Mettler-Toledo International Inc. (MTD) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Mettler-Toledo Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Adam Uhlman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Great, Jonathan. Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. On the call with me today is Patrick Kaltenbach, our Chief Executive Officer; and Shawn Vadala, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me cover some administrative matters. This call is being webcast and is available for replay on our website at mt.com. A copy of the press release and the presentation that we will refer to on today's call is also available on our website. This call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, financial condition, performance and achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, see our recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly and current reports filed with the SEC. The company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to provide any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. On today's call, we will use non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is provided in the 8-K and is available on our website. Let me now turn the call over to Patrick.

Thank you, Adam, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call today. Last night, we reported our second quarter financial results, the details of which are outlined for you on Page 3 of our presentation. Our second quarter results were strong and reflected better-than-expected organic sales growth across our portfolio, including very good growth in China and emerging markets. It was driven by improved market conditions and our focused Spinnaker sales and marketing program. Combined with our productivity initiatives, this resulted in excellent adjusted EPS growth in the quarter. Going forward, we are optimistic market conditions will gradually improve. Our team remains agile and focused on capturing growth opportunities, leveraging our sophisticated Spinnaker program and innovative product portfolio while benefiting from trends in automation, digitalization and onshoring investments. I am confident that strong execution of our strategic initiatives will continue to deliver solid financial performance. Let me now turn the call over to Shawn to cover the financial results and our guidance, and then I will come back with some additional commentary on the business and our outlook. Shawn?

Thanks, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. Before I review our Q2 results, I'd like to highlight a special item in our financials this quarter related to tariffs. As disclosed last quarter, we had a one-time gross benefit of $52 million from IEEPA tariff refunds in Q2 that benefited cost of sales, and was offset in part by a $28 million related refund to our customers that reduced our reported net sales by 3%. Discussion of our results today will exclude the impact of both of these items. Sales in the quarter were $1 billion, up 7% in U.S. dollars. And in local currency, our growth was 6% and above our price -- our prior guidance of approximately 3% local currency sales growth. Acquisitions contributed approximately 1.5% to sales growth and organic local currency sales growth was 4%. On Slide #4, we show sales growth by region. Organic sales, excluding acquisition and tariff refunds, increased 1% in the Americas, 4% in Europe and 9% in Asia/Rest of World, including 9% growth in China. Slide #5 shows core organic sales growth by region on a year-to-date basis. On Slide #6, we summarize sales growth by product area. Organic sales increased 4% in Laboratory and increased 3% in Industrial, which included 4% growth in Core Industrial and 1% growth in Product Inspection. Food Retail grew 11% in the quarter. Lastly, service revenue grew 9% or 7% organically. Slide #7 details organic sales growth by product area on a year-to-date basis. Let me now move to the rest of the P&L, which is summarized on Slide #8. Adjusted gross margin was 59.3% in the quarter, an increase of 30 basis points. Excluding unfavorable foreign currency and acquisitions, gross margin expanded approximately 90 basis points due to benefits from favorable price realization, lower tariff rates compared to the prior year, volume growth in our productivity and cost savings initiatives, partly offset by higher transportation costs. R&D amounted to $53 million in the quarter and was up 3% on a local currency basis over the prior period. SG&A amounted to $263 million a 4% increase in local currency over the prior year and includes sales and marketing investments, offset in part by cost savings. Adjusted operating profit amounted to $309 million in the quarter, up 9% versus the prior year. Adjusted operating margin was 29.3%, an increase of 50 basis points versus the prior year or up 100 basis points excluding unfavorable currency. Adjusted EPS for the quarter was $11.46, a 14% increase over the prior year. On a reported basis in the quarter, EPS was $11.55 as compared to $9.76 in the prior year. Reported EPS in the quarter included a $0.92 net tariff refund benefit, $0.26 of purchased intangible amortization, $0.22 of restructuring costs and a $0.04 tax headwind related to the timing of stock option exercises. Finally, we had a $0.31 acquisition-related charge related to higher earn-out achievements on previous acquisitions. That covers the P&L, and let me now comment on adjusted free cash flow, which amounted to $367 million on a year-to-date basis and was negatively impacted by the timing of tax payments, which were $55 million higher than the prior year. DSO was 35.6 days, while ITO was 4.2x. Let me now turn to our guidance for the third quarter and the full year 2026. As you review our guidance, please keep in mind the following factors. First, we are encouraged by our Q2 results and improved market conditions, especially in China and emerging markets. Second, conditions in the Middle East remain volatile. And while we have limited exposure to the region, this could impact customer decision-making should conditions significantly change. We are not currently seeing any change in related customer behavior and have not included an escalation of the conflict in our forecast. Lastly, we are very confident in our ability to execute on our growth and productivity initiatives and believe we are well positioned to gain market share regardless of the macro environment. Now turning to our guidance for the full year 2026. We have increased our local currency sales growth from approximately 4% to approximately 4% to 5%, reflecting organic growth of 3% to 4%. Our forecast excludes the impact of the previously described tariff refunds. Adjusted EPS for the year is forecast to be in the range of $47.15 to $47.50, which represents a growth rate of 10% to 11% or 11% to 12%, excluding currency. This reflects an increase from our previous guidance of 8% to 10% growth. At recent spot rates, foreign currency is estimated to be a 1% benefit to sales growth and a slight headwind to EPS for the year. For the third quarter of 2026, we expect local currency sales to grow approximately 4%, which includes approximately 0.5% benefit from acquisitions. We expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $12 to $12.15, a growth rate of 8% to 9% or 9% to 10%, excluding currency. Currency for the quarter at recent spot rates would be neutral to third quarter sales and a 1% headwind to adjusted EPS. Some further comments on our 2026 guidance. We expect total amortization, including purchase intangible amortization to be approximately $78 million. Purchased intangible amortization is excluded from adjusted EPS and is estimated at $28 million on a pretax basis or approximately $1.07. Interest expense is forecast at $67 million for the year. Other income is estimated at approximately $24 million. We expect our tax rate before discrete items will remain at 19% in 2026. Free cash flow is expected to be approximately $900 million in 2026, which represents 6% growth on a per share basis. Share repurchases are now expected to increase to $875 million for the full year as compared to our annualized repurchase level of $825 million during the first half of the year. That's it from my side, and I'll now turn it back to Patrick.

