Good morning, and welcome to the Bio-Techne Earnings Conference Call for the second quarter of fiscal year 2022. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the call will be open for questions following management's prepared remarks. During our Q&A session, please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. I would now like to turn the call over to David Clair, Bio-Techne Senior Director, Investor Relations, and Corporate Development.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me this morning are Chuck Kummeth, Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Hippel, Chief Financial Officer of Bio-Techne. Before we begin, let me briefly cover our safe harbor statement. Some of the comments made during this conference call may be considered forward-looking statements, including beliefs and expectations about the company's future results, as well as the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations and financial results. The company's 10-K for fiscal year 2021 identifies certain factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements made during this call. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements because of any new information or future events or developments.
The 10-K, as well as the company's other SEC filings, are available on the company's website within its Investor Relations section. During the call, non-GAAP financial measures may be used to provide information pertinent to ongoing business performance. Tables reconciling these measures to most comparable GAAP measures are available in the company's press release issued earlier this morning on the Bio-Techne Corporation website at www.bio-techne.com. I will now turn the call over to Chuck.
Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our second quarter conference call. The Bio-Techne team once again executed our global growth strategy at a high level, continuing the momentum from last quarter and the last fiscal year. We crossed an important milestone during Q2 as our trailing twelve-month revenue exceeded $1 billion for the first time in the company's 44-year history. Our 17% second quarter organic growth rate reflects continued robust demand for our portfolio of high-quality products and unique analytical solutions, especially within the biopharma end user base. Within biopharma, our positioning with cell and gene therapy customers continues to accelerate, with this end market growing north of 80% and our GMP proteins growing over 180%.
Our portfolio of innovative reagents, tools, and solutions remain incredibly well-positioned to enable the biologics revolution currently underway as transformative technologies like cell and gene therapy, spatial biology, and genetic and proteomic biomarkers drive research discoveries, the emergence of transformative diagnostics and therapies, and ultimately impact better patient care and outcomes. I'm extremely proud of our team of scientists that continue to develop innovative technologies necessary to advance and enable next-generation diagnostics and therapeutics. This strong performance in Q2 is once again delivered with a focus on driving profitability as our adjusted operating margin increased 50 basis points sequentially to 38.3%.
While the demand for human capital remains high and the pace of our own hiring to meet current customer demand and support our future growth programs remains challenging, we continue to make progress in adding talented people to our organization at all levels and in each of our businesses. During the quarter, we filled several key open positions within our technical and commercial organizations. We are utilizing referral bonuses, career fairs, as well as leveraging industry awards like our recent recognition in Inc. magazine's inaugural list of Best Led Companies to attract and retain talent. At the most senior level in our company, I'm very pleased to have Will Geist and Brenda Everson join our leadership team. Will is our new President of Protein Sciences and most recently served as Chief Operating Officer for Quanterix.
Prior to that, Will held multiple leadership positions running large business units for Thermo Fisher Scientific. Will is transitioning into his new role from Dave Ensor, who will be retiring in Q3. Brenda is our new Senior Vice President of Human Resources with extensive experience successfully leading HR functions at large organizations, including 18 years at Apple. Brenda will be transitioning into her new role from Struan Robertson, who will also be retiring in Q3. The contributions that both Dave and Struan have made to the dynamic growth and culture of Bio-Techne over the past eight years have been immeasurable, and I wish them all the best in their retirement.
It is largely due to the legacy created by Dave, Struan, and the remainder of Bio-Techne's 2,700 strong employees that has enabled our company to attract such great talent to lead our businesses on to the next decade of success. Now, let's get to some of the specifics around Bio-Techne's spectacular business performance for the quarter, starting with our regions and end markets. We once again experienced global strength across the portfolio. China led all territories, where the team delivered yet another quarter of organic growth above 20%. Close behind was the U.S., with growth also north of 20%, and Europe was in the mid-teens. As I mentioned earlier, this growth was driven by a very strong biopharma market, as it has been for many quarters, and we don't see that momentum slowing down.
Similar to Q1, academic growth was significantly lower than biopharma, where Omicron-induced shutdowns occurred over the holidays and lack of funding clarity impacted larger bulk orders. However, our daily run rate reagent demand from academic customers was strong for most of the quarter, indicating a healthy underlying academic research environment. We anticipate this relative lull in academic growth will gradually accelerate the remainder of the calendar year as the Omicron peak subsides and a spending budget is finally passed in Congress. Now let's discuss performance of our growth platform, starting with Protein Sciences, where we delivered organic growth of 19% in the quarter.
As I mentioned in my opening comments, we continue to experience broad acceptance of our innovative tools, reagents, and analytical solutions to improve efficiencies within the cell and gene therapy workflow. During the quarter, we initiated commercial availability of GMP proteins manufactured in our state-of-the-art GMP protein manufacturing site and are now actively shipping to our customers from this facility. We will continue to expand the number of GMP proteins manufactured in this facility, focusing first on scaling the GMP proteins with the highest anticipated demand within our catalog of over 30 GMP proteins. However, our cell and gene therapy business extends far beyond GMP proteins and includes serum and media for cell growth, our non-viral gene editing technology, as well as our Cloudz polymer-based cell separation technology.
