WAT - Waters Corporation (WAT) 41st Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (Transcript)
Waters Corporation (WAT)
41st Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Call
January 09, 2023 07:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Udit Batra - President and Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Rachel Vatnsdal - JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Presentation
Rachel Vatnsdal
Perfect. Hi, everyone. This is Rachel Vatnsdal with the Life Science Tools Diagnostics team. I'm joined by Udit Batra today, CEO of Waters. And so as a reminder, this will be a standard presentation. So we'll do a 20-minute presentation, followed by Q&A. You are able to submit questions via that conference portal if you are watching via webcast. Otherwise, if you are in person, feel free to raise your hand. We do have mic runners. We just ask that you wait to ask your question until you have the mic.
So with that, Udit?
Udit Batra
Thank you, Rachel. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for braving the day and staying for one of the last presentations during the day. I hope to keep it entertaining for you. Roughly two years ago or so, we launched our transformation program, which we announced almost two years ago at this conference, and I hope to be able to provide you an update on where we are with that transformation.
Nothing works if you don't have a great team, so I want to start by thanking the team that we have at Waters and the spirit that we have at the company that has led to quite a nice revival of growth, and nothing works if you don't have a supportive Board. So a big thanks to our Board as well.
I have three messages today. Number one, we have executed consistently over the last couple of years. Number two, we've revitalized our innovation, and our pipeline is delivering very nice new products. And number three, I announced about a year ago that we were trying to get into a few faster growth adjacencies, and I want to present an update to you on that front, and we've had nice traction there as well.
So before I get into where we are with our transformation, just a few words on the company itself. If you had a glass of water this morning, a cup of coffee, or if you enjoyed any lunch, chances are you've benefited from the products that we make. We are a leading analytical instruments company, and we work with some of the most innovative companies in the world to assure the safety and efficacy of the medicines that we take, the safety and cleanliness of the water that we drink and the durability of materials that we use day in, day out.
Roughly US$3-ish billion in sales, roughly 8,000 of us around the globe. Industry-leading margins are around 30% in EBIT, and present in over 35 countries. We are consistently awarded for our efforts in sustainability. So a rather nice base. We apply a simple and repeatable business model, where we – on the left-hand side of this chart, you will see where we listen to our customers to understand the needs that they have. Using roughly 9% to 10% of our product sales and R&D to convert highly complex instruments to interrogate molecules and convert them into simple yet sophisticated systems. And on the right-hand side, you see the four parts of our portfolio that makes this simple model work.
First, it's the instruments, right. We have roughly 150,000 of these instruments that are placed across our customers and in the industries that we serve. Second, the data that comes out of these instruments is fortified by an informatics system that is trusted by regulators and customers alike, so that nobody can adulterate the data that is submitted to these regulators. Empower, the system that we use for chromatography is used by the FDA and regulators to trust the data that is submitted to them. Roughly 50 or so pharmaceutical companies have used Empower over the last few years to submit data for pharmaceuticals.
Number three, on the bottom right of this flywheel, you see our customized consumables. We are a leading player in that segment. As the complexity of the medicines that we develop increases, so does the ability to separate them with our customized consumables. And this flywheel works with this fourth arrow, which is our service team, which basically services – it consists of highly technical service representatives, which makes this flywheel work for our customers. So a simple and repeatable business model with these four portfolio elements.
With this simple business model, we serve a highly resilient end market. So on the top left of this chart, you'll see our overall total accessible market, which is roughly around 12-ish billion, growing mid-single digits. The 2.95 billion that I showed to you on the previous chart is in the middle of the pie chart, roughly divided across these end markets. On the left, you see pharma, which is roughly 60% of our end market. Growing largely in – largely due to the volume of medicines that are being produced in the market. And with increasing concentration of biologics, this market is growing even faster. This market is, of course, quite resilient to ups and downs in economic changes in the macro environment.
As you traverse to the right-hand side of this pie chart, you see our industrial and applied segment. Roughly 50% of this is food and environmental, which is also resilient to changes in the economy. So the need for food and environmental products goes in line with the population. And then finally, roughly 5% of the remaining industrial market serves life science material testing, serves semiconductor as well as electronics and battery testing, so also quite resilient to macroeconomic changes. So roughly 80% of our business is exposed to resilient end markets, which have durable drivers.
