AZTA - NASDAQ

Greetings, and welcome to the Azenta Q3 2023 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, August 8, 2023. I will now turn the conference over to Sara Silverman, Head of Investor Relations.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon to everyone on the line today. We would like to welcome you to our earnings conference call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023. Our third quarter earnings press release was issued after the close of the market today and is available on our Investor Relations website located at investors.azenta.com in addition to the supplementary PowerPoint slides that will be used during the prepared remarks today. I would like to remind everyone that during the course of the call, we will be making a number of forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Litigation Securities Act of 1995. There are many factors that may cause actual financial results or other events to differ from those identified in such forward-looking statements. I would refer you to the section of our earnings release titled Safe Harbor Statement, the safe harbor slide on the aforementioned PowerPoint presentation on our website and our various filings with the SEC, including our annual reports on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We make no obligation to update these statements should future financial data or events occur that differ from the forward-looking statements presented today. We may refer to a number of non-GAAP financial measures, which are used in addition to and in conjunction with results presented in accordance with GAAP. We believe the non-GAAP measures provide an additional way of viewing aspects of our operations and performance, but when considered with GAAP financial results and the reconciliation of GAAP measures, they provide an even more complete understanding of the Azenta business. Non-GAAP measures should not be relied upon to the exclusion of the GAAP measures themselves. On the call with me today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Schwartz; and our Chief Financial Officer, Lindon Robertson. We will open the call with remarks from Steve on highlights of the third quarter. Then Lindon will provide a more detailed look into our financial results and our outlook for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. We will then take your questions at the end of the prepared remarks. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Steve Schwartz.

Thank you, Sara. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We're pleased to report on a solid third quarter with results that show a strengthening position across our business units that we believe will set us up to outgrow the market once again. We've spoken to you over the past few quarters about our actions to reinvigorate growth in revenue and profitability. And today, we're pleased to report meaningful results and evidence of strong traction. We can say unequivocally that the steps we've taken were the right ones. We restructured our go-to-market approach to align sales with customer decision-makers and purchasing patterns. We've recruited more incredible talent to our sales team, and we're seeing results wherever we've added these targeted resources. We're substantially aligned to implement a new reporting structure beginning October 1, which we expect will significantly improve our operating efficiency while better aligning our offerings to customer needs. We've initiated 2 tranches of meaningful cost reductions since the start of the calendar year. One is complete, and the other is on track to meet our committed objectives over the next 3 quarters. These actions are improving our operating leverage while bolstering operations capability to meet any and all demand. Today, we report on the status of these important initiatives. But before I do that, it's noteworthy that in Q3, the combination of a return to growth and our cost reductions allowed us to demonstrate positive free cash flow for the first time as a stand-alone life sciences company. We're proud of this accomplishment and recognize it as an important milestone in our growth trajectory. Now let's look at the business by segment. In services, we delivered strong organic growth of 8% year-over-year. Genomics was up 8%, led by strength in Next Generation Sequencing as well as continued strong growth in Gene Synthesis. We're pleased by the performance of this business, especially in what's become a more challenging macro environment. We've added roughly 20 new sales specialists who are rapidly coming up to speed on our Azenta offerings, and we'll continue to make targeted investments in the business where we see opportunities for growth. Gene Synthesis delivered a second consecutive quarter of sequential improvement with 9% growth. We're winning because of our ability to manufacture all manner of complex constructs and deliver with exceptional speed. We're confident that we're back to a sustainable growth pattern in our synthesis business, and though we don't necessarily expect a linear path of growth from here, we do believe we've taken the right actions building a business for growth over the long term. Our Next Generation Sequencing business grew by double digits over last year. We're ramping this business on the newest Illumina, NovaSeq X and PacBio Revio platforms, and our proteomics offering continues to advance as we look to remain at the forefront of technological advancement in the market. This quarter, we also launched several new multiomic services, including AAV viral packaging in Gene Synthesis, and Plasmid-E

