Operator
Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Bruker Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Earnings 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 would now like to turn the conference over to Joshua Young. Please go ahead. [06B44C-E Joshua Young] Thank you very much, Amy. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to Bruker's fourth quarter and full year 2015 earnings conference call. My name is Joshua Young. I am the Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development for Bruker. And joining me on today's call are Frank Laukien, our President and CEO; and Tony Mattacchione, Bruker's Senior Vice President and Interim Chief Financial Officer. In addition to the earnings release we issued earlier today, we will 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 be making 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 current business conditions and our outlook as of today, February 10, 2016. 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 first quarter 2016 financial results in May. We will begin today's call with Frank providing a business summary. Tony will then cover our financials for the fourth quarter and full year 2015 in more detail. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Bruker's CEO, Frank Laukien. Frank H. Laukien - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Joshua. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on the call today. I am pleased to report that Bruker reported strong financial performance in the fourth quarter and significant improvement in our full year 2015 results. The higher profitability and free cash flow generation are clear evidence that the hard work over the past three years to transform Bruker into a stronger and more profitable company is delivering results. Our full year 2015 results reflect increasing organic revenue growth; and we surpassed our guidance for operating margin expansion and EPS. I know that these performance improvements came while we were dealing with continued softness in some of our industrial markets and a strong currency headwind to non-GAAP EPS. I will now begin my presentation on slide four, where I will discuss our Q4 2015 results briefly before focusing on our full year 2015 results, which are more indicative of the underlying trends in our business. We reported revenues of $478 million in Q4 2015, with year-over-year organic revenue growth of plus 2.5%. This growth was driven primarily by our CALID Group, and our BEST segment. Geographically, Europe and the Americas were the primary drivers of organic growth in the fourth quarter. Our Q4 2015 non-GAAP operating margin increased by 500 basis points year-over-year versus Q4 2014. We reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.38 in Q4 2015, which represented year-over-year growth of plus 27%, despite still facing a year-over-year currency headwind, but aided in part by a favorable tax rate in the fourth quarter of 2015. Finally, our free cash flow of $138 million was very healthy following a strong Q3 2015 and accentuated by strong customer collection. On slide five, I show Bruker's performance for the full year 2015. In 2015, we reported a revenue decline of minus 10%. This decline was primarily driven by currency effects and also by a minus 2% net decline from our portfolio, as a result of our 2014 CAM divestitures, offset by a partial quarter from our recent Jordan Valley Semiconductor acquisition. We reported year-over-year organic revenue growth of plus 2% in 2015, which was better than our guidance for plus 1% organic revenue growth and represented a gradual acceleration of growth after an organic revenue decline in 2014. Geographically, Europe had a strong year delivering organic revenue growth in the high-single digits for 2015. The Americas grew in the low-single digits organically, while Asia Pacific declined in the high-single digits primarily due to weakness in Japan and Southeast Asia. Our non-GAAP operating margin for 2015 expanded by about 310 basis points to 13.3%, compared to 10.2% in 2014. This improvement was well above our guidance for plus 150 basis points or more operating margin expansion in 2015 due to our stronger profitability in the fourth quarter of 2015. Our non-GAAP EPS for 2015 were $0.89, a 19% increase compared to 2014. In 2015, currency headwinds lowered EPS by minus $0.09, but this was somewhat offset by a discrete tax benefit in 2015 that lowered our full year non-GAAP tax rate. Finally, our free cash flow hit a record level of $195 million in 2015, more than doubling year-over-year, primarily as a result of our strong performance in the second half of the year. Our 2015 free cash flow performance also benefited from higher customer advances and reductions in our working capital. While our focus on working capital reduction will continue to be a priority, we likely will not reach the same level of free cash flow in 2016. The recovery of our NMR business in the second half of 2015, combined with strong operating leverage