Yahoo Finance Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ:TECH) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ:TECH) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 1, 2024
Bio-Techne Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.48, expectations were $0.46. Bio-Techne Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the Bio-Techne Earnings Conference Call for the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2024. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the call will be open for questions following management’s prepared remarks. During our Q&A session, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I would now like to turn the call over to David Clair, Bio-Techne’s Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
David Clair: Good morning and thank you for joining us. On the call with me this morning are Kim Kelderman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Hippel, Chief Financial Officer of Bio-Techne. Before we begin, let me briefly cover our safe harbor statement. Some of the comments made during this conference call may be considered forward-looking statements, including beliefs and expectations about the company’s future results. The company’s 10-K for fiscal year 2023 identifies certain factors that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements made during this call. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements because of any new information or future events or developments.
The 10-K as well as the company’s other SEC filings are available on the company’s website within its Investor Relations section. During the call, non-GAAP financial measures may be used to provide pertinent to ongoing business performance. Tables reconciling these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in the company’s press release issued earlier this morning on the Investor Relations section of our Bio-Techne Corporation website at www.bio-techne.com. Separately, we will be presenting at the Bank of America, Benchmark, Leerink, William Blair, Jefferies and Scotiabank conferences in the coming weeks. We look forward to connecting with many of you at these upcoming events. I will now turn the call over to Kim.
Kim Kelderman: Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter conference call. I’m pleased to report that our third quarter outperformed our initial expectations as several of the green shoots we’ve discussed during our last earnings call continue to sprout and combined with excellent execution by our Bio-Techne team contributed to delivering 2% year-over-year organic revenue growth. We’re looking forward to seeing these green shoots further develop as the headwinds we have faced, namely the biotech funding and the macroeconomic challenges in China continue to stabilize and eventually improve. Our team demonstrated that our product portfolio can show relative strong performance in the stabilizing but still challenging end markets.
And therefore, we are confident that we can perform extremely well when our end markets fully recover. Additionally, we delivered this quarter’s growth while we continue to focus on profitability. The recent initiatives to drive efficiencies across the organization while investing to position the business for future growth are taking hold. And this shows by our adjusted operating margin increasing sequentially by 290 basis points to 33%. Our growth pillars within our portfolio continue to lead to our strong performance with a new quarterly record for our GMP reagents business, a continued increase in adoption of our ExoDx Prostate test, robust utilization trends across our proteomic analytical tools portfolio and strong demand for Comet, a fully automated special biology instrument.
I will double-click on these highlights and encouraging trends later in the call. First, I’d like to bring to your attention. The Bio-Techne’s recent recognition by CiteAb, a reagent search and data services company. Bio-Techne did not receive just one, but two awards. The first award I would like to mention was received for being the ELISA Kit Supplier of the Year. This important designation is awarded to the ELISA kit manufacturer that receives the most citations throughout the year. Citations are an important indicator of market adoption, particularly within academia. We are proud of our leading portfolio of ELISA kit stemming from a long history of innovation. CiteAb also recognized Bio-Techne’s RNAscope HiPlex 12 with the Innovation Award.
That is acknowledging its role in enabling spatial detection of RNA in tissue. Our overall spatial biology efforts were also recognized as Bio-Techne was highly commended for Educational Initiative of the Year, which is related to our ongoing work to enhance spatial biology research and education. This recognition is representative of our company’s vision to work together with our customers to unlock the possibilities of science. The second topic I want to highlight is related to artificial intelligence. Given the significant potential that AI and machine learning bring to the advancing science, I want to describe an example of one of the many ways our team is proactively and safely, leveraging these important tools. As you already know, Bio-Techne is the global leader in research use only proteins.
Researchers from around the world rely on our portfolio of highly bioactive proteins for many important laboratory workflows. Some examples of these workflows include cell growth and differentiation, antibody production and screening as well as biomarkers in disease monitoring. We are leveraging AI capabilities to create new patentable, hyperactive designer proteins and other reagents with new functionalities. For over 40 years, Bio-Techne has been on the leading edge of protein development and bioactivity. Today, we are using the power of AI to increase that lead even further. Now let’s get deeper into our quarterly results, starting with an overview of our end markets followed by our geographies. Our biopharma end market performance led by our cell and gene therapy growth vertical improved sequentially with a low single-digit increase compared to the prior year quarter.
