Lindon Robertson
Analyst · Needham. And your line is open
Thank you, Steve. I now refer you back to the slide deck available on our website. Turning to Slide 3. As Steve referenced, I will be brief with remarks regarding the semi business, but I do want to highlight a few points with semi included. For clarity of how we performed against expectations? We achieved the high end of our prior guidance range for Q4 under the aggregate view with semi. In that context, non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.78 up 67% year-over-year. Both life sciences and semi showed continued top line growth and strong profitability. Semi had another high-growth quarter with $205 million of revenue up 49% year-over-year. And life sciences generated revenue of $137 million reaching the high end of our guidance expectations with growth of 27% year-over-year. Due to the pending sale, our reporting of results will treat the semiconductor business as discontinued operations and our continued operations will consist exclusively of our life sciences business. Total GAAP earnings per share was $0.29 and I will break this down on our next page. In the appendix of this presentation, we have provided more details in the aggregate view of non-GAAP results for direct comparison to historical results. However, the remainder of my remarks will focus on the continuing operations which consists of the Life Science Services and Life Science Products segment and represents the ongoing business. As mentioned Life Sciences finished the year strong with Q4 revenue of $137 million, up 27% year-over-year and up 24% on an organic basis. Both products and services business delivered over 20% growth for the quarter and the full year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 15.5% and is net of 250 basis points headwind of overlapping G&A structure that is expected to roll off when the sale closes. I will provide more details on this later in my remarks, but perhaps most importantly we remain on track to achieve 22% adjusted EBITDA margin as we exit fiscal year 2022. Of course it was our September 20th announcement of reaching an agreement to sell our semiconductor automation business, which has driven these changes to our reporting. The agreement was to sell the business for $3 billion in cash. We expect net proceeds of $2.4 billion from the transaction and expect to have approximately $2.6 billion in net cash available to deploy for strategic investment in the Life Sciences business. Moving to slide 4. First, let's take a closer look on a GAAP basis, which you will see on the left side of the page. Revenue was up 6% sequentially and up 27% year-over-year. Looking at the bottom line, total GAAP earnings per share including the discontinued operations was a profit of $0.29, which includes $0.59 classified as discontinued operations. The GAAP earnings per share from continuing operations was a loss of $0.30 for the quarter. The gross margin was stable, while lower operating margin reflects expenses related to separating and standing up the two businesses. Operating expenses in the quarter include approximately $8 million of corporate expenses related to separating the semi business and $13 million of non-cash expense related to the retirement of trade names as we established the new Azenta brand. Additionally, there is an incremental burden of cost in our overlapping corporate structure, which is actively supporting both businesses until final separation is achieved. Below the operating income line, we had $16 million of non-operating expense related to the release of a tax indemnification asset. This $16 million charge nets out to zero at the net income line as we simultaneously eliminated a related $16 million potential tax liability. Now let's dive deeper into the non-GAAP P&L on the right side of the page. We delivered another strong quarter in Life Sciences to round out what has been a truly transformational year for the business. Organic growth was 24% in the quarter. The COVID related revenue was relatively stable sequentially and predominantly in the consumables business, which had about $11 million. Life Sciences gross margin saw a slight decline of 30 basis points quarter-over-quarter and 80 basis points year-over-year, reflecting performance improvements in products offset by modest margin pressure in services, on which I will provide additional color later in my segment remarks. Operating income was down 40 basis points sequentially and up 120 basis points year-over-year, showing the temporary pressure of increased G&A structure in the quarter but also demonstrating the strong operating leverage in the business as our revenue continues to grow faster than our operating expense. Let me provide more color around the changes to the reporting of our continuing operations, how we foresee transitioning to the transaction closure and on through to the end of fiscal 2022. As you may recall from prior quarters, I have explained that the separation of the two companies would put approximately five points of pressure on the stand-alone Life Sciences adjusted EBITDA margin. At the last call, our Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin was approximately 23%, so on a stand-alone basis you might expect 18%. However, as long as we are supporting the discontinued operations, we continue to carry some overlapping G&A in our corporate functions that drive an additional 250 basis points of expense. This extra cost will be about 300 basis points in Q1 as we will have nearly a full quarter of overlapping structure. When we close the deal and finalize the separation, which is expected in the first half of calendar year 2022, we expect to shed this extra expense and see immediate improvement. Meanwhile, as we continue to grow across the quarters of 2022, the leverage of our business model will continue to produce enhanced margins and we expect to exit the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 22%. With that in mind, this quarter we reported 15.5% adjusted EBITDA margin for Life Sciences, 100 basis point improvement quarter-over-quarter on a continuing operations basis. Turning now to slide five, for results of our continuing operations on a full year basis. Again, you will see incredibly strong revenue growth of 32%. Organic growth for the year came in at similar 33%, driven by growth in both segments. Gross margins