Mettler Toledo International Inc/ Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

hello everyone thank you for joining us and welcome to the metler toledo first quarter 2026 earnings conference call after today's prepared remarks we will host a question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star one to raise your hand to withdraw your question press star one again i will now hand the conference over to adam allman head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks, Rebecca. And good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. On the call with me today is Patrick Kaltenbach, our chief executive officer, and Sean Vidala, our chief financial officer. Let me cover some administrative matters. This call is being webcast and is available for replay on our website at mt.com. A copy of the press release and the presentation that we will refer to on today's call is also available on our website. This call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, financial condition, performance, and achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see a recent annual report on form 10k and quarterly and current reports filed with the sec the company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to provide any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement except as required by law on this on today's call we will use non-gap financial measures a reconciliation of these non-gap financial measures to the most directly comparable gap measure is provided in the 8k and is available on our website let me now turn the call over to Patrick.

Thank you Adam and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining our call today. Last night we reported about first quarter financial results, the details of which are outlined for you on page three of our presentation. We are pleased with our first quarter results and we delivered good performance in an increasingly uncertain market environment. Solid execution of our margin initiative supported very good adjusted EPS growth. Our investments and innovation continue to provide tangible benefits and we are well positioned to capitalize on our customers' investments in automation, digitalization, and onshoring in the future. While we recognize increased uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, we remain confident in our agility and strong execution of our growth and margin expansion programs to achieve solid adjusted EPS growth this year.

Let me now turn the call over to Sean to cover financial results and of guidance and then i will come back with some additional commentary on the business and our outlook sean thanks patrick and good morning everyone sales in the quarter were 947 million dollars which represented an increase in local currency of three percent or one percent excluding acquisitions which contributed approximately one and a half percent to growth. On a U.S. dollar reported basis, sales increased 7%. On slide number four, we show sales growth by region. Local currency sales increased 2% in the Americas, 1% in Europe, and 5% in Asia, rest of the world, including 4% growth in China. Excluding acquisitions, local currency sales were flat in the Americas and increased 3% in Asia rest of world on slide number five we summarize local currency sales growth by product area local currency sales increased 1% in laboratory increased 5% in industrial including 1% growth in core industrial and 11% growth in product inspection food retail grew 7% in the quarter excluding acquisitions in currency laboratory sales were flat, while industrial increased 2%, including core industrial flat and product inspection up 6%. Lastly, service revenue grew 7% and 5% excluding acquisitions. Let me now move to the rest of the P&L, which is summarized on slide number 6. Gross margin was 58.7% in the quarter, a decrease of 80 basis points, and was up 10 basis points excluding unfavorable foreign currency in acquisitions. We continue to benefit from favorable price realization and supply chain optimization benefits that helped offset an incremental gross tariff headwind of 90 basis points. R&D amounted to $51 million in the quarter and was up 1% on a local currency basis over the prior period. SG&A amounted to $258 million, dollars a one percent increase in local currency over the prior year and includes sales and marketing investments offset by cost savings adjusted operating profit amounted to 246 million dollars in the quarter up four percent versus the prior year adjusted operating margin was 26 percent a decrease of 80 basis points versus the prior year or up 40 basis points excluding unfavorable currency. We estimate the gross impact of incremental tariffs reduced our operating profit by 4%. It was a 90 basis point headwind to our operating margin. Items below operating profit were $0.13 per share better than our guidance and included benefits due to changes in interest rates and other income. Adjusted EPS for the quarter was $8.91, cents, a 9% increase over the prior year. Incremental tariff costs were a gross headwind to EPS of 4%. On a reported basis in the quarter, EPS was $8.33 as compared to $7.81 in the prior year. Reported EPS in the quarter included $0.27 of purchase and tangible amortization, $0.29 of restructuring costs, and a $0.02 headwind related to the timing of stock option exercises. That covers the P&L, and let me now comment on adjusted free cash flow, which amounted to $120 million and was negatively impacted by the timing of tax payments, which were $58 million higher than the prior year. DSO was 35 days, while ITO was 4.2 times. Let me now turn to our guidance for the second quarter and for the full year, 2026. As you review our guidance, please keep in mind the following factors. First, while we have an immaterial exposure directly to the Middle East, the war has led to higher global energy costs and has increased uncertainty in our end markets, and we experienced customer delays in the first quarter. Second, we acknowledge improving global economic indicators and also see increased activity in our pipeline, which we believe will translate to better growth during the second half of the year. Third, our guidance includes a benefit from changes to U.S. import tariff rates in February, but also assumes tariffs in the second half of the year return to consistent levels with prior IEPA rates. We have also not included potential tariff refunds from the U.S. government in our 2026 guidance, which could benefit cost of goods sold, and we have also not included potential tariff refunds to our customers, which would reduce sales. We will exclude these items from our adjusted EPS and organic sales growth in future periods. Fourth, our guidance includes higher costs due to inflation related to the war in the Middle East. We seek to mitigate these increases with cost savings initiatives and additional pricing actions, but have taken a cautious approach to guidance given the dynamic nature of the current environment. Lastly, we are very confident in our ability to execute on our growth and productivity initiatives and believe we are well positioned to gain market share regardless of the macro environment. Now turning to our guidance. For the full year 2026, our local currency sales growth forecast remains at approximately 4%. Our forecast includes a contribution from acquisitions, which will approximate 1.5% in the first half of the year and less than a percent for the full year. Adjusted EPS is forecast to be in the range of $46.30 to $46.95, which represents a growth rate of 8% to 10%. This reflects an increase from our previous guidance of 8% to 9% growth. At recent spot rates, foreign exchange is estimated to be a 2% benefit to sales growth and neutral to EPS. For the second quarter of 2026 we expect local currency sales to grow approximately three percent including a benefit of approximately one and a half percent from acquisitions we expect adjusted eps to be in the range of ten dollars and seventy cents to ten dollars and eighty five cents a growth rate of six to eight percent currency for the quarter at recent spot rates would benefit second quarter sales by approximately 2% and would be neutral to adjusted EPS. Some further comments on our 2026 guidance. We expect total amortization, including purchased intangible amortization, to be approximately $78 million. Purchased intangible amortization is excluded from adjusted EPS and is estimated at $28 million on a pre-tax basis or approximately $1.06. Interest expenses forecast at approximately $70 million for the year. Other income is estimated at approximately $25 million. We expect our tax rate before discrete items will remain at 19% in 2026. Free cash flow is expected to be approximately approximately $900 million in 2026, which is an increase of 5% on a per share basis. Share repurchases are expected to be in the range of $825 to $875 million. That's it from my side, and I'll now turn it back to Patrick.