Industry reports point to a recovery in biotech funding during the first calendar year of 2024 with estimates suggesting significantly higher funding levels compared to pre-COVID periods. However, this increase in funding comes after a December quarter that was an eight-year low. So it may be too early to call this a new trend. But nonetheless, it’s a green shoot that appears to be taking root. And if so, could blossom into meaningful revenue growth as we get into our fiscal year 2025. On the academic side, we delivered low single-digit revenue growth, even though we had a tough comparable from robust mid-teens performance in Europe last year. Within the U.S. and Europe, academic budgets remain stable and their spatial biology and proteomic instrument growth pillars outperformed in these end markets.
Now I will discuss the three geographies. North America improved sequentially with year-over-year growth in the low single-digits. This improvement was led by a strong performance in cell and gene therapy. Europe declined mid single-digits as mid-teens growth in the prior year period created a challenging comp for the geography. However, on a multiyear CAGR basis, Europe has performed well, mid single-digit growth. Last but not least, I will discuss China, which saw revenue decline in the mid single-digits versus prior year. We mentioned in our last earnings call that we saw a stabilization of revenues in December and January and we called for revenues in Q3 to be similar to Q2, and that was indeed in line with how the quarter played out, which is a confirmatory sign that the bottom may have been reached in China.
With the deceleration of revenue in China seemingly behind us, we also saw some green shoots in the region with China’s State Council’s introduction of a broad economic stimulus plan. This plan is focused on upgrading equipment across several industry to support innovation. While the specifics of this $70 billion lending program remain fluid, we anticipate that this will be a multiyear program that will eventually have a positive impact on our insulin business. Improving healthcare remains a priority for the Chinese government in our portfolios of bioactive reagents, proteomic analysis and spatial biology technologies will remain important tools for the modernization of healthcare in China. Now let’s discuss our segments and their growth pillars, starting with our Protein Sciences segment, where revenue declined 1% year-over-year on an organic basis.
This is a sequential improvement from our second quarter and reflects the stabilizing of the biopharma and Chinese end markets. Our Protein Sciences segment is where we have the most exposure to these end markets and stands to benefit the most from the green shoots taking root. Utilization of our protein simple branded portfolio of proteomic analytical tools remain very strong as consumables used on those instruments continued its long streak of double-digit growth. This growth was broad-based and was further enhanced by the growing installed base and expanding applications of these productivity tools. Examples of new applications are fractionation on MauriceFlex as well as QA and QC applications for gene therapies across our platforms, such as Maurice Simple Western and Simple Plex.
Our Simple Western platform of automated western blot solutions continues to gain share as demonstrated by the low double-digit growth for this quarter. The platform performance if it comes to ease of use, speed and reproducibility, compares very well to manual methods, which resonates with both our biopharma and academic end users. Customers continue to expand the Simple Western use case and workflows as we can see from increased utilization in gene therapy, potency release and quantitative immunoassay application. We are encouraged with the uptake of this novel instrument and given its low mid-teens market penetration and its expanded use cases, we see a long runway for adoption of this technology. Now let’s discuss the promising opportunity for our multiplex ELISA instrument branded Ella as a clinical diagnostic platform.
Following the recent ISO 13485 Certification, we are now ready to pursue clinical diagnostic opportunities on the Ella platform. This opens up a large potential end market for this highly sensitive, fast and easy to use multiplexing immunoassay instrument. The recently announced partnership with Novomol-Dx is a great example of this opportunity. Their Bio-Marker Pathfinder, or BMP kit utilizes Ella, its consumables as well as Bio-Techne’s reagents as the basis for their point-of-care [indiscernible] test. Novomol-Dx will initially launch the BMP kit in India that has potential to deploy this test more globally in the future. Moving on to the performance of the next growth pillar within Protein Sciences, which is cell and gene therapy. This novel portfolio of reagents, media, analytical and workflow solutions enables our customers to further their therapeutic development to progress through clinical trials and to make continued inroads towards the commercialization of these next-generation therapies.
Collectively, our portfolio of cell and gene therapy products and services increased over 30% in the quarter. GMP reagents, including GMP proteins and small molecules, remain a cornerstone of our cell therapy offering. We experienced continued traction during the quarter, especially in regenerative medicine applications. In the current quarter, we will be strengthening our GMP reagent portfolio with the launch of GMP antibodies, which are designed for cell selection and activation in cell therapy workflows. Overall, our portfolio of GMP reagents grew over 40%, which resulted in a record revenue quarter. Now let’s shift to our Diagnostics and Genomics segment, which reported 10% organic growth for the quarter. Starting with our spatial biology growth pillar, which includes both our ACD business as well as our Lunaphore acquisition.
