Perfect! Good morning, everyone. This is Rachel Vatnsdal from the Life Science Tools and Diagnostics team with J.P. Morgan. Pleased to introduce Bruker. Frank Laukien is going to do the presentation. As we typically do for these, it'll be 20-25 minutes of a presentation, followed by Q&A. If any of you in the room have questions, feel free to either submit them via the app on the MetaMeetings website or ping me directly. With that, Frank, I'll let you take it away.
Good morning, and thank you, everybody, for being here. I want to acknowledge two of our directors. Very pleased that you could make it. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel, for having us and giving us this excellent time slot while we're all awake and psyched for this conference. I'd like to acknowledge two of my colleagues, our CFO, Gerald Herman, and Mark Munch, who runs our Bruker Nano Group and does a lot in the spatial biology field and single-cell biology field, which is... We'll be talking about that today. So, my job this morning is to give you an update. I really want to talk about three things. I want to show you and demonstrate to you how over the years, with Project Accelerate and Operational Excellence, we have transformed.
I'm happy to report very clearly with very clear evidence of three years of double-digit organic growth, and as you will see during the presentation, four quarters of double-digit organic growth, which is pretty good this year, well, in 2023, at least, that was last year. We have transformed Bruker into a fast-growth company. I'll give you a few slides of updates on Q4. There's an 8-K that's going out at the moment, so you can look it up there. Then I will talk to you about the proposition, more than a proposition at this point, about how this is evolving into Bruker being an emerging leader in the post-genomic era.
I think that's not surprising to you because we've been doing proteomics and multi-omics and spatial and single-cell biology, but I think this will show you how this is coming together, and I think it's a very important theme for us. So let me make sure I push the right buttons here. Here we go. Right. Our safe harbor statement, I'd like to draw your attention to that. You're familiar with it. And again, there's an 8-K this morning. So our dual strategy of Project Accelerate kicked off in 2017 and then turned into Project Accelerate 2.0 with broader themes and additional themes like spatial biology, 4D-Proteomics , combined with operational excellence, which is an essential pillar of our strategy, really does work. Our strategy is clicking.
Project Accelerate, if you want to think about it financially, of course, is pulling up our growth, our margins, and our EPS. While operational excellence and lean initiative, productivity, initiatives in not only the traditional operational sense, but also in commercial excellence, in product R&D excellence, is pushing up our market share, our EPS, keeps our core very, very healthy. We've seen some companies that let the core degrade over time because they got excited about some new, new thing. We're not. We're doing none of that. Our core is strong, gaining margins, had terrific growth as well. You may be familiar with this hexagon. These are our six major initiatives. We'll be talking about some of them, of course, spatial biology, single-cell biology, proteomics, multi-omics are perhaps the most salient ones.
But we're getting a lot of tailwind now also from artificial intelligence trends that are affecting our semiconductor tools business. I know this is a life science conference, but it is important. Our technologies are just applicable elsewhere. We're also seeing some very good trends in what traditionally people like thought of more as the traditional, maybe more cyclical industrial markets. A lot of it is industrial research, and a lot of it is green tech or clean tech research from batteries to offshore wind to future fusion energy. I'll be hinting at that a little bit, even if it's not part of the octagon. It's really a very healthy demand picture. So, and we are striving, and we are making excellent progress as a leader in the post-genomic era.
This is no longer the second or third inning of the genomic era. This is the second inning, perhaps, of the post-genomic era, and I'll explain a little bit what we mean by that. It's very exciting prospects for the next decade or two. Right, the key strategic pillar of operational excellence is not as sexy as all the growth initiatives, but it does the job, and we actually have become really very, very good at this. We're doing it consistently. You've seen significant CapEx investments. A lot of them are for capacity for the next decade and more, and many of them, of course, also are for productivity. We have a very good Bruker management process that we've now honed over many years. It's not a branded management process. There are some others out there, but it, it really works.
