For joining us at the 26th Annual Needham Growth Conference. This is day three of four. With me today is the Azenta team. We have Steve Schwartz, the CEO, Herman Cueto, CFO, and Director of IR and Corporate Communications, Sara Silverman. My name is David Saxon. I'm an analyst on the MedTech research team here at Needham & Company. So in terms of the format, the Azenta team will do a presentation, and then we'll hop into a Q&A. If anyone in the audience has a question, feel free to raise your hand, and we'll try to get to you. So with that, happy to turn it over to you guys.
Great, David. Thank you, and thanks, everyone, for being here. We're always pleased to have a chance to be at the Needham conference. This is a great way to kick off the year and see everyone, and we really appreciate the opportunity to be here, so thank you. I'm Steve Schwartz. I'll give an introduction a little bit, and mostly people who are aware of the company will recognize what we have to say. We've also made some pretty significant modifications here over the last quarter, and I'll spend a moment there. And then I'll introduce Herman Cueto, who will have a chance to talk to you a little bit about some of the initiatives he has underway and how he's been thinking about the company.
He's joined us now just about 90 days ago, and we couldn't be more pleased with Herman as the Chief Financial Officer. Seems like he's been with us considerably longer. But we will be making forward-looking statements. I refer you to our safe harbor statement at www.azenta.com. What I wanted to do is just outline for you what we think is a really unique, high-value portfolio in a space that's critical for life sciences and becoming more so. And the places we participate, what we do to enable breakthroughs faster for our customers is really an essential capability. We have a track record of growth. We're in the process of reestablishing and reinvigorating the profitability that's associated with that growth. We're talking about the.
We'll give a little bit about the tailwinds that are behind the opportunities that we have as a company, and Herman will really talk about how do we convert this opportunity to drive considerably more value in the future. I do wanna mention, since the last earnings call, we've made significant changes to the company that really relate to driving shareholder value. The fourth quarter of our fiscal year ended September 30. We're in October one year. We grew organically in a market that was down, so even 2% growth against the peer performance in our space, although modest, was a pretty significant accomplishment based on the growth profile that we've demonstrated in the past as a company. On a reported basis, we're up 25% as a result of an acquisition we'd done exactly one year earlier.
We continue to push from a profitability standpoint, but we were a positive free cash flow company last quarter again, and we anticipate that we'll continue this trend into the future as it's a substantial threshold for us as a life sciences company, not just to be a standalone life sciences company from where we've been historically, but to be a cash generator and profitable company. At the time of the earnings call in early November, we also guided with confidence that we'd be a 5%-8% growth. We anticipated 5%-8% top-line revenue growth in fiscal 2024. We'll talk to you about the confidence that we have from what we see, even in an uncertain market, about what opportunities continues to drive our business.
When we established Azenta as a life sciences company that had grown out of Brooks Automation, when we separated with the semiconductor business, we sold it for $3 billion. We had a very significant cash position. In November of 2022, we announced that the board had approved a $1.5 billion share repurchase. We committed to $1 billion of that in 2023, and for the most part, we completed that in 2023. At the earnings call in November, we announced that we would then commit to the other $500 million that we'd approved one year before, and we'll embark on that here and anticipate that we'll complete that here in 2024.
So we still, at the end of that repurchase, will still have $500 million approximately to continue to grow, to add capabilities to the company, to build out the portfolio, to make investments, not just in the top-line growth, but to make investments in profitability. And you'll hear Herman talk about some of those initiatives that will consume some of that $500 million, but in anticipation of both growth and even a faster growth on the bottom line.
And finally, at the annual shareholder meeting on January 30th we anticipate that we will put three new board members onto the board of directors. So we added significant capability in terms of this continued transformation to a 100% life sciences company. We add Didier Hirsch and Dr. Martin Madaus, who are very strong operating executives with an excellent track record in life sciences.
We really look forward to their participation on the board. Edward Bosa is a person from the investor community who we think also brings us a very unique perspective. We're really pleased about the transformation we continue to make, strengthening the board, very strong balance sheet, and market opportunities that we think will serve us well here for the next ten years. I'll detail some of those things very briefly. For those of you who aren't so familiar, let me introduce you a little bit to Azenta. We are an end-to-end capability provider for those who do discovery in life sciences. Very simply, the sourcing of biological samples of a known phenotype that researchers can ultimately extract data from to begin to do cures and therapies using the genome as the foundation for their research.
