Neogen Corp (NEOG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Neogen Corporation Second Quarter FY2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star 0 for the operator. This call has been recorded on Thursday, January 8, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bill Welke, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us this morning for the discussion of the second quarter of our 2026 fiscal year. I'll briefly cover the non-GAAP and forward-looking language before passing the call over to our CEO, Mike Nassif, who will be followed by our new CFO, Brian Riggsie. Before the market opened today, we published our second quarter results as well as a presentation with both documents available in the investor relations section of our website. On our call this morning, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and the presentation, slide two of which provides a reminder that our remarks will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in other filings we make with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. I will now turn things over to Mike.

Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I continue to be energized by the significant opportunity I had at Neogen, working alongside our highly engaged global team as we transform the company with a clear focus on improved top-line growth and profitability. We are the scale provider in a highly attractive industry, supported by strong long-term secular trends, and I have high confidence in our ability to overcome recent macroeconomic and execution-related headwinds. Our second quarter performance represents encouraging early progress. with a return positive core growth across the enterprise and adjusted EBITDA margins improving nearly 500 basis points sequentially. The initial phase of our transformation is centered on stabilizing and strengthening our core, providing a solid framework for future innovation. We began with cost structure improvements implemented in the second quarter, expected to deliver approximately $20 million in annualized savings. We will continue to rigorously evaluate resource allocation opportunities and instill a culture of disciplined operational execution across the organization. Turning to our commercial teams, we are implementing a rigorous process-oriented approach to commercial excellence, emphasizing strong operational planning and data-driven decisions. And food safety, where our scale and breadth of offerings provide a clear competitive advantage, we see significant opportunity to shift towards solutions-based selling. This approach should increase customer stickiness and drive greater cross-portfolio penetration. Globally, over 75% of our food safety customers already purchase multiple product categories from us, and we have targeted initiatives underway to increase that percentage further by delivering comprehensive solutions tailored to their needs. In animal safety, we are focused on elevating our portfolio of products through our longstanding partnerships and have made investments to enable our commercial teams to drive growth. To accelerate all these priorities, we have strengthened our leadership with highly experienced operators, including our new CFO, Brian Rigby, and our new Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Friels. Joe is a seasoned diagnostics executive with extensive senior commercial experience at Abbott and Cepheid. He understands what world-class sales execution looks like and i'm confident he will help transform our sales culture we have also added tammy rinaldi as senior vice president and general manager of our food safety business unit james meadows as head of north america food safety and jeremy yarwood as chief scientific officers these leaders bring proven track records from top tier companies and will accelerate both innovation and execution excellence at neogen in parallel with our commercial focus we are applying the same discipline and urgency to operational efficiency and key project execution we saw early benefits in the second quarter from our cost actions which attributed to the sequential adjusted ebitda margin expansion we have continued to make progress on our sample collection product line and expected to become a positive contributor to gross profit in the second half of this fiscal year while there remains room for further improvement we're committed to fully optimizing sample collection over the long term alongside broader enhancements in inventory management and operational efficiency another key priority is the integration of petri film which remains on track for the second quarter of fiscal 2027 timeline previously shared we're currently in the latter stages of the production testing process which has gone well in parallel we have moved into the initial stages of product validation which is a comprehensive internal process to validate our ability to produce each of the 17 skews that we expect will be completed this summer. As part of the testing and initial validation work we have done so far, we've demonstrated the ability to manufacture peachy film plates. These plates will continue to be subjected to a wide range of internal quality performance testing, but the early results have been encouraging. As Brian will discuss later in the call, we are making positive progress on the previously announced sale of our genomics business, the completion of which will provide an opportunity to accelerate the deleveraging of our balance sheet. As a reminder, this past summer, we divested our cleaners and disinfectants business, which allowed us to pay down $100 million of debt. To wrap up my opening remarks, I'm pleased with the initial progress we've made over the past few months, which has led us to raise our outlook for the year and represents a solid step in the right direction. We are still in the early innings of our transformation journey, and the in-market backdrop is not without some challenges. However, we believe they are solvable or transitory in nature. I have every confidence in our ability to exit this fiscal year as a stronger, leaner, and more disciplined organization positioned to increasingly focus on innovation and a next leg of growth in fiscal 2027 and beyond. I look forward to meeting with many of you at the JPMorgan conference next week, where we will provide more details on our operational strategy. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Brian to share some details on our results and our updated outlook.

