All right, great. Welcome to the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. I'm Casey Woodring from the Life Science Tools and Diagnostics team, pleased to be joined by Waters CEO Udit Batra. Udit's going to go through the corporate presentation, then we'll leave some time at the end for Q&A. Udit, all you.
Thank you, Casey, and good afternoon, everyone. Roughly five years ago, we started a transformation process that has led to an increase in our commercial strength, revitalization of innovation, and entry into fast-growing adjacencies for Waters. And that has then allowed us to make the acquisition of BD's Bioscience and Diagnostics business. So today, I'll talk to you a bit about how we're executing from a position of strength with the acquisition of BD's Bioscience and Diagnostics business, how we see the next few years for value creation for our corporation. And finally, I'll give you a bit of a hint on what's to come from a strategic and financial perspective over the next few years. So let's start. For those of you who are not familiar with the Waters story, this chart is new.
Basically, on the left-hand side, you see that we start with significant unmet needs for our customers, then invest roughly 10% of product sales in R&D to take highly complex instrumentation and turn them into systems that are useful and used in high-volume regulated applications. These systems have four parts. First, instruments. Roughly 170,000 of those are placed across all our customers in regulated laboratories and other laboratories. The data from these instruments is then transmitted via regulated software or compliance software, and a prime example of that is our Empower software, which is used to submit data for about 80% of all novel medicines to FDA and NMPA and the EMA. The third part of this ecosystem is our chemistry and consumables capabilities. We are a leader in customizing separation columns to the molecule that we're trying to separate.
And we are the only company in the industry that has full control on the value chain. That gives assurance to our customers that they have no lot-to-lot variability, which is extremely important in quality control applications. And finally, this whole wheel only works with our service team, which is roughly one-third of our overall revenue. Roughly 2,000 folks are in our service team, most of them with advanced degrees. Many of them come from our customers. And the NPS scores that we receive are roughly 20% higher than the weighted average of all service industries. And so the NPS score is the highest across the industry. So a simple and repeatable business model that takes complex instrumentation, turns them into a simple system yet sophisticated for application in highly regulated settings. This business model we've been applying in attractive volume-driven markets.
And on the left-hand side of this chart is where we started back in 2020. These are our core markets. So we started with pharma QAQC, late-stage drug development, food and environmental safety, chemical analysis, materials testing, in all roughly $11 billion in size, growing mid-single digit-ish, where Waters grew slightly higher than that over the last 15, 20 years. We then took our business model and we said, where else can we apply it where we could advance our growth, where we could accelerate our growth? And the first place, of course, to hunt is in the biologics space, which grows double digits. And there are two parts to this. First is bioseparations, basically orchestrating the separation of more and more complex biologics using the same column chemistry that we've perfected over many years.
Second, increasing and augmenting our existing portfolio of analytical instruments for all those that are applicable in biologics laboratories. So those are bioseparations and bioanalytical characterization. Third is taking our LC mass spec capabilities into specialty diagnostics. And then lastly, taking our materials capabilities from our TA business and applying it to the battery testing arena. And that particular part of the market is roughly $7 billion-ish growing high single digits to low double digits. And in all, if you combine it, it's about a $19-$20 billion TAM growing mid to high single digits. So taking this simple and repeatable business model and applying it across our core markets and entering faster-growing adjacencies.
Over the last five years, and I'll take you through the story, our team has worked extremely hard to accelerate the benefits of pioneering science by regaining our commercial momentum, delivering pioneering innovation, and entering faster-growing adjacencies. I'll take you through each one of these. We're nothing if we're not boring. You saw this chart five years ago on the left-hand side. These are the five execution initiatives that I talked about then. And every year, we've given you an update. And there were five initiatives. The first one was instrument replacement. We had about a 13,000 instrument deficit that we needed to replace almost immediately. Over a two-year period, we basically added over $40 million in incremental sales just based on the instrument replacement initiative initially. And then now it's part of our commercial execution model at Waters. Second, we focused on service attachment rate.