So we source biological samples, we format them so they'd be stored in automated systems or managed in automated workflows and in consumables that go down to cryogenic temperatures, which is now essential as we get toward a cell and gene therapy world. We provide automated storage systems, and we provide outsourced storage of biological samples. We have about 60 million samples in our repositories. We have an installed base of large automated stores that have a capacity of about 500 million samples, so it's a pretty significant portion of the approximately 2 billion samples that are stored cold on Earth. We represent the market leader in the automated cold storage for sure, and we're the number two position player growing rapidly in the repository business.
We also have a world-class capability to interrogate these samples, to interrogate these biological samples and provide data to customers, the researchers, who can then utilize the information from these rare and invaluable samples, actually, to do discovery. This is a critical but not core capability that's necessary and utilized by every discovery company. The fact that we can provide services and capability to do it faster, to do it more economically, and to do it with an assuredness that these are high-fidelity samples that they can find at any time, is a unique capability, a unique portfolio in the industry. More and more, we're seeing tailwinds that continue to support this as a rare and valuable opportunity to support discovery. I'll give you just a quick profile of the company.
We look at ourselves as a company with both the reach and the resource to provide the strong penetration in this market. So, as I mentioned, we have a global footprint. We operate in more than 150 countries. We have $500 million on the balance sheet that allows us to keep making investments in support of this type of research that goes on around the world. The customers we serve are global customers, and so when we have storage and sample management for a customer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we do the same thing for them in France and Germany and China. We can manage their global repository business in a way that no other company can.
In the phases of growth, we started with core technical capabilities we had from a semiconductor business, automation and controlled environment, and a mechanical means by which we could make cryogenic temperatures, and we started in the sample management business about 12 years ago. We built automated stores. We acquired companies that did that. We acquired an installed base to physically manage samples in cold, in automated systems.
Subsequent to that, after building a $100 million business, we acquired a world-class capability in genomics analysis so that we could interrogate those samples that we managed on behalf of customers, and we rapidly grew both businesses, the storage and sample management and the genomics business, to about a $500 million life sciences business with an interesting core capability that's unmatched from a portfolio standpoint.
What you'll see from us going forward is we'll continue to build on those platforms, which provide the opportunity for very strong growth, but onto that, we'll add automation capability to enhance our capability, not just to manage tens of millions of samples, but ultimately hundreds of millions of samples. We'll expand our sample sourcing business, because today, everything that we do in this platform that generates a $600 million-$700 million business is on behalf of samples that are owned by customers. When we have the ability to source samples that belong to us, that are consented, that we can manage in our platform and measure in our platform, it gives us a chance to sell this consented sample data to multiple companies.
So what it allows us to do is to have leverage on utilizing the current platform that we have and expanding the opportunity for the management samples to be able to discover samples that can be sold to multiple customers. Finally, when we talk about automation, we are now in the repository business, where we'll be able to do fast turn, high fidelity, high quality, very economical management of biological samples, and we'll transform the market-leading repository business we have already into one that's an order of magnitude more capable from a cost and speed standpoint. In terms of end market growth, there are a number of tailwinds that support the opportunity that we have. More than 50% of the outsource research capabilities continues to grow. The things that we do as a company are critical for life sciences discovery companies, but not core.
The fact that we can manage samples and source samples and measure samples for them, they'll continue to outsource more of that. The more we can do it economically and with speed that they need to secure discovery, the scientific capability that we have as a company continues to bring more business to us. Three years ago, we looked forward, and we could see that the number of samples that were stored in an outsourced fashion was gonna double in five years. Three years later, we've observed that already. We continue to see another doubling over the next five years of the high-quality biological sample collections. There's a chance even for this to accelerate. The better we get at it, the more economically we can do it. We think this has a chance just to continue to accelerate.
In the last quarter that we reported in Q4, the sample storage business, our sample-based storage business and our repository business, grew 15%, and the storage business, the automated storage business, grew 38%. And this is a testament to the fact that the sheer sample count continues to grow up. So as we're able to provide outsourced services or we'll provide stores, the sheer volume of the number of samples that need to be stored is what's driving an incredible growth in the business, and we don't see this abating anytime soon. And finally, the cell and gene therapy opportunity that continues to build in fits and starts, we have a cryogenic sample management capability that's essential for cell and gene therapy capabilities. The fact that we've developed automated stores for cryogenic management of samples positions us well for when this market expands.
