Welcome to the Bio-Rad 2007 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the presentation over to Mr. Ron Hutton, Treasurer.

Before we begin the call, I would like to caution everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements about management’s plans, goals and expectations. Because our actual results may differ materially from these plans and expectations, I encourage you to review our filings with the SEC, where we discuss in detail the risk factors in our business. The company does not intend to update any forward-looking statements made during the call today. With that, I’d like to turn things over to Christine Tsingos, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Today we will review the fourth quarter and full-year financial results for 2007, the impact of our DiaMed acquisition, as well as provide some insight into our thinking for 2008. We know this is a lot of information and I’ll do my best to walk through it slowly. Let’s start with a review of the quarterly results. Net sales for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 were $459.7 million, an increase of more than 28% versus the year-ago period sales of $343.1 million. These quarterly sales include approximately $62 million contributed by the DiaMed business. Excluding DiaMed, sales in the fourth quarter grew 16% compared to last year, to $397.7 million. On an organic, currency-neutral basis, sales for the quarter grew 9%. This strong year-over-year growth was fueled by solid performance in both Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics. During the quarter we posted record sales with in our Life Sciences group. This growth was the result of increased sales of Protein Expression, amplification and processed chromatography products. Diagnostics also posted a record quarter even before the inclusion of DiaMed which is a reflection of strong performance in blood virus, clinical systems and quality control. Consolidated gross margin for the quarter was a reported 50.8% which includes more then $3 million of amortization expense related to the DiaMed transaction and another $3 million of foregone profit margin as required under purchase accounting. The gross margin for the base Bio-Rad business came in as expected at 53.4% as product mix in our fourth quarter typically shifts toward lower margin instrument sales. SG&A expense for the fourth quarter was $163 million or 35.5% of sales. This represents a significant increase from just last quarter but it is important to note that the inclusion of DiaMed in our consolidated results constitutes more than $20…

I think in my view, 2007 was a productive year. I think in addition to the continued expansion of our base business and I think about the fact that we expanded our manufacturing footprint in Asia, introduced some very interesting new products, secured large orders from people like Quest and CDC, and of course, topped it all of at the end of the year with the acquisition of DiaMed. I think we’ve really set the stage well for 2008. As you can hear from Christine’s comments about the outlook, we seem to be pretty buoyant about it. You think about the number of new products, increased positions in these markets, certainly including immunohematology. I think our selling organizations around the world are enthusiastic about the opportunities for 2008. As I think about going forward in 2008, I think the successful integration of DiaMed will be one of the key areas of focus for us, in addition to continued work to enhance our operating margins and better serve our markets. I think we’ve got a lot to look forward to. We certainly appreciate your continued support and interest and with that, I guess we’ll open it up for questions.

(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Jon Wood - Banc of America Securities.

First on BioPlex, I think Christine just disclosed 50 installations. is it safe to assume Quest was about half of that?

Yes.

How many analytes do you have on that? It looks like you just got an approval. How many analytes do you have on the system currently?

We’d say somewhere around 25. I don’t have the exact number. John, do you have an exact number?

Yes, that number is really close to mid-30s.

Mid-30s, okay.

And could you just, at least qualitatively, talk about what you have on the docket for ‘08 for that machine? Should we see that significantly, granted the FDA is uncooperative, should we see that number significantly increase in ‘08?

There will be a number of assays that we hope to introduce in ‘08, again depending on the cooperation of the FDA. Again, I don’t have the exact number for you, but it should be pretty significant.

On the food testing opportunity, do you have an automated PCR system for the food testing market in the works?

We do have a new platform for PCR out. We just introduced it, real-time basis. And it is compatible with automation front-end. So the answer would be yes. Although a majority of the laboratories right now are still able to operate in the 96-well format and certainly the through-put of the machine is more than ample to handle that. But it is an automatable machine with the front-end.

And can you just review the opportunity there, Brad? What do you view as the ultimate market opportunity for a molecular food-based modality?

Well, I think really the key aspect is to move into fresh foods, and I think that we’re talking about testing. Traditional methods can take five to seven days, and most fresh food needs to ship before that. That’s why it necessitates recalls. I think as more and more of the regulatory agencies and the industries get comfortable with a real-time test that gives them the sensitivity and the speed, you’re going to see more and more fresh food being tested in that 24-hour mark. So then a product can be quarantined prior to shipping. And I think at some point that’s going to start to set the standard in what the consumer is going to expect. Even today, all it takes is one outbreak. We had green onions a few, about a year-and-a-half ago, and that sort of decimated the industry for some period of time. So I think we’re seeing a lot more interest. As far as exact numbers, I think if we look at over the next, I’d see the market continue to grow maybe in the real-time or certain rapid tests, as much as 15% over the next five years at least.

Norman, can you comment just on the M&A environment? Has it changed any? I know you’ve just done a big deal. But as far as what you see in the industry, has the market changed at all with respect to acquisitions, either with the assets on the market or pricing?

It doesn’t seem to have changed too much so far. It seems about, I don’t know, about the same, maybe there are a few less deals coming, but I think we’re going to need a little more time to see what the trajectory is.

