Karleen Oberton: I’ll just add two points to that, Patrick, while we haven’t given up our Panther utilization, I would say that we are seeing that our Panther utilization grow year-over-year. And the other metric I would give you that we went back to 2019, around 20% of our customers were running four more assays, that’s probably close to doubled here at the end of ‘23. So those are things that should give us confidence of the stickiness of the Panther and the customers are adding menu.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Jack Meehan with Nephron Research.
Jack Meehan: Thanks. Good afternoon, Steve. There’s always next season, soon enough.
Steve MacMillan: That’s right. Asterix is also a big Eagles fan. So we got covered.
Jack Meehan: Oh, man. Yes, the payment frame. Well, wanted to get your thoughts on the Diagnostics business at Biotheranostics. Could you just give us an update? Talk about the growth runway for the breast cancer index test? And I think Karleen, you mentioned growth was accretive, but did it slow a little bit? Was that related to selling days or just any color would be great?
Steve MacMillan: Yes, I think Jack, the more we look at the BCI test and the opportunities ahead of us, I think we’re still in the earlier innings on what that business can become. And there’s, since we’ve owned it, and watching the team operate, I think we just feel incredibly good about the long term potential. So it was still well accretive and still growing nicely here. We just don’t want to be breaking it out down to the level given the size of it, but feel really, really good about the opportunity.
Jack Meehan: All right, and then, the cash on the balance sheet, continue to get a lot of questions around M&A priorities for Hologic. The recent questions we’ve gotten had been around, interest in doing things in the med tech world, was wondering if you could just comment on that. And then, kind of on the Biotheranostics team, just like the world of specialty labs, kind of using that as a foray into that world. Just any color on M&A strategy would be great.
Steve MacMillan: Yes, I think Jack, I think that the magic that because we are both Diagnostics and med tech, to your first part of that question. It does open up the opportunity for additional things, and we’re seeing some interesting things that would allow us to build on our Surgical platform or our breast cancer, the breast surgery business areas. So we continue to look in those areas. And frankly, I think some of the valuations in those areas might be a little bit better than say, for example, some of the Diagnostics one. So I think we certainly can shop in that aisle. And coming back to the second part of your question and the other aisle, we can shop in the specialty labs. I think one of the things we’re really proud of with Biotheranostics is it actually makes money which you very well know that a lot of the specialty labs there’s a lot of great top line revenue, but a lot of expense and not much profit.
And so I think we continue to want to be thinking about things that can be generating bottom line. As Karleen is staring at me hard right now. I’m making part of that up, but I’ve worked with her long enough to know her discipline so we’re being very mindful and careful in that space and continuing to feel like, what we know we’re good at is taking existing assets that are on the market and operating them pretty well. We don’t want to take on, wildly diluted things, just because we have the cash. And we’ve continued to, I think, be patient and the underlying performance of our businesses continues to give us that ability to be patient. So hopefully, that gave you the landscape here, Jack. Thank you.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from John Sourbeer with UBS,
John Sourbeer: Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the question. Just a question on the start off on the Breast health business, any updates on what the backlog looks like there? And how many quarters of backlog that you have? And just how would that compare to a normal backlog in that business?
Karleen Oberton: Yes, I think we certainly have several quarters of backlog probably going into early ’25 at what I’ll call elevated levels. We traditionally have but backlog for this business, given the capital nature of it, but we see it being elevated for probably the next three to five quarters, as we work through that backlog and supply, the gantries to our customers.
John Sourbeer: Got it. And then, as a follow up on the Diagnostics business and in the Panther, I appreciate that you’re not providing a full through there and I mean just but just anyway like quantitative or qualitative lead to provide on just what type of improvement on customer spending you’re seeing with the addition of the Fusion sidecar.
Karleen Oberton: So what I would say is that the respiratory menu is on the Fusion sidecar. So that’s where we see the most upside coming through in that respiratory menu. But certainly, as we’ve talked about BV, CVs is really leading the growth in the Molecular Diagnostics business at this point primarily in the US longer term. That’s a great opportunity internationally. But also seeing customers take on some of our legacy women’s health assays as well. So feel good about that the whole menu is driving the growth but led by BV, CV at this point.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.
