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Qiagen N.V. (QGEN)

Q2 2012 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 25, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the QIAGEN Conference Call on the Q2 Results 2012. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Albert Fleury, Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance NA. Please go ahead sir.

Albert Fleury

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome to the QIAGEN conference call to discuss our latest quarterly results. Joining me on the call are Peer Schatz, Chief Executive Officer; Roland Sackers, Chief Financial Officer; and John Gilardi, Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. A copy of this announcement and the presentation for this conference call can be downloaded from the Investor Relations section of our webpage at www.qiagen.com. Moving on to slide two, before I turn the call over to Peer, please keep in mind that the following discussions and responses to your questions reflect management’s view as of today, July 25, 2012. As we share information to help you better understand our business, we will make statements and provide responses that state our intention, beliefs, expectations, or predictions of the future. These constitute forward-looking statements for the purpose of the safe harbor provisions. They involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause QIAGEN’s actual results to differ materially from those projected. QIAGEN disclaims any intention or obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. For a complete description of the risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. I would now like to hand the call over to Peer.

Peer Schatz

Management

Thank you, Al. Hello. I would like to welcome you to our conference call and the opportunity to discuss our results for the second quarter and first half of 2012. As you saw in our release last night, we are achieving our goal to deliver faster growth in 2012 despite a continued challenging macro business environment. We are very pleased with our strong performance for the first half of the year. The success of our actions we are taking to drive growth and innovation at a faster pace, alongside a solid outlook for the remainder of the year, allowed us to raise our full year outlook. In the second quarter net sales rose 14% at constant exchange rates to $307 million on growth across all customer classes and regions. Adjusted operating income grew 10% to approximately $86 million and adjusted diluted earnings per share rose to $0.25 per share from $0.23 in the second quarter of 2012. As you can see on the slide, we achieved similar growth rates for the first half of the year as well, led by a 14% improvement in sales and adjusted earnings per share of $0.48 per share. These results were again ahead of our targets, but what were the reasons? Demand for our product among customers and pharma, applied testing and academia continues to be strong, especially in light of these challenging macro economic conditions. We also continued to see solid gains among our growth drivers in molecular diagnostics. These include companion diagnostics for personalized healthcare and tests in our profiling portfolio, both of which are underpinned by QIAsymphony. In Point of Need we gained about 1% of growth in the second quarter through the addition of AmniSure, a novel premature ruptured fetal membrane test for use in pregnant women. In prevention, sales…

Roland Sackers

Management

Yes, thank you, Peer, and good afternoon to everyone in Europe and good morning to those joining from the U.S. As you heard from Peer, for the second quarter of 2012, we were ahead of our targets for net sales and adjusted EPS, and we made significant progress on our strategic initiatives. We are committed to, actually awaiting, full-year growth in 2012, overall results in 2011. And based on this performance in this first half of the year, we have raised guidance for both sales and adjusted EPS. Before I go into more detail on the outlook, I will briefly talk about results for the second quarter and first half year. On slide six, you see our key results for the quarter. Net sales rose 14% using constant exchange rates to approximately $307 million. Consumable and related revenues were up 12% using constant exchange rates, while instruments rose 28% constant exchange rate-wise in this period. Adjusted gross profit rose 7% to approximately $219 million. As a result, the adjusted cost profit margin declined slightly to 71% in the second quarter of 2012 from 73% in the same quarter of 2011. However, it was steady compared to the first quarter of this year. As we have returned to two consecutive quarters above the 70% level, we are confident of achieving our full-year target on adjusted gross margin of about 70% to 71%. I also want to highlight that we achieved this adjusted cost – profit margin while driving rapid growth within our instrumentation business as well as with our QuantiFERON TB test, which continues to have a very strong sequential quarterly performance. Since it is manufactured by a third party, it has a cost margin well below the average consumable level for QIAGEN. We are working to bring the manufacturing in-house…