Let me start with some comments on our operating businesses, starting with LAP, which had modest growth across most product categories and strong growth in bioprocessing partially offset by a decline in pipettes due to soft demand from academia and biotech customers we see a growing need for replacement across our pharma and biopharma customers and expect to see a gradual increase in activity in the second half of the year additionally our team has remained very active in identifying opportunities across various hot segments like biopharma new energy and semiconductor that will further fuel our growth in the future. Turning to industrial, core industrial sales were up 1% of flat excluding acquisitions as we have seen cautiousness in customers' purchasing patterns across most end markets given the dynamic geopolitical and macro environment. Product inspection sales growth was solid as it benefited from innovation and our mid-market strategy despite continued challenges facing the food manufacturing industry lastly food retail had strong sales growth against easy year comparisons now let me make some additional comments by geography starting in them in the americas where sales grew two percent or were flat excluding acquisitions growth in our lab business included strong bioprocessing growth while product inspection also had some growth. Core industrial sales were soft this quarter, and were impacted by customer delays related to increased market uncertainty. However, we remain optimistic for growth in the second half of the year. Turning to Europe, strong growth in our product inspection and food retailing was offset in part by softer market conditions, especially chemical. Finally, Asia and the rest of the world had good growth this quarter and included 4% growth in China, led by our industrial business. In markets outside of China, we again had very good growth in India, Southeast Asia, and many other emerging markets, which remain an important component of our long-term growth strategy. In summary, I am pleased that our team continues to execute very well in a challenging market environment. We also continue to make important investments in innovations to cure our future growth. Our R&D accelerator and Jetstream programs have helped us increase our pace of innovation while better meeting our customer needs. We are especially focused on bringing new innovations to high-growth segments, such as bioprocessing. Our innovation helps our customers generate new insights, improve workflows through automation and digitalization, and to capture more precise and reliable measurements. Our dedication to bringing new innovations to market helps us increase our value proposition, stimulates replacement demand gain market share and support our price premiums in the marketplace i'd like to share with you some exciting examples of new innovative products we have brought to markets recently first our automated chemistry business recently launched our new easy max advanced automated lab reactor that helps scientists with their process development by automating scale-up experiments. EasyMix controls temperature, steering, dosing, sampling. It provides precise measurements with smart digital sensors for continuous unattended data capture, increasing throughput and ensuring consistent results. An embedded vision system continuously records experiments and captures critical events automatically, documenting visual context to speed up understanding of reaction behavior. By utilizing plug-and-blade peripherals, researchers can instantly automate complex tasks such as pH-driven dosing or pressure-dependent sampling, ensuring that every protocol is executed with robotic precision. Our lab business also recently introduced our InMotion PX1 auto-assembler that fully automates density, refractive index, and UVBIS measurements, expanding our broad portfolio of automation solutions for the lab. The new auto-assembler eliminates manual sample handling, reducing variability while increasing measurement repeatability, and while minimizing contact with potentially dangerous or toxic substances. Our powerful sampling, rinsing and drying features reduce the time for measurement cycles and enables high throughput and full data integrity and all the trailers enabled when connected to our LabX software. Our liquid handling business also recently became first to market with low retention pipette tips that do not use PFAS or forever chemicals. Our hydrophobic low retention pipette tips minimize retention of viscous liquids, proteins, enzymes, and DNA without the use of forever chemicals, reducing both the environmental impact and compliance uncertainty associated with PFAS. Switching to our industrial business, our recent product inspection innovations have led to very strong sales growth and market share gains we have further expanded our portfolio of x-ray solutions over the past year with additional coverage of the mid-market we have also had excellent success with our high-end solutions including our proprietary dual energy x-ray solutions that utilize advanced photon counting technology for precise identification of physical contamination in food and pharmaceuticals we have also recently introduced metal detection solutions that further expand our market leadership in metal detection our new m50r series delivers a 20 increase in detection sensitivity and is engineered to increase productivity in modern production environments i am very proud of our team's efforts to further build our portfolio of unique and highly competitive solutions the breadth of our offering the unique insights from our direct sales force and technical experts and the critical support of our service team provides with the largest service network of our main competitors are very important differentiators these innovations will also ensure that we are well prepared to capitalize on the many significant growth opportunities over the medium term including increasing customer demand from automation and digitalization solutions as well as faster growing segments like biopharma semiconductor new energy and others we also look forward to capitalizing on future growth opportunities with customer replacement cycles and investments in on and nearshoring activities over the coming years We are also fully committed to delivering on our margin expansion targets and have ample opportunity to deliver strong margin expansion this year and beyond. While there is increased uncertainty related to the conflict in the Middle East, our organization has remained highly agile and I am very proud of their efforts to balance the need to drive productivity gains and deliver strong EPS growth while investing for the future. now this concludes our repaired remarks operator i'd like now to open the line to questions we will now begin the question and answer session please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up if you would like to ask a question please press star one to raise your hand to withdraw your question press star one again we ask that you pick up your handset when asking a