We believe we're fully established as the unique provider, the sole provider of automated cryogenic sample storage, and we think that cell and gene therapy will be a huge driver for us in the coming years. We're proud of our heritage as a company, as an engineering and scientific company, and the fact that we serve the top 20 pharma companies in every fashion. We follow the customer discoveries from the earliest research days for the publications that we help them to provide, all the way through to drug discovery and drug delivery. So we have a broad platform. Our customers know us in all parts of their organization, from research all the way to clinical delivery, and we continue to build each of these capabilities out to make sure that we secure our position with the customers here in the future.
With that as a backdrop, I wanted to introduce Herman Cueto to you and have Herman Cueto take it from here to talk about some of the initiatives we have related to the profitability and how we're gonna drive this portfolio-
Perfect.
Considerable continued growth.
Maybe I'll just take a minute and introduce myself. My name is Herman Cueto. I'm the new CFO of Azenta. I started on October sixteenth, so I'm right here at 90 days. I joined Azenta from Becton, Dickinson, where I most recently held the position of senior vice president of finance. Over the last 90 days, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the transformation strategy that we're gonna start to talk to everybody about at the upcoming Investor Day. I've had an opportunity to go to some of our marquee locations in Indy, also in New Jersey, and in a couple of weeks, I'll be in Luxembourg to see the B Medical business firsthand. I've been greeted with such open arms by all of the wonderful people at Azenta.
All of the things that I talk about, the crazy ideas that I have, everybody is just super supportive of what we're trying to do, and I couldn't be happier to be here right now. So maybe just a minute on the three-segment structure. So for those of you who follow Azenta, we've been talking about moving into a three-segment structure at the start of this fiscal year, fiscal year 2024. Sample Management Solutions will consolidate the sample repository business, the large automated cold storage business, and the consumables and instruments business.
The Multiomics business is really the renamed genomics business, so think legacy GENEWIZ, and then B Medical is the company that we acquired in fiscal year 2023. Given the unique customer and revenue profile, we're gonna keep that off on its own. The reason we did this, it's really simple. First, it's actually the way we run the company, so internally, this is the way we're structured, it's the way we run the company, and second, it's the way we actually go to market, the way we wanna sell.
So for example, in multiomics, we have scientists selling to scientists, and in sample management solutions, we have asset managers selling to asset managers, so it just makes a ton of sense from that perspective. I won't spend a ton of time on this slide, but it's just a breakdown of the three segments that we have. You get a look at the revenue mix across the three segments, but most importantly, what's important here for everybody to see is the diversity within the portfolio and even the balance of revenue within each of the segments.
So it's a really great diversified portfolio that we feel really good about. So the next two slides are really focused on the two things that we're driving right now at Azenta. So the first thing is growth, and the next page, I'll talk a little bit about profitability. So we have a lot of momentum across these two things, but when you look at a page like this, this is a company with a rich history of growth. It's not on the page, but it was on one of the pages that Steve shared. This company in 2011, when Brooks got into life sciences, was $10 million. So when you think about a decade, a little bit more than that, to go from $10 million to something around $700 million, that's really hard to do. It's super impressive.
The way we've been able to do it is through internal, organic innovation and very strategic acquisition. So starting in 2016, we bought the BioStorage business. That's the backbone of the sample management solutions business that you see today. In 2019, we bought GENEWIZ. That's the backbone of the multiomics business. And then most recently, in fiscal year 2023, we bought B Medical, and that got us into cold chain solutions, but also has given us a foothold in the broadening and fast-growing emerging market really focused on growth. We do believe that Azenta, in any environment, should at least outgrow the market. We're going to continue to invest behind that. That is something that we're, we're keenly focused on. It's one of the two main pillars that we're focused on at Azenta.
And then second, I'm going to start with this slide we have already shown, so we're not trying to reissue guidance or anything like that. It's a slide that we shared when we updated guidance in November, so no changes to it. But it tells a really interesting story. So when Azenta finished the first half of 2023, we exited with a 2.9% margin, EBITDA margin. It's not where we want to be. It's not the type of company we want to be.
We quickly went and said, "Okay, look, it's time to go in and really find the cost savings opportunities." And in the second half of 2023, we were able to go from 2.9% to about 6.4%, so really good acceleration, and we landed the full year at 4.6%. So that momentum we are seeing continue throughout fiscal year 2024, where we've committed to 300 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion while making strategic investments in the Boston biorepository, the UK lab, and also the annualization of our sales force, sales force investments that we made last year. We feel really good about this. As I said when I started, I've spent the last 90 days really thinking about the transformation strategy, and we're really looking forward to talking more about that when we get to Analyst Day.
