Great. Welcome, everybody. I'm Matt Sykes. I run the Life Sciences tools and diagnostics team in New York. I have the pleasure of welcoming Roland Sackers, CFO of QIAGEN. Roland, thanks for being here.
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Maybe I thought just to set the stage a little bit, just talk about some of your recent performance. You announced a financing last night, just some of the recent updates, and then we can go into Q&A.
Yeah, we even got the financing done. But, but let's dig out a bit. Yeah, as, as you know, we, let's say had a actually good start into the year. We were able to beat actually in Q1 as well as in Q2, both our revenue as well as our EPS guidance for each quarter. We're able also then to update our guidance come to that as well, and increase now EPS all the way to $2.16 for the full year. We started, about $2.10 into moving into the year, so I think that's going quite well. But I do think what is probably more important for, for the investors is that we, still believe, and therefore also updated our guidance, that there's underlying acceleration in our industry.
It was quite obvious that the start for most Life Sciences tool companies into the year was a more challenging one. We were probably one of the few companies we actually had even a positive growth rate. Most companies were actually shrinking, which is quite natural post-COVID. The world looks somewhat different. You have to get COVID out of the numbers. Nevertheless, for the second part of the year, we are now expecting a more or less an underlying growth rate of around 5%, which I do think is a nice step up from the first six months. If you put it into perspective, that still the world is still a difficult one, but China is probably still for most companies a shrinking environment.
You clearly see that, particularly in U.S., with elections still coming up, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market, particularly when it comes to larger investments, buying instruments which are costing you easily six digits. I would say we expect a nice underlying improvement, and that is clearly driven that with the very simple reason that 85% of our business is a consumable business. As long as you go to work, you have to burn our consumables in the lab, and there's clearly a very healthy environment, and we also do that in a very profitable way. As I said, we are able to increase our EPS guidance for this year.
We also just recently had a Capital Markets Day where we laid out a midterm plan all the way up to 2028, where we expect a revenue CAGR of 7% and then a profitability goal of 31% of adjusted operating income margin by 2028, which is a significant improvement also compared to now, where again QIAGEN clearly is already I would say a company with an above-average profitability. Nevertheless, there's good reasons to believe, and happy to go through that today as well, that we're able to improve that more or less year over year. Last but not least, as you said, we clearly also did a refinancing more or less yesterday. Started with $450 million convertible note into the market.
We were able to upsize it to $500 million, coupon of 2.5%, a conversion premium of 44%. So I would say good and attractive terms for both, for the investors as well for us. Main purpose is we have to refinancing another $500 million, which will come due now, November this year, and therefore, I think, again, quite successful in terms of transactions. And I'm glad that we have that in brackets out of our way, and we can focus more on the underlying business again. But as I said, the consumable trends are very healthy.
Great. Maybe starting with that long-term guide you gave at the Capital Markets Day, maybe talk a little bit about your expectations at a segment level to drive that 7% top-line growth to 2028.
Yeah, ultimately, on the bigger picture, we are engaged in two business segments. One is Life Sciences academic environment, which is roughly half of our business, as is clinical business, which is also 50%. Within Life Sciences, we have three areas. One is academic, other is Pharma, and the third one is what we call Applied Testing, and the share is 20%-20%-10%. So it's 20% public funding, Academia, 20% is Pharma companies, 10% is applied human identification, some food testing, things like that. Overall, healthy market environment. What we noticed, of course, is that, particularly now, with in the U.S., I would say, at least a perception of uncertainty around public funding, bigger ticket items are harder to sell.
Clearly, also has to do with somewhat that we all had a fantastic run during COVID and selling instruments, not only in the clinical environment, but clearly also in some of the research facilities, and that is also something what you have to have in mind, but we clearly see that that is not a good environment right now if things cost more than $100,000. So good news for us, for QIAGEN, is more or less only two items. One is which we just stopped, is NeuMoDx, so that doesn't hurt us anymore, and the second topic is few instruments within sample preparations. All other new launches, like the QIAcuity, which is our digital PCR offering, QIAstat, which is our decentralized testing offerings, they are below around $30,000 items.
Here, we actually have a quite normalized instrumentation business, at least so far. The one thing that, of course, is also to notice, which is not helpful, is stimulus packages which get announced but not getting pushed forward. I think a good example is a bit like China. We all know that China has a couple of issues. One is a micro issue. GDP is also not helpful for healthcare in general. And of course, if there's an expectation out at some point of time there's a larger stimulus package coming, every company does exactly the same, waiting for the stimulus. Because why should I buy the instrument by myself if in whatever, three months, somebody else helps me to pay for that, right?