It also stresses this entrepreneurial element. That's why we're so strong in generating organic growth and organic, you know, return on invested capital. I think we're very good at that, still in the twenties. And that's a, that's an excellent way of running a company. It's our playbook. It's not primarily acquisitive. We make some acquisitions. I'll tell you about a couple we just closed last week. They're more, you know, buying little plants to grow them into mid-sized or larger trees over time, again, with a focus on innovation, organic growth, and also operational excellence. Right, we are not cutting OpEx. We're not cutting headcount. We are investing in R&D pretty heavily, even north of 10% this year in 2024, and we're gonna stick to that 10% really, probably throughout our medium-term horizon, which is to about 2026.
We’ve given a medium-term outlook at our investor day last June. We are very much on track for the 200-300 basis points above market, life science tools market, organic growth, and for the, you know, 10-13 or double-digit on average EPS growth. We expect that, as you will see a little bit later, also above market EPS growth in 2024, despite the acquisition that you know, is about that we did, that’s a little bit dilutive of the PhenomeX, which we’re very pleased to add some of their technologies to our post-genomic toolkit. We’ll be talking more about that, and Mark can answer questions later throughout the day. Yes, we are making a strong investment, but we have a lot to show for it. We’re getting extra organic growth.
We're getting EPS growth that I think is very good at this point in time and also going forward. So, the formula and the strategy are working, and the opportunities are tremendous. Right. Here are some examples of that. I will not go into all these slides, of course, will be posted. We have this unique magnetic resonance business, right? Other public companies don't seem to have that, right? So, NMR is an excellent field. We found many new growth drivers. There's the related field of EPR, there's the related field of MRI, preclinical imaging, and of course, indirectly, via our BEST segment, we're also supporting the clinical MRI vendors with superconducting materials. Those, of course, are the, you know, GE HealthCare and Siemens Healthineers and Philips of the world.
So anyway, NMR is a great market. For instance, in Q4, our Q4 order bookings were really quite solid in the BSI segment, and in Q4, NMR had some ultra-high field systems that got accepted. I'll tell you about those in another slide or two, and also had very good bookings growth. So NMR is a great field. It plays a major role in looking at structural biology, at deliberately at unstructured biology, by which is really very, very important. And here in this example, in new clean tech research, in the battery value chain that we're developing, where our other technologies are playing a role as well. But NMR, which perhaps, you know, might be surprising, is playing a significant role. Many good smaller growth drivers adding up as well.
You know, our MALDI Biotyper product line, that's been growing wonderfully over 20 years, roughly. We now have over 6,000 MALDI Biotypers. These are all paid systems, customer systems, over 100 million IDs. So it's really become the gold standard for nearly universal identification of bacteria and Candida, fungi, et cetera, from cultures. And this is just continuing to grow. It's a beautiful business. The instrument business is now no longer growing in the double digits. It's growing in the high single digits, which is fine, but the consumables business, which is more than 50% of the... and including aftermarket, and software, and databases, and consumables, is continues to grow in the double digits. So it's a beautiful business.
We combine that with molecular diagnostics, our specialty, somewhat niche role in molecular diagnostics, but with some very unique technologies in our LiquidArray, qPCR assays and other things that are in the pipeline. Very important to our Project Accelerate initiative. Our core innovation, let me talk about products that you—not for very long, but that you don't normally hear about. X-ray fluorescence, X-ray detection, nanoindenting, industrial research tools. You don't need. You're welcome to read the details, but the core message, the message is: we're investing in our core. We're bringing out innovation in core products that you may not have heard about, and we are gaining market share and having new capabilities.
Plus, more and more, not unlike some other companies in among our peers, we're finding applications that are sort of novel and have very good secular trends, particularly again, in this green tech, clean tech space, but also often related to nanomaterials and semiconductor metrology, ultimately. Right, so speaking of artificial intelligence and semiconductor metrology, a field that's really become... because we have such specialized roles that support on the logic side for CPU or GPU chips. GPU, very important for NVIDIA and its supply chain and others that are supporting the artificial intelligence revolution in going to not small.