Your next question comes from Quintin Lai - Robert W. Baird.

This is actually [Matt Natorni] in for Quintin. Could you just talk a little bit kind of globally about what you’re seeing in your segments in terms of demands, either geographically or customer-based. Are there any that are particularly strong in Q4? And just kind of how do you see those end markets shaping up over the 2008 timeframe?

We think about geographic markets and we continue to talk about this. The Asia-Pacific and emerging markets, we’re seeing above-average growth rates compared to the rest of the world. Having said that, we’ve had pretty good results in the Americas this past year and see continuing opportunities. Probably Europe has been the slower of the three segments around the world. That’s kind of the landscape.

With DiaMed, the quarter in terms of revenues looked kind of strong. And just trying to figure out, is there seasonality to this business? Or how should we think about kind of growth going forward with the DiaMed portion?

I wouldn’t expect much seasonality in that business. The only seasonality might be the kind of the summer months in Europe which is traditional in the Diagnostic arena, but otherwise, that would be about it.

Matt, we have one quarter under our belt here. I think as time goes on we’ll get a better feel for the business, both geographically as well as seasonally.

Just wondering if I could kind of dovetail into that, just to see if there’s any progress you could provide just kind of on how integration is going and what we can kind of look for as the year progresses.

We are just getting started. We closed the transaction on October 1, and not surprisingly, our initial focus, besides seeing our new employees and the business, and John can speak to that, and my role has been on financial reporting and getting this private Swiss company welcomed in this new world of US-GAAP public accounting and reporting. And there’s, so there’s a fair amount of work we need to do there and a lot of the integration efforts will focus on more infrastructure type of events and items this year in finance and IT and things like that. I think that overall the business itself is quite well run when you look at manufacturing production, sales distribution, etc. But we will be looking at all of those areas for potential opportunities to create and record synergies as well as continue to help grow the business.

Just one little addition there I might throw in here and that is that, we do see that over time as we begin to integrate the distribution side of the house of this acquisition, the ability to start pairing up some of the traditional blood virus products that we have that are manufactured in our French and U.S. operations and to be able to pair those up with the, with the blood typing product line of DiaMed. We’re already seeing that certain customers are already very interested in talking to us about that. So, as we start to integrate those two selling arms of the business, people will be able to pick up some of that synergy there. On the ground in Switzerland itself, we have basically designated this operation as a full operating division of Bio-Rad and we’ve organized it in a very typical divisional approach way that installs an R&D group, a marketing group, a manufacturing group and reporting to a division manager. So we think that that will give great focus to the things that we need to do from an R&D point of view and product point of view. So we’re pretty pleased with how all that’s coming together now.

Just one final housekeeping question on the tax rate, Christine. If I were to kind of strip away the amortization and the R&Ds, can you help me out with kind of what we could use as a pro forma tax rate for the fourth quarter?

Well, you know, interestingly enough, the tax rate coming in at a benefit is really based on the base Bio-Rad business, if you will, and not as much the acquisition-related costs. Now having said that, because income is much lower in the quarter and you look at the tax rate on a full-year basis, all of these little changes of income get magnified in terms of the tax rate. But the real benefit had to do with favorable resolutions of audits and tax credits that are available for us on the R&D side, especially in France. And despite the inclusion of DiaMed, we would have had a pretty attractive tax rate in the quarter anyway. That’s the best I can do, Matt, because it’s really hard to play the what-if game of this and this and this, what would the tax rate have been?

The next question is from John Gibbons - Odin Partners.

Christine, just walk me through the foregone profit margin concept. I understood everything else but that.

But under purchase accounting, you have to review all the components of the inventory, from raw materials, finished goods, etc. And under purchase accounting, there are things you can and cannot do in terms of valuing that inventory. So as a result of that, we had to take an expense of about $3 million into cost of goods for finished goods inventory that we needed to change the value of.

The purchasing accounting requires us to recognize that when we pay for the business, the earning potential of finished goods is something that we bought, so we’re not allowed to basically lower the inventory and record the income twice. So what the production process has earned lowers our margin. And, as we go through the finished goods, and then it’ll be less through the work in process, we get to realize all of it from our contributions and none of it, eventually, from the purchase of finished goods.

So it’s really a sort of a one-time event as you go through this?

Yes. And as the inventory rolls, it will go away.

Your next question is from Vito Menza - Sandler Capital.

On DiaMed, I’m pretty sure you said it, but full-year sales for ‘07 DiaMed came out to be what?

Well, we’ve only owned them for a quarter so I’d tell you that the fourth quarter sales were $62 million. We published the 8-K for the estimate on the first half of the sales. I don’t have a full-year number to give you for ‘07 at this time. So we will be putting some sort of estimate in the 10-K as best as we can see it for GAAP purposes.

And did you estimate that it was up 4% year-over-year? DiaMed was up in local currency? Is that what I heard?

No, we didn’t estimate that at all.

So the DiaMed projected growth rate is the same as the rest of the Diagnostics business? Is that right?

