Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Frank Laukien: Okay. John, thank you. It’s been good, right. I mean academic government never grows as fast at boom times, but it also is pretty resilient at – and it just grows steadily generally by low-single digits, sometimes mid-single digits. As I always say, it really depends where you are. I mean academic government, including academic medical centers, we are very much more exposed to academic medical centers, cancer research, proteomics research and medical schools, etcetera, than we were years ago. And that’s a really good thing because between Philanthropy and NIH funding and at just procedures growth and all of these things and focus on cancer or neuroscience research. The scientific areas in the post-genomic – the post-genomic trends, I think are much stronger than the genomic trends these days.

And I think they will remain that way, and we are very well positioned there. Metabolomics, lipidomics proteomics, PTMs, glycomics, I am just turning this into a techno session here. But for post-genomic trends, we are beautifully positioned our greater exposure into spatial and cell biology are good drivers. So, where we are within this modestly growing academic government funding is much more important. And so we are really – we are in there really, I think for the next decade or hopefully more, were really, I think are in the sweet spot of the demand curve and funding therefore as well. So, the allocation of prioritization with our product is great.

John Sourbeer: Got it. I guess I was trying to get that more. I mean do you anticipate any change in this demand? I know you are not guiding for next year, but when you look out over the next 12 months, do you see any changes when you look out there on trends?

Frank Laukien: I think the secular trends are the chador [ph] or maybe a couple of decades, still early days in those – in that, but I think it really has changed dramatically now. Towards the post-genomic age, which is exactly where you could call as post-genomic company except we also do semiconductor and food analysis, but right. So, I mean there might be some noise, maybe slower NIH budgets, but we are not exposed directly to NIH all that much. But then you have the CHIPS Act, you have the Science Act, you have a European CHIPS Act. China has been investing very heavily. A lot of our orders in China this year, also early were for high-end life science, NMR, microscopy, timsTOF mass spectrometry tools. So, there is a big proteomics project in China that sometimes the headline – the headline use if they execute all of that as often is the case, we will dwarf anything in the West, so to speak.

Then it just means there will be a very significant investment and focus on this post-genomic investment, which is exactly where we have positioned ourselves.

John Sourbeer: Appreciate that. If I could sneak in just one more on PhenomeX, or the Bruker cellular business, would you be willing to provide what you think could be the long-term growth rate for this business or any way to quantify any of the dissynergies or cross-selling opportunities there? Any additional color you could provide on that?

Frank Laukien: We are right now focusing on getting the cost structure right. So, we are – as you have seen also our run rate of $60 million or greater is initially focusing on making it just a little bit dilutive. And then – in the long-term, I would rather do that maybe when we give color and guidance next year. We think it can swing back to being a very, very good growth business and one that eventually in terms of growth rates and CAGR, given these attractive markets will be, over the long run, higher than what you see than even our Bruker average. In ‘24, that may not be the case because of some biopharma weakness, right. But long-term, we think it’s accretive to our organic growth rate.

John Sourbeer: Appreciate it. Thanks for taking the question.

Frank Laukien: Thank you, John.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Your line is now open.