Great. Welcome everyone. I'm Puneet Souda. I cover life science tools and diagnostics here at Leerink, and it's my pleasure to be hosting the Repligen team, CFO Jason Garland, and also Head of Investor Relations, Jacob Johnson joining us. Great to have you guys here in Miami. Good morning.
Thanks for having us, Puneet.
Yeah. Okay, excellent. Always exciting to talk about Repligen, number of things you have ongoing for you in the markets, strong clinical stage presence, clinical stage presence that you have and in commercial as well. Let me kick off on the 2026 guide. You framed it as, you know, 9%-13% organic growth rate. And then you pointed out the 500 basis points of performance framework relative to the bioprocessing end market, offset by 200 basis points of headwinds from gene therapy. Maybe just give us a view on that sort of 9%-13%. It was a bit wider than usual, historically, but could you walk us through the puts and takes, what it takes you to the higher end of that guide versus lower end?
What was the thinking behind it?
Yeah, no. We had a really strong 2025, so the momentum continues into 2026. You know, we've got a great order book that we ended as well with fourth quarter. I think to your point, the midpoint of that guide is right within the framework that we've been talking a lot about. I'm not sure your history, but we look back the last five years, and we've always we've given four points of range kind of coming out of the gate every year.
Mm-hmm.
We actually saw that then, you know, if you hover around that 11%, you know, ±2, it was a typical range that we've given on the organic side. I think to answer your question, if the pipeline of opportunities that we see continuing to grow is able to execute and convert within the year, that pushes us towards the higher end. The things that I'd say we're watching are, you know, certainly pharma digesting MFN, what that really looks like, FDA and approvals and how that plays out. Those are the things that we're watching that maybe leans us towards the low end.
Overall, we're really excited about the pipeline that we've got, the opportunities and again, well within this framework of being able to deliver above market growth.
You know, a couple of macro factors that you referenced as well, MFN policy. I think Olivier mentioned that.
Yeah.
Pharma CapEx timing, FDA biologics approvals as variables that are obviously out of your control.
Right.
Remind us, I mean, yes, pharma CapEx. I think CapEx is well understood, but generally speaking, biologics approvals were headed, you know, in somewhat a right direction, MFN policy somewhat behind. Just trying to understand sort of how, you know, how much of those factors are still, you know, playing a role in this overall guide.
Yeah, I mean, for 2026, the approvals, of course, probably have less of an impact or it's later in the year, right? I mean, we're not banking on the view from where we are today with approvals. It's more of an indicator of that overall market activity. I think it really comes back to the CapEx timing, right? Does that continue to improve from where it is today?
Mm-hmm.
That again helps us to go to that higher end of the range. You know, the approval side again takes a little bit longer to flow through.
Okay. Two things that are still, you know, external factors, you could say. One was a recent departure at Sarepta, and we're seeing, you know, obviously some of the more new modality-levered names in the therapeutics reacted to that yesterday. But just wondering if you had any sort of conversations, what this news means for you and your customers, at least in the new modality. Remind us, what's that level of exposure that you have there?
Yeah.
Yeah. Just in terms of new modality exposure in 2025, new modalities was about 16% of our revenue.
Mm-hmm.
That's, you know, cell therapy, where we saw strength last year, gene therapy, which, you know, we do have a headwind in there we've talked about.
Mm-hmm.
I think outside of that held up relatively well last year.
Right.
We did see some headwinds on the mRNA side of things. That's that piece of it. You know, the news you referenced, look, you know, we're not in the business of drug development and it's pretty recent. I think it's really too soon to say other than I think anything that reduces uncertainty for our customers is probably a net positive for us.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Got it. Another one that's obviously, you know, quite a few moving targets that all of us have been dealing with. With the conflict ongoing, there's a question of shipping in terms of cost of oil, you know, obviously oil.
Yeah.
price and inflationary pressures as a result of it. How does that impact shipping of instrumentation, consumables? Maybe just talk to us about that, because obviously you're shipping globally as well.
Yeah, no. First from an exposure within sales within the region, it's de minimis. Again, that doesn't really come into big play. You know, when we are shipping product from Europe that we manufacture there into our customer base in Asia, that's what typically might go through that region.
Mm-hmm.
Obviously we've spent the last several days, you know. I guess it's still been days now here.
Mm-hmm.
Seems like a long time, but finding routes around that. You're right, there may be some inflationary pressure on it, but nothing that we feel like is gonna be that meaningful that we need to call out. The team is all over it in terms of meeting the customer, you know, delivery commitments and their requests, as well as finding safe passage through to the region.