So with a simple and repeatable business model, serving highly resilient markets, we have a portfolio that is leading in each and individual segment that we serve. So starting with the left-hand side of this chart, which is the instruments that we supply to the markets, liquid chromatography, with liquid – in liquid chromatography, we defined the QA/QC market way back when Jim Waters formed the company.
We defined this market and has – we've established a leadership with our Alliance brand, which is now supplanted with the Arc HPLC brand that you see on the top of this chart. The ACQUITY line of products was developed to serve the ultra high-performance liquid chromatography market, and that remains a leader in separating larger molecules.
As you move to the Mass Spec segment, we have one of the widest portfolio of mass spectrometry instruments in the industry, serving discovery applications with high-resolution mass spec and high-volume applications with our tandem quad portfolio. As you traverse to the middle of the chart, it's our TA business, which is a leader in thermal and mechanical analysis of materials as well as battery testing more recently.
Moving to the right-hand side of the chart rather quickly is our precision chemistry portfolio. Some of our columns that we launched back in the 1970s are still in use for characterizing pharmaceuticals. So this part of our business has extreme longevity and the most recent products introduced are customized to separate biologicals and novel modalities.
And finally, service and informatics. These are attached to our instruments to develop a flywheel that our customers have been quite used to. So a resilient, a stable business serving – a simple business model serving resilient end markets with a leading portfolio in each of the segments that we serve. This results in rather attractive financials, and I'll start on the right-hand side of this chart.
Our return on invested capital, and this is from full-year 2019 to 2021, was roughly 40%. This is a market-leading number because it's not adulterated by any acquisitions or any sort of COVID tailwind. As you move to the middle of the chart, you see 30% in EBIT, which is, again, industry-leading, and you see the peer average at 23%. But what is most endearing about this performance is the return to growth, right. You see a 9-plus percent growth that we've shown on a three-year basis from 2019 to 2021. This, again, is a leading market performance. So in all, if you just look at Waters and why it is such a good investment, it's a simple business model with a leading portfolio, serving resilient end markets that have durable drivers and you can see the financials come as a consequence of this.
So with that, let me provide you an update on how this has been possible to orchestrate over the last two and a half years or so. First, let me dive a bit deeper into why we think we have a consistently strong execution. Nothing speaks like numbers, right. So on the top of this chart, you see our Q3 year-to-date organic sales growth, roughly 14%. And as you traverse your eye through the portfolio, geography and end market columns, you see rather consistent numbers.
From a portfolio perspective, the growth has been led by stellar instrument growth, roughly 19%. Our recurring revenues, both service and chemistry, also growing in the high-single digits, both much higher than previous years. If you look at it from a geographic perspective, you see double-digit growth across all geographies, with Americas and China in the mid to high-teens, and Europe and rest of Asia also in the low double-digit.
And in the end markets, what is rather interesting is the industrial and academic segments, for a change, leading the charge and pharma is still being quite respectable at low double-digit. So very nice performance year-to-date. But again, what is more interesting is how this performance has developed over the last three years. So here, similar format. On the top of the chart, you see organic sales growth from 2019 to 2021. This is in excess of 9%. This is well above historical averages, which were roughly 4% to 6% in this industry as well as for Waters.
And again, the same format on the left-hand side, you see the portfolio. Instruments growing double-digit, recurring revenues, 8%, both, again, ahead of industry as well as historical averages. Geography, consistent growth in the high-single digits, and in the end markets, pharma now driving over the longer term the growth. So consistently nice growth. And one of the questions we get from many of the people who cover the company is, please tell us what the sources of growth are for this sort of growth? And where do you see its sustainability? So what we try to do on this next chart is break it down a little bit, right. So let me walk through this chart from left to right.
So the first column on the left-hand side is the historical long-term market growth rate. This has been 4% to 6% for a very long time, and what has commanded this growth rate as well in our heyday. As you traverse to the right-hand side, you'll see pricing. Pricing, especially last year was very good. This was about 350 basis points across the industry, which is about 300 basis points higher than overall historical averages. So in this market, roughly 50 basis points was the norm. So 300 basis points in excess of historical averages. So we amortize that over three years, that's 100 basis points a year, right.
