Steve Schwartz
Analyst · Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Lindon. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. We're particularly pleased to announce the results from a very strong June quarter in part because the results that we’ve delivered, but more importantly because we’re able to demonstrate the earnings power of our business, which is made up of a portfolio of strong market leading technology positions and key growth segments of the semi-conductor and Life Sciences markets. A foundation that we strongly believe will continue to deliver going forward. Revenue at $182 million was up 7% from March and up 23% over the prior year. Gross margins increased sequentially by 100 basis points to reach 40%, which is a very meaningful threshold for the company, and a heavy lift from the 32% to 33% gross margins we delivered in fiscal 2011, the year we first entered the Life Sciences space and began to restructure our semiconductor product portfolio. The top line and gross margin performance led to a non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.36, more than double what we delivered in the June quarter one year ago, and up 27% from the March quarter. Growth came from both segments as we delivered our eighth consecutive quarter of growth in Life Sciences and semiconductor, which is riding the wave of strong momentum in the capital equipment space, also benefited from our expanding market share position in our key growth segments. The part that we find most energizing is the momentum that we’ve established inside the company to continually ratchet down on costs and improve efficiency, while we advance new product development and sales activity to deliver top line growth. We continue to see more potential and that’s what drives us even harder. Today, we report on some of the highlights from the quarter and give color as to what makes us enthusiastic about the prospects from the very solid positions we’ve captured in two important markets. I’ll begin my comments today with a recap of our Life Sciences business performance. Revenue came in at a robust $37 million, that’s up 6% from March and represents organic growth of 27% from the June quarter one year ago. And including organic growth and revenue from acquisitions was our seventh consecutive quarter of greater than 25% growth. Bookings at $42 million had another $7 million to backlog, which now stands at $260 million. And though gross margin was slightly softer on mix, Life Sciences delivered $2 million of operating profit in the quarter even as we made additional investments to expand our global sales team. I’ll add just a few additional highlights from the quarter. Our automated storage systems business grew 63% versus prior year coming from both bio and cryo automation solutions we delivered to compound and bio-banks, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine applications. In a particularly positive sign, our BioStore three cryo system bookings topped $2 million for the quarter with account penetrations in North America, Europe, China, and the Middle East. We had 26 new customers expanding our base across a broad spectrum of customers in the Pharma, Biotech, healthcare clinical, and academic end markets. We also delivered on some important milestones that will generate future revenue. We launched BioStudies, a bioinformatics platform that enables customers to virtualize and visualize all of their global samples. And we received a first order from a major bio-bank by demonstrating the utility of this configurable sample management software platform. We completed and commercially launched two new configurations of a BioStore III cryo automation products, one that stores a common Life Sciences industry standard sample container called an SPS rack and the other a variable temperature version of the BIII C for customers select the automated configuration and liquid nitrogen sample security, but would want the store at user selectable temperature set points anywhere between minus 80 and minus 190 Celsius. Initial units of both new products have already been shipped to a major customer. In our consumables and instruments sector, we released a universal instrument that will allow customers to simultaneously cap and de-cap 96 sample tubes of various types and brands. This is the first in the market. And we just recently developed a new small footprint minus 80 degree C automated store that expands our customer universe to include those who need automated minus 80 storage, but for whom up to 300,000 samples is adequate storage capacity. And at the beginning of last month, we completed the acquisition of Pacific Bio-Material Management or PBMMI, a highly regarded biological sample transport and storage company with customers that include Memorial Sloan Kettering and Mount Sinai Hospital, plus an a list of research and academic institutions that they won because of their high quality and outstanding service capability. Along with the strong and talented team we had more East and West Coast geographic footprints and more than 250 customers that meaningfully expands our academic market presence. And with each sample under management, we have the possibility to deliver more value to customers from the broader portfolio of offerings that we’ve developed at Brooks over the years. Our cold chain sample management portfolio is proving its value, as we provide customers with a one-stop shop for all of their cold sample needs. We’re working to increase the depth and breadth of all of our offerings along the cold chain. Our new product development initiatives and the addition of PBMMI are all representative examples of this strategy in action. In Life Sciences, our priority is growth. We continue to invest in new products additional go-to-market sales capability and acquisitions that allow us to grow in this important and expanding space of sample management. And although we’re focused on growth, we’re careful to strike the right balance to maintain profitability as we grow. This business has tremendous earnings leverage and we know that if we elected to slow investment for growth, we could deliver much higher profitability. As a matter of fact, we maintain our position that the potential profit margin of Life Sciences is greater than in our semiconductor opportunity, but for now we believe that the best thing that we can do for shareholders is to continue to make investments to capture more of this market through targeted investments in organic and inorganic growth opportunities. We believe that we’re taking the right steps, and I illustrate with two examples. First, we’ve meaningfully expanded our customer base over the years. When we started in the automated stores and services space, we acquired companies that gave us approximately 200 customers. At the beginning of fiscal 2015, when we acquired FluidX, a consumables and instruments company, we added another 300 customers. BioStorage Technologies came with an