And then, of course, if it is not happening or not happening in scope that people expected, you have this kind of delay function as well. So I think there's also something what we're seeing right now, that there's some hope for incremental inflows, which might or might not happening. So people are in a bit in a wait and see mode. But again, nevertheless, we wouldn't increase our revenue guidance as its underlying consumer growth rate wouldn't be as healthy, and I think that's the one thing we shouldn't forget. We all sold in the last, I don't know, three years, typically instruments which we typically sold in a period of 5-7 years. And also, our customers try to catch up and utilize them, right?
Either by menu expansion or also Pharma companies still have quite a backlog in certain areas. So we see actually pulls from the instruments which are in the market actually doing quite well, and that is, again, helping us to give a positive momentum and even what we believe is expecting acceleration. On the clinical side, I would say, similar trends. Now, finally, COVID is out of the numbers. While there's still COVID, there's not much COVID testing anymore, but there's clearly a lot of respiratory going around. We have seen a larger RSV wave last year. We might have seen the CDC actually yesterday announced a new statement that they rather expect a more severe respiratory season this year, and in particular, driven by a couple of different items.
Symptomatic testing might stay on a high volume level as it is right now, because people also want to know, right? In the good old days, pre-COVID, people just stayed at home. Now you want to know what is the bug, and what does it mean to you, and that is on a high level.
But I would say also here, areas for us, which are also important, like our TB testing, are doing very well, because that is also important to understand on QIAGEN is significant to, significant parts of our growth are coming, not that we are entering new markets, that they're coming from that we are converting sometimes even 120-year-old technologies like TB, which is literally a 120-year-old skin test, with a new modern, in that case, IGRA technology, which just have better specificity or sensitivity terms. Take TB as an example. TB, still 65% of the overall market is a 120-year-old skin test, which specificity is more or less slightly better than flipping a coin. And you require second visits and whatever.
Having here a more reliable is very typically 99%+ reliable test, as we are offering it, has also significant scientific advantages, and that becomes now more and more accepted by the market.
Got it. Maybe, focusing on QIAcuity and QIAstat. In your longer term forecast, you show that those two products are gonna outgrow the market. Maybe just talk a little bit about sort of product development and market expansion, which you just kind of briefly touched on, but I want to dig a little bit deeper. Do you need to continue to develop new pillars as your existing ones mature, or can you evolve your existing product line into menu expansion, upgrades, adjacent markets, things like that?
I think if you look at the, we really go through them all four. And if you look on our pillars right now, and QIAcuity and QIAstat are two of them, they're all. You as a reporter would say that they're all in the first inning, right? We are. They're all early stage. We just brought the instruments to the market. And also here, the similar what I said, QIAcuity is our digital PCR offering, and digital PCR is an opportunity for our customers in Pharma, in research, and starting next year, end of this year, moving into next year, also on the clinical side, for two simple reasons. One, which is again, eating into the, as of today, $2.5 billion existing qPCR market.
You offer a new digital technology, where for similar price points, the scientist just gets more information. It's a bit like we are at least I'm old enough, that we still had a Nokia telephone, and it did the job, right? I could call somebody. Today, we all have the iPhones or whatever, and we barely use it for making calls. We still make calls, but we still can use it. The same here, right? You get many more information which are relevant for you as a scientist in a similar price point, in a similar time point, and that is, you will see how that rolls up the market.
The second opportunity, which is then eating into the, somewhat into the sequencing market, but at the same time is also driven by the sequencing market, is that with digital PCR, or take a Pharma company. Pharma company doing research, they typically know exactly this as a five, eight points where I, with my drug, I expect a change or I shouldn't see any change. The way they control that these days is with a lot of cases, with sequencing, but sequencing, as we all know, is still very expensive. Also literally it'll take you weeks from more or less preparation all the way to read out. If you do that with digital, you get it more or less for $100 plus in a day, so it has also a significant cost advantage.
So I would say there's just two very simple, scientifically based reasons why digital PCR will significantly change the landscape we're in, and QIAGEN, together with one other company, is the leader in that area. I would argue that we even have the best machines out there. Our disadvantage so far was that we had a limited menu, but we expanded it, particularly this year, quite well, and you have seen the growth rate on consumables run rate in the second quarter was quite good. I think it's a nice opportunity. QIAstat is slightly different. QIAstat is our machine for decentralized testing. Again, if you think on a hospital, you have, on the one hand side, a centralized lab.
