Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ:BRKR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 13, 2024
Bruker Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.8, expectations were $0.65. Bruker Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Bruker Corporation Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Justin Ward, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.
Justin Ward: Thank you, and good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to Bruker Corporation's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Justin Ward, and I'm Bruker's Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Joining me on today's call are Frank Laukien, our President and CEO; and Gerald Herman, our Executive Vice President and CFO. In addition to the earnings release we issued earlier today, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be downloaded from the Events and Presentations section of the Bruker Investor Relations website. During today's call, we will be highlighting non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and are posted on our website at ir.bruker.com.
To begin, I would like to reference Bruker's safe harbor statement, which is shown on Slide 2 of the presentation. During this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events and the financial and operational performance of the company that involve risks and uncertainties, including those related to geopolitical risks and wars as well as to supply chain logistics and inflation. The company's actual results may differ materially from such statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in today's earnings release and in our Form 10-K for the period ending December 31, 2023, and as updated by our other SEC filings, which are available on our website and on the SEC's website.
Also, please note that the following information is based on current business conditions and to our outlook as of today, February 13, 2024. We do not intend to update the forward-looking statements based on new information, future events or for other reasons, except as may be required by law, prior to the release of our first quarter 2024 financial results expected in early May 2024. You should not rely on these forward-looking statements as necessarily representing our views or outlook as of any date after today. We will begin today's call with Frank providing an overview of our business progress. Gerald will then cover the financials for the fourth quarter and full-year 2023 in more detail and share our newly established full-year 2024 financial outlook.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bruker's CEO, Frank Laukien.
Frank Laukien: Thank you, Justin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. Bruker finished 2023 with another quarter of excellent revenue growth including 15.9% organic revenue growth year-over-year. For the full-year 2023, we delivered industry-leading 14.5% organic revenue growth, which shows remarkable resiliency and consistency under difficult market conditions. Moreover, 2023 was our third consecutive year of double-digit organic revenue growth a testament to the strong execution of our Bruker colleagues across the globe and to our differentiated innovation strategy and culture of disciplined entrepreneurialism. Importantly, in fiscal 2023, we also delivered a solid 10.3% non-GAAP EPS growth year-over-year, all while investing significantly in R&D, capacity and productivity and in selected strategic bolt-on acquisitions.
For those keeping track of our new Bruker cellular analysis business, which we refer to as BCA and formerly known as PhenomeX. As forecasted in fiscal '23, we had a fourth quarter bolus of $0.10 of non-GAAP EPS dilution. Excluding BCA, our fiscal year '23 pro forma non-GAAP EPS grew 14.5%. In Q4 of '23, we did major restructuring and cost cutting at BCA almost immediately after the acquisition closed on October 2, 2023. Accordingly, in fiscal year '24, we expect the quarterly BCA non-GAAP EPS dilution to be significantly reduced to just $0.02 to $0.03 per quarter with a significant further drop in dilution expected in fiscal year '25 and BCA profitability anticipated in fiscal year '26. As we look at the fiscal year 2024, we entered the year with solid bookings momentum, a strong backlog and a positive outlook for Bruker to emerge as a leader of the post-genomic era and financially to again achieve above-market organic revenue and non-GAAP EPS growth.
Accordingly, we are today announcing our fiscal year '24 guidance for organic revenue growth of 5% to 7% and non-GAAP EPS growth of 5% to 7% both compared to fiscal year '23. Turning now to Slide 4. In the fourth quarter of '23, Bruker delivered excellent organic revenue growth of 15.9% and solid pro forma non-GAAP EPS growth. Bruker's Q4 '23 reported revenues increased 20.6% year-over-year to $854.5 million, which included a currency tailwind of 2%. On an organic basis, revenues increased 15.9%, which included 15.5% organic growth in BSI, our Scientific Instruments segment and 20.3% in our best segment. Net of intercompany eliminations, while growth from acquisitions added 2.7%. This implies constant exchange rate, or CER, revenue growth of 18.6% year-over-year.
Our fourth quarter '23 non-GAAP operating margin was 18.1%, which was down 290 bps, primarily due to the dilutive PhenomeX acquisition in Q4 '23, as well as headwinds from other M&A and currency. Altogether, this combined effect more than offset our organic operating margin expansion of plus 270 bps. Our strong organic operating margin expansion is evidence of the success of our Project Accelerate and operational excellence initiatives. In Q4 of '23, Bruker reported GAAP diluted EPS of $1.41 compared to $0.66 in Q4 of '22. Our Q4 '23, included an acquisition gain of $0.99 from our PhenomeX acquisition. On a non-GAAP basis, Q4 '23 diluted EPS was $0.70, down 5.4% from $0.74 in the fourth quarter of '22, primarily due to the PhenomeX acquisition in Q4 '23.