Thanks, Shawn. Let me start with some comments on our operating businesses, starting with Lab, which had good growth in the quarter across most product areas. We saw improving trends across our biopharma customer base and continue to see strong growth in process analytics and bioproduction. Laboratory balances and analytical instruments growth was also strong and benefited from the many innovations we have brought to the market in the recent years, our LabX software and growing demand from hot segments like semiconductor, advanced materials and batteries. Turning to industrial. Core Industrial did well this quarter with sales growth driven by strong demand for our solutions that enable automation. We saw strength across markets like biopharma, food manufacturing, semiconductor and new energy. As expected, Product Inspection organic sales growth this quarter was modest due to the timing of customer projects, but organic growth is expected to pick up again in the second half. Lastly, food retail sales growth was better than expected due to the timing of project activity. Now let me make some additional comments by geography. Starting in the Americas, where sales grew 1%, excluding acquisitions. We had strong momentum in most Lab product categories and in our Core Industrial Automation Solutions and Product Inspection. These results were offset in part by timing of food retail and transportation and logistics project activity. Turning to Europe. Sales growth this quarter was solid and included growth across most of the business, including strong growth in Core Industrial and food retail. Finally, Asia/Rest of the World had very good growth this quarter across the portfolio and in most major markets. Our business in China grew 9% and was stronger than expected as our team continues to do an excellent job identifying high-growth markets and leveraging our innovative portfolio. Biopharma customers' demand was also healthy and contributed to our results. Markets outside of China also had strong growth this quarter. Emerging markets have been an important element of our long-term growth strategy for many years. India, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America offers excellent growth opportunities as these markets develop and mature, and we believe many of them will also benefit from near-shoring investments over the coming years. Our company is uniquely positioned to capitalize on emerging market growth over the coming years. In the second quarter, emerging markets outside of China represented approximately 18% of our sales, slightly more than our business in China and grew high single digits in the quarter. Emerging markets, excluding China, have also grown high single digits on average in local currencies over the last 5 years, above the company average and are an important contributor to our growth. To take advantage of these growth opportunities, we have long-standing dedicated market organizations in emerging markets, China and around the world. Our market organizations are a significant competitive advantage, allowing us to stay close to customers and better understand local market needs. We have dedicated growth plans for each major country and we leverage our broad portfolio of solutions across a range of price and value points to meet varying customer requirements. Additionally, in markets like Mexico, we have further developed local assembly and manufacturing capabilities in recent years, which strengthen our ability to serve local market needs and enhance our competitive position. The market organizations and emerging economies also leverage the same Spinnaker sales and marketing programs we have developed in other countries, including various digital tools, value selling guides and sales enablement tools. We have also rolled out Blue Ocean to most of our MOs and having a single instance of a global information technology infrastructure provides rich data, analytics and unique real-time business insights. This is a significant competitive advantage that allows us to target opportunities in various hot segments like bioprocessing, GLP-1s, semiconductor and battery in an agile way. As domestic and foreign direct investments continues to grow over the coming years, we expect emerging markets to remain a healthy contributor to our growth well into the future. In summary, we are very pleased with our Q2 results and the solid growth our team has delivered. We remain focused on capitalizing on our customers' investments in automation, digitalization and onshoring around the world. After a few years of disruptions and uncertainties related to tariffs, governmental policies and geopolitics, we believe customers will continue to return to a more normal replacement activity going forward. We have maintained a strong focus on investing in innovation and growth in recent years while protecting profitability, which will serve us well as our markets recover. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, I'd now like to open the line to questions.