So that 4% to 6%, you add a 100 basis points, let's take the higher end of the 6% and add 100 basis points, and now you traverse your eye to the right-hand side of the chart, and you see 7%, which is the peer average in the industry, right. And the range of the peer group is between 6% and 9%. And you see Waters is at 9-plus percent, which is about a 200 basis points in excess of the overall market that we see growing, okay.
So now what I'll try to do is explain this 200 basis points and the sustainability of it. There are three drivers of this 200 basis points of excess performance versus market. First, the success of our commercial initiatives, which I shared roughly two years ago right here. Second, our innovation has started to contribute rather handsomely, and I'll share with you some details of the products that we launched over the last two years and how they have gained traction. And number three, we are extremely excited to share that some of the adjacencies that we've talked about just last year have started to gain traction.
So let me take each of these in turn. First, the commercial initiatives. What you'll recall is that we shared five of these initiatives. And in each of those areas, we've made solid progress, and we see a nice runway ahead of us as well. First, we said we are going to replace roughly 13,000 or so instruments that we had accumulated over the last few years as a backlog. We are roughly one third of the way through this journey. Number two, we said we will increase our service attachment rates, which is already industry-leading, by about 1,000 basis points. Over the last 2.5 years or so, we've increased that number by 250 basis points – sorry, 350 basis points, and there is another 650 basis points to go.
Number three, we said we want to increase our penetration in serving contract manufacturers and contract research organizations. We've started off extremely well. In fact, the growth in that particular segment outpaces the overall growth of Waters' by 100%. So it's about 20% growth versus the 9-plus percent growth that I showed you earlier. Then we still see a nice runway ahead there. We are roughly half the way through the – increasing the penetration of that particular segment.
Number four, when we started two years and change ago, the penetration of our consumables revenue across the e-commerce channel was less than 20%. Today, that number is at 35%, still far away from the 55%, we think, is industry average. So still some nice runway ahead on that initiative. And finally, we had said we were going to start doing justice to the new products that we launch, and we've already seen benefit on that front. So our product vitality index measured as the incremental revenue of products launched over the last three years. Instruments launched over the last three years and consumables launched over the last five years has increased from about 9% to 15%. So across all five initiatives, we've seen nice progress, but we also have a significant runway ahead of us.
In summary, roughly 100 basis points of contribution that we should expect over the next couple of years from this initiative – in this initiative in the future. So nice commercial traction.
Let me now switch and talk about how we've revitalized the innovation. Same format that I showed earlier. We are largely focused on products that solve critical unmet needs across the industry. And on the left-hand side, you see liquid chromatography. So for small molecules, we've introduced Arc HPLC, which now supplants the Alliance brand of instruments, which is the mainstay in high-volume, small molecule QA/QC testing.
Second, our ACQUITY Premier UPLC, especially designed for testing biologics and has two orders of higher – 2 orders of higher sensitivity versus the leading instruments in the industry. So two products that meet unmet needs in the small molecule space and the large molecule space.
Move to mass spectrometry, starting with high-resolution mass spec, our cyclic – SELECT SERIES Cyclic high-resolution mass spec is one of the only instrument in the industry that allows you to separate molecules based on their shape, in addition to their size. This is a significant advance that has led to increased traction of this particular product.
As you move towards high-volume applications for biologics and small molecules, Xevo G3 QTof – bench top QTof, which is a workhorse instrument in late-stage development, can now seamlessly transfer methods from development into QA/QC with the waters_connect platform. And finally, the Xevo TQ Absolute, which I'll talk about in a bit more detail in a minute has the highest sensitivity in its class of high-resolution mass specs for high-volume applications.
If I move now to the consumables segment, we launched the MaxPeak Premier Columns less than two years ago that has had the fastest uptake of any column in Waters' history. And this is largely because we have allowed customers to speed up their experiments between 15x to 20x and increase the sensitivity at the same time because this column was designed in particular for biologics characterization.
Number four is informatics, where we introduced our waters_connect platform, which speeds up experimentation by 50% for people who are trying to test a large number of – are looking for large number of impurities in food and environmental samples. And finally, our TA business, not to be left behind has developed a powder rheometer that is extremely useful for characterizing precursors for development of lithium-ion batteries. So a renewal of the portfolio across the board and that bodes extremely well for future growth.
