Aisyah Noor: Understood. And then the second question was just on M&A and your appetite to deploy capital from here given the recent share buyback program. Obviously, M&A activity among your peers has also picked up in the recent quarter. And then just quickly, if you could give us a contribution from Verogen in 2023, just to help us out with our models. Thanks so much.
Thierry Bernard: So on M&A, we confirm our traditional strategy. You see that you know that we have a rich history essentially, especially of bolt-on acquisition. We have always said that we don’t want to do M&A for the sake of M&A. We want to do M&A, not to spread the company’s fame again. We are constantly working, looking at opportunities that fit in our current portfolio and especially would reinforce our pillars of growth. So it’s a very focused M&A strategy. We have also said many times that we are looking at opportunities that could be during a short period of time, dilutive to our P&L, but should be in a very visible time frame, accretive. We always said that we give it normally around 2 years before becoming accretive.
And so we continue to clearly look at opportunities. We also said that given the strength of our balance sheet, we would or we could also be looking at stronger or bigger than just bolt-on acquisition. So this is a work in progress. Once again, what you have to keep in mind, it will have to be very much fitting into our existing portfolio and existing strategy. As regard to Verogen, we were expecting a contribution of around $20 million for the year 2023, and this is where we landed.
Aisyah Noor: Thanks so much.
Operator: Our next question comes from Doug Schenkel of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Douglas Schenkel: Hi, good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for sharing so much on your guidance philosophy for the year. I know there’s been a couple of questions on this and pacing. I want to take a different angle. So it’s an uncertain time to say the least, and you would have been an outlier if you guided more aggressively in Q1. So to me, while the Q1 guides lower than what we see in consensus models. I think the good thing is on the surface, it seems pretty derisked factoring in comments that you’ve made on OEM headwinds, China dynamics and how pharma growth is expected to pace in an election year. I guess my question is, where could we be wrong? What’s the biggest risk to Q1 as we sit here today? And then looking past Q1, if you don’t meet or even beat Q1 expectations, does the rest of the year start to look aspirational because it is really back-end loaded in terms of how you guided relative to the norm.
Again, I get it. But again, I wanted to see what the risk is to Q1, if any, and then get your take on what we need to see beyond a strong Q1 to have more confidence in the outlook for the year in terms of you meeting or have been beating expectations.
Thierry Bernard: I think — thanks, Derek. I think Ron and I can take — Doug I’m sorry, I can take that question. In terms of risk for Q1. Honestly, I don’t see a specific portfolio risk for Q1. The risk that I would highlight, and it’s not just impacting QIAGEN, if that happened, is the overall economic situation. Again, let’s not forget that half of the world is moving into election this year, that we believe that labs are still a bit slow to building up again their purchasing capacity. So this is for me the main challenge. Roland, in his explanation on 2024 guidance clearly also disclosed that indeed, we have an acceleration, especially between H1 and H2, clearly. Missing Q1 obviously is not our objective now. We want to continue to execute, but even if Q1 would a bit slow, I wouldn’t say necessarily that it would question the full year.
It would be far too early. Because once again, you see a logic sequential quarter-by-quarter acceleration of our performance. And my last rational argument would also be that do not forget that most of our new launches or expected extra contribution to our performance 2023 is coming in H2. We plan to have GI for QIAstat in the U.S. starting in H2. We plan to have meningitis in the U.S. for QIAstat in Q4 of the year. And we plan to have the real impact of our QIAcuity clinical diagnostic also in H2. Those are my assumption. But Roland, please.
Roland Sackers: Just a few additions and welcome back. As I said before, I also looked a bit backwards more or less a year’s pre-COVID because they are probably good indications to what we have seen before, right. And the revenue/profitability share H1, H2 for ’24 is actually in the same way as we have seen more or less for the year ’16, this ’19. So I would say, it’s quite normal in terms of ramp for the year. Second and I do think that is important as well. Again, I would not — I would rather turn it around what you said before. It is — you can now argue it’s a whamp [ph] I would rather say we expect rather back to normal in the second part of the year. So the off is rather in the first half of the year, the normal if you compare it also to the full year 2013 or even to the second half of 2023, that is what we expect to happen in the second part of the year. .
Douglas Schenkel: Thank you very much.
Operator: The next question comes from Falko Friedrichs of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Falko Friedrichs: Thank you. Good afternoon. My question is on QIAstat-Dx please, which was a little bit slower in Q4 than what we used to from this platform. Can you speak a bit about the dynamics in the fourth quarter also from a regional perspective? And outside of the test menu expansion that you’ve just referenced, what makes you confident that 2024 will be another step forward for the platform? Thank you.
Thierry Bernard: Thank you, Falko. First of all, you see when you ask about the geographic, we have to be very clear. Because of the delay of GI registration in the U.S., most of the growth currently for QIAstat is coming from Europe, from also Middle East and Asia Pacific. Those are the 3 contributions mainly to QIAstat. At the same time, it’s quite humbling to see that with one panel respiratory in the U.S., we continue to place system and take market against competition, which shows the strength of the platform. So — why are we confident? First, because we do expect, as I said before, GI and meningitis to come in the U.S. in 2024. And if by the end of ’24, you have the 3 normal, I would say, or traditional panel for syndromic testing available in the U.S., you completely changed the dynamic of growth of QIAstat in that kit market.
And I remind you that North America is still the first market in volume for syndromic testing. Second, because we have also improved our high-throughput QIAstat solution, the system that we call QIAstat rise, and we are relaunching it in 2024. In Europe, but also in the U.S. So long story short. As we have said on our last Investor Day, December the 8, 2020, QIAstat is a solution with a double-digit growth profile, definitely, and we are moving to take the second position on that market. If I would have told you we would be #1 on syndromic, it would be purely aspirational, but positioning QIAstat to really become the #2 in that market is the objective, and this is the objective we are going to achieve.
Falko Friedrichs: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: And we take our final question from Matt Sykes with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Matthew Sykes: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just one for me. Just can I appreciate the capital equipment environment you guys outlined in relation to the guidance in Q1 and ’24. But maybe just on the level of recurring revenue that you have and a lot of that is expressed in Sample Technologies. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more color on the cadence and your view on Sample Technologies over the course of the year, you obviously gave a full year guide for that business, but I would just love to understand how the cadence of that business is going to do over the course of the year, particularly in Q1 and then the back half of this year.
Thierry Bernard: I think as we described for the rest of the business, we expect a sequential acceleration here as well. Taken if you especially consider the purely non-COVID part of that Sample tech business, we will be completely aligned with the guidance once again that we gave on December the 8, 2040 [ph] portfolio, which is between low to mid-single digit. We were very close or slightly above mid in 2023. We expect to be slightly lower this year, but still in that guidance of mid to — of low to mid-single digits. Third, Sample tech is definitely the portfolio where, in addition to our current leadership, we want to continue to be on the attack. And what I mean by this is that not only are we the only company, which has systematically upgraded its instrument for the last 3 years, QIAcube becoming QIAcube Connect.
EZ1 becoming EZ2, every time with new features. As we said today, again, we will launch an upgraded version of QIAsymphony, our flashing [ph] platform by the end of 2025. And we are also planning new development in Sample tech automation that we will probably disclose during our Investor Day on June 17.
Matthew Sykes: Thank you.
End of Q&A:
John Gilardi: Thank you, Thierry. And with that, I’d like to end this call. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Phoebe and me, and we’re always available to help you. Bye-bye.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.
