安捷倫 (A) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Agilent Technologies Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions)

And now I'd like to introduce you to the host for today's conference, Parmeet Ahuja, Vice President of Investor of Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Paul, and welcome, everyone, to Agilent's third quarter conference call for fiscal year 2021. With me are Mike McMullen, Agilent's President and CEO; and Bob McMahon, Agilent's Senior Vice President and CFO. Joining in the Q&A after Bob and Mike's comments will be Jacob Thaysen, President of Agilent's Life Science and Applied Markets Group; Sam Raha, President of Agilent's Diagnostics and Genomics Group; and Padraig McDonnell, President of the Agilent CrossLab Group.

This presentation is being webcast live. The news release, investor presentation and information to supplement today's discussion, along with a recording of this webcast, are made available on our website at www.investor.agilent.com.

Today's comments by Mike and Bob will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. You will find the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations on our website. Unless otherwise noted, all references to increases or decreases in financial metrics are year-over-year, and references to revenue growth are on a core basis. Core revenue growth excludes the impact of currency and the acquisitions and divestitures completed within the past 12 months. Guidance is based on exchange rates as of July 31.

We will also make forward-looking statements about the financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are only valid as of today. The company assumes no obligation to update them. Please look at the company's recent SEC filings for a more complete picture of our risks and other factors.

And now I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Parmeet, and welcome to your first Agilent's earnings call as our new Vice President of Investor Relations. And thanks, everyone, for joining our call today. Before covering our third quarter financial results, I want to acknowledge the recent passing of Dr. Tachi Yamada, a giant in our industry and a former Agilent Board Member. Tachi was much more than a knowledgeable, deeply involved Agilent Board Member for 9 years. As many of you on the call already know, Tachi lived a very full life as a doctor, a scientist, as a humanitarian who was driven to help others. I know that the Agilent team is not alone in recognizing that Tachi Yamada will be greatly missed, and we extend our deepest sympathies to Tachi's family.

Now on to the third quarter review and our updated outlook for the year. In Q3, the very strong broad-based momentum in our business continues. The Agilent team delivered another outstanding quarter exceeding our expectations. Q3 revenue of $1.59 billion is up a reported 26% and is up 21% core. This is against a modest decline of 3% in Q3 of last year, so we are well above fiscal year 2019 pre-pandemic levels.

In addition, as another positive sign of continued momentum, orders outpaced revenue during the quarter. Our growth is broad-based across all business groups, markets and geographies. The combination of strong top line performance and execution translated into excellent growth in profitability and earnings per share.

Our Q3 operating margin is 26%. This is up 230 basis points from last year. EPS is $1.10, up 41% year-over-year. Agilent's success continues to be driven by our build-and-buy growth strategy and execution prowess. We are developing market-leading products and services, investing in fast-growing businesses while delivering outstanding customer service and continue to drive profitability.

Since the onset of the pandemic, we have taken actions to ensure Agilent emerge even stronger as a company. While we have yet to leave COVID-19 in the rearview mirror, our Q3 results are another indicator our actions are delivering the intended results. Bob will provide more details on end markets and geographies, but I want to briefly highlight our performance in our 2 largest end markets, pharma and chemical and energy.

We continue to perform extremely well in pharma, our largest market, growing 27% with strength in both small and large molecule segments. Our large molecule business grew roughly 52% in the quarter and now represents 36% of our overall pharma revenue, up from the mid-20s just a few years ago.

In chemical and energy, our business is recovering faster than expected, expanding 23% in the quarter. This is an acceleration of the momentum we achieved in the first half, and our order funnel continues to strengthen.

Looking at our performance by business unit. The Life Science and Applied Markets Group generated revenue of $680 million. LSAG is up 22% on a reported basis. This is up 18% core off just a 4% decline last year. LSAG's growth is broad-based across all end markets. Our performance was led by strength in pharma, which is up 22%, and chemical and energy, up 31%. All businesses delivered strong growth, led by cell analysis at 38% growth and our LC and LC/MS businesses, which grew 22%. We continue to strengthen our position in the fast-growing large molecule market segment.

During the quarter, the LSAG team launched 3 InfinityLab Bio LC systems at the well-attended InfinityLab LC Virtual Conference in June. These new products further extend our LC leadership position. In addition, building on our already strong pharma offerings, we launched new compliance-ready LC/Q-TOF and LC/TOF solutions to our portfolio in the quarter. The Agilent CrossLab Group posted revenue of $560 million. This is up a reported 21% and up 15% on a core basis. These results are on top of 1% growth last year.

The business is benefiting from increased activity in customer labs and instrument connect rates. This is leading to more contracted services, on-demand services and consumables consumption across all end markets. All end markets grew mid-teens or higher with the exception of environmental and forensics, which still grew 9%.

The pandemic has shown ACG to be our most durable business, with ACG growing each quarter since COVID-19 first emerged. Our customer-focused approach and digital investments continue to pay dividends. Looking forward, instrument placements and demand bode well for continued strong performance by ACG as we drive attachment rates and increase customer lifetime value.