As we move along, before we get into the adjacencies, I just wanted to spend a minute on the Xevo TQ Absolute. This is a mass spec that we've recently launched. It has 15x higher sensitivity than the leading instrument, with a much lower footprint, both environmentally as well as physically and reduces time of experimentation by 50%. It is largely applicable for anionic compounds like PFAS.
And most of you would know that there are new regulatory requirements for increased surveillance of these forever chemicals across the globe. And there is significant global funding. We estimate this market to be roughly $200 million to $250 million, growing 20-ish percent. And with one of the best instruments in the industry, we expect to grow rather nicely in this space. So that's strong commercial execution leading to that additional growth versus the market.
Second, innovation starting to contribute rather nicely, boding pretty well for the future. And then finally, I wanted to take a few minutes and talk a bit about the adjacencies that we had introduced about a year ago. So you'll recall, I talked about our simple business model with the four parts of the portfolio. We were rather careful about selecting adjacencies where we wanted to extend our business by looking at clear unmet needs in areas where we could apply this simple business model, and of course, we saw a commercial opportunity. And we identified these five, which are growing almost double the rate of our core business in terms of end market. The 4% to 6% now becomes high-single digits to low-double digits.
Let me take each of these in turn. First is bioseparations. Basically, this is an area where we are introducing more and more sophisticated column chemistry to mimic the increasing complexity of molecules that are coming down the pipeline for medicines, right. So with increasing complexity of biologics and cell and gene therapy, it's no mystery that the demand for better separations is increasing quite rapidly. We estimate this market to be roughly $1.4 billion, growing 8% to 10%, and Waters has had a very strong position in the small molecule side of this business and we intend to establish something similar on the large molecule side.
Second, bioanalytical characterization, and I'll do a double-click on this in a little bit. But there are unmet needs across the value chain to produce biologicals, from raw material testing to process development and in-process testing to QA/QC. And we believe with our capabilities, especially on the small molecule side, we can apply the same logic to large molecules and novel modalities, and we think this market is roughly 1.8 billion. If you include not just LC-MS and LC-UV, which are areas where we have strength, but also some of the other analytical techniques that are required to characterize bioprocessing much better, and this market is expected to grow roughly 10% to 12%.
Number 3 is LC-MS in diagnostics. As the name suggests, this is specific application of LC-MS for high-volume testing of multiple biomarkers in areas such as oncology, endocrinology and drugs of abuse testing. Again, this market is $1.5 billion. It's already pretty well established, roughly 8% to 10% growth. Number 4 is battery testing, a highly exciting area. Battery testing is very similar to – is in a similar place as bioprocessing, where the full value chain of producing batteries from raw material testing to in-process testing to QA/QC is being established as we speak.
And our products have been used for a long time already in characterizing different parts of the battery value chain. We are now trying to get them to become high volume and simple to use. And this market is rather attractive, growing the fastest amongst the adjacencies, 18% to 20% and roughly $1.5 billion or so in size.
And sustainable polymers, the unmet need here, roughly – the unmet need here is driven by the fact that roughly 50% of the R&D in polymer development is now focused towards developing polymers that are sustainable and recyclable. And as you develop them, their physical and mechanical properties have to be measured using our products. So in all, it's roughly $7 billion in additional addressable market, growing almost double the rate of our core market, so rather attractive.
As I said, let me double-click a little bit on the bioanalytical characterization space. There are three settings of use that we have uncovered with BioAccord, the simplified LC-MS system that we've talked about in the past. Raw material testing, process development and QA/QC for biologics. And you see names of customers on this slide. This is rather unusual. Customers gave us permission to share their names. There are several other customers who are using the same application.
Starting with the fingerprinting of cell culture media, Janssen has been using our BioAccord to characterize all raw materials that go into development of their monoclonal antibodies and cell and gene therapies. In process development, we have a collaboration that's ongoing with Sartorius to speed up clone selection, which is a high-volume step in the early stages of process development. And we take a process that usually took six weeks, and we've narrowed it down to two days. And several customers have already bought the BioAccord to use it for that particular application.
Recently, AstraZeneca presented a paper at BioProcess International using the BioAccord to do in-process characterization of their latest perfusion bioreactor. So you can see there are applications for our products in process development already.