Peer Schatz

Management

Thank you, Roland. I’m now on slide 10 to provide an overview of the progress we have made on our strategic initiatives and what we have achieved so far in 2012. Most importantly, we are well on track to achieve our goal to add more than 200 new QIAsymphony systems worldwide by the end of 2012. This builds on a more than 550 systems in place at the end of 2011. As for QIAensemble, we plan to provide an update in the second half of this year. We are very active here and are looking forward to sharing this progress with you. First important element of this program, the launch of the QIAensemble, The Decapper, at the end of 2011 has been very favorable. In terms of adding content, we received U.S. regulatory approval for our therascreen KRAS test in July. And we are preparing for a number of regulatory submissions in the second half of the year, including a therascreen EGFR test in the United States as a companion diagnostic. As we broaden our geographic presence, we are reviewing options to expand into new markets in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. The top seven markets are maintaining a rapid growth pace, up 28% on a constant exchange rate basis, in the second quarter and providing 12% of total sales. Many actions are also underway to help QIAGEN grow more efficiently and effectively. Also in the second quarter, organizational and leadership changes were announced to improve capabilities to address customer needs. These took effect on July 1, and we are getting very good responses across the organization. We are also continuing to free up resources that can be reallocated to growth initiatives through various projects that began in November 2011. These actions will help improve our growth and adjusted…

Roland Sackers

Management

Thank you, Peer. I’m now on slide 16 to review some of the details about our share repurchase program. As you saw in the release last night, we announced the first share repurchase program in QIAGEN’s history. Our intention is to repurchase up to $100 million of our shares, which represents about 6.2 million shares based on the current share price. We would buy back shares in both Frankfurt and on NASDAQ, and this will be done opportunistically. We see this program as a commitment to our strategy of returning to a faster growth profile and also a signal that we continue to feel our shares are significantly undervalued. As for our financial flexibility, we still have significant capabilities without relying on the equity and benefit from our strong free cash flow. Moreover, we intend to continue pursuing accretive M&A opportunities. Also in the release, we announced that we are reviewing our current debt structure and may take advantage of the currently low mid- to long-term interest rates. If we take any action, this could result in higher interest expenses. We see this as a worthwhile short-term trade off given the current attractive credit markets and with – for higher interest rates. I would now like to turn to slide 17, to review our increased full year outlook. Based on the strong performance in the first half year of 2012, as well as the acquisition of AmniSure in May, and the next generation sequencing initiative, we are raising our outlook for net sales and adjusted earnings growth in 2012. For the full year, total net sales are now expected to rise approximately 8% to 9% using constant exchange rates, up from the prior range of 6% to 8%, with approximately a 3% to 4% contribution from the acquisitions of Cellestis,…

Peer Schatz

Management

Thank you, Roland. I’m now on slide 19 for the summary before we move into Q&A. We are performing well in a challenging macroeconomic environment in 2012, achieving our goals for faster growth. Let me review again what we have announced. We exceeded our targets for sales and adjusted earnings per share growth in the first half of the year, a mix of growth from recent acquisitions and the rest from organic business. This has enabled us to raise our full year targets. We have also launched the first share repurchase program in QIAGEN’s history, and plans to buy back up to $100 million of stock. This is a signal of our conviction in our future prospects and views on evaluation. In closing, we are on track to delivering a stronger performance in 2012, and have begun the second half of the year with confidence. With that, I’d like to hand back to Al to open up for the Q&A session. Thank you

Albert Fleury

Management

Thank you, Peer. We now look forward to taking your questions. To ensure we can accommodate as many people as possible, please limit yourself to only one question and if necessary one follow-up. We are implementing a new policy to mute your line after you ask one question and one follow-up. But you are welcome to rejoin the queue to ask another question if time permits. Operator?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen at this time we will begin the question-and-answer session (Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Daniel Wendorff from Commerzbank. Please go ahead, sir. Daniel Wendorff – Commerzbank: Good afternoon and gentlemen, thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the very good quarter.

Albert Fleury

Management

Thanks, Dan. Daniel Wendorff – Commerzbank: And I have a question relating to guidance. Your adjusted EPS guidance for the full year, what margin expansion opportunities do you see in terms of adjusted EBIT margin in the second half, and where would they come from? And related to that, what positive placement effects of the FDA approval of the Rotor-Gene Q do you see coming in the second half of the year? Thank you.

Roland Sackers

Management

I’ll take the second part first and, Roland, if you could address in the first part of the question. We see a great opportunity now to roll out into pathology labs with our approved package of the Rotor-Gene Q system and also the related approved KRAS test. The important thing is that therascreen KRAS addresses a very, very substantial market in personalized healthcare, so this is really the first test that can allow pathologists to afford the up-front investment for an instrument platform, because of the large volume they’ll be able to amortize that and to actually make a interesting business off that test alone. So we’re seeing a significant opportunity here to increase the placements in the pathology labs. But many of them actually only have a few cyclers or a few real-time PCR instrumentation options available, and we’re giving them a novel one and also a very important commercial test for them. Roland?