We used to talk about 7 and 5 nanometers, now it's 5, 3 and 2 in the research phase, plus all the related high bandwidth memories, the systems on a chip, even FPGAs that are related in this advanced packaging, that's also absolutely. You don't just need better chips; you need highly integrated advanced packaging. And our tools, both automated atomic force microscopy, as well as our unique X-ray tools, play a major role in that. And we have overall, our semiconductor metrology revenue is higher than the number here at the bottom, but we figure roughly, we ballpark that about $75 million and very rapidly growing part is already in support of artificial intelligence, which is obviously a revolution that has a long way to go.
We're one of the beneficiaries, one of the major beneficiaries of that within the life science tool space. Right. Something a little bit new that's emerging, but really has been adding up a little step by step by step, is our new scientific software initiative within the BioSpin group. It has come together inorganically from a number of acquisitions that we are integrating, under our, as both modular solutions, all with open interfaces. I think it's very important. That's what customers want. They don't want you to have proprietary solutions. Maybe you could squeeze out some extra margin, but I think you'll grow much further and have a chance to become sometimes even an industry standard by playing it open, by being open to others, and integrating solutions.
Very much focused on productivity in the laboratory, digitalization, digital transformation in the laboratory, a huge topic for specialty chemicals, for biotech, for biopharma. We're very much involved in that, so you'll be hearing more of that. We have significant growth plans. This will have excellent margins, and it's really coming together very nicely in our Integrated Data Solutions, IDS, division that will be new to you. That's a big driver of our growth and, of course, for further margin expansion. Right. New opportunities in clean tech. You don't hear about our BEST segment, about 10% of our revenue, making superconducting materials for high energy physics, fusion, et cetera, for the MRI industry, for our OEM customers. But there really are some cool opportunities.
One that has really been around for a while now and is accelerating, which is fusion energy research, a clean, essentially inexhaustible, completely safe source of energy. If we can develop, if the world can develop it into a, baseload, reliable baseload technology, that could replace both coal and, and other carbon emission technologies, as well as the traditional, fission nuclear energy that, some countries invest in and others have concerns about. Anyway, fusion will be an important part of the mix, and we're a very important part of key technologies and conductors for it. Another opportunity driven by GE Vernova, quite honestly, and the U.S. DOE, is potential replacement of the rare earth metal wind turbines. We're completely dependent on China with that because that's where all the rare earth metals come from.
Moreover, if you go to 20-megawatt and larger, you eventually need to go to another technologies. These turbines and towers get too tall and too heavy, you can't put them out there anymore, and superconducting technologies may well play a role. At least there's a prototype project, and we're funding some of the conductors, but also some of the engineering for that. Another exciting long-term opportunity, but we don't mind taking the long-term view and being designed in. Right. So this is all adding up to, you know, we have transformed into a fast growth company. There's no question about that anymore. Our management process, which is excellent, and this element and focus on this disciplined entrepreneurialism, it's not just another little trademark. This is something we live and do every day, is driving our profitable growth, and it's been a successful transformation.
We're on track for three consecutive years and four quarters of greater than 10% organic revenue growth. Our goal continues to be to grow our revenues organically, 200-300 bips above market, also in 2024-2026. That's a reconfirmation of what we said in June. Yes, indeed, our goal of greater than 10% non-GAAP EPS in the next three years, including this one, with continued high return on invested capital. We're very much focusing on proteomics, multi-omics, and spatial single-cell biology. You'll hear that in our transformation or our emerging leadership in the post-genomic era. And so, it's this part is really working, and I couldn't be more pleased with the progress that we have been making, and I think that we will continue to make. Let me give you a quick update.
A couple of, we've struggled, not in a terrible way, but we've had some delays throughout the year. Very pleased to announce that we did have the first 1.2 GHz instrument installed in the United States at The Ohio State University. It was NSF funded. We thank NSF for their vision and leadership in, in making this happen. From clean tech to structural biology to intrinsically disordered proteins that are very important in disease and that only NMR can really study, all the way to mechanism of disease from cancer, Alzheimer's, and so on. NMR is a very important part of the scientific infrastructure that you need in the post-genomic era, and here, OSU, in a national facility funded by the NSF, has taken the lead.