And then finally, QA/QC and biologics. A lot of customers have been striving to use mass spec in QA/QC, Regeneron is the furthest ahead. They've qualified not just the instrument, but the software for use in QA/QC, which is a significant step forward for the industry, and they have one of the largest pipelines of monoclonal antibodies in the industry. They have now qualified the BioAccord not just for identification of the molecule, but also quantitation of the molecule as well as glycans, which are chains that hang off monoclonal antibodies.
So you can see not only are these interesting areas where there are unmet needs, there is traction with our technology, especially LC-MS across different settings of use and roughly a $1.8 billion market growing 10% to 12%.
So I hope I've given you a flavor of how we've revitalized the business through commercial execution, through revitalization of our pipeline, through entering into adjacencies, but nothing would be possible if you were not leaving the world better than we found it. And I won't read through this chart, but across environmental, social and governance areas, we've received several accolades over the last year and change that verify that we have been working pretty hard on this front as well.
Now as I put this all together, from a market opportunity perspective, we've gone from – we'll go from about a $12 billion or so accessible market to $18 billion. From a growth perspective, we are growing from mid single-digit end market to one that is growing high single-digit to double-digit. And from a margin perspective, I think we've spoken about this before, if our business grows in excess of 5%, we usually have 100 basis points that flows right to the bottom line. In the short term, we are investing 70 basis points to 80 basis points back into the business to build these high-growth adjacencies. And over the long term, if we have investment opportunities, we will continue to reinvest in the business. But if these faster growth areas pick up, there is a significant opportunity for margin expansion as well.
So in all, I hope in this rather quick overview of our business, I've been able to give you some evidence why and how we are executing consistently, how we've revitalized our innovation and how adjacencies are gaining traction.
Thank you for your attention.
Question-and-Answer Session
Q - Rachel Vatnsdal
Thank you. And so as a reminder, if you have a question, feel free to raise your hand and we'll have a mic runner bring you a microphone. So first off, you mentioned it, all the sell siders scratching their heads on what is going on with instrument growth. I think a lot of us in this room have seen the difficult comps off of last year. You guys continue to put up good numbers on the instrument front. So can you walk us through what do you think is happening there? Is it an acceleration of the market? Is it outperformance specifically for Waters? And then where are the strongest pockets of that instrument demand that you guys are seeing from your point of view?
Udit Batra
Thank you, Rachel. Not surprising that's the first question. I think you'll recall that I presented the waterfall for the full growth of the business. I mean a similar waterfall you can create for instruments, right. So instruments on a three-year basis have been growing roughly 10%, as I showed on one of the charts. If you decompose this over the long-term, instrument growth was roughly 3% to 4%, add-on 100 basis points or so for pricing, you get to 4% to 6%, or 4% to 5%. And you compare that now to the growth that Waters is seeing, you subtract it and you see a bit of outperformance, right. And it's the same levers. Basically commercial execution, the replacement cycle that we talked about. Second, introduction of new products, which have been gaining traction across the board in LC, in mass spec, in TA.
And then finally, some of the adjacencies that we talked about, we are seeing nice traction of our instruments like the BioAccord. So when you look at it in aggregate, the 9% to 10% number, and you subtract the long-term growth rates and the pricing from it, it doesn't look so outstanding. I mean as much as it's doing pretty well, it's not the 19% to 20% that you see, right. So on a three-year basis, the instrument growth rate is 9% to 10% for Waters as well. Really 2% to 3% or so of that is outperformance, which is explained by the three initiatives that are actually on this slide.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Perfect. And maybe just since you mentioned it, pricing. So pricing contributed 350 basis points this year. It's been outperformance across the board for tools players. So how should we think about that pricing lever playing into 2023? Can you guys sustain this level of pricing? Do you expect it to grow more? Or should we kind of fall back heading into next year?
Udit Batra
Yes. I mean it's difficult to tell, but I think I would break it down into three levers, right. The first is offsetting inflation. And we still expect this to continue, but not at the same rate as it had in 2022. Second is new products commanding a higher premium and now they are in the second and third year. So you'd see that flowing through. And third is a muscle that our teams have developed to pass on pricing when relevant, which is something that Waters was not doing in the past, right. So with all those three, we feel we can pass on more pricing than 50 basis points to 100 basis points. Now don't ask me if it's 350 basis points, or if it's somewhere in the middle, but we feel much more confident than we have in the past. Given the new product portfolio that we have, given the fact that the commercial execution, especially on the pricing side, is way better that we should be able to pass on more price than historical average.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe looking at those high-growth adjacencies in the slide that you laid out. Looked a little bit different in the Analyst Day slide, specifically on some of the polymers and then the battery testing. It looks like battery testing used to be $0.8 billion market, growing double digits. Now today, that's $1.4 billion, growing 18% to 20%. And then on the polymer side of things, you used to kind of size the market at $3 billion. Now that's just under $1 billion, but growing a little bit faster. So can you walk us through what happened and what's the difference versus those Analyst Day numbers that you laid out?
