Matthew Sykes: Got it. Thank you for that color. And then, maybe just following-up on Derik’s question on the second-half next year assumptions. Shawn, if we were to kind of look at the comp impact and then inventory destocking, where there might be some level of visibility that going away. Could you kind of isolate what your assumptions are for just underlying demand growth in the back-half, in the context of the second-half recovery, if that’s possible?
Shawn Vadala: Yeah. I’m sorry, Matt. I don’t have that level of triangularity in our model. And of course — they, of course — it’s very early to start trying to give specific for any quarter for next year. I think we always try to share what we know at this time of the year, recognizing it’s early, but we feel like it helps everybody to know at least what’s on our mind and it helps you to think about how to organize your models. But of course as we get into the year, we’ll refine the things as we learn more about trends as we enter the year.
Matthew Sykes: Got it. I appreciate that. Thanks, Shawn and thanks, Patrick.
Shawn Vadala: You’re welcome. Yeah.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Please go ahead.
Patrick Donnelly: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Shawn, maybe one for you, just in terms of next year, do you mind just breaking out kind of the segment forecast? You know, it’s usually pretty helpful just to hear kind of that sub-segment detail and maybe geographies too. I know you mentioned Europe and China.
Shawn Vadala: Yeah, sure. So, hey, maybe I’ll — some of this might repeat what I’ve already said, but I’ll just kind of go top-to-bottom just to make sure everybody gets it. So, I think, you know, the overall sales growth for the full-year next year is flattish. And so, if we start with Lab, we expect Lab to be up slightly. We expect, core industrial to be down slightly. We expect Product Inspection to be up slightly. And then we expect Food Retail to be down probably mid-single digit, might be a little bit more than that. From a geographical perspective, we expect, as I mentioned before, China to be down high-single digit with a bigger decrease in the second — in the first half of the year and growth in the second half of the year. And then we expect the Americas and Europe to be up slightly.
Patrick Donnelly: Okay. That’s helpful.
Shawn Vadala: You know, slightly low-single digit.
Patrick Donnelly: Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, I got you. And then maybe one on the earnings side, Shawn. I mean, just looking at 4Q, you know, in typical years, it’s about a-third of the year in terms of earnings. Yeah, you’re a little bit below $11 here for 4Q. I mean, just take that as a run rate, right, it kind of suggests something like $33. You know, the guidance for next year is more $39. I guess, is there something holding 4Q down, it goes away next year? I’m just trying to think about that as a jumping-off point and just bridging the gap to get to that guidance for next year on the earning side relative to what 4Q seems to imply.
Shawn Vadala: Yeah. I mean, I feel like you’re trying to take a low quarter and try to extrapolate. And of course, the fourth quarter has this dynamic that we talked about with not having your typical year-end market demand, you know. And so — so I’d be a little bit cautious to try to do any correlations off of that and of course, the way we’re building it up is a lot more granular. Looking at the different levers and trying to pull it altogether and so we feel good about the guide that we’ve provided. And of course, there’s a lot of moving parts. Things are dynamic, but I think we still stay very committed to operational excellence inside the Company. I mean, the culture is just amazing. The amount of agility and the amount of resilience is really impressive.
And the organization is doing very well in that regard. And like I mentioned before, we do try to find the right balance for the medium and long term here too. And I think we were striking that with this guidance.
Patrick Donnelly: Okay. No, so 4Q seems maybe like a little more of a depressed number than how you think about next year, I guess.
Shawn Vadala: Yeah.
Patrick Donnelly: Okay. I appreciate, guys.
Shawn Vadala: Yeah. Thanks.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jack Meehan with Nephron Research. Please go ahead.
Jack Meehan: Thank you. Good morning.
Shawn Vadala: Hi, Jack.
Jack Meehan: So, one of your peers called out lab closures is impacting demand as they went through the third quarter and into the fourth quarter. You obviously have really good visibility into this, probably amongst the best in the peer group. I was just curious what you’re seeing in that regard, if that’s kind of a factor that’s playing into the outlook.
Shawn Vadala: Yeah, maybe I’ll start, Jack. So, I mean, hey, the only thing I’ve really heard about is like there’s certainly a lot of small start-up biotech that have gone out of business. Some articles on that kind of recently. But, as you know, that’s not a big part of our business. I mean, it has a smaller effect on maybe our pipetting business, but a lot of our portfolio really isn’t geared towards early research. So less of an impact for us, but other than that we’re not hearing anything.
Patrick Kaltenbach: No, absolutely not.
Jack Meehan: Okay. And then on Food Retail, so, I just look back over the last decade, this has been, you know, give or take a $200 million business, you’re there. This year, you’re obviously trending well above that. Do you view this as pull-forward from future years? Is there some risk that this could swing below the trendline before we can get to equilibrium?
Shawn Vadala: It’s always a lumpy business, you know, like we’ve had some years where it’s been down recently. It’s nice to see retail have a great year. But beyond just being lumpy, we’ve actually won some new accounts in the US and in Europe. So the teams, it’s actually done a really great job with that. So you have like the cyclicality of investment cycles, but then, I think we have won a couple of nice — you know, a couple of really nice projects here. And then we’ve also have come out with some new innovations in the last couple of years, some new things that have added onto our portfolio or refresh of the portfolio, I should say, that has been really well received in the marketplace as well too. But I would never extrapolate anything from retail, because it’s always lumpy.
