Udit Batra: Yes. And then I think you asked about the U.S., in particular, what are we seeing in the U.S. Look, I mean, as I said, I spent a fair amount of time with customers across the globe. And one of those was a large customer in the Midwest, where I spent a whole day with about 12 to 13 folks from the customer across many different departments, across development, manufacturing, QA/QC. And we talked deeply about what they envision for CapEx, which I sort of earlier commented on, and the CapEx is very robust. Second, we talked about the use of our new products, think about in-line testing with LCs, think about our columns, think about the upgrades for empower. The software, really, really well received. And we talked about the phasing of the spend, which also, again, is still sort of late Q2 and back half weighted.
But to put it all in perspective, if you look at the U.S. itself, the 5 years stack, Michael, is still pretty healthy. It’s in the mid- to high single digits, right? So there is really no drama outside of China. I mean we’ve had 2 exceptional years in ex-China sales. And now you have a little bit of a lull, but the activity looks extremely good, gives us confidence of what we are planning for the full year. So as I said, no drama, no new news, but just other than the fact that new products are gaining traction and customers have much more robust orders than they did a year ago.
Michael Ryskin: Okay. If I could squeeze in a quick follow-up. On Wyatt, you had some commentary on how the quarter progressed? And if you could elaborate on that a little bit. And it looks like you tweaked down the M&A contribution for the year. I think it was $1.3 million prior. Now it’s $1.1 billion. Is that instrument mix in Wyatt? Is that phased and phasing through the year? Just sort of how is that acquisition trending?
Amol Chaubal: Yes, look, I mean, on Wyatt, we’re making fantastic progress, right? All the synergies that we laid out at the beginning of the acquisition, like cross-selling, like attaching our LC seamlessly to the instrument, like attaching our columns with their shipments have all progressed ahead of schedule, including sort of a beta version of bringing light scattering on Empower. Now keep in mind, right, Q1 is a really small quarter and for instruments, especially and when things sort of slip a couple of weeks here and there, it causes that distortion. And that’s why we sort of tweaked down Wyatt to 1.1% versus 1.3% M&A contribution. But way that acquisition is going, we are super happy where we are in that journey and really look forward to bringing light scattering into QA/QC.
Udit Batra: And Michael, to build on it, again, from to customer conversations, I had an opportunity spent some time last week with one of our largest academic customers who has a hospital attached to it. And basically, we talked at length about characterization of lipid nanoparticles, which as you will know, are used for delivery of mRNA, both vaccines and therapeutics as we go forward, an area of intense interest across academia and industry. And these folks specialize in characterizing lipid nanoparticles, which can often be aggregated of different — and have different sizes and shapes. Lights — they basically use SEC columns from Waters and light scattering equipment to characterize these aggregates. In addition, what I learned is that they’re piloting the use of field flow fractionation, which is another instrument that Wyatt makes as a precursor to using SEC malls, right?
And field to fractionation, if — and the early experiments indicate a really positive outcome. If those experiments work well, could become a mainstay for any experiment that is done to separate these aggregates. And the same idea then applies to AAVs, which is — which are viral vectors used for cell and gene therapy or other particles, that are used in biologics. So very excited about what we’re seeing in Waters, really a great cultural fit, well ahead of all synergy targets and customer conversations even give me more confidence. So in the mid- to long-term, we expect it to continue to be accretive to growth and to margins.
Operator: Our next question comes from Matt Sykes from Goldman Sachs.
Matthew Sykes: Maybe just revisiting the guide, just given the lower-than-expected guide in Q2, and you mentioned that you expect sort of funnel activity translate into some level of orders towards the end of Q2 into Q3. Have you changed sort of your view on the phasing for second half in terms of the growth you’re going to achieve in Q3 versus Q4. Are you pushing more of that potential growth into Q4. Has that phasing at all changed for your full year guide?
Amol Chaubal: So Matt, thanks for your question. And look, I mean, we executed well to finish at the higher end of our Q1 guide, right? And that sort of keeps us on track for our full year sales guide. And as Udit discussed, our Q2 guide is essentially 10% higher than Q1, which has been sort of our historical trend pre-pandemic. And our second half guide is also very much consistent with how we’ve historically performed, which is a 45-55 split. So we generally expect the breakdown between Q3 and Q4 to also follow that historical trend for 2024.
Udit Batra: I think, Matt, thanks for the question. And again, I’ll remind you, we had the same discussion when we looked at Q3 versus Q4 of 2023, and there was a lot of discussion on the ramp. And I think we, again, landed at the higher end of what we were predicting. So a difficult business overall to predict if you have high average selling price instruments. But I think we have so much statistics from the history of Waters, gives us a lot of confidence and couple that with discussions that we’ve had with customers that we think the full year guide is fully intact. And quarter-on-quarter, there’s a lot more time to talk about it as we see how Q2 evolves on the ramp between Q3 and Q4. But history should be a decent guide if you’re really looking at that sort of modeling between quarters.
Amol Chaubal: Yes. I mean on a growth basis, it looks a little weird, but that’s because of last year, right? The weakness progressively stepped in China and pretty much Q3 and Q4, there was no incremental meaningful bad news out of China, but a lot of that was not reflected in Q1 and Q2. And that’s why it sort of it plays out in the growth purely from the baseline effect mostly from China.
Udit Batra: I think what Amol saying is it’s arithmetic and customer conversations give us confidence that we have a pretty good set of visibility.
