Agilent Technologies Q4 2023 Earnings Results & Report

Agilent Technologies EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.38
• Consensus EPS: $1.34
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.04
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.53
• EPS Beat Rate: 6 of last 8 quarters

Agilent Technologies Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $1.69 billion
• Expected Revenue: $1.67 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$19.57 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: -8.70%

Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) is a global provider of analytical laboratory instruments, software, services and consumables. The company serves customers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical, food, environmental, energy and academic research sectors, as well as diagnostic and clinical laboratories.

Agilent’s offerings include liquid and gas chromatography systems, mass spectrometry instruments, spectroscopy and atomic instruments, laboratory automation products, genomic and cell analysis solutions, and related software. The company also provides laboratory supplies, instrument maintenance, compliance services, consulting and other support throughout the research and testing workflow.

Agilent was formed in 1999 through the separation of Hewlett-Packard’s test and measurement, chemical analysis and life sciences businesses. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company serves customers through operations and commercial activities across North America, Europe, Asia and other international markets. Padraig McDonnell serves as Agilent’s president and chief executive officer.

Agilent Technologies Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Agilent reported Q4 core revenue of $1.69 billion, down 9.7% year-over-year, while delivering a healthy 27.8% operating margin and EPS of $1.38, beating guidance despite the revenue decline.
• Signs of stabilization emerged with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.0 for the company and above 1.0 for the LSAG instruments segment, and sequential revenue growth in all regions except China.
• The Agilent CrossLab Group posted 4% core revenue growth, driven by double-digit expansion in contract services, which now represents 65% of its revenue.
• For fiscal 2024, Agilent expects core revenue growth between a 0.5% decline and 1% increase and EPS of $5.44 to $5.55, underpinned by approximately $175 million in cost-saving measures.
• The China business fell 31% in Q4 and is forecasted to decline mid-single digits in FY2024, though management remains confident in China’s long-term life sciences market recovery.

Presentation

[Operator]

Welcome to the Agilent Technologies Q4 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Beau, and I will be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question following the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone. I will now hand you over to your host, Parmeet Ahuja, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[Parmeet Ahuja, VP of Investor Relations at Agilent Technologies]

Thank you, Beau, and welcome everyone to Agilent's conference call for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023. With me are Mike McMullen, Agilent President and CEO, and Bob McMahon, Agilent Senior Vice President and CFO. This presentation is being webcast live. The news release for our fourth quarter financial results, investor presentation, and information to supplement today's discussion, along with the recording of this webcast, are available on our website at www.investor.agilent.com. Today's comments by Mike and Bob will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. You'll find the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations on our website. Unless otherwise noted, all references to increases or decreases in financial metrics are year-over-year, and references to revenue growth are on a core basis. Core revenue growth excludes the impact of currency and any acquisitions and divestitures completed within the past 12 months.

[Parmeet Ahuja, VP of Investor Relations at Agilent Technologies]

Guidance is based on forecasted exchange rates. We will also make forward-looking statements about the financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are only valid as of today. The company assumes no obligation to update them. Please look at the company's recent SEC filings for a more complete picture of our risks and other factors. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Thanks, Parmeet, and thanks everyone for joining our call today. Before we get into discussing our results and outlook, I want to mention that we're joined today by Padraig McDonnell, President of the Agilent CrossLab Group, and Sam Raha, President of the Agilent Diagnostics and Genomics Group. We're also joined on this call for the first time by Phil Binns, President of the Agilent Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group. Phil's name may be new to some of you, but he's well known at Agilent and in the industry. Phil has been with us for more than 13 years, coming over with the Varian acquisition and overseeing our market-leading spectroscopy business. We're extremely pleased to have some of Phil's knowledge, experience, and proven leadership strength heading up our LSAG business.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

In his short time in the role, we've already seen Phil add tremendous value as a member of our senior leadership team. Welcome, Phil. Now, on to our fourth quarter results. The Agilent team once again continued to perform well under challenging market conditions. Revenue of $1.69 billion declined 9.7% core after increasing 17.5% last year. This is at the high end of our guidance. Our proactive approach to manage our cost structure in this market environment helped us deliver healthy fourth quarter operating margins of 27.8%. Q4 earnings per share of $1.38 exceeded our guidance. While this was a decline of 10%, it comes against a tough compare last year when EPS grew 26%.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

While the market continues to be challenging, we believe we are starting to see signs of stabilization. As an encouraging data point for the quarter, our book-to-bill ratio is 1 for the company and greater than 1 for our LSAG instruments. Let's now take a close look at our Q4 performance, starting with our regional results. During the quarter, while down year-on-year, we delivered sequential growth except for China, as expected. In China, our business declined 31% year-on-year, after growing 44% in Q4 last year. While China was down sequentially, these results are very much in line with our expectations. In the year-on-year, monthly performance improved slightly as the quarter progressed. In addition, orders were slightly higher than revenue for the quarter. While it is too early to call these two data points a trend, we see this as encouraging sign of potential stabilization.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

In late September, I traveled to China for the first time since the COVID outbreak to meet with the Agilent team, key customers, and government officials. I was reminded of both the sheer size of the Chinese economy and our market there. I saw firsthand the work being done to bolster economic activity in the near term and create an environment that will support continued growth into the future. I remain convinced China will continue to play an important role in life sciences, and I'm confident that the China market will return to growth. In looking at our largest end market, pharma declined 14%, driven by continued caution among customers on capital expenditures for new instruments. Within pharma, biopharma performed better than small molecule. Geographically, our biopharma business outside China grew high single digits.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Looking at performance by business unit, the Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group delivered revenue of $928 million, down 18% core versus a tough compare last year of up 22%. Customers continue to hold off on capital expenditures, particularly in the pharma segment of LSAG's business, which declined in the high 20% range. This is against growth in the low 20s last year. On the other hand, we continue to see strong customer demand and growth in our PFAS solutions, as well as continued strength in the advanced materials segment. These are two secular trends we've highlighted before, and we remain optimistic about future growth in these market segments. While the market environment remains challenged, we continue to innovate and provide unique solutions for our customers.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

