Ladies and gentlemen, the program is about to begin. Reminder that you can submit questions at any time via the Ask Questions tab on the webcast page. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the program over to your host, Michael Ryskin. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks everyone for joining us. My name is Michael Ryskin. I'm on the B of A Life Science Tools, Diagnostics, and Animal Health team. Joining us for our next session is IDEXX Laboratories. With us, we're pleased to have Brian McKeon, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, and Tina Hunt, EVP of Strategy, Sector Development, and Global Ops. Brian, Tina, thanks so much for being here.
Good morning. Thanks for having us.
Morning.
Great. The IR team is with us as well, as you can tell. So we're gonna have the similar format to what we normally do. We'll do a fireside chat, Q&A, for about 40 minutes. And if anyone's got any questions, feel free to hit us on Bloomberg, email, or via the webcast portal, and we'll work those in. Brian, Tina, I guess just to kick things off, you know, our usual opening question is, you know, you recently reported Q4 results, and you initiated your 2024 guidance, about a month ago. Can you just quickly run through what you thought were sort of the key points to keep in mind about how 2023 wrapped up and how you see the coming year?
Happy to. Thanks, Mike. Just in terms of 2023, we had a solid finish to the year. Our fourth quarter, we had 8% overall organic growth, 10% growth in CAG diagnostic recurring revenues, which is about 80% of our overall revenues as a critical driver of our results. And, when you normalize for days' effects, we had strong growth across U.S. and international. You know, adding in the days' effects, about 10% U.S., 13% international in Q4. We actually had 4% volume growth in the quarter, both U.S. and international. That was the strongest quarter for the year on the volume front. So, you know, we felt good about that performance, and I think it reflects the ongoing progress we've had in driving good execution in the business, new business gains, sustaining high levels of customer retention.
We obviously had price realization and new product placements of instruments. We actually had 11% year-on-year growth in our overall premium instrument install base. And that's a key driver of our long-term strategic growth. So it helped us to finish what was a very good year for us. We had 9% organic growth overall, double-digit organic gains in CAG diagnostic recurring revenues across US and international markets. We had strong financial results. If we normalize out some of the discrete R&D expense compares and the, you know, the one-time impacts, it was 17% EPS growth on a comparable basis, about 110 basis points of margin improvement, normalized, very much in line with our long-term goals. So we felt very good about the execution delivery heading into 2024.
We have an outlook for sustained, strong growth and strong financial performance in 2024. We shared our full-year goals on our last earnings call. Just a reminder, we don't update our guidance. We're not confirming or updating guidance today, but we will give you an update on our next earnings. In terms of what we shared on the last call, we had an outlook for 7%-10% organic revenue growth, 7.5%-10.5% growth in CAG diagnostic recurring revenues. Really to understand that the midpoint of that view is 9% growth that basically reflects expectations for solid volume gains, similar to what we achieved in the second half of 2023 and about 5% net price improvement.
You know, we are still working through some headwinds on clinical visit gains and same-store sales growth. You know, our expectation, reflected in that midpoint view, was for roughly flat clinical visit growth post-Q1. We highlighted in January, there's some weather impacts that'll likely impact the Q1 results. But overall, I think we're well positioned to deliver solid top-line growth and continued margin improvement and strong EPS gains. So, that was reflected. And we're very excited about the innovation agenda that we're advancing this year that Tina can share more on. But you know, we're launching a major new platform later in 2024 and have a lot going on in the innovation front on menu expansion and on our software business.
We think we're really advancing key elements of the strategy that positions to sustain long-term growth, aligned with our goals.
Okay. Yeah, we'll definitely touch on new innovation and interview. There's a lot I wanna discuss there. First, I wanna start on some of the market dynamics you just talked about, Brian, in terms of what you saw in 2022 and 2023 and your expectations for 2024. So just on the clinic trends, I mean, that's an area where we're getting constant questions from investors. That's a major area of focus given how that's trended in the last couple of years. So you talked about that view of roughly flat clinic visits post-1Q. And again, 1Q has the weather impact. We saw it in January. We're seeing a little bit of it in February. What sort of pushed you to expect flat visits post-1Q? What are you—I mean, again, just thinking about visits—used to grow historically, declined in 2022 and 2023.