Shawn or Patrick, last quarter, you raised the guide for China. So I guess not a surprise to see the pickup there, but it does seem like maybe it improved a bit sooner. Can you just dive into the acceleration a bit? What does the momentum there look like when it comes to pharma versus non-pharma and just sort of the consistency that you expect in the coming quarters? If I remember correctly, the improvement seemed like it was due more to core industrial last quarter. So to what extent do you have pharma improvement sort of baked into the outlook for the rest of the year here?

Yes. Thank you, Dan. And yes, of course, we are very happy with the growth we have seen in China, 9% in Q2 was really a very strong result versus the guidance we initially had for the quarter. I mean the growth has really been led by Industrial, which had double-digit growth in China. We are benefiting from many of the core segments such as biopharma, but also food as well as the hot segments like investments in battery that is happening in China. For Lab, the growth was a bit more modest. We expect continued improvement there also in the second half, both also from biopharma and maybe also academia will pick up towards the end of the year. We see or we had at least some indications of some additional funding for academia in China as well. But then again, also the good hot segments and the strong investments in areas like lithium battery and new energy. So overall, I would say, really led by industrial, the growth across many segments and pharma was a good part of that as well.

Yes. Dan, then just to be specific, like in terms of the second half of the year, we're looking at high single digit now for China also for Q3 and for the full year. And we kind of -- this momentum that Patrick referred to on industrial, we feel very good about entering the second half. Also the trends around automation and digitalization that we talk a lot about, we're definitely seeing those benefits in China as well. And then I think as we kind of go into the second half of the year, too, we also feel like that the Lab business is gradually improving as well.

Yes. Okay. And then maybe just on product inspection. A little bit of growth in that piece. I think you had been pointing to that being down a touch this quarter on some timing elements that you referred to. Can you just maybe expand on that? Was there anything that got pulled forward from 3Q as it relates to that timing? And then if you put the timing aspect aside, maybe just talk about spending and demand relative to the way that you saw things last quarter in PI specifically.

Yes. No, thanks, Dan. So if you remember, we had a really good Q1 in PI, and then we were trying to caution people that Q2 would be a little bit lighter just given the timing of how the project activity was looking like it was playing out. But as we kind of like go into the second half of the year, I mean, we feel very good. I mean, we're probably looking at mid-single-digit growth in the third quarter. And for the full year, we're probably looking at high single-digit growth, which is probably more like mid-single-digit growth on an organic basis. But when you step back, 70% of that business is food manufacturing. So the -- from an end market perspective, not quite like pharma. But when we look at how the team is executing, we actually feel really good. I mean we talked a lot about the benefits of innovation in this business over the last few years, and we kind of continue to see that. We're coming out with a couple of new products this year, which is pretty exciting. And then this general strategy that we've talked a lot about in terms of how to better position ourselves for the mid-market segment seems to be working very well and well received in the marketplace.

Just wanted to maybe unpack some of the other trends from 2Q. I guess as we think about the revised guide in the back half of the year, can you just talk a little bit more about some of the underlying assumptions by end market and segment? Obviously, you just covered PI in China, but maybe walk through where you're changing your assumptions otherwise.

Yes. Tycho, I'll take that one. Thank you. So I'll start with the product categories, and then I'll give you the division. So Lab for Q3 would be mid-single digit. Core Industrial, we're looking at low single digit. And I think it's important to remember that Core Industrial had a very challenging comparison to the prior year in Q3 of last year. It grew 10% organically. Product Inspection, mid-single digit, which I just said, and then Retail, we're guiding at flat. In terms of the Americas, we're guiding at low to mid-single digit. Again, this one had a more challenging comparison, just to highlight in Q3 of last year, which was up, I think, 9% organically. Europe, up low single digit. China, we talked about high single digit. And then maybe just to kind of wrap it up with the full year. Full year Lab would be low to mid-single digit. Core Industrial would be low to mid-single digit. Product Inspection would be high single digit. And of course, there's a little bit of acquisition from the -- largely from the first half of the year in these numbers. So Core Industrial would be low single digit organically. PI would be mid-single digit. Retail would be low to mid-single digit. And if we look at the regions, Americas would be low single digit or about flattish organically. Europe would be low single digit and then China would be high single digit.