In addition to uptake with our core cell and gene therapy products, we are experiencing a halo effect on several other Bio-Techne product lines, including our proteomic analytical tools and spatial biology franchises. We also continue to explore external opportunities to expand our cell and gene therapy offering in addition to our organic efforts. In December, we struck an agreement with St. Paul, Minnesota-based Wilson Wolf for a future investment in eventual acquisition of this rapidly growing company. As background, Wilson Wolf manufactures a G-Rex product line, a leading single-use cell culture device, which has enjoyed rapid adoption and is quickly becoming the cell and gene therapy industry standard for bioreactors. Wilson Wolf is a very synergistic fit with Bio-Techne, with G-Rex cell culture devices requiring GMP proteins as a key input to scale immune cell growth.
Terms of the agreement include the right to make a 20% ownership investment upon Wilson Wolf reaching $92 million in trailing twelve-month revenue or $55 million in EBITDA. This is followed by an agreement to fully acquire the company upon achieving $226 million in revenue or $136 million in EBITDA for an additional $1 billion, representing a total acquisition price of $1.26 billion. If these milestones are not reached by the end of calendar year 2027, Bio-Techne has the right to purchase Wilson Wolf at a set multiple of 4.4x trailing twelve-month revenue. As a reminder, Wilson Wolf, along with Fresenius Kabi, are already Bio-Techne partners in a ScaleReady cell and gene therapy joint venture. Today, Wilson Wolf annualized revenue is greater than $50 million and growing rapidly.
We are looking forward to them hitting their milestones and eventually becoming official members of the Bio-Techne team. With all the excitement around cell and gene therapy opportunities, we haven't taken our eyes off the ball of the core of our company, RUO proteins and antibodies. Our core research-use-only protein and antibody businesses continue to perform extremely well, growing double digits in the quarter. Our broad catalog of RUO proteins is widely recognized as an industry-leading portfolio, with our R&D Systems brand delivering the highest level of quality, bioactivity, and lot-to-lot consistency. In fact, we created a category of research-use cytokines more than 35 years ago and have amassed a catalog of over 6,000 proteins over this time frame, including several hundred that are exclusive to Bio-Techne.
Our in-house expertise and broad offering in both proteins and antibodies creates opportunities for Bio-Techne to participate broadly in emerging applications, including high-throughput proteomics and the development of engineered proteins, and positions us to possibly expand into adjacent opportunities, including mRNA and plasmid DNA manufacturing. Moving on to our proteomic analytical tools, where the team once again delivered robust growth across our portfolio of novel instruments and leading immunoassay solutions. Our ProteinSimple branded instrument portfolio increased 25% as Biologics, Simple Western and Simple Plex all grew north of 20% in the quarter. Biologics once again led the way, growing over 30% year-over-year. Recall our Biologics instruments, namely our Maurice platform, enable the identification, purity testing, and charge analysis of proteins and bioprocessing.
Maurice is also gaining traction in cell and gene therapy applications, with its ability to characterize capsid proteins enabling AAV serotype identity and stability testing. Our fully automated Western blotting solution, Simple Western, continues to gain acceptance within the research community as its ability to convert the messy, cumbersome, and unreliable process of a manual Western blot into a three-hour, highly accurate push-button process and continues to resonate, particularly with our biopharma customers. Simple Western is also gaining significant traction for cell and gene therapy applications with stem cell therapy, regenerative medicine, gene-modified cell therapy, and gene therapies customers all using Simple Western for viral vector identification, purity testing, and empty versus full capsid detection. The recent launch of the Stellar NIR IR detection modules for our Jess Simple Western system is a great example of enhancements we continue to deliver on this platform.
Stellar fluorescence modules enable the detection of low abundance proteins and the multiplexing of multiple targets, including multicolor immunoassays alongside total protein staining within the same detection lane. Following the commercial availability of Stellar modules, Jess now offers low picogram sensitivity in both chemiluminescence and fluorescence channels. For Simple Plex for Ella, we are also experiencing increased demand in the cell and gene therapy applications, with the instrument increasingly being used to detect host cell-related impurities. The Ella assay development roadmap remains very full, with additional neurological biomarker, cell and gene therapy, bioprocessing, and immuno-oncology assays in the pipeline. Layer the untapped clinical opportunity onto this rich assay pipeline, and we believe Ella remains in the early stages of reaching its potential. Now let's discuss the diagnostics and genomics segment, where organic revenue increased 6% for the quarter.
Our spatial biology business, branded ACD, increased 10% in the quarter. While this growth is not up to our long-term expectations, it was a nice improvement over Q1, which was impacted by key open commercial positions, a higher exposure to a softer academic market, and a tougher year-over-year comp. All those same headwinds remain in Q2. However, we did make progress in filling some of the open commercial positions and expect for continued progress in growth rates as new commercial team members onboard and the academic environment improves. As a reminder, over recent quarters, we have expanded our spatial biology portfolio beyond RNAscope, adding kits for the visualization and quantification of DNA, microRNA, short RNA targets, as well as higher plexing RNA capabilities.