So to summarize, Azenta is a very differentiated, end-to-end sample management company. Around $650 million, or greater than $650 million of revenue in fiscal year 2023. Well-positioned in its markets, and we have the capability and capacity to do more for our customers. And really, what's more important, and Steve touched on this, Azenta has a very, very healthy balance sheet. We ended fiscal year 2023 with $1.1 billion in cash. We have zero debt, and we've committed to returning $500 million of that billion back to shareholders through the share repurchase program. So that's going to leave us with $500 million to run the company, to invest in this transformation that we're going to do, and to find strategic tuck-in M&A. So we're positioned extremely well for the future.
We're excited about it, and this is the plug for Investor Day, so it'll be March 14th, here in New York City. We're looking forward to seeing everybody there. I'll turn it back over to you, Dave.
Great.
For some Q&A.
Yeah. Thanks, thanks, Herman. Thank you.
Thanks.
Again, if anyone has any questions in the audience, feel free to raise your hand and we'll get to you. I guess just off the, you know, this last slide, I wanted to kind of start higher level, and then we'll get into kind of the businesses. You made some recent commentary, I think it was last week, I guess, about, you know, expecting revenue growth to accelerate into the low teens over the next couple of years. You know, guidance for this fiscal year is five to eight. So maybe talk about, you know, what's driving that acceleration. Is it market recovery? Is it commercial execution? And then the second part is, directionally, how should we think about the revenue growth profile of the three businesses, you know, and enabling you to see that acceleration?
So I want to address, it's a sample-based business, which we continue to see the trend toward outsourcing, so it's going to take a little while to do that. We've, we manage almost all samples for two large pharmaceutical companies today. Three years ago, we didn't. We had bits and pieces of those. We, we think the next 10 pharmaceutical companies are candidates for us to store tens of millions of samples for them. So we, we continue to see that as a tremendous opportunity. The more carbon footprint, the more floor space, the more complexity in those collections, we think we're, we're uniquely positioned. So it'll provide longer term growth opportunities we think we'll capture. On the genomics side of the business, we, we don't do commoditized measurements, rather we do really specialized scientific measurements.
We've been able to see sustained spending on critical research projects, and so the reason that even a 2% growth or flat in the genomics business, although it's not been where we've been, the fact that peers are down 10% and 15%, we think we continue to outperform. So in a, for example, a 6% growth market, we think both businesses provide us a chance to outgrow. The unknown here is B Medical, and on the B Medical part, there's a lot of volatility in the business, but just still steady performance. We understand when we've won business, but not as well when the business will be let, ultimately, when the contracts will be cut. But we think that we'll build on the B Medical business from vaccine delivery to the first part of sourcing rare biological samples.
So on the outbound side, the B Medical vaccine boxes are purchased by the World Health Organization, by UNICEF, by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , from a charitable organization standpoint. How do you deliver vaccines? But when the health worker goes and has contact with that child to inoculate them, it's an opportunity for them to bring a whole blood sample back using that same cold chain in reverse, and the customers for those.
Samples of pharmaceutical companies. And so there's a, there's a product business on the outbound, there's a services business back, and it'll take some time to build that, but there's a tremendous amount of interest in the 50,000 B Medical boxes we have installed in remote areas of the world, where the samples and the patients and the participants are most valuable and most interesting. So we, we continue to see the places that we exist in the marketplace having growth drivers from, from almost every perspective, and we continue to be focused on that sample-based business. We think it'll provide opportunities for us to grow once again in the teens as the, as the market stabilize and become healthier.
Okay. And then I think you also made a comment about EBITDA margins getting into the mid-teens. So I guess, you know, where is that coming from? Is it, you know, in the COGS line, is it in kind of the OpEx section, middle of the P&L? Any commentary there?
Yeah, no, I mean, it's gonna come from both, David. You know, as we think about the transformation strategy, I mean, you know, there are things that we could do to automate inside of the factories that would help on the COGS line, as an example. You know, we have a network architecture that we're gonna be looking to, you know, look at that more holistically. And both of those two things in combination will help cost of goods sold. But even beyond that, you know, there's org simplification things that we need to do. And that's gonna be really the key thing that we talk about at Investor Day.