That is when you take a sample, they send it in, and they tell you, "Call me in three days, and I tell you what you have." Or but of course, you have also needs on a weekend, you feel sick, your kid feels sick, you go to the emergency room, and you want to know it now. It might be a respiratory symptom, it might be a gastro symptom, and what these kind of machines do, they test at the same time for, in our case, up to twenty-two different pathogens, right? So you can see if it's thinking of respiratory, is it just the flu? Is it RSV? Is it COVID? Is it bird flu? Is it whatever, right? You have that in forty-five, sixty minutes, so you can wait for that. That is not standard care.
It's not even standard care in London, right? And if you leave the city, it looks very different. And what we see here is clearly that COVID changed the landscape. People want to know. Nobody of you, I assume, other than you, because you are scientists, knew about Ct values pre-COVID. Now you all know what it is and what it means. I hope so. I'm quite sure that you do. And that is exactly. People want to know what can we do? And that is driving the testing. And if you want to know, the doctor for sure wants to know. Our test has one advantage.
It's not only, and that is incredibly important now, moving into also compared to competitors, moving into other areas of diagnostics, for example, oncology, where not only can give you qualitative results, we also can give you quantitative results, so how much. And so that helps you in steering treatment decision even better. So I would assume that again is a market where we have also high double-digit growth rates, quarter over quarter. It's going to to continue just by the medical needs we're seeing right now.
Got it. And maybe turning to the most recent quarter, similar to peers across tools, instruments remain challenging. You talked about the price point, so you're less affected than perhaps some of your peers, but maybe just talk through your expectations for instruments in the back half of 2024 into 2025, and your ability to continue to offset instrument weakness with strong consumable demand.
Yeah.
Maybe, and maybe ask in a different way, as you look at that 2028 forecast of 7%, like, how do you think about consumables versus instruments, and is there some conservatism in how you're thinking about instruments as a part of that longer-term guide?
Our working assumption right now is that we do expect somewhat an improvement this year also for instrumentation, but not necessarily becoming positive all the way through. We had, like, - 6% ex-NeuMoDx instrument negative growth in the second quarter, and I would again, compared to others, still quite good. Nevertheless, it is something what we expect will probably take some time because we need again, or even more important, our customers needs visibility, and perception is sometimes even worse than reality. What I mean is, it is better for customers to know that my funding is 10% down than they don't know it, and it might be only 5% down, because they need an environment they can work on and work in.
That is, I think, in certain areas, particularly in the U.S., not given yet, and I think the election will clear a lot of that. Of course, one thing that is also very interesting is funding. The U.S. is typically bipartisan driven, right? So they always find a way, right? But right now, everything is overshadowed by the discussion, so on, who is the next president or whatever you call it. So there's a lot of areas which probably will we have to go through. Europe is a bit better. It's not an easy environment, but I would say visibility is somewhat better. China, we talked about.
Got it. And then maybe moving to QuantiFERON, TB offering remains a key topic of conversation for you and QIAGEN. Maybe talk through the two kind of elements. What is going to continue to drive that conversion from skin? You talked about the sensitivity, so clearly that's a reason, but given the share that skin has, there's clearly some reluctance to make that switch. So how. One, how do you drive that? And two, it's difficult to respond to competition that's not yet on the market. But as you think about years out from now, assuming it's a more competitive market, how does QIAGEN address that, and how do you compete and win?
Your first topic, again, we shouldn't forget all the time that it's not only true for TB testing, it's for the whole clinical environment. It's a sticky industry, right? And you still have this kind of environment where people believe I'm doing that since 10 years, and my patients are very happy, and I'm going to do that till retirement, right? And think on HPV testing, right? And still, the majority of women get testing for cervical cancer with a Pap test, where everybody knows it's again also in the 50%-60% of the right result, where an HPV test is in the 99%+ , same cost point, but it's just changing medical practice, right? And then you have situations like that.
Talking about HPV first thing, like that in Turkey, where it governmentally gets pushed, you have significant better healthcare than we have in Germany, where only the private insurance companies paying HPV test, the public not. Coming back to TB, I do think it's important to see that we are coming with the IGRA test now is the new standard. You see the number of papers, the number of references, the numbers of KOLs significantly accelerating, and you can see that also in our reflection of numbers. Again, you have seen last year we growing 20%, and so on. So you see there's it is always very difficult to gain the first 10%, 15% of market share because then you have to change that mindset.
Once you are, as we are now, let's say in the 20%+ market share, you see, okay, there's a new player in town, more or less.