Excluding the initial minus $0.10 BCA dilution in Q4 '23, Bruker delivered pro forma non-GAAP EPS growth of plus 8.1% year-over-year in Q4 of '23. Moving to our full-year '23 performance. On Slide 5, you can see Bruker's strong performance and excellent execution in 2023 with industry-leading organic revenue growth of 14.5%, solid non-GAAP EPS growth of plus 10.3% and excluding BCA even pro forma non-GAAP EPS growth of plus 14.5%. More specifically, for fiscal year '23, revenues increased by 17.1% to $2.96 billion. On an organic basis, revenues grew 14.5% year-over-year, consisting of 14.5% organic growth in scientific instruments and 14.7% organic growth at best net of intercompany eliminations. Our 2023 non-GAAP gross and operating margin and GAAP and non-GAAP EPS performance are all summarized on Slide 5.
And you can see solid non-GAAP EPS growth of 10.3% despite a $0.10 headwind from BCA in the fourth quarter. I'll also note that our 2023 free cash flow increased by $98 million year-over-year. Our trailing 12 months return on invested capital, a non-GAAP measure was 20.6%, a metric that highlights our differentiated Bruker management process and focus on disciplined entrepreneurial innovation and organic growth supplemented by selected strategic bolt-on or early-stage technology acquisitions. Please turn to Slide 6 and 7, where we highlight the fiscal year '23 constant exchange rate, or CER performance of our three scientific instruments groups and of our BEST segment year-over-year. In '23, BioSpin Group revenue was $799 million and grew in the teens percentages in constant exchange rate.
BioSpin saw growth across biopharma, academic government, industrial research and applied markets as well as in our new integrated data solutions or IDS division. We had revenue from 4 gigahertz class NMR systems each in fiscal '23 and fiscal '22. And in the fourth quarter of '23, we installed the first 1.2 gigahertz NMR in the United States at the Ohio State University and the 1.1 gigahertz NMR at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For '23, our CALID group had revenue of $960 million and constant exchange rate growth in the high teens percentage with strong growth in life science mass spectrometry driven by the timsTOF platform and aftermarket business as well as strong growth in applied mass spectrometry and our optics infrared, near-infrared and Raman business.
Microbiology and Infectious Disease revenue was up slightly as solid demand for MALDI Biotyper Consumables was offset by a final drop of our modest COVID-19 molecular diagnostics revenue to near zero. Please turn to Slide 7 now. Fiscal year '23, Bruker Nano revenue was $942 million, and in constant exchange rate, Nano grew in the high teens percentage with strong revenue growth across markets, including academic government, industrial, and semiconductor metrology. The artificial intelligence megatrend is a strong tailwind for our semiconductor metrology and advanced packaging tools. Revenues for our advanced X-ray solutions and Nano surfaces, core tools also showed strong growth. Fluorescence microscopy revenue was up on solid growth in academic government research as well as contributions from our Q4 '22 acquisition of the Inscopix neuroscience research tools.
Finally, 2023 best revenues grew in the mid-teens percentage net of intercompany eliminations, driven by share gains and superconductor demand by our MRI OEM customers as well as by growth in big science, fusion research, and key new extreme ultraviolet EUV technologies for semiconductor lithography tools by large OEM customers, all in support of the strong AI or artificial intelligence demand. Let me now move to Slide 8, which is a slide that's familiar to those of you who saw our presentation at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, where we're outlining what we mean by leadership, emerging leadership in the post genomic era, which of course, includes many different fields of multiomics beyond genomics, but including genomics, as well as solutions for single cell, spatial, structural, quantitative, and interaction biology.
I will not dwell on this, but I invite you to read this slide in more detail at your leisure. On Slide 9, you have a quick summaries of two technology acquisitions that we closed in early February and which both fill gaps that we had in our portfolio and therefore strengthen our portfolio. On the left, you will see that we acquired Nanophoton in Osaka, Japan, a company with about $5 million in fiscal year '23 revenue. They are a specialist in research Raman microscopy systems so far, primarily are only offered in Japan and Korea, but we think these products will do very well outside of Japan and Korea as well, since they're really performance-leading with exceptional speed, sensitivity, spatial resolution and user-friendly workflows in research Raman microscopy.
