Okay, fantastic. Welcome, everyone. It's great to have you. Welcome, Gerald Herman, CFO of Bruker.
Hello.
I'm Aisyah Noor, European MedTech Analyst with Morgan Stanley, and it's my pleasure to host this fireside chat today with Bruker. As you can see, there's no fire because of budget cuts, but I can promise this can be a warm and engaging session. We have about 30 minutes for Q&A, so let's get right into it. Maybe some research disclaimers. If any questions, please reach out to your salesperson or morgan stanley.com/ researchd isclosures. So let's start. It's been a turbulent year for the life science end market, and we've had some guidance revisions across the sector. Maybe if you can start with giving us a bit of a brief of your third quarter results and your updated guidance following that.
Sure. Hello, everyone. Gerald Herman, great to be here again in London. Yeah, we had a fairly mixed story for the third quarter. Probably the highlight was the order bookings performance for the third quarter of 2025. We posted a book-to-bill ratio of over one, which, given our revenue performance of over $860 million in the quarter, is pretty solid, especially under the current market dynamics. From an order perspective, we were pleased to see significant strength in the academic and government research area in orders, excluding the U.S. As some of you may know, the U.S. Academic and Government market for Bruker is only about 8% of our total revenue, so the remaining elements are global outside the U.S. So we were quite encouraged to see that the order performance was solid, particularly in the academic and government area ex U.S.
And beyond that, we also saw some strength in the biopharma area, and that was really encouraging for us. We'd seen two quarters in Q3 and Q4 of 2024, which were really quite encouraging in terms of order performance and biopharma. And then we had two quarters of pretty weak biopharma performance, I think generally related to some of the MFN issues in the pharma space, as well as tariffs, I think put a bit of an overhang in biopharma in those two quarters. So in the third quarter, seeing strength in biopharma was really quite encouraging for us, and I would say just generally we're continuing to see that momentum, if I may describe it as that, in the fourth quarter in biopharma globally, including the U.S.
In the other areas, our revenue performance was kind of flat on a reported level and down about 4.7% on a revenue perspective. Our EPS was well above expectations, actually. Our operating margin performance at 12.3% of operating margin was beyond what we expected to see, and our EPS performance was up from where we expected from a consensus perspective, but we are still sharply down. Our EPS at $0.45 was down about 25% on a year-over-year basis, so profitability is still challenged for us, I think fundamentally being driven by four primary areas: the weakness in academic and government in the U.S., the challenges we continue to see in China stimulus funding. There were delays in that area. We saw a little improvement in the third quarter, but still weak, I'd say, just from a year-over-year perspective.
And then tariffs continue to be a drag on our profitability, as well as foreign exchange. Some of you may know, our large footprint from a manufacturing and a headcount perspective is mostly European, so we have a pretty significant drag on earnings just related to foreign exchange translation. Actually, I was just discussing this with another investor earlier today. On a year-to-date basis, that drags about $0.09 on our EPS just on foreign exchange alone. So I think those elements for the third quarter sort of a mixed picture, but fundamentally very encouraged by the order performance that we saw.
Okay, fantastic. Let's unpack some of those comments to begin with. So let's start with biopharma. So how's market growth trending? How exposed are you to this segment? Where are we in the recovery path? And which areas of research are you seeing some green shoots or continued growth in?
Yeah, I think I'll start by saying just more broadly, our overall exposure to the biopharma market is between 15%-20%, depending on the quarter of our total revenue base. We're striving to drive more growth into that sector. We continue to feel strongly about the opportunities within biopharma. Despite some perhaps shakiness in the second and the third quarter in the biopharma revenue side, we continue to think that there's real growth opportunities there. I think most of our pharma business is in the large pharma space. We do have some healthy biotech-related activities, but I would say that's probably under 20% of our biopharma exposure just generally. So our focus is mostly on large pharma, and they are, generally speaking, a sizable consumer of most of our high-end innovative instruments. Most of you may be familiar with the timsTOF portfolio.