What was the thought process to say that flat is the appropriate mindset, you know, again, excluding weather?
Yeah. I think we you know, we're trying to calibrate and estimate, you know, what you know, some of the effects that we've been. The capacity dynamics at clinics. There was, we can spend some time talking about the context here, but there was a significant step up in the demand that went on, you know, during the pandemic. And I think we've got a combination of kinda clinics adapting to that new level of capacity as well as, you know, some macro dynamics, more so in our international regions. Maybe Tina can expand on some of the clinic visit dynamics.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just to kinda build on the context of in about 2%-3% annual clinical visit growth. And as we know, during the pandemic, there was a huge step up because of the increased pet population. There was an acceleration in the clinic visits. You know, we saw up to 5% annual increases in clinic visits. So now the clinics are operating off of that. They're building off of that much higher base. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. Also, that is out there. And, and what we've seen happen is that that demand has outpaced the current clinic models. And of course, the tight labor dynamics also played a role in here. So as we think about, you know, we know that clinics are, are hiring. That's what the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show, that they are hiring.
The piece that we're very focused on is the productivity element of it. When we talk to customers, 87% of clinics say that they see great opportunities for increasing productivity and efficiency within the clinics. We talked about the landmark study that we did last year, Finding the Time, that put forward a very data-driven, analytically robust framework that talked about the practice process, but more importantly, how they can enhance productivity looking through the dimensions of workflow, technology, and culture. We offered playbooks to in order for practices to start doing that. One thing we're seeing is that it was very well received by practices. Of course, it'll take time for them to really operationalize some of those learnings. This is where we continue to work with our customers with our high-touch commercial model.
You know, a thing that we really focus on is that deep partnership with customers and helping them work through that. And then the other thing I will say is the solutions that we bring to our customers. Yes, the diagnostic solutions, but also, we're very excited about addressing a huge need that customers had told us that they have with the launch of Vello, which is our customer pet parent engagement product deeply embedded within our PIM solutions. And that is being very well received by customers. We're very excited about it, and we think it's gonna really help with productivity. And I can talk more about what Vello will bring, Mike, you know, when we get a chance.
Yeah. That's, that's a good flag. We'll, we'll come back on that. And again, there's a couple of things you just flagged there, Tina, that I wanna follow up on. But first, maybe going back to something you were talking about, Brian, in terms of sort of the, the long-term view of the market, and, and Tina, you're a specialist as well, just talking about the comps and the expansion and the pet population that we saw in 2020, 2020, 2021. Is the view on the long term the same? And I guess the another way to phrase that is, you know, you've got your, your LRP, your 10%+ revenue growth that's been the model for years and years and years. And you, you know, you reiterate it every year, at your analyst day. But if I sort of break that apart, you know, there's a volume component.
There's a price component. There's an innovation component. There's a, you know, little bit of a share gain component. There's a productivity or, you know, the, the IDEXX benefit component. But volume has been weaker, right, in terms of vet visit trends. So longer term, do you see the market, you know, if it was declining in terms of visits the last couple of years, you're talking about a big flat this year. You know, I'm not asking for a view on 2025 vet visits, but just longer term, do you think that we're back to a 1%-2% vet visit market, that this is just a temporary, you know, maybe 3-4-year temporary, but still temporary dislocation in terms of visits?
Yeah. Let me set some context on the overall growth algorithm. I think Tina can help with the visit component. But to your point, we have a longer-term potential on our CAG Dx recurring of 11%-14%. If you take the U.S. view on that, we've assumed about 3% of that comes from visit expansion. We'll talk about that in a moment. I think the important thing to understand is, you know, the bigger part of our growth algorithm is elements that we can influence and execute against. So I think in terms of expanding utilization of diagnostics, new business gains, getting price realization relative to the value we're delivering, we've been executing very well. So I, you know, and that aspect of our growth algorithm is the same.