Thank you, Mike, and welcome to all the investors and analysts joining us on the call today. Similar to Mike, I'm incredibly excited to be part of the team at Neogen and emboldened by the significant opportunity ahead of the company to drive shareholder value. To that end, we saw a return to positive core growth in both segments for the first time in four quarters, with total second quarter revenues of $224.7 million, increasing 2.9% on a core basis. Looking at the components of growth, foreign currency added 0.9%, and divestitures and discontinued products were a headwind of 6.6% compared to the prior year. the impact from divestitures was attributable to the sale of the cleaners and disinfectants business which was completed in July 2025. at the segment level revenues in our food safety segment were 165.6 million in the quarter including core revenue growth of 4.1 percent we saw the strongest growth in our indicator testing and culture media product category led by sample collection which benefited from an easy prior year compare, and Petri film, which saw a nice recovery from the first quarter and returned to high single-digit growth. Double-digit growth in pathogens led the bacterial and general sanitation product category, while the allergens and natural toxins category saw growth in allergens offset by a decline in natural toxins. From a macro perspective, we continue to see disruption at the customer level with food production volumes estimated to generally still be down across major producers on a year-over-year basis. Additionally, there have been several major plant closures and food producer bankruptcies across the industry in the last 12 months. Given the short-term fundamental backdrop that we believe is primarily driven by inflationary cost pressures, we are even more encouraged by the strong results in the second quarter. While macro trends remain negative, there are signs some of headwinds may begin to abate as we transition into fiscal year 2027 and beyond quarterly revenues in the animal safety segment were 59.1 million including core revenue growth that was approximately flat compared to the prior year quarter we experienced solid growth in our biosecurity product category led by higher sales of insect control products due in part to market share gain. In the veterinary instruments product category, lower sales were primarily driven by needles and syringes, while lower sales in the life sciences product category were largely driven by timing of orders and fulfillment. Our global genomics business had core revenue growth accelerate to 6% in the quarter, with solid growth in the bovine market partially offset by weakness in companion animal testing. From a macro perspective, we have also seen challenges in animal safety as a part of a multi-year trend with production animal herds declining in the U.S. to record lows. Most forecasts have this trend reversing next year as ranchers begin to invest again given record beef prices, but we will continue to take a more cautious approach as we approach guidance until evidence of positive improvement is more apparent. From a regional perspective, core revenue growth in the second quarter was led by our LATAM region, up high single digits with strong sales of pathogen detection products and Petri film. The U.S. and Canada region had core growth in the mid-single-digit range, with food safety up mid-single digits and animal safety about flats. Strong growth in sample collection, as well as in Petri film, pathogen detection, and allergens was partially offset by a decline in food quality and culture media. The APAC region saw low single digit core growth that was led by pathogen detection products sample collection and genomics offsetting declines in culture media and allergen test kits our emea region had core growth decline low single digits with growth in sample collection food quality genomics and petri film offset by declines in natural toxins culture media and general sanitation products Gross margin in the second quarter was 47.5%, a sequential improvement of 210 basis points from the first quarter, with the increase due primarily to volume and lower tariff costs, excluding the impact of integration-related and restructuring costs, the second quarter gross margin was 50.3%. Addressing the production efficiency of our sample collection product line has been a priority, and we saw improvement in the quarter, which is a trend we expect to continue in the second half of the fiscal year. With an increased focus on inventory across the organization, we did see an elevated level of inventory write-offs in the quarter. We have described this as a multi-quarter process to return to more normal levels of scrap and continue to expect to see improvement in the second half, as this is an item of high emphasis for our operations teams. Adjusted EBITDA was $48.7 million in the quarter, representing a margin of 21.7%, an improvement of 470 basis points from the first quarter. The margin improvement was driven primarily by the higher gross margin and the headcount reduction implemented during the second quarter. Second quarter adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share were $22.6 million and $0.10, respectively, compared to $9.4 million and $0.04 in the prior quarter, due primarily to the higher level of adjusted EBITDA. Moving to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with gross debt of $800 million, 68% of which remains at a fixed rate, and a total cash position of $145.3 million. We remain in compliance with all debt covenants and remain comfortable with our position as we look to the second half of the fiscal year. Free cash flow in Q2 was $7.8 million, representing an improvement of $20.9 million from Q1, the result of lower CapEx and improved trade working capital efficiency. Importantly, we expect that routine CapEx will trend towards more normal levels of 3% to 4% of revenues starting in late fiscal year 2026, which will further improve free cash flow trends. As Mike noted earlier, we are raising our full year guidance for fiscal 2026 to reflect the second quarter performance being ahead of our expectations. We now expect revenue to be in the range of $845 million to $855 million and adjusted EBITDA to be approximately $175 million for the fiscal year. This updated guidance reflects a cautious approach to the second half of the year given the lingering weakness in our end markets and the fact that we have a new team on board that is still settling in and evaluating opportunities. As a management team, Mike and I take very seriously the commitments and guidance we provide to investors. Looking on a quarterly basis, our guidance contemplates revenue in the fourth quarter being modestly higher than the third quarter, which we are assuming will step down from the second quarter due primarily to seasonality, and that adjusted EBITDA margins will follow a similar trend. We continue to expect our capital expenditures for the year will be approximately $50 million and that free cash flow will be positive. We have also previously disclosed that we have a process underway to divest our global genomics business. The process continues to move along, and while the timing of such processes is inherently difficult to predict, we anticipate being able to make an announcement in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal year, given the current stage of the process.