The Diagnostic and Genomics Group produced revenue of $346 million, up 44% reported and up 37% core compared to an 8% decline last year. The growth is broad-based across product lines and regions and was led by our NASD GMP oligo business. The ramp of our facility in Frederick, Colorado continues to go very well. The quarterly results exceeded our expectations, easily surpassing the $50 million revenue milestone. While one quarter does not make a trend, our team has done a tremendous job increasing output in a high-quality manner. This gives us increased confidence in our ability to exceed the $200 million annual run rate in revenue with existing capacity.

In addition, the Train B manufacturing line expansion is well underway and on schedule. Our genomics instrumentation and consumables businesses rebounded strongly in the quarter, as did our pathology-related businesses. For the first time in several quarters, we saw diagnostic testing above pre-pandemic levels. While we are watching the Delta variant very closely, to date, we have not seen a meaningful negative impact on testing volumes.

I also want to highlight our performance in China. While still less than 10% of DGG revenue, our China business grew 50% in the quarter. We continue to see tangible progress in building a stronger China market position. In Q3, we signed our first ever companion diagnostic development services agreement with a China-based biopharma company. Earlier this month, we also announced the initiation of in-country manufacturing for our SureSelect product line. We are very bullish about long-term growth prospects in China for our DGG product and services offerings.

In addition, the integration of the Resolution Bioscience team is going well and we are very pleased to enter and expand our participation in the fast-growing NGS-based cancer diagnostic market.

It was a busy quarter at Agilent. So I have a few other achievements I'd like to share with you. Last month, we published Agilent's 21st Annual Corporate Social Responsibility Report. At a time when some are just starting to look at issues like sustainability and societal impact, this has always been a key part of who we are as a company. We've been addressing these issues since our founding more than 2 decades ago. I would encourage you to review our report on the Agilent website.

We're also very pleased to receive recognition as a Great Place to Work in the United States by the Great Place to Work Institute. This result is just one more example of Agilent having a highly engaged and energized team. And as you know, teams with high engagement win in the market.

Looking ahead, building another excellent quarter and the momentum we're seeing, we expect the business to continue to perform well as we close out what we believe will be an outstanding fiscal year 2021. As a result, we are once again raising our full year revenue and earnings guidance. Bob will share more details, but we're expecting a continuation of our excellent top line growth and earnings generation.

While the world has yet to fully emerge in the global pandemic, Agilent is well positioned to deliver excellent results again in the fourth quarter. I remain very proud of the Agilent team's ability to consistently deliver for our customers and shareholders.

Thanks for being on the call today, I look forward to your questions. I will now hand the call off to Bob. Bob?

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. In my remarks today, I will provide some additional details on Q3 revenue and take you through the income statement and some other key financial metrics. I'll then finish up with our updated outlook for the fourth quarter and full year. Unless otherwise noted, my remarks will focus on non-GAAP results.

As Mike mentioned, we had an excellent result in the third quarter. Revenue was $1.59 billion, reflecting reported growth of 26%. Core revenue growth was 21%. Currency added 4.5% for the quarter and M&A added 0.5 point. In addition, COVID-related revenues were in line with the prior year.

All end markets performed well, with pharma and chemical and energy as standouts versus our expectations. Our largest market, pharma, grew 27% during the quarter after growing 2% last year. The performance was led by the continued strength in our large molecule business growing 52%, while our small molecule business grew mid-teens. And all regions in the pharma market grew double digits.

Our large molecule business was driven by our NASD division and demand for LC and mass spec instrumentation and solutions, while our small molecule business was primarily driven by QA/QC refresh.

Chemical and energy also performed well this quarter with 23% growth. Even after accounting for the comparison against the 10% decline last year, this was clearly our best quarter since the onset of the pandemic. This result was driven by increasing momentum and demand for advanced materials and the general global economic growth. Our view is that the chemical and energy market still has additional room to grow moving forward.

The diagnostics and clinical market grew 28% against a decline of 10% a year ago, our softest quarter last year. We are very encouraged with the continued recovery in the market as our genomics and pathology businesses saw very good growth. On a regional basis, all regions grew with China up 41% and Americas delivering 38% growth.

In the academia and government market, we delivered 12% growth as most research labs continue to open globally and expand capacity. On a regional basis, Europe led the way. The food market continued its double-digit performance, growing 12% on top of growing 1% last year.

Food manufacturers continue to invest in increased testing to ensure quality and authenticity.

A developing cannabis testing market, primarily in the U.S., also contributed to growth in this market. And regionally, the food market was led by the Americas and Europe. Rounding out our key markets, environmental and forensics came in with 5% growth.

On a geographic basis, all regions demonstrated solid growth, led by the Americas at 32% and Europe at 23%, both exceeding our expectations. The performance was broad-based across all markets. And as expected, China was up 8% on top of 11% growth last year. All 3 business groups grew in China during the quarter. Pharma, chemical and energy and diagnostics were the key drivers.

Now turning to the rest of the P&L. Third quarter gross margin was 55.9%, up 80 basis points from a year ago despite roughly 40 basis points of headwind from currency. Our strong top line, some positive product mix, coupled with the strong execution from our operations team drove the year-on-year improvement. And our supply chain team is doing a tremendous job getting our products to customers despite the increase in demand.