Yes, I think across the board on a currency-neutral, organic basis, whether you’re looking at our traditional Life Science or Diagnostics or DiaMed, it’s all in that, kind of that, mid- to high single-digit growth rate is what we’re seeing for ‘08. And then, obviously, we’ll actually have four quarters of DiaMed in ‘08 versus one quarter in ‘07. So reported growth should be much, much higher than that. But I think organically the businesses seem to be growing in that mid- to high single-digit level.

Some of the currency benefit that your getting as the U.S. dollar depreciated is coming back at you in SG&A? Did I hear that?

Yes, you did hear that. And, in fact, it was like $8 million just on a sequential basis. For the full year it’s probably double that. So the good part about that though, Vito, is that we have, it gives us some bit of a natural hedge to protect the income line. Revenues are higher, but so are expenses. And so that’s good because all of this outlook is based on kind of the dollar where it is today. Obviously if the dollar starts to strengthen, then it suddenly becomes a headwind on the top-line.

Your next question is from Weidong Huang - TimesSquare Capital Management.

Christine, I missed what you said about CapEx and depreciation amortization during the quarter. Could you repeat those?

CapEx for the quarter was $14.7 million. So full-year CapEx was $60 million. And depreciation amortization in the quarter was $23.9. and $67.3 million for the full year, $63.9 with the increase of $5.2 related to DiaMed.

How much of it was DiaMed? I’m sorry.

In the quarter it was about $5.2 million split between cost of goods and SG&A, so about $3 million in cost of goods and $2 million in SG&A. And we talked about in the guidance that we’re looking at about $20 million in ‘08 of amortization, again the majority of it, $12 million-ish in cost of goods and $8 million in SG&A. So, $20 million of additional amortization expense in ‘08 on top of what we have.

And option expenses, what was that in the quarter and for year?

It was $1.6 million for the quarter and a little over $5 million for the year. It’s about $5.5 million for the year. And that may increase slightly in ‘08 in line with option grants.

I heard that J&J just raised it’s manual blood typing test price by 100% to 110%. Can you confirm that?

I don’t know what the exact percent was, but I do remember seeing something in the last few days that they are raising their prices, I guess to keep up with Immucor.

Your next question is a follow-up question from John Wood - Banc of America Securities.

Have you seen any change in major pharma or just the pharmaceutical segment’s spending patterns recently?

If anything, we’ve probably seen to go up a little bit. There’s obviously been a lot that’s gone on in terms of not as much consolidation but changes in some of the product mix has changed in these companies. But in general, the pure research dollar part of that which we see primarily is, if anything going up a little bit. There’s no big technology change or seed change that’s driving that but in general we see them continuing to invest in R&D. And then we continue to benefit from the production side of it as several products that use our technology or our products, being pharmaceuticals, go into full production obviously in 2007 with the rousing success of Gardasil had a very positive impact for us.

And so you’re not exposed to on the chromatography side, you’re not exposed to some of the bigger biotechs that have been experiencing some weakness lately?

Well, it all depends if we’re in that process it certainly can be an issue. When Pfizer decided to drop Exubera we were in the Exubera process. And so to the extent going forward, we’re not going to get a lot of sales into that process. But there are literally hundreds of drugs in process. There’s a lot of them that we’re in, and it’s one of those businesses. Some things are up; some things are down. But generally, given our position in the market, more are up than down.

And then on the DiaMed intangibles, $12 million in cog, about $8, is it right to assume about $8 million in SG&A?

Yes.

Can you give us the impact of the mad cow decline in the quarter on the Life Science business?

It was pretty much in line with what we expected. Remember we were talking about for the full year about $15 to $20 million, and that’s where we ended up for the full year. And it was fairly ratable through the year. We are expecting another decline in that business in ‘08. But it’s my personal rule to not ever have to talk about it, because there’ll be so many other good things going on in the Life Science business that you won’t even notice it.

Is that franchise nearing a steady state at this point?

Well, yes, just sort of the law of mathematics. It certainly gets to a point where the market is decreased, the number of animals tested, despite some of the things in the news recently, most of the North American testing is controlled by the government and policy hasn’t changed. In Europe, the number of animals being tested continues to drop. And but, we’re seeing probably, at a point just mathematically, the drop in the price, or the average selling price is not as severe.

The next question is from Steve Valiquette - UBS.

But just to make sure that I understand the numbers here, if I backed out the $12.9 million of non-cash charges that you cite and then I use a tax rate somewhere in the low twenties, I’m getting an EPS number that’s still pretty far below the consensus number of $0.80 for the quarter. I’m not sure if you mentioned an EPS number, exit charges or if that’s including something else.

And we also talked about that the tax effect, it’s probably not appropriate to use a tax rate in the twenties to tax effect those charges. But we did talk about $7.7 million of amortization of in-process R&D, $5.2 of amortization, $3 million of foregone gross profits, [$2.5 million in this FX] loss, equating to about $0.68. So you can add that to the $45. And that’s at a zero tax rate because basically the benefit was on the base business.

As there are no further questions in the queue, I’ll turn the call back to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us here through this very long and complex call but we hope that you share our excitement, not only in our results, but what the future holds for us. Thank you.