question to allow for optimum sound quality if you are muted locally please remember to unmute your device please stand by while we compile the q a list your first question comes from michael riskin with bank of america please go ahead thanks for taking the question um let me just start with the high level on the full year guide you reiterated the the four percent lc sales girls.

But I believe you bumped up the M&A contribution a little bit. I think it was previously 1% in the first half, 0.5% for the year. Now it's like 1.5% for the first half or less than 1% for the full year. So on the one hand, the deals contributions trending nicely and we'll have to talk about that. But I also want to see what's going on in the organic business. Is this something that you saw in the first quarter? Is this just adding a little bit of caution given the macro? And if you could you know, expand a little bit on if it's more in lab or industrial where you're taking down your assumptions. That'd be great.

Okay. Hey, Mike, this is Sean. Hey, maybe I'll take that. So, yeah, you're right. So, like, in terms of the acquisitions, we're really pleased with how they're, you know, performing. The teams are really doing well. Very good focus on integration. You know, it was about a 1.5% contribution in the first quarter. We expect a similar contribution in the second quarter. So then when you kind of get into roundings, you know, it's still going to be less than 1%, but it's going to be more than the half a percent that we were thinking at the beginning of the year. So, of course, that implies, you know, maybe a modest reduction in the organic number. You know, I think that largely reflects a little bit of this uncertainty in the first half of the year. You know, we're taking still a cautious approach to the second quarter, just given the environment. But, you know, we still feel very good about growth for the second half. I mean, we'll talk a little bit more about that throughout the day. But I mean, you know, you kind of see a lot of positive indicators out there externally in terms of, you know, PMIs. You see, you know, just global indicators looking positive. But when we look at our own pipeline, we also feel good about that as well. You know, if we kind of like get into the businesses themselves, maybe I'll just kind of go through it just so that everybody has it. So for the for the full year you know we're looking at lab at low to mid single digit which is similar to before but for the second quarter we're also thinking low to mid single digit but on an organic basis that's maybe more like low single digit for the lab business one of the things we're kind of looking at for for q2 is maybe a little bit more in Europe you know there's maybe you know when we just think about topics like bioprocessing we see that as something that we we expect to see a little bit better results in the second quarter uh in europe when we get into core industrial you know core industrial for the full year we're still at like this low to mid single digit uh but this one but on organic basis it's low single digit this one has maybe a couple of dynamics to it you know on one hand we're seeing our chinese business really showing good improvement and and we feel good about that um but on the other hand we had maybe some more softness in the first half of the year in some of our Western markets. And then in terms of product inspection, we're at mid-single-digit for the full year. That's maybe a little bit better than we were before on an organic basis. Low single-digit frankly reflects the strong results we saw in Q1. And then on the geographies, and then for the second quarter, that one would be low single digit which is down a little bit on an organic basis and that kind of reflects a little bit the timing we had a very very strong start to the year especially in the Americas and we'll see maybe some some some of the other side of that in Q2 but overall the business is executing extremely well and then on the Americas we're thinking kind of low single digit for the full year and also So for Q2, on a Q2 basis, that would be a flattish. You know, there's a few dynamics there. We can talk more about it in a minute. But, you know, one of the things is our retail business, you know, can be a little bit lumpy, and that's going to be down there in the second quarter. And then if you look at our European business, we're still at low single digit for the full year. With low to mid single digit in the Q2 guide, that's a little bit of a step up. This is a little bit this lab topic that I was talking about before. And then China has been a bright spot in the quarter, and we just feel like there's actually very good momentum there. We went through this period where they kind of went through this reset. We've now had a few quarters in a row of good growth on the industrial side with momentum continuing to build. So we're going to increase our growth expectations for China for the full year to mid-single digit. A lot of it's going to do with this industrial business, which we kind of see building into the second half of the year. And then the guidance for Q2 is low to mid-single digit, which is a little bit more similar to what we saw in the first quarter.