The single molecule sensitivity, unrivaled specificity and subcellular resolution offered by the RNAScope ISH technology is driving utilization in cancer, neuroscience, immunology, cell and gene therapy and regenerative medicine applications. This broad utilization has enabled RNAScope to become the most referenced spatial biology technology in the industry as the number of our customers publications recently surpassed 10,000. Importantly, over 50% of these publications were released in the last three years as increasing global awareness and expanded market adoption further solidify ACD’s leadership in spatial biology applications. Jumping to a Lunaphore platform. Demand for our fully automated high throughput hyperplex spatial biology platform called Comet once again outpaced our manufacturing capacity in the quarter.
However, across divisional project to rapidly scale up Lunaphore’s instrument production capacity is on track to meet current and future platform demand. We also remain on track to launch ACD’s RNAScope HiPlex Pro on the Comet at the end of our current fiscal year. This will enable a novel, highly differentiated multiomic spatial biology platform capable of visualizing up to 12 RNA and 24 protein biomarkers simultaneously in one tissue sample. Moving on to our fourth and final growth pillar, which is the liquid biopsy based molecular diagnostics business. Our ExoDx prostate test provides valuable information on whether a man with a gray-zone PSA score should proceed with an invasive, potentially dangerous prostate biopsy or not. With over 25% volume growth in Q3, the value of this test continues to resonate with both patients and physicians.
I’d also like to highlight the continued traction we are experiencing with our surgeon carrier screening and oncology kit business. A surgeon’s ability to solve complex molecular diagnostic challenges continues to resonate with their clinical laboratory partners as growth for this business approached 30% during Q3. Also, we continue to execute on technology synergies within our molecular diagnostics division. We are developing exosome-based single gene mutation tests for monitoring various cancer markets. These kits leverage our ExosomeDx technology and will be distributed through our surgeon laboratory channel. We expect this first monitoring test to be launched in the upcoming quarter. Before I hand the call over to Jim to walk you through the financials in more detail, I would summarize the key takeaways for Q3 as such.
Biopharma end markets as well as the China region stabilized relative to the previous quarter and there are early indications that these markets will improve in the back half of the calendar year. Our growth pillars, which are comprised of cell and gene therapy, proteomic analysis solutions, spatial biology technology and our liquid biopsy platform, all continue to outperform the market with their superior portfolio positioning and by the excellent execution of our team. These growth pillars enabled by our leading portfolio of proteomic reagents and assays remain incredibly well positioned to enable our customers to improve the quality of life by catalyzing advances in science and medicine for years to come. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Jim.
Jim?
Jim Hippel: Thank you, Kim. I’ll start with some additional detail on our Q3 financial performance and then give some thoughts on the financial outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. Starting with the overall third quarter financial performance. Adjusted EPS was $0.48 compared to $0.53 in the prior year quarter, with foreign exchange having a material impact on EPS. GAAP EPS for the quarter was $0.31 compared to $0.43 in the prior year. Q3 revenue was $303.4 million, an increase of 2% year-over-year on an organic basis and a 3% increase on a reported basis. Acquisitions contributed 1% to reported growth. Looking at our organic growth by region and end market in Q3. North America increased low single digits year-over-year, while Europe and China decreased mid-single digits.
As Kim mentioned, we noticed an improvement in demand from our biopharma customers, which benefited growth in both our North American and European regions. Overall, Europe had a challenging year-over-year comp as both academic and biopharma increased mid-teens last year. APAC outside of China decreased low single digits overall, with government funding and macro constraints in Japan and South Korea, partially offset by growth in India. For China, the soft government funding environment continued to impact the region. Although the stabilization we experienced in our run rate business in December continued in Q3. This stabilization led to year-over-year growth in our core reagents as well as our spatial biology business in the region. It appears as though the worst of the China slowdown is behind us at this point.
And over the long-term, we remain confident that China will still be the fastest-growing major region in the world for life science tools. However, the path back to accelerated growth, we think will take longer than previous down cycles. By end market in Q3, excluding China, biopharma grew low single digits in the quarter, while academic was relatively flat with a challenging double-digit growth comps in Europe. Below revenue on the P&L, total company adjusted gross margin was 71.9% in the quarter, a significant improvement from Q2, but lower than the 72.6% in the same quarter of the prior year. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by the impact of the Lunaphore acquisition in this fiscal year. Adjusted SG&A in Q3 was 30.3% of revenue compared to 27.9% in the prior year, while R&D expense in Q3 was 8.5% of revenue compared to 7.7% in the prior year.