The new products we launched in June at ASMS, in particular, the 6495 LC Triple Quad, which is focused on key applications like PFAS, continue to generate positive customer interest and new orders. We are also bringing innovative new solutions for customers across the biopharma value chain. We just saw a number of our online UHPLC systems with large biopharma companies. The systems are easy to use, reliable, and deliver significant value by providing fully automated analysis of critical quality attributes and allowing real-time decision-making outside the lab. The Agilent CrossLab Group posted revenue of $404 million, up 4% core and 6% on a reported basis. ACG delivered growth across all end markets and in all regions except China. The contract services business was up double digits, offset by the services associated with new instrument placements.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Our strategy of increasing the connect rate continues to pay off. In the quarter, the contract services business represented 65% of ACG revenue, a number that has grown nicely over the years. The Diagnostics and Genomics Group delivered revenue of $356 million, flat on a core basis and up 1% reported. DGG's results were led by the pathology and NASD businesses, which both delivered low double-digit growth. These strong results were offset by the continued market challenge in genomics, for both consumables and instruments. Our NASD portfolio and capacity expansion are continuing as planned. We're confident in the long-term growth prospects for the markets we serve. Before I finish covering DGG, I want to thank Sam Raha for his contributions over the years, which have helped us to build a strong foundation for the DGG business. I wish Sam well.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

In addition to these business group highlights during the quarter, we were recognized for our commitment to sustainability. Agilent's near long-term targets for reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions have been approved by the highly regarded Science-Based Targets Initiative. A year ago, we entered 2023 sharing a view of economic and industry uncertainty as we got it from moderating growth in the second half of 2023. We had not anticipated, however, the significance of the market headwinds the industry eventually faced, particularly in the pharma market in China. Despite the challenging market conditions, we delivered full-year revenue of $6.83 billion, growing 1.5% core. While our full-year growth was lower than initially expected, we met or exceeded every quarterly guidance range we provided, a solid testament to the team's execution ability.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Including FY 2023 results, our 4-year compound annual growth rate is 7%. This is at the high end of our long-term growth guidance. In FY 2023, we delivered operating margins of 27.4%. This is up 30 basis points this year and up more than 400 basis points in the last 4 years. Earnings per share of $5.44 were up 4%, delivering leverage earnings growth for the year. Our 4-year compound annual growth rate for EPS is 15%. Looking back, 2023 was a challenging year. What I'm particularly proud of is the Agilent team's ability to quickly pivot and take action to address these challenges while staying relentlessly focused on our customers. While we worked to significantly reduce expenses, Agilent's customer satisfaction ratings remain at all-time highs.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

At the same time, our employee engagement continues to be excellent as we achieved a number of best employer awards over the last year. All this helped us deliver another year of leverage earnings in an extremely difficult market environment. Before turning it over to Bob for more details, I want to provide some high-level perspective on FY 2024 and beyond. For 2024, we anticipate a slow but steady recovery throughout the year. In our initial outlook, at the height of our guidance, we expect revenues to return to growth. At the same time, our range for EPS in the year ahead has us again delivering leverage EPS growth. As we look ahead, we remain convinced the market challenges being faced by the industry today are transient. Our end markets are powered by investments in improving the human condition.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

The pace of science, innovation, and discovery continues to increase, which will fuel further growth. We remain focused on winning in the marketplace. Our differentiated products and services, and most importantly, our One Agilent team, are all essential to the success of our customers. We are well positioned for long-term growth. Bob will now share more detail on the quarter and the year, along with more specifics on our initial view for fiscal 2024 and Q1. Thank you for joining us today, and now, Bob, over to you.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. In my remarks today, I'll provide some additional details on revenue in the quarter and the year, as well as take you through the income statement and other key financial metrics. I'll then finish up with our guidance for fiscal year 2024 and the first quarter. Unless otherwise noted, my remarks will focus on non-GAAP results. Agilent finished the fourth quarter with core growth at the top end of guidance and EPS exceeding our expectations as we executed well against challenging macroeconomic conditions. Q4 revenue was $1.69 billion, down 9.7% core and 8.7% on a reported basis. This is after growing 17.5% in Q4 of last year, when we benefited from the recovery from the Shanghai shutdown in Q2 of last year.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

This created an estimated one point of headwind in the year-on-year results this quarter. As expected, we saw weakness in capital purchases in LSAG, with the biggest impact in our China business. Now, I'd like to share additional detail on our end markets for the quarter. Revenue in our largest market, pharma, declined 14% versus 20% growth in Q4 of last year. Biopharma declined 2%, while small molecule was down 23%. However, biopharma ex China was up 7% in the quarter and grew solidly for the year. And while small molecule was down, the decline was most pronounced in China. And outside China, small molecule was up sequentially in the quarter. Chemicals and advanced materials declined 11% versus growth of 27% last year, while flat sequentially.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Our chemicals and energy subsegments were down 15%, while advanced materials were down roughly 2% globally and up 4% in the Americas and Europe combined. The food market was down low double digits against a tough 20% growth comparison last year. High single-digit growth in the Americas was offset by declines in all other regions. In the Americas, PFAS testing is emerging as an important growth area in food testing, helping drive the high single-digit growth. We expect testing for PFAS chemicals will continue to be a growth driver across multiple end markets over time. The environmental and forensics market declined 3% vs. 18% growth last year. Similar to the food market, the Americas region continues to experience strong growth, up double digits, driven by PFAS.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

This strong performance was primarily offset by softness in China, which was down year-on-year, but up slightly on a sequential basis. Our business in the diagnostics and clinical market declined 4%. While we delivered low double-digit growth in our pathology-related businesses, it was more than offset by continued weakness in genomics. The academia and government market was down low single digits, with strength in the Americas driven by government funding, offset by weakness in China and Europe. Results were pressured across all geographies in the quarter. As Mike mentioned, China was down 31% year-on-year after growing 44% in Q4 of last year, in line with our expectations coming into the quarter. The rest of Asia was down mid-single digits, and both Americas and Europe declined low single digits in the quarter.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Before turning to the rest of the P&L, I'd like to quickly summarize some full year highlights by end market and geography. From an end market perspective, all markets grew low to mid single digits for the year, except for pharma, which was down 2% globally. In addition, all geographies grew except China, which was down 5%. Now back to the P&L for the quarter. Despite the revenue declines, our team continues to execute at a very high level. Fourth quarter gross margin was 55.8%, and our operating margin was a healthy 27.8% in Q4, which was slightly better than our internal expectations. Below the line, we benefited from stronger than expected cash flow, generating incremental interest income in the quarter.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Our tax rate was 13.75%, and we had 293 million diluted shares outstanding, both as expected. Putting it all together, earnings per share were $1.38 for the quarter, exceeding our expectations, albeit down 10% from a year ago when EPS grew 26%. As Mike mentioned, our Q4 results capped a year where we grew 1.5% or on the top line, increased operating margins by 30 basis points, and grew EPS by 4% while overcoming a couple of points of currency headwinds. This is a real statement on the team's ability to quickly adapt to market changes while still delivering leveraged earnings growth. Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet, I'm incredibly proud of the Agilent team as Q4 continued a string of very strong quarterly cash flow results.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