In terms of just on the 1Q guide, you indicated 1Q revenue should be down only low single digits sequentially versus 4Q, and that implied about a 10% organic growth at the start of the year. Maybe just talk to us in terms of your level of confidence in the strength of the 1Q exit run rate relative to the typical seasonality. With this conflict in mind, anything that we ought to consider in terms of shipping delays or booking of revenue sometimes as those products go out the door?
Yeah. Look, we think we're in great position in 1Q to then be able to deliver and establish a great step forward to meet our total year guidance. You know, we tried to indicate some of that on the call for earnings that the strong fourth quarter orders run rate you know translated to a steady, I'll say backlog, if you will, to execute in 1Q. We're executing that. Again, we're managing some of the puts and takes within the Middle East traffic. Overall I think everyone should know that we're expecting to start within that framework and put a good foot forward for the year.
Got it. Since you mentioned orders, I mean, maybe can you talk a little bit about the order book? Any sort of recent feedback that you're getting from the field in terms of just, you know, sort of again, orders, first and foremost, I mean, in mind for investors just given the.
Yeah. You know, I guess I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth because I've referenced orders even though I said we weren't gonna be really quantifying that anymore as well as book to bill. Again, we'll focus on revenue guidance as a way to indicate that performance. By all measures, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year, book to bill, you know, fourth quarter was a strong quarter for eight quarters.
Okay. You know, when I look at the cadence this year, first half being weaker versus second half, is that just primarily, you know, Sarepta headwind being sort of front loaded, or is there other considerations in that?
Yeah. I look at it, there's kind of two dynamics, Puneet. There's the, we talked about kinda 48% in the first half, 52% in the second, and that's really just more seasonality, right? Kind of very typical. You know, we tend to have a, you know, a stronger second half, particularly from the fourth quarter. That's very much in line.
Mm-hmm.
It's the year-over-year growth rates that is more impacted by the gene therapy. In other words, that's why we said the second half would be above the midpoint and the first half might be below. That is. That's where the timing of the gene therapy comes in. That was much more front-end loaded in 2025, so the year-over-year. On the order of magnitude of dollars, $48-$52, that's seasonality. That is not related to the gene therapy dynamics.
Got it.
Make sense?
Yeah. I'm going back and forth to a bit, but.
Yeah.
Just on the, you know, one of the comments which was interesting to me is, on the call you called out, you know, highest probability conversion funnel since 2022.
Yep.
Obviously strong order momentum there. It seems to imply, you know, book-to-bill being at one, but, you know, the question is, how sustainable is that? Maybe just talk to us a little bit about that conversion funnel. What is there? Is it just normalization, is there something more to this in terms of how the CDMOs are ordering, the timing, and overall maybe it's pharma? I'm more, again, looping in another question, which is there any early indication of any facility onshoring or anything going on on that front?
Overall, again, we've seen this strong growth in the funnel. We've talked about this as well, we're getting a lot more looks at RFPs for our downstream systems, for our fluid management portfolio. We're continuing to be brought into a lot more, you know, opportunities, which again helps to build that funnel. You know, I would say that we're having some onshoring dialogue, but in terms of it converting into, you know, opportunities or proposals, that's still to come. Again, that overall strength that we're seeing in the funnel isn't, you know, only a certain product, it's really across the board. I think again now the dynamic that we're all, you know, continuing to watch is what's the timing on how those convert, right?
That's where we still might still be waiting for RFP feedback. You know, we're not getting feedback to say that we've lost or they've moved on, but it's more of a kinda wait and see on some of the things. That's really for us, you know, the switch. It's the conversion on this big pipeline, but again, what that timing will be.
Okay. Just a related question on the capital equipment. Obviously, capital equipment demand has, you know, remained soft in 2025. Analytics placements were holding up better.
Yeah.
Maybe just talk to us about assumptions that you're embedding in terms of overall capital equipment recovery. A number of your products are, I mean, in a consumable way. They're, you know, utilized over a couple of months or a couple of weeks versus purely capital equipment. Maybe just help us define how large is sort of capital equipment business for you, and what does that, you know, what does that entail in terms of overall recovery this year?
Yeah. Maybe first on capital, right? Go back to 2025, you know, we wound up the year, you know, flat on capital equipment, and we think that was a pretty good outcome, you know, in the context of the industry, which at least from what we could see, I think peers were down on capital equipment for the full year, right?
Mm-hmm.