Okay. And then looking at this fiscal year, you know, 300 basis points of margin improvement that gets you into the seven, eight percent range. You're guiding fiscal, the fiscal first quarter to break even. And then I think you've said, you know, you're exiting the year approaching double digits. So maybe talk about, you know, what drives that sequential improvement. You know, it's a fairly steep ramp, I guess. You know, you kinda mentioned some of the phase I , phase II initiatives. So, I guess, you know, talk about the ramp. What drives that?
I mean, you, you certainly wanna talk about the phase I and phase II initiatives coming through. So I would say in the first part of the year, you have the phase I , sort of finishing up. Right now, we have the phase II starting, but don't forget, we do have to cycle through some of the investments that we've made in the sales force, so that will mute some of the stuff that you see in the first part of the year.
So that's why you see a little bit of that acceleration in the back half. You know, what I would say is both of those initiatives are well on track, and as I've said before, you know, the teams have done a great job putting those plans in place. Even when timelines on certain initiatives ended up getting extended, they had plan Bs to pull different things in. So, it's, it's in a good place. We feel really good about the full year guide and the 300 basis points of margin expansion.
Okay. And then just remind me, so phase I was. That was just standing up a standalone cost structure, I think. Let me know if I'm right or wrong. What is exactly phase II ? Where are those you know, costs?
I would say, so we said between phase I and phase II was about 400 basis points of margin expansion. It comes from a variety of things. I think the first wave was more around org simplification initiatives. Phase II was a combination of org simplification plus some network architecture. But as we've gotten into things and the network architecture, you know, you get into regulatory deadline, not deadlines, but regulatory considerations. You know, we had to go and course-correct and do some more org simplification type initiatives. It comes from a combination of both.
Okay. And so, you know, phase I is finishing. You'll, you know, continue to get the benefit there. Phase II, does that extend into fiscal 2025?
It will.
So, like, okay, so, you know, off the 7%-8% on the year, we should see some, you know, incremental expansion off that.
Just as we cycle into 2025.
Okay.
That's the right way to think about it.
Okay.
So you get a partial, I think three quarters of it, three quarters of phase II, you'll see inside of fiscal year 2024.
Okay. Then, just on the share repurchase authorization $500 million. I guess, is that, you know, $100 million per quarter starting in the fiscal fourth, extending through the calendar 2024?
It really starts, you know, it'll start around now and go through the end of September. But you know, we wanna be smart about the way we do it, and, you know, there are considerations, you know, the stock price that we're buying at might, you know, change the way or the volume that we buy on a given day.
Okay.
So we tried to, you know, set it up in a little bit of a strategic way.
Okay. And then, just lastly, and then we'll dive into the businesses. So, you know, you will end with a healthy balance sheet. You've-
Yeah, absolutely.
Talked about $500 million. You know, you have been acquisitive in the past, so maybe talk about kinda how you think about M&A going forward, and I'm sure you'll give more details in a couple of months. But, you know, what areas do you find attractive? And, you know, are you thinking, you know, $500 million acquisition or would it be smaller tuck-ins?
I mean, I'll start, and then certainly Steve could jump in. But what I would say is, I think we're focused not on anything transformative, it would be more on the tuck-in side.
And there are, you know, there are areas that we think are interesting, you know, on the sample acquisition side. You know, if we were able to find something strategic in that space, it would certainly be interesting. But I don't think my philosophy on M&A or tuck-in M&A is really anything different than Steve and Lyndon had done in the past. I will say that, you know, we're focused internally. You know, the profit profile of the company is a high priority for us, so we do want to invest to transform the company and make it more profitable. So when you look at that $500 million, certainly we're going to use some of it to transform the company. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I'll second everything there. Just really simply, we're a $650 million company in a market opportunity that's greater than $10 billion, and so building out the capabilities we have are incremental investments. When we talk about the spends we'll do inside, this is factory consolidation, ERP consolidation, the kinds of things that were secondary when the company was growing 20% per year for five years.
They're really important, really good things to do right now. And on the acquisition front, we always consider ourselves. The foundation for the company is really strong engineering, so products and systems and those kinds of things we'll build, and those will be organic investments, typically. And on the acquisition side, mostly smaller tuck-in kinds of things. Sourcing will be one, and data will be another. So on the ends of this sample management and measurement portfolio, bringing samples in and having data come out the back end, relatively smaller capabilities that'll suit us very specifically.
So it's a really healthy balance sheet. We feel good about the amount that we have, and it'll last us for at least a couple of years as we continue t o grow out the portfolio.
Yeah. Great.