In Q4, we generated operating cash flow of $516 million, well over 100% of adjusted net income, and invested $84 million in capital expenditures. CapEx spending is driven by our ongoing NASD capacity expansion, which remains on track. For the year, we delivered $1.5 billion in free cash flow, an increase of 44% over last year. Our balance sheet continues to remain healthy as we end the fiscal year with a net leverage ratio of 0.6x. With the current challenges in the market, it is great to be a company with a fortress balance sheet and strong cash flow. In the quarter, we paid out $66 million in dividends and spent $80 million to repurchase shares.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

For the year, we returned $840 million to shareholders through $265 million in dividends and $575 million in share repurchases. Looking forward, you may have also seen that we recently announced a 5% increase in our quarterly dividend, providing another source of value to our shareholders. It's worth noting that we've increased our dividend every year since we first began issuing them in 2012. Now let's move on to our outlook for the upcoming fiscal year and first quarter. As Mike stated, we expect to see a slow but steady recovery throughout fiscal 2024. However, we also acknowledge the continued market uncertainty, high interest rates, volatile exchange rates, and depressed capital spending. Like several of our peers, we expect the markets to be down slightly for the year, while we expect to perform better.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Given the expected slower market conditions, we've taken additional steps to adjust our cost structure. Incorporated into our guidance is roughly $175 million of cost savings. Given the significance, I want to provide a little more detail on these actions. Roughly 30% of the savings are related to portfolio optimization decisions we've taken in DGG, the largest of which was the exit of the Resolution Bioscience business. Another 25% is related to material and logistics cost savings, as well as optimizing our real estate footprint, with the remaining savings tied to continued reductions in discretionary spend and optimizing our workforce. Along with these actions, we've taken a $46 million charge for restructuring and other related costs in our Q4 GAAP results.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

These reductions, while difficult, are necessary to ensure we continue to fund our most critical investments, as well as fund the variable compensation resets from this year. These actions help ensure the company delivers leverage earnings growth in FY 2024 and will enable us to emerge even stronger when our markets inevitably return to their long-term growth rates. As Mike noted earlier, we exited Q4 with some potential signs of stabilization, with a book-to-bill ratio of 1 for the company and greater than 1 for LSAG instruments. While this is positive, we're going to be prudent in our initial guidance. For the full year guide, we expect revenue in the range of $6.71 billion-$6.81 billion.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

This represents a core growth range from a slight decline of 0.5% at the low end to 1% growth at the high end. Currency is a headwind of 1.2 points, while M&A is also a slight headwind of 10 basis points related to Resolution Bioscience. On a reported basis, we are expecting a decline in the range of 1.8%-0.3% year-on-year. From a geographic perspective, we expect modest growth in the Americas and Europe. And while we expect to see recovery during the year in China, our initial view is it will still decline for the full year. From a business group perspective, we expect growth in both DGG and ACG, while LSAG instruments will still be pressured.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

In terms of phasing, we expect the first half of FY 2024 to look similar to the second half of FY 2023, with growth in the second half of next year. We are projecting modest operating margin expansion for the year, and below the line, we expect interest income and expense to offset each other, a tax rate of 13.5%, and 293 million shares outstanding. Fiscal 2024 non-GAAP EPS is expected to be in a range of $5.44-$5.55. This range represents flat to 2% growth versus FY 2023. From a cash flow perspective, we expect another robust year. We are expecting roughly $1.6 billion in operating cash flow and $400 million in CapEx as spending increases on NASD's train C and D expansions.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Looking to Q1 2024, we expect revenue in the range of $1.555 billion-$1.605 billion. This represents a core decline of 11.3%-8.5%, with currency and M&A having a minimal impact. At the midpoint, we are expecting growth that resembles what we just delivered in Q4 and assumes no significant budget flush during the end of this calendar year. This is against another difficult comp of 10% growth in Q1 of last year. First quarter, 2024, non-GAAP earnings per share are expected to be between $1.20 and $1.23, as the cost savings fully ramp through the quarter. As Mike indicated, while we are expecting low growth in 2024, we remain optimistic about the future of our markets and our long-term growth prospects.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Our business remains very profitable and healthy, and I know we will come out stronger as a company when market growth returns. Now, I will turn the floor back over to Parmeet for your questions. Parmeet?

[Parmeet Ahuja, VP of Investor Relations at Agilent Technologies]

Thanks, Bob. Well, if you could please provide instructions for the Q&A now.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mr. Ahuja. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone now. And if you do change your mind, please press star followed by one again to withdraw your question. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We'll go first this afternoon to Vijay Kumar at Evercore ISI.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure, Vijay.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Some helpful comments here, Mike. Maybe starting with those book-to-bill comments here.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Overall company, one turn, LSAG instrumentation looks like it's turned. Curious, what does book-to-bill look like ex-China, and if instrumentation has turned, that Q1 guidance, you know, comps get easier. Why is Q1 assuming no benefit from this turn in instrumentation?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Hey, Vijay, let me take that. I think if you look at the book-to-bill ratio, it's for LSAG instruments, it's actually very similar, both, yeah, including China and excluding China. China was actually slightly positive as well, so that's a you know a good sign. And as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, you know, we're taking a prudent approach to our first quarter. And certainly, we see this as a positive. We did, you know, have some. We typically do have seasonality from, you know, our Q4 to Q1. But we're taking it kind of one quarter at a time.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I think part of the big story too, Vijay, is the 10% comp, you know, from last year as well. But, as we said it in the call, it was encouraging to see some initial signs of stabilization with that kind of book-to-bill on the instrument side.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Understood. I'm glad to hear prudence and right off the bat here.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

We got that into the script, Vijay.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

On just one more layer on guidance here.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

What are you assuming for NASD and China for fiscal 2024?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. So, for China, we are thinking mid-single digit decline for the full year, so very similar to this year. And then for NASD, right now, we're expecting mid-single digit growth.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Mid-singles. Yeah.

[Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Fantastic. Thanks, guys.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Operator]

Thank you. We go next now to Patrick Donnelly at Citi.

[Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi]

Hey, guys.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Patrick.

[Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi]

Thanks for taking the questions. And, Mike, maybe kind of a follow-up on the 1Q guide. You know, it seems like, again, the order's encouraging, you know, maybe a little bit, a little bit prudent on the guide, as you said. I guess when you think about just the implication for the ramp 2Q to 4Q, is it, you know, is it optimism in the market based on, you know, some of those order trends? Is it obviously the comps get easier in the second half as you work through it? Can you just talk about the visibility into the recovery and, and kind of what gives you the confidence in the ramp as the year progresses here?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, sure, Patrick. How about if I lead off, Bob, and then you can add any additional comments you'd like to make here. But you know, when we think about the comments around what we've described as a gradual recovery and growth, I think it's first of all important to remind the audience that we do expect the first half of the year to be very much like what we saw in the second half of 2023. But looking forward, why do we think that things are going to be look different in the second half? Which is, you know, though it's initial and still early, there are some early signs of potential stabilization that you see in our order book.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

You know, the fact that book-to-bill for the company was above 1, the fact that we had the same result in our instrument business, which has been the most pressured part of the company. And listen, while it's too early for customers to be confirming their 2024 budgets with us, let's go back to the sales funnel, which is a predictor of potential growth, right? So our sales funnels continue to show a lot of interest from customers. And we know that at some point in time, those things will start to release. The funnels remain healthy. And listen, an environment like this, we've seen these things before, which was, you know, healthy and capital spending, you know, has been constrained, so some release can be expected.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

You know, we hear, I don't want to get too far down my skis on this, but we hear customers talk about some new focused investments. And I think we're not—we're not calling for a big, broad-based market recovery, but certain segments of the market are going to be better. You know, we're talking about some investments in R&D tools, but what's going to—PFAS testing capacity expansion plans we're hearing from our customers, advanced materials. And then, as you mentioned, earlier, Patrick, you know, there is an easier compare in second half 2024 as well. So we do expect this return to growth, and I think it's—it's not simply a hope. We've got some information to kind of back up our thinking there.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Again, we'll know a lot better about how things look when we get to the budgeting phase of our customers in early 2024. You know, again, right now, the markets for capital instruments still remain quite challenged. And, as I mentioned earlier, we are seeing encouraging signs of potential stabilization, but it's going to be a journey for our return into growth, and I think our guide reflects that. And, again, I think we've got a high degree of confidence that this is what the back half of the year will look like.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Hey, and Patrick, you asked about Q1. You know, it, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, I think we're taking a prudent approach here, but we're also going up against last year, where we did have a budget flush.

[Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi]

Mm-hmm.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

It happened earlier in the year, but for delivery in November and December, and we're assuming that we're not seeing that or building that into our estimates. So if that happens, then that would be a nice thing for all of us.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, absolutely, Bob.

[Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi]

No, that's helpful. Yeah, I appreciate that, Bob. And maybe, Bob, just on the margin side, you know, helpful to hear you talk through a few of the different moving pieces. It sounds like some cost savings in DGG, among others. I guess, can you just give a bit more color on kind of the moving pieces, where you're pulling some levers, you know, the ability to take out some additional costs to hit these margin numbers? Obviously, you talked about margins being up a bit. You know, I think there are some headwinds, like incentive comp, things like that. So maybe just talk about-

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah

[Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi]

ou know, the gives and takes there and confidence in terms of some of the cost outs.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, that's a great insight there, Patrick. Yeah. Because we do have some add backs. I would say, you know, that so don't take that $175 million and drop it to the bottom line because we have some resets. I would say roughly half of that is kind of a reset between our sales comp and variable pay. If we think about it, it's really across the P&L. The biggest piece actually is in DGG, with the exit of the ResBio business, but we've also taken some tough decisions in other product lines to streamline the portfolio there. And I would say, you know, roughly a little over 30% of that is associated with that. The other twenty-five percent is really within our COGS.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Our OFS team has done a phenomenal job of really kind of leaning into reducing our costs around logistics and material costs. And then I talked about the site consolidation as well, which will show up up and down the P&L. So we've taken a look at our real estate footprint and have actually closed several smaller sites between around the world, really. And then the final piece is really kind of infrastructure optimization, which would be discretionary spend, but then also headcount reductions that would be focused on areas where, you know, we've right-sized it to the demand.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Patrick, this is Mike. You know, we asked earlier about the confidence about the growth recovery. I think when it comes to hitting the 175 high degree of confidence, we control this 100%, and we'll deliver on this.

[Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi]

Very helpful. Thanks, Mike and Bob. Appreciate it.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm-hmm.

[Operator]

Thank you. We go next now to Matt Sykes at Goldman Sachs.

[Matt Sykes, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure, Matt.

[Matt Sykes, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Maybe just on NASD. I know it's just over the past, call it year and a half, we've kind of gone from high double digits to low double digits, and next year, mid-single digits, which is probably just some level of normalization as you ramp capacity. But just given the step-up in CapEx you're guiding to next year, is there some wiggle room in terms of how you guys lay that capacity out? Or is the confidence in that end market growth enough to keep, you know, investing in that area, next year?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I'll jump right in on that one. So, I tried to make that come out in the script, but our plans to continue to invest for the future long-term growth of this business remain high. We're going full steam ahead on the capital expansions, and they're tracking according to plan. In fact, I think we'll probably do a little bit better on the cost side when all is said and done, relative to the CapEx that's involved. Bob, maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the things we're seeing relative and I think we've commented on this before, but what are we seeing in the marketplace relative to, you know, 2024 relative to NASD?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I think, Matt, it's a great question. And so if we look at the details of kind of the mix. Actually, I would say we have the most healthy mix of portfolio in NASD in 2024 than we've had. So, a significant increase in the number of programs that we are gonna have been going through. Now, it's a bigger component of clinical volume versus commercial volume, which I actually think bodes very well for the future going forward. We have seen, you know, some, I would say some pausing of certain customers as they, you know, associated with IRA, but we think that that's transitory. So as Mike said, we're not at all concerned about the long-term growth prospects of this market.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

In fact, you know, many of the programs that we're seeing come into our portfolio are actually, as what we had talked about in previous calls-

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Much larger targeted patient populations, which really speaks well to the volume. And then, as Mike mentioned, we're actually expanding our portfolio, our technologies. And so it's not just siRNA, but we're having the ability to continue to grow our CRISPR, GMP-grade CRISPR, business, as well as antisense. So we're continuing to do that as well.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Hey, Sam, I know this will be your last call, but I thought it might be interesting for you to jump in here for a second. You know, as part of your transition, you've been talking to a lot of our key customers, and I think, you know, we're hearing the same story from them about long-term growth, continued investment here.