I mean, that's like seven questions. Thanks. No follow-ups.

Your next question comes from Luke Sergott with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Thanks for your questions, guys. You mentioned the 2Q dynamics in the Americas. You mentioned some retail comps and issues there. Just kind of double-click in there and give us a sense of what's going on and your outlook and how that's changed.

Yeah, so retail is always a lumpy business. You know, it always has been, always will be. You know, if you kind of, like, look at Q1, you know, I think it was, like, down double-digit in the U.S., but we had, like, really strong growth in Europe, you know. And so it's, like, so overall retail was up, I think, high single-digit in the quarter. So that's kind of that's the business. You know, you just have these kind of swings. So there's nothing to read into it. You know, I think when I step back from it, actually, I feel very good, like in the sense of like how the team's competing. We've introduced a lot of new innovation in the last few years, and it's really well received in the market. I think our team actually just won an award on one of the products. So a lot of good things going on. We're competing well, but it's just very lumpy.

All right. And then just follow up here on China, the particular strength. We've heard this other from peers as well, but you have a slightly more industrial lean. How much of this is due to the middle market strategy within the PID business and that kind of picking up and also, you know, leading to what you guys have been seeing there in that business over the last year and a quarter?

Hey, this is Patrick. Let me take that look out. I mean, again, as Sean said, we are very pleased with the momentum in China, but the strength is not coming necessarily out of the product inspection business. It's really the core automation business in our core industry business. there's a really nice momentum there's a lot of investment going on in automation in china across many of the end markets um that is probably the preliminary momentum that is building up there and also has contributed to a good q1 growth on top of that i would say in the pharma space now with the reason pharmacopeia changes we see also good opportunities and good momentum for high-end balances and others where customers are replacing stuff in their qa qc labs and rd labs So, these two are the more important vectors. It's not a PI. This is really industrial automation and a good piece of information.

Great.

Your next question comes from Katherine Schult with Baird. Please go ahead.

Thanks for the questions. Maybe first, you talked about increased activity in your pipeline, supporting maybe some improved growth in the back half.

Can you just elaborate on that a bit? i know you typically only carry a month and a half or so of backlog but maybe talk through what you're seeing from a fundal indicator standpoint thank you yeah catherine yeah so you're right like you know we normally kind of deflect these types of questions with our one and a half months of backlog which is very true but you know kind of sitting here today you know we've been kind of hearing for the teams for a while like there's a lot of you know different KPIs in the in the pipeline from like the whole funnel right from opportunities all the way through orders and I don't want to get too specific but you know we have a lot of ongoing reviews with our teams we um we we Patrick and I spent a lot of time with the executive team earlier this week kind of going through those details we reviewed it with the board yesterday and just kind of coming out of that we feel like there's you know you kind of compare that to what you see on some of these headlines and, you know, it kind of helps us feel better about like this, you know, this growth in the second half of the year versus what we are seeing with the uncertainty in the first half of the year. I think we all kind of felt like the year would start off a little slower when we guided initially, despite all the arrows pointing in a more positive direction, exiting last year with, you know, the more favorable MFN agreements, biotech funding, macro indicators but we we did expect the year to start slow um and you know of course what we didn't expect was some of the geopolitics which created even more uncertainty in the quarter but we're not seeing any cancellations from that we're just seeing you know it feels like things are just getting pushed out a little bit but when we look at the funnel um you know we're you know we need to still convert those into sales but but you know an absent you know uh things deteriorating on a geopolitical scale, you know, we're actually feeling pretty good.

Okay, great. And then you called out some chemical softness in Europe. We've heard some other companies calling out similar dynamics. Can you just unpack a bit what you're seeing there when that softness started? You know, is it Ukraine-related? Is it Middle East-related? Is it something else? And maybe just talk through that.

Catherine, this is Patrick. Again, this is more related, I would say, in general, to higher energy costs in chemical. So many of these customers are actually seeing the pressure of high energy costs in Europe. They are really more cautious with their investments and also more cautious in expanding their facilities. So I would say it's not the Ukraine, it's a combination of the Ukraine and the Middle I mean, the old process, as we all know, went up quite significantly, and that weakness in chemical actually, we saw some of that in our process analytics business, which is very strong on the biopharma side, but on the chemical side, it has been a bit softer, and then also in the lab business, that actually had some impact.

Great. Your next question comes from Dan Arias with Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for the questions. Sean, can you maybe talk about cost management in the current environment? It would be great to just sort of hear about offsetting freight and then oil and input costs for the rain and business, maybe just sort of a refresher on sensitivity in general there and then the impact that you see here.