We also, in the same quarter, had a similar, a 1.1 gigahertz solid-state NMR system getting accepted at, University of Wisconsin-Madison. We're equally pleased with that, and it does add up over the years. We now have over 20 gigahertz-class NMRs installed worldwide. We did two acquisitions, two small acquisitions. As I said, we buy seeds or small plants and then begin to grow them. One of them addressed a gap that we had, quite honestly, in our biopharma PAT, process analytical technologies, and we acquired a small Canadian company outside of Toronto called Tornado Spectral Systems. They've been at this for a very long time. They have about $5 million in revenue.
We think we can scale that, we can integrate that with our other biopharma PAT tools that we have already, but we didn't have these Raman process tools and probes. And biopharma, I know biopharma processing is not the word to use right now because it's a little weak, but we all know it's coming back, and fundamentally, it's a very big market, and this strengthens our software and measurement tools and automation capabilities for that biotech and pharma process analytical technology area. So that's not on the research, that's on the QC side. Switching gears and going to an extremely high-end research application, we've entered the field of electron microscopy with the acquisition of Nion. They're outside of Seattle, in here on this coast, and they have sort of the ultimate high performance. Everything is a first in the world.
Very high—very smallish business. You know, we expect them to be just above $10 million in revenue in 2024. They'll—it'll be profitable, and really never been scaled. And I think even this high-end material science research markets, there's a lot more we can do with this technology over the years. And it's just a fundamentally important base technology that we were lacking at Bruker, and at least in a very niche way, we're now entering that market. And here's the slide many of you have been waiting for, and that will be mentioned in our—that is being mentioned in our 8-K this morning. I'll skip the left side because you can look up how we've done year-to-date. We've done really very well.
And then, as of the update, as of this morning, is that our Q4 2023 revenue, which are preliminary estimates, and not like, not yet audited, all of that good stuff, is going to be in excess of $830 million, which even for the fourth quarter, implies more than 12% organic revenue growth. That is, as we see it right now, more than $35 million above the consensus that's out there. Our Bruker Scientific Instruments, the 90% BSI segment, the bookings there were solid. And by the way, were solid also in China. In China, we had a bit of an air pocket in Q3 after a super strong Q1.
So for the year, we'll have double-digit organic revenue and bookings growth in China, and we also had solid bookings, organic bookings growth in our BSI segment in China, also in Q4. So we're very pleased that that was a good quarter again. I know there were some concerns after our Q3 on that, which were overblown, but anyway, Q4 was good in China. By the way, also speaking of NMR, NMR worldwide in bookings in Q4 just were a bit of a standout, so they were. They contributed to the solid bookings. For the full year 2023, that means greater than $2.94 billion in revenue, in reported revenue, with greater than 13% organic growth, again, as preliminary estimates. And I did mention China already.
For fiscal year 2024 preliminary outlook, we will give guidance, as we typically do in early February, when we have our Q4 earnings call, and we're gonna keep it qualitative for fiscal year. We expect solid above-market, above LST market, obviously, Life Science Tools market, organic revenue growth and non-GAAP EPS growth. And that's all in, that includes the PhenomeX acquisition that we have acknowledged, will be about $0.10 dilutive this year. Very happy to have it. It's a terrific business, create new tools for the post-genomic era, and even with that, I think we'll have above-market non-GAAP EPS growth. So we, we could afford to make that investment, and we're glad we made that visionary investment. It wasn't always welcome or well-received, but I think that was shortsighted. This is a terrific deal. Right.
Let me finish up in the last few minutes with giving you an outline of why we are dedicated, amongst other opportunities, well-balanced to this, to being this and becoming and being already an emerging leader in this post-genomic era, which I think will be the big drivers in tools, but also in diagnostics, in drug target discovery. It's already happening, but I think that's the bigger play in the next 10-20 years. The last 20 years were dominated by genomics, because the technology was there, and that's a good thing. And genomics, of course, is very important in an overall multi-omics and systems biology approach. But proteomics and related fields, glycobiology, glycomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, epiproteomics, looking at all the post-translational part, it's not just nerdy talk by talk.