Okay. Very helpful. And then a follow-up, you've guided 2.5% on price for 2Q. Just curious where you landed and what you're thinking for the back half of the year? And then separately, did you capture -- recapture any of the delayed chemical orders?

Yes, sure. So on the pricing side, continue to be really pleased with the team's execution. But ultimately, pricing comes back to value proposition. I think a lot of the investments we've been making over the last few years on innovation continue to pay off well. So in the end, our price realization for the quarter was around 3%. So we're very happy with that. So a little bit better than the 2.5% that you were mentioning in terms of our original guidance. Towards the end of the quarter, we also put in place some additional pricing measures isolated in a few areas where we were seeing a little bit of inflationary pressures. So our guidance for the second half of the year is more in the 2.5% kind of a range. And again, we're -- as a reminder, we're also lapping a lot of the midyear price increase actions that we did last year in response to all the tariffs from last year. So when you kind of wrap that all up, our full year price realization is now approaching 3% for the full year. I think the other part of your question was China -- I mean, not China, Chemical, Europe, do you want to take that one or...

I can take that one. Tycho, so yes, on chemical, just as a reminder, I mean, overall, it's under 15% of our total sales, and we had probably the biggest exposure across Industrial and Lab for chemical. It's -- for us, it's mostly specialty chemicals. And when we talked in Q1 about the pressures we have seen in the EU, it was mainly energy related. It's our view on things. Actually, the EU chemical results were better in Q2, so they recovered. And -- but we still would say we take a bit more cautious stance on the overall segment still because they are more exposed to energy cost fluctuations than other segments that we're seeing. And -- but overall, of course, in the quarters to come, we will also have easier comps in the segment.

I think one for Patrick and one for Shawn. Patrick, nice to see the reacceleration in Lab. I guess, can you give more details on what drove this? It would be great to get a sense on what you're hearing from customers on the why behind the inflection in the second quarter following what would seem to be a softer start to the year. Was it budgets being delayed, concern around the war or other? And then as you think about durability kind of going forward, the comps get more difficult, but it sounds like you're expecting mid-singles again in the third quarter. Do you think Lab kind of should stay in the steady state of mid-single digits here as we work through the second half and maybe into '27?

Yes. We will not talk -- thanks, Josh. We will not talk about '27 yet. But of course, we are actually quite delighted with how Lab is performing. And a lot of that is based not only on our strong go-to-market strategy and our local market teams that we have that are really very close to our customers. I think it's also based on the fact that we have really put a lot of effort into innovation over the last years. We launched a lot of new great products across the Lab portfolio. And within Lab, at the moment, of course, the process analytics business is performing extremely well in biopharma, as you can imagine. So that drives a lot of the growth as well. And then you look at the rest of the portfolio that we have, analytical instruments have been very good in Q2, and we see that also moving forward. We saw the pipette business coming back to growth as well last quarter, which is very promising. So I would say, yes, we're actually quite pleased with the momentum we have in Lab moving forward. We do expect, as Shawn said, for Lab mid-single digits growth about that range. And it's pretty broad-based. I think if there is even some upside to this, it would be potentially an acceleration in China that still has to materialize. Again, we saw some initial good momentum, but that was more in Industrial in China, and I think Lab is more to come. Overall, extremely well positioned for lab products with our LabX software platform. As you know, we provide about 40% of the instruments that are used typically in the QA/QC lab and most of them are connected to our LabX portfolio, which gives our customers a really unique opportunity to do just their testing in a very compliant way and using LabX as a complete workflow control system and also aggregate the data to use AI on the next level if they want to. So it's -- I think we are very pleased with where we are with Lab, and I think there's more to come. Thank you.

Yes. Good to hear. Okay. And then, Shawn, can you give an update on how margins are tracking versus your plan? Any updated view on the full year margin expectation? I mean it seems like you're tracking ahead of plan. Is this reflecting moving pieces on the tariff refunds? Or are there other drivers you'd highlight?

Yes. So just to be clear, the tariff refund topic is excluded from our results, our adjusted results and our guidance. Now of course, changes in tariff rates is a different story. And so that can be a factor here. But we feel very good about the team's execution. We really -- I think we've been trying to like really focus on this always in the past. I think if you look at the different initiatives that we have kind of underlying margin expansion like the SternDrive program, productivity programs, cost savings initiatives, they're all, I think, very important. And I think it definitely highlights, I think, some of the culture in the company as well. If we look at Q2, you kind of heard we -- if you look at the operating margin, we were up like 100 basis points if you exclude currency. If you look at that from a full year perspective in terms of what we're thinking for 2026, we'll probably be, excluding currency, probably up 60, 70 basis points, maybe modestly better than what we were thinking before. Now there's some currency in that. So on a reported basis or not excluding currency, it would be up slightly, maybe in the 10 to 20 basis point kind of range. And that's at the operating margin level, yes.

