you mentioned. You know, we were encouraged by the modest step-up in Q4 and, you know, another acceleration in, into Q1, and we are starting to see it reflected in our, in our sales rates. You know, we were, you know, guiding to maybe mid-teens, you know, decline in bioprocessing in, in Q1, and we did a bit better than that, you know, which, you know, matches with, the order book, you know, dynamics that we've talked about.
But until we see, you know, this, this order book translate into more meaningful step-up in sales, and we see it sustained for, you know, a meaningful period of time, we're gonna continue to, you know, manage our guidance on the, on the basis of the current run rates that we, that we do see, to, to try to avoid, you know, the false start that you're, that you're talking about. But probably the thing that I've focused the most on here in this, in this particular end market is just the health of the end market itself that we're serving. You know, patient demand is, is strong. You know, in our business, number of new approvals is, is important source of, of growth for us. You know, certainly, all the pipeline activity that we're, that we're participating in.
Even throughout the, you know, this contraction here, we've been working off excess inventories and stuff, you know, the end markets itself have been really, really strong, and they continue to be. So at the end of the day, you know, I think we're all encouraged by, you know, the ongoing strength of that end market. These supply chain dynamics will play out, and, you know, we're starting to see that happen. To the extent that, you know, we see a more meaningful recovery as we move through the year, you know, that would be upside to our, to our outlook.
Okay. All right. That's, that's helpful. Pivoting away from bioprocess for a minute, you know, the other area that's gotten a lot of focus over the last couple weeks has been instrumentation.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's a relatively small part of the Avantor's portfolio. It's not something we typically think about, but still there was some incremental weakness there, and it's consistent with what almost everyone else has called out. You know, your instrument portfolio is a little bit different than most others. You know, it's not mass specs and LCs.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
You know, it's freezers, fridges, centrifuges, you know, plate shakers. Why is that necessarily seeing weakness? And could you just, you know, characterize, like, you know, what are the customers, and if you're seeing any discrepancy there between various, various pockets of spend?
So you know, for us, instrument and equipment represents about 15% of our enterprise, you know, revenue. We have a small portion of that in our, you know, biosciences segment. Majority of it is actually in our, our lab solutions segment. It's about 20% of the revenue in that, in that segment. I would say you know, probably the top price point on a piece of equipment or instrument in our portfolio would probably be, you know, $50,000. So ASP in that space is gonna be, you know, significantly lower than that. You're talking benchtop equipment and, you know, basic equipment that and instruments that would be used in a lab. Key drivers of demand for us would be new lab build-outs.
And so when you think about what's been going on around biotech funding over the last, you know, 12, 18 months, and reprioritization and closure of labs throughout last year, there's been certainly a slowdown in the number of new lab build-outs. We're encouraged by, you know, a return of funding, and, you know, those things typically take a quarter or two to work themselves into orders. But. And then just the replacement cycle. And although we did see, you know, weakness generally across, you know, each of our end markets, biopharma was probably the one that was the most pronounced. And, you know, there still is this kind of cautionary, you know, spending patterns, you know, within biopharma that's impacting all of us in this space.
When we talk to our customers, a lot of activity. Our sales reps, you know, continue to be encouraged by, you know, the number of opportunities, the size of the funnels, but projects are getting pushed, taking longer to get, you know, orders released and approved. Our customers signal that, you know, they'd anticipate the second half of the year, you know, budgets being a bit more loose than in the first half. But again, similar to my commentary on bioprocessing, we've not baked that in, and so we're anticipating, at least in the outlook, that the current, you know, friction in the system here continues as we move forward.
Okay. And when you think about new lab built out, and you think about some of that equipment that you talked through, I mean, that's, that's pretty indispensable. That's not something that, you know, when those labs do come back, you know, you're not gonna forgo a freezer or a fridge. You, you know, you can't really exist without it, right? So it's pretty, pretty locked in.
Yeah, I mean, just consistent with the rest of our portfolio, these are, you know, the necessities of a lab for a scientist to do their work. If you're outfitting a new lab and you're worried about, you know, spend, these are items you can't do without.
Yeah.
And so it's, it's great positioning. You know, it is, you know, you know, I think, a headwind that we see across, the industry, and it was a bit more pronounced in Q1 than what we had seen, you know, last year. It stepped down both year-over-year as well as sequentially, you know, double digits, low double digits. So even though it was only 15% of the, portfolio, it, you know, did have, an impact in the, in the quarter. Fortunately, you, you know, back to my opening comments, you know, this is a consumables play here at Avantor. Over 85% of our revenues are recurring, and so to start to see the momentum building on, you know, key consumables categories, lab chemicals categories, that's really the strength of our, of our platform.