It's really what drives biology and disease, and without that, you don't fully understand cell biology and, and disease biology, importantly. And so this is gonna be at least as important or at, at least equally important to the, to genomic medicine, and in many areas, can go far beyond what genomic medicine was able to deliver, which was a lot, but also in some areas, disappointing. It's not only the multi-omics view, it's also the many different types of aspects of biology that we can elucidate. So from spatial biology, which we're pursuing, to single-cell biology, which what this acquisition was about, also focusing on tissue, cell, disease biology, quantitative biology, from pretty pictures to really measuring quantitative expression levels, to interaction biology, protein-protein interaction, chemical biology approaches, chemical proteomics for drug discovery.
Many, many, many areas that are coming together, and we are a player or are becoming a player, essentially in all of them. We have key technologies that drive that. We look at very large TAMs. We think the timelines for this secular, high secular growth is, I think it's the next two decades. So as far as any of us can see, and particular standout in those areas will be proteomics, multi-omics, and spatial/single-cell biology. And I don't need to go into the biology slides. I think many of you are very familiar why that is going to be important. Our timsTOF platform is a key platform in many of these 4D-Proteomics and 4D multi-omics approaches, including new areas like 4D epiproteomics, post-translational, 4D glycoproteomics.
You'll see a lot of additional subfields emerging, that each one of them are actually very important and very good growth drivers. So beyond proteomics, as you peel the onion, there's more and more underneath. Our timsTOF platform is doing very well. And at the end of fiscal year 2023, it's now over 800 units installed. So we've added another 100 in the last six months, roughly. So this is a key platform, but it's not the only one. We're doing things with NMR, gigahertz NMR, particularly, for this structural biology that, you know, have evolved for a purpose for key functions, transcription factors, et cetera, fast signaling and cell biology. Unfortunately, they also play a major role in cancer and cardiovascular disorders or disease. In the beginnings, the onset of aggregation in prion or neurodegenerative diseases.
So structuring, looking at unstructured, intrinsically disordered, it's a mouthful, but it is actually important in biology, and we have the tools to do that. Right, the Canopy CellScape system, spatial biology, is a standout in spatial targeted proteomics that is truly quantitative, with this 8-log dynamic range that just goes beyond what other offerings that are out there. We think it is the next generation spatial proteomics system, and it's really being very well received by customers, and there's some wonderful applications and publications that are coming out on this. This is part of the Canopy acquisition we did in 2019 or 2020, and we're turning it into something very important for the company. Right. Finally, I'll end up on a couple of Bruker's cellular analysis, or formerly PhenomeX, or maybe no, it still has Berkeley Lights and IsoPlexis.
This is really a wonderful technology, set of technologies that have come together, particularly that very unique Beacon platform from the old Berkeley Lights, that is used for much faster and more difficult target, monoclonal antibody development, as well as for cell-based cancer therapies. Here is an example from the university, from Dr. Zamora at Medical College of Wisconsin, where he's using this technology. He's a long-term Beacon user, to expedite translation of cell-based therapies, in this case, particularly in CAR T cell workflows, in oncology. And here is an example, very quickly, from MIT, someone who just bought it from us. He bought it in December. We had closed that acquisition in October, and that's being used for potential breakthroughs in vaccine development.
Can you believe we still don't have a vaccine against HIV, 35 years into it? And of course, there isn't really a very good vaccine against malaria and other major killers. I mean, the numbers of how many people die from all of this and how many people get it each year are still astounding. It needs new technologies, it needs new biology, and Dr. Batista, in this case at MIT, is pursuing that with that Beacon optofluidic system, of which we have more and more panels, more and more applications, more and more versions. We'll be investing heavily in that. It's a completely unique technology that for antibodies, stable cell line development, and in this case, vaccine development, plays a major role. So I'm a little bit over.
