Earnings Labs

Bruker Corporation (BRKR)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 4, 2015

$36.22

-0.85%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+4.86%

1 Week

+8.01%

1 Month

+14.32%

vs S&P

+15.27%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Bruker Q3 2015 Earnings Release Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Joshua Young. Please go ahead.

Joshua S. Young - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you very much, Amy. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to Bruker's third quarter 2015 conference call. My name is Joshua Young, and I am the Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development for Bruker. Joining me on today's call are Frank Laukien, our President and CEO; Tony Mattacchione, Bruker's Senior Vice President and Interim Chief Financial Officer; and Rene Lenggenhager our newly appointed President of the Bruker BioSpin Group. In addition to the earnings release we issued earlier today, we will also be referencing a slide presentation as part of today's conference call. The PDF of this presentation can be downloaded by clicking on the earnings release hyperlink on Bruker's Investor Relations website. During today's call, we will be highlighting non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of our GAAP to our non-GAAP financial statements is included in our earnings release and in our webcast presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to reference Bruker's Safe Harbor statement, which I show on slide two. During the course of this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the financial performance of the company that involve risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ materially from the projections described in such statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in today's earnings release and in our Form 10-K, as well as other subsequent SEC filings. Also note that the following information is related to our current business conditions and our outlook as of today, November 4, 2015. Consistent with our prior practice, we do not intend to update our projections based on new information, future events or other reasons prior to the release of our fourth quarter 2015 financial results in February 2016. We will begin today's call with…

Rene Lenggenhager - BioSpin Group President, Bruker Corporation

Management

Thank you, Frank. Even though today is only my third day at Bruker, I though it would be helpful to provide you some perspective on why I joined Bruker and what I see as the opportunity in the BioSpin Group. Bruker has a strong culture built on customer intimacy, innovation with integrity, and product leadership. This culture fits well with my past experience at Mettler Toledo, and attracted me to join the company. I also joined because I'm excited about the potential of the BioSpin Group. Bruker is a market leader and NMR will be a critical technology to help enable new scientific discoveries as new applied clinical and industrial solutions in the future. We will continue the tradition of innovation, but it will also forward the operational excellence and lean initiatives, an ongoing journey that can continue to bring improvements year-after-year. I'm very familiar with the advantages and the challenges of managing business franchises, where you have a market leader position. At my previous company, I completed many operational excellence projects ranging from R&D, sales and marketing, operations and logistics. From commercial perspective, I was responsible for enhancing the value selling capabilities of our sales force while strengthening our processes and delivering sustainable growth and margin expansion. I understand that the customer success and financial success need to go hand-in-hand and I see many opportunities to work with Frank and help make group of BioSpin an even more successful all around high performance franchise. In the near-term, I'm focusing on several key priorities. First, I will be working to gain a deeper understanding of the BioSpin business, customers and markets. Second, I will work with the organization to finalize business targets and goals for 2016. Third, I will ensure that the group successfully completes its ongoing restructuring initiatives. And…

Joshua S. Young - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Amy, could you please assemble the Q&A roster.

Operator

Operator

Certainly. Our first question comes from Steve Willoughby at Cleveland Research.

Steve B. Willoughby - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst

Hi, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Frank, you went from a mid single-digit year-over-year decline in your BioSpin business last quarter to calling it out as an area of strength here in the third quarter. I was just wondering given your relatively positive commentary regarding orders the last few quarters, should we expect the NMR business to kind of turn the corner now and expect a more positive result to continue in the fourth quarter and going into next year? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes, Steve. I do think there is a sustainable improvement in NMR with orders for the full year that you're expected to clearly be stronger than last year, which are pretty weak orders, as you recall. In the first half of this year, we had some execution issues in that Bruker BioSpin business that I think we've fixed to a great extent and clearly, at least we made very significant improvement in Q3. And so, I think with healthy orders in NMR this year compared to last year and improved execution, I think we're on a good path to hopefully be able to call that in another one or two quarters for sustainable improvement. I'm optimistic here.