Thank you, Steve. I now refer you back to the slide deck available on our website. Turning to Slide 3 for some highlights. Third quarter revenue was $166 million, up 25% year-over-year and up 2% on an organic basis. This reflects strong growth in each of the key areas of large, automated store systems, Sample Repository Solutions and genomics. The offsetting area of softness was in the Consumables and Instruments business, which continues to experience an oversupplied market. Excluding the C&I business, our organic growth was actually up 8% year-over-year. Our sales and marketing alignment actions are gaining traction, and our customers continue to subscribe to the high value we bring as a critical sample-based solutions and multiomic solution provider. And I should highlight that B Medical provided results above our prior guidance and above the prior quarter. The higher level of revenue in the quarter combined with the recent cost actions we have taken are showing through in the improvement in profitability. Non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.13 in the quarter, and adjusted EBITDA was 7.8%. We are now into our fourth fiscal quarter, and when we get to the guidance section, you will see this quarter will support revenue growth for the full fiscal year in the range of 17% to 20% year-over-year. This includes a flat to down 4% organic projection. If we exclude the soft C&I business, the balance of the business is supporting organic growth of approximately 4% for the year, led by strength in large, automated stores and Sample Repository Solutions. More about the guidance later. Now I would like to turn to Slide 4 to take a deeper look at our results for the quarter. As I already mentioned, total revenue was $166 million, up 25% year-over-year and up 12% sequentially quarter-to-quarter. Looking at the GAAP P&L on the left side. SG&A expenses were higher year-over-year, driven primarily by operating structure we added from acquisitions. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, the SG&A expense increase was primarily driven by the $17 million decrease in the contingent consideration related to B Medical that we took in Q2. We reduced the remaining $1.4 million of the earn-out accrual in Q3. Below the operating income line, we generated $11 million in net interest income this quarter, following the similar trend of previous quarters. GAAP earnings per share for continuing operations was a loss of $0.04 compared to a loss of $0.03 last quarter. Now looking over to the right at our non-GAAP results. Gross margin was 45.6%, which was higher by 4 points versus second quarter, with both segments showing improvement. The margin benefit came from the cost reduction actions, the 12% higher revenue and certain nonrecurring cost adjustments in the products segment. Operating expenses were $77 million, up $2 million quarter-to-quarter. The operating expense line also realized the benefit of the cost reduction actions but was offset with higher revenue-driven sales commissions at B Medical and performance-based compensation accruals. On a year-over-year basis, operating expenses were up $20 million. Roughly $11 million of the $20 million year-over-year increase was related to the acquisitions, while the remainder was primarily driven by investments in sales and R&D net of the cost reduction actions. Non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.13 per share. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 7.8% as we once again see the leverage in the model as revenue increases and cost reduction actions are realized. Now let's turn over to Slide 5 for a review of our Life Science Products segment results. Total segment revenue was $75 million for the quarter, up 57% year-over-year, driven by acquisitions which contributed $32 million in the quarter. $27 million of the revenue from acquisitions was from B Medical, with solid delivery of the orders we previously disclosed plus additional orders booked and shipped. The products segment organic-based business declined 9%. The C&I business experienced continued headwinds and declined 27% year-over-year on an organic basis. The rest of the business was up 10% on an organic basis, led by a record quarter of large, automated store system installations. Products third quarter gross margin was 44.9%. The sequential improvement was supported by higher revenue, which drives improved cost absorption, the benefits of the cost reduction initiatives and nonrecurring cost adjustments in the period. These items result in an adjusted EBITDA for the products segment of 7.8%. Next, please turn to Slide 6 for a review of our services segment results. The services segment generated third quarter revenue of $91 million, an increase of 7% year-over-year and 2% quarter-to-quarter. The organic revenue for the quarter was up 8% with genomics up 8% and Sample Repository Solutions growth of 6%, once again led by double-digit growth in core storage as we continue to accumulate samples stored. The genomics business reported growth of 8% year-over-year and 3% sequentially, reflecting a continued recovery in Gene Synthesis, which grew 9% compared to the second fiscal quarter and 6% year-over-year. NGS was up 13% year-to-year. We saw growth in every region compared to the prior year with China showing the highest growth, albeit comparing against a period impacted by COVID with market constraints in 2022. The services business delivered 46.1% gross margin, down 1 point year-over-year, though up 1 point quarter-to-quarter. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin for services was 6.8% and improved 1 point sequentially. Now let's review Azenta's balance sheet on Slide 7. As of June 30, we had $1.3 billion of cash, restricted cash and marketable securities, both short term and long term. We have no debt outstanding. We began a significant share repurchase in the first fiscal quarter, committing to $1 billion to be returned to shareholders in this fashion by the end of this calendar year. Against that objective, by the end of the third fiscal quarter, we had expended $672 million year-to-date for 14 million shares. And since July 1, we have expended another $92 million for 2 million additional shares. We will keep you updated and can confirm we remain on track to complete the $1 billion buyback commitment by the end of this calendar year. With the balance of the $1 billion in repurchases earmarked, we still have roughly $1 billion of cash available for deployment to operations, investments and return to shareholders. Our track record and plans continue to underscore disciplined capital deployment for generating long-term value for shareholders. Let's turn to Slide 8 to address the current period cash performance. Cash flow from operations was $17 million. The improved cash performance aligns with the improving profit performance. Capital expenditures for the quarter was $8 million, resulting in free cash flow of $9 million. Let's turn to the final slide for our guidance. Our Q4 guidance reflects a mix of strong backlog in a softer market, as highlighted by others in our space. Fourth quarter revenue is expected to be in the range of $155 million to $173 million with a midpoint supporting growth of approximately 19% year-over-year on an as-reported basis. This reflects B Medical confirmed orders of approximately $24 million and the balance of the business, excluding B Medical, to be up $1 million sequentially at the midpoint. We expect the softness in C&I to continue. And if we exclude C&I, the fourth quarter organic revenue for the rest of the portfolio is expected to be approximately 3% year-over-year at the midpoint. We estimate foreign exchange to be a 1% tailwind and the revenue from acquisitions to be a tailwind of approximately $25 million or 18 points of growth. We expect products revenue, excluding B Medical, to be in the range of $45 million to $55 million. Including B Medical, total products segment revenue is expected to be in the range of $69 million to $79 million. We expect services revenue to be in the range of $86 million to $94 million, and adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to be approximately $2 million to $9 million or approximately 5% margin at the midpoint. Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be in the range of minus $0.02 to positive $0.06. As we said previously, the actions to achieve the first round of $20 million annualized cost reductions were implemented prior to Q3 and did affect our spend by $5 million in the quarter. And we have made the investments we also outlined primarily in sales. We had also announced a second phase of cost actions to support $15 million of additional annualized spending reduction by the end of the calendar year. This effort is underway, and we expect to show those savings in our second fiscal quarter of 2024. For the full year, we expect to deliver revenue growth in the range of 17% to 20% year-over-year and have narrowed our guidance range to $648 million to $665 million, which includes approximately $108 million from B Medical. In closing, we are encouraged by the progress we have made this quarter. We continue to drive toward further growth and profitability across the business and expect to see further improvement as we move into the next fiscal year. We have a strong balance sheet, tremendous portfolio, a best-in-class team and are serving the world's premier life science customers, enabling breakthroughs faster. We are winning and are committed to delivering long-term sustainable value for the shareholders. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will come from the line of Jacob Johnson with Stephens.