Udit Batra
Sure. In all of those areas, we've learned a lot, right. And we have sort of become much more precise about what we think is our end market, the accessible market. So you didn't ask about bioanalytical characterization. There the numbers changed as well on the high side. What we've done there is included not just LC-UV and LC mass spec, which is what we did in the past, but also other instruments and techniques that are used to characterize raw materials, process development as well as QA/QC, right. So that's the explanation for that one.
For battery testing, not only have we included our instruments, but we've also included some other instruments, same logic as bioanalytical characterization. And that market is growing really, really fast. Our part of the business is growing much faster than 18% to 20%, or that is the estimate for the market. And on sustainable polymers, we took it the other way, and we said, look, let's remove all polymers and materials that are not relevant to the exact end markets we're serving, right. So it's basically very specific reasons for each one of them, and that's in the footnote of the slide as well. So you don't have to memorize it.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Perfect. Then maybe just looking at 2023, you've talked about your long-term outlook assumes that Waters will continue to grow above market. But the group is facing difficult comps heading into next year. Then also, we have some of this macro environment and concerns about that being pressures on the capital spending budgets. So can you just walk us through the puts and takes? I understand you're not giving formal guidance today, but how should we really think about that and growing above market into 2023?
Udit Batra
Yes. I mean, so first, again, let's just use that waterfall, right. So for the end markets, we are not seeing any meaningful signals of slowdown, right. So we are not seeing pharma changing dramatically. As I mentioned, it's a resilient end market, which is not sensitive to macro ups and downs. And over the long-term, this market grows high-single digits, maybe sometimes low double digits, right. We expect that to return. So nothing really changes there.
Second, on the Industrial segment, we've seen a really nice growth over the last couple of years. That should come down just a little bit. We can't expect that to grow 15%, 16% over the long-term. And then finally, on the academic and government, we saw a nice revival, but that was due to sort of lower comps. And we still have at the Waters level a lot of work to do to gain traction in that segment. So that's the market commentary.
From a Waters perspective, again, the three levers are on the slide. We still expect our commercial execution to continue to pay about 100 basis points or so. New products that I mentioned are contributing already and should continue to contribute over the next couple of years, and we are gaining traction in these adjacencies. So we feel rather confident that no matter where the market is, these three levers will allow us to outperform it.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Helpful. Maybe just kind of going off of those industrial and applied comments. You flagged the PFAS testing market being $200 million to $250 million. Can you just dive a little bit deeper into that market? Are there any additional regulations that you see could be coming in the next year, to three to five years even that you think could accelerate that market even further and what we've seen today?
Udit Batra
Yes. I mean it's early days, right. But I've personally spoken to customers in Europe, in Asia, and public health authorities in the United States. Uniformly, people are expecting the regulations to get much more stringent. So let me give you an example. There is an expectation not only are we testing larger chain molecules or testing smaller chain molecules, and we are increasing the sensitivity to more than parts of $1 billion. And this is where our Xevo TQ Absolute is the best instrument in the industry to serve that need, right. So we are seeing it across the globe. So that's the regulatory side. We are also seeing companies respond. We are seeing large industrial companies, and there was one in the news recently, we are seeing large industrial companies respond in advance of the regulation. Some have committed that by 2025, they'll reduce PFAS in any of their affluence dramatically. And we've spoken to those companies and they are serious customers.
So early days, but we see public health institutions and regulators increasing scrutiny. We are seeing companies that produce such products increasing scrutiny. And then finally, we are also seeing it not just relevant for PFAS in water, but also in food. For instance, in Asia, in some Southeast Asian countries, people are highly sensitive to what is present in baby food due to the baby food crisis a few years ago. And the regulations have increased quite dramatically there. So if anything, the regulations are going to get much more stringent.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Since you mentioned Asia, I got to ask a China question. So you guys were able to grow 9% in China during 2Q despite those lockdowns. It sounds like we are going through another phase of a pretty meaningful outbreak. So can you just talk about how were you able to compete in that region during 2Q? Do you think that's replicable again heading into this year? And then just any commentary from boots on the ground, what has it been looking like the last few weeks there in the region?
