Robert McMahon: Yes. I would say that our view of leveraged earnings growth continues into ’24. And so while we do have some things coming back to us, some of the actions that we’ve taken will continue to move into a full year for 2024. And quite honestly, that’s kind of what we expect our job to be is to be able to drive that leveraged earnings growth.
Jack Meehan: Thank you, guys.
Mike McMullen: Welcome.
Operator: Thank you. We go next now to Vijay Kumar at Evercore ISI.
Vijay Kumar: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Good job on the margin execution here, Mike. Mike, maybe I missed some of the comments here. Can you talk about the phasing in the quarter here in China? I think I heard when you start off down mid-singles and was July off like minus 25%, minus 30%, is that the exit rate?
Mike McMullen: Yes. We take a change within the quarter.
Robert McMahon: Yes, Vijay, this is Bob. Your math is in the ballpark. Yes. So we were down mid-single digits through June. So May and June kind of tracking as we expected, and then we saw incremental weakness in July, and we ended up for the full quarter down 17%. And what we’re assuming going into Q4 is that, that performance will continue into Q4. And given the tough comp that we have because I think we grew 44% in Q4 of last year, we’re estimating roughly a 35-ish percent drop in Q4 in China.
Vijay Kumar: Sorry. That’s helpful, Bob. And just — sorry, where I was going with that question was, can you talk about capital versus recurring? And I think when I look at your Americas in Europe, America is just flattish. Do you see a similar sort of phasing in ex-China, maybe talk about exit rates in July?
Robert McMahon: So actually, if you think about the ACG business, actually ACG grew in all regions and all end markets, inclusive of China. So there wasn’t a change there. And I would say both in the Americas and Europe, we didn’t see that same effect.
Mike McMullen: Yes. And overall, outside of China, the geographic performance was better than expected.
Robert McMahon: Correct.
Mike McMullen: We saw no trends like the China trend in our other geographies.
Vijay Kumar: That’s helpful, Mike. And Mike, maybe one that you mentioned a couple of times on transitory. I think that’s a new firm that you’re using — what have you heard –
Mike McMullen: I think I move away from prudent to transitory.
Vijay Kumar: Yes. What have you guys heard on the ground on China stimulus, maybe some positive commentary, but nothing is concrete and why use the word transitory is the implication here fiscal ’24 should be a more normalized year when we look at the comps?
Robert McMahon: Yes. So, a couple of thoughts here, I think relative to the China business, we’re hearing similar things, but nothing really significant and there’s not enough to go onto assume we have kind of material impact on our outlook for the rest of the year. When we talk about transitory, we talked about the fact that these markets are driven by investments to improve the human condition as I mentioned. They’re not going to go away. And neither while we’re not going to get into the specifics of an actual number, we actually see a path to growth next year for full year for Agilent. And of course, we have the tough compare the first half of next year, we did coming off a double-digit print for first half this year, but as we looked at our business keep in mind, we’re – what’s behind my thought process here which is – we’re instrument company, yes, we have big instrument business around 60%, we have a 40% of those in recurring revenue business.