Roland Sackers

Management

Yeah, hi Daniel. I think first and foremost, right now we feel very well on track to reach our 2013 goal in terms of EBIT margin and adjusted EBIT margin, as announced previously. And of course, it also goes hand-in-hand with that we’re expecting better margin profiles in the second part of the year. Specifically, on the third quarter I guess it will be comparable to the third quarter of last year. Where in the fourth quarter, we do expect a better margin than the fourth quarter 2011, so well on track I would say to our goals in 2013. Daniel Wendorff – Commerzbank: And maybe as an add-on to that, does it come from, then, the better product mix or?

Roland Sackers

Management

I think it’s a couple of things. First of all, we did very good with the product mix, as I said before. We clearly see very good momentum in terms of growth rate and at the same time we’re still executing on all the efficiency programs we started late last year and they are now, really over the second part of the year, come into effective. So, you have seen that in the first quarter. And then also to a certain extent in the second quarter, we were able to conclude on a significant number of them and now we really get the benefit out of it. So, I think it’s a combination of both in terms of revenue growth, but also being more effective and efficiently and also to believe that over the course of 2013 that a more possibilities for us to grow essentially are started also, a couple of new initiatives more on the outside. Again logistics is an important driver for us right now, so there are a couple of things where I do to believe we are able to get significant impact. Daniel Wendorff – Commerzbank: Okay, thank you very much.

Albert Fleury

Management

Thank you, Dan.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Tycho Peterson from JP Morgan. Please go ahead sir. Tycho Peterson – JP Morgan: Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Congrats on the regulatory momentum here with KRAS. Just wondering if there’s anything that you can highlight in terms of plans to further accelerate the menu. I understand kind of timelines you laid out, but as we think about further menu expansion, anything that can be done to kind of accelerate that? And then, are you able to comment at all on utilization patterns of QIAsymphony today in terms of what you’re seeing now that you’re starting to get the menu approved and how you’re thinking about that going forward?

Peer Schatz

Management

Sure. It’s very important to differentiate between Europe and the United States. In Europe, we clearly have the full menu in virology, microbiology and genetics available on the portfolio, also personalized medicines. So you see the very broad range of tests that are already CE marked for use on the QIAsymphony RGQ. And there, we clearly have significant pull-through rates already on many of these systems. The focus, therefore, is on addressing areas that we, even with our broad portfolio we have currently, are not addressing in Europe, adding selectively to that and also to accelerate the number of regulatory submissions and approvals that we will be taking forward. If you look at the system about a year or two years out, it will actually have one of the broadest menus in the molecular diagnostics industry. So the majority of the competing platforms today only have a handful of tests approved on the systems, even after a decade or so in the market. And we are moving forward with a significant number in the pipeline across all indication areas, virology and microbiology, and also personalized healthcare. So the goal for the United States is three-fold. So we have a significant emphasis on the resources that we have announced in development. We completely revamped the development processes that we had over the course of the last decade and also brought in new leadership and injected more resources into that area. So that’s number one and these – the first results are moving forward, and again, the pipeline is deeper than what we are basically showing here. There’s a lot more going on. Number two is what we are also doing is we’re actively partnering out there with a number of parties and just working together with them to port content onto…

Peer Schatz

Management

Yeah. Roland, if you could provide the numbers, I’ll address the infrastructure question. The interesting thing is that this product has actually exceeded our internal expectations, even in terms of its pull that it’s generating in markets such as the U.S. and also Europe, so we’re seeing very, very good uptakes. We, therefore, have maintained a focused market development sales channel that builds on the Cellestis infrastructure that they brought in to our organization. So, QuantiFERON is being marketed in a market development way by a targeted, specialized sales channel clearly leveraging off our laboratory sales force that has relationships with all these laboratories and is able to bundle these products into packages for our customers. So that is probably what we’re going to maintain, considering these very high growth rates and penetration opportunities that we see in front of us. And we think that that will remain very attractive for quite some time, several years. And so we decided to maintain this market development sales channel.

Roland Sackers

Management

Yeah. And, Tycho, what we said on Cellestis, next thing is we also know what we see right now in terms of actual deliveries and in terms of acquisition, we said it was running on a $55 million run rate approximately and we expected it to grow around at least 20%. I would say that is actually what we see right now.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead sir. Bill Quirk – Piper Jaffray: Yeah. Thanks and good afternoon, everybody.