When you look at our international growth potential, which is even higher, we're counting on more growth potential from the expansion and adoption of our in-clinic platforms. And we've got great momentum on that front. We had 13% increases in our in-clinic install base internationally last year. We obviously have a new platform that we're an additive new platform launching this year and a new platform to come in the future. So, the key execution drivers we feel excellent about. I think the, you know, the dynamic that we've been working through growing off this higher demand base post-pandemic is the clinical visit trends. We do believe that that is going to come back over time, reflecting the demand in the market. Maybe you can talk about.
Yep. Yeah.
the demand drivers.
Yep. So, just building off of, you know, what Brian talked about, we have very high confidence in the resilience and attractiveness of this market. And we believe that it is highly underserved. And we will return to, you know, that about 3% clinic visit growth, you know, when it happens, you know, we'll have to see. But we do have faith in that. And a huge part of that is coming from the sector tailwinds that we are seeing. And we've talked about the sector tailwinds. But just to kind of frame them again, first off is you let's just look at the pet-human bond. It continues to strengthen. More importantly, the younger generations are adopting a lot of the pets, the increase in population that we see. In fact, millennials and Gen Z now own 45% of the dogs in the U.S.
And these populations are even more emotionally attached to their pets. Our research shows again and again that they're even more inclined to prioritize the healthcare of their pets even than the prior generations. It was always very high. But the younger generations are even more focused on the health of their pets, and they see the value in diagnostics. So there's very positive demographic trends that we see. And then you look at the increase in pet population. We talked about a 12% increase between 2020 and 2022 in the U.S. We saw similar increases globally. And so there's this higher pet population. I talked about our very exciting data that we're seeing that pets are living longer, you know, and increase in the lifespan of dogs, for about 12% or 1.4 years since 2010. And cats is 14% or 1.7 years. And so now, why does that matter?
It matters because our data shows and this data is from 9,000 practices in the U.S. that as pets age, they consume more medical services. Diagnostics, both as dollars and %, continues to grow. If you start thinking about all these tailwinds adding up to what we believe is huge long-term potential for our business.
Okay. That's helpful. And, Tina, actually, I wanna come back to something else you brought up in the previous answer. You talked about the, you know, the productivity the practice productivity index, things like that. You know, one thing we're always kinda debating is what's the right metric to track in terms of underlying health of the vet clinic, right? There's visits. And even visits itself can be broken down into wellness versus sick versus, you know, clinical and non-clinical. But there's also total practice revenue. So, you know, visits have been choppy or downright weak. For the most part, revenue's staying robust. And at the end of the day, you know, you've got two customers, right? You've got the clinic as a customer. You've got the pet parent as a as a secondary customer.
How do you think about that part of it, right? Like, does the fact that the clinic revenue remains strong is a little bit of an offset for the fact that, you know, even if visits are a little bit more challenged?
Yeah. The way we think about that is, and you're absolutely right. Clinic revenues are strong. You know, price has played a part in the clinic revenue strength. So we also see that when we partner with our customers, so they tend to grow faster. This is where part of the high-touch commercial model that we have comes into play. You know, all of our data shows that practices that have IDEXX products and services grow faster than the market. So we continue, we hope that this is going to continue. This is a deep partnership that we have with our customers.
Mike, I think it's a great point, which is that the clinics themselves, I think, are healthy. Diagnostics within the clinic is actually growing faster, right, than clinic revenue. So I think that reinforces the value that we bring in partnership with our customers. I think that's all positive as a backdrop. I think over the long term, for clinics to be healthy, volume will grow as well and needs to grow as well. And so I think what you're seeing is customers. And there's your increasingly sophisticated ownership of veterinary practices that, you know, a lot of capital that's come into the industry over time.
The focus is shifting towards organic growth and trying to find ways to drive demand and to align that with ways to manage productivity within the clinic so this what we see as underserved demand can be met. And so I think, you know, in the near term, clinics are quite healthy and able to realize value. I think over the long term, we're very optimistic. There is a, there are a lot of incentives to drive the volume growth and aligned with the opportunities that we see to improve pet healthcare globally.