The equipment and instrument, you know, demand will come back. That's not a category I need to see a lot of growth out of.
Yeah.
If we're growing that low single digits, our algorithm works just fine. So just need that to not be a headwind, and then the strength of the consumables will really start to show through.
Okay. I just one last one on that. Again, it's not your usual instrument comps and tools that you think of. You know, it's not like you're competing with Waters or Agilent there.
Mm-hmm.
It's more like the Mettlers, the Sartorius, you know, maybe a small part of Thermo in the LSS segment, not the AI segment, but those are the, those are the right comps to think about?
Yeah, and, you know, maybe on the private side, you know, a name like Eppendorf would be a-
Yeah
... a name that, you know, some of you might be familiar with. Those would be the types of, you know, suppliers to the platform as well as you know, other content that, you know, a customer would be looking at alongside ours.
Okay. All right, moving on from instruments. Let's talk about, you know, customer groups. You know, biotech, you talked about, you know, your exposure at the enterprise level to biotech is relatively small. But, you know, biotech activity is one of the areas where we're hearing some early signs of improvement, of thawing. You know, not something that's necessarily materialized into dollars yet, but hopefully getting there. How should you think about pacing of that through the rest of the year? What do you need to see to feel more confident in that uptick?
So biotech funding did stabilize as we moved throughout last year, and, you know, we did see a nice uptick of funding in Q1. And I think, you know, the data would indicate and discussion with customers would indicate that typically takes a quarter or two before it starts to roll through, you know, into, you know, orders and revenue. And so we're probably still a bit away from, you know, seeing the impact of that. It is a really important customer segment for us and quite strategic. There is a lot of science being developed by the thousands of these biotech, you know, labs and startups around the world. And we have really, you know, critical access to these customers.
Any one on their own is, you know, relatively insignificant, at least from a revenue standpoint. But when I aggregate all of these customers that we serve in the biotech space, that would be, you know, one of my largest, you know, customers if I treated them as one. It's low single digits at an enterprise level. But you know, when you look at that from a biopharma lab research, you know, perspective, it is a pretty meaningful part of our business. And again, you know, it gives us really critical access and the opportunity to position our content on these platforms, regardless of who ultimately commercializes it, whether it's them or, you know, one of the larger pharma companies.
You know, getting our materials spec'd in with those players is what ultimately leads to the stickiness that we see when, when platforms go commercial.
Okay. And again, any improvement in that end market is just upside. It's not, you know, it's not the base case.
Yeah, consistent with just how we've guided the year, you know, current, current run rates persisting is, you know, would get us there. And so to the extent that there is a meaningful improvement, you know, that could, you know, that could give us a little bit of tailwind.
Okay, great. I wanna sort of take a step back and talk about the other change that you announced in December at the-
Mm
... Analyst Day, was the, you know, the reporting structure change. It's not just about the, you know, the way it's reported on the, on the, press release, it's about how you run the business.
Mm.
So, you know, historically, you were, you were segmented by geography, and you know, you made the move into, business segments, you know, the LSS and BPS. Could you talk about how that positions you differently with your customers. And, you know, it's been about six months since that announcement. Any change in conversations with customers, how that's being received, sort of the feedback you've gotten?
Yeah, it's a great pivot. We are really excited about the new model, 'cause, at least in my perspective, it's a much more logical way to run the business, and it allows us, enables us to better align, you know, our business with our customers' needs, both in the lab as well as in the production environment. And so, you know, to have the organization on a global basis lined up behind our lab customers as well as our production customers, it just gives you better alignment with them. I think it gives you a crisper view into, you know, their requirements, makes your capital allocation decisions, you know, probably a bit more pronounced.
You know, it allows, you know, portfolio decisions to be a bit more pointed and specific to, you know, what your customers are doing. And so, you know, I wouldn't overplay it. I mean, we're, you know, a few months into actually standing up the organization. I would say we're probably getting, in the near term here, more operational benefits from the new model. It is significantly easier to forecast at a business segment level than it was our geographic structure than we had before. And so that has, you know, greatly simplified, you know, forecasting, and the insights that we're getting from the investments we've made to structure our data this way have been, you know, pretty compelling as well.