Okay. Well, I wanted to maybe dive into the B Medical business. So you're more than a year of ownership there, and you recently announced a large deal with the DRC.
Yes.
I think it's $50-60 million revenue to Azenta. So I guess, you know, maybe talk about one, what have you learned over the, you know, last 12, 15 or so months of owning it? And then number two, you know, more recently, you talked about how the DRC is vaccinating out samples back. Is that, is that different than the average B Medical deal? And if so, does it make it any more profitable for you, or does it not really have a impact there?
Yeah, so I'll break it down a few things. So, yes, all the elements exactly right. So I'll, but I'll and I'll put them back together in a different construct maybe. So the MoU from the DRC was EUR 100 million, and it's related to some measurement equipment, some Toyota vehicles, literally, that have been outfitted by B Medical to be able to transport over long distances, cold vaccines out and cold samples back.
And when I say long distances, this is a 1,000-mile range, and these are refrigeration units we built into Toyota. So we've been working with Toyota for quite some time. And then, of the. About half of that contract ultimately comes to us for these cold vaccine boxes. On top of that, and to be discussed, is how the DRC has a very strong initiative to also bring whole blood back using the same cold chain. This is not part of this contract, but the mechanisms for that are gonna, are part of the conversation.
Okay.
So one of the things that springs this, ultimately, so we can start to get the timing of the pattern of the order, is how do we settle how the blood portion of this will come back? So it's exactly what we were hoping to do. It's exactly what DRC didn't know they could do, and so we were really encouraged by that.
They just went through elections in the country, and it settled out exactly as everybody had anticipated, and now we're trying to resurrect that and make sure that the contracts can get put into place, POs can begin to be let. But it's a great opportunity to demonstrate the sample initiative. The health minister was a Western-trained physician who's really keen to make sure that these initiatives get established in DRC.
Great. And then, just, before we move on to, to, another part of the business, you know, fiscal 2024 guidance calls for mid-single-digit growth for B Medical. If you want to defer to the investor day, that's fine. Is, is mid-single digits a good way to think about the B Medical business longer term?
I don't think we're gonna. We'll get more into it at Investor Day, for sure, but we're very comfortable with our guide for fiscal year 2024.
Okay.
Let me pile on there. There are a couple things about B Medical. So the vaccine cold chain business is a noble business. It's a profitable business. It's a good business. The value to us, to the shareholders from Azenta's perspective, of course, we need to make sure that's a good, profitable, sturdy business, but the kinds of things that we do as Azenta really relate to the human biological samples that come back, that lead to the next cures and vaccines, and so the installed base is really critical. The foundation that exists is really important. What we build on top of that business is what we think is the real future opportunity that exists in and around the B Medical business.
Okay, great. And then just moving to Sample Management Solutions, so in that, system stores and large auto stores has been, you know, seeing very, very strong growth. So maybe talk about, you know, what you're seeing from a core customer budgeting or spending perspective, and then, you know, kind of expectations going forward?
I think, one of the things to think about is, these are long lead time type sales, so, you know, some of the things that you see in, like, cell and gene therapy, where, you know, for us anyway, if we get an order, it's kind of book and ship. You know, the large automated stores is a backlog business. You know, we come in, and, you know, we build a store in a room like this, and, you know, we're working with the company to, you know, to outfit the, the right room, the right size, the right ceiling length.
So, that business is really. It goes on for a while. It's a long sales cycle. So we have good visibility into the backlog there, and that gives us a lot of confidence in what we're talking about for fiscal year 2024. We continue to see things, you know. Continue to see conversations, you know, that give us a lot of confidence in what we guided for this year.
Okay.
David, I'll add on one thing. There's also another vector, and we talked about this from time to time. In addition to storing biological samples for population studies, for rare disease initiatives, customers who manufacture biological materials are now also starting to buy these stores to manage their supply chain inventory, and so the fact that people use them for monoclonal antibody storage, for oligos that they ultimately sell, these are our large automated stores that are going on the manufacturing side.
So we have another growth vector here besides just the storage of biological samples for research. It's also for the production and management of outgoing supply chain, which is an unknown. It had been unforecasted by us, but over the past couple of years, this business started to pick up, so it's a great, it's a great application for our large automated stores.
Nice. Great. Well, I'm getting the red blinking light, so.
All right.
Next time I'll start with the Multiomics.
Fair enough.
Steve, Herman, Sara, thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having us.
Thanks, everyone, for attending.
Yeah, thanks, everyone.
Absolutely. Great.