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Dan. Yeah, hey, so, of course, our team is highly focused on all these topics. It's a very dynamic environment. You know, we have topics like fuel, transportation costs. We're looking at input costs as well, too. You know, we, you know, we certainly have a strong culture of agility, which always helps us during these times. So there's a lot of things that we can do on the cost side. There's things that we're looking at in terms of price mitigation as well, too. We've been a little bit cautious with how we've, you know, kind of factored that into our guidance, because, you know, in addition to all that, we have some, you know, we'll have some benefits on the tariff side a little bit. You know, if you think about these IEPA tariffs going away and then kind of going to the 10%. Now, of course, we have new news yesterday. We'll see how that plays out. But, you know, we're assuming the IEPA tariffs go back to what they were before, kind of mid-year. but you know in that few month period there's a little bit of a benefit so the way we're kind of thinking about it is like we'll have that benefit we'll have some of these headwinds and they probably are in a similar kind of a range but on top of that of course we're gonna look at trying to do some mitigation which could be an upside here yeah okay thank you and then maybe just to follow up on Mike's question and then your answer there when you were going through the moving pieces I don't know it just kind of felt like there was at least as much uptick stuff as there was downtick stuff um you guys have a pretty good track record of leaving yourselves room to beat and you have some pricing power so i know we're only talking about a couple of dips of organic but can you just maybe pinpoint where it is that you found yourself needing to adjust the outlook thanks yeah i mean these things get kind of into rounding sometimes so you know like you know you know of course we you know when we kind of look through it you know you you debate of is it this or that, but in the end, sometimes they're rounding. So I wouldn't try to read too much into the precision of it. But I'd say like, you know, where we, where we felt like we had good momentum going into the second half of the year was, was this China situation. And then so modestly, that kind of, kind of is offset by some of the other geographies, you know, it might not change uh exactly how we say you know low single digit for this country or that country but but in the end there there's just kind of nuances between the current countries and you know it didn't didn't change in terms of how we maybe speak to the the range but but but modestly a little bit better in china we have good momentum i'd say in emerging markets in general like you know countries like india is a very good example um and then just modestly you know you know a little bit lower in the Western markets, and more so in the first half of the year. And I think in the U.S., we see it as much as anywhere here in terms of Q1 and in terms of customer behavior.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a follow-up. I know you talked about the chemical side, Patrick. Can you just talk about just that core industrial piece? It sounds like China's maybe a little bit better, but on the Western side, how have those conversations changed with customers? What are you hearing given the macro backdrop and just the right way to think about this impact and the visibility you guys have for that business going forward?

Yeah, very good, Patrick. Clearly, as I said, China has already, I would say, We've taken a really nice uptick there in terms of the automation fees in our industrial portfolio. And when you ask me what's shifting in core industrial, it's while in the past we have probably a lot more discrete industrial balances and stuff like that to end users. a we see an increase in demand for automation and digitalization and this is also done for our customers by a lot of automation partners and so we see a lot of more engagement with emems and others that are that are really using our portfolio to to build higher automated manufacturing lines etc and we have an outstanding portfolio there and see a lot of engagement in china but also increasingly in the western part. In Europe, where we have seen good momentum, and then also in the U.S., I mean, looking forward, what I anticipate is also there with the build-out of manufacturing capacities in the U.S., whether it's in pharma or industrial pieces, we will see also better momentum in industrial automation solutions going through these automation partners that build-out manufacturing lines and other automation solutions for end customers. So I'm actually really, really optimistic about our solutions. We have put a lot of innovation on our products over the last years, and it really plays out nicely that we have a very strong portfolio in this place.

That's helpful. And then, Sean, maybe one for you just on the guide. Can you talk about the price versus volume? I think the previous guide was 250 bps a price, maybe 100-ish of organic volume. Can you just update where we are there, and then staying on the topic of price, just how you're thinking about the moving pieces of margins with price and maybe some of the input costs. Thank you, guys.

Yeah, sure. No problem. So, hey, price came in pretty much as expected in Q1. We're in that kind of three and a half percent kind of a range. I feel really good about the value proposition in the company. I mean, Patrick talked a lot about innovation earlier in the prepared remarks. I mean, that's ultimately the key, right? Like when you're providing value to your customers, then there's a willingness to pay. And I think our organization does a great job articulating that so that we can kind of be compensated for the value. As we think about the rest of the year, Q2 will probably be in the 2.5% range or so, maybe a little bit better. Things start to step down now because we lapped some of the mid-year pricing that we put in place last year with some of the different topics from last year. For the second half of the year, we're still kind of holding this like normalized 2%. Frankly, I could see a little bit of upside here as we kind of think about inflation in this environment, but I wouldn't raise anything quite yet. We'll see what we'll do, and we'll kind of evaluate that.

So for the full year, we're still kind of in that like two and a half percent range or so okay thank you guys your next question comes from vj kumar with evercore isi please go ahead hi guys thanks for taking my question patrick maybe my first one for you on on uh looking at q1 performance it looks like lab was where all the challenges happened you did call out middle east maybe some customer delays talk about you and how Q1 phasing played out. Did you see trends improving exiting Q1? Like, what was the issue in labs, and was it all tied to Middle East?