Yes, post-genomic era, this is not just a dream in our eyes or some sort of pure ambition. Overall, that's about a quarter of our revenue. This is still 2022 revenue numbers, 'cause we now have 2023 finalized. And there's many tools from timsTOF to applied proteomics in clinical, to NMR, to structural biology, to spatial biology. Acuity is soon launching in late, later in 2024 for spatial biology. We didn't talk about that. And of course, the new Beacon single-cell platform. And with that, I'll wrap it up and leave it on this slide for the Q&A. I think we have a lot to look forward to, and our strategy is working. We're a fast growth company with good EPS growth going forward and also for 2024.
We are thriving for this, and doing something about this emerging leadership in the biggest growth area of all, which is the tools for the Post-genomic era. Thank you very much.
Perfect. Thank you, Frank. So first up, I just want to ask on that 4Q pre-announcement. You know, Bruker’s had some really impressive growth throughout the year, 4Q was no different. So can you walk through that quarter in a little bit more detail? You mentioned China performed better than expected after that dip in through 3Q. So any details there? Also, how many ultra-high field NMRs were placed in the quarter there? And then any other notables to really call out.
Yeah, we will be discussing all of that in early February. Obviously, today is not the day to go into a lot of detail on that. It's very preliminary, right? Yes, and we had these two systems that were placed, that were accepted, the 1.2 and the 1.1 gigahertz NMRs, both in the U.S. in the fourth quarter.
Perfect. Maybe just digging in a little bit on your comments around bookings in the quarter. How should we think about that for 4Q, both in total and in China? I think you said double-digit growth in orders. Was that for 4Q specifically, or was that-
That was for the full year-
Okay.
in China. Yeah, double-digit organic revenue and organic bookings growth for the full year in China, in our BSI segment, right?
Yes.
In BEST, looking at orders, they get these five-year deals, so we always do that for the BSI segment. Then order growth year over year in Q4, BSI bookings also in China. So I'd—I would call, we had a spectacular bookings in Q1 in China. In 2023, we had pretty good 2023 Q2. We had a weaker Q3, if I'm sure you recall, and Q4 was good.
Okay.
Not spectacular, but good.
Maybe just as a follow-up, can you give us book-to-bill commentary on 4Q, both for China and then rest of world, just given how topical it is?
For BSI, it's very close to one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Helpful. Then on 2024, so you noted that you're expecting above-market growth this year. How should we think about that underlying market growth assumption? You know, we've had some peers in the life science tool-
Yeah
-space give varying views. Understand you're giving us full guide for, very important-
Well, that's the disadvantage of going first on a Monday morning-
Yes
... is I don't know what all my peers are going to say, right? It looks like, you know, the sentiment that, of companies that have talked about this earlier in 2023 already was, flat to low single-digit growth, organic growth. And with that as the market assumption, we'll, you know... I, I don't want to give a numerical range right now.
Mm-hmm.
We'll do that in early February. But, I think we should be able to outgrow that by 200-300 basis points or more-
Okay
... in organic revenue growth. We also expect solid organic bookings growth in BSI.
Okay.
This isn't just a backlog story. Backlog helps. We've got great visibility. It's still very strong. It just comes together nicely as a mix.
Okay.
Continued health and strong backlog. What's wrong with that?
Helpful, definitely. Maybe just digging into China a little bit more. So can you talk about some of the dynamics there? You know, 3Q China was a big concern. You guys were a little bit more soft-spoken on China in that 3Q earnings call. So what's happened the last three months since your last earnings in China? And are there any pockets of strength or pockets of weakness that you want to call out?
All very good questions, and I cannot say that we have this incredible insights or visibility into China that others have. China is. China today provides all of us, including Bruker, with less visibility and clarity than in recent years.
Mm-hmm.
We're no different from that. We had moderate organic bookings growth year over year in China in Q4, and Q4 of 2022 wasn't some outlier or weak quarter, so that's good. But beyond the. Well, maybe the one thing I would add, or the couple of nuances, I would agree that CRO and biopharma in China still seems quite weak. Maybe a little bit of recovery in Q4, but I don't know whether that counts as a statistic. And then we have a lot of investment in this post-genomic tools, where China and the rest of the world are out disproportionately allocating R&D funds in academic and academic medical centers. That's nearly 50% of our China bookings and revenue. So maybe that's in part. And then we have the right tools that they want to invest in now, right?