I guess, Shawn, my first one, a quick housekeeping. What was FX in M&A contribution in the quarter?

Yes, it was about -- so in terms of -- you're talking -- I'm sorry, Vijay, you said -- did you say FX in M&A in terms of revenue?

Foreign exchange...

Yes, yes. So I usually don't think in terms of foreign exchange. So the acquisition contribution was about 1.5%. And then in terms of FX, I think if you kind of like look at our reported numbers versus our local currency, it implies 1%. But I think with rounding, it's north of 1%.

That's helpful. And I guess when I look at the updated guidance, Shawn, when you do the math, I think the implied exit rate for Q4 is somewhere between 4% to 5%, depending on the midpoint or high end of the guidance. That's a step-up, right? That's a sequential step-up from 3Q. I know in the past, you've spoken about the backlog and order visibility, right? Is that what's driving the sequential step-up? Like what gives the confidence in this fourth quarter exit rate?

Yes. So I think -- so Vijay, a couple of things. So first of all, I think if you look at it from a growth perspective, yes, the implied Q4 is a little bit higher than the Q3 guidance. I think a lot of that also has to do with the fact that Q3 has a much more challenging comparison to the prior year. I kind of called out a little bit the industrial business as an example, and also the Americas had a challenging comp. So I think that's kind of part of it. But I think if you also just look at sequentials in terms of just like the flow of quarters and dollars from one quarter to another, I feel like the sequentials are pretty in line with historical sequentials. And then as we kind of like exit the year, we feel like we have some good momentum entering into the back half of the year. And I think, yes, when you look at what we're seeing in the business today, we definitely feel good about the momentum that we're kind of carrying into the second half.

Maybe I want to dig a little bit more into biopharma. It sounds like that's one of the places you're feeling a little bit better this quarter. I had some comments on bioprocess analytics, bioproduction balances. Just would love to expand more on that. Did you see -- was it sort of like -- how big of a step-up was it? Was it above your expectations? Anything about where you're seeing that momentum the most and just expectations for that going forward? Do you feel like you're early on? Or you've already sort of like crested it, if you know what I mean?

Yes. Thanks, Mike. I'll take that question. Look, let's talk about biopharma and bioprocessing here. I'll start with bioprocessing, which is overall, I think, a low double digit of our total sales. It's mostly Pro, but also part of the Industrial Automation portfolio plays here. Pro had really good growth again in Q2, especially in the Americas with bioprocessing. And there's also some good equipment demand from industrial coming on from these automation providers where we serve them with our automation solution equipment from industrial products that we have. So there's really good momentum there. When you ask about the investments in pharma and biopharma, you're probably referring here to the reshoring activities, I guess. We -- I think we are -- number one, we are extremely well positioned for that because about 50% of our sales go into production, plus about 20% QA/QC, where we cover a lot of the value chain there. And we are in an excellent position with our biopharma portfolio, but also helping on the industrial automation portfolio. We see some good activities, some RFQs here related to reshoring, but I still would say it's early innings. I think this momentum will continue to pick up in the second half and also as we go into 2027. But yes, there are some activities and you probably all have heard about companies expanding their manufacturing in the U.S. I think until then, there will be really some groundbreaking of additional facilities that will still take some time, and then there will be more investment coming in the years '27 and '28. For now, again, most of what we see is facility investments and capacity expansion in the U.S.

Yes. Another interesting dynamic, too, is like there's been a lot of questions and talk about replacement cycles. And if you just look at our results in Q2 and one quarter doesn't necessarily make a trend, but it was encouraging to see very strong growth in the analytical instrument business as well as laboratory balances. And if you think about the types of instruments that are typically on a QA/QC bench, those categories actually did very well in the quarter here.

Okay. Okay. And then maybe just going back to what Vijay was just asking about in terms of the second half outlook. Yes, as you just touched on in that answer, you do have a little bit of a step-up. But you also talked about in your prepared remarks expectations for Middle East and geopolitics and the macro and all that. It sounds like you're not expecting -- you're kind of expecting status quo for that. I guess what I'm trying to get at is, it feels like you did get bit by that a little bit in the first quarter. So I just kind of want to get at how much buffer there is in the guide if things do escalate, just maybe a degree of conservatism or areas of upside potentially to offset if the macro Middle East gets a little bit worse, just sort of a repeat of what happened in 1Q.