This is Hannah on for Jacob. Since you're realigning your segments and combining SRS and Life Science Products, can you remind us of the synergies between these 2 businesses? And then conversely, what does this mean for the effort around cross-selling genomic services to SRS customers?

Sure. Hannah, this is Steve. I'll be glad to do that. So on the sample management side, as we continue to evolve the business from the repository standpoint, we see more and more repositories really need to be automated. So this is a capability that we're bringing not just to the customers with automated stores but also to our own internal operations. And when we go to approach a customer, now we talk to them about management of their assets, management of their sample collections. And what happens is we likely will put automated stores on site. We'll take archival samples off site. And so the offering that we bring to them is a combination of the repository services and the automated stores that we have. And so it's a natural -- without a break point, it's a natural way that we can help them to perform asset management in a more effective way and also continues to drive the means by which we develop automated stores to manage workflows for customers. So this is a natural evolution of the way the product and services portfolio was moving. And it's a really appropriate time for us to get this aligned so that when we start fiscal '24, these business units become one. It's really a sample management play. From the standpoint of our ability to sell the omics capabilities to these same customers, as we build the capability and knowledge across the omics business and across the sample management business, there's a skill set that we've been developing where people have the ability to connect the customers to the people inside the end user customer who both manage samples and are responsible for preliminary measurements, if you will, on these samples and also the management of the clinical trial. So this is a natural one, requires a little bit different sales capability inside the company. But as we mentioned, we've been adding sales resources that have these particular skills to help us to do the cross-sell. So the cross-sell has been effective. It will become more effective as we have specialists who are able to connect both the sample management and the omics capabilities. And you'll see more of this as we move into 2024.