I'll just quickly double-click into a point that Brian made. You know, as we focus on diagnostics, and clinics are increasingly recognizing that diagnostics is an important revenue generator for them, with 17% of the revenue coming from diagnostics, but more importantly, a profit center, with almost 30% of the clinic profit comes from diagnostics. So it's just a win-win. It's better medicine. You know, they're providing elevated standard of care. And economically, it is very attractive.
Okay. And then, I wanna, you know, cover a lot of ground we wanna cover. But I wanna pivot to the price and, you know, both the price you've taken in recent years and your price expectations for 2024 and how that feeds into the broader, you know, LRP. As you said, Brian, in your opening remarks, you know, you were able to achieve really favorable price contribution in terms of your total revenue growth in 2023. You're guiding for another solid year of 5% net price benefits in 2024. That's, you know, above your historical numbers that you were taking previously, and especially if you think about it on a multi-year basis.
You know, if you add up the price from 2021, 2022, you know, 2023, 2024, you know, you're getting to that point where it's almost, you know, 20% price in a matter of three years. So how do you think about price elasticity in this market? You know, what's been the feedback from vets, from the community? Is there a level where you start being uncomfortable that you're taking too much price?
Yeah. I'll answer part of the question, and then I'll hand it over to Brian. So, you know, we have taken high price increases over the last couple of years, reflective of the inflationary pressures that all of us saw. And our customers have been very understanding of that. They also are very comfortable that the pricing that we have is commensurate with the value that we deliver. They really understand and want the value that IDEXX brings to them, both through our innovations as well as the deep partnerships that we have with them. They rely on our commercial teams as, you know, an extended part of their team. So they see all of that value. They really appreciate our Technology for Life story as an example.
So, you know, if you think about some of our newer products that we have announced, I will take the expansion of our gold standard fecal antigen portfolio in our reference labs. We just added a very important new biomarker to that portfolio. And we're going to include that at no additional charge to customers. So this, this see the value that we bring. Catalyst is another example. We have, you know, 69,000 Catalyst customers out there today. And we have been increasing the menu and capabilities of that platform with 9 new menu additions over the last 10-12 years, as just an example. So customers see that. They see the integrated offering that we bring. They recognize that diagnostics is a performance category. And, you know, all of that really adds up to the pricing is being accepted by our customers.
Then the last thing I would say is the diagnostic spend is just really a small part of the overall, even the spend that a pet parent has on their pets.
Very good.
Yeah.
Yeah. Just to reinforce, we obviously don't control the end pricing that the vet clinic offers to the pet owner. And we're, as Tina pointed out, a small part of, you know, the relatively small part of the overall equation. So I think that there has been; it's been an inflationary environment. There have been higher price increases, I think, reflective of the cost of providing services and the enhanced value that vet clinics are delivering. I think that pet owners have consistently shown, you know, a strong commitment to pet healthcare and prioritize their pets' health over their own per, you know, all the research that we've seen. And, you know, so I think that that's something that, you know, we, it has been managed effectively within the sector.
I think we're, we're all aligned with trying to, to do the best we can to deliver good value and expand pet healthcare over time. Our, our longer-term outlook for things like pricing is, as you know, in our algorithm, is 2%-4%. So I think we're, we're you know, the near term is more reflective of the inflationary dynamics we've seen. But I think we'll, we'll continue to focus on delivering value and helping our customers to communicate the value they're delivering through our through our solutions, including software and pet owner communications. And, and, we think there's a, you know, a broad, broad, acceptance of, of the value that comes from pet healthcare. And hopefully, we can contribute to that.
As far as the mechanics of it, you know, I think a lot of it is tied to the, you know, IDEXX 360 program and sort of how vet pricing is incorporated in that. Could you just remind us of sort of again, the mechanics of the price increases, how they're incorporated every year, and how that comes up, you know, when the renegotiation comes up? When do those contracts roll over? Just to think about how it's passed on to the vet.
In most regions, we do a once-a-year communication of a list price change that gets reflected into the various, broad range of agreements we have with customers. Some customers may have discounts off of that list price, etc. But that's a pretty formulaic, you know, exercise, if you will. There is an element of the gross to net conversion that is just reflective of new business activity that we'll have through the year. Or it could be things like program spending on rapid assay initiatives or, you know, product-specific initiatives. You know, we do an estimate of what we think that will be over time.