Peer Schatz

Management

Hi Bill. How are you? Bill Quirk – Piper Jaffray: Good. So, Peer, first question is just thinking about the next generation sequencing announcement and how should we be looking at this? What type of milestones I guess should we be watching for? Automation within the spaces has clearly been a bit of a challenge for some of the other players, and so I guess I’m trying to just get a better handle on when we might get feedback, when we might get some type of indication that indeed we’re moving towards kind of your vision here for essentially kind of a turnkey solution?

Peer Schatz

Management

Sure. I’d first like to note there are some great platforms out there and there’s been a tremendous amount of innovation and great leadership in this area by several players. And our opportunity here is to simply take this very clinically oriented profile that we have and adapt this technology to certain segments of the market. And so it’s a very, very targeted approach. There has been a lot of noise in the rumor mills about the various specifications or what the product will have or not have or what it would look like. And I have to say I was quite surprised to see that, because we have not disclosed any information on this, and this has been an effort ongoing for some time. QIAGEN has one of the deepest enzymology portfolios in this industry. We have a very deep expertise in chemistry as well, and complete automation. So what we’re going to be taking forward is I think going to be quite unique. The milestone that I would like to point to – and I hope you understand, we’re clearly positioning ourselves in a market also with a lot of dynamics in it – but the milestone I would point to is an early 2013 disclosure on the more detailed specifications of the instrument and the details on the launch plans. This is, I think, appropriate at that time, we’ll also be able to deliver a full information package for your that, I think, we’ll highlight this opportunity. But again I’d like to emphasis that we’re focusing on the clinical research and molecular diagnostic markets in the first run. Bill Quirk – Piper Jaffray: Understood. And then as my follow-up, I’m just thinking about the instrument side of the business here obviously very strong performance in the quarter. I guess just a clarification question for perhaps Roland, was there any acquisition impact in this number, or should we thinking about this as perhaps the new normal with respect to the level of instrument sales? Thank you.

Roland Sackers

Management

It’s clearly driven in the most significant part by the Symphony placement. I think that’s an important driver. And one thing of course, which is always hard for us predict is that in terms of Symphony placements, how much are direct sales and how many are placements. So this is one of the impact factors, which long-term as you know, don’t make a difference, but on a quarterly revenue condition, from time-to-time give us an additional benefit or a certain volatility. Nevertheless I would say instrumentation also for the rest of year continues a strong focus for QIAGEN, so I would expect here also good growth rates for at least the rest of the year.

Peer Schatz

Management

I think one thing that I’d like to point to on this, Bill, is that we saw a very strong uptake also for QIAsymphony in the applied testing field, in forensics, food, pharma and veterinary, as our menu is quite substantial in that space in the meantime. And in this area, reagent rentals are rare. So as I highlighted in the diagnostics area, we actually are seeing a lot of reagent rental come through so that we’re not seeing growth on the instrument revenue number, but in exchange, we’re clearly getting the reagent rental commitments for the future and that’s what we’re very excited about. But applied testing is one of the areas that has been doing very nicely.

Roland Sackers

Management

And just to be precise in your question, of course the acquisition didn’t deliver anything in terms of implementation.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Brian Weinstein from William Blair. Please go ahead, sir. Pete – William Blair: Hi, guys, it’s actually Pete in from Brian. On the same vein, I was wondering if you can give me a bit more color on EEQ, something in the install base right now, specifically if you could break out placements between segments, or at least between – like clinical and non-clinical labs and how that would correlate with consumable pull-through?

Peer Schatz

Management

Sure, as I mentioned, about 60% of the QIAsymphony placements are in molecular diagnostics and we see a very good balance between U.S. and Europe. The remainder 40% is predominantly applied testing, with forensics, probably followed by food and veterinary, and the remainder is pharma. So we’re seeing a lot of uptake in translational labs and in clinical research in the pharmaceutical space. But that is – it’s a 60, 30, 10. I’d have to look at the exact numbers, but that’s about the breakdown. If you ask about the number of placements that we have, we’re half way in to the year. We said 200 replacement should be achieved this year, so this – and we said we’re well on track to achieve that target. So I would expect by the end of the year to have more than 750 systems, or in other words 200 incremental additions this year. Pete – William Blair: And then as far as the consumable, pull-through –

