Good morning, everyone. This is Rachel Vatnsdal from the Life Science Tools and Diagnostics team from JP Morgan. I'm joined today by Marc Casper, CEO of Thermo Fisher. Today will be a 40-minute presentation. We'll start off with 20-minute presentation with Marc, after that, we'll shift into Q&A. Just like all the other sessions that you've been to this week, we'll have mic runners throughout the room. If you do have a question, please raise your hand, but wait until you have a mic in your hand to ask your question. Otherwise, for those of you joining us online, feel free to answer a question via the webcast. With that, Marc, I'll let you take it away.
Good morning, everyone. It is great to be back in San Francisco. Rachel, thank you for having us. you know, I thought about this conference. It's just great to see so many people, and yesterday it was a great day with customers and so many familiar faces in the standing room only crowd here at the Westin. What I thought I would do is in every year past is remind you of our safe harbor and the use of non-GAAP financials. The reconciliation can be found in our website under the Investor Relations section. When I thought about this conference, I thought about 2022 and what the world was like for investors, not the most pleasant of years. I thought that I would maybe share some perspective before getting into the presentation.
This is, I think, my 15th JP Morgan conference. What I wanted to do is just kinda reflect a little bit, right? As I think about Thermo Fisher Scientific, the company is consistently focused on value creation for all of our stakeholders, right? We do that in a way that creates a sustainable strategy that allows us to be able to build value for the long term while delivering great short-term performance. As a company, we're proud of our track record of setting ambitious goals. I love getting questioned about are they too ambitious and then going out and consistently achieving them, and that's how we measure our success. When I think about the company, nobody has a crystal ball to what the future holds in terms of the macroeconomic environment, geopolitics and those things.
What I do know is that we're uniquely positioned to navigate whatever environment is thrown at us, because we have built over many years a deep, trusted partner status with our customers. They rely on us to help them navigate whatever the world is for them and make them successful in the environment. We have an experienced management team. We've seen a lot, and in each period of the different environments we've managed through, we've been able to exit those periods a stronger industry leader, and proud of what we've accomplished to set the company up for long-term success. We obviously have the benefits of our leading scale and depth of capabilities, which positions us well. The company, as you'll hear, has a proven growth strategy. It drives share gain. It's powered by our PPI Business System.
We have a disciplined capital deployment strategy that has created significant value for our shareholders over the years. We have an outstanding track record and a sustainable formula for success, right? When I think about the environment, our end markets are good, right? There's lots of challenges in the world, but when I think about it is we're gonna navigate them extraordinarily well, deliver results that all of us can be proud of and create value for our stakeholders. The presentation today, I'm gonna have in two parts. I'll refresh the company for you, just to give you some of the key facts, figures, and a little bit about our strategy. I'll update you on the non-financial goals of 2022, lay out the goals for 2023, and on February 1st, we'll give you all the numbers.
That's been the practice we've had for all of the years past because we'll have complete information and can answer all the questions at that point in time. Key takeaways from the presentation. 22 was awesome. We delivered an outstanding year, positioned the company very well. We serve good end markets. They're very attractive. The fundamentals of them are strong. Our track record is great, our outlook is strong, and our long-term outlook for growth is high single digits, right? That's what we signed up for in our long-term financial objectives, we feel confident in our ability to deliver that. We did a large acquisition in December of 2021, the acquisition of PPD. We've had a little over a year of ownership. It's been awesome.
The business is performing incredibly well. Synergies have been been realized, and the business is very well positioned, and we're excited by the contributions that it's making and how it's made the whole company stronger. We couldn't be more excited, which I think you can tell from me today, about what 2023 will bring to Thermo Fisher Scientific. The company, the world leader in serving science, right. We serve our customers. Our customers know us for our leading brands, which is at the top of the slide. Our industry-leading scale with over $40 billion of revenue, 125,000 awesome colleagues, and we spend on our product businesses about $1.5 billion on research and development. We have unmatched depth of capabilities, and we create value in a sustainable way. We have a positive societal impact.