Gross margin improvement -- performance, along with continued operating expense leverage, resulted in operating margin for the third quarter of 26%, improving 230 basis points over last year. Putting it all together, we delivered EPS of $1.10, up 41% versus last year. Our tax rate was 14.75%, and share count was 306 million shares, as expected.

We delivered $334 million in operating cash flow during the quarter, showing a strong conversion from net income and up more than 15% from last year while crossing the $1 billion mark in 9 months. During the quarter, we returned $172 million to our shareholders, paying out $59 million in dividends and repurchasing roughly 800,000 shares for $113 million.

Year-to-date, we've returned $829 million to shareholders in the forms of dividends and share repurchases. And we ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in cash, $2.9 billion in outstanding debt and a net leverage ratio of 0.8.

Accounting for our Q3 performance and improved outlook in the fourth quarter, we are again raising our full year projections for both revenue and earnings per share.

We are increasing our full year revenue projection to a range of $6.29 billion to $6.32 billion, up $125 million at the midpoint from previous guidance and representing reported growth of 17.8% to 18.4% and core growth of 14.5% to 15%. Included is roughly 3 points of impact from currency and a small amount from M&A. In addition, we're on track to deliver roughly $100 million in COVID-related revenue in fiscal 2021, in line with our expectations from the beginning of the year and flat to last year. We expect to continue our strong operating leverage, and so we are increasing our fiscal 2021 non-GAAP EPS to a range of $4.28 and to $4.31 per share, up 30% to 31% for the year. This translates to fourth quarter revenue ranging from $1.63 billion to $1.66 billion. This represents reported growth of 10% to 12% and core growth of 8.5% to 10%, on top of the 6% growth in Q4 of last year when we started to see early signs of recovery from the strict lockdowns.

In addition, while COVID revenue was roughly flat year-on-year for the full year, last year's fiscal fourth quarter represented the high watermark in our COVID-related revenue. And as a result, we expect to see roughly a 1 point headwind due to COVID revenue in the quarter. So our core growth, excluding COVID, would be comparable to 9.5% to 11%. We are forecasting higher expenses in the fourth quarter as we invest to maintain our strong momentum, but expect continued operating leverage in excess of 100 basis points. Non-GAAP EPS is expected to be between $1.15 and $1.18 with growth of 17% to 20%.

Now before opening the call for questions, I want to reiterate that we continue to see good demand in our end markets, have solid momentum in all our businesses and expect to close the year extremely well. We believe our strategy is the right ones for Agilent, but we couldn't achieve these results we've been producing without the excellent execution by the team.

With that, Parmeet, back to you for Q&A.

Thanks, Bob. Paul, if you could please provide instructions for the Q&A now.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question is from Tycho Peterson with JPMorgan.

Congrats on the quarter. Mike, I want to start with the China outlook. I know in China, there's been a fair amount of noise about companies being able to do products in the country, ports being shut down, terminals shut down. So can you maybe just talk to kind of some of the near-term dynamics in China? It sounds like trade tension is also getting worse with the Buy China policy. So how do you think about that over the next couple of quarters?

Yes, sure. Thanks for the congratulatory comments, Tycho. And we really actually continue to feel quite good about our performance in China. As Bob and I mentioned in the call script, I think 8% up on 11% last year. And I think our stack growth rate is around 19% in Q3, is actually up where our stack rate of 17% in Q2. We're seeing this good strong pharma and C&E demand in China now, and the funnel has really remained quite robust.

And I think now getting to your specific question, we're not seeing any significant changes in terms of ability to get product in. I mean there's been a lot of noise for years, I have to say, between the United States and China, yet the business seems to somehow get transacted. So Bob, I think we're not really overly concerned about those dynamics. And we did have somewhat of a little bit of shipment interruption as some of our academia and government customers were -- had to work through a VAT tax exemption change. But I think that was relatively minor impact on the P&L. So -- but clearly, we're monitoring those developments. And you have to continue to work to make sure you've got your logistics flowing through the country, but we've always been able to find a way and are not overly concerned about it at this point.

Yes. I would say, Tycho, we continue to invest in China, as we mentioned in the call. And there are always bumps here and there. But long term, we feel very good about the business in China.

Yes. I just have one other thought here, Tycho, is relative to logistics. We had invested into a number of forward-looking stocking locations over the last few years, that really has paid us dividends because we're less dependent on stuff coming directly into -- they'll be at the port because we have a lot of in-country inventory.

Okay. That's helpful. And then it sounds like you've got a lot of underlying momentum. I know you don't want to talk about the order book, but any preliminary comments you can make on '22 at this point. The Street has you up about 6.5%. Curious if you think that's a reasonable bar. And any comments on where you think margins may go next year.

Yes. Thanks, Tycho. So as you might imagine, I'll probably sidestep that question a little bit in terms of specifics. But what I can tell you is that we feel really good about the momentum of the business. The order book is continuing to be strong, and that's as of today, where we got the latest view of the early orders through August. So order momentum remains there. As I mentioned on our prior earnings call, we feel really good about our ability to meet and exceed those long-term growth goals. We put out the margin goals. So I think that's where we stand right now is -- we'll get to that in November, but we're feeling good about the trajectory of the business momentum we've built here.

