Mettler-Toledo International Inc. (NYSE:MTD) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 13

Shawn Vadala: Yeah. Sure. So, maybe the best way to look at it, Jack, is that we’re kind of looking at our overall cost structure to be flattish for the full year. So, if you kind of like think about that in terms of the second half of the year, probably down low single digit in the second half of the year. And if we — if you try to think about that, how it looks on the P&L, SG&A will be lower than other lines. Of course, part of our costs are also above gross profit, which you don’t necessarily have broken out separately. But I think as we look at the — at our program, we are focused on productivity and other discretionary spending. But I think it’s also important to emphasize too. We’re still continuing very much to grow and invest in — I mean, invest in the business for growth.

I mean, if you look at our R&D, as an example, it’s still up 7% year-to-date. We still expect to see growth in R&D for the second half of the year. But then kind of just stepping back from everything too. I think we feel pretty — like it’s the right balance where we can still provide really good operating margin expansion on a full year basis in the 70 to 100 basis point kind of a range. And that’s despite some unfavorable currency.

Jack Meehan: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Derik de Bruin with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Derik de Bruin: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. So, a couple of ones. So, I was surprised to hear your pharma biotech comments on things being down so much. And the reason why I say that is, I mean, we certainly have heard that purchases over $100,000 are getting held up. So, your items are often well below that. What’s going on there? I mean, is it just a complete freeze? Or are you just getting a lot of pushback on pricing? I’ll ask the pricing question, what are your expectations now for the price in your guide?

Patrick Kaltenbach: Yeah. I’ll start with it, Derik, and then I let Shawn chime in as well. Look, we’re not seeing a complete freeze. It’s not like total pharma business is frozen for us. Of course, we see a decline. And as we said, we see delays in orders. It’s not — and you’re right. I mean, our products are in lower CapEx or below CapEx spending. But that said, we see a slowdown in orders in pharma-biopharma, and it’s pretty broad based, but it’s not a complete going off the cliff, so to speak. But it’s a significant decline that we’re seeing and slowdown that we are seeing. And for us, of course, the question is as many others ask, how long will this take? And why is that happening? We want to hear from our sales team is, well, we have a lot of quoting activity, actually, what we’re seeing, but I’m really happy to see is that we have a strong sales team engagement.

We have a lot of sales teams out there with customers that are talking about their plans. They get good leads. Leads are actually up year-to-date. So, we see good momentum on the lease generation side, but they’re not turning into orders as quickly they used to do. Now how long this will continue. It will definitely also depend on when more certainty is coming back to the economy. I mean that’s what we’re hearing from our sales team. I’m pleased with the quoting activity. I’m monitoring that on a daily basis. I see how our sales team is interacting with customers and now often they are out there with customers and discussing projects and investments. But the time to turn these opportunities into orders have definitely increased, and that’s part of the slowdown we’re seeing in orders.

Page 3 of 13