We're focused on ESG priorities. I'll talk about some of those as well. All of this becomes a reality because of the strength of our PPI Business System. I'll talk about that also. All of our company's focus starts with our mission. We enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer, right? Sounds good. It's actually what we do, right? When you walk through our facilities, when you talk to our colleagues, they can talk for hours about how they've helped a client advance a breakthrough medicine, how they've helped a pediatrician with a new diagnostic, how they've brought something to a government regulator to ensure that the air that we breathe is clean or the food that we eat is safe.
All of those things are what inspires all of us to bring our very best every day. We have a rich set of opportunities to enable our customer success. Pharmaceutical and biotech is our largest end market, represents about 60% of our revenue. The other three end markets that we serve are all roughly the same size. Academic and government, where we push the frontiers of science. In diagnostics and healthcare, we enable more cost-effective diagnostics and better patient care. Industrial and applied, we facilitate both quality control as well as advancing research, particularly in the materials science applications. Our market is about $225 billion. Long-term market growth is 4%-6%, and our ability with that kind of market growth is for us to deliver 7%-9% or better growth. Our segments create value for one another.
They're related, they're linked, they're able to help our customers do things that nobody else can provide for them. Our Life Sciences Solutions business is a leading portfolio of life science research tools as well as BioProduction technologies. Our Analytical Instruments, we have leading technologies for solving tough analytical challenges. Specialty Diagnostics, improving patient care. In our largest segment, Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services, we have a leading CRO, CDMO, and extensive laboratory products capabilities that include our channel business. We do the clinical research, we do the development, we do the manufacturing, we equip the labs, basically take everything from a scientific idea all the way through an approved medicine for our clients. Our formula for success, right? It is well ingrained in the company. We've been executing it for a number of years, it's delivered really fantastic impact.
We have a proven growth strategy that drives share gain. We have a PPI Business System that enables outstanding execution, and we have a proven capital deployment strategy. I'll highlight each of them. What that formula allows for is consistently delivering exceptional financial performance. When you look first element, our share gain strategy. Right? How do we grow the business? A high level of commitment to high impact innovation. Each year, very strong relevant products to push science forward, enable the impossible that our customers couldn't have done in the past because of the technologies we bring forth. We leverage the benefits we have of the scale and the high growth in emerging markets. It creates a superior customer experience that allows us to drive share gain in those markets.
We have a unique value proposition, which I'll highlight as well, which has allowed us to build a unique trusted part-partner status with our customers. That combination of those three elements drives 7%-9% core organic growth in the long term. You know, obviously in 2022, our guidance is 12% core, so we don't limit ourselves at this rate, but that's a good rule of thumb with 4%-6% market growth that we can grow sustainably faster than that for the long term. The PPI Business System has been ingrained in the company for 20 years. We celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022. What that allows us is to engage every colleague, every day to find a better way every day.
It's the culture of the company that every colleague is empowered to make Thermo Fisher Scientific a better company. That improves our quality, it improves our productivity, it improves our customer allegiance. That methodology of improving the company and never being satisfied with the status quo allows us to accelerate organic growth, expand margins, and deliver great cash flow. The third element is our proven capital deployment strategy. The slide is one that we've used with the exact same words for many years, but it's a good reminder of what it is, right? It starts with from a strong cash flow generation and a very strong balance sheet. We focus primarily on M&A. Strengthen the company, leveraging our track record to be able to create value through that.
The fragmented industry that we serve, with us having about 20% total market share, gives us ample opportunity to deploy capital. We do return a lot of capital. Last year, we bought back over $3 billion worth of shares. We returned about half a billion dollars in dividends, and we consistently do that. We'll continue to be focused on both growing our dividend and returning capital through share buybacks. Every year it might mix a little bit. The mix might vary a little bit, but nonetheless, it's an important part of how we deploy capital. We have substantial firepower, right?
In our long-term model that we presented in May, we have about $50 billion of firepower over the next three years in terms of the ability to deploy capital and, we'll continue to be active, and generate strong returns for our shareholders. That formula has delivered great results and positions us to continue to deliver outstanding performance. When you look at it, we've delivered over the last 10-year period, 13% growth in revenue, 17% growth in adjusted EPS, 15% growth in free cash flow. You know, a very strong track record. You can cut the data in whatever years you want, and you get to be very similar results of just very strong financial performance, whether it's a five-year period, 10-year period, 20-year period, we have a demonstrated track record there. I'm super excited about what 2023 will hold.