expanded 360 basis points, driven by margin improvement in both Life Science Products and Life Science Services. Non-GAAP operating margins, as viewed on the continuing operations basis for both periods, increased from breakeven in fiscal 2020 to 9.1% in fiscal 2021. The full year tax rate was 20.3%, culminating in full year non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.48 compared to $0.02 for fiscal 2020. Full year adjusted EBITDA margin on a continuing operations basis was 16.7%, up an impressive 950 basis points year-over-year. Now please turn to page six for a review of our Life Science Products segment results. The products business in total was $53 million, up 9% quarter-over-quarter and up 38% year-over-year. The year-over-year increase was driven by 79% growth in storage systems and 30% growth in consumables and instruments. The Life Sciences Products Q4 gross margin was 47.9%, a 390 basis point improvement year-over-year, driven by strong margins in our automated storage business. Q4 operating margin of 12.4% expanded 910 basis points over last year, driven by the gross margin improvement and operating leverage in the business. Adjusted EBITDA shows the same margin expansion and came in at 17%. Next, please turn to page seven for a review of our Life Science Services segment results. Services business generated revenue of $84 million, an increase of 20% year-over-year and 4% on a sequential basis. As a reminder, this business is comprised of our genomic services business and our Sample Repository Solutions offerings. The genomic services business grew 22% year-over-year, driven by double-digit growth across all service lines. Sample Repository Solutions also delivered strong growth, driven by storage, up 16% year-over-year and up 25% excluding the impact of RUCDR. Sequentially, SRS revenue for the fourth quarter was up a strong 12%. If we adjust total service revenue for the impact of RUCDR, services growth was 22%. The services business delivered 50.8% gross margin, tapering slightly this quarter following higher-than-average utilization earlier in the year. This level of gross margin remains within our target range for now and reflects recent investments in the labor force both in hiring for capacity and compensation levels for retention. This brought the adjusted EBITDA margin to 14.2%. We foresee the services business gross margin fluctuating around this level for the near future and providing a return to EBITDA margin expansion with revenue growth. Let's turn to slide eight for a summary of cash flow for the quarter. Our operating cash flow is reported on a consolidated basis, including results from discontinued operations. We generated operating cash flow of $150 million over the past year, which included cash outflows of $22 million related to the separation costs. The working capital line reflects prudent investments to support the growth of both businesses throughout the year. Capital expenditures for this quarter totaled $18 million, including $2 million for semi. For the full year, total capital expenditures of $53 million includes $44 million related to Life Sciences. Let's turn to slide nine where we provide the first view of the balance sheet with semi assets moved to the net assets held for sale line. We closed with $244 million of cash, restricted cash and marketable securities, along with approximately $50 million of debt providing $194 million of net cash. Reviewing the balance sheet for the life science business, the largest asset on the books is goodwill and intangibles reflecting the numerous acquisitions we have done over the past decade. As highlighted in the cash flow, you can see in life sciences there is an increase in working capital and accounts receivables and inventory partially offset in payables. The PP&E line of $131 million is made up of equipment such as freezers, genomic analysis tools and injection molding. We have 14 labs and eight sample repository solution locations around the world, but we also have building and leasehold improvements. And beyond this the line, is comprised of software and other assets. Let's turn to Slide 10 now for guidance on the first fiscal quarter of 2022. Revenue from continuing operations is expected to be in the range of $130 million to $140 million with a midpoint supporting growth of approximately 15% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $14 million to $22 million and non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be $0.04 to $0.12 per share. As I said earlier we continue to expect the stand-alone business to return to around 22% adjusted EBITDA margin by the fourth fiscal quarter of 2022. For the full-year we expect capital expenditures in support of life sciences to be approximately $60 million to $70 million including approximately $25 million for the China genomics building site. We estimate that the non-GAAP tax rate will be in the range of 17% to 21%. Turning now to Slide 11. We will wrap up our prepared remarks. We are truly a one-of-a-kind life sciences company. We continue to deliver strong profitable growth. And as I mentioned, you will see this profit capability even more clearly once we complete the sale of the semi business. We have a strong balance sheet for strategic investment, which we expect to grow even stronger with completion of the sale of the semi business expected in the first half of calendar 2022. We have around a $200 million net cash position today with an anticipated balance of approximately $2.6 billion upon completion of this sale. We are excited about the launch of the Azenta Life Science business. We will be hosting a virtual Investor Day, next Tuesday November 16, starting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. We welcome investors and analysts to attend virtually as we have a broader group of our management team join in presenting our business capabilities and outlook. And of course, we will provide a new three-year target model describing our objectives for fiscal year 2024. A link to the registration page is available on the Events section of our Investor Relations website. Please reach out to Sara Silverman, our Head of Investor Relations, if you have any questions. And we look forward to speaking with you all next week. This concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn the call back over to the operator to take your questions.