Brent and his team are, you know, doing a really nice job, you know, partnering with the, you know, the EVPs that are running the segments, to bring us better insights than probably what we've had before. So all that is really working well, and I'm really pleased with how we're out of the gates there. It's also unlocked, you know, in a pretty meaningful way, these transformation synergies, that we're working on, and we're able to pull forward, you know, a lot of those synergies into Q1, which helped with margin expansion.
So all those pieces, you know, are coming probably more quickly than, you know, ultimately, the benefits that our customers will get out of this in terms of, you know, better alignment of your NPI and your innovation, you know, systems and processes with your customers, having, you know, more specific and dedicated conversations with your customers' needs in the lab and getting your solution to, you know, to better match what they need. That's certainly the focus and where we're headed.
One of the things so similar related to that, now that you've got this report, new reporting structure, you know, one of the questions we get was sort of like Avantor's focus on innovation, on investment in R&D, on new products. Just given the way you reported historically, and just given, you know, the breadth of your portfolio and the number of different SKUs you have, you know, no single product moves the envelope, right?
Right.
So in some ways, it feels like that, that innovation and that spend is a little bit underappreciated. Anything you can call out there in terms of, you know, what, what gets you excited, and what's coming down the pipeline?
It's probably one of the most important levers that we have at Avantor. You know, it's an area that I spend a significant amount of my time on, both in our lab segment. You know, there's a lot of innovation that goes on there. You know, some of it is, you know, with our own proprietary content, but a big part of the model there is, of course, you know, connecting content that's being developed, you know, in the broader ecosystem and helping pull that through into our, you know, into our channel. And then, of course, on the production side, that's all about you know, innovations around new materials, new form factors.
You know, we're working at the cutting edge of all these new modalities, bringing new materials that unlock, you know, the potential of the science that's being developed. So we're really integral to our customers that are working on new therapies. You know, our investments are keeping pace. We're up to, I think, 13 innovation centers, and we'll be opening our new flagship innovation center in Bridgewater, you know, later this summer, which will double the size of the center that we currently have there, which is gonna give us some really unique capabilities to better support, you know, cell and gene therapy and, you know, the development of some of these new modalities. So we're excited about that.
You may have picked up, you know, we've put in place a scientific advisory board that's now been, you know, running for, oh, we're probably, you know, nine or so months into that, with some really, you know, significant experts around the business that are, you know, already starting to show value. We've stood up a science and technology committee at the board level that the SAB connects into, but also, you know, enables the board to have more oversight and engagement with our team around how we're, you know, driving innovation.
So, a lot of focus and attention in this area and, you know, next to all the, you know, the cost reductions that we're driving as part of the cost transformation, you know, R&D, for example, would be an area where we continue to invest and increase spend, you know, year-over-year.
So that's a great transition. You just touched on the cost savings initiatives. So, you know, you talked about $75 million of gross savings in fiscal year 2024. I think you flagged four pillars: organizational efficiency, you know, the footprint optimization, go-to market, and procurement.
Mm-hmm.
You know, again, four or five months into the year, just sort of how's that trending? What's the update on that, you know, towards that $75 million number?
Yeah, so the broader program, it will deliver $300 million of run rate synergies exiting 2026. We talked about in-year savings in 2024 being $75 million. We're out of the gates, you know, probably a little bit ahead of the curve, which give us some upside in Q1. We're gonna push hard to over-deliver, as is the culture at Avantor. You know, it's early enough in the year, and we still have enough moving pieces in the year that I think we're still comfortable, you know, quoting the $75 million. But, the program is going well. You know, some of the organizational efficiency work that, you know, helped stand up the two new operating segments, you know, is one of the categories that's probably delivering a little earlier than anticipated.
The teams have done a really nice job pivoting and getting the organization lined up, you know, behind the two segments. We've started some work around footprint optimization last year, and we're starting to see some of the benefits of that. You know, what's important to understand about that work is, you know, we've been strategically investing in our footprint over the last several years to build, you know, centers of excellence and start to aggregate capabilities in some of our larger sites, which gives you an opportunity just to optimize the overall footprint and take advantage of the investments that you've made.
A lot of investments in robotics and automation, that, you know, take work out of the system and really set you up well to drive, you know, efficiency and to serve, you know, the growth as it, as it comes back. And then I would say that, you know, the go-to-market work that's being enabled by a lot of the technology investments we're making in digital, for example, you know, will play out as we move throughout this year. And, you know, a lot of work, obviously, trying to cull back some of the inflation that we've seen, you know, coming to our supply chain through the procurement angle. So a lot of work, you know, and it, and it is, you know, a transformation initiative, as we describe it intentionally.