We are also very encouraged with the continued market traction we are experiencing with BaseScope, a kit for the detection of short RNA targets, 50 to 300 bases, enabling the detection of splice variants, circular RNA, and gene fusion. Our menu of probes is now greater than 50,000 targets over many species, and publications have almost crossed 5,500, demonstrating the growing interest in this platform. Cell and gene therapy has also been a new market for our spatial biology business, with ACD being used to track genes of interest in a cellular environment and determine the quantity of gene uptake in therapeutic cells. We recently announced a non-exclusive partnership with fellow spatial biology company, Akoya Biosciences, pairing our RNAscope HiPlex V2 assay for RNA imaging with Akoya's protein imaging assays to run on Akoya's PhenoCycler-Fusion system.
This single-cell spatial multi-omics workflow has the potential to accelerate scientific understanding of human health and complex diseases like cancer, unlock new biomarker diagnostic signatures, improve patient stratification, and ultimately improve treatment outcomes. We are excited about the automation of the RNAscope HiPlex V2 assay enabled by the Akoya partnership. Moving on to other parts of our diagnostics and genomics portfolio within our molecular diagnostics division. Our ExoDx prostate cancer test continued to make progress in the quarter as patients returning to their doctors for routine checkups or follow-ups led to a strong improvement in diagnostic testing volumes. Q2 test volumes for our ExoDx prostate cancer test returned to pre-pandemic volumes and have continued to increase year-over-year by strong double digits as we begin Q3.
In addition to the ExoDx prostate test, we continued to advance our pipeline of innovative exosome-based diagnostic tests, including our non-invasive kidney transplant rejection assay, ExoTRU Kidney. As a reminder, ExoTRU is a non-invasive, multi-gene, urine-based liquid biopsy assay that provides critical allograft health information to assist clinician decision-making in managing kidney transplant patients in optimizing patient care. We continue to pursue a dual pathway for the ExoTRU commercial launch, focusing on discussions with potential commercial partners and taking steps to prepare for potential commercialization on our own. With regards to the products from the legacy Asuragen business, our leading portfolio of genetic and oncology molecular diagnostic products, including our kits for FMR1 and BCR-ABL, continue to gain market traction. During the quarter, we strengthened our genetic kit offering with the launch of the AmplideX PCR/CE CFTR kit.
Cystic fibrosis is a life-limiting autosomal recessive disease caused by variants in the CFTR gene. This research use-only kit provides broader coverage of the diverse U.S. population than any other commercially available targeted CFTR testing assay. Finally, our diagnostics reagents business delivered its tenth consecutive quarter of growth, with organic revenue increasing in the upper single digits. The pandemic-related headwinds that impacted this business in recent quarters continue to diminish, and we are experiencing a re-acceleration in the chemistry, blood gas, and hematology control product lines. Improving doctor office visit trends and the resulting diagnostic test volumes, combined with new product launches and additional penetration within existing OEM customers, position this business for sustainable growth going forward
In conclusion, the favorable trends we experienced in recent quarters continued in our Q2 as execution from the global team, favorable end market conditions, and robust demand for our portfolio of proteomic research reagents, analytical tools, and molecular diagnostic products remain strong. Our cell and gene therapy initiatives are resonating with our biopharma customers, as increasing demand for our GMP proteins, cell culture, and media products are translating into demand across our portfolio, particularly for our ProteinSimple brand of proteomic analytical solutions. We have our sights firmly focused on hitting our $2 billion 2026 revenue target, and following the signing of the Wilson Wolf purchase agreement, I'm even more confident in our ability to deliver and potentially exceed this goal. With that, I'll hand the call over to Jim.
Thanks, Chuck. I will provide an overview of our Q2 fiscal 2022 financial performance for the total company, provide some additional details on the performance of each of our segments, and give some thoughts on the remainder of the fiscal year. Starting with the overall second quarter financial performance, adjusted EPS was a record $0.88 versus a $0.62 one year ago, an increase of 16% over last year. Foreign exchange negatively impacted EPS by $0.04. GAAP EPS for the quarter was a $1.94 compared to a $1.15 in the prior year. The biggest driver for the increase in GAAP EPS, other than from business operations, was unrealized gains on our investment in ChemoCentryx. Q2 revenue was $200.69 million, an increase of 20% year-over-year on a reported basis, and 17% on an organic basis.
Acquisitions contributed 3%, and foreign exchange translation had an immaterial impact to revenue growth. From a geographic perspective, we experienced a strong and balanced performance with China and the U.S. growing over 20% and EMEA increasing in the mid-teens for the quarter. The rest of the world grew in the upper single digits. By end market, biopharma remained very strong, growing 30%, while academia increased low single digits year over year. Moving on to the details of the P&L, total company adjusted gross margin was 72.3% in the quarter compared to 71.5% in the prior year. The increase was primarily driven by volume leverage and favorable segment mix.
Adjusted SG&A in Q2 was 26.5% of revenue compared to 25.2% in the prior year, while R&D expense in Q2 was 7.5% of revenue, in line with the prior year. The increase in SG&A and R&D was due to the acquisition of Asuragen in the fourth quarter of last year, as well as investments made to support our long-term strategic growth. The resulting adjusted operating margin for Q2 was 38.3%, a decrease of 50 basis points from the prior year period, but an increase of 50 basis points over Q1. Excluding the impact of the Asuragen acquisition made last April, adjusted operating margin was in line with the prior year.