That's a product that's widely purchased in the biopharma space. Even our more recent introduction of the tims Omni product has been really well received by biopharma, even at the large pharma level, recently, even though we just introduced the product in June of 2025. I would say just more broadly, we're continuing to target biopharma with many of our instruments and our consumables and other solutions. As I said earlier, we think that this is a really attractive market for us, and we're somewhat underexposed relative to our peers in the space. Trending, I mentioned earlier, we saw good performance in the fourth quarter of 2024, weaker performance throughout much of 2025. It did appear as if CapEx spending in biopharma was being paused during the MFN discussions, I guess, with the Trump administration.
Our view at the moment is that it does appear as if most of the pharma overhang has been lifted, in the U.S. at least. And we see quite good traction in Japan, in China, and in Europe relative to biopharma. This has been really exciting in terms of some of our product introductions, but even our core product performance in those markets has been quite good. So I won't spend too much more time on this, but I think probably most investors understand that China is really pushing very hard now on the development of their own biopharma market. That's going to be a growth driver, certainly for the entire industry, but we think we're well positioned in the Chinese pharma marketplace for our instruments in particular.
There's still import-export challenges from time to time, but fundamentally, high-end instruments are also well recognized in China because there's not a lot of other players that can offer these types of research-related instruments for drug discovery and research elements.
As a follow-up to that comment, is the domestication or the nationalization of research budgets, a move of expansion of manufacturing R&D sites in the U.S. and/or China, is that a positive for Bruker or a negative for Bruker or a neutral?
I think it's pretty neutral. I mean, we're a global company, so wherever in the world those facilities are operating, whether they're being reshored back onto the U.S. or whether they're being moved to other places like China to develop in those markets, I mean, we're going to be there. Generally speaking, our instruments are, from an innovation perspective, unique, and I think that they'll continue to be required and needed by pharmaceutical companies as they start to develop new drugs, and for sure, that's true in China. We certainly see it in Japan, and we've seen it for years in Europe and continue to expect to see that in the U.S.
Okay. Let's move on to U.S. academia and government. So again, could you talk through how your portfolio is exposed to this funding? You mentioned, I think, 8% before. Assuming a flat NIH budget and no budget flash into the year end, what do you think the outlook for this segment could be like heading into 2026? And there's been a question from the market as to if government shutdowns have been operating for 43 days. Could we see 43 days of activity come back in December and January, or is this just lost activity and it starts to ramp up from here?
Yeah, it's difficult to say. I must say, for us, for those of you that follow Bruker, most of our order patterns take place in the last month of the quarter and generally in the last two weeks of that last month, so it's still a little early for us to call it. What I can tell you, I mean, I do think that at least what we've seen so far in the third quarter is encouraging for us, that we did see a bit of a spike that was perhaps related to funding that's cleared through with respect to the 2025 fiscal year for the U.S. government. And in 2026, the jury is still out. I think it's still early for us to call it. What I can say is there's some encouraging signs in U.S. academic and government.
I mean, it does appear as if there's a number of funding solutions outside of just the government side. There's a lot of collaboration going on now in research in the United States between, I think, the traditional academic institutions, research hospitals, as well as pharmaceutical companies. So one way or another, I think the research will hopefully sustain itself in the U.S. I would say just generally, our expectations with respect to 2026 are fairly muted in the U.S. We're looking at the other regions of the world to support our academic government research revenue profile for 2026.
We should note that if, in fact, Congress moves forward with funding in a more positive way, even if it was flat or slightly up, we have relatively easy comps against 2025 because this has been quite a weak year for us in terms of academic research revenue performance in 2025 for Bruker.
Where do you see the most opportunity outside of the U.S. for academic research spend?