Remember, I said we have about 170,000 instruments placed across laboratories around the globe. The service attachment rate was about 43% back in 2019. Today, it's about 54%. That's about a 2.2% increase every single year in service attach. Third, we said we want to sell more consumables through e-commerce channels. Five years ago, we sold roughly 20% of our columns through e-commerce. Today, that number is in excess of 45%. So roughly 5% increase every single year. Number four is expanding into faster-growing contract organizations. Five years ago, this number was at 15% as a proportion of our total pharma business. Today, it's in excess of 25%. So an increase of roughly 10-12% over the last five years. And finally, as I said, we invest roughly 10% of product sales in R&D. And we had a burgeoning pipeline. We wanted to do it justice.
So we launched an initiative to ensure that every launch had excellence associated with it. So these five initiatives have followed diligently. We've followed diligently over the last five years. And now turning to the fifth one, we basically said, look, what can we do to advance innovation in the company? We pioneered innovation across our portfolio so that Waters has, again, gained podium position across each of our portfolios. I just have three examples here. First is in the LC space, where Alliance iS is the leading instrument in the category. It reduces errors in the quality control space by 40%. It's in the second year of its launch, and it grew 270% versus last year, same time last year. The Xevo TQ Absolute is a quantitative mass spec that is used for PFAS testing. It is the most sensitive mass spec in the industry.
In addition, it is the most robust, making it grow roughly 40% in the third year of its launch. The MaxPeak Premier columns is the best story of all. It's now in the fifth year. These are bio-inert columns that are well-suited for biologics characterization, are growing year on year 35%. So in all of these areas where we compete, we have regained podium position and set a new standard for innovation. Number 3, we wanted to build new vectors for growth. Remember, in the past, Waters was focused on small molecules. And food and environmental testing, we wanted to enter faster-growing adjacencies. And here, on the left-hand side, I list three of them: bioanalytical characterization, bioseparations, and taking LC mass spec into specialty diagnostics. Bioanalytical characterization and bioseparations together form our focus on biologics and creating a biologics QC environment that mimics the simplicity of small molecules.
On bioanalytical characterization, I just have picked two examples on this slide, one from the past and one from the present. The first one is the BioAccord instrument, which we launched back in 2019, 2020. We've taken that instrument. It was initially designed for QC laboratories. We've taken that into raw material testing, in-process testing with a high degree of success. Second, we just recently launched our charge detection mass spec, which is basically suited for mega molecules. Basically, think lipid nanoparticles, think AAVs, think antibody drug conjugates. It's one of a kind. And that's really helping us build our bioanalytical characterization portfolio organically. Second, on the bioseparation side, this category of columns has grown 50% year on year. Started with our MaxPeak Premier columns, which basically, as I mentioned on the previous slide, have grown 35%.
Based on those bioinert surfaces, we launched size exclusion chromatography aimed at large viral-like particles. Then we introduced slalom chromatography. I know this is. I'm geeking out a little bit. This is exciting for me, and I hope it is. At least some of it is memorable for you. The second meaningful innovation was called slalom chromatography. Think slalom as you go down the hill while skiing. This was especially designed for large oligonucleotides. The third and the most interesting one was affinity chromatography, where we've created customized columns that we can stick antibodies to to allow separation for all sorts of large molecules, something that we're extremely excited about. I'll talk about it a bit more as well. From an inorganic standpoint, we made a couple of acquisitions to increase our portfolio of bioanalytical characterization equipment.
We acquired Halo Labs for particle characterization and Wyatt Laboratories' light scattering portfolio to take it into quality control. Acceleration across adjacencies that, again, I started with about five years ago or that I mentioned five years ago. On the right-hand side, you see Waters-specific growth drivers. We were also equally pragmatic as we saw growth drivers emerge, not the least of which is the GLP-1 testing domain, which will add roughly $30 million in incremental sales to Waters' revenue in 2025, roughly 95 basis points of accretion this year alone. PFAS testing adds 70 basis points or $20 million to the top-line growth. The third is generics testing in India. India grows high teens for us, and that adds roughly $30 million to the top line or 95 basis points.
