Frank Laukien
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead
Thank you, Miroslava. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on today's call. I hope you and your families are well. We continue to navigate a challenging environment among a global pandemic, while the majority of our academic and research customers worldwide have returned to business under a new normal, some still operates at productivity levels that are below pre-pandemic levels in an effort to accommodate safety protocols. Against this backdrop, Bruker delivered a good third quarter with sequentially strengthened financial performance compared to the first two quarters of 2020. In Q3 2020, our revenues still declined slightly year-over-year, but our non-GAAP operating margins and non-GAAP EPS improved significantly compared to Q2 or Q1 of 2020 and approached prior year Q3 '19 levels. We are pleased with the way our teams have delivered under the circumstances. During Q3, we continued to support initiatives to understand the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease. These include functional structural biology studies by high field NMR so called long COVID patient studies by NMR and mass spec metabolomics, as well as viral protein and disease patient proteomics research by mass spectrometry. And finally, we support the discovery and development of diagnostics, therapies and vaccines with our tools. Moreover, our Bruker high-end diagnostics business continues to serve the COVID-19 PCR testing market with nucleic acid extraction and PCR test kits and equipment. In Q3 of 2020, this grew further and we generated about $8.5 million of revenues from these PCR products primarily in Europe. Together with partners, we also have been piloting COVID-19 rapid antigen tests at some of our own European sites, and in customer labs with a goal to broaden our COVID-19 test portfolio further. From an operational standpoint, our major factory sites in the US, Europe and Malaysia are operating at their new normal. We are currently not facing any significant operational constraints, although we are monitoring this resurgence of the virus in Europe and in the US carefully. Turning to financial results. Our third quarter 2020 revenues rebounded sequentially as academic customers returned. Q3 2020 revenues were still slightly below prior year level, down minus 1.9% year-over-year and down 4.6% organically. Sequentially, we generated 20% more revenue in Q3 compared to Q2 of 2020. We continue to carefully manage expenses and monitor our cost structure. As a result, our Q3 2020 non-GAAP operating margin even improved year-over-year, while our diluted non-GAAP EPS approached Q3 '19 levels. Year-to-date and including the third quarter, our key proteomics, diagnostics and biopharma initiatives continued to grow nicely, and we now anticipate that Bruker will return to healthy year-over-year revenue growth and margin expansion in 2021. I now go to Slide 4, where we show the financial highlights for the third quarter of 2020. Q3 2020 revenues declined by 1.9% year-over-year to $511.4 million. Acquisitions added 0.3% to revenue growth and foreign currency translation was favorable by plus 2.4%. On an organic basis, Bruker's Q3 '20 revenues declined 4.6% year-over-year, which was comprised of a 3% organic decline in the three Bruker Scientific Instrument groups and an approximate 20% organic decline at BEST, net of intercompany eliminations with BEST negatively impacted by reduced demand for superconductors by MRI OEM companies. Our Q3 '20 non-GAAP gross margin decreased 90 bps year-over-year to 49.6%, while our non-GAAP operating margin improved 30 bps year-over-year to 18.6%. Lower volume at NANO and BEST together with unfavorable foreign currency translation negatively impacted the gross margin performance year-over-year, while meaningful OpEx savings resulted in an operating margin gain relative to Q3 of 2019. In Q3 '20, Bruker reported GAAP diluted EPS of $0.35 per share compared to $0.39 in Q3 '19, and on a non-GAAP basis, Q3 '20 EPS was $0.42 compared to $0.43 in Q3 of '19. On Slide 5, we show Bruker's performance for the first nine months of 2020. Revenues decreased by $113 million or minus 7.7% year-over-year to $1.36 billion. On an organic basis, revenues declined 8.3% year-over-year in the first nine months comprised of a 7.9% organic decline in the Scientific Instruments Groups, and a 12.6% organic decline at BEST, net of intercompany eliminations. Acquisitions added 0.5% to our top line and foreign exchange was insignificant, up 0.1%. Year-to-date, 2020 order bookings for Bruker Scientific Instruments Group declined low single-digits organically. Order rates improved sequentially, and had positive year-over-year growth in the third quarter as customers return to labs and research activities continued to recover. During Q3 of 2020, BSI's biopharma and diagnostic markets remain solid and academic markets continued to recover, while Industrial Research and Applied Markets continued to show softer trends due to the pandemic-driven economic slowdown. On the brighter side, BSI semiconductor metrology markets remain in an upswing. Year-to-date 2020 non-GAAP gross margin decreased 240 bps compared to the same period in 2019, while non-GAAP operating margins declined to 280 bps, as Gerald will discuss both growth and operating margins improved significantly when we look at them sequentially from Q2 to Q3 2020. On a GAAP basis, Bruker reported EPS of $0.57 in the first nine months of 2020, compared to $0.82 in the first nine months of 2019. And year-to-date 2020 non-GAAP EPS was $0.77, compared