The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>I guess jumping right in. So welcome to the conference, first of all. It's great to have Bio-Techne join us for a fireside chat. We've got
a pretty big question list here. We'd like to go through your business, your key priorities, growth pillars, thoughts on capital deployment,
and a few other topics that hopefully, we can get to.
To begin, I guess, can you take a minute to give us the one-minute pitch and overview of Bio-Techne's business? What is Bio-Techne?
Where do you play within the life science tools market? And in your words, what differentiates Bio-Techne the most and makes it
unique from other tools companies?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Got it. All right. So you've been in the CEO seat now for just over a year. You took the helm officially last February. And prior to that,
you were the President of the Diagnostics and Genomics segment since 2018.
Can you reflect on your first year as CEO, you started leading Bio-Techne in a pretty difficult period for tools. And how did you manage
through the environment?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Got it. Okay. And then -- so moving over to sort of your guidance philosophy. Bio-Techne doesn't explicitly provide financial guidance.
But over the long term, the company aims to outpace the life science tools market by 500 to 1,000 basis points per year, assuming
underlying end market growth of 4% to 6% over the long term.
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Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: All right. So moving over to your customers and geographies. Pharma makes up around 50% of your overall revenues. And in fiscal
Q2, you noted that pharma revenue saw pretty broad-based strength and grew mid-teens. Can you discuss what you're seeing in
terms of activity levels between the larger pharma customers and the smaller biotech customers?
And what's embedded in your expectations for '25?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: And Kim, just on pharma, given your consumables orientation, do you tend to see pharma spend come back first versus
instrumentation? I mean, I think the broader diversified tools peers have all talked about pharma recovering, but it has been a choppy
ride in the last couple of years. I think there's still some hesitation from investors to believe it until they really see a play out in the
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Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: And maybe last one and turn it. In terms of being normal, you've heard IRA, pipeline reprioritization, maybe it's the macro interest
rates. I don't know like when your salespeople are meeting with pharma customers, like when do we get back to normal? Like what
are the factors you think that are still not there even though things are getting better?
James Hippel - Bio-Techne Corp - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President - Finance
Personally, I think it's just a matter of timing. I mean we -- as Kim talked about, we had assumed that large pharma wouldn't really
start to come back. We wouldn't see it really until our fourth quarter, the calendar Q2, mainly because our main customer in pharma
is the researcher at the bench, right? So by the time the budgets get approved by the Board and get trickled down to where the
actual researcher knows how much they can spend, it's often the March, April time frame. So that's why we didn't expect to see it
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Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Okay. Moving over to the academic side. Clearly, there's been quite a bit of volatility on the funding side. I'm sure you've had a million
questions about that today. But can you discuss your exposure to NIH funding?
And what type of impact have you seen from the new administration's actions to restrict funding?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: So you've identified four key pillars that make up about 45% of your revenue across the portfolio, including cell and gene therapy,
ProteinSimple, spatial biology, molecular diagnostics. We'll get to spatial molecular shortly, but starting with cell and gene therapy,
you sized this previously as roughly a $4 billion market growing low teens with Techne having about 2% share and growing over
30% long term. I think you discussed it earlier, but can you remind us how big this business is today and your key offerings within
cell and gene therapy? And maybe speak a little bit about the Wilson Wolf investment as well.
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Got it. Okay. And another growth pillar here, ProteinSimple. You don't disclose specifically, but we estimate it's somewhere around
$275 million between both instruments and consumables. You noted that instruments grew low single digits in FQ2, first returned
to growth in about 2 years.
And on the instrument-specific consumable side, they grew high teens in FQ2, which I believe you said was 8 out of 9 of the prior
quarters where consumables grew double digits. Can you speak a little bit about the ProteinSimple franchise, what your sort of
attach rate is for Bio-Techne consumables on the instruments and what your outlook is for instruments from here?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Got it. So your other two growth pillars I just mentioned earlier, molecular diagnostics and spatial biology. In your Investor Day deck
from 2023, you sized the spatial market at about $5 billion, growing low double digits with your long-term growth rate being over
20%. And you sized the molecular diagnostics market at $9 billion, growing low double digits and again, with Bio-Techne growing
over 20%. So I guess starting with spatial.
You grew this business about mid-teens in the fiscal second quarter. What's your strategy within the spatial market? Can you discuss
any market trends you're seeing, if you're taking share? And if so, from who?
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Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Just on the Lunaphore, you talked about taking share. Just what's been the share gain trend there? Like are you growing above the
market? Is it all share gain? Just give us a flavor for what's happening in that business?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Got it. Okay. Maybe one more here. We've got about a minute left. M&A is one of the keys to your story.
You mentioned earlier the company has acquired around 18 companies over the past 10-plus years. Can you discuss your deal
pipeline today? What specific areas you'd like to add to the Technip portfolio? And what's the ideal profile for a business Technip
you'd like to add?
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Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: Got it. Okay. Maybe one more real quick one. What excites you the most about the Bio-Techne story?
Question: Kyle Boucher - TD Cowen - Analyst
: All right. With that, Kim, Jim?
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