on a reduced cost base, helped us to deliver much better than expected operating profit, EPS and cash flow in 2015. I am also every pleased that our return on invested capital, or ROIC, in 2015 reached a level of greater than 20%. In summary, we are very pleased that our results in 2015 were much improved compared to prior years and we have clearly turned the corner with our transformation. We now expect several years of gradually increasing organic revenue growth and further margin expansion ahead of us. Please turn to slides six and seven now, where I'll provide additional details about the year-over-year performance of our three groups and of our BEST segment for the full year 2015. Let me begin with our BioSpin Group, which reported revenues of $547 million in 2015, representing a minus 3% organic revenue decline. This decline was the result of weakness in our preclinical imaging division combined with a slow start to the year for our magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or MRS division. Our MRS division reported flat revenues for the full year, but generated good organic revenue growth in the second half of 2015. This second half strength was offset by our preclinical imaging business, which posted declines in both revenues and new order bookings in 2015. Our NMR business experienced a low-teens increase in new order bookings in 2015, representing a nice recovery after a significant bookings decline in NMR in 2014. The effects of volume growth and price increases, both contributed to the growth in new order bookings. In the fourth quarter of 2015, we already saw some positive effects of higher price backlog flow through to our BioSpin Group margin. At this time, Bruker BioSpin has substantially completed the transfer of ultra-high field NMR magnet manufacturing from our Rheinstetten plant in Germany, which is being closed to our remaining two magnet factories in France and Switzerland. Next, I will turn to our CALID Group, which reported total revenues of $493 million and 7% organic revenue growth in 2015 along with a major improvement in profitability, in part due to our 2014 CAM divestitures and restructuring. Our Detection Division had an exceptionally strong year 2015, with a number of large transactions, including the explosives trace detection installations at various European airports in 2015. Our Daltonics Division had a good year of revenue growth in 2015 for nearly all product lines. Our MALDI Biotyper continues to be one of our fastest growing product lines, reaching close to $100 million in revenue in 2015 with approximately 10% year-over-year currency adjusted revenue growth. After a strong year in 2014, our Optics Division faced weakness in some of its markets, which pressured its top line in 2015. That said, the Optics Division controlled expenses and sustained its above corporate average level of profitability. Please turn to slide seven now. The NANO Group reported revenues of $460 million, which represented organic revenue growth of approximately 1%. NANO had a mixed year of top line performance as strength in its academic customer segment was offset by continued weakness from industrial and semiconductor and data storage customers. Our AXS Division had a solid year delivering high-single digit organic revenue growth in 2015, with particular strength in our X-ray diffraction product. We reported a decline in both revenue and profitability for our NANO Surfaces Division in 2015. The division has seen weaker demand from its industrial customers, particularly in regions of Asia outside of China and Japan. And despite the weak market, the division is doing a good job of managing costs and expenses. Finally, within our NANO Group, our smaller NANO Analytics Division posted low-teens organic revenue growth in 2015, driven primarily by the Micro X-ray fluorescence business. Our BEST segment reported revenues of $134 million and plus 4% organic revenue growth year-over-year in 2015. BEST also increased its non-GAAP operating margin by 360 basis points to 9.0%. In Q4 of 2015, BEST substantially completed two multi-year programs, ROSATOM and DESY. BEST also achieved strong bookings and backlog increases in 2015 with large long-term superconducting wire orders. I'd like to wrap up my presentation on slide eight, where I show Bruker's key priorities for 2016. The year 2016 will mark Bruker's transition from a three-year period of transformation, including divestitures and restructuring to our next, more evolutionary phase of operational excellence and lean initiatives. Over the past three years, Bruker has spent more than $90 million on restructuring charges as we changed our portfolio, lowered our fixed cost and began to streamline our supply chain. We are certainly not done with driving higher levels of operating profitability and cash flow, but future improvements will come more from business and product innovation, being close to our customers, as well as our lean enterprise initiative, outsourcing, implementing better business systems