Steve B. Willoughby - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst

Just one follow-up on that, Frank. In regards to the strength of the orders you're seeing in NMR, I know you've been calling it out as healthy for the past several quarters. Was the strength in orders in NMR any different here in the third quarter as compared to what you saw in the first or second quarter? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: The NMR orders fluctuate even more from quarter-to-quarter, that's even lumpier. So looking at orders in any given quarter, Q3 orders were excellent, but there also was an also ultra-high field order. As you may recall, we had a press release in some of our ultra-high field orders. Some of which of course won't get delivered and turn into revenue for several more years. But overall, it's been – it's been – for the year it's healthy single digits that's healthy for the full year. And in any given quarter, it really goes up and down a little bit, I really wouldn't want to comment quarterly on BioSpin orders because they fluctuate too much. For the year, they're healthy as we said before and that implies single digits. But...

Steve B. Willoughby - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst

Thanks, very much. Okay. Thanks, Frank. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Brandon Couillard at Jefferies.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Yes. Good afternoon. Frank, in terms of the – I guess the more balanced second half revenue cadence here, I mean was that largely a function of luck or better management of the cadence? And how much control do you – can you really exert on this dynamic to perhaps level it out more so in the future? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We work very, very hard on it, Brandon and then we got lucky. Sometimes, you work very hard and you don't get lucky and things fall out, but we worked very hard. We've made a very concerted effort to do better than our own previous internal forecasts for Q3 and we succeeded. So that was good, because I was not comfortable with the way Q3 and Q4 were shaping up with Q4 is always the strongest quarter of the year, that will never be changed. But it was too much with – would have come in from Q4 and I wanted to achieve more in Q3 already. But keep in mind that Q3 was a mix, there was some favorable mix. There was some favorable timing for which we worked very hard, but they also were from improving fundamentals. It's really a mix of those three things coming together.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Thanks. And a quick one for Tony. Could you give us the impact of currency in terms of operating profit dollars in the third quarter? Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: Sure. Actually, let me get that back – get that to you later.

Brandon Couillard - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Super. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Tim Evans of Wells Fargo.

Tim C. Evans - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Frank, on pre-clinical imaging business, you said it was weak and you decided to take a restructuring. So I'm assuming that you are anticipating that weakness will continue. Can you talk about what's going on in that business a little bit more broadly? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, if you – which you do I know of course, Tim, If you followed our press releases, you'll notice that in the third quarter, we had some of the most significant product introductions in that. We have a new preclinical PET SPECT system, we call it the Albira Si, which we think is going to be performance leading. We came out with a cryogen-free 3 Tesla magnet and an MRI PET combination and also optical molecular imaging, a new system. So major, major product introductions in PCI in Q3, but of course, you don't get orders and revenue from that yet. That's going to take probably a couple of quarters before that begins to ramp up. So we're not only doing restructuring. Although we did some restructuring or we are in the process of doing some restructuring in some of the optical molecular imaging product line, which we're streamlining and integrating into another R&D site and factory.

Tim C. Evans - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And just one ... Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I don't know if I answered all of your questions, but that's sort of the big picture.

Tim C. Evans - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

That is helpful. And I just wanted to squeeze one in on your margin guidance, you said greater than 150 basis points of expansion. If I just kind of triangulate on revenue and EPS, I could get to a margin number that is meaningfully more than 150 basis points of expansion. I want to make sure that I'm calculating that correctly and there is nothing below the line that would kind of maybe make the margin a little bit lower and still allow you to come in to EPS guidance? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: There is just still a lot of risk every fourth quarter, (41:57) by a significant margin, well I try not to use the word margin here. But the fourth quarter will be the biggest quarter of the year in every respect and so therefore there is risk if some sites are not ready or the magnets don't make it to field and things like that. I think we're, the 150 bps guidance or greater than 150 is reasonable, there is upside to that, but there is also risk.

Tim C. Evans - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: Tim, there is nothing below the line noteworthy and as both have Frank and I'd mentioned in our comments we had very positive mix in Q3. We don't expect that mix to continue in Q4 and we do have from lower margin business that we expect to revenue in Q4 as well. So, we don't expect that mix to continue. And if I may just to go back to Brandon's question the FX impact on operating profit was about $5 million in the third quarter.

