Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:A) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Robert McMahon: There’s no reason to believe when we think about kind of the level of investment over-time. And the importance of our instruments in the Discovery of new therapeutic areas or food testing, we think about as Mike was talking about these new areas around Applied Markets, there’s no reason to think that there is something fundamentally has changed, that they don’t need instrumentation. And so, I think we feel very good about our market-share and our good about our market-share, and our competitiveness and do expect our LSAG business to be a growth driver for us going forward. Yes, no completely. No, is this more just on the comp basis, after making…

Dan Brennan: That sounds great. Bob and just one quick one, just on – the applied versus the chemical, you mentioned some chemical weakening just that were concerned during the quarter, but the applied obviously powering through. Can you just maybe unpack a little bit more how you’re thinking about like how we exit the year across your different buckets within the chemical and applied segment?

Robert McMahon: Yes. I mean, I think if you look at Q4, it will be really an impact of China. So we’re actually looking at chemical and advanced materials declining in Q4, because of that 70% increase that Mike mentioned in Q4 of last year. That was across-the-board. I would say the advanced materials will be much stronger than that down high or down double-digits. And the chemical side, probably we will have a bigger impact. If you recall, the Shanghai shutdown impact was centered in the chemical and advanced materials market, because that’s where our GC manufacturing was and that’s a Workhorse for some of those products. So, we do see it down in Q4, but up for the full-year. I think that’s a really important to make sure that people understand.

Dan Brennan: Great, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And we have time for one more question this afternoon, we’ll take that now from Luke Sergott at Barclays.

Luke Sergott: Great. Thanks for squeezing me in.

Mike McMullen: Hi Luke.

Luke Sergott: Just real quick on the – thanks. So real quick on NASD. But are you guys seeing any pressure from the market, seeing any in-sourcing from the market? I know Novartis has talked about doing some of this as well. And then lastly additionally, with that with the CapEx guide down. Are you guys still investing in additional lines there for the year? Or is that really on pause is that have anything to do with that kind of CapEx stepped down?

Mike McMullen: Let me leave it there. And then have Bob jump-in and Sam as well, but from in-sourcing standpoint. No, we’re not seeing any material moves in this direction. And in fact as we head into ’24, we continue to broaden our book of business and we’re going to have more customers overhead in terms of breadth of customers as we go into ’24. And yes, it’s called Project Endeavor. So Train B we went live, which we had a different code-named. And that’s live, but we continue to move forward with our expansion plans on the other front, siRNA front, along with what we like to do on the CRISPR side as well And antisense. So, we’re going to broaden that. So our stated investment plans remain unchanged.

Robert McMahon: Yes, to be very clear, Luke, to add what Mike said, we are not slowing that down at all. That investment is one of the highest priorities, we’ve trimmed back spending in another less more infrastructure kind of oriented projects as opposed to kind of revenue-generating. I think what you’re seeing actually is it’s actually coming in better-than-expected, because the pricing is better-than-expected and you probably have seen that in other places. And so, the availability of parts and the key materials is better than what we had initially planned as well.

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