to $1.04 for in the same period in 2019. Please turn to Slide 6 and 7 are where we provide further highlights on the year-to-date 2020 performance of our three Scientific Instruments Groups, and of our BEST segment, all on a constant currency basis and in comparison, to the same period in 2019. Year-to-date, 2020 BioSpin Group revenue declined mid single-digits to $398 million. The revenue decline at BioSpin was due to COVID-19 related customer lab closures and installation delays primarily in the first half of 2020. BioSpin's performance improved sequentially and revenues were up year-over-year in the low single-digits in the third quarter as the academic market recovery continued and biopharma remained robust. During the third quarter, BioSpin received customer acceptance for a second 1.2 gigahertz and NMR system, which was successfully installed at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. BioSpin continues to ramp up its manufacturing and shipment activities for gigahertz systems. During the first nine months of the year, BioSpin's NMR and PCI Systems' revenue declined year-over-year due to the delayed order and installation activity as expected. BioSpin's aftermarket revenue increased slightly year-over-year and scientific software revenues were higher although of a low basis. Turning to the CALID Group, year-to-date 2020 revenues of $445 million were approximately flat compared to the same period in 2019. Molecular spectroscopy revenues decline year-over-year as FTIR/NIR markets were affected by the pandemic and economic slowdown. However, this was more than offset by solid growth in CALID's Daltonics microbiology and diagnostics, and its life science mass spectrometry business. CALID's performance also strengthened sequentially with revenues growing mid single-digits in the third quarter of 2020 year-over-year. For the first nine months of 2020, CALID's microbiology and COVID PCR testing consumables grew significantly year-over-year, our timsTOF proteomics business had a solid uptake and revenue growth year-to-date, despite the challenging conditions for instruments and customer installation delays. Finally, revenues for our FTIR and Near IR and Raman molecular spectroscopy product declined year-to-date with weakened applied and academic demand. Please turn to Slide 7 now. Bruker NANO revenues declined mid-teens to $393 million in the first nine months of 2020, reflecting slower academic, industrial and industrial research demand. This is all true for NANO's X-ray and NANO-surface, NANO-analysis tools and they all declined in revenue year-to-date. Year-to-date semiconductor metrology revenue for the NANO Group grew year-over-year as semi markets remain in a rebound. Finally, year-to-date 2020 BEST revenue declined low-teens, net of intercompany eliminations on reduced superconductor demand by MRI companies. Turning to Slide 8 now. Bruker continues to make investments in innovation that we believe will position the company for long-term profitable growth. This September, we acquired Canopy Biosciences, a leader in high-plex biomarker imaging for immunophenotyping using multiplexed fluorescence microscopy. Canopy's offering strengthens Bruker's position in Spatial Omics and targeted Multiomics Research. It complements Bruker's fluorescence microscopy portfolio and also helps our Bruker NANO Group expand its life science footprint. Canopy's ChipCytometry, manual and automated platforms and related consumables and services provide high resolution multiplexed imaging of peripheral blood mononuclear cells or PBMCs or of tissue again with applications in immunology, immuno oncology, cell therapy and targeted proteomics research. The cell CellKraft ChipCytometry platform that's our trademark CellKraft work, which is part of Canopy has advantages listed on the slide. We are very pleased to have the Canopy and CellKraft work team joined Bruker. Please remember that for high resolution spatial biology, we also recently had a very important new product introduction as we launched our Vutara VXL super resolution fluorescence microscope for industry-leading single-molecule localization and for subcellular targeted Multiomics imaging. Turning to Slide 9, we continue to make excellent progress with timsTOF 4D proteomics. At the recent human proteome organization or HUPO World Congress, Bruker's Melvin Park and Oliver Raether were awarded the HUPO science and technology award for the commercialization of Tim's trapped ion mobility spectrometry and off the passive proteomics method. We also announced significant additional innovations that HUPO, including the PaSER proteomics search engine, new work in progress, true single cell 4D proteomics workflow, this was the first, the PRM passive method for targeted quantitative proteomics or translational applications and the caps passive work flow for cross linking in structural 4D proteomics. We remain very excited about timsTOF and our opportunities in 4D proteomics. So, in conclusion, Bruker's performance strengthened sequentially in Q3 as academic markets and customer research activity continued to recover. Our core growth and margin initiatives are progressing well and we are excited about our opportunities in biopharma, microbiology and viral diagnostics. In proteomics, targeted multiomics ultra-high field NMR, software and aftermarket. Bruker remains fundamentally healthy and we expect to return to solid year-over-year revenue growth and margin expansion in 2021. And with that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Gerald Herman, who will review our financial performance in more detail.