Tim C. Evans - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

$5 million negative? Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: Negative.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Derik de Bruin at Bank at America Merrill Lynch.

Michael Ryskin - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Hi, good evening, it's actually Mike Ryskin calling in for Derik. Thanks for taking my question. Kind of a follow-up on something that's been asked before about the third quarter, fourth quarter split. Most of you – as you mentioned, most of your second half strength usually comes from 4Q, you alluded to that in some guidance earlier this year. But then today, you also mentioned that you saw some strong sales in CALID with explosive trace detection, which was lumpy non-recurring. Then you had some orders in BioSpin move up from 4Q, and those two groups really drove your performance. Could you provide some color on how much of an effect you think those two factors will have in 4Q? And whether or not we should expect sort of similar ramp that we've seen in prior years, especially given the difficult comp you have with 2014? Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: Yeah. Mike, like we just mentioned Q3 we had – the timing of Q3 there was more acceptances that we expected, those won't continue into Q4. And we – yeah, so we benefited from the timing. The year-over-year Q4 is not expected to be much higher or much lower as well. So, that will play an effect on the sequential comparison. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I mean, so being a little less dependent on Q4 is a healthy thing. I'd like to make that – I'd like to reach that, achieve that in every year. Q4 will still be a very strong quarter. And I think you kind of always – we're giving guidance for the full year. We're reporting the first nine months, so you can really triangulate what we're thinking about the fourth quarter. But as always, keep in mind that for Bruker even though we have better and better tools to predict, there is still a plus/minus $15 million type of uncertainty and that's very fundamental because we deal with bigger systems and customer acceptances and insights that can or that may or may not be ready. So, I think, this is you know, reasonable guidance, and I think, that's makes still for a very strong Q4, but I am glad that we moved a little bit more into Q3, otherwise Q4 would have been, we would have relied too much on Q4, I think, that's really all there is to it. It's not that all of a sudden Q3 is stronger than Q4, but I think, it's just a healthier sequence of events as we now envision it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Doug Schenkel at Cowen & Company. Doug Schenkel - Cowen & Co. LLC: Hey. Good afternoon, guys and thank you for taking my question. I only have one, but it does have four parts. So, just related to NMR order improvements and the healthy order bookings, one, was the momentum pretty balanced across higher field products, and lower field products where your major competitor exited? Two, anything notable in terms of geographic strengths or weaknesses? Three, is it too early to determine with about the improvements in academic government budgets freeing up is helping order trends? And four, anything available data-wise, that would demonstrate that some of your newer product launches are starting to have an impact on driving a replacement cycle? Thank you. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We love your one single question, Doug. So, an NMR order, geographically we're pretty balanced, so there was strength everywhere, in the quarter year-to-date Europe was quite strong. NMR orders ultra-high field has been, it was dormant – almost dormant last year, it has recovered a little bit, but it's not at its usual strength, and new orders for gigahertz systems and gigahertz class systems as these are, depending on field strength $10 million to $20 million types of funding that takes longer, so we don't have anything under our belt yet in that direction from new orders. There's one 1.2 gigahertz order that we added in Frankfurt in the third quarter, sorry I don't want to skip that, but that's just been in the works and in the pipeline for a very long time and finally got funded. So ultra-high field I would say partial recovery compared to 2014 but not as strong as we had seen some time ago…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ross Muken at Evercore ISI.

Ross Muken - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Good afternoon, guys. So obviously, when Charlie departed, there was a lot of concern relative at least on the investor side to sort of the story of the management team and the like even though many of you've been together for a while. But then, you added two really impressive board members which you mentioned and then, you brought on Rene not long ago. And clearly, you are a much, much strong organization, at least optically to us. From an operation standpoint, is there any way you can give us some – that I know not everyone's been there for quite a long time yet, but any way you can give us some like anecdotal stories or examples, where these three individuals who came from obviously, much larger and diversified companies that had maybe a bit better of an operating trajectory historically? Give us examples of how they've already start to input, maybe add to the business? And how you've incorporated some of the ideas to sort of helping drive what seemingly have been better results here in the business? Obviously, a lot of this has been many years in the making. I'm just trying to get a sense for some of the new voices. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. I'll start with Rene because this is his – really his day four. He's my kind of guy, he started working on Sunday, on November 1. So, and he had an entire Saturday of vacation between jobs, so I'm optimistic that he will be a hard worker. He's a very experienced guy and his very deep very technical background in innovation and R&D experience, including R&D management, but he really has outstanding operational experience. And operational defined very broad not only manufacturing or logistics…

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Jonathan Groberg of UBS.