Yeah, interestingly for me, I mean, Europe continues to be fairly strong. I'd say that's a sustainable area. We have a really strong, I would say our roots for Bruker are generally rooted in the European academic market, so that's going to be quite solid. I do think also Japan is now poised to take a different role in academic spending, particularly in chemical and in other physics-related areas. But I would also say some of the pharma markets in Japan are also kind of rebounding in a way that we haven't seen in multiple years. So Japan, just generally as a region, feels better to us than it did a year or so ago, and then, of course, China.
We have really good strength, I think, in China and our overall position with respect to our product portfolio in China, not just related to the timsTOF product, but I mean, I'm talking about molecular spectroscopy, X-ray, semiconductor, and certainly our NMR systems, I think, are unique in those markets.
Okay, fantastic. That's a great segue to my next question, which was on China. So I think you saw a sequential improvement in China in the third quarter. Just talk about what you're seeing on the ground by the different customer segments, what the net growth is going to be like for Bruker for China in 2025, and you're thinking about how this shapes your thinking for 2026.
Sure. So China continues to be a relatively important market for us right now. I'd say it represents about anywhere between 13%-15% of our total revenue base. We have seen declining revenue performance in China over the last year and a half. There's been a lot of talk, if I may say, about China stimulus. We had been expecting to see it. We know a number of our products, our solutions are connected to academic funding environments in China, including stimulus funding. We know specifically which projects they are, and we know that they have so far not yet been funded. So that's been going on for multiple quarters, I would say, might even say a year and a half. So I think our general position with respect to China is down, likely in the low single digits on a year-over-year basis from a revenue perspective.
I mean, we do expect orders when we saw a really solid order performance in the third quarter from China. Again, this is off of relatively weak comps now, and I would expect that to continue even into 2026. In the market segments, as I mentioned earlier, I think the China biopharma segment looks quite solid and likely robust into 2026. Industrial seems to be recovering. I would say the academic and research side, especially in physics, chemistry, and some of the other physical sciences, continues to be fairly solid, and I would expect it to improve in 2026. We also have some market dynamics in the semiconductor space in China. Despite some export or import restrictions into China, we are still performing pretty well in that market, and I would expect that to continue.
While there's been a lot of, I would say, disruption and maybe sometimes dysfunction within the U.S. activity, I would say China tends to be more stable and probably essentially after some weaker performance, starting to step it back up in 2026, so we're fairly optimistic that we'll show growth in China on a year-over-year basis, but again, off a fairly weak comp.
Great. Let's move on to the mass spec portfolio. So you announced two launches ahead of the ASMS this year, tims Omni, tims Metabo. Could you talk through the growth contribution you expect from this product in the coming year?
Yeah, interesting products. I mean, these are two relatively unique products in the marketplace. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, the tims Omni is a product that focuses on functionality of proteins, not just identification of them, so we think that this is an entirely different sort of market framework and pretty excited about the ability to introduce a product with that kind of innovation, and then the timsMetabo product is focused on metabolites and the ability to analyze and understand those. I think that's also a product that has some competition, but fundamentally, we think our innovation elements there are going to be superior. These products, which were introduced in June of 2025, I think are pretty remarkable. We've now received orders for both of those products, actually, in 2025, already in the third quarter, and we expect to see more in the fourth quarter.
It's unusual to see that kind of order activity in an early product launch, so we think both of these products are going to be sort of standout products in the portfolio over time, and most of you know we have in the main lane with respect to the timsTOF Ultra AIP system, which competes against the Thermo Fisher product. We continue to expect there to be some competition in that lane, but these other products really play in different lanes, and we expect to see a significant contribution from those. I would say where we are right now is the fourth quarter order performance. We'll see where that lands in a few weeks, and we'll talk more about this in February, but so far, very encouraged by what we have seen in terms of order performance.
The delivery on those products and revenue recognition will likely be at some point in Q2 or Q3 of 2026. And I think, generally speaking, the mass spec portfolio has been sort of one of our hot areas in terms of our overall revenue performance going forward. So don't expect that to change much. I expect these two products in particular will have a significant contribution to that in 2026 and beyond. But a very good start. I'd say good traction in the early stages.