And if you add all of that, that is over 250 basis points of accretion from these Waters-specific idiosyncratic growth drivers. And for those of you who were at our analyst day, you see these numbers compared quite favorably to what we had presented back in March of 2025 as our target. So as I said, we're nothing if we're not boring. We say something, and we go back and look at it, and we deliver against it. And so I just wanted to show you the report card before we went on talking about the future. Now, accelerating commercial momentum, launching new products, entering faster-growing adjacencies, of course, it leads to an industry-leading or best-in-class financial profile. So on the right-hand side, you see some facts. This is trailing 12 months of data across the life science tool space, scaled players across the life science tool space.
In the middle column, you see adjusted operating margin. I mean, for those of you who know the Waters story, we've always been a margin leader. We remain so, roughly 180 basis points higher than the next competitor. And then as you go down the list, you see a significant lead versus the rest of the industry. But what is more endearing is now we're a growth leader as well. For the last 12 months, we've grown roughly 8%. The next competitor is at 5%. And if you take a weighted average across, we're three times faster than the rest of the industry. So quite a nice report card, which, of course, leads to a double-digit EPS growth that you see on the right-hand side. So a strong focus in transforming the company that has led to quite nice financial results.
And so before Casey asked me in the Q&A what 2026 looks like, you should expect more of the same. Basically, from a growth perspective, our replacement cycle is in its middle innings. On a six-year basis, on a six-year CAGR, it's still in the low single-digit growth. So it's still well below our average 5%-6% growth for instruments over a certain period of time. Second, our idiosyncratic growth drivers, GLP-1 testing, PFAS testing, generics in India continue to be very strong and should contribute equally or nicely in 2026. And then you see two new rows at the bottom of this chart. The first one is biologics. This is bioseparations, bioanalytical characterization, both of which combined should add on to the commitment that we have made on the other idiosyncratic growth drivers. And finally, informatics.
We have roughly a $300 million informatics business anchored in our Empower software, which I mentioned earlier. We expect this to grow double digits over the next few years as we move from on-prem to subscription models, add value with new applications that our customers can use that are cloud native, and add on a whole bunch of portfolio of instruments that are compatible with Empower, so in all, these five growth drivers, Waters-specific growth drivers should add roughly 200 basis points at least to our top-line growth, so I think you'll agree with me that Waters is in a reasonably strong position at this point in time, which, of course, gave us the confidence to acquire BD's diagnostics and biosciences business, and I want to talk about the value creation that's ahead of us for the next few years on the basis of that business.
Let's start with just looking at the bioscience and diagnostics business of Becton Dickinson first. It's a $3.3 billion business, which grew roughly 5% CAGR from 2019 to 2024, which compares favorably to the rest of the industry. It's a well-established portfolio of brands with a large installed base, a pretty deep sales channel. When you look at the revenue itself, roughly 80% of it recurs every year, and on the right-hand side at the bottom, you see the geographic footprint. Close to 50% of the business is in Americas, slightly higher than what Waters' footprint is. When you go to Europe, it's roughly 30% of the overall turnover, which is similar to Waters, and Asia-Pacific and China a bit underweighted versus Waters, roughly at 20%, so balanced geographic footprint, 80% recurring revenue. On the right-hand side, you see the two business units.
The first one is biosciences, which is roughly $1.5 billion in revenue. Here, BD commands leadership position with flow cytometers and flow-specific antibodies. Roughly 50% of the customers are in high-volume applications like Waters in clinical diagnostics, in elucidating the endpoints for clinical studies. The rest of the 50% serves pharma R&D, drug discovery, biotech, and academia and government, and then there's roughly 2% of the business is focused on single-cell multi-omics. The second business unit is the diagnostic solutions business unit. It's roughly $1.8 billion in size. Two-thirds of that business is a microbiology business where BD has created that category several years ago and has leading brands like BACTEC and Phoenix, which basically are focused on reducing hospital-acquired infections and combating antimicrobial resistance.
25%, 26% of the business is focused on molecular diagnostics with the BD MAX platform, which is the only open LDT platform for PCR testing in the industry, growing double digits over the last several years. And the BD COR platform, which is a high-throughput automated platform, which is now setting the standard for HPV testing and now is benefiting from guidance that the HHS has issued for home collection for HPV testing, which should have a serious impact on cervical cancer. And then the smallest portion of this business is about a $100 million point-of-care business. So in all, a $3.3 billion business, growing mid-single digits with a lot of vectors for growth going forward. 80% of the business recurs every year, and 80% of it is also focused on iconic brands. Let me now talk a bit about the combination of the two businesses, Waters and Becton Dickinson.