In addition to the net proceeds being prioritized for debt reduction, this divestiture will further simplify and focus the business and also position the business for enhanced incremental margin i'll now hand the call back to mike for some final thoughts thanks brian when i joined neogen i was thrilled to lead a company with strong leadership positions with highly attractive end markets while we have faced both macroeconomic headwinds and execution challenges we believe these are solvable and that neogen's best days lie ahead now nearly five months into my role I've had the privilege of meeting many of our customers and team members around the world. These interactions have only strengthened my optimism and deepened my appreciation for the power of the Neogen brand. Our customers don't see us simply as a supplier. They view us as a true partner and a trusted authority in food safety. We are committed to further strengthening these vital partnerships, accelerating groundbreaking innovation, and delivering greater value to our customers than ever before. In my interactions with team members across the globe, I've been deeply encouraged by the passion and commitment I've witnessed firsthand. The thoughtful dialogue and sharp insights shared in these conversations reaffirm what I already knew. We have an exceptional team that is fully invested in our mission. We now have a strengthened leadership team in place, seasoned executives with deep experience driving transformation in global life sciences and diagnostics businesses. They bring a disciplined, fundamental-focused approach centered on process excellence, clear prioritization, cross-functional collaboration, transparency, and accountability. Importantly, we are already seeing strong buy in a costly organization as we implement these changes, a clear signal that we are aligning around the right strategy to unlock Neogen's potential. In closing, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to every employee around the world for your hard work, resilience, and unwavering dedication. It is your talent and commitment that will drive our success, and I'm more confident than ever in our ability to deliver outstanding results for both our customers and shareholders. Thank you, and now I'd like to turn things over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from Bob Labick with CJS Securities. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Congratulations on the strong results in Outlook.

Thanks, Bob.

So I wanted to start where you just finished, Mike. You talked about the new management team. Can you discuss, you know, kind of maybe a little more what you look for in each of the people as you built out this team and how long it will take to get, I mean, the announcements kind of just happened, obviously, get people on board and for everyone to, you know, gel and make a difference and, you know, start operating as one?

Yeah, thank you for that question. You know, the great news is we've attracted top-tier talent to this company, which speaks highly to the opportunity we have at Neogen in turning this business around. When I was recruiting for the talent, I was really looking for very experienced leaders in diagnostics or life sciences that have been part of large organizations that understand the discipline and complexity of managing global businesses. But more importantly, we're operators. They were able to zoom in and zoom out and really help the organization accelerate the basics that I've talked about before. And I think that's extremely important because we've got a great workforce, and in some cases, we're trying to implement global processes that require a lot of hands-on initially to get everybody going in the same direction. So I'm very proud, and I think we're extremely lucky to have attracted the talent that we've attracted. As far as how long is it going to take to get them up and running, I would say that given the talent caliber and experience of these professionals, they're already hitting the ground running, you know, and our business is not so different than the diagnostic and the human diagnostics business. So from a technology and go to market, there's a lot of similarities there. So we've got a very robust onboarding plan for all of the leaders, and we are starting now to meet as a full management team and really focusing on the priorities, which have not changed, which are all about driving top line, optimizing our growth, and really focusing and becoming masters in the fundamentals.