Looking at our numbers below operating income, net interest expense in Q2 was $2.6 million, decreasing $0.8 million compared to the prior year. The decrease was due to a continued reduction of our bank debt. Our bank debt on the balance sheet as of the end of Q2 stood at $282.1 million. Other adjusted net operating expense was $1.9 million for the quarter compared to $1.3 million expense in the prior year, primarily reflecting the foreign exchange impacts related to our cash pooling arrangements. For GAAP reporting, other non-operating income includes unrealized gains from our investment in ChemoCentryx. For the non-GAAP P&L, our adjusted effective tax rate in Q2 was 21.4%.
Turning to cash flow and return of capital, $101 million of cash was generated from operations in the quarter compared to $89.3 million in the prior year quarter. In Q2, our net investment in capital expenditures was $10.2 million, and during Q2, we returned capital to shareholders by way of $41.3 million in stock buybacks and $12.6 million in dividends. We finished the quarter with 41.2 million average diluted shares outstanding. Our balance sheet finished Q2 in a very strong position with $279 million in cash and short-term available for sale investments, bringing our net debt position to near zero. Next, I'll discuss the performance of our reporting segment, starting with the Protein Sciences segment.
Q2 reported sales were $205 million, with reported and organic revenue both increasing 19% compared to the prior year. Within this segment, the strong growth was very broad-based in nearly all reagent, assay, and instrument platforms. As Chuck mentioned, cell and gene therapy increased almost 80%, including growth over 180% in our GMP protein products. While Biologics grew over 30%, Simple Western and Simple Plex both increased over 20%, and proteins and antibodies all grew low double digits. Operating margin for the Protein Sciences Segment was 45.5%, a decrease of 120 basis points year over year, due primarily to favorable volume leverage, more than offset by the timing of strategic investments to support future growth.
Turning to the Diagnostics and Genomics segment, Q2 reported sales were $64.5 million, with reported revenue increasing 23%. Organic growth for the segment was 7%, with acquisitions contributing another 16%. The diagnostics reagents business increased upper single digits, and the ACD branded spatial biology portfolio improved sequentially, achieving double-digit year-over-year growth in the quarter. For Exosome Diagnostics, revenue growth was hampered by the timing of companion diagnostic projects with Big Pharma, but importantly, prostate cancer test counts improved almost 30% compared to the prior year period, now surpassing pre-pandemic levels. We are encouraged with the volume trend and anticipate continued improvement as patients return to their physicians for checkups and our sales force gets more in-person interaction with the physician community. Moving on to the Diagnostics and Genomics segment operating margin.
At 16.9%, the segment's operating margin increased 140 basis points compared to the prior year. The increase reflects the favorable impact of volume leverage and product mix, partially offset by the impact of strategic investments to support future growth. In summary, our research-oriented end markets remain strong, and the diagnostics end market continues to improve. As our Q2 performance shows, our proteomic research reagents and analytic tools remain in high demand, and we are executing extremely well in serving these markets. Our comps become increasingly more challenging in the second half of this fiscal year as they reflect the massive rebound that occurred last year from the COVID lows the year before.
However, given our strong performance during the first half of our fiscal 2022, we have increasing confidence that we can achieve an overall organic growth rate in the mid-teens% for the full fiscal 2022. That concludes my prepared comments, and with that, I'll turn the call back over to Melissa to open the line for questions.
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. As a reminder, we ask that you each keep to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Puneet Souda with SVB Leerink. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Hi, Chuck, Jim, thanks for taking the question. First one, really, I think Jim already covered some of that as really mid-teens growth that you expect here for the year despite the tougher comps. I just wanted to clarify, Jim, on that, you know, op margin side, given the hiring that's been somewhat delayed, how should we account for hiring through the year and op margin performance throughout the year within this context?
We more or less expect the hiring to continue at the pace that it has been. How that translates into adjusted operating margin, you know, we said at the beginning of the year that we expected to end the year in Q4 at the same relative operating margin that we ended Q4 of last fiscal year. We still see that as being the case. That's really only about 50 basis points higher from where we ended Q2. We see a continued gradual pace towards that mark.
Got it. On, you know, on capital deployment, just wanted to understand, obviously, you have the new $400 million buyback that you placed, given, traditionally, Bio-Techne has prioritized growth M&A, and I think that continues to remain a priority, but just, trying to understand how are you balancing that with versus the buyback, if you could just, walk me through the puts and takes. Yeah, this year.
I'll take that, Puneet. Up to this point, you know, we've been doing buybacks for stock option dilution, which is minor. We've done 16, 17 acquisitions the last eight years, but we've never gone beyond 2x leverage. We've never been able to. We've never done well in the public auctions, and we tend to do them with things more private and which it tends to be much smaller. Currently, valuations still remain quite high, and they might be getting cheaper, but we'll wait a few months for things to settle until we even know that. To date, they're very high. We felt it was, given the status of our stock price, we feel very undervalued, and we thought it was probably appropriate, our board especially, to make that message.
Since we have an extra turn or turn and a half that we never use anyway. We've got, as Jim pointed out, we're net debt zero. It's time to act and do something here and, you know, put some leverage to work.