And I want to break this up into two parts. First, I want to talk strategically on how the acquisition allows us to accelerate our journey even further into high-growth adjacencies. And then I'll talk a bit about the synergies and the immediate uplift that we should see already in 2026. So first, on flow cytometry, BD Biosciences. Remember, I said we want to create an analytical laboratory for large molecules that mimics the simplicity and the compliance that you find for small molecules. And there are two parts to this. First, we need to be able to separate and purify all sorts of large molecules. This is the bioseparations portfolio that you see on the left-hand side. Waters has already built a very strong position in that area. That business grows roughly 50% year on year.
And we were on the hunt for specific antibodies to continue to improve our portfolio for affinity chromatography. Roughly 12 to 15 of our programs will immediately get accelerated, and we validated that during integration planning. We'll immediately get accelerated with access to the wide range of antibodies that BD manufactures. On the right-hand side, you see bioanalytical characterization. The laboratory of the future for biologics will look like small molecules only if we can have all these instruments be compatible with a compliant software like Empower. We've already traversed that journey for HPLC with UV detection, for mass detection, for capillary electrophoresis, for multi-angle light scattering with Wyatt, and now we intend to do the same with flow cytometry.
And so that in the future, when customers want to characterize complex large molecules, they can do it in the laboratory, both from a chemistry standpoint, from a physics standpoint, but also to assess the binding of these large molecules on cell surfaces. This is especially important given the guidance that the FDA has recently issued for analytical equivalents of biosimilars as opposed to biological equivalents. So this is quite an important tool to have in our armamentarium. Why molecular diagnostics? As I said before, we've been on a journey to take LC-MS into diagnostics. We've got a small entrepreneurial business, roughly $265 million in sales, which has been growing every year, high single digits to low double digits, really performing well. We've increased the number of analytes that are available for therapeutic drug monitoring for endocrinology.
But we are limited by the commercial infrastructure and the service infrastructure we have. With BD, we acquire a much larger commercial and service infrastructure that immediately accelerates the growth of this business. Second, we also get access to globally relevant regulatory and medical affairs capabilities, as well as automation, which, again, should automate these laboratories and allow LCMS to continue to grow faster. So significant value creation ahead for molecular diagnostics or for LCMS using the capabilities that we acquire from BD. Why microbiology? Now, this is two-thirds of the diagnostics business. It is extra credit. Basically, this is not underwritten in the deal model. And you see significant benefit both on the revenue side and on the cost side. Let me start on the revenue side.
If you just traverse your eye to the left-hand side of this chart, what you find is BD currently has a competitor's MALDI-TOF mass spec that they use for microbial identification. Waters is a leader in mass spectrometry, and we intend to replace the competitor's mass spec with our own. This should yield at least $100 million in top-line accretion over the next few years. Second, while BD defined the category of microbiology for hospitals, it had not entered with the same workflow in pharma QC as well as industrial testing, areas where Waters has a significant infrastructure and expertise, and we intend to take this workflow of microbiology into those segments, leading to about a $50 million upside. So significant upside over the next few years from these two Waters-specific levers. And then on the right-hand side, you see efficiency improvements.
The gross margin of the microbiology business is roughly 1,100 basis points lower than our nearest competitor. If you adjust for product mix, there's a 700 basis points gap between the gross margin of the competitor and ours. We intend to close that gap by, of course, implementing more disciplined pricing that we see at Waters already. Second, we want to basically build a more closed system where our products have preference. And then finally, with the improvement of the organization, we expect to add another 300 basis points. So in all, over the next few years, we expect to claw back or close the gap between us and the competitor on gross margins. So across the portfolio, across flow cytometry, molecular diagnostics, and microbiology, we see Waters-specific strategic drivers that should help strengthen our business for many, many years to come.
Let me now turn to the financials, to the synergies. And there are two parts, of course, cost synergies and revenue. So let me start with cost. Traverse your eye to the bottom of the chart. We've signed up for roughly $200 million of cost synergies over the next three years. When you compare this to what some of us were part of in the EMD Millipore and Sigma-Aldrich merger, that number was roughly 8% of the combined cost base. We've signed up for roughly 5% of the combined cost base. If you adjust for that, we should be well above $300 million in cost synergies alone. Now, if I take you a little bit into the details, the cost synergies are divided into three parts: manufacturing and supply chain, commercial and service, and R&D and G&A.