[Sam Raha, SVP and President, Diagnostics and Genomics Group at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, absolutely, Mike. I'll just add a couple of things to your and Bob's comments. One, we are now on contract with more major pharma than we ever have been. And it's very promising. If you look at publicly, the percentage of their overall R&D budgets that they're now spending on therapeutic oligos, and we are in the driver's seat to win those opportunities. And just in the last couple of weeks alone, I've spoken with a number of our lead pharma partners, and they've reaffirmed, though there's a slight navigation through the IRA, as Bob mentioned, that the conviction for, on their end, of the market potential remains unchanged, and we are in the leadership position to pursue that.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Thanks, Sam.

[Matt Sykes, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Got it. That's, that's great, great amount of detail. Thank you. Maybe just, Bob, for you, just on pricing,

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm

[Matt Sykes, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

ind of what's embedded for next year as you think about pricing, and how has pricing kind of trended over the course of this year? Are we back to sort of normalized levels of pricing that you guys have historically achieved, or is there still some pricing gains to see sort of as we move into next year in certain areas of your business?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Hey, Matt, that's a great question. We ended the Q4 at just a little under 3%, and actually for the full year was greater than that, so it actually continues to hold up very well. What we're building into our plan for next year is roughly two percentage points of price, which, as you know, is greater than our historical kind of pre-COVID levels. So what we've been able to do, I think, is really speaks to the value of the value proposition that we have, as well as the emerging mix of our businesses, as well.

[Matt Sykes, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. We go next now to Rachel Vatnsdal at JPMorgan.

[Rachel Vatnsdal, Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

Great. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the questions.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Rachel Vatnsdal, Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

So first up, I just wanted to ask on China. You know, you mentioned that the region was down 30% this quarter. That was in line with your expectations. You're expecting it to decline mid-singles again next year. So I guess just how much of a function is that really due to some of the comps and starting to lap the, you know, easier comps?... late into next year, versus, is there any, anything structurally wrong with that market? And how do you expect China to continue to grow on that medium to long term?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

You want to take the first part, Bob? I think it's,

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, yeah. So I, well, I think, from the standpoint of the comps, what we would see is obviously, if you looked at what we did in the first half of this year, we had very strong growth, and then we're going up against extremely difficult comparisons this year. I mean, as I mentioned, we were up 44% in Q4 of last year, so down 31.1% this year. We're still up, you know, over the two years. And, as we think about this, similar to the rest of the kind of the guide, we're expecting kind of declines in the mid-20s% in Q1 and getting better from there.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Some of that, it will be an easier comp, and I'm sure Mike will talk a little bit more about this, but we don't think, see anything structurally changing in the Chinese marketplace for life science tools.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, absolutely, Bob. So why don't I pick up from there? So I made a few comments about this in the prepared remarks, but I made my first trip to China since October 2019, when we were there for the BCEIA show. And, you know, what did I see? First of all, I saw a just reminder of how quickly things can happen in China. Electric vehicles everywhere, a lot more green. You know, digital adoption was just amazing. I don't think anybody uses cash there anymore. And then you, you're also reminded as you travel around the country, just how big a country it is, how big the economy is, and how big the markets are for life sciences.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

But, to your specific question, here's what I was hearing from customers and my team, and what I've seen as well, which was: Why do we think this market eventually will return to growth? You know, all the things that have been driving this market over the years, which is primarily the Chinese government's 14th Five-Year Plan, they're still on it. They're pointing to long-term growth, you know, improving the quality of life in China. We're hearing stories of new environmental regs coming from PFAS. The anti-corruption impacts that we've seen in the health and pharma, the pharma space look to may have peaked, with a lot of the actions occurring, which could ultimately, long term, lead to more R&D investments because there'll be less money being spent in the SG&A area.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

But, I don't want to be too short-term optimistic about, you know, this expansion of growth because the business is bouncing along at a certain level. And that's why we called stabilization in our prepared remarks. So what we're seeing, what we're forecasting, we're hearing is from our teams and our customers: don't expect any significant new near-term improvements, but don't expect any significant near-term deterioration either. And I think that's why when you look at the year-to-year numbers in terms of the growth rate, Bob, it's probably like a comps compare issue. But, we've had a couple of months now of the business running at a certain level, and that gives us the sense that, you know, we'll be... I think we used the word potential signs of stabilization. So, hope that helps.

[Rachel Vatnsdal, Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

Yeah. No, that's helpful color. And then I just wanted to dig a little bit more on your comments around next year. So you mentioned that you expect the first half to be similar to what you're seeing in the back half of this year. So I guess, can you just walk us through in a little bit more detail what exactly you mean by that? Should we be expecting similarities from an organic growth perspective, or are you really talking about more from a revenue dollar standpoint? And then same type of question on the trajectory of the rebound on margins and EPS next year. Should we expect, you know, kind of that similar ramp, given the comp dynamic as well?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I think I'll try to answer all that in short order, Rachel. As we think about the first half of the year, yeah, we think that we—you know, if we look at our business, you know, and look at that kind of book-to-bill, we've kind of troughed in Q2. Q3, I think we mentioned, actually was a little better, was less than, still less than one, and then Q4 continued to improve. And our expectation is that that kind of performance will continue. Now, we're going up against difficult comps when we were actually bleeding down our inventory, and that particularly happened in Q1 and Q2 of last year as we were talking about it.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

I would expect us to have the trough in Q1 of 2024, Q2 being a little better, and then growing out of that as we benefit from the easier compares. I would expect our P&L and the EPS to look very similar to that. Q1, we are, we've taken most of the actions. They will have all been taken in the first quarter, but they won't have a full quarter. So we'll have full quarters of the cost savings in Q2 through Q4. So as that business kind of improves, as the business improves, you know, we'll get more and more leverage on the bottom line.

