Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:A) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Joshua Waldman : A couple for you. First, Mike, a lot of questions on instrumentation, so I’ll ask on CrossLab. A nice quarter here. I wondered if you could talk through the drivers to the acceleration? Anything beyond just the comps? I mean are you guys seeing signs of higher adoption of contracted service, share benefit. Is this a category where maybe price is just now starting to come into the mix?

Mike McMullen: Yes, absolutely. So I’m going to tag team with Padraig on this one, but I think all those factors are hitting, and we’re going to talk about services, but I think it’s important to know that between services and consumables, we actually crossed over the 30% connect rate for the first time in the fourth quarter. So we’ve been talking about the importance of connect rates going forward. And on the services side, which is where your question is centered is, we’ve seen an acceleration of growth. We hinted at some of the places we’re doing really well at the big enterprise level. But Padraig, why don’t you add some your thoughts on here? Because this is your business and a lot of good things happening here.

Padraig McDonnell : Yes. I think, Mike, as you said, touch rates continue to be very strong, and it’s much more than a break/fix business and we see our contract rates actually growing at double digits, which is incredibly sticky with customers. And all key offering categories right from enterprise down to some of the preventive maintenance services we do are all very, very strong. We also see that, of course, we have a large installed base and being able to provide different solutions and services for that have been really great. I will close by saying that we had some very big wins in the enterprise service business, and that’s where we really look about productivity of labs and how we help customers with their outcomes, and we’re seeing that increase as we go through the quarter and through the year.

Joshua Waldman : Then Bob or Mike, curious to get your updated thoughts on supply chain and what you’re seeing from a component availability and cost perspective entering ’23? And I guess, whether or not your guide assumes improvements in either of these or maybe if supply chain improvement could represent upside to the guide?

Robert McMahon : Yes. I would say we have seen in the second half of this year, incremental improvements as we went through Q3 and Q4 that helped us allow us to increase our revenue here in Q4. I would expect that incremental improvement to continue into next year. But it’s by no means back to kind of normal I think if it happens to improve, I do think that, that would be a good thing for us. And — but we’re not — we’re assuming kind of the same level of improvement that we’ve seen in the back half of this year moving into FY ’23. I do think that some of the costs have come down but there we’re still having to purchase things in the aftermarket to be able to ensure supply and deliver to customers.

Mike McMullen: Yes, to Josh’s question, if we get to a point where we don’t have to go into that aspect of the market, that would be upside for us.

Robert McMahon : That’s right.

Operator: We’ll go next now to Dan Leonard of Credit Suisse.

Dan Leonard : Mike, I have a follow-up on Europe. So when you’re framing the possibilities for 2023, I hear you on the conservatism for the chemical industry. But what about other end markets? Does the macro uncertainty in Europe bleed into pharma or aca, gov or anywhere else?

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