As you think about what we're assuming for 2026, you know, Olivier said, "Hey, we think low double-digit growth for capital equipment in 2026." I think there's some nuance there, right? You know, we talked about analytics growing, you know, that franchise growing 20%+ in 2026. You know, there's a piece of that that's the SoloVPE plus upgrade cycle. That's an opportunity that we think is still in front of us and will benefit us in 2026. The other piece would be we think, you know, growing contribution from the upstream analytics portfolio we bought last year. Analytics I think is a big piece of the capital growth in 2026.
I'd tell you there's also some other benefit from like we launched a new mixer last year. We talked about initial placements this year. I think, you know, there's probably a little bit of benefit from that. I think outside of that, you know, what we're looking for the balance of the capital equipment portfolio is, I would say, flat to kind of modest growth in 2026.
Okay. On the point of SoloVPE.
Mm-hmm.
You know, wondering if you can. That's a unique innovative product. You have a unique position there. There's a broad applicability of such a product in the marketplace in bioprocessing. Maybe just give us a view into how large is the installed base, timing of how this installs, and how long could that take, overall the adoption replacement cycle?
Yeah. I'd say there's, I think, 2,500 units installed base.
Mm-hmm.
1,500 of those are maybe five years or older, I think is the rough number. That's really what we'd be going after, right? Those older units. We upgraded about a low single-digit % of those units in 2025.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think the goal is to probably do roughly double that, so call it mid-single digits, upgrading of that install base in 2026.
I think the other exciting thing about this is it's also kind of refocused us on the broader portfolio to understand where are there other upgrade cycles and opportunities that we have. You know, that's gonna be a major part of sort of our thinking on new releases and certainly into our long-term strategic planning as well. Like, how do we make this more of a muscle for us? Got it. Okay. Maybe just shifting a bit to the end market. You have CDMOs and biopharma versus emerging biotech. Wondering if you can, you know, if you can maybe give us sort of the state of the union right now that you're seeing across those three types of customer bases.
Yeah. I mean, I think we saw growth across all of them, at least in the back half of the year. I'd tell you like pharma and CDMO performance were remarkably consistent for most of the year. Q4 is a little bit different because CDMOs were lapping, I think, a 40% plus comp.
Mm-hmm.
It's a really difficult comp on the CDMO side of things last year. Good growth out of both those customer bases. I think it speaks to what we talked about last year is just the broad-based strength we saw across our portfolio and markets, customer base, et cetera. I think as you look at emerging biotech, we saw growth for the last three quarters of the year, which is an encouraging development. Obviously really good funding trends in 4Q and I think year to date on the biotech funding side of things. I think with that said, you, if you look at the dollar value of those emerging biotech, those revenues, we're still below where we were a couple years ago. That's where we don't believe we've really seen the benefit from funding yet.
Mm-hmm.
I think we'd like to see more concrete evidence of that before we say that customer base is completely back. Though, to be clear that they still grew, the last three quarters.
There's gonna be a natural lag in timing, right, between funding and when we might see an order and convert it to sales as well. I think we're still well within that range. It's a lot of really great signs and more momentum to come if that funding continues.
Historically speaking, I'm wondering if there's a timeline in which, you know, the clinical funding, which was pretty significant in the second half for the clinical stage companies, is still continuing, and how long does that take to trickle into equipment and
2-3 quarters, I think, on average.
Yeah. Exactly.
Okay.
For an order, and then, you know, whether you can then convert it, whether it's in the same quarter or the one after.
Yeah.
You're kind of that 9 months-12 months.
Got it. Okay. Maybe just wanted to touch on China. It's a smaller piece of your revenue, but it's something that, you know, Olivier has talked about quite a bit.
Yeah.
You're investing in China. Maybe just, you know, give us a bit about the landscape there, because I think after COVID, a number of local firms gained more prominence there. As you go back into it, how do you want to position into China? How do you take the share? How do you win in those accounts?
Yeah. It's an exciting market for us. Again, even though to your point, we've dropped as our total, you know, amount of sales, we now have guided and shared that in 2026 we'll be back to growth, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's at least that first pivot that we're making. To your point, we've recognized that how we operate and how we'll win in China is gonna be very different than maybe what we've done in the past. We've talked very, you know, frequently about this opportunity to find local partners in one way. Again, you know, our view isn't okay, we go in greenfield. It's how do we find the right local partners. We're still spending a lot of time vetting that, making sure that we've got the right folks to help us, both from a local, I'll say, manufacturing and supply chain capability as well as other market access. That will continue to be a focus for us.