They have lots of sequencers, yeah, but now they're investing in proteomics. China has an enormous ambition in proteomics that would rival those of the rest of the world if their headline press releases were to be taken, you know, literally. So, yeah, I think, I think it does help us that we're involved in the post-genomic era and in proteomics and so on. So these are good drivers for us. And yes, indeed, biopharma still seems weak, even maybe a little bit of recovery in Q4 in China. These are all China comments.
Yeah. Helpful. Maybe as a follow-up on that, since you mentioned visibility and how that's constrained in China right now, can you talk about visibility within your broader portfolio? Maybe just ex-China for now. What is your current visibility? What's the broader backlog in BSI look like on a monthly basis? You previously talked about this eight-to nine-month range, so any comments there would be helpful.
Yeah, it's a little too early for us. We'll give you more, I mean, eight months is what we talked about at the end of Q3.
Mm-hmm.
And yeah, it, you know, it probably will be similar to that, but even I just don't have the, all the finalized figures yet, but we will have in early February. But it's going to be substantially similar to through the end of Q3. It's not that we took down backlog by two months or so to deliver a fourth quarter. Not at all. Right. Not... Sorry, you had a second part of the question that-
Just visibility in general and how that kind of relates to-
Yeah, I mean, our visibility is unusually good. I mean, nobody can predict the future perfectly, but our visibility, because of the many months of backlog and even more backlog than we've traditionally carried, is very good. And the order trends have been good or solid, right, in Q4 for BSI, including China. And, you know, and then very fundamentally, beyond the tactical short-term stuff, I think we're just on a trajectory in very, very large growth drivers with very good secular trends from AI, which is unusual, but also we didn't strategize that 10 years ago. We want to become the leader in AI metrology tools, but wow, we're there at the right time with the right tools. So it's good to be prepared when you get lucky, right?
Then I think fundamentally and very consciously, driving of having the most powerful set of tools that can have a lot of further runway and new applications and panels and assays developed for the post-genomic era is just our very, very big strategy.
Great. Maybe shifting over to capital deployments. You've announced a few deals in the last recent weeks here-
Sounds like that's for you, by the way.
Yes. ELITechGroup, Nion, Tornado as well. So can you give us some more insight into the financial profile of each of these assets, whether that's revenue growth, margins? And then, you know, how do each of these assets really fit into the broader Bruker portfolio?
Well, I mean, Frank reviewed most of the revenue performance expected from each of these acquisitions in the presentation, so I won't repeat all that. But generally speaking, these are strategic acquisitions that fit neatly into the portfolio. We've been looking at this pretty carefully over the last, I would say, six months for many of these. In some cases, we've been looking at these acquisitions for over a year and a half, and they've all just come together. To answer your earlier question about capital deployment, our capital deployment strategy really hasn't changed. I mean, we focus—our number one priority is around investment in the business, whether it's at the R&D level, whether it's capital expenditures to build further capacity or production optimization, or it's commercialization with our sales and marketing infrastructure.
That focus continues to be the case, and M&A that fits directly into that strategy is perfectly suited towards that. So I think our position, fortunately for us, we've got a good, strong, you know, capital position. Our balance sheet's very well positioned to be able to continue these types of acquisitions, and so very pleased to be able to do them and to announce them.
Perfect. Maybe, Frank, just one minute left here, so last question for you. Anything else about the Bruker story that you feel like is misunderstood, that you're getting excited about as we head into 2024? You know, you've mentioned some of this proteomics as a golden age as well. So anything else to highlight within the story?
I think I've covered the major parts, right? And the evidence for the transformation from three years in a row, and again, an outlook, albeit qualitative, for a solid and a robust 2024. So I don't really have anything to add, yeah.
Perfect.
Thank you for the opportunity to present.
With that, we are out of time.
All right.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you all very much.