Your next question is from Brandon Couillard with Jefferies.

Mike, maybe just starting with the biopharma business, I mean 50% growth in large molecule is pretty impressive. Can you just elaborate kind of on the sources of growth there and what that would look like if you back out the NASD contribution?

Yes, sure. And then I'm actually going to invite Bob and I also want to have Jacob make a few comments on some of those new introductions here. So I think I used the word broad-based at least 5 or 6x, maybe 10x in my prepared remarks, and we're seeing that in biopharma. So we've got across the board double-digit growth happening here, cell analysis, LC, LC/MS, other platforms that go into biopharma along with our consumables and services. And then, to your point, really outstanding growth in NASD. But while NASD was a big contributor, it was an Agilent live story. And Bob, maybe you can just answer the specifics on the numbers.

Yes. And Brandon, to your point, total in large molecule was 52%, as I mentioned before. But even if you back out the NASD business, it still grew in excess of 40%. So very strong business on NASD, but it shows that the rest of the business, both instrumentation as well as the consumables pieces and the other elements on the pharma-associated revenue in Diagnostics and Genomics, also very strong business.

And Brandon, I just want to maybe have Jacob jump in very quickly because we have a continued drumbeat of new introductions into this space as well, which has been the focus and prioritization of our R&D pipeline. Jacob, I know we had 2 big introductions in Q3 as well.

Yes. Thanks for that, Mike. And as I said at the Analyst Day, I think we talked about in, let's say, that 70% of our portfolio, above that was really focused on biopharma. So I'm really happy to see that momentum we have right now. And as you also mentioned in the prepared remarks, I'm very pleased what we did with the Bio LC portfolio. In fact, we had -- and in one of the big -- a lot of our momentum is that with that Bio LC that we introduced here a few months ago. And we had a virtual conference with more than the 1,000 customers participating, and we had more than 25 external scientific speakers, which I would actually say, I know it's the best in the industry by far. So that introduction is actually creating quite a lot of momentum, and it allows us to play for all the bionode, biocompatible space for the 2D-LC, but clearly also into the mass spec we'd embark at the end of it.

And we also mentioned the compliance, the FDA Part 11 informatics compliance is another very important part that most of the biopharma sees as a requirement to do business with them. And we have invested in this for quite a while. So we ensure the data integrity, the audit readiness and choice of data is have the right level of security. And right now, we have with the offering both supporting our LC, but also all our major mass [spec] domestic instruments and also in spectroscopy with the recent announcement here of the TOF and the Q-TOF informatics solutions. So right now, we are -- we have a very strong portfolio, and that truly drives our growth. Well, I can continue talking about the (inaudible).

So I better bounce it back to Brandon. Brandon, thanks for allowing us to do a little bit of advertising on the Agilent portfolio strength, but back to you to see if you have any additional questions.

Yes. I think just touching on maybe if we could just elaborate on the small molecule market. You mentioned kind of QA/QC refresh. Curious what we might be in there and what you think the market is kind of growing for small molecule relative to your mid-teen?

It's our view that there's always a replacement market going on in the small molecule space. And sometimes it picks up a bit more. But I think we're in that phase right now. I wouldn't say it's a huge acceleration. It's just this solid and probably high single...

Yes, I was going to say, Brandon, as we think about this prior to the pandemic, we were probably slower growth than normal where some of the QA/QC refresh was probably elongated. And now we're starting to see that pick back up. And that typically is an 18- to kind of 24-month kind of cycle. And I would say we're still in the beginning of that. And so I feel good about the continued performance of the refresh cycle going forward.

Your next question is from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.

Congrats on the strong print this afternoon. Maybe, Mike, maybe on my first question here. Resolution Bio, the deal that you guys did. Could that come in line with expectations? I'm just curious, the 50 basis points contribution seems a little light. Is there some ramp-up phase here that's involved or not? Maybe just talk about what the deal does to you and how it adds to the corporate growth rate here?

Yes. So you're doing some very good math. So it's was about 0.5 point of reported growth, right, Bob? And I'd say relative to Q3, probably a little bit behind the revenue as we learn more about this business, there's some elements of lumpiness. So we're feeling pretty good about how the business will finish, but we're expecting a lot in the fourth quarter. I think this is a story of continued acceleration of growth in '22 and beyond. And we're just super delighted by the early days of how the teams feel about being part of Agilent.

And then we're really building scale around this business. So I think it's still a relatively small part of the overall revenue picture today for Agilent. We knew that going in. I think it roughly is 50-ish kind of million. But we expect really strong growth rates in the coming years. And again, we really feel like we're off to a great start with this team. We're just interacting with Mark Li, who is the founder -- cofounder of Resolution Bio. He's really happy about the capabilities that we're bringing to his business to further scale it. So early days, but feeling pretty good about things. And Bob, I don't know if you or Sam has...

Yes. I just going to say the other thing is, obviously, we're just now having more and more conversations with our existing CDx customers and the power of being able to have our established CDx business on the IHC side, coupled with NGS-based technology, I think, is going to be a real significant competitive advantage for us going forward. So very excited about this business going forward.