The first two buckets are roughly $75-$80 million each, and the R&D/GNA is roughly $45 million. Now, in 2026, we expect the overhead reduction in manufacturing, in GNA functions, in commercial to immediately hit, and the direct and indirect procurement initiatives to also be accretive immediately in 2026. So cost synergies, we think there is quite a bit of room to overachieve. Plus, we expect to hit the ground running in 2026 when the deal closes. Turning now to revenue synergies, there are three buckets: commercial excellence, so application of Waters' commercial excellence levers that I talked about earlier. Second, entry into higher growth adjacencies or strengthening our position into higher growth adjacencies. And third, cross-selling. Let me talk about the second and the third bucket. I'll spend a little bit more time on commercial excellence on the next page.
On high-growth adjacencies, roughly $115 million of revenue synergies is expected across the three adjacencies I mentioned earlier. For bioanalytical characterization, we intend to take flow cytometers, the FACSLyric flow cytometer that BD has, into many more process development labs and QC labs and eventually make it compatible with Empower, adding roughly $40 million in top-line accretion at the end of the fifth year. Same with bioseparations. As I mentioned earlier, there's about 12 to 15 programs that have been stranded in the Waters portfolio that will immediately get a benefit from access to a much larger antibody portfolio at BD. And third, as I mentioned earlier, LC-MS and diagnostics with a wider commercial infrastructure and capabilities in regulatory and automation, we should be able to accelerate the journey there as well, roughly adding $40 million in overall accretion to our revenue.
On cross-selling, BD has a much stronger infrastructure in commercial infrastructure in academic and government labs, in drug discovery, in biotech, where Waters is not present as strongly. We expect to take our LC-MS portfolio and the rest of our portfolio into these laboratories with BD's commercial infrastructure. So that's high-growth adjacencies and cross-selling. Let me now turn to commercial excellence. These should sound familiar: instrument replacement, service plan attach, and e-commerce. BD has roughly 22,000 instruments across flow and diagnostics that are due for replacement. The number at Waters back in 2020 was 13,000. Remember, I said earlier, in two years alone, we added roughly $43 million in incremental sales just due to the replacement initiative. We've signed up for $20 million here by the end of year five. So less than half the revenue accretion in more than double the time. So there is room for overachievement here.
And that's roughly 100 incremental units every single year. Service plan attachment, remember, we said for Waters, we took the service plan attachment from 43% to 54% over a five-year period, roughly 2.2% accretion every single year. Here, we have signed up for roughly 1% accretion every single year, yielding $20 million by the end of year five. And on e-commerce, we intend to take the 20% number of consumables sold through e-commerce to close to 40%, which is a 4% increase every single year. At Waters, we've done 5%. So we've perfected or we've improved our ability to execute these commercial levers, and now we intend to apply them to BD with quite a bit of room for overachievement. So we feel pretty good about where we are on the application of these commercial initiatives. So we're executing from a position of strength.
I've laid out what we expect from a value creation perspective with a combination of BD and Waters over the next five years. Let me now turn to the strategic and financial perspective over the next five years. From a strategic perspective, it's a bit of a complex chart, but let me sort of walk you through it. Our business model is in the middle. So instruments, informatics, consumables, and service in compliant high-volume applications, right? So that's our capability. Back and start at 12 o'clock, we started with small molecules back in 2020. We had some strength in food and environmental testing, which we've been leveraging with PFAS testing. That's at 2 o'clock. Turned to between 3 and 5 o'clock, we moved decisively into large molecule pharma. We started with BioAccord, added CDMS to it. Now we have the BD flow cytometry and antibody business.
to between five and six o'clock, it's the clinical diagnostics business. This is the molecular diagnostics plus LC-MS business. Not only do we have our portfolio from Waters, now we bring in BD MAX and BD COR and their software to the portfolio. Turn to seven o'clock, there's the microbiology business, one that BD created the category for with BD Synapsys, BD BACTEC, BD Phoenix, and BD Kiestra, leading brands. And then now between seven and nine o'clock is our TA business. We've led materials characterization for many, many years. We've taken that into the double-digit growth arena of battery testing. And finally, at 10, 11 o'clock, you see in-process analytical testing, taking the tools that we use in quality control and in manufacturing to the manufacturing suite itself.