You know, to your point, we've added a lot of new leaders within the Asia PAC region as well as in China specifically. We're even still getting some of that halo effect overall in the region. We still believe that we're under-indexed in Asia PAC as a total, you know, part of our sales percentage than, you know, we should be in the rest of the industry. We'll continue to really put a big priority there. You know, there are additional investments in 2026 for Asia PAC, but again, I don't wanna make it sound like, you know, we're out doubling, you know, the infrastructure, the resources. We're being selective and prioritized in that and again, finding the right way to find partners.
It's much more than a China story as well, right? It's South Korea, it's Japan, it's India, Singapore. Those are the other regions that we'll continue to grow and focus on.
Got it. Yeah, that's. Makes a ton of sense, just given the prominence of bioprocessing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Over there. You know, let me get to margins because, I mean, that's been quite a lot of discussions among investors on that. We fielded a lot of those questions as well. Maybe, you know, take a minute and tell us how we ought to, you know, think about the overall op margin expansion, not only this year but more longer term. What are the levers you can pull? You know, obviously, you know, there's a strong top line has to be strong and drive some of that, but pricing maybe on productivity, what are some of the things that you can do? I mean, obviously you're fiscal 2026, I think you're implying 120 basis points of gross margin, 150 basis points of, you know, EBIT margin.
That's right.
wondering what?
Number one, I just wanna make it clear where this is a priority for Olivier and I and the team, right? Margin expansion. I'm hopeful that everybody recognizes that we hit that commitment in 2025 with strong margin expansion, right? I know from a reported basis, it was lower, but if you take out the impact of M&A, which again, to us was a longer term investment on the technology and the product portfolio that we've been building, you take that out and even take out the tailwind from FX and on an organic basis, we were up 240 basis points of margin expansion for EBIT.
Again, very much in line to what we're committed to and kinda helping the say-do ratio on this one. To your point, we've guided another 150 basis points for 2026. I think you hit a lot of the pieces. I'll just add some color, right? At the gross margin level, there's some volume leverage, but the real volume leverage sits at the EBIT level, right? We're able to grow that top line and certainly manage our overall costs under that same growth. You get good volume leverage there. Price, to your point, will always be one of our top profitability increases. Again, low single digit price, but you know, we all love that 'cause it helps the top line grow and it falls through to the bottom line.
That will continue that play. But at the same time, that price has to more than offset the inflation that we have, you know, primarily in our compensation structure, right? Everyone comes in and we, you know, might have 3%-4% higher, you know, overall, you know, comp. You gotta offset that inflation, and if there's some overall inflation as well with our suppliers. Pricing has to be that lever to offset that, you know, completely and maybe even deliver some upside. To your point, productivity comes in, right? You know, the operating team has continued to build this muscle around, you know, day-to-day productivity. We call it our RPS system.
Also really thinking smartly and long-term about, you know, how do we optimize our footprint, how do we optimize our resources? That all falls through. We'll continue to just have incredible cost discipline and focus. I can tell you within my organization in finance, we're providing a lot more real-time visibility to spending, you know, across all the functions. We're also built out a, I'll say, a mindset and mechanisms to know, all right, to prevent us getting, you know, over our skis. Meaning if we aren't growing at the high end or whatever the rate, how do we dial things back so that we still deliver the margin expansion we can, and we have the mechanisms around that.
I think the last piece to the question is the framework over a longer period of time, right? It's really those same dynamics, you know, every year. We expect that we'll see more volume leverage, I'll say, in kinda 2028 and beyond, right? This year and maybe into next year, there's again, still strong volume leverage, but maybe we'll get more of that after we finish or I'll say get more focused on our fit for growth investments in 2026 and 2027.
You know, we've talked a lot about it, but we recognize that for us to be able to scale and grow and be, you know, double the size business over the next several years, that we need to do things in some way differently than we've done up to, you know, kinda life to date, if you will. That's infrastructure, that's having the right talent and organization, some of the IT systems, and that's where we're focused on investing over the next couple of years.
Maybe on that point of investments, I mean, maybe if I could take a bit of a leap here. A lot of these investments have to be done early on, and the benefits are more longer term.
Yes.
You know, as you look at the current, you know, the investments in IT products, you talked about executive team, Asia expansion, R&D, maybe just walk us through, you know, sort of how are you prioritizing these and, you know, how should we think about the investment sort of ramp? Does it increase into the back half of the year? You know, the benefits, you know, how should we think about the, you know, those benefits coming back to you and layering that in in 2027?
Yeah.
Potential timing of those.
I mean, we shared on the call that we would step up in first quarter on our operating expenses from Q4 and then be kinda flat to mild-
Yeah.