Great. Let's move on to your molecular diagnostics acquisition, ELITechGroup. So you bought this in April 2024. You talked about $190 million of revenues or so for 2025, very nice installed base. You talk about what was the rationale behind the acquisition? What was the urgency for you to be present in that molecular diagnostics segment? And what specifically about that asset kind of attracted you to it?
Yeah, I think it's, first of all, a really unique profile. It's largely based in certain countries, in mid-sized hospitals in Europe, no presence in China, no presence, really material presence in the U.S. So fundamentally for us, it fit the profile. We have a large footprint in Europe, and we felt like we really could expand their coverage in Europe materially with our reach. And I think we're starting to prove that we can do that. I would say the attraction of this particular product, it's a sample to answer PCR-based technology, but it's got a very robust platform, and there's been multiple iterations on that platform. But we think that it fits really neatly with some of our complementary to some of the products that we were presenting, particularly around multiplex assay structures in this area.
It was truly complementary for Bruker because some of you may know we have a strong footing in our MALDI Biotyper business. We're probably the leading player in microbial identification, so we had microbial, we had fungal identification capabilities, but we really didn't have viral, and so getting a platform as robust as this together with the installed base for ELITechGroup, I think, was really meaningful for us. I think, generally speaking, when we look back on this, this is an example of an acquisition where we thought that there would be synergies. We've discovered really that the synergies are greater than what we thought, not only on the operating expense line, but more importantly, just from our ability to build out our molecular diagnostics business into what this will now be roughly a $500 million business for Bruker. I mean, that's a substantial play on a $3.5 billion revenue company.
And I have to say, quite honestly, one of the fundamental reasons for looking at an acquisition like this is Bruker needed more sustainable recurring revenue. We have a lot of exciting instruments. These tend to be high ASPs, sometimes a lumpier type of revenue profile. What you get in molecular diagnostics is an attractive, sustainable level of revenue performance over time. Once you have an installed base, and we have an installed base here of over 1,100 instruments, it's a recurring revenue stream. And certainly, as a CFO, I really like that stream. And you will see more attention paid by Bruker into the molecular diagnostics field going forward. It helps us from a cash flow perspective, and it helps us from a revenue stream perspective. So very much pleased with the performance of that acquisition thus far.
It's superseded our acquisition model at this stage, and we have really some exciting things which we will be announcing in due course around that platform as well.
Okay. I'm going to try and push for some of those announcements, but maybe just touch upon that a little bit more. So it's the BeGenius platform and the InGenius platform that it sells.
That's right.
Where has the, of the 1,100 or so placements so far, which settings has it resonated the most with? Reference labs, hospitals? What's the USP of that product as compared to some of the leading players or incumbents in the market, like the BioFire? And are you planning any? Does the achievement of that $500 million in sales require more geographical expansion into the U.S., menu expansions? Just talk through the longer-term growth drivers.
Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, fundamentally, the really important sort of selling proposition of this product is the platform itself is easy to use. It's got a very high accuracy rate. The cost elements are quite low. I mean, as you may know, the product initially was developed to focus on esoteric assays. So these are things like hospital-induced viral infections. These are items that are not typically called for through a Roche or an Abbott kind of framework. So these esoteric assays are really important in the longer scheme. So they're typically additive in the broader scheme. And of course, we have respiratory capabilities as well on this platform. So I think it's attractive because it has some of the out-of-the-box capabilities, but from an accuracy and cost perspective, it's really attractive. The target specifically for this is really mid-sized hospitals.
It's not targeting high-end, giant, high-volume hospitals, generally speaking. And these smaller mid-sized hospitals are really interested in instruments like this, and adding some further assays to it allows them to do their own testing within those hospitals without having to necessarily outsource this testing activity to the larger players. And I think it's a big step. It's a big step, especially from a geographic perspective for this particular business to focus on expansion in the European markets. Lots of mid-sized hospitals, especially in France, Germany, and in the northern European countries, those are important targets for this market. We've already introduced the product in there, and I think this is one of the reasons why we're starting to see some uptake in the number of installed units. And to your question of other geographic expansion, for sure, we have capabilities to introduce these systems into the U.S.