[Operator]

Thank you. Moving on now to Derik De Bruin at Bank of America.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Hi, good afternoon.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure. Good afternoon, Derik.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Hi. So can we talk a little bit about pharma? You know, your- that market was up and down all year. You know, not a lot of visibility. Are you seeing some of the, you know, the orders that were sort of stuck in the funnel starting to come loose, right? I mean, how are you sort of looking at the pharma market going forward for this year?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, well, I think the answer, I think the answer is the, the deal funnel still remain elongated, so-

[Padraig McDonnell, President, Agilent CrossLab Group and Chief Commercial Officer at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I think what we see from our funnels is that they're growing, but the velocity in closing deals from the point of funnel to order is still static on that side and elongated.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, and hey, Derik, I think if we think about the pharma end market, we're assuming very low single-digit growth for next year. And, some of that is actually, you know, getting past the tougher comps in,

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Mm-hmm

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

In FY 2023, and actually, our biopharma business grew in total. And we think about small molecule was the area that, you know, was dragging the pharma business down. You know, as you know very well, that's, it, it typically has a replacement cycle. We are well into that replacement cycle. We were up very high. We kept calling it, and we've seen that be very depressed, and our expectation is that'll start coming back, you know, in earnest in 2024, but probably in the back half of 2024.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

So this goes to—I'm sorry to beat this up, but you know, your China you've got going down. Pharma, you just basically said you don't have a ton of visibility. You hope that things will come back. I'm just not sure. I'm curious why you didn't put a little bit more cushion in the guide, like that? It just feels like—it's still a little bit back end heavy. Well, it's not a little, it's a lot back end heavy, given where we are sort of on the cycle.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I think as we said earlier, Derik, there's reason to believe that not only do you have the comps working in our favor for the second half, there's real. And we know that customers want, there's interest in the products, and I think they've got a step... And by the way, we're not calling for this miracle snapback in 2024.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Yeah.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

But we're also saying, not saying that small molecule can continue to decline 20, 30% kind of numbers we're seeing this year. Particularly, that's where the pressure's been. But we know, we know that, biopharma, there's they need some tools for R&D. We know that these replacement cycles only last, can only be held up for so long. So there's a confidence relative to what we see in the funnels. Deals aren't coming out of the funnel. And then although we are focusing here on pharma right now in this commentary, there's a lot of other strength in some of the other secular markets, in the applied markets in particular, which is a nice diversification we have on the instrument side as well.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

And, Bob, I don't know if there's any additional thoughts on the pharma story?

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

No.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Okay.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Yep. And just one final one. Just what were bookings? I mean, I know you said the book-to-bill was greater than one, but I'm just curious in terms of bookings. And do you often see a spike in bookings in Q4? Basically, I'm just trying to get the sense of like what you saw as a head fake or, you know, you've got where you think you've got real demand here.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. So, you know, we don't give the absolute dollars other than to say it was greater than one. It was one, roughly one for the total company, and then instruments were higher. Typically, we do see a Q4 where it is higher. So this kind of goes back to kind of our historical performance, where orders are a little higher, particularly because we have October in our results. And so last year was actually a aberration, so to speak, as we're working down the backlog, and this kind of gets us back to our normal process.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. And through the quarter, Derik, we saw our normal seasonality.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

So there wasn't anything unusual about the order, order pattern to kind of say, "Is this a head fake or not?" So I think that also is one of the reasons why, you know, we said, "Okay, early signs of some stabilization here.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Again, not huge growth. We're saying stabilization.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Correct. Correct.

[Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America]

Thanks.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Operator]

Thank you. We'll go next now to Jack Meehan at Nephron Research.

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

Thank you. Good afternoon.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Good afternoon, Jack.

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

So, wanted to dig a little bit more into LSAG in the quarter. Could you break down the growth between instruments and consumables and just any commentary across product lines?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Everything, I would say, for the quarter was pressured, although consumables performed better than the instrumentation. Our consumables business was down, you know, kind of, low single digits and against a very tough comp of almost 9%, 10%. And if you looked at it ex China, that was largely influenced by China. We grew low single digits in consumables.

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

Okay. And so does that imply instruments may be down over 20% in the quarter?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

They were down. Yes.

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

Okay. Yeah, and I guess maybe just to follow up on Derik's question, you know, I think everybody's trying to think about the right way to interpret this book-to-bill commentary, but just, you know, is there any additional color you can share on the magnitude? You know, were orders down in the quarter? I guess just trying to understand because there was an easy or a difficult comp on revenue, like are orders kind of more, you know, don't have a similar level of volatility. You know, it should have mathematically been over one, right?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. So the orders were down year-on-year, but obviously down not as much as revenue was down year-on-year. So when we look at it, you know, I think that kind of shows, though, the stabilization-

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

Mm-hmm

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Cause we had, you know, some pretty significant revenue last year because of the recovery in the for Shanghai, the Shanghai shutdown. So I don't think that we actually think that this is the best way to kind of look at it-

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

Mm-hmm

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Wn a go-forward basis because we don't have the play, of the backlog happening, much anymore. And so actually, as we look at it on a quarterly basis, we've seen a nice, steady progression up back to historical numbers.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

And Jack, I think it's fair to say, Bob, that one of the things we were conscious of was a lot of the commentary about how significantly things were getting in terms of being worse. And as you know-

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm-hmm

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

We've been out for some time calling for no year-end budget flush, constrained capital environment. We came into the year actually guiding for slower growth in the second half. So what we're trying to intimate in the call today is, you know, what we've been saying for the last several quarters, exactly what we're seeing right now. And I thought, we thought a proof point was the book-to-bill, which said, "Listen, listen, it's, it's not great out there in terms of robust growth, but the sky is also not falling either.

[Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research]

Yeah. Okay. I appreciate all the color. Thanks, guys.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yep.

[Operator]

Thank you. We'll go next now to Puneet Souda at Leerink Partners.

[Puneet Souda, Senior Managing Director, Life Science Tools and Diagnostics at Leerink Partners]

Yeah, hi, Mike, Mike, Bob. Thanks for taking the questions.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Puneet Souda, Senior Managing Director, Life Science Tools and Diagnostics at Leerink Partners]

Yeah, so good to have you, Steve, there. First one on CrossLab. Bob, with the 65% of your business being in service contracts, could you elaborate on what sort of growth contribution we should expect here for the full year? And also, I don't know if you provided the LSAG expectation contribution for 2024 as well.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. For ACG, we're expecting kind of mid-single-digit growth as we are. You know, with the contracted services piece being double-digit, but then being pressured by the instrumentation. So that'll be down. That'll be moderated. And for the LSAG business, right now, we're looking at kind of low single-digit decline. Again, with a greater decline in the first half of the year and a return to better performance in the second half of the year.