Jonathan Groberg - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great thanks for that... Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Very poor audio Jonathan. Anything you can do about that?

Jonathan Groberg - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Sorry, do you hear me okay. Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: Yeah, John, you're better now, go ahead. You can ask your question.

Jonathan Groberg - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. I was just saying geographically, obviously Japan and China are two significant markets for you, can you maybe just give a little bit more color on what's interesting in those geographies?

Joshua S. Young - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yeah, John. This is Joshua. So, last quarter we talked about Japan being a point of weakness in the business. We saw those trends continue in the third quarter. In Japan, we saw weak revenue and weak orders with reasonable declines. In terms of China, you know China we had a slow start to the year, but I'd say we certainly are seeing mixed results in some businesses. We're doing quite well in China, for example Daltonics and others not so well. The way that will shake out though is we still expect growth in both revenue and new order bookings for the full year in China.

Jonathan Groberg - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then also I may have missed this, can you give some color on the MALDI-TOF, the (54:14) business and kind of what you are expecting there over the next bit? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. This is Frank. So that continues to be healthy even in Europe where of course the market – you know we've been in the market much longer, the aftermarket business is growing very rapidly. We're expecting for the full year healthy growth in the Americas, which is what we expected because we now have – or as of earlier in the year we had our second FDA claim accepted. And in China, we've seen very healthy market development year-to-date and expect more of that as we also got Chinese FDA clearance late last year. So its particular strength in China and the U.S. and very satisfactory in general and also as predicted particular strength and now rapidly growing from a smaller base, but rapidly growing aftermarket business for the multi biocipher.

Jonathan Groberg - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Frank, could you quantify that how big that business is now or how big you are expecting you see by the end of the year? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Very broadly in the $80 million to $100 million range. I don't think we want disclose exact figures, nor do I have it at my finger tips.

Jonathan Groberg - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. All right.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from Tycho Peterson at JPMorgan.

Tycho W. Peterson - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey, guys. The positive price mix dynamic you called out, was that specific to NMR or you kind of seeing an ability to kind of extract broader price increases across the portfolio? Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: It was specific to NMR. We had a few high margin shipments, some of which benefited from timing. And if you look at, we had lower NMR gross profit shipments in the previous third quarter. So most of the product mix effects came from NMR.