I do think there's a large number of mid-sized hospitals in the U.S. that would really benefit from these types of systems. So it's more of a niche-based product, but I do think it's got really wide-ranging capabilities, and we will be adding further assays onto it. And as I said, I think it's a really interesting complement to our MALDI Biotyper system, which is already installed in a number of facilities in Europe and in the U.S. So we already know those customers, those hospitals, and I think it's a really good complementary fit.
All right, so speaking of the Biotyper, so there's been a lot of talk around the Waters Corp to Becton, Dickinson merger. How should we think about the potential impact on your Biotyper partnership with BD, and what are some of the drivers of success for you and BD in this long, outstanding partnership that you think they would need to get right to succeed?
Yeah, look, first of all, I have to say we're delighted with the partnership arrangements we have with BD and with Beckman Coulter related to the distribution of the MALDI Biotyper. I mean, we have our own direct sales channel, and we do sell products through there, but we're very pleased with the indirect channels through these distributors. So I mean, we're not necessarily looking for or planning to disrupt that channel distribution to the extent that Waters Corp decides subsequent to the final closing of that transaction. If they decide to move away from that, that'd be disappointing. But of course, particularly in the U.S. and in other markets, we have direct channels that we can activate, and we will. Frankly, from a CFO perspective, it's a good thing. We have higher margins on the direct than we do on the indirect.
So I think that's not the end of the world. Wouldn't prefer that, quite frankly, because we like the distribution structure we already have, and they've been great partners with us historically. With respect to other instruments coming in, and there's been a lot of talk. I fielded a couple of questions on this a couple of weeks ago when I was in New York. Look, you don't build a MALDI Biotyper with 100 million microbial identifications annually overnight. I mean, it seems to me that if you want to go down that road, and many have tried, I might say, it's going to take years in order for you to do that and to do it successfully. And then you have to dislodge the existing installed base. So we're not overly concerned about that. I mean, as I've already said to you in multiple other areas, we're an innovation company.
So fundamentally, we're already innovating on the next generation of the MALDI Biotyper. We have over 7,000 installed base globally. So I mean, I would just say I think it's going to take a bit of time for someone to challenge that base.
Understood. Understood. Okay. We've got two minutes left. Maybe one on M&A. So you've been quite actively consolidating in the last two years, a lot of them bolt-ons. We've seen some high-profile, sizable transactions in the diagnostic space in the last month. Do you feel the need to participate, or what's the capital deployment optionality like for you in the coming year?
Yeah, so just publicly, I'll restate, we're on a deal diet, at least at the big deal level. Someone was saying yesterday, we still smell the bacon as we come through the area, so we're well aware of it. I do think there's some attractive assets out there, I need to say, and as I said earlier, clearly we are interested in the diagnostics field, and we'll continue to look at assets that make economic sense for us. What I can say is just generally, some of you have already heard this, but from a capital deployment perspective, our focus is principally on R&D and on our CapEx activities inside the company. We're doing some small tuck-ins from an M&A perspective, but those are not really, well, I like them, and they're complementary generally to what we're doing, and we did a couple in the mass spec area recently.
These are all good, but we're not talking about anything really giant or material. And I think our capital deployment strategy is going to be focusing on R&D and innovation and our capital spending to support that. And then after that, I mean, we have a debt paydown framework, which we've been following. We're trying to get down closer to a leverage ratio of 2.7. We're roughly at 3 at the moment. So we still have some work to do with respect to that. So I would not expect to see significant acquisition, large acquisition activity for some time until we have kind of hit those other checked those other boxes. That doesn't say we're not looking, and that doesn't mean that we won't be interested in something that is strategically important for us. But I would say in the short term, that's not our plan.
Fantastic. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Gerald, for being here.
Thank you very much. Pleasure. Thank you.