Peer Schatz

Management

I am sorry, yeah. That depends very much on the customer class and the region. So in Europe we have consumable pull-throughs which are well indeed in the six digits. If you have labs running the standard virology assays HIV, Hepatitis, and in addition to that also the Chlamydia and gonorrhea and others that are all available on these systems, then you clearly have a usually a six digit number. In the United States, because we have a mix between LDTs and now the first commercial products coming onto the system, it is a lower number, so we’re still in the five digits. And this will clearly move up higher in the United States, we expect and probably match what we’ll see in Europe. We do have some accounts in Europe that are in the high six-digit numbers. So it’s a very nice pull-through bandwidth that the system has. In theory, I think we did this calculation on a recent call. The system as a theoretical pull-through of over $1 million without bending it too much. Operator The next question comes from Romain Zana from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Romain Zana – Exane BNP Paribas: Yeah. Good afternoon. And thank you for taking my questions. So firstly, I was wondering in what extent you are impacted in the U.S. by the mentions increasing pricing pressure by some of your peers and some of them also highlighted the softer use of reagents. So I was wondering in what extent it has affected your U.S. business in the Q2 and how do you see the U.S. market evolving in H2. And this one question will be on the gross margin. I guess the main reason for the gross margin decline year-on-year is U.S. HPV, but medicine can, at some point of time, overbalance the negative pricing (audio gap) and if yes, when could we expect this kind of pick-up?

Peer Schatz

Management

Sure, thanks. Good questions. The first is how do we see the general purchasing sentiment in the United States, I understand was the focus. Right now, it’s kind of like let’s wait and see for 2013, so you see the numbers in academia, and particularly in the U.S. are not in the very high range. So I think there’s a little bit of wait and see mentality going on right now, and that might actually amplify itself a little bit around the time of these budget submissions. But I think in general, we have guided very conservatively in this area. We are trying to factor in everything that potentially could happen. In terms of the clinical markets, yes the market is under some pressure, but it constantly has been. So the fee schedules in the diagnostic markets have been going down almost every year, i.e., the reimbursement prices for tests have been coming down year-over-year with the exception, I think, of one year in the last decade, but other than that a significant decline. So a lot of these laboratories are managing these situations already since quite some time. We haven’t necessarily seen a deterioration of that. I’d say over the last three four years, it has been quite pronounced across the whole laboratory industry and it continues to be something that the labs are managing over a competitive and very focused clearly also on making sure that they get a good product, but also at a very good price. So I wouldn’t expect a significant change in the second half of the year on the clinical side.

Roland Sackers

Management

Yeah, on the second part of the question, Romain, it’s clearly also on the top of the gross margin, as TB of course has a certain impact, important one is of course also, we had a very strong implementation quarter, which clearly for us is an important part of our strategy as Peer mentioned before, more placements clearly leading to more consumable growth going forward. And also our very good growing QuantiFERON on TB business is a part of the gross margin impact. Nevertheless, we are well on what we planned and forecasted, actually slightly above also in the second quarter. So we feel quite comfortable with our 70% to 71% adjusted gross margin goal for the remaining of the year. Any significant potential impact on kit sales in personalized healthcare will clearly have a positive benefit on our cost margin as they come in with a very good gross margin in particular. Romain Zana – Exane BNP Paribas: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Jeff Elliott from Robert W Baird. Please go ahead, sir. Jeff Elliott – Robert W Baird: Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you can provide some color on the demand trends you’re seeing in Asia Pacific and talk about your expectations going forward for that market. Thanks.

Peer Schatz

Management

Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, it continues to be a very dynamic market for us. And we have been expanding very well, and for the full year expect a very strong contribution from these markets and continue to do so. This is based on what we think are still stable macroeconomic conditions, especially in the healthcare markets, primarily in China. I’m now excluding Japan from Asia Pacific. So, we’re seeing quite strong growth in these across all regions, but it’s also company specific. So, we’re seeing great growth around our TB portfolio, clearly, a very, very important product area there. And we’re also seeing actually seeing great uptake following the pharma companies into China. We’ve been very successful in translational research in China as well, with a number of mostly also publicized collaborations in this area and we look forward to doing more in that space.