The bigger part of the pricing is basically more of a formulaic communication within the context of, as you pointed out, what's increasingly become a, you know, a set of agreements with our customers where we're aligned with helping them to grow over the long term and delivering value to help support them.
Yeah. You know, because it's locked in, you normally have really good visibility on that. I mean, you called it with very high level of precision in 2022 and 2023, you know, almost quarterly. You know, not something, an area you're really gonna see surprises in over the course of the year, right?
We have a very good handle of where we think it'll land. Again, there can be some variability. Sometimes it could be new business-related, you know, things of that nature. But within the year, we feel that's a good estimate for us.
Okay. All right. And then, moving on to some of that innovation and new products, you talked about, a lot of the focus was on the inVue Dx. You talked about it. I believe the first time you mentioned it or the first time you got explicit about, you know, discussed it was the analyst day last year. And then, obviously, you unveiled it in January and gave us a lot more color. So it's been about a month and a half since that. You know, any early feedback from vets, any early conversations you can share? Obviously, you're not, you know, actually selling it until later this year. But sort of what's been the reception you've gotten since the VMX unveil?
Yeah. Let me, let me take that one, Mike. And let me just step back and frame this for any folks who may not be as familiar with it. So at a very high level, I'm going to just start with the ecosystem that we bring to our customers, which is our diagnostics and software ecosystem. And then from the diagnostics end of things, we have, of course, a multimodality offering within clinic and our reference labs. And now, if you double-click into the in-clinic side of things, we have a portfolio of analyzers that are in our suite with a Catalyst One that offers chemistry, 70,000 install base that I mentioned, ProCyte Dx and ProCyte One with hematology, which is about 40,000 install base, SediVue Dx, which is our urine sediment analyzer, and we're at above 17,000 install base for that. That's, like, broadly speaking, we have more.
But that's, broadly speaking, the premium offering that we have. Now, inVue Dx is adding into that ecosystem, and it is going to provide solution for new testing categories that we don't provide anything for today. So let me just talk about what those are. So the first one is ear cytology. Ear cytology is something that is very commonly done multiple times a day in a clinic today. One in every five pets comes in with an ear issue. There's about 30 million ear cytology cases out there. About 19 million of those that we know of, based on our data, clinics look at a slide in order to figure out what's going on with that. In order to do that, you know, they're gonna take the ear bud.
They're going to put it on a slide, fix and stain a slide, a whole process that takes about 10-20 minutes. So about 19 million of those are done in this very manual, subjective, technique-sensitive way. Only about 1 million are sent to reference labs. So we're going to provide a solution for them that's going to completely automate this. There's going to be no slide involved. It is going to be less than 1 minute of hands-on time. And they'll get results in 10 minutes with looking at cells in their native state. So more information, accurate, consistent with work really being taken out of it, as much as possible. So that's the ear cytology piece. The second piece that we are going to launch with is blood morphology. So I talked about ProCyte as a hematology analyzer that provides CBC results.
Best Medicine says that you should also look at the blood morphology for sick tests or anytime sick pets or anytime there's an abnormality. We see that in two-thirds of the case, when there's a CBC, there is an abnormality that suggests that blood morphology should be looked at. Today, that's done in that same labor-intensive slide processing and looking under the microscope that I talked about. Because it is so hard, clinics are not doing it as much. So it only gets done about 10% of the time today. We believe that there is an opportunity of 20 million blood morphology tests. So those are the two that we're going to launch with. And as you can imagine, the blood morphology, it's going to have a very high attach rate with our ProCyte analyzers and also opportunity to place the two together in the future.
The third one that we are not going to have at launch, but it falls under our Technology for Life approach. And we will, you know, we're working diligently on it to bring it up next, is the FNA. And that is when a pet comes in with a lump or bump, the veterinarian will stick a needle into the lump and try to figure out, is this cancerous? Is there something else going on? So really, really high value testing category that either they're doing it in clinic and trying to see to the extent they can tell under a microscope, or they're sending it out to the reference lab. So really a huge opportunity of solving some pretty serious pain points within a clinic and bringing new revenue streams to IDEXX. And now, as I talked about, these are going to be placed within our ecosystem.