additional 300 customers and PBMMI 250 more bringing the number of customer relationships to more than 1000. Over the past three years, this represents a five-fold increase in the number of potential opportunities we have to expand our cold chain offerings. We’ve already started to leverage this portfolio to win more business at many of these customers who are eager to streamline their sample management solutions. In terms of results, Life Sciences revenue for the first three quarters of fiscal 2017 was $105 million, almost equal to the $108 million of revenue we delivered in all of fiscal 2016. That represents 37% growth over the same period one year ago, and for the fiscal year-to-date bookings totaled $154 million, up 35% over the same period last year. We’re forecasting another strong quarter for Life Sciences and we expect to deliver double-digit sequential revenue growth in Q4 with revenue above $40 million and we expect revenue will continue to grow in every quarter of 2018. I’ll now turn to the semiconductor business, which remains our main cash and profit engine. In our semiconductor business, we set a number of new high water marks as we successfully tested our operational capabilities against another surge in customer demand. We delivered revenue of $145 million, up 8% sequentially and up 22% versus the same quarter one year ago. It’s important to note that this 8% quarter-over-quarter growth was net of reduction in our CCS revenue of approximately $5 million, due to the decrease in leading-edge foundry spending that some of our OEM customers have already mentioned. This makes the growth in our semi business all the more impressive as it’s driven mostly by 3-D memory capacity and advanced packaging. I’ll provide a quick update on these three growth drivers, starting with vacuum automation. The tremendous growth in vacuum process technologies, primarily deposition and etch led us to yet another record in vacuum robots with revenue up 14% from this previous record we delivered in March. These are unprecedented times and we’re reaping the benefits of our powerful market position in the vacuum automation space. Year-over-year our vacuum robot business was up 56% and indications are that we’re in for a period of sustained strength in the equipment industry and that vacuum process steps that serve 3-D memory will continue to be in high demand into 2018. Our leading market position at more than 15 OEMs who supply vacuum equipment virtually assures that if any capacity additions are a benefit for Brooks. In advanced packaging, we saw a 60% increase in automation solutions, from $9 million in March to more than $14 million in the June. Advanced packaging growth was driven by strong investment by Chinese OEMs, as well as increased shipments of 200 mm vacuum systems to support the unique packaging needs for MEMS, power, and plasma dicing markets. We also added to our share by winning the automation design for an advanced packaging lithography tool. Looking forward, we see positive momentum for additional investment in leading-edge foundry to support integrated fan-out. The advanced packaging business is robust and the in the opportunities that exist are expanding to a broader number of companies, which are building lines to adapt these new technologies. As a result, we feel that we’re at a step change from the $40 million annual run rate that we sustained from most of the last couple of years to something that can be meaningfully higher. The only part of our semiconductor business that was not up in the June quarter was contamination control solutions, which still came in at a healthy $20 million, but was down from record $25 million in the March quarter. This reduced level was expected as leading-edge 10 and 7 nm foundry spending, which drove extremely high shipments in December and March has subsided as that manufacturing capacity is brought online. On the positive side, we believe we have one 100% market share for all 10 nm and 7 nm manufacturing capacity that’s being installed and in these technology nodes ramp, so too will our CCS business, but we’re forecasting CCS to be down again in the September quarter by another $6 million to $8 million as leading-edge foundry spending is expected to remain low. That said, we are counting on new factory capacity in China and the restart of foundry spending to be meaningful drivers of additional market opportunities in 2018 and our forecast, which are based on new fab capacity expansion plans are for CCS business to grow again in 2018. Finally, in the quarter we also supported another jump in our cryo vacuum pump business, which was up 10% from the prior quarter and up more than 50% from the prior year as both ion implantation and PVD activity has strengthened. Our Polycold cryochillers business that supports applications for advanced displays was similarly in very high demand, more than double the level of the same quarter one year ago, and at levels we’ve not seen for several years. We anticipate similar revenue for our cryo vacuum products in the September quarter. In total, we forecast our semiconductor business to be down approximately 7% to 8% at September, after our record June quarter, which included a couple million dollars of pull-ins to help customers who wanted more product in June, but even with the pause in September, we’ll be very busy in manufacturing operations as we will be preparing for what we are forecasting to be some high demand quarters after that. So although revenue will be slightly less, we’ll be no less busy in our preparedness for a strong demand outlook. Overall, we’re extremely pleased with our performance. We’re in two growth businesses that are supported by strong market dynamics in which we hold defensible positions that we continue to build. Our outlook for Life Sciences for more quarters and years of accelerated top line and margin expansion as we continue to build a growth engine centered in the sweet spot of sample management. This market is exploding as bio samples are the key elements to support drug discovery, cell therapy, regenerative medicine, and cancer research. The demands for our capabilities are accelerating and our ability to define standards of handling and transport are going to be essential for our success and to the benefit of the industry. In the semiconductor space, we’re benefiting from the strong growth in 3-D memory and all of the vacuum equipment that requires. We are well positioned for advanced packaging automation opportunities where we have shown our capability to capture share and we’re far and away to market choice for CCS solutions for wafer and radical carrier cleaning. All-in, we see another strong quarter in September, even with the pause in the semiconductor business. We remain extremely bullish about our position in both markets and we anticipate growth in the December quarter from both segments. That concludes my formal remarks, and I’ll now turn the call back over to Lindon.