Yeah, hey, thanks. On the lab side, yes, we had a bit slower than expected start with some headwinds, but the headwinds were mainly, say, in the research area, academia, the pipette. So our pipette business actually was negative in the first quarter. On the chemical side, it also was, you know, these delayed customer investments that we have seen in Europe that affected somewhat lab there. But these were the two key areas where we saw good momentum and continuously very good momentum is bioprocessing that continues to be very strong. And we are also really well positioned here with our strong lab portfolio with lab access, you know, a workflow enabler and key differentiator against many of our competitors. So we expect, after this, I would say it's a slower start in Q1, we expect conditions to gradually improve throughout 2026 for lab. And again, on the pro side, anyway, bioprocessing is really strong. We see also really good investments, as I said before, in, for example, in China with the pharmacopoeia role. We see there are also lots of investments of companies that build out manufacturing capacities for GLP-1s and others. And our team is really well-connected to this build-out. So I think lab will gain momentum. And when Sean referred to the pipeline activity, that also, of course, includes to some extent what our lab team is working with our customers on some of the better projects for the second half.

Understood. And when you think about the back half step up, Patrick, is that assuming academic and government improves? You know, you said it was down in Q1. Are you assuming the delayed orders from Q1 maybe catching up or perhaps a step up in bioprocessing rate? And I think you mentioned something around automated chemistry as well, performing well. So just what are the moving pieces, you know, from an end product perspective?

Yeah, again, the bigger moving pieces is probably what you will see with our industrial automation solutions. So core industrial will be strong. Again, we see lab improving, but on academia, we do not factor in a bit of improvement. I mean, I think we will continue to compete even better in that space and forecast probably more flattish instead of declines for the second quarter and the rest of the year. Given the strong portfolio that we launched, we just launched a very interesting new product on the pipette side. With the Vero pipette, again, we launched these new pipettes with Kifa's pre-coding, et cetera. So we have a lot of good stuff going there as well. So the step ups, again, will be more driven by industrial, a lot of it is also coming out of China in general, more across the business, PI remains to be strong. So that's a good move for us in the second half as well. And I think you have the key piece, is there anything you want to add? No, no, I think that's good.

Yeah, I think, like you said, I think there's, you know, software market conditions, things will gradually improve, but there's also some things going on inside the company that will help too.

Your next question comes from Callum Titchmarsh with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just talk us through the demand you're seeing on the service front and any stats you could just give us on the attach rate on the current installed base. Just a refreshed view there would be helpful given some of the bullish commentary in the Yeah, well, thank you.

Of course, really proud about the service growth. I mean, you have seen us growing 7% in the first quarter. 2% of that was driven also through acquisitions we have done. But even the core underlying growth of 5% in this environment really speaks to our incredible strengths in service and our great connection of our customers to our service business. I, as I said before, I see our service business to continue to outgrow products as we have ample of headroom to grow to conduct more of the installed base that is currently not under service contract or even not covered today by our service organization. We launched about two years ago now, sorry, two years in, dedicated service growth initiative that we continue to fund to cover more of that installed base with not only going after the you know uncovered install base but also increasing the connect rate of services at the point of sales which is different across the product portfolio i cannot give you like an average number here because as you can imagine for example a business like product inspection which is end-of-line inspection fully automated it's a very high connect rate because these customers cannot afford any down times in the food manufacturing environment whereas in other areas like in lab or academia it's it's lower but we have dedicated programs in place to increase disconnect rates and we see continued improvement there as well so yeah i'm very optimistic about the service business internally uh my team hears me a lot speaking about you know how important it is uh for us to drive higher customer loyalty our nps cores and services are outstanding um when i compare this to the rest of the industry and again i think there's a lot of good stuff to great and then just any update on the on the reshoring theme maybe just talk us through those discussions with with customers if you've had any and just to refresh on the timelines there thanks a lot yeah look at the reshoring we know all excited about it but it's still early innings for us so remember about 50% of our businesses related to manufacturing then another 20% QA QC I would say but if you think about manufacturing, expansion is probably the biggest opportunity, but these reassuring activities while they're on the news, and I just read an article this morning, the news from Switzerland that one of the companies in Switzerland actually decided to not expand the line in Switzerland, but build it out in the US. So this is exciting, but again, this will take time. I mean, it's early innings, and I think it's a great opportunity for us moving forward to help customers as they build out capacity with our highly automated digitalized solutions.

Your next question comes from Josh Waldman with Cleveland Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Patrick, I wondered if you could comment on how durable you expect recent higher growth in PI could be. Any reason to think this like mid-single-digit growth for 26 could be sustainable into 27 when you think about kind of the upgrade cycle opportunity across mid-market and now the dual X-ray. I guess, have you guys started to roadmap out what you think the upgrade cycle could be?

No, look, we're not looking. This is also a constant replacement business in many areas. I mean, these two systems here, a lot of round in some areas, but they are even more excited about getting deeper in the mid-range markets. we've changed that strategy about one two years ago expanding our portfolio in the mid-range will be attacking very successfully with a new expanded portfolio so i'm actually quite optimistic that there's a lot of uh head will pass to continue to grow the team puts out a lot of great innovation on on all fronts whether it's jack wayne whether it's the metal detection as i talked about in my earlier remarks or with the photon counting and x-ray to drive even more sensitivity and with that also more application spaces for us. So I think this thing has a long delay made.