Yes. Mike, maybe I'll take that one and Patrick can add some color if you'd like. But I think there's a little bit of a difference right now. I think one is like there is very strong momentum that we're seeing in terms of customer activity. And so we feel very good about how we're sitting to the second half. Now we always acknowledge we're pretty short cycle with 1.5 months of backlog. But when we look at everything holistically, we actually feel good, and we start to lap also some topics from a year ago like academia and biotech, which are smaller end markets in general, but we feel like some of these end markets are starting to improve. We're starting to see growth again in the pipetting, liquid handling business, which has also been really good. It's been a headwind for a while for us. If you look at like the Q1 dynamic, like you mentioned, absolutely. And I think one of the issues there was that we had expected companies to maybe start the year slow. I think with all the uncertainty that was hitting companies right at the beginning of the year, one of the things we kind of felt was that a lot of customers were holding off on finalizing budget commitments within their organization. So a lot of things were also getting held up as kind of like a generic statement. Right now, it seems like people have their budgets. They know what they want to do. There are the projects. And while things can always change, we feel like there's pretty good momentum going into the second half of the year. And then I think we'll learn a lot more about what it means over the next 3 months, and it might be more of a question on what it could mean for 2027. But I think the reality is that there's a lot of dynamic topics going on always in the world, and we'll continue to monitor them. But regardless of the environment, I feel like the team is trying to stay focused on what we can control and executing well.

I had a couple of follow-up guidance questions for you. The first is, so if I just look at EPS, you beat the second quarter by about $0.70 and the midpoint of guidance is going up by $0.70. So it seems like a lot of the raise is related to what you saw in the second quarter. So just trying to square that with your comment that overall, it seems like conditions are improving. Just is that conservatism? Or are there other offsets that you're building in at this point?

Yes. I think it's fair, Jack. I mean I think if you kind of like look at how we're -- how the second half -- like very happy with our Q2 results, of course, very happy to raise guidance for the full year, very happy with the momentum we're seeing in the business, acknowledge if you're trying to look at what your second half model looks like today versus 3 months ago. It looks like maybe there's a little bit of conservatism or moderation slightly. It's not reflecting anything we're seeing in the business, but we feel like maybe that kind of derisks any concerns out there for any of the geopolitical stuff, and we feel generally pretty good as we kind of go into the second half of the year.

Great. And then I wanted to poke a little bit more at the Core Industrial business. You talked about chemicals a bit. I'm actually not sure if some of that overlaps in the Lab, but we now have 6 months in a row of U.S. manufacturing PMIs over 50. So felt like we might see a little bit more momentum there. I was wondering if you could just talk about more like the macro sensitive stuff, like if you think there's still some of that correlation or if there's a reason why maybe it diverges for some reason?

Yes. No, it's a good question because if you kind of look at -- well, first of all, there's a couple of different things. The one thing that isn't necessarily evident in the results until you like look internally and unpack them is like the categories that are really supporting automation and digitalization around the world are actually growing very well, and we see that. We also -- while we're less correlated to PMIs than we were 10 years ago, we also recognize that when the economy does better, we generally should do better as well, too. And even though there's a little bit of a delay. But the one thing that maybe doesn't jump out is that within Industrial, there can be small pockets of project activity. And one of those pockets is our transportation and logistics business. And the reality is there's just like some timing going on with larger customer projects, and that's kind of like mitigating some of the other positive results you're seeing in that business. But overall, we feel actually quite good. And if you kind of like look at even our Q3 guide, despite lapping also some pretty large comps in industrial as well as the Americas from a year ago, we actually feel pretty good about our guidance and how the outlook is for the second half.

Now that we're in the back half of the year, curious just how reshoring conversations have trended, if those have picked up at all? And if you would expect orders to roll through here before the year-end?

Yes. Casey, I mean I think I partly at least addressed it in one of my former answers. Yes, we see some activity there with RFQs that are related to reshoring, again, as customers are expanding manufacturing in the United States, that is a good indication that there's more business to come. Again, the larger factories and investments still have to be made. So they are still early innings. But we see -- we truly see the pharma, biopharma investments as largely incremental for us moving forward when you think about biopharma CapEx plans, especially when it comes to instrumentation, think about the tank scale, think about the QA/QC lab. So there will be moving forward, some good momentum. And we are, of course, in a lot of discussions with some of our key customers there about their plans. And it's still early innings, but yes, the momentum has picked up, and we are pretty positive that this will carry well into 2027, 2028.

Got it. That's helpful. And then, Patrick, can you just walk through how performance trended in the Americas by business segment and end market? Curious on how things like academia and government and biotech trended, right? Like you mentioned pipetting returned to growth. So within that 1% organic number in Americas, I would just be curious to hear what drove that and maybe what's still lagging and how you would see that region playing out in the back half?