and driving better commercial practices. Our second priority will be to continue to strengthen our systems and management insights by harmonizing business processes and ERP platforms. In 2015, we went live with a new financial consolidation system. And in early January of 2016, we successfully merged our various instances of SAP, an important step as we consolidate our ERP onto one global platform. Throughout 2016 and 2017, an important goal will be harmonize our business processes, embed them in our ERP and begin to roll them out in our country sales offices and production sites. Third, it is important that we continue to invest for future profitable growth. In order to sustain attractive operating leverage, we expect to gradually accelerate our organic growth. We're continuing to make investments in our four strategic growth markets; and we continue to invest a high percentage of our revenues into R&D. My fourth priority is to reemphasize the focus on customers and the importance of driving product and business innovation. This is the lifeblood of our business and staying close to our customers and ensuring that we're not inwardly focused is a key priority. I will conclude my comments by stating that I am very pleased with our financial performance improvements in Q4 and for the full year 2015. With that, let me turn the call over to Tony Mattacchione. Anthony L. Mattacchione - Interim CFO, Senior Vice President of Finance & Accounting: Thank you, Frank. I will now provide some additional details on our financial performance in Q4 2015 and in the full year 2015 starting on slide 10. Bruker had an excellent fourth quarter financially, which built on the positive momentum from Q3 2015. To reiterate Frank's comments, in Q4 2015 we expanded our operating margins by 500 basis points on organic revenue growth of 2.5%. We delivered an EPS increase of $0.08 year-over-year. And we generated $138 million of free cash flow. On a full year 2015 basis, revenue grew 2% organically year-over-year; and we delivered 310 basis points of operating margin expansion; $0.14 of non-GAAP EPS growth; and $195 million of free cash flow generation. We are very pleased with our financial success in both the fourth quarter and in 2015. Now let me drill into more detail on our Q4 performance. Our non-GAAP operating income grew 31% to $83.7 million and we reported a non-GAAP operating margin of 17.5%. This operating income growth along with a favorable tax rate drove a 27% non-GAAP EPS increase year-over-year in the fourth quarter. Free cash flow generation of $138.2 million in Q4 reflected a $76 million year-over-year improvement primarily driven by our higher profitability, but also from working capital improvements. We typically generate most of our free cash flow in the fourth quarter; and that trend also continued this year in 2015. Our balance sheet continues to be healthy as our net cash position increased by 41% to $201.6 million, even as we initiated two share buyback programs in 2015. Our working capital reductions in the quarter resulted in an improved working capital to revenue ratio, which was lowered to $0.36 per revenue dollar in Q4 2015, compared with $0.38 in Q4 2014. Turning to slide 11, I show you the year-over-year revenue bridge for Q4 2015. Despite a 60 basis point net negative portfolio effect and a 7.8% negative effect from changes in foreign currency translation, organic revenue grew 2.5% in the fourth quarter of 2015. The strengthening of the U.S. dollar resulted in a $39 million currency headwind, while the negative portfolio effect was the result of our CAM divestitures in 2014 and a partial quarter of revenue from our Jordan Valley acquisition in the middle of Q4 2015. On slide 12, I show our Q4 2015 profit and loss statement. Our Q4 2015 non-GAAP gross margin of 46.6% increased 270 basis points year-over-year. The benefits of our CAM restructuring added 50 basis points to our gross margin in Q4 this year. Roughly 180 basis points of the gross margin improvement was primarily the result of the higher business volume, improved order execution, pricing and operational improvements related to our transformation initiative. Our Q4 2015 operating expenses were down approximately $20 million year-over-year. In Q4 2015, lower R&D and SG&A spending resulted in a 230 basis point year-over-year contribution to our operating profit margin. The net result is that our non-GAAP operating margin improved 500 basis points compared to a relatively weak Q4 2014 quarter. Our Q4 2015 non-GAAP tax rate of 19.1% was 90 basis points lower than in Q4 of 2014. This was primarily the result of reversing certain U.S. evaluation allowances. This is primarily also attributable to the higher profits earned in the U.S., which were caused by divestiture of our unprofitable CAM businesses and other tax planning effects this year. Finally, non-GAAP EPS of $0.38 represented an $0.08 or 27% increase from Q4 2014. On slide 13, you'll see the revenue bridge for the full year of 2015. We reported an organic