Got it. That's super helpful.
I wanna make
Um-
It's really important you guys understand that we're not changing our priority on our capital plan. It's still M&A. Us going to 3.5-4 times leverage is probably, you know, not highly likely. We've got room here. It's still number one, though.
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Chuck, a question that we've been getting from investors is about the overall demand in GMP proteins and the recent acquisition in the space. As you saw, there was an acquisition of GMP cytokine manufacturer by one of your larger peers. You know, given the valuation paid for that asset, it appears that the interest is gonna be likely going to be scaling of GMP proteins business and by that peer. Just wanted to understand how do you see your competitive position now in that market and the overall demand you're seeing in that market with potentially one competitor- scaling up as well? Thanks.
Well, we think we're years ahead, for starters. That entity hasn't been very up to date with their work, and we have hundreds of proteins they can't even make. We think over time, the drift in GMP proteins will be like the drift has been in our RUO proteins and towards quality, lot consistency, bioactivity, et cetera. I think we'll be uniquely positioned in, say, five, ten years to probably have, again, proteins that nobody else can even make, more than likely. We're gonna go well beyond the IL-10 and IL-15, we think, as this industry matures and, you know, people get smarter and use these proteins for different things. We just think that we're in the best position we have been.
We've been at this for four or five years now. I think the move with Wilson Wolf even more than strengthens that because we'll be able to position full solutions to the industry, bioreactors that have proteins already embedded sterilely. We're gonna have novel innovative concepts to actually improve the whole cell and gene therapy workflow. A new landlord for these guys is not gonna help them. They have no domain knowledge in this space to begin with. They all have money to help them with, but they're years behind us, we feel.
Got it. Okay. Super helpful. Congrats on the Wilson Wolf deal, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Dan Arias with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Chuck, on GMP proteins and to your last point on scaling there, I'm just curious how many proteins that you make are driving the bulk of the demand. Is there like an 80-20 rule that we should think about, or is it more diverse than that? relatedly, you know, when you think about what's important over the next 12 months or so for growth, is the more critical factor related to just scaling up the ones that you make now, or is it expanding the menu? I mean, I'm sure it's both, but I'm just sort of looking for-
Yeah.
Which one is a bigger lever on growth this year?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. It's a very good one. You know, we started out early trying to expand and have, you know, the largest breadth, catalog in GMP proteins. We went to beyond 50. We have now since moved that back to roughly 30, 35. There just isn't a lot of demand right now. It's a very embryonic, nascent industry. You're right, there's literally a 12 that are really being made and sold, and that's about it. We have got our first three totally launched in multiple lots, lot consistency verified, and in the middle of selling them and also having them, you know, audited by customers. These are the, you know, the IL-7, 10, 15. 2 is coming. We have a WENT coming soon.
We're gonna go after the first 12 or so in the first year or two year, probably. I doubt we'll ever scale, you know, across the board to 30, 40, 50+ for probably years to come. I doubt anyone will. It'll depend on how the industry, how that workflow matures and what they're looking for, I guess. The big deal for us, of course, and for everyone is how to make these beyond an RUO fashion, so in lots that are sizable. Then lot to lot consistency, which is, you know, near perfect. That's where the focus has been.
That's what we're good at at the RUO level, and we've been able to replicate that now at a, you know, an extreme multiple in lot size with this factory. That's what we're known for, and that's what we think is gonna differentiate us. So far, you know, the customer input and the audits have been Stellar. They're blown away, quite frankly, what they see for the ability of our quality and lot to lot consistency at the size of lots we can produce. They wanna be assured that as they come out of clinicals and they go into a therapeutic, that they, you know, they can buy, you know, millions of dollars of a single protein in a near perfect consistency. We're able to do that.
Yeah. Okay. Appreciate that. Then maybe just on ACD, can you just help us with how you see that business trending across the year? I mean, you had been pretty confident in a rebound last quarter, which I guess you saw a little bit of, but this quarter was slightly softer than what we were looking for, what I think you were looking for. Number one, how much of what you saw in the quarter was related to sales force versus market factors? Then two, can you maybe help us with a landing zone for growth this year?
Yeah.
Just given that at least in our model, this is kinda like one of the swing segments that
We were mid-single digits last quarter, and we're double digits, so we like the recovery, especially when you take into account that there was an Omicron factor. There is an academic tendency to this franchise. There's a lot of academic customers and that was softer. The comp on top of that is near 30%, and that's continuing for a while. As we go through the rest of this year, and then last, of course, is the sales force. Spatial biology, you know, is all the rage, right? We're the biggest business out there in it right now, so I guess we're the other up-and-comers' target.
We've had, especially since business is located in the Bay Area, we've got, you know, some attrition. I mentioned that last quarter. We've covered over half of that back. We're in pretty good shape now, and the results reflect that, especially when you have to take into account the comp and where academia is a little bit softer still. Others in that area have also mentioned the same kinds of market conditions. Throughout the rest of the year, we see improvements, continued improvements. You know, we still have always said, we've had brief periods of 20% and 30% growth. We've always said this is a 15%-20% grower for many years. We still stand by that.
I think we're on our way back to that and, we're not too worried to be honest. It's kind of on plan.
Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jacob Johnson with Stephens Inc. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good morning. Chuck, you know, a lot of focus on GMP proteins and understandably so. I think in your opening comments you mentioned serum and media as an opportunity and for the cell and gene therapy market. Are those candidates for GMP manufacturing one day? When could that occur?
We're working on expanding our Atlanta facility for BME right now. We have exploding growth there, primarily 'cause the market leader has kinda tripped recently, and so we're finding a lot of business. We're expanding on that now. Yeah, you know, regular GMP media we'll be putting into the current GMP factory now proteins. We're gonna probably do GMP antibodies and GMP media there. Probably in parallel, a little bit, some here, some at the headquarters, but over the next year we'll be getting all that online. We see that as a natural adjacency to GMP proteins and part of the workflow. We're being asked, customers are asking, "Why can't you do this too?
Got it.
We are selling some. It's just like we were doing GMP proteins the last few years. We're doing all this in our research facility in the kind of make do GMP type of quarters. We have to scale it though. The way to scale it is to put it in our GMP factory where we have the room.
Got it. That's helpful. Thanks for that, Chuck. Then maybe following up on Puneet's question on capital allocation. Chuck, I think you'd said at some point last year that at some point interest rates are going to rise and maybe multiples will come down and you would be ready to act. Obviously, we've seen some of this play out in the public markets. But do you think it's slowed through on the private side? Do you think you'll see more opportunities come to you as a result of this?
Do you think in terms of M&A?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, in terms of M&A.
I mean, I think every, you know, humans are human. Nobody's gonna take their current price of where it is today versus a month ago and say, "That's our value." I doubt anyone will, no matter what size of the company. Things have to settle out, and probably acquirers aren't gonna be that, you know, that mean anyway. They're probably gonna wait as well, knowing it's probably foolish to even try and just upset the target. You know, if interest rates go up, it affects your treasury yields, it affects the DCFs out there, the models, they all come down, ours too. If this is the new world that, you know, you're everyone's shaving 10 points off their multiple, then, you know, we'll deal with it.
We'll deal with it, you know, effectively like we always have. You know, during Trump's era there was 2.5% to 3% interest rates and we were carrying at times a 40x multiple. There's a flight to quality too. I mean, we're a company that makes money, double-digit growth, you know, stable unicorns. It's just, you know, we're hoping that, you know, that this will end up being a winner in all this when things do settle. Right now I think we're all still in a bit of a, don't catch a falling knife kinda scenario, right?
We know there's a lot of interest. We get a lot of reasons in our company for people to be interested, and we'll be ready to capitalize, and M&A as well. Believe me, I'm looking forward to acquiring things at a little better price tag as well. Jim, you want to add anything else?
Yeah. I think the only thing I would add would be that, you know, if anything it might do in the short term in terms of make the environment more favorable for M&A is, you know, one of our big competitors the past year and a half hasn't been other companies, it's been going IPO. This volatility that we're experiencing now, particularly with the-
Yeah
IPO market, might make owners think twice about that being a viable option and make, you know, a private deal more accessible.
To be honest, we've actually had some inbound inquiries from potential targets that said they were more interested in IPO-ing, and they've called back.
Got it. Perfect. Thanks Chuck. Thanks Jim.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Hey guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Chuck, maybe just to expand on some of the kind of demand questions earlier on things like GMP. You know, obviously people keep a pretty close eye on general biopharma funding and you kind of mentioned the IPO market, areas like that. Curious how you're feeling about kind of the sustainability of the demand. Obviously at your analyst day, you talked about a few years of really strong growth from some of those high growth, more biologic areas. Just curious if conversations have changed at all or you still feel really confident in the sustainability and strength from some of those markets
I feel better than ever. Can I say 180% growth one more time?
Yeah.
You know, we're killing it. We can't keep up, and we can't get this off the ground, you know, fast enough. We're being throttled actually. The most exciting thing you saw in the transcript. We put a lot of extra detail around the applications for cell and gene therapy from the rest of our portfolio all the way. We're finding all our instruments are being used. We're having an incredible growth. Biologics isn't supposed to be growing continually at 30%. We kept digging. Why is this happening? It's being used and spec'd in for cell and gene therapy applications, AAV purity and stuff.
On all three of our platforms are being spec'd into cell and gene therapy applications, going well beyond the TAMS that we were, you know, positioning these instruments for in the beginning. Yeah, we see this being a juggernaut for years. You know, our $2 billion, you know, target out there at 2026, the largest component of that was cell and gene therapy. Guess what? It's just gotten a lot bigger when you add Wilson Wolf revenue to it. You know, it's gonna be could be roughly, you know, half the company or more by then, which would take it well beyond $2 billion, too. Yeah, and the new things coming, we're definitely gonna do media. We're definitely doing antibodies.
We have more and more demand for antibodies that are being used in these areas as well. This halo effect is, you know, it's broad. It's because I think we did all the right things starting four years ago, you know, with doing more than a one-trick pony type of approach. You know, we have about 10 different products that can affect the workflow of cell and gene therapy. Then the things we couldn't get, you know, we created this JV to give us more power in the channel, and it's really working. You know, both those entities, Wilson Wolf and Fresenius are doing quite well.