Mm-hmm.
Everybody wants, then particularly the large labs offering that, and they make tons of money with that. We shouldn't forget that as well. Everybody else wants to offer it because it becomes also a competitive element. So I would say it will still take years, but the acceleration level is where we are, where we're getting to. We should not forget that it is always a competitive market. Everybody only thinks that there's only QIAGEN in the market, which is not true, right? Oxford, now Revvity, is in the market, as we are since two thousand and twelve. There was always a handful of Asian players in the market. bioMérieux was in the market, left the market, is now back into the market. So it is always a competitive environment.
But I think the way we stood and were able to get to this larger position we are having right now is by two reasons. For the one, we've never stood still in developing tests. I think we are now, you know, in the fourth generation, and we also were working on automated solutions, and here together with our very good partner, DiaSorin, I think have the leading platforms out there. We all know that there is a market which might attract more players going forward. In all fairness, we are aware of this on and off rumor since 2012 . There was always somebody coming or not.
Now it looks a bit more serious, so I would assume that we are seeing that, but at the same time, there's no regulatory or any other test going on because it is public, which we should be aware of, or we are aware of, so it is clearly still quite some time out there. Nevertheless, for us, what is important is that the customers believe and trust and like our products, and we were able to increase prices last year and this year, which I think is also confident for the quality and also the work flow we're offering, so we feel good about it.
Then maybe one more on TB. You just touched on a little bit at the level of automation, particularly versus one of your existing competitors right now. How important is that in the decision-making process for those customers? And two, how sticky is the customer once they get a QuantiFERON, you know, once they start doing that, is it very difficult to displace them?
I think it works, what I said before, works in both directions. If you want to get in, it takes you a long time, but once you're in, y ou are in for a long time, because the switching costs are quite high. 'Cause for a couple of reasons. First of all, you have to validate everything. As you know, we are in a regulated environment, and just the validation typically takes months and costs a lot of money, right? And so you only validate for something where you are quite sure that it has advantage, right? As in better reach, broader, wider impact, better automation. I'm quite sure that nobody else will have a better automation because we know which platforms are out there, and the DiaSorin platform is top-notch. There's no question. I think nobody's going to beat that.
I think it's also important to understand. I think that's one mistake also a lot of people who are just not as much in the details are doing is, QuantiFERON is also not a centralized product nor market, nor a customer group, right? It is, first of all, even a lab environment, very decentralized, so more or less every lab wants to offer it because it's also quite a profitable testing environment for the lab. So they don't necessarily like to sell it and send it to a centralized lab because we get, let's say, somewhere between $15-$30 a bit. Their reimbursement in U.S. is $150. So they can make good money with that, and why should I send it in? So it's a lot of labs offering that.
There's also a reason why not even all are not even close to half is automated, right? So there's also opportunities. But I think the other reason is also it is a very diverse customer segment. So yes, there is on the one hand side, there's labs, but then, of course, we have significant parts of our customers are immigration, immigration-driven testing, immigration officers, prisons, armies, congregated livings, healthcare workers. If you are a nurse or working in ER, back to school testing, very different environments. So you have to have specialized sales force. It took us ten years to have this dedicated sales reps. These are, in brackets, very different persons than the guys who are just going into the centralized lab and selling, "Okay, this is my portfolio of twenty different tests," including that, right? So again, it's not also an easy-to-enter market.
Got it. I'll ask one more question, and then I'll open it up to the audience in case there's any questions. But shifting to Sample Technologies, you know, how do you drive above market growth, given your large presence in the market today, and how are you positioned with some of the faster-growing areas like liquid biopsy, microbiome, areas like that?
It's clearly not easy if you are by, I don't know, 60%+ , but most analysts believe market leader to do much better. But I think we have a couple of opportunities coming up in the next two years, which thus far , even for us, are somewhat unique. While everybody, I guess, knows quite well that we have a, whatever, 60 %+ market share within overall sample prep, most people didn't realize that we are in certain parts of sample prep are not even present. Particularly, the high throughput market. QIAGEN never had any instrument addressing the high throughput market. We are going to enter that market. We never wanted to enter that market until we believed we have also an automated offerings, which is really top-notch, and we believe that is something that we are able to launch in 2026.
Nobody's questioning that we have some manual, right? So I think we have clearly the chemistry, which will outperform everybody, and it's nothing new, typically, what our sample prep technology does. But we were missing the automation on the high throughput. We have QIAsymphony for the mid-throughput, we have the QIAcubes and others for the low to mid-throughput. So that is an area where I think we just can gain. Now we'll see how good we do, but that is clearly helping us in incrementally growing the market.