This isn't just simply, "Oh, let's just, you know, go cut 5% of the workforce and reset cost instantly." It's... You know, we are fundamentally changing the way that the business is working and taking work out of the system and finding, you know, smarter and better ways to do it. So it'll structurally lower the cost base of the business, which, you know, as we get the operational leverage of growth together with this self-help, with the self-help that we're taking here, the incremental margins coming out of all this should be pretty attractive.
Okay. One of the headwinds for this year you did talk about on the SG&A line was, you know, some of the return, the reset of incentive comp as you go through the year. You know, could you remind us of the dynamics in 2022, 2023, what you saw, you know, how that's gonna play out this year? And again, clarity on, you know, that's not gonna be an incremental headwind in 2025. That's just a one-time reset, right?
Yeah. I mean, the business obviously is taking on COGS inflation, other fixed cost inflation.
Yeah.
And one of the bigger, you know, drivers of inflation in our business this year was a, you know, a reset of incentive comp, you know, with the expectation we had last year that the business would recover and do better than you know, what it did. You know, the incentive systems didn't pay out at any meaningful levels last year, and so, you know, restoring those to more target level payouts created more than 100 basis points of headwind to it this year. And that came in, you know, January. You know, some of the merit inflation and stuff comes in in April, as we've seen it. You know, we offset COGS inflation through price, so these other sources of inflation, you know, we're going after with productivity and this cost transformation initiative.
And so, as we, you know, move throughout the, the three-year program, we wouldn't anticipate, you know, to need another year of reset. And so you should start to see, as we get into 2025 and 2026, more meaningful amounts of this, you know, these savings start to flow through to the bottom line.
Okay. All right. Have a couple of minutes left. Want to touch on a couple of quick points real fast. One is on capital deployment. You know, you've, you've deployed capital a number of different ways in the past couple of years.
Mm-hmm.
You know, could you remind us of your priority and thought process, you know, between M&A, buybacks, debt?
So our priority at the moment is to get leverage under three times, and so priority, you know, around, you know, debt, debt paydown and deleveraging. We paid down $170 million of debt in Q1 and well over $1 billion over the last year. So we continue to make good progress on reducing the amount of the debt. The leverage ratio isn't changing much until we get, you know, some help from the denominator in that equation. And so, you know, probably best case, you're talking, you know, second half of 2025 before we'd see it, you know, approach that three times number. So that'll be the focus in the near term.
Long term, you know, I think the playbook is unchanged, a more flexible, you know, strategy that would allow us to deploy capital, to, you know, bring in more proprietary content and technologies to support our customers, you know, would certainly be in focus. And I think, you know, the platform has a long track record of creating a lot of value for all of our stakeholders by doing that. But, we're probably a bit off from being able to get back to them.
But you don't, you know, you don't feel the need to do M&A at this point. You know, you, the portfolio is in a better place than it used to be between the deals you've done, the operational initiatives, the reorganization. You know, there's no glaring holes you feel need to address.
When you layer in all the work that we do around innovation-
Yeah, yeah.
-both to bring innovation into our lab, you know, with our third-party partners, as well as our own, you know, innovation engine, you know, the platform is in a much different place.
Mm-hmm.
If I look back to you know, I've been here 10 years now. If I look back to the portfolio 10 years ago, it's a much, much, much different business today.
Yep, for sure. Great. Got about a minute left, so we'll wrap it up with our usual concluding question: you know, what do you feel is most underappreciated or misunderstood about Avantor? You know, what's the question you keep getting time and again that, you know, you really want to address?
Well, we've covered, you know, I think a lot of different topics. Certainly our bioprocessing business gets a lot of attention. It's 25% of the revenue, and, you know, I think just trying to understand our portfolio relative to, you know, other players that play this space, I think is, you know, probably fits that category. So hopefully we're able to touch on that. I mean, you know, from my perspective, you know, it's a good start to the year. I think the setup is constructive. There's a lot of, you know, data points to be encouraged about, but, you know, I think we're approaching with a bit of caution here and not getting, you know, too far ahead of ourselves until we actually see the recovery take hold.
But, you know, the order book improvement, the acceleration of consumables, you know, sales, I think are all in the right direction. The things that we can control, you know, costs and execution and, kind of the disciplined approach that we take to running our business, you know, those are paying off, 110 basis points of margin expansion in the quarter. And so, with the new operating model in place, you know, a lot of focus on this cost transformation, I really like the setup for our business.
Great, that's a great place to end it. Thanks so much. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, everyone, for joining.
Thank you.