The increase in SG&A and R&D was driven primarily by the Lunaphore acquisition. Our strategic pricing strategy continues to offset the dollar impact of inflation to operating income, with pricing also largely offsetting the inflationary impact on our operating margin in Q3. Adjusted operating margin for Q3 was 33%, a decrease of 400 basis points from the prior year period but an increase of 290 basis points sequentially. Excluding the Lunaphore acquisition, which closed at the beginning of Q1, adjusted operating margin was 160 basis points lower than the prior year due to the impact of unfavorable volume leverage and to a lesser extent, strategic investments to position the business for future growth. Looking at our numbers below operating income.
Net interest expense in Q3 was $3.1 million, increasing $2.9 million compared to the prior year period due to higher debt levels associated with our acquisition of Lunaphore earlier this year. Our bank debt on the balance sheet as of the end of Q3 stood at $389 million, a decrease of $58 million compared to last quarter. Other adjusted non-operating income was $1.6 million in the quarter, an increase of $1.5 million compared to the prior year, primarily reflecting our 20% share of Wilson Wolf’s adjusted net income and the exchange impact related to our cash pooling arrangements. Moving further down the P&L. Our adjusted effective rate in Q3 was 22%, flat sequentially, but up 100 basis points compared to the prior year due to geographic mix.
Turning to cash flow and return of capital. $81 million of cash was generated from operations in the quarter and our net investment in capital expenditures was $16.4 million. Also during Q3, we returned capital to shareholders by a way of $12.5 million in dividends. We finished the quarter with $160.5 million average diluted shares outstanding. Our balance sheet finished Q3 in a strong position with approximately $140 million in cash on hand and our total leverage ratio was below 1x EBITDA. Going forward, M&A remains a top priority for capital allocation. Now I’ll discuss the performance of our reporting segments, starting with Protein Sciences. Q3 reported sales were $214.6 million, with reported revenue decreasing 2% compared to the prior year period.
As we discussed last quarter, following a strategic review of our portfolio, we have decided to divest the fetal bovine serum or FBS business. FBS has approximately $10 million annual revenue business with an operating margin profile and long-term growth rate below the company average. The exclusion of FBS unfavorably impacted reported segment revenue growth by 1%. Thus, organic revenue decreased 1%. As a reminder, it is our Protein Sciences segment that has the most exposure to the China geographic region as well as to the biotech end market. Operating margin for the Protein Sciences segment was 44.2%, a decrease of 90 basis points compared to the prior year quarter as unfavorable volume and product mix were partially offset by cost management and structural alignment initiatives.
On a sequential basis, Protein Sciences segment operating margin increased 390 basis points as a result of these cost initiatives and improved volume leverage. Turning to the Diagnostics and Genomics segment. Q3 sales were $87.5 million, with reported growth increasing 16% compared to the same quarter last year. Organic revenue growth for the segment was 10% with the Lunaphore acquisition having a 6% impact. Growth was solid across the entire segment with our Molecular Diagnostics division leading the way. Moving on to the Diagnostics and Genomics segment operating margin at 9.3%, the segment’s operating margin decreased compared to the prior year’s 15.2% due primarily to the impact of the Lunaphore acquisition. However, Q3 operating margin improved 330 basis points sequentially from Q2, due to improving volume leverage and favorable product mix.
As we close out our fiscal year, we expect our Q4 to look similar to our Q3 that just ended with markets remain stable, namely the biotech end market in the China region. Our growth pillars should continue to drive outperformance relative to the overall market with incremental sequential improvement in revenue. With the expectation of incremental revenue in Q4, together with our cost management actions, we should also see incremental improvement in our adjusted operating margins in Q4 relative to Q3. However, we are also facing tougher year-over-year revenue growth comps in Q4 than we did in Q3, especially in China where we grew in the mid-teens in Q4 of last fiscal year. While these more difficult comps may be headwinds to our organic growth in Q4 relative to Q3, we are pleased that the trajectory of the business is improving.
As we progress to the end of our fiscal year, we will be monitoring very closely what impact the recent increases in biotech funding as well as the longer-term stimulus announced recently by the Chinese government may have in our fiscal 2025 outlook and operating plans. At our next earnings call, we look forward to updating you on the progress of these green shoots taking root. That concludes my prepared comments. And with that, I’ll turn the call back over to the operator to open the line for questions.
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