Maybe, Shawn, you can repeat again how you guided Americas for Q3 and for fiscal year.

Yes. So the Americas, the guide for Q3 is low to mid-single digit. But again, we're lapping 9% in the prior year. And if you kind of like look at the different end markets, I don't know, Patrick, if you want to contribute here, but I can kind of run with it if you want, like in terms of like the end markets, we're certainly seeing improvement in some of the areas that have been softer like academia or biotech. And our pipetting business is a good example of that. It's larger exposures for that business, smaller for the Americas overall. So that feels pretty good. Bioprocessing has been a very hot segment in the U.S. for us. A lot of the different like hot segments as well like process analytics particularly benefits from like power, semiconductor are also doing very well. And then if you think about like these trends around industrial automation, digitalization, good momentum there, as I mentioned. And like Patrick said, onshoring, we're well positioned for it, but still probably very early innings there. And then what was also nice is just like I kind of commented on earlier about like if you think about the value chain, that QA/QC space where like analytical instrumentation, like that was a nice -- that was good momentum also in the quarter. So I think kind of like the setup, the trends continue to, I think, go generally in a good direction. We do get lumpiness from time to time from things like retail. But if you kind of look beyond that, the underlying business looks positive today.

Maybe just following up on Tycho's question on price. Could you maybe just break out a bit more specifically which segments and geographies you've been more aggressive with on price just as we think about performance in the quarter? And then obviously, that 2%, I believe, is the long-term assumption for price. But just given the uptick in end market health and some of the innovation you've spoken to, any reason why that couldn't sit above 2% when we think about 2027 and beyond?

Yes. We'll talk probably more about those types of assumptions at our upcoming Analyst Day, but I certainly wouldn't expect us to come out with a higher price increase guidance than 2%. We feel pretty good about that one for the long term. In terms of breaking it down, Kallum, we typically wouldn't get into too much detail, but maybe a good way to think about it is that we tend to do well in most geographies in the world. And -- but geographies where there's higher inflationary pressures are going to have higher price increases. And so for example, like in the United States, of course, we had a lot of the tariff pressures a year ago. So of course, the U.S. would have had a higher price realization than some of the other geographies.

Great. And I know they're relatively small portions of the business, but maybe just talk us through in a bit more detail what you've seen in the high-growth areas like bioprocess and semis. And then for those areas, I guess, are you comfortable with the portfolio you have today of products? Or would there be appetite to perhaps offer something broader for the future?

Yes. Thanks, Kallum. These hot segments, whether it's semiconductor, battery, GLP-1 and others, these are all low single-digit contributors to our overall sales, but they see really good growth. And of course, our market teams are really focused on solutions for these areas. So I would say we play well in them. If you look at the U.S., as Shawn said, semiconductor definitely is a really good segment, GLP-1s, the whole biopharma segment. If you go to other areas around the world, if you go to, for example, to China, the battery segment is really also back there to very good momentum and also investment in biopharma and GLP-1s. But don't think this is the larger part of our business. Again, the broader part of our business is in pharma, biopharma, in chemical and food and other areas, but these hot segments are important from us from a perspective that we really want to maximize our growth in these areas as well, and we do very strategic investments when it comes to solutions for these end markets and working very, very close with customers whenever they need specific tailored solutions for their segments. For example, we had very good results there, working closely with some of the largest battery manufacturers over the last couple of years to make sure that we develop tailored solutions that really drove significant growth for us in these areas.

So first, I guess, maybe touch on the Lab business and what's driving that improvement. Are you starting to see pharma invest more heavily in sort of lab in the loop and automation capabilities as they look to shore up some of their AI strategies? Or would you characterize the improvement in pharma and Lab as just kind of general certainty coming back to the market?

Yes. Look, when you look at Lab, I mean, a lot of it is, of course, driven by the innovation we have brought out, not only in terms of automation and digitalization capabilities, but that's a good part of it as well. You got that. I mean, when you think about how pharma companies are automating their experimental setup, they'll use a lot of our equipment together with some of the automation partners that we have, and to automate their experiments and to really drive towards higher throughput. What is essential there is that they also have an informatics platform like LabX that collects all the information and then they can use that on an aggregated level to drive the next experimental conditions, et cetera. But Lab overall is benefiting across the board, not only from automation, but also from the number of new products and new features with the products, innovation that we released over the last years, and it goes almost across the entire value chain in Lab. Because think about the more early research part, we launched a new semi-automatic pipette this year, which has really -- received really well in AutoChem, we just launched a new solution that we think will drive some good growth moving forward. And then on the Lab product categories, we have also launched a lot of new products. So I think there is given that we have also a big exposure to the QA/QC market, that will be a good momentum for us moving forward.