Applications are going from inspecting semiconductors and nanomaterials battery research as well as academic and industrial research. Differently, here in United States in Tucson, Arizona, we acquired Spectral Instruments, Imaging LLC to go -- to complement our preclinical product lines with preclinical optical imaging for bioluminescent and fluorescent, in vivo imaging and optional X-ray imaging. This enhances our preclinical imaging, or PCI solutions for a vivo disease research and should be welcomed by our customers. So let me wrap things up. In summary, Bruker delivered excellent organic revenue growth and solid EPS growth in '23. Even as we have accelerated our strategic investments in the Project Accelerate 2.0 for transformation as well as in production capacity and productivity to meet our growing demand.
Bruker strong growth is a result of its fundamental commitment to innovating in high-value solutions as well as of our ongoing portfolio transformation. Our technology and biological applications leadership in many areas combined with world-class execution and an excellent Bruker management process position us well for continued outperformance as a leader in the emerging post-genomic era. Now given our strong growth in '23, our healthy fiscal year '24 guidance as well as our recent selected strategic bolt-on acquisitions, we are now optimistic that we can achieve our previously communicated fiscal year '26 medium-term outlook for revenue and non-GAAP EPS already one-year earlier in fiscal year 2025. With that, let me now turn the call over to our CFO, Gerald Herman, who will review Bruker's Q4 and full-year '23 financial performance in more detail and provide our fiscal year '24 outlook and assumptions.
Gerald?
Gerald Herman: Thank you, Frank, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm pleased to provide some more detail on Bruker's fourth quarter and full-year 2023 financial performance, starting on Slide 11. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Bruker's reported revenue increased 20.6% to $854.5 million, which reflects an organic revenue increase of 15.9% year-over-year. In the fourth quarter of '23, Bruker's reported GAAP diluted EPS of $1.41 compared to $0.66 in the fourth quarter of 2022. The fourth quarter 2023 GAAP EPS includes a $0.99 per share non-taxable line cash gain from the acquisition of PhenomeX now called Bruker Cellular Analysis division, or BCA. This gain for GAAP reporting represents a bargain purchase gain and reflects the excess of identifiable net assets acquired over the purchase consideration paid.
Included in the acquired assets or deferred tax assets related to acquired net operating losses, or NOLs. While the present value of these NOLs is very significant for GAAP accounting, the tax benefits of these NOLs going forward are expected to be much more modest annually. On a non-GAAP basis, Q4 2023 diluted EPS was $0.70, down 5.4% from $0.74 in the fourth quarter of '22, primarily due to the $0.10 dilutive effect of our Phenomics acquisition in the fourth quarter as well as a challenging tax rate comparison year-over-year. Excluding BCA, Bruker delivered pro forma non-GAAP EPS growth of 8.1% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of '23. Non-GAAP gross margin performance was down 80 basis points year-over-year in the fourth quarter of '23 negatively impacted by foreign exchange and M&A headwinds, partially offset by organic gross margin expansion of about 40 basis points year-over-year.
Our fourth quarter 2023 non-GAAP operating income increased 3.8%, while non-GAAP operating margin decreased 290 basis points year-over-year to 18.1%. And as foreign exchange and acquisition headwinds, primarily from BCA, more than offset very strong organic operating margin expansion of 270 basis points year-over-year in the fourth quarter of '23. Our fourth quarter 2023 pro forma non-GAAP operating margin, excluding PhenomeX acquisition was 20.6%. We finished the fourth quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments of approximately $488 million. During the fourth quarter, we used cash to fund selected Project Accelerate 2.0 investments, capital expenditures, and share repurchases of approximately $50 million. We generated $205.5 million of operating cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Our capital expenditure investments were $31.5 million, resulting in free cash flow of $174 million in the fourth quarter of '23. This reflects an improvements in cash flow of about $37 million over the fourth quarter '22, driven by better working capital performance in the quarter. Slide 12 shows the revenue bridge for the fourth quarter of '23. We delivered solid revenue growth in the fourth quarter of '23 in BSI with 18.5% organic revenue growth in systems and 8.2% organic growth in aftermarket revenue, all year-over-year. Geographically and on an organic basis in the fourth quarter of '23, our Americas revenue grew in the teens percentage. Asia-Pacific revenue grew in the 20% range, while European revenue grew in the mid-teens percentage all year-over-year.