That's helpful, Mike. And Bob, one for you on expenses. Year-to-date operating expense as a percentage of revenues, you guys are in low 30s, sub-31%. That's well below your historical level. I guess my question is, is this all just associated with the volume leverage rate, given the strong organic performance year-to-date? Or are there some timing elements on expenses that's failing you? And how should we -- if there are, how should we think about those factors coming back in '22?

Yes. Vijay, it's a great question. And I think if you remember, maybe a year ago, we talked about some of these expenses that were going down. And our goal was not to have them come back to the same levels that they had. And these would be in areas around travel, but also leveraging our digital capabilities. And what we've been able to do is be very successful.

Certainly, volume is our friend. And the leverage that we've been able to drive across all 3 of our business groups has really helped. But if you look at our year-over-year elements around travel and costs associated with marketing programs and digital investments, our digital investments have gone up, but the actual return on those investments has actually gone up. And in fact, Jacob just highlighted one of the programs that we had.

And so those are -- our goals are for those to continue -- they will continue to ramp next year to come back, but not near the level that they had come prior to the pandemic. So we do think that there's a fundamental margin improvement associated with these expenses. And that's why Mike talked about kind of our long-term margin expansion story is intact. It's not going to be 200-plus basis points like it was this last quarter, but certainly feel good about our continued ability to drive margin expansion.

Vijay, this is Mike, if I can just add one additional comment too, and hopefully it came out in my -- in our prepared remarks, but we're not holding back on investing for growth. So we were quite pleased with the margin performance, but it didn't come at the expense of our ability to grow down the road.

That's extremely helpful, Mike. Congrats, again. Thank you.

Thank you.

Your next question is from Doug Schenkel with Cowen.

Could I -- actually, can I just build off of that last question with a quick follow-up? Again, acknowledging and recognizing you're not going to guide on 2022 today. I'm just wondering though, at a high level, should we assume that incremental margin is going to be a little bit lower than normal next year if we're assuming a normalization of activity in a post-pandemic world? I heard what you said about areas where you're not going to need to invest as much, but at the same time, you are investing in growth. Just mathematically, did the incrementals need to be a little bit lower than normal next year?

Yes, we're still building our plan, but our intent is to still be able to drive that margin expansion. I will say that we are having our new Train B in NASD come online, which will add a little pressure to it. But I think we've been very good about being able to do 30% to 40% incrementals and sometimes even higher than that when the margin comes in. And I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to continue to do that, Doug.

Okay. Super helpful.

Yes, maybe what's underlying your question is inflationary pressures and activities around that. And I would say that we didn't see any material impact. Obviously, there is some, but we're planning to manage that going forward.

Yes. No, that's -- get on it. It's supply constraints, it's inflationary pressures. It's the hope that we're traveling a little bit more and there's real conferences and real site visits, things like that. So that's the spirit of the question, just making sure that to capture those dynamics, we don't have to think about something other than that 30 to 40 traditional time -- range. So that's helpful, Bob.

I would just add, in terms of -- sorry to interrupt, Doug, but I'd just say that some of our programs and such are really geared towards making sure we can manage our way through this in '22. So we're on this already.

Got it. Okay. In terms of full year guidance, as has been noted a few times, you increased the outlook by more than the magnitude of the Q3 beat. I guess I'm just wondering what gives you confidence in this change. Is it backlog data? Is it pacing across the quarter? Is it activity through the first month of the quarter? Maybe it's all of the above. And maybe more importantly -- you check everyone. Okay. Perfect.

Yes. Bob and I are smiling in the room here, and I think we probably checked mark on all first of those 3 things you mentioned.

Okay. And then throughout the year, you've consistently beat your own targets pretty materially, and it definitely makes sense to skew the error bars a bit more conservatively when you set your targets given the state of the world. That said, given how well you performed relative to those targets and recognizing we're not out of the pandemic, but we got a little more experience with it at this point, is it fair to say that you're at the point where you could adjust the philosophy a little bit and maybe kind of change the positioning of those error bars as you set guidance moving ahead?

Yes, I think that's fair. I think what we've tried to do is set prudent guidance as we've talked about in the past. But certainly, as we've -- and our customers, more importantly, the market is getting used to kind of dealing in a COVID world, there's fewer variables to be able to kind of understand. And I would look at just kind of what we did in Q2 to Q3. We dramatically increased our Q3 guidance and then did the same thing here for Q4. So I think our visibility is improving.

You should take that away for all the things that you kind of rattled off. Certainly the momentum that we're seeing, the general economic improvements and so forth. But as you mentioned, there's still a Delta variant out there. And so while as Mike has mentioned, we haven't seen any impact of that yet we also recognize that, that could change during the course of the quarter. So we're trying to take all those kind of factors into account, but also try to provide some realistic guidance going forward.

Your next question is from Derik De Bruin with Bank of America.

Can we talk a little bit about environmental and sort of that? And sort of I want to dovetail that question to -- I know it's probably a little bit early, but any signs of how we should think about the GC portfolio picking up? Are you just replacing -- is it just sort of like catch up spending right now in the industrial or any initial indications that the replacement cycle that you were going -- you were in the midst of prior to the pandemic is likely to restart?