Yes. And I think the -- like part of your question was also the uncertainty. Like I think the increased certainty certainly helps, right? Like we hear that a lot in terms of like biopharma generally spending more than they -- where there was a lot of hesitation at the beginning of the year.

Great. That's super helpful. And then maybe touch on your service business, how that trended in the quarter and then updated expectations going forward?

Yes. Service in the quarter grew -- what was it 9%?

It was 9%, organically it was 7%.

Organic 7%. So again, really growing faster than our products at the moment, and we're really proud of that. We continue to make really strategic investment -- in our service business, we have still a good opportunity to continue to outgrow the rest of the market, #1. Our service is an important business for us because it drives a lot of customer loyalty. Our Net Promoter Scores are very high in this area. We launched also new capabilities in service. For example, our service engineers have now access to an AI-supported knowledge base where they can basically use all of the internal information that we have regarding earlier service records, about R&D material, application notes, et cetera. So whenever they go out and service a product, they basically can use these AI-supported tools to do best-in-class service, which drives, of course, our first fix ratio a lot and also drives customer loyalty up. There's a lot of things that customers can get, but I say only at MT because we have access to this data. We have access to solutions that none of our competitors have when it comes to servicing instruments that are in the installed base. And there's still a growing opportunity for us moving forward. So I'm very optimistic that services will continue to grow. Last year, we, for the first time, exceeded $1 billion revenues in services, and that's at a high single-digit growth rate.

Yes. So to put it in perspective, for the year, it's probably going to be high single digit for the full year. Q3 might be more like mid- to high. But when you step back for the full year, we're very happy with that performance.

I just have one question. My understanding is the U.S. Pharmacopeia had some material revisions that went into effect earlier this year around pharmaceutical weighing requirements. I've seen some analysis that's describing this as quite significant. So -- and I believe the effective date for compliance started in the first quarter of this year. So is this an influence that you would spike out? If so, what sort of activities is it driving at customers? And how is Mettler exposed to such a change?

Yes. Thanks. That's a very good point. I mean it's not only the U.S. Pharmacopeia, we have seen already last year and early this year, the revisions of the Japanese Pharmacopeia and the China Pharmacopeia last year, which actually had the same revisions when it comes to weighing regulations, which helped to drive incremental growth. And we are extremely well positioned with our -- exactly with the recently launched portfolio of new Lab balances to help our customers to support them with complying with these regulations.

Patrick, I would just like to revisit your comments on emerging markets outside of China, that high single-digit growth rate. Can you offer some more color? Is that all volume? Do you have pricing power? Anything to share on service attachment rate and the long tail of emerging regions?

Yes, very good question, Dan. Thank you. Yes, we are growing high single digits in these emerging markets outside of China. And of course, if you think about, for example, India has great momentum, if you think also regions outside of Southeast Asia, if you think about Latin America, Mexico, Brazil, et cetera, where we see pretty good growth and also good investments of many companies out there. We -- there is also some reshoring onshoring, but let's say, reshoring ongoing also in these regions, which really helps us to benefit a lot from the growth opportunities across our platform. So this is a play that goes across -- I mean if you think about the end markets, it goes across pharma, but also chemical and chemical also if you think, for example, about investments into the battery segment, where manufacturers have expanded their footprint outside of China into other areas into Asia Pacific. And that comes along with a lot of investment in new instruments but also, of course, related services. I wouldn't say that there's a significant difference in terms of connect rate when it comes to the laboratory instruments outside of -- or in these emerging markets compared to other regions. So that, of course, then also drives an additional incremental revenue opportunity for us moving forward and also recurring revenues.

And we also do well on price as well in these markets. It's like I said before, it's very much a global topic for us where the value proposition tends to resonate globally, which is great.

And then as a follow-up, does the opportunity in these emerging markets just map towards manufacturing GDP by country? Or are there any areas of disproportional opportunity that you would highlight?

I think India, I mean, certainly is a standout, right? I mean, at least the last couple of years, if you look at the growth, it's been really, really impressive. It's certainly a geography that we prioritize on. And we just think we have a lot of great opportunity there. And if you look at the underlying -- some of the near-shoring and opportunities with generics, those types of things, there's just a lot of good things on the horizon there. But I mean, all the other areas, too, we differentiate on as we allocate resources and not to repeat them all, but Patrick mentioned a lot of them, but like -- but they're all -- whether they're in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin, South America, there's a lot of great opportunity. And one of the strengths of Mettler has always been that we have direct sales organizations in these individual countries so that we can really understand the local markets and really have teams that really have that application know-how and work with the local customers, and that really makes a difference.

Thanks, Jonathan, and thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any follow-up questions, and I hope you all have a great weekend. Take care.