There's the two other things which are, I think, will roll in over time is that clearly also with all the incremental COVID revenues, which we had, we had incremental money, which we can put into R&D, and we also were able to fund more efforts within sample prep development, and that will roll in. Which, by the way, also includes another new machine for QIAsymphony, our mid-throughput platform, which we are significantly updating, particularly also in terms of connection and workflow features, which also, again, should be incrementally helpful for us. So I think these are probably the two main points over the next two years. Again, it's not an easy target to be significantly better, but if we get that somewhere between 3% and 5% growth rate, that would be nice.
Got it. Any questions from the audience? Got plenty more, so don't worry about it.
I was feeling that.
Maybe just shifting to your bioinformatics business, QDI. It's becoming a fairly material presence within your revenues now, and it obviously is, what, I think, above 80% recurring or subscription-based model, so it's an attractive business for you. How do you expect to expand in the clinical market, and what level of impact should we expect moving forward in terms of top-line contribution related to QDI as that continues to expand?
Yeah, so far, I think it's, as you said, a nicely developing business. It's going through some changes. As you said, we are moving away from this licensed big-ticket item business through the small kind of a SaaS model, which CFO anywhere likes more because it's getting more predictable, and the margin for us is quite healthy. But it's going through the change. So again, we see what I said before for instruments also, like the big licensed sales, is also difficult with the Pharma guys because they have people like me and telling you, "Okay, wait six months, come back in six months," and so on.
But the one thing which is clearly the underlying challenge, which will remain, is that QIAGEN, as many other companies, did a good job in helping scientists of this world to extracting information. So we have tons of information, but the interpretation of that information is now the challenge.
And there we need the tools, all of bioinformatics, which also QIAGEN is providing, where, as you said, we are by far the number one player in that area. And given that the extraction, sequencing, or whatever we just mentioned or discussed before, is rather accelerating, and therefore more data is getting available, and areas like oncology and personalized medicine are also driving that kind of need. I'm quite positive in the midterm that it can takes a double-digit growth environment. I would expect some volatility in the short and midterm by this change of modeling from big license deal into more or less pay-per-extraction model, but I think that is rather temporary impact.
Got it. Maybe shifting to some of the financials. If we look at sort of. You've had a pretty impressive operating margin expansion during what I would consider to be a pretty challenging period. At the Capital Markets Day, you did a bridge chart with multiple factors that lead to that greater than 31% target. If we look at these factors, and if I can remember correctly, I think it's portfolio streamlining, process optimization, site network strategy, innovation. I know the answer is all of them, but it would be helpful if you could maybe sort of prioritize sort of what's sort of the low-hanging fruit, what are sort of the longer term goals, and what's the biggest lever, do you think, that margin expansion of those priorities that you guys have mentioned?
Hmm. Of course, there's never something low-hanging, right?
Yeah.
But, though I do think a couple of things are probably today a bit easier to judge and even the Capital Markets Day because we kicked it off, particularly the NeuMoDx investment was an important decision for QIAGEN. It was a platform which really had a good performance during COVID because it was a higher throughput platform. But as I said before, we also believe that for some time, selling this kind of machines gets more difficult, and therefore, we will also experience a loss-making situation by stopping that. I think that has a significant positive input to our profitability.
Unfortunately, it doesn't kick in immediately because as a reasonable company, you have to help customers transfer, and it takes us till mid of next year. So the positive impact will phase in over time, and we will get the full benefit probably in the second half of next year. Nevertheless, that is already all about, let's say, a hundred basis points, right? And so that's a big part of that. Second driver is clearly the still existing underutilization in our production environment, because we all had to build out a lot of capacity during COVID.
Mm.
And of course, we can utilize that for other products as well, but you have to go into the revenues. As we're going right now, it's happening, but it doesn't happen overnight. So I think that is also going to happen. Mixed short-term benefits also have been helpful. I would say R&D, 9%-10% is always where we feel quite comfortable on the ratio input versus output. And on the sales and marketing side, we have more or less everything in place, what we have to have. I'm quite sure that the 31% is not the last announcement from us on that aspect, all the way to 28%.
Got it. You touched on it for a second there. R&D, you've been very consistent at sort of the percentage of sales that you expect to have, around 10%. On the SG&A side, though, you have expanded some of your commercial footprint in certain areas. QIAcuity is one example that comes to mind. So how are you thinking about SG&A spend over the next few years, particularly as you're trying to move into some adjacent markets to expand the growth potential of some of your pillars? And where do you still need to increase your commercial presence, if at all?