Good to hear. And then I wonder if you could talk through what you were seeing in core industrial more at the product level, you know, any pockets of recent acceleration or decel and then any more color on where the delays hit. And then I thought a portion of this business was kind of tied to, you know, kind of component sales, maybe the bioproduction equipment OEMs is that right? If so, can you remind us kind of the size of that business and trends you've seen there?

Yeah, so hey, maybe just giving you a couple of shades of flavor here. So like I think the thing that stands out to me the most is that the portfolio still seems to perform really well and you see higher growth in the areas that support themes around automation and digitalization. Like, we talked a lot about the portfolio strength in this area. We definitely see the opportunities globally. We see customers shifting into this direction, and that continues to do really well. You know, in other parts of the portfolio, you know, sometimes there can be some lumpiness, like we saw in Q3 of last year, you know, with some project activity and some of the mentioning solutions that we provide for logistical people and things like that, our companies. But I'd say overall the team is competing well now. When you think about the end market exposures, about 60% of core industrial is sold to a combination of pharma, food manufacturing, and chemical. And out of those three, I'd say the one that's probably the softest right now is the chemical for kind of the obvious reasons with the impact of higher energy costs on their facilities. and just probably kind of delaying. But I'd say in general, there was just some caution in the broader end market space for industrial. I just think it's like kind of like similar to how we started the year. We just felt like after all the volatility, when there's uncertainty, people pause a little bit, right? And that's how we expected the year to start. It definitely happened. And, you know, with the increased uncertainty, I think that was a factor. But the other side of this business, of course, is, you know, we've talked a lot about that it's less cyclical than the past. But, of course, you know, improving PMIs is something that we, you know, we look at favorably as well, too, for the future. And, you know, when you factor in, and I'm not talking, you know, timing of these things always is, you know, we'll see how it plays out. But, you know, as we kind of even go into the medium term, you know, we'll have broader opportunities with this onshoring theme that Patrick talked about. And at some point, I think we'll see more on the replacement cycle. And then what we're also seeing is like in some of the hot segments, like, you know, if you kind of look into China, like, you know, China has a lot of very exciting hot segments that are seem to be really picking up momentum, like the battery segment being a good example there. and you know these are things that you know again play well to the portfolio okay thank you your next question comes from doug shankle with wolf research please go ahead good morning uh two questions uh are really two topics uh first on pacing um some of this has

been covered in some of your answers to other questions but i'm just curious if you'd be willing to distill a little bit when it comes to any product categories or geographies that got notably better or worse in April versus March. I think it was Dan Arias' question earlier where he kind of pointed out lots of moving parts, but that's fairly normal and there's some good guys and bad guys in the quarter, but it would be helpful to just see if there were areas where things changed over the last couple of months as we think about trends into the rest of the year. So that's the first one. The second is specific to China grants. Could you elaborate a bit more on the grant proceeds recognized in the quarter? That seems like it could be something important in terms of being indicative of broader improvement and sentiment in the region, but I just want to make sure we're not putting too much emphasis on that. Thank you.

Yeah, sure. Hey, so in terms of getting into more granularity, Doug, hey, we usually don't talk about months and certainly wouldn't want to talk about too much color, but I think you can, you know, just the fact, you know, that we try to lay out what we thought for Q2 by product area and, you know, division and region in the full year, you could probably draw, you know, you can kind of see directionally, you know, how we're thinking of things in terms of q1 to q2 and then and then q2 to the to the full year and and um you know wouldn't want to kind of repeat kind of what i went through there before um but in terms of like the china grant um you know so this is this is a a grant from local government there you know i the way i would read it is like they're just encouraging us uh from you know in terms of uh expanding our capacity there in the Shanghai area, they're also, you know, encouraging us for local manufacturing for things and also for research, you know, and these are things that are always been priorities of the Chinese government. And, and so for us, it's consistent with our strategy, we're not necessarily, you know, you know, doing things significantly different here in terms of how we think about our footprint. But I think everybody knows we have a very important Chinese business, you know, that we think has got a great growth opportunity for the future. And we have a great China for China story. And I'd say this is another chapter in that China for China story, you know, in terms of how there's investment in China for China. And, you know, this one's nice because the local governments um encouraging it and um and so the six million was just uh there's two dynamics to the grant there's some of it's capex related and some of it's opex related um you know and um and the opex is mostly on the on the research side and uh you know from a cash flow perspective there's going to be timing differences between when we receive grant funds and when we actually spend against the grant and then so we'll exclude both of those from our cash flow statement as we kind of report on our nco our free cash flow going forward super helpful thank you very much

yes thanks your next question comes from tycho pearson with jeffries please go ahead hey thanks uh i want to actually hit on the customer delays again um can you quantify uh you know, how large those were and, you know, how you think about the path to recoup. And then the chemical softness, is this a push out? I mean, or is it more CapEx, you know, budgets getting cut, which obviously has longer term implications?

