Eric Ashleman
Analyst · TD Cowen.
Yes. No, it's a good question. I mean look, if you kind of get it right down to the way that inventory replenishment is done, obviously, your future projections and your assumptions around lead time drive almost all of your requirements. And so in hindsight, now you can view this and think, well, there must have been irrationality there, but I don't think that's actually the case. I think if you are projecting a line in a certain way, and you've been experiencing delivery patterns, not just for us, but for others at a certain level, it's going to say, you need a lot of stuff. I think part of what's changed here and maybe changed most dramatically is you have kind of a simultaneous -- well, first of all, the calendar change, funny as it sounds, that always tends to bring a different headset. And I think there's some legitimate things out there kind of from a macro perspective that people are wondering about. We're further away from COVID. We're starting to see some pullback in biopharma spending. We have some funding crisis associated with start-ups and things in biopharma places. So the minute you interject that back into the equation, you potentially go change your assumption on long-term demand, it actually has a pretty striking effect on what you should be bringing in. Now you combine that with the fact that we execute really well, so our lead times and our customer set, returning quickly back to normal, you put those 2 things together, even an automated system is going to say, "Hey, you've probably got too much here." So back to your point on learnings and things like that. First of all, we're not typically seeing cycles of this magnitude, these kind of swings. But to be fair, maybe in the world to come as we see, and it seems like there's always another chapter around the corner. So I do take your point. And I think higher iteration, really coming together and understanding long-term projections being maybe potentially more transparent with where we are in terms of lead time performance, customer set, making sure that, that's exactly understood not just today, but tomorrow as we move through cycles and swings like this, I think those would be the kind of things that our teams are talking about at both the commercial and the operational level.