[Puneet Souda, Senior Managing Director, Life Science Tools and Diagnostics at Leerink Partners]

Got it. Okay. And then on... If I could ask a little bit on, semi onshoring, that's a point that you're pointing at. That's not something you were focused on in prior calls. And I hear you, that you're growing on-- growing on the PF-- you know, PFAS side. But just wanted, could, could you elaborate a little bit on both, semi onshoring as well as the environmental gains that you're having, and why shouldn't that contribute more to your instrumentation, you know, growth in 2024?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. It has the potential to do that. As we talked about it, we're at the beginning of the year, and so we wanna be prudent there. But there's nothing out there that doesn't say that that should continue, given the macro and economic environment and the incentives that governments are providing to continue to invest. You know, and actually, what we're seeing is nice business in Southeast Asia as well as India. And I would expect that to continue. That's where we're placing, you know, incremental investments to continue to drive and capture that demand. I would expect the same thing in the environmental area as well. But we're not gonna build all of that in right now at the beginning of the year.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

But I think we saw some trends, too, we're starting to see, which was PFAS, is also now driving some testing in the food marketplace, as well as every country that we talk to is in the process of further enhancing their own regs. So, you know, we wanted to have some other areas of potential growth for the company beyond the story around pharma.

[Puneet Souda, Senior Managing Director, Life Science Tools and Diagnostics at Leerink Partners]

Right. Got it. Okay. Thank you, guys.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm-hmm.

[Operator]

Thank you. We'll go next now to Josh Waldman at Cleveland Research.

[Josh Waldman, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics at Cleveland Research Company]

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe one for Bob and then one for Mike. Bob, maybe circling back on Derik's question, I wondered if you could provide more context on the forecasting process this round or the puts and takes that went into the organic guide. I mean, as you take a step back, were there, segments in the business that were, like, decelerating or slowing as you went into the guide, or, or maybe areas where you're still trying to find bottom? And if so, how did you reflect that in the guide?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, obviously, this year has been one for the ages in terms of being able to try to manage the forecasting. So we've taken a number of different angles at it to look at it. So not only growth rates, which I think is the focus here, but also actually, if you looked at it on a sequential basis, and looked at the actual dollars, I think that that's probably more instructive, particularly as we were looking at the bleeding of the inventory. I would say what we've seen over the last couple of quarters is that signs of stabilization. There are always puts and takes across the various businesses, and we think that we've tried to do that.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

We've built in feedback based on the field's projections, the funnel that Mike and Padraig talked about, and then, you know, an assumption around the conversion of those funnels. And we haven't seen the funnels slow down. They're still modest growth, but and we're starting to see the slowing of the elongation. I'm not saying that it's stopped or accelerated in terms of the purchase, but we are starting to see that slowing, and you're actually seeing that in that book-to-bill. And when we look at the orders, you know, on a sequential basis, we're starting to see that kind of stabilization as well. And so that's kind of how we're looking at continuing to go forward.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

If you kind of just built that going into next year, you would start seeing, you know, a challenging first half and then better performance in the second half. Hopefully, that gives you some flavor.

[Josh Waldman, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics at Cleveland Research Company]

Got it.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah.

[Puneet Souda, Senior Managing Director, Life Science Tools and Diagnostics at Leerink Partners]

Yeah, that, yeah, that's helpful. That was actually gonna be my follow-up. Maybe, Bob or Mike, if you wanna take a-

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure.

[Josh Waldman, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics at Cleveland Research Company]

Was curious-

[Josh Waldman, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics at Cleveland Research Company]

If you could maybe quantify where the funnel stands entering 2024 versus maybe, you know, where it typically is entering a year, and just how correlative or how, how much do you think it is a predictor of near-term demand? I mean, is that - is better funnel conversion at all kind of part of what drives the improvement as you progress through the year?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm-hmm. I think we're assuming for, and Bob, kind of the same rates, right? No significant improvement.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Correct. Yeah, yeah, we're going up against, you know, the first half of this year, actually, what you saw was the elongation of those cycle times.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yes.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

What we're seeing right now is kind of, like I said, it's not necessarily fully stable, but it's not declining or increasing at the rate that we saw at the first and second quarters of last year. You're starting to see that. All things being equal, that conversion is actually improving slightly versus a year ago. It's still not back to historical numbers, and that's what we're trying to handicap here as we look at our forecast going forward.

[Josh Waldman, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics at Cleveland Research Company]

Okay. All right. Appreciate it, guys.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Thanks, Josh.

[Operator]

Thank you. We'll go next now to Daniel Brennan at Cowen.

[Daniel Brennan, Managing Director at Cowen]

Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. Maybe just on China, I know you mentioned, I think in the prepared remarks, like month-to-month pacing had improved in the quarter. Just any more color or anything on exit rates in China? And if you could, I'd be interested to get, like, some more color on maybe end market trends in China. I know you, you gave some color on what, you know, biopharma, but could you discuss pharma overall and any other interesting color from an end market basis?

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Sure, Bob. We maybe we'll tag team on this, which was I think the, relative to the order book, I think we were slightly above revenue for the quarter. No really unusual pacing, through the quarter from China. You know, we've, we've been calling. I know a lot of our conversation today has been about, pharma, but, we've been saying for some quarters overall for China, it's been a broad-based slowdown. And, and, and that's what the business has been. That's how we ended the year, in terms of, the end market performance. I will say that, you know, we, we were pleased that we were in line with our expectations for, for the business. So again, we, we, we described earlier that the, the business was moving along, at a certain overall, overall level.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

I think we do have a view of China that we will still be down in terms of of the revenue for the year. But you know, reflective of where we are, where we're seeing the business right now, so-

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Hey, Dan, and to build on Mike's point, just a couple of other additional data points. You know, we were down pretty significantly in all end markets in Q4, as you would expect, because we were up 44% in Q4 of 2022. And so that's probably not as relevant, because we were catching up relative to some of the catch-up of the Shanghai shutdown. Another data point, though, is if we looked at kind of year-on-year growth, actually, we exited October, the year-on-year performance, it was still a decline, but it was much better than what we saw at the beginning of the quarter. And so we actually saw a sequential improvement. I think Mike mentioned that in his prepared remarks.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

And then if we looked at kind of absolute dollars, they've been pretty steady month-over-month.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Mm-hmm.