Okay, that sounds great. And then maybe just one more question. I'll jump back in queue. And obviously, good quarter, strong sequential margin improvement. But I think you said you'll get better improvement in sample handling in the back half. I'm trying to get a sense of what was the headwind to margins maybe from sample handling or maybe said another way, once you get that to the margins you want, what would be the the equivalent or close EBITDA margins, you know, at current levels. And then obviously as top line grows, you can grow that from there.

Yeah, I mean, let me give you a little bit of my thoughts on sample collection. And then I'd like to ask Brian to share his thoughts as well, more specifics. But listen, sample collection is a challenge for us. We've been pretty transparent about that. We're working it multiple fronts from making sure that pricing is reflective of the average price in the market. We are taking all of the improvements on improving the efficiency on the line. I think the great progress that we have made in getting back, getting out of back orders means that we can reduce the temporary labor, some of the scrap and other things that were impacting our margin to kind of get more to steady state. You know, and we are 100% focused on improving profitability on this product. but this continues to be a gateway product that our customers need, but it leads to other purchases within our portfolio. And I personally don't think the product's ever going to be as profitable as other parts in our portfolio, but we're not giving up and we're going to continue to be focused on that. But I would say high level, we would expect this product to return to some profitability in the second half.

And I'd like to ask Brian to share any thoughts on that. yeah thanks my thought my comment would just be i think if you look at the um at our non-gap reconciliation schedule where we've excluded the negative impact of that previously you can see that it was q4 in q4 it was around 10 million in q1 it was 6 million and q2 was around 3 million so the trend is favorable and again to mike's comments we expect to then turn positive as we move into the back half of the year okay super congrats again thank you thank you thanks Bob your next question comes from David Westenberg with Piper Sandler your line is now open hi thanks for taking the question and uh congrats on uh on a really good quarter

here uh so I'll just start off with um why hasn't the implied h2 growth um or margin um a little bit higher falling you know a really good quarter um do you think uh is this conservatism or you Like just first quarter for both the CFO and I guess second quarter for the CEO, you just want to make sure that everything's right here.

Yeah, let me start. I'll share some thought. Thank you for the question. I think that's a very fair question, and I'll ask Brian to jump in. I mean, I think, listen, what you see contemplated in the guide is our prudent approach to beginning to return the business to sustain a predictable performance. You know, you've heard me talk about that last time, and I'm very much focused on driving predictability in this business and consistency. Listen, I'm happy with how the org is reacting to the new ways of working in the very short period of time that we've been here. And Q2 is a great quarter, but it's one data point. We've also got a brand new team that's going to be settling in and learning how to work together and really start to scale these things that we've put in place. And I would say just as important, and Brian and I have talked a lot about this, we understand the importance of our commitment to investors and building credibility. That's extremely important to us. And so with that said, and the lingering macroeconomic weaknesses, tariffs, uncertainty, and what have you, you know, we feel confident with the trajectory, the early progress we've made, and taking all of that into account, we believe it's appropriate to take a conservative tack for the remainder of the fiscal year. And the last point I've made is, it's important to note that we are now forecasting a positive growth for the year, given this latest update on the guide.

Yeah, I would just echo Mike's comment in terms of, you know, it's one data point. You know, we did raise the guide to reflect the over-delivery in Q2, but, you know, we've got a new team in here.

I've been here for two months now, and we just want to make sure that we, you know, take the right approach that relates to how we manage the guide. perfect and um just asking one kind of basic blocking and tackling question as we look at our models were there any one-time revenue tailwinds in the quarter and we think about recurring adjustments um how do we think about those cycling through for for the rest of the year i think um with the recurring adjustments it's one of those um um have limited time but i mean i mean i guess you always have new ones so i guess anyway anyway to think about that Yeah, sure.