ESG is ingrained in the company, right? It's a source of competitive differentiation. We're focused on it because it's the right way to run the company. It's the right way to have a sustainable long-term strategy for success. From an environmental perspective, we're focused on safeguarding the planet. We're focused on helping our customers achieve their sustainability goals. From a social perspective, we have a diverse and inclusive culture that brings out the best in our colleagues. We support our communities. We're active in our communities and volunteering. We're active in our communities through philanthropy. We're a good neighbor, in the many places we work around the world. We're focused on good governance. We have an awesome board.
They hold the management team accountable, and we report our results with transparency, that's so that we can hold ourselves accountable to great performance and that all of our shareholders and stakeholders can understand how we're performing. Let me turn to a year ago. We were together at the JPMorgan conference, I think virtually, but together nonetheless. These were the goals, exactly the slide from the presentation that we set out for 2022. Revenue growth, successfully integrate PPD, enable a societal response to the pandemic, execute on our ESG priorities, drive margins and below-the-line performance, and effectively deploy capital. Those are our goals. It was a great year. I'll hit some of the highlights, but really, when I look back at 22, one of our best years ever. Great product launches.
Right when I think about the growth strategy, I wanted to highlight just we increased our investment in R&D during the pandemic. We generated significant revenue from the pandemic response, and we were able to accelerate R&D, and we're seeing the benefits, right, of it. Whether it was in genetic analysis with our SeqStudio Flex, whether it was the products we launched in next-gen sequencing, whether it was in our Analytical Instruments business, whether it was chromatography or mass spectrometry, just great launches, as well as in Specialty Diagnostics and neurobioscience reagents.
Really strong year in 2022. We advanced our customer value proposition, right? You can see some of the headlines on the chart. One that I'm particularly proud of is with Moderna, right? They got to work with a number of players during the pandemic. They selected us for their pipeline of activities going forward, right? The activities of what's in their therapeutic pipeline, long-standing relationship, leveraging our capabilities in Greenville, North Carolina, to do the sterile fill finish activities for them going forward.
It's an example of customers recognizing the performance that they had seen from us. Many other highlights with universities around the world, collaborations to advance the value proposition that we have. The second expectation for 2022 was to deliver on PPD. We did a incredible job. I thank the team and all of the colleagues for their relentless focus on customer success, achieving the integration goals, and delivering great financial performance. The business is on track to deliver 14% core growth during the course of 2022, generate just under $7 billion of revenue, contribute over $2 to our adjusted earnings per share.
We were able to leverage those relationships to grow the business very strongly, create significant revenue synergies, and the integration now is largely complete. We will achieve the $175 million of synergies by year three, $100 million from cost, $75 million or greater from the operating income from the revenue synergies. Really, really strong performance on the PPD acquisition. PPI Business System. Well, you think about what year that was like in a way for the society broadly, for the economy broadly, what a nightmare, right? You think about it, right? Supply chain, labor shortages. You think about inflation, all these things that were new, right? You didn't hear us talk about that at all during the earnings calls.
The PPI Business System allowed us to effectively navigate that because of our supply chain resiliency and our ability to adjust to challenges, the ability to drive incremental cost management in a more inflationary environment, and to be able to appropriately price and use the analytics and the customer relationships we have to be able to navigate the inflationary environment very effectively while increasing our customer allegiance with our customers. ESG, a very strong year. We increased our carbon reduction goals for this decade to 50% reduction for Scope 1 and 2, and we're on track to achieve that. By next year, we will have 50% of our U.S. energy based on renewable sources, and we continue also to invest significantly in our colleagues and our communities.
From a colleague perspective, as you know, we were able to recognize the colleagues' contribution to our success through additional payments, because of that during the pandemic. We also were able to do payments to help offset the impacts of inflation in terms of one-time payments. It really is about creating a sustainable business model for the long term. Really a very strong year from an ESG perspective. We give ourselves a green check mark. Most importantly, all of that hard and smart work positions us with incredible momentum as we enter 2023. Our goals for the year, nothing here is gonna surprise you, right? We're gonna go out and gain share, right? That's our goal. That's how we measure success. Right? We're excited by it. We have momentum. We're gonna continue to do that.