Udit Batra
Look, I mean it's a different dynamic, right. It's not lockdowns. It's actually complete reopening. And yes, there is a wave of infections, no different than what you are seeing in the overall economy that's going through our workforce there as well. I am not worried at all about the long-term growth prospects of China for our business, not at all. But I am worried about the resilience of the teams on the ground who have been going through all these turbulence over the last few years. And my hope is that in the next few months that this wave of COVID goes through, people get vaccinated and we come out on the other side of this. So not worried about the long-term prospects, but you do see a bit of lumpiness, given which part of the country gets shutdown due to larger amount of infections.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Helpful. While we're just talking on geographies here, can you just walk us through what you are seeing in Europe? Are there any capital budget constraints so far? Obviously, the energy crisis and how that's playing in as well. So what kind of conversations are you having with your customers in Europe there?
Udit Batra
Look, I mean, Europe has been one of our strongest performers, especially on a three-year basis. But even year-to-date, it's nice in the low to mid-double digits. Across the different segments in Europe, we are overweighted in pharma. So you don't see that slowing down at all. In fact, the food and environmental applications were led by Europe. Our mass spec headquarters is in the UK, so they benefit a lot as new mass spec products are launched. And then these mass spec products are custom designed and the software is custom designed first for food and environmental applications. So we've been seeing very nice growth there as well.
From a macroeconomic perspective, we have seen really no signals of Europe slowing down. As I mentioned earlier, we are serving rather resilient end markets, right. 80% of our business is going to pharma or food and environmental applications, which see no real impact of the overall macroeconomic conditions that you are referring to. So no real signals that we see today.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Helpful. Great to hear. And then maybe can you just talk about the onshoring opportunity. So we've been hearing this across pharma biotech, also with semiconductors in the CHIPS Act. But can you just walk us through how to think about this? Is it going to be really a one-time impact where it's just the instrument being placed in a different region? Or could we see some additional tailwinds, whether that's service attachment rates in different areas, some of the software selling as well?
Udit Batra
Yes, it's again quite early in the game. But I would have the same commentary I had on existing business. Now there are two pieces to the instrument. I think you were referring to the instrument replacement as far as onshoring is concerned, right. Classically, in the industrial segment, it's been a replacement business for instruments. Now we're seeing greenfield opportunities that are driven to some extent by the onshoring and to some extent by new segments like batteries. It's very difficult to deconvolute that. But in both of those areas, we think it's – once you've planted those – once you place those instruments, you'll have the same sort of replacement cycle that we see in pharma and the other areas.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Helpful. And then last question, because we're kind of running out of time here, just on M&A. You've highlighted that you want to be inquisitive within some of these high growth adjacencies. Just with your refreshed view on some of the outlook for some of these adjacencies, where do you expect to do a deal? And then again, what size, just given the macro environment, what leverage are you willing to go to?
Udit Batra
I think you know that I won't be able to comment any more specifically than I have in the past on this topic. But that said, we are super excited about what we see in the bioseparations area. I mean we had – initially, when we launched the adjacency, we said we first want to make sure that we have organic traction in each of these. We feel very comfortable that in all five adjacencies we see organic traction, meaning we have people who understand these adjacencies. We are super excited about what we see in bioseparations. There are several interesting ideas.
In bioanalytical characterization, we think we are in the very early innings of setting up that business rather nicely. And there's a significant opportunity and significant unmet need to speed up biologics processing to reduce the cost for cell and gene therapy, and analytical instruments have a strong role to play in that area. For battery testing, we've done really nicely with the portfolio we have, but we also see the ability to augment that particular segment. So especially on bioseparations and bioanalytical characterization, we are super excited about the organic development, but also what we see from an M&A perspective.
Rachel Vatnsdal
Perfect. And with that, we are out of time. Udit, thank you so much for joining us today.
Udit Batra
Thank you, Rachel.
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Waters Corporation (WAT) 41st Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (Transcript)