Hey, Derik, Bob -- how about I take the first one and then Bob -- I mean, Bob, and then Jacob, you may want to add additional comments here. But let me talk with the question around gas chromatography. So we are seeing that. And that's really behind a lot of the fairly bullish comments, if you will, around C&E space. So we're seeing it in our GC revenue, and we're also seeing it in our GC order book.

And I've been very reluctant to call that, hey, we think this business is now in a situation of returning to growth. That reluctance has now passed. I think we're now into what looks to be the start of some really good potential business on our GC side as that replacement cycle turns back on. And Jacob, I know you're a lot closer to the details. Do you have anything else you'd add to that?

Yes, Mike, you're absolutely right. I think, first of all, the -- I think Bob mentioned that also the chemicals and engineered materials markets are certainly on fire right now where we see a lot in semicon and in mining industry, including [lithium] for batteries. But we also see the traditional petrochem markets really start to see some momentum now. And there's a lot of talk about the future of petrochem, but this market is going to stay for quite a long. And I think that all the analysis show that there'll be newer cycles here. So we see investments coming into this market right now.

And the new market that's also coming along is renewable energy, which will also use many of our technologies. And we see a great opportunity there also in the future. They're still in development phase. But there, as you know, there's a lot of investments going in here. So we are participating in that also. So we see a lot of opportunities in GC, and the GC is actually seeing momentum growth spurts in the chemical markets but now into the energy markets.

So okay. So following up on that. So you're feeling good about sort of your more industrial or so experiments, even with some of the choppiness in the Chinese market, some of the data there. So are you seeing -- is it the U.S. and Europe start doing more? Or is it just you're seeing a turn out of that one? And then where were we -- what -- remind me, in annoying baseball analogies where we were in innings on the GC replacement cycle?

Yes. So Bob, I think it's fair to say that there really is no difference across the regions. I mean China actually was an area of strength for us in C&E, and I think we're seeing good, good strength globally, which I think points to the importance of global economic outlook for this segment. And I'd say we're probably earlier middle innings, and it's a -- I kind of pause there for a while because we have a great run going with the new portfolio, but a pause. So I'd say we're like early innings, middle innings.

Yes. I would say, Derik, just to give you a frame, China was more than twice the China C&E market was in line with the overall C&E growth rate that we saw.

Your next question is from Dan Leonard with Wells Fargo.

I was hoping you could -- Mike, I was hoping you could address the 5% to 7% core revenue growth model that you've introduced in December. Is that still relevant? Or do you think something has fundamentally changed in the markets from that time period?

I'd say it's relevant until we change it. So I'm not ready to, on the fly here, revise our long-term growth. But as you may recall, in our December outlook, we said, think about us being more at the high range in that area. And I think it's the first time I put a 7 out there in any type of long-term growth guidance. I think what's changing is the nature of our portfolio, which is we continue to build very quickly, much bigger positions in faster-growing segments. And I think it's probably fair to say that the pharma market, in particular, the biopharma market is -- remains very robust. But again, we're sticking with those long-term growth goals at this point in time.

Yes, I would say, Dan, to build on what Mike is saying, particularly the pharma market, we do feel that, that market, in effect, Mike talked about it in his prepared remarks that we're emerging as a stronger company. We do think that the pharma market really driven by that large molecule area is a faster-growing market coming out of the pandemic than going into it. And I think if we look at where our investments are and the performance that we've had in the -- particularly the large molecule, now again, small molecules have been doing very well, that in and of itself would elevate that overall long-term growth rate to be faster than what we saw going in, which certainly helps us, given that that's our largest market. So I'll leave it at that.

Okay. That's helpful clarification. And just a follow-up on China. Could you elaborate further on the drivers of that 50% growth rate you called out for DGG in China?

Yes. I'm going to invite Sam on this call. He hasn't had a chance to work today in this call. So Sam, your thoughts on what's been going on in China. I was still a little bragging on your growth rate there.

Yes. Mike, happy to give more perspective on China. We actually had a good quarter across the board for all of our business groups within DGG. Specifically, we've continued to see real momentum in clinical diagnostic testing, like in pathology. We've seen really good pickup of our PD-L1 diagnostic or companion diagnostic there as we continue to train more pathologists there in the use and so forth. Genomics also had a really, really good quarter both on the consumable side. And we've also just recently announced within the quarter, the launch of our new V8 exon, which is being well received in China and globally. And I'll tell you one of our absolute strengths in China, as it is elsewhere, remain our core NGS and genomics QC portfolio. So all of those elements, along with Mike, as you mentioned now, the signing our first companion diagnostic development agreement with a biopharma there, I think foretell a continued story of strength in China for DGG.

And just to build on Sam's comments, I mean we've been working really hard over the last several years putting them in the right foundational capabilities, building the right commercial channel, the right ability to handle diagnostics products ourselves. So I think -- and it's really great to actually see those investments starting to pay off in near-term growth.

Your next question is from Patrick Donnelly with Citi.