We have a proven track record. We're gonna leverage our PPI Business System to effectively navigate the dynamic macro environment, right? Our end markets have been good. The economy has many risks. We continue to see strength. We'll navigate whether it's strong or different. We'll come through it with great results and well-positioned for the future. We'll continue to effectively execute our capital deployment strategy. We'll deliver the PPD synergies. We will successfully integrate The Binding Site, which we closed on January 3rd. I'll give you a highlight on that in a moment.
We'll continue to execute our M&A and return of capital strategy. We'll make progress on our ESG priorities as well. We look forward throughout the year to report the momentum we have across all of those dimensions. We acquired The Binding Site. We announced it at the beginning of the Q4. We closed it on January 3rd. It brings a leading company in Specialty Diagnostics for the management of blood cancers and immune system disorders. It's a great company with incredible technology that together will be able to continue to push the science and the medicine forward to be able to help those that are struggling with multiple myeloma.
It really is incredibly compelling. It'll contribute about $0.07 to our adjusted EPS this year, and we're excited that we're able to get started on the first business day of 2023 with this acquisition, and we'll update you on our progress during the course of the year. I'll end where I started with the key takeaways of the day. 2022 was special. We're even more excited about 2023. We're incredibly well-positioned industry leaders serving attractive markets. We've got a great financial track record and outlook. Our largest acquisition in the company's history is performing incredibly well. 2023 will be another special year for Thermo Fisher Scientific. Thank you for your support. We look forward to your questions.
Perfect. Thank you, Marc. As a reminder, everyone, if you do have a question, feel free to raise your hand, we have the mic runners around the room. Maybe just to kick it off here, you guys have had a really impressive year across the portfolio, but notably biopharma, PPD, also instrument strength. Can you just walk us through how were you able to do that despite all the macro noise? How much of it was market acceleration versus really true share gains from Thermo?
Yeah. I would start, Rachel, with the markets were good. Right? The markets were definitely strong, the industry benefited from that for sure. It's clear as you look at our results and the long-term targets and even the 12% guidance that we gave in Q3, we've set a higher bar in terms of what good looks like from our perspective versus others. I feel very good about that. When I look at biopharma, you know, it was clear that the value proposition that we have really resonated, right? In terms of you saw it in our PPD results, you saw it across the portfolio, very strong growth. The trusted partner status, it sounds good in words, but the reality is it's driving very meaningful share gain for the company.
The instruments business really benefited from the acceleration in R&D in 2020 and 2021. As we had some of the financial benefit of COVID, we reinvested in the business. You saw very strong product launches, and you saw in a good market set of conditions in the instrument businesses for the industry, we were able to deliver very strong growth.
Helpful. Then maybe just on the topic of biopharma, bioprocessing, destocking.
Mm-hmm.
It's been a dynamic that many of your peers have called out. Thermo so far hasn't really called out any of that softness.
Right.
that other players have been seeing from an orders perspective. Can you just walk us through why have those issues not translated to Thermo's portfolio? Is it, you know, your ability to have that services component, or what makes Thermo's portfolio more resilient when it comes to any of these stocking concerns that peers have called out?
I think when I look at BioProduction, right? I think it's always good to put things in context, right? It represents about 10% of our company's revenue. If you look back over the last, you know, 15 years, it would be our fastest-growing business on average, right? Very strong market. You know, in the good years, the challenging years, it typically is always in the same spot as being, you know, the fastest or one of the fastest-growing businesses. When I looked at last year, looked at the performance of the business, we were, you know, through the Q3. When I looked at it, if pharma and biotech, you know, was growing for us about 15%, right? For that whole end market, the BioProduction business was growing meaningfully faster than that, right?
We delivered very strong performance, and I feel very good about that. When I see a lot of the industry commentary, I think a lot of it has to do with COVID and what percent of a company's portfolio was COVID-related, right? You know, on a relative basis within BioProduction, it wasn't a very large % of our portfolio. I think a lot of the stocking dynamics is probably related to that. I'm sure there are customers that may have more inventory that they'll work down than they want, but we've continued to deliver very strong growth and feel good about the outlook.