I'll take the question, Mike, and add anything you'd like. The only thing I would recall, we did have about $2 million of insecticide tailwind in Q2 in the animal safety segment, but really, that would be the only thing of note that I would call out as a one-timer.

Yeah, David, what I would just add is that, you know, we saw, you know, it's crazy, you know, know, the simplicity sometimes is you get what you measure. So, you know, driving the commercial excellence, focusing on key products, when you think about, you know, petri film, pathogen, allergens, which have been a focus for us in that quarter, you see very healthy returns on those when you drive the right focus. And so, you know, we were very pleased with how the organization's responding to the additional focus. And we feel that a lot of this growth was due to driving the specificity, and commercial excellence. So the organic growth is great, and now we're looking to scale that and accelerate it.

Got it. I'll just give it to you knowing that you still have a few more analysts to ask questions from.

Okay. Thanks, David.

Your next question comes from Brandon Vasquez with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on a nice quarter as well. Mike, maybe as you said, you know, you're maybe about six months into the seat now. You guys have had a strong quarter here. Talk to us a little bit about specifically what in the commercial organization has changed that is working.

This is probably the first time in several quarters, if not a couple of years, where you've been able to kind of accurately forecast the business and actually give improving expectations for the business on a go forward basis so what is working and what's giving you the confidence to raise guidance already uh less than a year into the seat in the ceo seat yeah thanks brandon and listen i wish i can tell you something that makes me look really smart um reality is it's just focusing on the basics and driving simplicity um you know i think that you know last quarter when we were talking about you know in the quarter discussion but also on the one-on-ones you know Specifically, the organization was very comfortable doing monthly forecasts, for example. And very early on, that didn't seem like the right approach, given our history of missing our forecasts. So we instituted a weekly latest best estimate process where we bring in all of the sales leaders and all of the supporting functions on a weekly basis, reviewing the forecast, reviewing the risks and opportunities, reviewing the targeted accounts, discussing what needs to be true, What do we need to do to enable the sales team to deliver on the commitments of the customers? And, you know, I would say in the first couple of weeks, it was a little bit rough, but now you see the leaders running the calls and the whole organization is really focused on enabling the commercial team. And one of the things that I think I've shared and I've been trying to instill in the organization is our commercial team needs to be very customer centric. The rest of the organization needs to be in service of the commercial team. And that is how we're driving this. And so early signs is that this is really resonating with the organization. And I think we can kind of see that reflective in the Q2 performance. Now, that said, we don't want to get ahead of our skis. We're going to continue to do the same thing this quarter that we did last quarter, get the new leaders on board, drive more specificity, making sure we're really looking at the opportunities, addressing the concerns, you know, that we have and the headwinds in the market. And I think really that is the formula for success.

Got it. Great. That's helpful. And then one of the other big questions I get a lot with investors now, and I'm sure you're aware, is just the feature film manufacturing process. You made a couple of comments in your prepared remarks on some confidence there. Can you maybe just spend another minute on like, what is it that's giving you confidence that this is continuing on time? And, you know, what are you seeing in the early ramp of that facility?

Yeah, absolutely. This is a super important project for us. You know, in Q1, I shared that early on, I knew this was a priority, and I spent a lot of time with Jim Walters, our head of operations and the manufacturing team, really looking at this plan. You know, having been in biopharma businesses and medtech businesses, is any tech transfer has a lot of challenges. In this case, we're doing 17 on 17 SKUs. And I was very proud and happy, pleasantly surprised, I guess happy, of how the team has thought about all of the potential factors and things that can come to play in making sure that this transition is extremely successful. And I think that since then, we have executed that plan. That plan remains the same. We remain extremely focused and the process of doing that is starting to, you know, demonstrate some results. And so we're still on track for the November 2027 timeline. We're in the late stages of production testing, which has gone very well so far. In parallel, we've begun initial phases of product validation, which we expect to continue into the summer. You know, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, throughout the course of production testing and the initial product validation work, we've demonstrated that we can manufacture Petrifilm on the new equipment, which is a very important milestone, you know, and so we're going to continue to execute the plan. We've got the right talent, the right resources. This is a top focus for us. We are not sparing any, any, any focus or resource required. And that's what gives me confidence.