It'll have a multiplier impact because it'll be placed with our very customer-friendly IDEXX 360 program that you referenced earlier. And it's going to have a multiplier impact on our overall business. So, Bria n, I don't know if you wanna add anything to that.
Yeah. I think Tina summarized it well. It's a new platform that really, you know, I know there's a lot of focus on the direct impacts. But I think what we're really excited about is the opportunity to open up dialogues with clinics about overall IDEXX solutions. We've seen that with things like ProCyte One, you know, SediVue Dx is things that help to accelerate, you know, discussions and plan to help us place more Catalysts and, you know, sell more lab services and just expand our overall business relationship. So, I know our sales force is really excited about this. And we're excited as well. And something we can build upon. And, as you know, we look forward to sharing information on an additional platform to come in the future to build on that track record.
Mike, to answer specifically your question, yes, we announced at VMX. Customers are so excited about it. I mean, we're hearing high level of interest from customers on the technology because it's really hit a huge pain point that they have.
Okay. That's, that's great. I appreciate all that color. A couple quick follow-ups on inVue. And then I've got a bunch of rapid-fire small ones to close in with at the end. So the two big questions we've got on it since the VMX announcement is, you know, you, you know, you, you talked about it in August last year, the analyst day. You unveiled it in January. But you're not fully shipping or launching it until December or not December, Q4 2024. I don't wanna put words in your mouth. But you said Q4 2024. So, why, why the delay? Why is it you know, what are you still working to optimize? It isn't on the manufacturing side. Is it, you know, the workflow? Is it, some of the analytics?
And then the other question I had was, both when you unveiled it and today, you kinda talked about the, the evolution of the inVue, right, that you're gonna have more capabilities coming online with fine-needle aspirate. You know, you talked about blood morphology, something that's not really done today. But it's something you think that vets will, will use over time. How do you see that, both of those factors, FNA and blood morphology, impacting the ramp? You know, is this you, you talked about, like, utilization for it, in terms of, consumable spend and how that, you know, correlates with SediVue. Is that is that, like, a year-three number? Is that a year-five number? You know, how will it take time for vets to adopt this and learn how to use it and really, you know, go from zero to full speed on it?
Yeah. I can answer the first part of your question, Mike. So, we have a very robust, tried-and-true process that we leverage for platform development. So there is the actual development that we do within IDEXX. But then also, we really test it in customer environments. And what we have learned, time and time again, is that the operating environment within clinics, the samples they see, how they're operated, can be very different. So, we're following that whole robust process, making sure that when we do start shipping the analyzer, it's going to be very high performance. It's going to delight customers in every way possible, not disrupt because we have any sort of issues. So it's a very extensive testing process that we go through. You know, I'll just cite ProCyte One as an example.
Right out the gate, it was just so well received because it was performing at such a high level. That's the kind of expectation that customers have of us. We don't wanna shortchange that in any way with a premature launch. That's part of what we're going through right now: just making sure that it's going to perform in it at very, very high levels in the clinic operating environment.
Mike, I just wanna ensure. I, I think we as you know, we, we've historically not talked about platform launches until they're ready for commercialization in part for this reason. And the dynamic was we, we, we made some investments, some in-licensing investments, last year related to this platform and another platform that, you know, we, we, we obviously felt the need to highlight, you know, given the materiality of it, you know, what, what we were investing in. So, we, we, we feel our, our launch is very much on track with what we had highlighted. And, you know, we're, we're as a company, I think we've got a, a great R&D team and operations team that has experience in developing, launching new platforms and executes really well.
I think we're really pleased with, you know, the progress that they made with inVue, excited about bringing into market and just building on that capability, which we think is unique, you know, in terms of what IDEXX brings to the market.