Great, helpful. Maybe just sticking on that trend of pharma biotech. During your Analyst Day in May, you noted that you expect this end market to grow above that 7%-9% long-term growth that you've laid out. Can you just talk about your confidence in pharma and biotech today? Obviously, we've had some of the biotech funding concerns earlier in the year, and there's been, you know, broad discussion on is that going to slow the pipeline the next few years? Biosimilar is hitting the pipeline, also these weight loss drugs, Alzheimer's. Walk us through those puts and takes. Do you feel like the biopharma and pharma end market has really slowed down, or is it sped up, in your opinion?
Yeah. The end market has been very strong. While there's clearly lots of noise in the investment community, customer activity is very high, right? If I look at, you know, authorizations in our clinical research business, if I look at bookings, if I look at the pipeline of activity, if I just even think about what I'm hearing from customers in the meetings I have, you know, customers are advancing their pipelines. That's what they're focused on, right? The end market continues to be very strong.
You know, we saw certainly a period in 2020, 2021 where If you had a good PowerPoint presentation, you could get funding, right? I'm not sure that is, that's not necessarily the best environment. That is, you know, shook out. That's not having a material effect on the end market, right? When you think about some of the potential blockbusters, whether it's Alzheimer's or weight loss or, you know, that bodes well also for what the industry's future is.
helpful. Maybe shifting gears here to China. During Q2, Thermo was able to grow over 20% in China despite some of the lockdowns. Also some of that outperformance was really due to COVID-related instrument sales.
Mm-hmm.
Can you walk us through, first off, what are you seeing in China right now? You've had a lot of peers speak about some of the lockdowns and, just the broad outbreaks that we've been seeing in recent weeks.
Sure.
What's the environment there? Can you compare and contrast that with your performance during Q2? Is that replicable or was a lot of that just one-time related due to the COVID?
China, again, setting the context, you know, China will continue to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest-growing geography for the company in the long term, right? Just the demographics, the focus on a healthier China, those things will drive strong growth, right? And we feel good about that. There'll be geopolitical tensions. There'll be categories in this industry that you sell less of, or you don't sell because of it, but the fundamentals are gonna be positive.
When I think about last year, and you think about the first three quarters of the year, what you saw was controlled lockdowns, right, in the country, and effectively the governments and local governments wanting the industry to continue to operate, right? We were able to, you know, basically have business as usual in terms of activity. Our colleagues did a remarkable job. There was nothing usual about the environment. Many colleagues lived at factories and all of those things to ensure that customers were served because those customers are doing such important things.
What you saw at the end of the year was very different, right? You saw widespread, you know, COVID infections as opposed to lockdowns. You saw. The economy was disrupted. I would expect that China feels more of the impact in the super short term, but it also gets it behind the country. Therefore, China, which has had a rough go from an economic standpoint, should actually rebound in terms of growth. Kind of a little bit more of a short-term pain for mid-term better environment. That's my take on it.
Helpful. Maybe just since we're talking in geographies, Europe. Can you talk about what you're seeing there from a capital budget standpoint, just as the region's been facing, you know, geopolitical issues, energy costs? What are you hearing from your customers in that market?
When I think about Europe actually had strong performance last year, right, and for the company. You know, a lot of our business, you know, the majority of it, is related to pharmaceutical and biotech, which is less economically sensitive. That's done well. Interestingly enough, that the EU has really focused on academic and government spending, right? They've actually really committed to science investments, lessons from the pandemic. I actually think the academic environment should be reasonable in Europe going forward as well. Clearly, there's recession challenges. Clearly, there's inflation challenges. There's many challenges in Europe, but in our industry, actually, the end market's been reasonable.
Helpful. While we're talking about capital budgets, I need to bring up instruments.
Sure.
What have you been seeing from the instrument market? We've all been trying to discuss, is this market acceleration or really what's happening in that instrument piece and how sustainable is it? Analytical Instruments for you guys grew 16% during Q3. It's been robust throughout the entire year. How are you thinking about instrument market heading into 2023, especially given some of these difficult comps?