Okay, that's helpful. Yeah, speaking maybe of sustainable growth, you know, China has been a great spot for you guys. Again, over 20% again this quarter in spite of maybe some minor dislocations, you know, with things like the rolling blackouts. Can you just talk about, you know, the strength there and then again, expectations for that to continue as we go throughout this year and even next one?
China's. Yeah, China's rinse and repeat. It was 22%, and it's gonna be there 2020-2025, in that range, we think for some time. We'll cross $100 million this year, which is great for our company and for the size we're at, but it's only $100 million in China. When we're, you know, when we're out there at $2 billion+ as a company, it's gonna be, you know, twice that or more. I see nothing stopping the growth of China. Unless if the entire country shuts down and locks up and stuff, there might be a momentary blip, but nothing is gonna change long term.
You know, geopolitical things too, it's just like before where, you know, with, you know, in the Trump era, all the product stoppages and stuff, you know, it didn't affect us. We're the only game in town. There aren't local suppliers there. So if they wanna do research in China, they're gonna have to buy our stuff. They knew that then. They'll know it continue going forward. So no issues.
Okay, that's helpful. Maybe just a quick last one on Exo. You mentioned prostate at pre-pandemic level volume. That's certainly encouraging. Can you just talk through, I guess, the catalyst set there over the next few quarters in terms of payers coming on board and continuing to ramp the reimbursement side?
Yeah
What we should keep an eye out for on Exo?
Yeah, sure. You know, we're something like 96 million lives total, and we're under a million for private payers, you know. We're continuing to grind away in private payers. We're seeing good growth. We've touched 3,500 or so urologists, of which about three-fourths are repeat purchasers. We're not even, you know, a third of the way through the domain of the doctors out there. It's a continual issue. We are now starting to ramp and go after. We haven't yet. We're seeing these results without still expanding our sales force. We're just starting to get to that now. We have, as you know, a new leadership, a new team in place with a surgeon, and it's already having an immediate effect.
You know, we got to get after it now putting more people on the street and going after more of these urologists. You know, they forget fast, and you've got to stay on them to even be repeat purchasers. We are now across 75,000 tests total sold. You know, it's not a surprise now. It's starting to become real, and we're seeing the growth for it. You know, we did have a little bit of a reversal with Omicron, and you know, we're not all the way back here with patients yet. It's coming though, and again, it's for sure a billion-dollar platform entirely. And then we're gonna do a combination of things ourselves. We're gonna have partnerships. Before anyone asks, you know, the ExoTRU program, we definitely are able to do it ourselves.
We're talking NGS now, but we are very, very close to a very, very good partnership. I actually feel very strong that we'll get it here. If we don't get that one, we've got one or two others waiting in the wings for a shot. A lot of interest in this platform and a lot of interest in the other things we have on the drawing board that are already validated assays, things in blood, as an example. It's coming.
This is the best quarter in well over a year for Exo.
All right. Thanks, Chuck. Look forward to some of those announcements.
Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Catherine Schulte with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. I guess first on your comments on the academic end market, can you just quantify the impact Omicron has had on customer activity levels and any regional differences that you're seeing there?
Yeah. I've got a very insightful question. It isn't. We've had our academic range from flat to double digit. It depends on the products. It depends on the regions. We have some academic accounts are fully funded. They're multi-year grants, and there's no issue. Some are not, and they're waiting on new grants. Some are pulling back because there's no budget yet, and they're being careful. We've got all these answers back from our field people 'cause we've dug in hard. The net-net of it all is roughly mid-single digits, maybe a little better than that, roughly like last quarter, but there was no doubt a significant impact from Omicron. They sent people home longer than the time period over Christmas, and they haven't come back yet. It's like our own company.
We brought people back, and we sent them all back home again. It's everywhere. We're not worried. It's coming great. This is on top of, you know, some regions that are pretty good, as well, and the overall macro environment looks good. The budget, you know, that was already passed in the House is 15%. You add $3 billion on top for the ARPA-H, and that's where you get the 21% number. It's gonna be something of a double digit. Double digit would be a great budget. You know, Congress a little late this year in getting stuff done, as we all know, and they've got to get it done. We hear it's a February deadline, but we'll see.
I think we'll start seeing an uptick in the academic going forward. Even so, we have, you know, worked hard in this company mitigating academic risk. It's way smaller than our biopharma segments now. With the results of biopharma, we are totally swamping out any effect from academia. This is by design. This is for this very reason. Going forward, we're not too concerned. It's gonna improve the rest of the year, academia, and hopefully their BA.2, you know, variant is not a big deal, and we will get back to normality here by summer, or at least get a few months off. I think you'll see quite a big snapback everywhere in academia, personally.
Okay. Got it. With Will taking over the Protein Sciences Segment, any changes in strategy or opportunities that you see there with the change in leadership?
Well, there's only one Dave Eansor, and he'll be sorely missed. You know, I won't miss the sparring with him. He's got an edge to him, as we all know. Everyone knows Dave. Will Geist comes with a great pedigree. He has very strong domain knowledge, if not stronger than Dave's, in biology. For us, that's pretty critical that our leadership here understands science, you know, all the way up and down. He's been here a few weeks. He's still residing in California. He's had a great start. You know, we had a long search. We spent a couple years looking for the right individual for Dave's retirement, and I think we found him.