You know, mild, you know, or modest growth through the year. I mean, that is the timing. We're trying to, you know, you walk in again with some immediate increases due to primarily compensation increases and some other things that have now hit in first quarter. That's what we'll hit. Again, we're managing that step through the rest of the year in terms of how we effectively hire more resources and the timing of that. You know, to your point, those have to yield benefits. I mean, I'll say that again, some things are about preventing, you know, things breaking at the seams, right? There's an infrastructure and an execution that is required to deliver, you know, at the higher scales. You know, to me, the benefits come in our ability to gain volume leverage.
It's not a, oh, I add this $1 and I get $2, you know, a year later. It's a, I add that $1 and it's now created capacity for me to grow and grow, right? I think again, the good news is that the things we're doing now have a lot of legs and, you know, like runway in terms of the ability to scale beyond that. It's not a, oh, every year I need to do that again, right?
Yeah.
That's where these investments come into play. I think again, we'll start to see some of that in 2027, but then even beyond that, I think we'll get more of that volume leverage. Again, still, you know, maintaining our this target of being kind of, we said 30% EBITDA, you know, call it 25% EBIT.
Mm-hmm.
You know, sort of margin rate or, you know, by the 2030 timeframe.
Okay.
Again, it's not a linear path.
Yeah. The, you know, despite the flat sequential that you talked about in terms of the modest, I mean, Q-over-Q in, through the year in OpEx, these are commitments that you are still I mean, again, this is an investment year-
Yes.
So to speak.
Yes.
Right?
Absolutely.
The benefits are still.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay.
Again, an investment year that still delivers at the midpoint 150 basis points of margin expansion, right? This isn't a one or the other. What we're doing is both at the same time.
Got it. Okay. Another question that we, you know, continue to get as, you know, with respect to ATF, it's been very successful product for you, getting now specd into commercial therapies. Maybe just wondering if there's any updates on the competitive front, and maybe just give us sort of, you know, how is the funnel looking there, the level of interest?
Look, we are the leader in perfusion technology, right? We have been for years, a decade or more. We have a ton of experience and when you look, you know, peel back the, you know, the curtains on all the expertise we've got and resources, we have been competing with TFF as an alternative that entire time, right? Nothing that's been, you know, kind of recently discussed would suggest it's not another version of a TFF sort of solution.
Mm-hmm.
By the way, we have our own TFF solution. Frankly, we're agnostic if our customers that we're supporting are, you know, a TFF house, then we'll provide a solution for them as well. In fact, we, you know, we find that in most cases, we win those opportunities as well. I think the other good, you know, I'll say point on this is, in addition to that leadership we have, we continue to invest.
Mm-hmm.
This isn't a oh we're gonna stand on our laurels in terms of hey we've been able to beat competition. We're always gonna be investing for that next gen and staying steps ahead. We feel great about the opportunity base. As you know, we've talked, it's not just a mAb story, it's a new modality as well. Cell therapy wins, so it's such a core important growth factory or growth, you know, factor for us within the in the organization.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Maybe just last one, if in the last minute that we have here. In capital deployment, you know, you had a 908 product, and then Rebel that you acquired and then your TangenX . I mean, maybe just give us a you know update any sort on the integration front, but more importantly, you know, how should we think about you know areas where you there's a better strategic fit to the current portfolio? Because portfolio is something Tony used to talk about. Obviously, Olivier is focused on expansion of the portfolio.
Yeah.
How should we think about the M&A?
First, just on the integrations, they're going incredibly well. I mean, again, you can see the new products that we're launching on the resin side that embed the TangenX technology. You know, we've talked a lot about how do we integrate the 908 portfolio into some of our upstream applications.
Mm-hmm.
Again, still progressing in that way and a lot of integration, you know, activities behind the scenes as well, all going well. We continue to focus on innovative, differentiated technologies. You know, we might fill some of the workflow gaps that we have, whether it's bioreactors, cell culture media, viral filtration, maybe a third place. Then we're also gonna be, you know, looking at other ways that we can provide solutions to customers as they look at their new modality, you know, pipeline as well. Again, with a priority on accretive top line, accretive bottom line, you know, and you'd love to see EPS kinda be immediately accretive or soon thereafter. And we also now have been playing.
We've been exploring and using this opportunity on minority investments as well, so we can stay connected. We did the Novasign partnership, so now we stay connected with the technology, but without some of the immediate dilution, so. Yeah, we're excited. It's, I think we've got a great year ahead of us and really strong pipeline and activity, and look forward to continue the dialogue.
All right, great. Well, Puneet, thanks very much.