For our EMEA region, fourth quarter 2023 revenue was up high single-digit percentage year-over-year. Slide 13 shows our fourth quarter 2023 P&L performance on a non-GAAP basis. Non-GAAP gross margin of 51.8% decreased 80 basis points from 52.6% in the fourth quarter '22 impacted by foreign exchange and acquisition headwinds, partially offset by organic gross margin improvements of about 40 basis points year-over-year. Fourth quarter 2023 non-GAAP operating margin of 18.1% was 290 basis points lower than the 21% margin performance we posted in the fourth quarter of '22 as foreign exchange and acquisition headwinds primarily from BCA more than offset strong organic operating margin expansion of 270 basis points. For the fourth quarter of 2023, our non-GAAP effective tax rate was 31.3% compared to an unusually low 20.6% in the fourth quarter of '22 driven mostly by a one-time discrete favorable item in the prior year period.
Weighted average diluted shares outstanding in the fourth quarter of 2023 were $146 million, a reduction of 1.9 million shares or 1.3% from the fourth quarter of '22, resulting from our share repurchases over the trailing 12 months. Finally, fourth quarter 2023 non-GAAP EPS of $0.70 was down 5.4% compared to the fourth quarter of '22, with a $0.10 headwind from BCA. Excluding BCA, our non-GAAP EPS was up 8.1% year-over-year. In fiscal year 2024, we expect BCA to be much less dilutive after our major cost actions in the fourth quarter of '23 and our full-year 2024 non-GAAP EPS guidance incorporates a $0.10 non-GAAP EPS headwind from BCA. Slide 14 shows the year-over-year revenue bridge for the full-year of 2023. Revenue was up $434 million to 17.1%, reflecting organic growth of 14.5%.
Acquisitions added 2.2% to our top-line, while foreign exchange was at 0.4% tailwind resulting in constant exchange rate revenue growth of 16.7% year-over-year. Non-GAAP P&L results for the full-year of 2023 are summarized on Slide 15 with the drivers similar to the fourth quarter of 2023 as explained on the slide. Turning to Slide 16. In the full-year of 2023, we generated $350.1 million of operating cash flow up about $76 million from 2022 on improved working capital performance. We generated $243 million of free cash flow in 2023, up about $98 million from 2022 on higher operating cash flow and lower capital expenditures. Turning now to Slide 18. We entered the year with solid backlog and an even stronger portfolio to again achieve above-market growth.
Our outlook for fiscal year 2024 includes, we are initiating a guidance range of reported revenue of $3.23 billion to $3.29 billion, representing growth of 9% to 11% compared to 2023. This guidance assumes organic revenue growth of 5% to 7% year-over-year, an estimated foreign exchange tailwind of 1% with acquisitions contributing 3% to revenue growth. That excludes any announced potential acquisitions that have not yet closed. This guidance implies constant exchange rate revenue growth of 8% to 10% in full-year of 2024. For operating margins in 2024, following strong organic operating improvement of about 130 basis points in 2023, we expect 2024 organic operating margin improvement of about 50 basis points. For non-GAAP operating margins, all in, we expect about an 80 basis point decline from the prior year due to a combined 130 basis point headwind from foreign exchange and acquisitions.
On the bottom line, we're guiding to non-GAAP EPS for 2024 in the range of $2.71 to $2.76 or non-GAAP EPS growth of 5% to 7% compared to 2023. Other guidance assumptions are listed on the slide. Our full-year 2024 ranges have been updated for foreign currency rates as of January 31, 2024. One additional note on quarterly phasing for the year. We expect first quarter organic revenue to be sequentially below the fourth quarter of '23 and only modestly above the first quarter of 2023, which was an exceptionally strong first quarter. We also expect softer operating margin performance in the first quarter of 2024 driven by BCA dilution and other acquisition and foreign exchange headwinds. Our organic revenue and operating margin performance is expected to strengthen in the remainder of 2024.
Finally, at our Investor Day in June 2023, I shared financial targets for the medium-term fiscal year 2026 outlook for Bruker. Our strong 2023 financial performance, healthy 2024 guidance and our portfolio strength gives you confidence that we will likely reach our full-year 2026 medium-term targets for revenue and non-GAAP EPS a year earlier in 2025. To wrap up, Bruker delivered differentiated organic growth and financial results in 2023, and we're well positioned to deliver above market revenue and non-GAAP EPS growth again in 2024. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Justin to start the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Justin Ward: Thank you, Gerald. I'd now like to turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A portion of the call. As a reminder, to allow everyone time for question, will be asked that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Operator we're ready for Q&A.
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