And then as it relates to China, it looks like you saw strong growth during the quarter. Can you just talk about some of the trends you're seeing in China?

Yes. So it's a little bit different from what we've been hearing from other companies. The genomics capabilities in China have been strong. They were strong in the third quarter, and we're going to pay close attention to it, but we've gotten off to a good start here in the fourth quarter as well from very strong growth in China. And so when I say strong growth, Q3 growth was something close to 20%, and we're seeing really good momentum here as we start the fourth quarter as well.

And your next question comes from the line of David Saxon with Needham.

Congrats on the quarter. Steve, maybe I'll start with the C&I part of the portfolio. I'd love to hear how you're thinking about that recovery, if you're seeing any early signs that could point to stability in that part of the portfolio. And then sorry for the multipart question here, but I think the last quarter, you said destocking wasn't impacting all customers. Has that changed at all? And I'll have a follow-up for Lindon.

Yes. So David, I wish I could tell you it's different. It's not. It's pretty much the same. There are customers -- I mean we still have a healthy C&I business, but there is destocking that continues, but there are customers that we're selling product to in the second quarter and again in the third quarter. And I think they've managed their inventory to not be so dramatically large. So it's a similar situation. Indeed, we had expected that maybe we'd seen the bottom from a destocking standpoint. And although it's still soft, we're hopeful that we'll get out of this pretty soon. So it's almost a similar environment, the similar look that we had a quarter ago. Still a healthy business, but we haven't seen the uptick that we would anticipate -- that we'll anticipate that customers will have once the inventory has been burned off.

Okay. Great. And I guess just a quick follow-up to that, Steve. So it doesn't sound like it's worse [ if at all ]. Is that correct?

Not really, David. Let me tell you one thing that was interesting for us, a different dynamic. The instruments business was strong in the quarter. And we do see that as an indicator that automation continues, the fact that there's continued workflow automation being put into place. And we think that's a harbinger for an opportunity for more and healthier consumables business as we move forward because our consumables are adapted precisely for the instruments that we put in place for automated workflows. . So we're anticipating that that's a good sign for us. And we're hopeful that before we get out of 2023 that the business ultimately will pick up. But we do guide a similar -- we do see a similar fourth quarter as we saw in the third quarter.

Okay. Super helpful. And then, Lindon, just on the P&L, EBITDA, that was pretty strong, 7.8%. I mean I get that you started to benefit from some of these cost reduction initiatives. It doesn't sound like you'll see the benefit of that second phase until next -- early next year, next second quarter. I guess why -- the fourth quarter obviously implies some contraction. Why is that? Any color into kind of if that's conservatism or if you're pulling forward some investments?