There are at least three examples where we've had a lot of success recently with our Patrol system for GLP-1 testing, our Wyatt light scattering instruments for polysaccharide testing, and our BioAccord instrumentation for clone selection. So this is sort of the layout of our portfolio. It started with, if you traverse your eye from 12 o'clock all the way back to 12, it started with a mid-single-digit growth end market to now you see with green, low double-digit, mid-single-digit plus, and double-digit growers. So really a decisive move of the portfolio into higher growth end market. So that's our strategy on a page. And as you think about Waters of the future and capital allocation, this chart should help you sort of ground yourself. Financially, what does that look like? I mean, it's the same layout I showed earlier for 2025.
Basically, from a revenue perspective, we're guiding to a 7% growth CAGR over the next five years. When you look at sell-side reports, our peer average is roughly 4-ish%. The margin expansion, which yields, and we've signed up for a margin expansion of roughly 500 basis points, which again compares favorably to the peer group. And that all then, of course, leads to a mid-teen EPS growth, which is not so shabby as we look ahead. Let me finish with where I started. Waters is indeed executing from a position of strength, which allowed us to make the acquisition of BD's bioscience and diagnostics business and should lead yet again to an industry-leading financial outlook over the future. Thank you for your attention.
That was a super helpful overview. I think you nailed it. My first question's on 2026.
So you haven't provided guidance at this point, but you just said to expect more of the same. So can you just elaborate on that? What type of framework should investors be using when thinking about this upcoming year for Waters?
No, no. Firstly, thank you. And more of the same. So we'll provide formal guidance when we finish the year and share Q4 results. But you should think about it, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, you should basically, on the top line, just simply be thinking about an instrument replacement cycle that's in its mid-innings. So the five, six-year CAGR is still at the low single-digit level, so a lot of room to sort of add to that. And then you can add the idiosyncratic growth drivers, right? So GLP-1 testing, PFAS testing, generics in India.
We added biologics and Empower growth to it, so roughly 200 basis points of accretion from that, and then the new products like CDMS adding on, so similar sort of frame going forward as we've seen, and we will guide when we issue the Q4 earnings, and as we usually do, we get constructive as the year goes along,
and before we dig into the specifics on the business, I wanted to just bring up reshoring. Where do you see Waters' opportunity there, both in terms of the total addressable market and then Waters' specific potential revenue opportunity and any sort of color you have around potential timing of when we could start seeing that?
So look, I mean, it's always seductive to get too quantitative when you have qualitative trends, I mean, we're not shy of issuing targets and sort of beating them.
But in this particular case, let me just start with the facts, right? We know that there's roughly a $350 billion-$400 billion CapEx that is generally committed by our customers. We also know from customer conversations that they will start to sort of impact our portfolio probably at the end of 2026, sometime in 2027. We know that Waters wins more than it loses in greenfield opportunities. We've shown that with the relative growth rates, our relative growth rates versus the rest of the industry already. But what we don't know is the magnitude, right? And I would caution against being in a rush, right? Let's just wait, get more quantitation on this, and there's ample time in quantifying the upside. The other interesting side effect of the timing is that you might see several years of high single-digit instrument growth, right? So let me explain.
Our instrument replacement cycle will likely taper off sometime in 2027 when the reshoring CapEx should pick up. And then by the time that starts to taper off, we'll have another replacement starting from instruments that we placed back in 2021 and 2022. So in a strange way, you might see a high single-digit growth of instruments for a significant period of time.
Okay. That's helpful. You just touched on instruments, but I'd like to touch on chemistry. Year to date, chemistry has grown 11% as of 3Q, which is above the historical growth rate for that business. You touched on several growth drivers in the presentation, driving that recent outperformance: price, volume growth across molecules, new product launches, and bioseparations, for example.
So can you elaborate on which of these drivers you expect to remain a tailwind to your chemistry business in 2026 and, yeah, how you're thinking about the long-term?