All right. Great. Thank you.
He hasn't asked for any changes yet. It won't be long, though. He'll ask for something. They all do, so.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Nowak with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Good morning, everyone. On Wilson Wolf, I think we all understand how strong of a company that is, but I guess what risk do you see in that G-Rex bioreactor business from being the rocket ship that it could be? Just figuring out what could go wrong as you're on track to buy that business.
I think by far the biggest risk is, you've got John Wilson, who is more of a R&D scientist type of a KOL collaborator than an operations guy. You know, him not finding a partnership somewhere, getting beyond a $100 million. You know, these guys tend to run into trouble growing the companies beyond that level. They're right down the street. They're already integrated because of ScaleReady JV already. I've known him for over a decade, and tried buying him first time when I was at Thermo Fisher 14 years ago. We've been friends ever since. I think this thing is with a customer base of 800, he has, I think, over 20 customers that have already over $1 million annual purchases.
There isn't anything out there even remotely close to his level of clinical integration, I don't think, anywhere from anybody. This is the de facto standard of the future. Are there new ways to do this? Are there gonna be copycats? Are there gonna be people doing crazy new things with bags and stuff? Sure. The beautiful thing about G-Rex in that, you know, it's the way it works, and it's hard walled surface, you know. It's really gentle on T cells, and NK cells like it. There are a lot of people chasing this technology with bioreactors that simply aren't going to work very well for T cells and for NK cells, just fact being. John learned this years ago, and he's got a head start.
We're not gonna let him fail, for sure. It's a marvelous business. It's growing like crazy. He's got a great team. They work with our great team here, and I've been waiting years for this, to be honest. We're ecstatic.
Yeah. No, it's great. Just going back to China, saw the Eminence impairment in the P&L. Just curious what happened there if that impacts China on a go forward or at least in the next couple quarters.
Well, you know, it's China. We have a lot of cash in China. We took a swing, and we know media is gonna be big. We looked at two other entities, and we walked away from. We didn't think the management was stable. We picked this one. Guess what? The management wasn't stable. It's at a point where we definitely gotta do the write down. We got it more than covered. It's really immaterial. It's not all a loss. There's liquidation. There's assets. We got a nice spot in the Suzhou Industrial Park there.
There's ways to regroup, but at this point, all we can really say is that we're just taking the next step of the responsible thing we need to do with the impairment, and then we'll go from there and let you know more later if we, as we, see what our options are with that small asset.
Okay.
As a reminder.
Thank you.
As a reminder, Alex, our results that we report for China don't include anything from Eminence.
Right.
It has an immaterial impact on our growth in China.
Got it. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Chuck.
Yep.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you'd like to join the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Ryskin with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, Chuck. Just following up on the Wilson Wolf. I mean, you know, in your due diligence, do you think that, you know, the current operations there, that they have the capacity and the, you know, kind of expertise to reach that $100 billion level?
Can I give you $1 for asking that? I can. You just wouldn't believe what he did to this site. He bought a 100,000 sq ft site, and it's. He bought over a year and a half of supplies early on for the supply chain risk. Even there all in, he decked out the facility for his people. It's beautiful, and you could still park a couple airliners in there with the empty space. It's just wonderful positioning. Yeah, we're not worried at all. I think, if I had to guess, I don't know for sure, I don't wanna get too crazy, but, it would scale many multiples of their current revenue rate, I'm sure.
Got it. Just, I guess, following up on, you know, a couple of the questions around GMP proteins. You know, are customers coming to you knowing exactly what they want, whether it's, you know, IL-2, IL-15 or, you know, what other IL protein there is?
Yes.
Is it more of a consultative process and, you know, given your experience in the industry and your work with other customers in this space, are you really driving customers to the, you know, the best protein for their process?
Yeah. Another great question. The answer is mixed here. One, we talked about, you know, we have a lot of interest, and a lot of our products are actually going into regenerative medicine as well as cell and gene therapy. That is a very collaborative effort with the customer at our site. We are doing other kinds of proteins as well. I mentioned, you know, WENT is one example. In terms of the classic, you know, T-cell type of work going on for clinicals, you know, we're not the first of the game. You got Miltenyi and CellGenix out there right now in most of the clinicals, right? We're coming up fast.
These customers come to us looking for equivalency, a U.S. supplier, R&D Systems brand, lot-to-lot consistency, and they wanna do equivalency testing. They already know what they want, and they're what you'd expect. They're the IL-2s, 7, 10s, 15s to start, of which and by the way, a learning for us, you know, you need like all three out of the four at least to really get serious. People seriously doing equivalency because no one's using just one. They're using two or three of these, and they don't wanna do also the effort on just one when they can't get all three. We're just getting started into that now because we really
We've been open for a few months, but now we're just at the point of working on our fourth one for inventory. We're at that level of now getting serious about equivalency. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Kummeth for any final comments.
Okay. Well, thanks all for attending the call. We really love being a billion-dollar company, and we're on our way to two, and we'll with a great quarter. We think we have some more ahead of us here, so we'll talk to you next quarter. Thanks. Bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.