No, these are good questions. So on the EBITDA and the 7.8% in the quarter, there's substantial performance improvement as we've highlighted in our remarks. There was also cost adjustment in there that won't reoccur going forward. So think of that as a couple of points of pressure, 1.5 points to 2 points of pressure in the results itself that won't reoccur. But setting that aside, the performance, you're right, it's got a lot of momentum. And it's exactly on the absorption that we get with revenue increases. It's also the cost reduction actions, the first phase being completely in the P&L. And while we're making some investments as we go across the quarters, we are working on the cost reductions by the end of the calendar year. So I would emphasize, when you're looking for those benefits of the next phase, we're being very thoughtful on this next phase of reduction. It's about integration. It's primarily as we said before, about integrating some of the structures that we've acquired over the years in our manufacturing locations, and we're being careful with those structures. So we think that will take some time, and we'll give you an update. But for now, we believe we're on track to deliver that by the end of the calendar year. I do want to go back to the C&I because there's a data point that I think will be helpful, per David's question. I think it's good for you all as we gave some data points. The C&I is the one outlier of our business. The rest of the portfolio showed growth throughout. And the C&I being down -- it was actually down 24% year-over-year on an as-reported basis. And just to put a -- pinpoint on it, it's a little bit less than $19 million of revenue in the third quarter, about 11% of our portfolio. So if you set aside that, which I would like to emphasize, as I've said many times in the past, we love having the C&I business because it's a revenue and profit multiplier. It's not what differentiates us. It's a highly fragmented space. We are glad we have it because it provides us additional revenue and profit and leverage as markets are good, but you get bit when it comes down like it is at 24%. We will -- we continue to take some leaning actions on that business as we had. But with that said, if you remove that, our organic growth is quite remarkably different than the rest of the market. And this is where Steve had emphasized in his remarks, we really believe that the marketing and sales actions and the value of our portfolio across the other 90% is really standing out in the market, and we couldn't be more pleased with how the market is accepting and taking it. So we really believe we're back on the 90%. The C&I, it's just going to take us a while to work through that in the marketplace. So David, thank you for your questions. I think they're spot on to the key items in the release.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.

Congrats and good execution here. Steve, maybe my first one here on some of these numbers, end markets, starting with genomics. You mentioned Gene Synthesis on the service side up 9%, NGS up 13%. Does it imply -- Sanger was down. So can you talk us sort of why NGS was up 13%, Sanger was down? Is that NGS strength being driven by new products, et cetera? So any color on what's driving that. And sort of biopharma, I think some of your peers have spoken about cautiousness on capital budgets. Can you talk about bookings trends within the storage business and B Medical? Any sensitivity from a CapEx cautiousness?

Yes. Thanks, Vijay. Gosh, if that was the first one, I'm curious how many questions you got. But let me try. So a few things. You had it right. So the synthesis business, up 8% is, we think, a really healthy look for us, 2 consecutive quarters of increase from where we've been. I think you recall, we'd had a downward trend. And I think we had issues to resolve from a delivery standpoint. So we feel we're in a good position there. We -- just to put some color on that, we've seen a lot of aggressive price pressure in the synthesis business that we did not chase down. And we had some delivery issues as we've been -- as we communicated to people, but we've resolved those. We continue to deliver extremely high quality, high speed. And we do really complicated things for customers. So we're really confident about that. The China business in synthesis has also been pretty healthy. On the NGS business, the 13% growth is -- so I'll give you a couple of pieces there. One is just strong across-the-board capability. And Vijay, also every once in a while, we win a project that allows us to have a good slug of NGS business in a particular quarter, followed by digestion from that same customer until they come back for another study. But we had a good solid growth period in NGS, and we continue to be healthy there. We're making investments on new tools, continue to be aggressive about winning customer business. And we anticipate that will -- the investments that we make will allow us to continue to grow that business over the long term. The Sanger business was flat. So just to give you an idea, so Sanger was 0. So when you put -- when you do the arithmetic there, indeed, Sanger was flat. One of the things I will say is as we announced the Plasmid-E

Sorry, on the bookings on the capital side, Steve, just given some of your peers talking with cautiousness in biopharma spending.

Yes. So Vijay, we saw flat on the cryo business, just to give an idea. So different from the past when we've been an upward trend. So I presume that's equivalent to some of the softness people are seeing in that regard. And we're seeing -- again, we mentioned on prior calls, there's business that we know requires automated cryo, for example, but some of those things have been delayed. And so we had anticipated growth about this time of the year when we started the fiscal year. To have it be flat is different from the plans that we had at the beginning. So indeed, there's some softness there and some projects that we believe are just being delayed. And as they come, we'll be in -- we're in a position to win, but that's what we're seeing. On the large, automated stores, we have pretty significant backlog. We see that business continuing to be very strong. And so the cryo side flat, large, automated stores, we continue to see that business growing significantly. And for the next few quarters, we'll continue to work to get the capacity of our factory up so we can deliver. We're on time for customers. But if that business grows, we're going to need to continue to make improvements in operational capability to make sure that we can deliver.