I think the one thing, just to balance that, while we still do quite targeted investments, like on specialists and others, there's one other benefit we are not talking too much about, but that has significantly changed and still is changing with COVID world, which is selling B2B to our customers.
Okay.
Now, our online share is now probably, let's say, 60%+, and that for healthcare is quite good, and again have in mind that 85% of our revenues are recurring sales. To be honest, you don't need any sales rep once you bought our machine. Our new machines work a bit like in the good old days, where you had hotel mini-bars, where you could take something out. You take it out, and get a reorder, or get it rebuilt. So the way machines now work, right? So there's a lot of time which you set available for sales rep to do what is really important, to look for new customers to sell a new workflow. That's also the way how you sell has changed. You're not selling consumables anymore. You're not selling machines anymore. You sell integrated workflows.
So you have slightly different discussion with customers, which I think is helpful as well. But this allows you also to run more or less, your routine work gets less, but you can focus on this dedicated discussion with customers. Therefore, you have more focused people, like on TB, like on QIAcuity, or like on QIAstat, because you're, you discuss with them a particular, in brackets, problem.
You're describing sort of a more flexible capabilities when it comes to SG&A spend. I'm wondering, with NeuMoDx and the savings you're getting from that, and I know it's more next year back half, and then probably into 2026, but how are you thinking about sort of the ratio of keeping some for profitability contribution versus investing in new areas? Have you kind of targeted where those savings will go?
Yeah, and, as you know, I think the guidance we gave, we still kept clearly some flexibility for us.
Got it.
Right? And so I would say there's still, if there's opportunities arising on the R&D side or on specific marketing campaigns or whatever, we feel that we have the flexibility without any larger impact to our guidance. So I think that is not the case, and if we even don't need that, it's even better, right? So I would say right now, there wasn't any reason for us to be super aggressive or whatever, because we had, I would say, a decent track record over the last, more or less, three years, and also the start of the year was good enough.
Then just on capital deployment, of the 2028 top-line guide of at least $2 billion, how much of that is sort of dependent on future M&A, if at all? And then secondly, sort of what pockets of the business do you see an opportunity for inorganic investment? You've often commented about bolt-ons as sort of being the preferred strategy, but maybe just talk about if there's been any evolution in your thoughts on capital deployment.
Also here, as you said, we kept our capital allocation policies quite steady, right? We always look for organic opportunities. We of course like to do inorganic, smaller bolt-on deals as well. But I would say we also have a track record since 2012, which we now recently increased, and returning cash to shareholders with share buybacks or with synthetic share buybacks, where you actually, which is a Dutch thing, where you have actually the best of both. You're able to reduce the number of shares, but you still have it in most jurisdictions, tax-free cash out to shareholders, which we did already earlier last year. We just got another $300 million approved at the AGM. There, we said there's a $1 billion reserve for that all the way through 2028.
I think you see a combination of that. Why are we saying bolt-ons? Of course, if there's another latent TB kind of opportunity where we can acquire a business which has a nice growth, we are not going to shy away, right? I still recall, and when we did that in 2012, it was $20 million in revenues at that time. We paid $300 million. Everybody, like you, were hammering on us, and how can you pay $300 million for a business with $20 million revenues? So in the meantime, we have now close to $2.2 billion dollar accumulated revenues with high gross margins. Most people will argue it was a good deal. If we have that opportunity again, happy to do so.
But the likelihood is probably more on, well, those three smaller ones, while of course, we would review larger ones if they offer good returns as well.
Got it. We're out of time, but I do have one last question.
Sure.
Just sort of what do you feel is sort of the most underappreciated from investor perspective about QIAGEN? What would you like investors to kind of come away with?
I think it's the resilience of the portfolio. I know that right now there's a lot of focus on certain topics, but I think our real strength is that we actually have a really balanced footprint. Life Sciences, we are clinical, this was a 50/50 and it typically is, not everything always goes perfect, but one, it balanced out quite nicely. The same is true within the five pillars of growth. Yeah, as I was decentralized, centralized, we have a lot of consumables, 85%. The likelihood that we will grow this company, let's say north of 10%, is not high because of that.
But at the same time that we always do better than majority in the industry, I'm also quite sure, because it is a, I would say, a company with a strong brand reputation, high-quality products, and on top of that, we're also somewhat profitable.
Got it. Roland, thank you very much. Appreciate your time.
Oh, thank you, Matt.