year-over-year revenue increase of 2.1% in 2015. Changes in foreign currency translation lowered our revenues by 10.2% or $184 million in 2015. On slide 14, I show our non-GAAP P&L for the full year of 2015. Our non-GAAP gross margins improved by 150 basis points compared to last year. Approximately half of the gross margin improvement was related to the higher business volume, improvements in commercial practices and the operational initiatives associated with our transformation. The savings from our CAM restructuring contributed 60 basis points to the gross margin improvement in 2015. Our fiscal 2015 operating expenses declined by $88 million compared to last year. Approximately, $62 million of the decrease, excuse me, was related to FX, while the CAM restructuring represented $22 million of the year-over-year decrease in the fiscal 2015 operating expenses. Our non-GAAP operating margin increased by about 310 basis points year-over-year in 2015, with CAM representing a little over 100 basis points of that increase; and roughly 200 basis points coming from FX and operating leverage we've incorporated into our business model. Our non-GAAP tax rate of 22% was 310 basis points lower than last year and below the 24% to 25% we had assumed in our guidance. The primary driver of this lower rate was the reversal of the U.S. valuation allowances I referred to previously. On the bottom line, in 2015, we reported $0.89 of earnings per share – non-GAAP earnings per share, which was $0.14 or 19% higher than 2014 and well above our most recent guidance of $0.75 to $0.80. Changes in foreign translation rates – foreign currency translation rates reduced our EPS by $0.09, whereas the absence of the divested CAM businesses increased EPS also by $0.09. On slide 15, I show our 2015 full year cash flow statement. We generated very strong free cash flow of $195 million in 2015, compared with $80.5 million last year. That was a $114.5 million improvement year-over-year. That increase was the result of the higher earnings and lower working capital cost, predominantly by cash collection timing for large NMR installations and significantly higher customer advances we experienced in 2015. Customer advances, which represent customer down payments, can be large and can fluctuate significantly depending on the timing of order receipt and the customer's acceptance of our systems. Our Q4 2015 cash conversion cycle shortened by 10 days compared to Q4 2014. This was comprised of the following: our days of inventory decreased by seven days to 188 days; our days sales outstanding decreased by two days to 59 days; and our days payable outstanding increased two days to 33 days; all compared to Q4 2014. During the fourth quarter of 2015, we repurchased 2.8 million shares in accordance with our share buyback program. In 2015, altogether, we repurchased approximately 4 million of our shares. Most repurchases occurred in November and December last year. So the effect on our 2015 weighted average share count is not yet very significant. As of the end of 2015, we had 167 million of remaining authorization to buy back shares, as part of the 225 million share buyback program we announced last November. Now turning to slide 17, I show Bruker's guidance for the full year of 2016. We expect to generate organic revenue growth of approximately 3%; and we expect to increase our non-GAAP operating profit margin by approximately 100 basis points. We expect that our non-GAAP EPS will be in a range of $0.97 to $1.02. We also expect that changes in foreign currency exchange rates will lower our reported revenues by 1.6%, which will only have a nominal effect on our non-GAAP EPS in fiscal 2016. The revenue headwind from FX will be approximately offset by the benefits of our recent Jordan Valley Semiconductor acquisition. This means that organic and reported revenue growth will be around 3% also in fiscal 2016. Our currency assumptions included a yen to U.S. dollar rate of $1.20; a U.S. dollar to euro rate of €1.09; and a Swiss franc to U.S. dollar of CHF 0.99, which were the spot rates at December 31, 2015. We assume a non-GAAP tax rate range of 25% to 28% for the full year of 2015; and we are assuming a fully diluted share count of approximately 163 million to 165 million shares. We expect CapEx to total approximately $50 million for the full year of 2016. I would remind investors that much like 2015 we expect the majority of our profitability and cash flow to be generated in the second half of 2016. We also expect to have a seasonally weak first quarter and do not anticipate much year-over-year growth in operating profitability or EPS in Q1 2016. I will close by stating that we're very proud to report strong improvements in Q4 and for the full year of 2015. We are doing a very more effective job of delivering on our commitments to shareholders; and we expect 2016 to be another good year for operating margin expansion and free cash flow generation. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Joshua to start the Q&A session.