Yeah. Hey, Tycho. So, hey, on the customer delays, I mean, it's not like we have a quantification of that. It was a general theme that we saw in, you know, some of the Western markets in the quarter, you know, especially earlier in the quarter, you know, so I can't put a specific number on that, but, you know, as we kind of, like, provided some of the insights to our pipeline and stuff like that, I think you can read into that, you know, we're feeling more confident about things converting here as we kind of, like, go towards the second half of the year. In terms of chemical, you know, you know, I think it's a, you know, we'll see how it plays out, you know, I think it's still too early to kind of to judge like exactly how it's going to play out certainly out of the core end markets it's it's the softer one um certainly out of the the big three for us i mean china chemical to put it in perspective is about 10 to you know low teens uh kind of a percent growth but most of its specialty chem uh for us but there's also sectors of that that also participate in some of these hotter segments, too. And so it's not necessarily all bad, you know, in terms of how we think about. Yeah, and I think we'll have some easier comps here in the second half on chemical as well, too.

Okay, and then follow up on Europe, you know, you've had a couple months of, you know, PMIs and expansionary territory.

I know you took up kind of the near-term guide a little bit, but, you know, is there a chance that that could actually come back sooner? yeah we'll see i mean right now in the in the short term we still we're still a little bit more um taking a more cautious profile you know um but you know uh you know we'll see how it plays out we'll see how it plays out yeah okay thank you your next question comes from evie koslosky with goldman sachs please go ahead Hey, thanks for taking the questions.

So I think in the past you've talked about your exposure to the semiconductor industry with the ultra-peer water business. Can you remind us what your exposure there is as a percentage revenue and then how that business trended to start the year?

Percentage? Yeah. So Evie, this is Patrick. I mean, if you think about it's part of our process analytics portfolio, I think in total it's a low single-digit contribution in revenues. But it's doing extremely well. I mean, all these build-outs in semiconductor, including, by the way, data centers where these things are also used for cooling systems. This is a great business opportunity for us, and we have a really strong go-to-market team there and a really strong connection to customers. So that's going really well. But in total revenue contribution, I mean, of course, it's one of the hot segments that I highlighted, but it's low single digits in total.

Okay, great. And then on bioprocessing, I think that saw good growth in the quarter. I guess, what sort of demand are you seeing for your bioreactor sensors as people look to drive automation in their facilities? And then how do you feel your portfolio is competing relative to the broader market?

The growth, right? How are we competing in bioprocessing?

Yeah, well, we're competing extremely well. We also launched, we continued to launch all the new products. We just launched also recently a new glycos sensor, for example. We are very strong there also for all our digital sensors for, like, our integrated or intelligent sensor management systems, fully digital, which really is highly differentiated from our competitors. We see good demand, I would say, across the world, around the world in bioprocessing. No slowdown there, and I would expect that with the build-out for, you know, major important drugs like CRP1s that that continues.

Great. your next question comes from brandon couillard with wells fargo please go ahead hey thanks good morning um patrick did i hear you break out uh lab versus industrial within china in the quarter and then are there any pockets of lab that are doing better like bioprocessed air or are they all kind of generally in the same sort of similar flattish range. Thanks.

I'll start with the numbers and then Patrick can answer the question. So in terms of the quarter, you know, we were up, like we said, hold on a second, I'm looking at the wrong thing here. I just want to make sure I'm giving you the right number. We were up 4% in China in the quarter um you know industrial was up high single digit so you know to put it in perspective this is like the the third quarter in a row uh with with good growth and on the industrial side in in china and um and uh you know the second quarter in the in the in a row with like more like uh you know high single digit kind of growth here um you know lab was was you know just down slightly, some different dynamics going on there, but, you know, it depends a little bit on the product category, but I'd say, you know, overall, you know, the market is a little bit softer than the industrial side, but I think that, you know, we're kind of optimistic as we kind of look into the second half of the year here. Maybe you can add a little more color, Patrick.

Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, the specific tool app, I mean, and the pharma, let's say the pharma markets as well, the pharma, the biopharma piece is doing well, the small molecule market, or some people call it chemical pharma in our area, is software at the moment. That has impact on some of the product categories that we have. For example, if you think about in-lab, about our auto-chem business, has been also impacted by that. two vectors there. One vector is, I would say, the software end market in a small molecule cam, but then also we launched a new product and some customers knew about that, so that also probably caused a little bit of relay in terms of growth there as well.

Got it. Thanks.

Your next question comes from Casey Woodring with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for fitting me in. Maybe I'll just ask one last one.

I want to clarify the incremental tariff piece uh is the march change in harmonized tariff schedule codes included in that maybe just unpack the tariff component a little bit more thank you yeah sure casey you know so so yeah we so there's kind of like two dynamics here like on one hand we have like a good guy with the lower rate from february and tariffs we'll see some of that kind of in the second quarter um but we assume that that kind of goes back to the the you know the previous like rates similar to the previous IEPA rates, you know, kind of in the summer here. But on the other side of that, we also have higher inflationary pressures. And as I mentioned before, like, of course, we're working on different mitigation actions, but we're a little bit cautious about putting that all into the guide. So the way I kind of think about it is you have like some of these inflationary topics kind of largely offsetting the tariff benefit with an upside on how, you know, how we approach some of the mitigation kind of in the second half of the year.

Got it. Thanks, guys. Yep. Thanks.

This concludes the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Adam for closing remarks.

Hey, thanks, Rebecca. And thanks, everybody, for joining us this morning. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to me. And I hope you all have a great weekend. Take care.

This concludes the call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.