Tycho W. Peterson - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then, on the weakness in NANO, can you may be just, Frank, talk a little bit about how you think about the cycle here? How long you think the order book here remains depressed and with the bolt-on you did there, does that smooth out a little bit of the cyclicality for that business? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I think that the, that business, that's an ongoing business there. They are not only depending on the cycle, but also on technology adoption and technology adoption and first pilot systems. That's a steadier process. Of course, what we really would like to see is the technology adoption where we think we're in very, very good position for the next decade quite candidly and without having to wait for a decade even as we go from 14 nanometer to 10 nanometer eventually seven nanometer and five nanometer and of course, the trend toward 3D FinFET structures infrastructure in memory end process is ongoing already anyway. But the cycle to build capacity that has not really been satisfactory for anybody in the metrology business, but we do know it's coming back it's an usually long down cycle. But we're kind of feel good about that first of all we don't have too much exposure as a company overall, we do get the technology adoption part throughout and you were all patiently waiting for the cycle to pick up that will be the gravy, but in the meantime that's the situation. I think some of the other industrial markets you're not surprised to hear, sometimes there are elements of that that's the Wall Street Journal business that's what you read about, so they are they didn't get stronger in the last three months to six months. Keep in mind that NANO also has made a very conscious effort to have more of its mix from academic research and biology and life science research, particularly the florescent microscopy, florescent microscopy super resolution and multi-photon, those acquisitions that we did in the previous year that's getting into gear. So the mix of NANO is also changing along the way in a way that in some areas where we see favorable funding trends from the brain initiative or from investments in cell biology. So it's a mixed bag, it's not all just dependent on steel or metals or cement or so, although there is some elements of that we'll become more diversified and in some areas, we simply, in addition to the cycle, which we can't control and which isn't that favorable, where our technology adoption curves, where we're almost a must on that adoption curve and we're branching out more into life sciences. So, it's strategically changing over time from the NANO that perhaps you remember from two years or three years ago. I hope that helps, that may have been too much color.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Isaac Ro at Goldman Sachs. Isaac Ro - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question here. Frank, maybe just a high level question on the CFO search, could you maybe give us an update on the progress there in terms of the pipeline kind of the qualities of the candidates you're currently evaluating, maybe when we might know a little more there. Thank you. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. It's a very active search and we're clearly looking at candidates and we're getting to see some good candidates. We have good external candidates and internal candidates. We believe that, we're going to make a decision most likely in the first quarter of next year and at this point, it's just an intense process, that's proceeding and so I would think that we most likely will make a decision in the first quarter of next year. Isaac Ro - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Great. And then, just one product specific question on Biotyper. I think, you mentioned in the prepared comments, that it was strong, I was curious, if you could maybe try to put a little more color on what it contributed to growth. And then, more importantly, where do you think we are in the product life cycle. I gather that we are still somewhat early days, based on I think our last conversation at ASM this year. But just curious on, as you think about sort of in baseball terms, what inning we are in, and maybe from here what kind of general investment you think, that you need to make to realize the opportunity, that'll be great. Thank you, guys. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well,…

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Dan Arias with Citi.

Bryan Kipp - Citigroup

Analyst

Hi. This is actually Bryan Kipp on behalf of Dan. Just a question on pacing in the quarter, just around the color you guys gave on the kind of the implied growth rate for 4Q. How did the October pace just – and in conjunction with that, did you expect the $6 million ROSATOM to come forward in the back half of the year, can you remind me there? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We expected that in the second half of the year and during the quarter, it became clear that it's going to move out of Q3 and into Q4.

Bryan Kipp - Citigroup

Analyst

And the pacing in the fourth quarter in the sense of – I know you guys are still working through your ERP system and trying to have visibility at month end. How is it pacing so far in the fourth quarter, just trying to get a sense of the plus and minus $15 million is still what you are thinking? Thank you. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think we find out the plus or minus $15 million in the last three days or four days of each quarter. It's literally there so many installations and acceptances that I have no increased visibility and I wouldn't have it internally even by middle of December. It's literally whether or not we may exceed by up to $15 million. I mean that's – that's at the high end of the variability or might be lower that really gets determined in many ways fundamentally and even with better systems and sort of the last week of each quarter. That's no different in Q4 and then that actually would be more or less also true in the Q3 or Q2. So the pace – the pacing is on track. There's nothing remarkable there in Q4.

Bryan Kipp - Citigroup

Analyst

And just a higher level question, kind of more around strategy. You guys have not emerged not in a bad way, but on talking to you at length in regards to the rationalization of the portfolio, right-sizing the business and streamlining the company. These tangible changes are helpful, but just thinking where are you guys are going forward in terms of product portfolio kind of dynamic? Do you have any interest in moving further downstream or do you think it's going to be five years to 10 years from now, the identity of Bruker is still going to be a leading kind of more upstream research analytical instrument provide? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I wouldn't want to use the category downstream or upstream. But more we're looking for defensible high-margin areas where we can be one of the leading players and that can be a $10 million ultra-high field NMR system that's clearly what you would call a very high-end and perhaps upstream that can be a €50,000 or $50,000 explosive trace detector has new libraries and technology that goes far beyond what's generally has been found at airports before. So, there, I would say we're very – we are not only a high-end only company. We're looking for high performance kind of sometimes come in innovative small packages or in user friendly packages with great content like the MALDI Biotyper. That's not the most high-end MALDI (01:05:36) or mass spectrometer that's out there, but it's incredibly powerful solution because of the libraries and assays and consumables that come with it. So, we're much less a niche high-end company today, but we still look to leverage performance for good margins and that can be really at either end of the market wherever we think we can find interesting profit and margin pools where we think we can have defensible positions.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Bryan Brokmeier at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Bryan Paul Brokmeier - Cantor Fitzgerald Securities