Yeah. You know, one of the things that I always like to remind all of our shareholders is, we like difficult comps, right? Actually, that's what we're paid to create, right? We're definitely not paid to create easy comparisons, right? That's the, we're used to that. When I think about the instrument business, you had good funding, good industry backdrop, and the science is good. The science is good in the pharmaceutical industry. The science is exciting in terms of where the academic community is pushing.
We, as a company, specifically benefited from our commercial initiatives and from the acceleration of R&D investments, right? We had a very strong year of launches, which I highlighted some of them in the presentation. That combination allowed us to deliver really great results in the instrument business. What's very important on the forward-looking side is orders were very strong, right? We built backlog during the year, right? We enter the year, with a strong order book. That's a very encouraging sign.
Helpful. How should we think about pricing heading into next year? Obviously, you did roughly 300 basis points of pricing this year. That's almost 3 times of what you normally do.
Sure.
-on that 50-100 basis points average on an annual basis. How do we think about pricing heading into 2023? Can you sustain these level of pricing increases, or should we expect a more normalized level?
When I think about pricing, this is a great industry, and, you know, every year you see positive price, and that might vary by 50 points or 100 points. The way that we thought about last year's environment is to be able to have very clear discussions with our customers about inflation is real. We're gonna drive incremental productivity to help offset as much as we can. We're gonna pass through higher pricing. Our customers accepted that, right? That's really about the discipline of our PPI Business System. We were able to really do that well. We had about 3 points of price last year. What our belief is for this year is price will not revert back to normal, but it won't be as elevated as it was in 2022. It'll be somewhere in between those.
Maybe can you just help us walk through the puts and takes heading into 2023 from a top-line perspective. You've talked through some of this instrument, capital budget standpoint, China being maybe a near-term headwind here, but could recover in the back half. You know, net-net, how are you thinking about 2023 through that framework of 7%-9% on a top-line perspective?
Can't wait till February 1st. That'll, that will give you all of the details. The things that we have talked about for the year, which I think are helpful, is on COVID testing. We said that we're assuming an endemic level of testing volumes, so about $400 million, and that the pull-through on the reversion to the $400 million is around 40%. That's the one factor. Foreign exchange, when we gave at the end of October, was about a $1 billion headwind, about $0.75 per share. FX rates have moved more favorable to that.
They're still a headwind, but they're less of a headwind. We'll get the most up-to-date number at the end of this month to reflect in our guidance, but that's more positive than it was back then. You know, we'll look at the, you know, orders and all of those things to determine the appropriate range. Given that the economy has been similar to what we've seen, I would say that market conditions continue to be good.
Perfect. Maybe shifting over to PPD, so that was the highlight of your presentation today.
Mm-hmm.
It's continued to crush everyone's expectations. You raised the guidance for that PPD to be 14% organic this year. Can you just walk us through what is driving this outperformance for PPD, especially when you've seen some of the peers in this CRO space just be much more volatile this year?
Yeah, great execution by the team. Our colleagues literally spent a nanosecond saying, "Okay, ownership of the company changed. Okay, we got customers to serve." That was the psychological aspect of the integration. The team's been awesome, right? The customers got it, like, right away. Like, in some of the previous acquisitions, the customers have deep trust in us, but it was a lot more about show me. This was like, yeah, you've earned the right to expand in this area, and you bought a leading franchise, right? The amount of new wins, whether a small biotech or large biopharma, it's been very substantial, and that creates great momentum for the business.
We were able to do that in a way where we were able to reduce our costs through the cost synergies that we outlined. The profitability has been very strong, and we'll generate over $2 billion, $2 per share of profitability last year and into the year with great momentum. It's fantastic. We, you know, we had set our expectation for high single-digit growth for the business, which is very strong performance in the CRO industry. You know, our latest guidance was 14% growth for last year and very strong authorizations performance. The business is performing at a really high level.
Going off that, obviously, none of us really expected you to go to the CRO space, but it's done way better than anyone expected. Can you talk about other parts of the value chain? Would you ever get into a pre-clinical CRO? Are there any more assets that you can kind of add around PPD to expand this workload even more?