Mike, maybe one on the chemical and energy side to follow up on some of the earlier questions. I know that's one where you pretty closely keep an eye on the order book and your confidence kind of goes with that. Are you getting more visibility as the order book builds there? I'm just trying to compare it to even pre-pandemic, mid-pandemic. I know you guys had a pretty short lease on in terms of how you would guide for that segment, how comfortable you would allow yourselves to get. Just wondering how the order book is looking there relative to some of the past quarters and how you're feeling about that segment. It certainly seems like the tone is pretty positive here.

Yes. No, I'm glad you picked up on that, we really wanted to come through on the call. And I think the confidence is coming from not only the revenues that we reported. But as Bob mentioned, in general, and I think it also holds for C&E, we just have much better visibility into our funnel. And you may recall I was talking a lot of -- in prior calls, I talked a lot about conversations we're having with customers, and we knew there was activity. But now that conversation is turning into orders.

So we're feeling much better about the trajectory of the C&E space. And I've historically been very, very cautious to give any real kind of positive trends in this area. But I think we've seen enough over the last few quarters. And what we're seeing with our customers in the order book is really the basis for this confidence. And again, it's tied to not only the pent-up demand they've had in terms of needing to replace aged equipment in their laboratories, but they also -- what we hear from our customers, they are much more confident about where the global economy is going, so they're willing to make investments.

I know there's couple of pauses here and there, and there'll be some ups and downs because of outbreaks here and there of COVID. But in general, the trend remains very positive. I think, as Bob mentioned earlier, our customers have learned to deal with this. So Bob, I know this is -- we talked a lot about this. Anything I missed there?

Nope.

That's helpful. Appreciate it, Mike. And then on the diagnostics side, just given commentary that you guys are above pre-pandemic levels. Can you just talk about the pace of the recovery in the quarter and then expectations for the further ramp from here? I just want to clarify and make sure you haven't seen any impact in Delta up until, I guess, this week. I just want to make sure I have that clear.

Yes, yes. I mean we saw a continued recovery. I think we mentioned at the beginning -- at the end of Q2 that we were kind of at pre-pandemic. We exited there. The average was still below. And that steady improvement across our business, across -- really across all of the regions continued into Q3. And by the end of Q3, we were above. And Patrick, to your specific question about Delta, we have not seen any impact to date associated with that.

Your next question is from Matt Sykes with Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on the quarter. Just on ACG, you guys had a pretty impressive operating margin, over 29% for the quarter. I'm just wondering what you feel about sustainability of those margins? And then any progress that you've made on attachment rates in that business? I know you mentioned a little bit in your prepared remarks and any additional color on that would be helpful.

Yes. I think I'll pass it on to Padraig McDonnell who can provide some additional color on the ACG and answer your questions. Go ahead, Padraig.

Yes. Great. Thanks, Mike. And we're getting back to a more normalized service support with our customers, which has more costs associated, of course, with travel. But we're starting to see accretive margin in Q3, and we're seeing that and come to improve in Q4, so very, very strong on that. In terms of attach rate, we're seeing increased attach on our services and consumables. And of course, with the larger installed base, this bodes really well for the future as more attach and attach rates for services and consumers will be available to us. So a very strong outlook.

Yes. Hey Matt, maybe just to build on what Padraig is saying. In terms of sustainability, we feel very, very, very good about the ability to continue to sustain those levels of margin. It gets back to the work that our service engineers do in servicing our customers is mission-critical for our customers, keeping those labs and those instruments up. And our ability to continue to invest in digital as well as be there on-site, on the labs -- or with the labs is really important.

One piece that I would add is we continue to invest in that digital, as I mentioned before. And our online orders actually grew faster. Our revenue grew faster than the overall ACG business, which actually speaks to our continued relevance in that space. And obviously, that's good for our customers in terms of either doing business with Agilent, but it also helps from that margin perspective as well.

Great. It's very helpful. And then just one more on C&I. I know you've answered a lot of questions on it already. But I'm just wondering how the competitive landscape might have changed. I mean, obviously, it had a challenging time during COVID. It took a while for it to recover, and now it's certainly in recovery mode. I'm just wondering, as you look out at the competitive landscape, have you seen some competitors slow investment and therefore, there's some share gain opportunities in that growth that you're seeing?

I don't know if they slowed. I'm not sure they're reinvesting for that segment. So -- and we're not seeing much happen on the competitive side. We're, by far, this is -- we're the clear leader in this space. We've continued to invest in our core portfolio pre and throughout the pandemic. So as you can tell, I'm pretty bullish about our ability to outgrow the competition in this space. And...

Yes, let me add, it seems like a long time ago, but we launched 2 new GCs back in 2019, both at the high end and the midrange GC. And we talked about one of the reasons that we did that is we've got leadership position in the GC market. But when you look at it, we're over-indexed to the high end. And so the ability for us to be able to have this mid-range who I think was really critical, and we're starting to see that benefit. And maybe Jacob will want to jump in on the conversation.

Yes, exactly. You're absolutely right, Bob, on the GC and our strength in our GC, but I think we should also mention our spectroscopy business and the ICP-MS where we have done a lot of work also ICP, OES and MS, where we've done a lot of work at it that have a very strong market share for the material science, and we continue to take market share in that space also. So I think you see us being very strong here. And we have also a size that we will continue to invest into this market going forward. So there's a lot more there for the customers going forward.