Analyst

Hi. Good evening. Since introducing the Tissuetyper, how is the development of the library then? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Very early days, very early days, Bryan. So, there is some early adopters that are now ordering this system, and they will all be – in most cases, they will all be collaboration partners. This will – this in some ways will be a team sport, not unlike for the MALDI Biotyper, where there is no way that we can develop all the contents or library in-house, and so, we rely on many different collaborators to – who explore and discover new areas. And then, we help organize validation, if they think they've discovered something, you've got to do it on multiple systems in multiple labs. So, it's very early days. But in the meantime, even as there's no validated assays yet, it's in a system that generates a lot of excitement because of it, incredible tissue or anatomical pathology research capabilities. So, we benefit initially now from the research-oriented customers.

Bryan Paul Brokmeier - Cantor Fitzgerald Securities

Analyst

Okay. And in the quarter, I guess really over the last couple of quarters, were any of the improvements that you're seeing – were any of the improvements you're seeing that has allowed for customers to take deliveries in these – from the fourth quarter into the third quarter? Is any of that a result of things you've done year-to-date? Or was it really just up to the customer and the customer readiness? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Very strong execution in Q3. We really worked it at very hard, and that means, you lose some customers because they're not ready and you work with others. And you just make sure that we don't add to it by incomplete shipment or quality or not properly planning our resources. So I really think the BioSpin colleagues and others in CALID and elsewhere, I think they just – I think our execution is getting better and better. I think our management processes, and information systems are getting better. They're not perfect yet, but I think there is a lot of improvement and it's pretty steady. Anthony L. Mattacchione - CFO, Senior VP-Corporate Finance & Accounting: And just one point of detail here. It's not that customers are taking shipments, it's that we're completing installations of systems earlier than expected and they're meeting the specs as well. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Bryan Paul Brokmeier - Cantor Fitzgerald Securities

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Paul Knight at Janney Montgomery Scott.

William March - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

Hi, this is actually Bill March on for Paul. How you guys doing? Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good. How are you?

William March - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

Doing well. I was just hoping you could provide a little more color on the recent Jordan Valley acquisition? And then, how we should think about kind of the pacing and/or lumpiness of revenue within that segment? Thank you. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure, Bill. So we've given some color on the rationale behind the Jordan Valley technology. The X-ray metrology technology that they're pursuing, we think they can strengthen that even further with some of the components and other technologies that we can contribute, so there's some nice technical synergies, there's also some sales and customer support and service synergies between their global setup and our global setup that's all coming together nicely. We have given some guidance that we think this will be that their revenue next year might be somewhere around $25 million, so Bill, what they contribute the remainder of this year will be negligible, but what they contribute next year might be around $25 million, and we expect this to be $0.01 to $0.02 accretive to non-GAAP EPS next year.

William March - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

Just then a quick follow-up, just thinking about the revenue pacing, do you think that they'll have kind of a consistent mix or do you think that it could be kind of quarter-to-quarter or you could see lumpier revenues? Thanks. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, since they have high ticket items, I'm sure that particular business will have lumpiness, no question about it, but the more different businesses we have, these lumpiness are not in phase, so to speak, so within the much larger revenue stream of Bruker, I don't think this will materially or perhaps in anyway increase our lumpiness overall.

William March - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

That's helpful. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Standalone business, yes, but at the Bruker level, it's the lumpiness, doesn't make such a big difference.

William March - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

Great. Thanks for your help. Have a good evening.

Operator

Operator

That is all the time allotted for the call. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joshua Young for any closing remarks.

Joshua S. Young - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

I want to thank everyone, for joining us this evening. If you're interested in meeting with Bruker management, we'll be presenting at the Citi and Credit Suisse Healthcare Conferences during the fourth quarter and the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference at San Francisco, in January 2016. We also invite you to visit us at our headquarters in Billerica, Massachusetts. Thank for your attention and have a nice night.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.