Yeah. When I think about our CRO capabilities or clinical research capabilities, I think of them in a way very analogous to what we did with our pharma services capabilities, right? We bought a leading franchise, we invested in the business to improve its competitive position, we did selective bolt-on acquisitions to add capabilities. We weren't trying to add scale. The way we would think about it is there's some interesting things going on in real-world evidence and technology and those things. Over time, you may see us add some capabilities around that, or we may do it organically. That's how I would focus it. The business today in the way it's constituted is incredibly well-positioned.
Helpful. Then maybe just on the manufacturing side of things, can you just talk about what trends you're seeing? Also, you've had a few peers with some quality concerns on the fill and finish side of things. What does that mean from an opportunity perspective for Thermo Fisher, especially given the trusted partner status and the quality that you focus on?
Yeah. You have to do a good job every day, right? You're producing essential medicines, and that is the priority, right? There's other things we wanna do after the quality side, but you got to do that right every day, all right? That's the priority we have. You know, when we saw some of the industry challenges, that redoubled our focus to make sure that we're that no complacency seeps into the organization. It's, it's an important reminder, not that we needed it, but you always, you know, you just gotta do great work every day. What we've seen is very strong interest from the large pharmaceutical companies to work with us and leverage our pharma services manufacturing capability.
What has changed over the last few years, I certainly think the pandemic brought that out, as well as one of the large molecules that failed in the industry, is that even the largest companies don't want to have to build 100% of their capacity in-house. They wanna be able to partner a certain percentage. They wanna build redundancy into their manufacturing network. When they do that, they're gonna go to the highest quality trusted partners, and there's a couple companies they're gonna choose from. We're benefiting from that changing environment.
Helpful. Maybe shifting over to diagnostics now. Respiratory season has been much stronger than anyone really anticipated with flu coming, much earlier than typical. Can you walk us through, is that $400 million still the right starting point for 2023 from a COVID perspective, or should we see upside to that number? As we think about the shift from 2022 to 2023, how are you thinking about A, you know, the pooling testing going forward and then overall impact to margins from that COVID roll off?
Yeah. In terms of testing in the respiratory season, you know, the way we've thought about guidance around testing, we did that I think late 2020 is just pick the de-risk number that, you know, there's not a 100% guarantee, but it's highly certain. We just flow through anything incremental to that. I think the $400 million is a good assumption for 2023 on testing. I don't think is materially gonna affect that $400 million number. I feel good about that. The flow-through on the margins on the degradation should be about 40%, and the $400 million should contribute at about the company average in terms of margins.
Perfect. We have a question up from online here. Just on business mix. Years ago, it was more balanced, and now pharma biotech is nearly two-thirds of the business, which just makes sense given the strength. Just given the weakness in some of the diagnostics names that we've seen in recent months given the market, particularly in liquid biopsy, would there be any desire to focus M&A outside of biopharma and potentially in some of these diagnostics areas to return to more of a balanced set of end markets?
Yeah, you know, we do like all four of our end markets, right? They're related. We did obviously a meaningful acquisition in Specialty Diagnostics end the year, actually closed on January third. We definitely look at that, and we look at the different spaces, and if the right opportunity comes up, we certainly would go out and capitalize on those.
Great. Helpful. You know, can you talk about The Binding Site a little bit deeper? You mentioned it briefly in the presentation. How does that really fit within that Specialty Diagnostics portfolio? How did this deal come into fruition? You know, from an integration standpoint, what are the key milestones that we should be looking for throughout the year as you integrate the asset?
Rachel, it's a company that we've been following for a decade, right? Have had dialogue with them on and off over that period of time, right? It's not a new idea or, you know, it was more of a moment in time where funding costs went up for private equity. Where that asset may have traded to another private equity firm, competition from that group of potential competitors kind of moved away. Because it's a UK pound denominated business, we were able to leverage the moment in time there on exchange rates also to be able to buy the business. We moved in very quickly. We had done diligence over a long period of time, and we were able to bring the transaction to fruition.
We're super excited about it, right? It is a standard of care for blood cancers, and what we're gonna do is help push the science forward, right? It's a great team, and together we're gonna be able to bring out, you know, new diagnostics that make a difference. We'll update you on the growth. It's a high-growth business, accretive to company margins, and we're excited about what the contribution will be.
Perfect. With that, we are unfortunately out of time.
Thank you.
Marc, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks so much.