Operator

Operator

And next question come from Doug Schenkel from Cowen & Co. Please go ahead sir. Doug Schenkel – Cowen & Co: Hi, thanks for taking the questions. So, my first question is actually a follow-up to an earlier question. In the press release, but not on the call, you noted that a key driver to your instrumentation growth was I think what you referred to as initiatives to secure product placements such as QIAsymphony. Can you provide a little bit more color on exactly what that means and if there’s anything of note there? And then my second question is on gross margin. Could you explain the gross margin performance given as you noted the decline in higher than corporate average gross margin U.S. HPV sales and a higher revenue mix of lower margin instruments and lower margin QuantiFERON TB tests? It seems like there has to be something else in play here, and I guess specifically was there a notable contribution from royalties and/or milestone type payments that helped you at the gross margin line? Thank you.

Roland Sackers

Management

Yeah, well I’m going ahead with the second part of question, and Peer probably is going to answer the first part of the question. No, in the second quarter there was nothing which I would call as a in any way a non-recurring significant item in terms of revenues or even other kind of line functions which could impacted our profitably in any significant way. So, no royalty income, no significant milestone income, which would be as incremental in what we have seen in the second quarter 2011. So it was purely driven by the impact actually on the positive side, on the very strong performance on our molecular diagnostics business outside HPV. I think there’s one thing, I think, we have to focus on also on this call is that our molecular business ex-HPV had a very significant double-digit growth rate and of course, the molecular business also has a very significant gross margin and not – actually a significant number of the consumables area have seen similar gross margin in our HPV franchise. And I think there is something I would like to remind you on.

Peer Schatz

Management

First part of the question, Doug, the language sounds a little bit strange. I’d have to go check that in the press release. So our focus is simply to make sure that QIAsymphony is as widely available as possible as a platform. It has such unique feature and we have now put so much content onto these platforms, primarily in Europe now and starting also in the U.S., and the opportunities are just all over the place. And we want to make sure that we expand the footprint as quickly as possible so we can start generating and moving up the reagent pull-through. It’s simple as that. It’s one of the key goals at our company to expand the footprint of our automation portfolio.

Operator

Operator

Okay, the last question comes from Vamil Divan from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Vamil Divan – Credit Suisse: Yeah, thanks for getting me in here at the end. Just a couple question I guess related to the – your KRAS approval and just more broadly on companion diagnostics. We get a lot of questions in terms of labs switching from their LDTs over, and I think KRAS is an interesting example just given that most of them have a KRAS test already. So, you talked about this a little bit already, but if you can you give us a little more detail, as labs are talking about converting over, what is it that’s really kind of driving it? Is it the quality of the test? Is it kind of regulatory stand that the FDA has given, without the sort of enforcement that the FDA could come down with down the road? I’m just curious to see what it is that’s kind of giving you a sense that people want to switch to your approved test?

Peer Schatz

Management

Sure. I think it – there are basically three categories, as you correctly pointed out. Regulatory is one, and I won’t go into that here now, but I think we discussed that previously and there is a lot of discussion on that topic. The second is the product – it has to make economical sense for a laboratory to drop an existing product and move over to a commercial product. And the benefit of using that FDA=approved product is that the hurdle of validation is significantly lower, and you have a higher level of quality for the product that you don’t have to ensure through extensive internal quality control procedures and validation processes. So, there – it’s important when you move into a laboratory to start out with a product that has substantial value in terms of revenue opportunity, testing volume opportunity to be able to generate that economical business case that would be required for a pathologist to purchase a system and to bring up the test on an FDA-approved format. And we believe that it is something we can offer with KRAS, and especially with the pipeline. If you look at the pipeline that we’re sharing with pathology, it is really deep. And with that, we clearly have a big differentiator and have not really seen a lot of pushback in converting LDT. So we said two-thirds, up to 75% conversion should be possible. We already have a good chunk of the market today, so the test is – and that’s the third category – really good. It’s not a bad test. It is a very good test. And this is leading also with a lot of publications supporting that, leading a lot of laboratories to say well, now I have everything together. It makes economical sense. I can justify it here and it has an FDA approval, so I’m also clean on that side and it is also very good test. And this has been proven now many, many times and so I’m now going to take it on board. The fourth element could be the reimbursement scenario for reimbursement of a FDA-approved product versus a non-FDA approved product, and all the questions around reimbursing an LDT comparably to a FDA-approved product. I won’t go in to that one, I just highlight those two in the middle. The economical and the quality elements make us very positive about the conversion opportunity. Vamil Divan – Credit Suisse: Okay. That’s great. Thank you.

Peer Schatz

Management

Thank you.

Albert Fleury

Management

Great. I would like to close the conference call by thanking you all for participating. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact John Gilardi and me. Thank you.