Got it. Thanks a lot, guys, and congrats again.

Thanks, Brandon. Your next question comes from Subu Nambi with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.

Hi, guys. This is Thomas on for Subu. Thanks for taking our questions. For the growth in indicator testing and culture media, how much of that was volume driven and then how much was on price? Just trying to gauge how we should think about growth for the rest of the year and if that's sustainable.

Yeah, I can share some thoughts and maybe Brian wants to add a few things. I would say that most of it is organic growth. You know, these are these are product lines that we drove specific focus on. And so there are some, you know, last quarter, we did share that there was a part of the decline of petri film was due to a inventory correction in our major distributor in the United states we've seen that distributor go back to normal levels and when you look at sellout data it's around nine percent you know so the the petri film market continues to be healthy we continue to be the market leader and growing you know at that pace i think pathogens is also another one where we're seeing significant growth but organic growth just due to you know all of the illnesses the rise in illnesses and other things you know that you see and then with allergens You know, that was, as you guys might be aware, you know, we've had some supply issues in the past. We're not through those. We're working – we've worked through all of the back orders, and we're gaining some lost customers, and we're really looking to get that platform back on sustained growth. I don't know, Brian, if anything you want to share with us.

Yeah, I would just say a total, you know, up 6% and just more volume than price would be the only thing I would have inside.

Okay, awesome. And then maybe just to stay there on PetriFilm, what are your updated assumptions around the 2026 growth rate? And then just how should we think about this longer term? If much of the growth was volume, is there pricing power still available in the market to take for PetriFilm? Thank you, guys.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's always pricing opportunity. And in fact, that's the standard language in all of our contracts. One of the things that is not unique to this business is that we have different contract durations and different contract expiry. So as new contracts come on board, certainly the inflationary pricing adjustments are introduced. And of course, when we launch new Petri film tests that we always price that accordingly. But I think there continues to be an opportunity to adjust for inflationary measures as new contracts come up for renewals.

Yeah, I think the only thing I would add is just that you may recall that in Q1, we had one of our largest U.S. distributor adjusting their inventory levels, which provided for a headwind in Q1, even though the end market was still strong. So that phenomenon wasn't there in the second quarter.

So we would expect the remainder of the year for that product to look more like Q2. ladies and gentlemen as a reminder should you have a question please star one your next question comes from thomas debouncey with nephron research your line is now open hi uh thanks guys for taking the question um i was just wondering uh like just in terms of you know i guess coming into the ceo role your feedback from customers uh uh you know the business overall obviously they've had to deal with some stockouts of certain products, like example collection, and just their willingness to kind of work with you as you, you know, ramp up production and get back towards more normal inventory levels, and then just overall the business, is there a rough breakout you could give in terms of volume versus price in terms of the organic growth? Thanks.

Thanks, Tom, for your question. You know, by now, I have visited all regions and have visited customers, distributors, direct customers from around the world. And I honestly have to say, you know, I've never been in a market where customers are rooting for you like they are for Neogen. We are the food safety company. I can't tell you how many customers, you know, some more impacted than other with our supply issues, but they want us to succeed. they see us as a vital partner in their food safety quality program if you know if you if you look at food safety quality program at sites these are cost centers you know these are um you know they're doing the testing required and sometimes they have a lot of turnover and when there are gaps in their competency or gaps in their training or knowledge they rely on neogen to help fill that gap and i think that is one of the uh one of the uh competitive advantages that we have in addition to having a full food safety portfolio is that we are seen as the experts in the food safety business and so it has been consistent around the world yes some customers are frustrated but they very much want us and need us to succeed because that means that their food safety programs will also succeed now brian i don't know if you have yeah i would just say similar to my earlier comments uh around another product category it was it was positive but more volume than prize yeah great thank you down for the questions at this time i will now turn the call over to mike nesta for closing remarks great thank you everybody for joining and all the conversations and the feedback i very much look forward to seeing many of you next week at jp

morgan to continue the conversation and have a great rest of your day ladies and gentlemen this concludes the conference call for today we thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your line.