[Daniel Brennan, Managing Director at Cowen]

Got it. Thanks for that. And then, you know, chemical and advanced material, it was like a tale of two cities. It looks like, you know, C&E was down 15% in the quarter, you said, and you talked a lot about PFAS. And so there's any more kind of like what you're seeing on kind of both sides of the coin there, you know, what's kind of baked in on the C, you know, on the core chemical and energy side for the year, and just anything on trends there? And then obviously, it sounds like you guys still remain really constructive on the applied material side or, or the-

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Absolutely

[Daniel Brennan, Managing Director at Cowen]

Advanced material side, excuse me.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

So how about Bob, I'll just lead here with a few, few comments, and then I've been dying to pull, pull Phil in on here as well, and maybe talk about some of the, some of the things he's seen on the advanced materials side, which is a real area of, of expertise for himself. But I think you, I think you were to tale of two cities is really quite appropriate, both in terms of breakout by segment, also by, by geography. Bob, I think we posted 70% growth, if I remember correctly, in China last year.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Right.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

So, I mean, that's a tough comp. I don't care who you are. But we're seeing, you know, continued slowness on the C&E side. Our major customers here are really conservative in terms of their deployment of capital. Many of our largest customers are on cost control. So that's what you're seeing reflected in the numbers, and that's why we're, you know, we expect a constrained outlook on that side of the business for a while. It's a different story on the advanced materials, and I think, Bob, you pointed to, you know, good growth geographically, globally, you know, outside of China. And then, Phil, I know you and the team got a whole bunch of initiatives around the applied markets, particularly, not only PFAS, but advanced materials.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

I thought a good opportunity for me to introduce you to the audience and have you share your perspective on what we're doing on the applied, on the advanced materials side.

[Philip Binns, President, Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Thanks, Mike. And yeah, certainly, we've mentioned, you've talked around the activity within labs being ex-China, at least being reasonably robust. But on the applied market side and certainly around advanced materials, we're certainly relatively strong in those markets, and we're seeing good, really good generation around the batteries market. And of course, we've spoken about the onshoring process around there in the advanced materials area. So globally, that also obviously comes into the onshoring. And globally, we're in strong positions in those markets and have been historically, and-

[Daniel Brennan, Managing Director at Cowen]

Continue to innovate strongly around those, those markets and stay close to those customers. Thanks.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Thanks, Phil, and welcome.

[Operator]

Thank you. We go next now to Dan Leonard at UBS.

[Dan Leonard, Managing Director and Research Analyst at UBS]

Thank you. I wanted to circle back for a moment on the Q1 guide. You spoke about a challenging year-on-year comp a couple of times, but as you're thinking about the Q4 to Q1 sequential ramp in dollars, you know, how much of that decline forecasted is, is what you'd chalk up to seasonality versus prudent? If, if you could, you know, give us a flavor.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Great question, Bob.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Dan, that's a great question.

[Dan Leonard, Managing Director and Research Analyst at UBS]

Yeah.

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

If you looked at last year, and we, you know, our revenue went down roughly $90million-$95 million from an extremely strong Q4 to, you know, also a very strong Q1. You know, if you look at the midpoint of the guide, it's a little over $105 million-$110 million. So there is an element of looking at what we did last year. Again, not assuming a, you know, a strong budget. I don't wanna kinda parse it out to give you a percent, but that kinda at least gives you kinda how we were thinking about the Q1 guide relative to what we saw in Q1 of last year.

[Dan Leonard, Managing Director and Research Analyst at UBS]

Appreciate that. And then, as a follow-up, can you remind me, in 2024, when do we lap the headwinds on the genomics side? And what is your appetite for continued investment in genomics as part of the DGG portfolio?

[Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I would expect us to we will have a difficult Q1, and then starting to get better from Q2 and beyond. Not dissimilar from the rest of, you know, some of the businesses. And then I'll let Mike talk about the kind of the investment.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

Yeah, I think first of all, just to remind the audience, when we talk about our genomics business, what are we talking about? We've got a $500 million business. Probably 50% of it's in QA/QC instrumentation, where we are the undisputed leader here. A lot of appetite to invest in it here. Our TapeStation product, particularly the consumables business, is on fire right now. Capital side is constrained, as we've seen across the marketplace. And then, I think we all believe in the view that NGS will continue to be a growth market for us, and for the industry. I think that people are dialing back their expectations about how robust it is for a period of time, and I think we're seeing that in our business.

[Mike McMullen, President and CEO at Agilent Technologies]

So, why do we make some of the structure changes we made on the portfolio? Because we want to ensure that we've got the ability to have a healthy P&L, while at the same point in time, investing in growth. So there's a reallocation of R&D dollars happening as a result of some of the changes we made, that we talked about on the call. So answer to the story is, we have a lot of appetite for focused investments in areas where we think we can win in genomics.

[Dan Leonard, Managing Director and Research Analyst at UBS]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions this afternoon. I'd like to turn things back to you, Mr. Ahuja, for any closing comments.

[Parmeet Ahuja, VP of Investor Relations at Agilent Technologies]

Thanks, Beau, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. With that, we would like to end the call. Have a good day, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude the Agilent Technologies Q4 2023 earnings call. Again, thanks for joining us, and we wish you all a great evening. Goodbye.

Participants

Executives

• Parmeet Ahuja, VP of Investor Relations
• Mike McMullen, President and CEO
• Bob McMahon, Senior VP and CFO
• Sam Raha, SVP and President, Diagnostics and Genomics Group
• Padraig McDonnell, President, Agilent CrossLab Group and Chief Commercial Officer
• Philip Binns, President, Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group

Analysts

• Vijay Kumar, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI
• Patrick Donnelly, Managing Director and Equity Research at Citi
• Matt Sykes, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Rachel Vatnsdal, Research Analyst at JPMorgan
• Derik De Bruin, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America
• Jack Meehan, Research Analyst at Nephron Research
• Puneet Souda, Senior Managing Director, Life Science Tools and Diagnostics at Leerink Partners
• Josh Waldman, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics at Cleveland Research Company
• Daniel Brennan, Managing Director at Cowen
• Dan Leonard, Managing Director and Research Analyst at UBS