Your next question is from Josh Waldman with Cleveland Research.

Just 2 for you. Mike, you mentioned overall orders outpaced sales in the quarter, and it sounds like book-to-bill in the LSAG business was likely positive. Just wondered if you could provide us with your assumptions for core growth in the LCG business in the fourth quarter. And then as we look beyond FY '21, given the broad-based strength you've spoken about on the call today, I guess, is it fair to assume that as we look to FY '22, this business should likely grow something above kind of a low to mid-single digit longer-term average?

Yes. Let me talk about the fourth quarter, and I'm not sure we're going to answer the last one just yet as we're going through our plan. But...

I had to try.

Yes, yes, yes. No, it's a good try. I would say for Q4, you are -- you're accurate in the belief that our book-to-bill was positive for the quarter. And if we think about Q4, our guidance comprehends high single-digit, low double-digit growth for the LSAG business core growth. And so I'll leave it at that.

Got it. And then it seems like year-to-date pharma has outperformed what you expected to come at the end of the year. I guess wondered if you could comment on any kind of current thoughts you have around the potential magnitude of any year-end budget flush, I guess, given it seems like investments from these customers have been fairly consistent -- consistently strong throughout the year. Does that kind of deflate any kind of year-end spending?

Yes, we'll address that in our Q1 call. But to your point, we've been pleasantly surprised, and it has continued to be more stronger than what we've anticipated throughout the first 3 quarters. And what I would say is we don't expect that to slow down any in Q4 even.

And your last question is from Jack Meehan with Nephron Research.

You talked about the job that your team is doing managing supply chain. I was wondering if you could elaborate on the hotspots you're seeing in terms of input, shipping or labor. And when you look at the fourth quarter guidance, is that -- are you taking any more prudence or conservative-type approach based on what's going on in the supply chains?

Yes. I mean, this has been a lot of discussions. I think everybody is talking about supply chain constraints on a global basis. And it's been a challenge for us. But as Bob noted in his call script, our team has just done a tremendous job getting the Agilent products to our customers. And we're really good at this about managing situations. I mean we worked on these at least a number of commodity areas for some time. We also have done things such as identified and changing alternative sources of supply. So we've been able to do that.

We've had last-minute changes to notification from logistics suppliers that they won't pick up our boxes, and so we switched to another supplier. So we've been able to manage our way through that. And it was conspicuous, it was absent in our call script, a lot of details because while we continue to monitor it, that we really don't believe there's a material risk to the company at this time. And we feel like we factored all that into our guide for the fourth quarter. And Bob, I know that you've been a close study of this as well. And anything else you'd add to that?

Yes. The only thing I would say is it's the usual suspects that other folks have held out, things like resins and chips, and our team has done, to date, an outstanding job of being able to continue to satisfy demand here. And our expectation is that, that's going to continue to happen into Q4. And we've got a continuous improvement program that continues to drive productivity and efficiency gains, and we're expecting that and -- to combat some of these inflationary pressures as well as continuing to deliver to our customers, and we'll continue to do that into '22 as well.

Great. And then one other follow-up is on COVID. So the fourth quarter guidance assumes it's a 1 point headwind, though we're obviously in the middle of another Delta wave here. So I was curious what you're seeing on the ground or whether your products are just starting to wane, in general. And any preliminary thoughts around how you have $100 million this year, just how you're going to guide as you go into 2022 related to that?

Yes. What I would say, Jack, it's a good question. And our products aren't directly tied to the testing. We didn't see the dramatic increase, but also didn't see the dramatic declines with the testing there. Ours is more around expanding capacity, both in-testing. And over this course of this last year, we've actually seen it migrate to more therapeutic capacity -- or excuse me, vaccine capacity and demand there. And so we don't see it spiking up. We're not building that into Q4. I think it's a little too early to tell for FY '22. It's been reasonably steady the last couple of quarters. And we do expect contribution in '22, and we'll provide more color as we get through our planning process. But we don't see it dramatically dropping off.

I do apologize, but we do have an additional question. The last question is from Dan Arias with Stifel.

Just one for me. Just, Bob, maybe a high-level question. Just sort of to the idea of getting to a post-COVID world, whenever that might be. I'm wondering which of the 3 segments you think might stand the best chance of maybe rebasing at a higher level at the op margin line, just by virtue of some of the success that you're having and then to your point, some of the fundamental changes that might come to the expense structure. I mean is that something you think is possible? And if so, would you be willing to sort of help us with which one is looking most promising there?

Yes, I do think it's possible. I'm not going to call out because I'm not going to let -- if I call out one, I'm not going to let the other 2 division presidents off the hook. They must have thanked you. I think we can continue to do it across the board. Certainly, we are making investments across all 3 of the businesses to continue to grow. But we certainly feel like we have opportunities to continue to drive margin enhancement across all 3 of our business groups. Sorry, guys.

And that concludes the question-and-answer session for this conference call. I will now turn the conference back to Parmeet Ahuja for closing remarks.

Thanks, Paul, and thanks, everyone. With that, we would like to wrap up the call for today. Have a great rest of your day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect. Stay safe and well.