This is a capability that we have built over time, over decades. It's a very strong capability that we have. Then I'll just quickly address the front part of your question. Then, Brian, I'll let you take the ramp part. So, we are launching with both ear cytology and morphology. And, they're both very high volume, you know, frequently done tests, on a daily basis at a clinic. So customers are very open to having this solution in their practices, also knowing that over time, it's going to add other menus. So we see no issues that, you know, they're going to wait for any menu. They're going to; they're really valuing what we're going to bring. And as I said, it's high volume. But, Brian, do you wanna talk about the ramp?
Yeah. No, I think this is principally kind of a 2025+, you know, kind of effect, right? We'll start placing instruments in Q4. I think that what we've seen is that there's relatively quick adoption of menu. And, you know, you get customers who are excited about these solutions. You know, the first adopters are folks that are very interested in adding to their practice. We gave you a range on the consumable revenue that includes the three categories that we talked about. So obviously, that will build over time with, you know, as we add capability and fine-needle aspirate. And, but I think that's a reasonable estimate. And, if you go back in time, our SediVue Dx estimates were, you know, we delivered against those.
They're kind of, you know, in a similar kind of arrangement to what we've highlighted here. So we'll, we'll look forward to building on that. And, and this is a multi-year effect, as it has been for SediVue Dx. And, you know, we, we highlighted 20,000 placement opportunity. We look forward to, to marching towards that with our expanding global sales capability. I know they're, they're excited about having this new solution. So we look forward to reporting progress on that.
Okay. Sounds good. And then, a couple quick ones, somewhat one-off. Maybe I'll start with an innovation question. So in terms of other potential new products, not something you've discussed in the past, but maybe if you could talk about it qualitatively, we often get questions if there's an opportunity in diagnostics to complement some of the innovation we've seen on the therapeutic side of things. So I'll just say, for example, you know, Zoetis has Apoquel and Cytopoint out there for derm. And there's other derm products expected. There's been a lot of innovation in the pain side of things with Librela, for example, and Solensia. Have you looked at opportunities for more, like, companion diagnostics? And I mean companion as in companion pets.
But in terms of to complement the therapeutic sides out there to see if, you know, to test if the pet would respond to the drug or to test if there could be side effects, just sort of complement some of the innovation that's happened on the therapeutic side. Is that an opportunity down the road?
We do, I mean, most of the products that we bring to market are really based on the needs that our customers express. And we are tied in very, very closely with our customers on, you know, what are those pain points? What are some of those needs? And you're absolutely right. In order before they can treat, you have to diagnose. So we are constantly looking at what the opportunities are ahead of us.
Okay. All right. Fair enough. And then one more. And this is a little bit on the competition side of things. You know, we don't often talk about competition because we, we think the diagnostics market is, you know, fairly well entrenched and, relatively stable. But you did have a shakeup in the last year where Mars acquired Heska announced. Now, you know, they have the Heska point-of-care business. And they, they also own the VCA Antech reference lab business. You've got an existing contract that you had talked about previously with Banfield. How should we think about, you know, the renewal for that that's coming up in a couple years? And, you know, how, how do we think about, their portfolio where they have both clinics, with Banfield and VCA? They have reference lab. They have point-of-care. How does that interplay with your portfolio?
Yeah. I think just at a high level, it's, look, there's always been a very competitive sector. We actually see the increased level of investment in the sector as reflective of people's confidence in long-term growth opportunities. So I think they, you know, we're all committed to growing pet healthcare. And so I think having smart people thinking about how we do that is a good thing overall for sector development. It's not a new dynamic for us to have customers owning, you know, competitors and working through that. Our focus is on helping our customers go faster. We think we have great solutions, you know, $2 billion of cumulative R&D investment. I think we're in a great position to build on that progress and bring value.
You know, if we help our customers go faster, you know, we'll be successful as a company and the industry will be successful as well.
Okay. All right. I think that's actually a really nice, concluding remark to touch on, Brian. I think it's a good way to wrap it up. With that, unfortunately, we're out of time, everyone. We could keep going. There's a lot more to discuss. But, really wanna thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining, Brian and Tina. Everyone that's on the line, from the investor community, really appreciate your attention. We're around if there's any follow-ups. Talk to you soon, guys.
Thank you, Mike.
Thank.