Chemistry is a gift that keeps on giving, right? So you have columns that were specced back in the 1970s that are still used, right? So once you spec in a column, it doesn't change unless the molecule is withdrawn from the market, right? So think of chemistry as an annuity, right? And it's a high gross margin. There's a pricing resilience, especially if you have innovative products. And from an innovation standpoint, our bioseparations portfolio has grown roughly 50%, starting with the bio-inert MaxPeak Premier columns, which have grown 35%. On top of that, we built our size exclusion chromatography, which is targeted towards LNPs and AAVs. And then we moved to slalom chromatography for oligonucleotides.
And the most recent development is our affinity chromatography columns, which are customizable for any type of biologic. So you give us a biologic, and we will work with you to try and figure out what antibody binds to it and then conjugate it to columns that you can purchase, right? It's fantastic. And it's rather foolproof. So once you sort of have it tagged along, you can create a large pipeline of columns. So we think this will continue to add growth. Now, of course, I mean, we grew 11% year to date in chemistry. Historical growth rates are roughly 7%-8%. I wouldn't expect that to continue forever. We've seen benefits of innovation that came last year. But there is no reason to believe that chemistry cannot traverse a high single-digit to low double-digit domain once all of this portfolio starts to get embedded. Okay.
Want to hit on Becton. So I think a lot of the investor focus has been the targets that you've laid out, cost synergies and revenue synergies. You've straight-lined both in terms of what you're expecting in each year. Curious what you view as most actionable in 2026 on both the cost and revenue side and where potential areas of upside or opportunities to pull forward some of those synergy timelines forward.
No, I think, I mean, we laid out the report card, or at least the report card that you should hold us to pretty openly, right? From a cost perspective, you should expect the overhead reduction of G&A initiatives to hit already in 2026, at least the actions to be taken as fast as possible in 2026, indirect and direct procurement to hit already in 2026. So those should add immediately.
I won't quantify that beyond what we've already quantified for 2026 in the past. Let the deal close, and we'll have a lot more to talk about it. Second, on the revenue side, we've spent a ton of time during integration planning, sort of validating the synergies and getting teams together to see where we can immediately see growth. I talked about the commercial growth drivers, instrument replacement, e-commerce, service attached, things that we know how to do. We want to apply them to the larger portfolio, and we expect that to add value immediately. Cross-selling across LCMS, across flow cytometry in PD, in process development, we expect that to add value rather immediately. So we feel quite good about what we have signed up for. I won't say more at this stage.
Let the integration planning finish and let the deal close, and then we can look back in the rearview mirror and see what's happened.
Okay. Maybe one more question on Becton and to the extent that you can talk about this is just the China piece for the legacy Becton business. Just talk about the exposure there, how they're exposed to the reimbursement dynamics in the region, pretty volatile, as you've seen from your peers, so just the thought process around how you're going to handle that,
so about 11% of BD's business is focused on China. I mean, your focus is more on the diagnostics. Your question is more on the diagnostic side, where there is no molecular diagnostics business in China. It's mostly microbiology. And the microbiology business is very different compared to the other reimbursement pressures that you're seeing.
It's basically two large competitors serving most of the hospitals. We do see pressure, or BD does see pressure in reducing the utilization of bottles in hospitals as a result of the cost pressures. But we've seen that started to subside already towards the end of the last quarter.
Okay. Gotcha. Looks like we have 30 seconds here. Maybe as you look across the business, you have an exciting integration plan ahead of you. Maybe what are you most excited for in 2026 and the year ahead?
Oh, lots. Maintaining a focus on a few things and not sort of getting excited with every opportunity that comes. But I mean, look, it's our dream to build the biologics QC of the future.
With bioseparations and bioanalytical characterization, I think we will play a huge role in ensuring that biosimilars get market access way faster than they have done in the past with analytical characterization tools that we've developed. So I'm super excited about that and super excited about the microbiology business. But definitely, if I had to pick one, something that we set out to do five years ago, we did it organically as best as we could, and now we have a much larger portfolio and a much stronger position to be able to accelerate that journey. So.
All right. Sounds good. Well, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Udit,
thank you.
Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the conference.