That's helpful, Steve. And maybe a quick one here for Lindon. I think B Medical outlook came up slightly. I think at the midpoint, the base business is down slightly. Can you just talk us through your assumptions for base business into Q4?

So yes, if you look off of what we finished Q3, our base business is actually expected to be up about $1 million quarter-to-quarter. And in our very specific look at this, and of course, there's a range around it, we see services being flat to down $1 million and products being up $1 million. And we still see a lot of deliveries ahead of us on the large, automated stores. So we've got that business being relatively flat quarter-to-quarter but up just a touch of $1 million. So in the B Medical, in our guide here of $24 million, this is centered -- I mean it's a single number, not a range around it. It's based on the firm orders that we have scheduled in the quarter. And I would emphasize to everybody, we've got a range of history here. So this -- in Q3, we were pleased that they were able to get almost $6 million above what we had projected at this time of last quarter booked and shipped. In the previous quarters, that range from -- we had 1 quarter that was less than $2 million done in the final, I'll say, 50 days. And the other quarters, we're close to that $2 million to $3 million, $4 million. So it range -- Q3 stood out as being $6 million, but so far in our short history with them, that's been the standout. So we'll look for $24 million to be a solid guide. And if we get more orders, we'll expect that to ship as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Yuan

Congrats on a strong quarter. I'm curious for the genomic services. Can you comment on if the recent flood in China has any impact on the operations and demand in 4Q? Then I have a follow-up question.

So that's not been an aspect of business impacts for us. And Yuan, appreciate the very specific question. We pay a lot of attention to China. Just to remind people, our genomics business has a significant operating center in Suzhou, China. And it has done tremendous for us in terms of not just the delivery globally of Gene Synthesis but also development of an unusual successful business inside China, providing the services across Sanger, NGS as well as synthesis on the ground in China. As Steve mentioned, not only are we not seeing that impact that you asked about, but we're not really seeing the softness that people have called out in China. So we're watching it. But right now, we're fairly bullish on China. So appreciate the color and the question.

Got it. And I'm glad to see the quarter -- the growth of Gene Synthesis, the 9%, and the NGS, 13%. I'm just curious, can you provide more color on the market share, whether you are gaining or losing market share in the genomic services sector? And how does that compare to your peers?

It's a really tough one. I would highlight to you that, as I mentioned in our remarks, China grew faster than the other areas. We saw growth across each region though in genomics. And I think if I look at total life sciences space, we've seen a lot of announcements that have -- saw numbers down. But the genomics space -- services space doesn't have a tremendous amount of publications that would highlight to us in this somewhat fragmented business whether we were able to gain share. I do believe when you're in this level of growth year-over-year, high single-digit, you're in these particular areas of the market where we're seeing softness. We're seeing challenges. But we're able to grow through it. We would anticipate we may be taking a little share, but it would be a little share based on the size of our business and the growth rates now. Come back and ask me that question when we get up into the teens, double digits, and I'll have fun answering that question.

And there are no further questions pending. I'll turn the call back to Lindon Robertson for closing remarks. Thank you.

Yes. We really appreciate everybody tuning in and the questions and -- always are insightful ones to help add color to our announcement. We couldn't be more delighted with the progress that the business has shown year-to-date. As you recall, when we reported this time last year, we know we disappointed some people at that point. But since then, I think our assessment, our realignment of the business, our focus on sales and marketing, our investments have been what's been driving our results. And we're seeing that momentum. As I highlighted, if you take out the C&I, which is about 11% of our revenue, the other 90% has got a handsome growth in a market that's struggling a bit. With that said, we'll continue down that path, and we'll continue to take some costs out as we've committed on the second phase to be done by the end of this year, the calendar year that is. And we look forward to giving you an update. And before that, of course, at the end of our fiscal year, which finishes September 30, so we'll see you, which traditionally comes in the first week or so of November. So that report out. So we look forward to seeing you in the meanwhile in some conferences, but thank you for tuning in today. Appreciate it.