Bruker's Renewed Focus On Growth Has Lit A Fire Under The Shares

 

Growth has historically been a challenge for Bruker (BRKR), as management was previously more focused on margin improvement and hadn’t historically done a great job of fostering R&D (or M&A) aimed at growing the company’s addressable markets outside of more staid legacy research and industrial markets in nuclear magnetic resonance (or NMR) spectroscopy and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (or MALDI) spectroscopy.

That was the story around seven and a half years ago, and I’m happy to say that management has managed to find a better path that combines improved revenue growth prospects and better margins, including margin uplift from a larger/richer aftermarket business. In particular, management has highlighted multibillion-dollar opportunities in a range of life science and clinical markets, while meaningfully improving margins since that 2014 article.

Bruker still faces meaningful competition from Agilent (A) and many others, and it’s fair to note that the company doesn’t have the attractive leverage to bioproduction like Danaher (DHR) or Thermo Fisher (TMO) (or Agilent). Still, on the basis of what Bruker does have, including sizable addressable life science research and clinical market opportunities, the growth opportunity here looks good. Valuation is another story, but that’s not so surprising for a life sciences equipment company today.

 

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Bruker's Renewed Focus On Growth Has Lit A Fire Under The Shares

While Performing Well, The Expectations Around Agilent Are High

I was skeptical about Agilent's (NYSE:A) prospects for outperforming its peers back in the summer of 2015, but since then, Agilent shares have comfortably outperformed peers like Waters (NYSE:WAT), Thermo Fisher (NYSE:TMO), PerkinElmer (NYSE:PKI), Bruker (NASDAQ:BRKR), and Shimadzu with a 30% run that has also handily beaten the S&P 500. Management has done a better job than I'd expected of improving margins and streamlining/refocusing the business, and Agilent has also done better than I'd expected in the pharma space on the back of a strong liquid chromatography product cycle.

At the risk of sounding like a broken clock, the valuation on the shares still concerns me. The new (and improved) Agilent has been generating FCF margins in the mid-teens and while I think management can deliver upside on operating margins and asset efficiency, I'm not sure that meaningfully exceeding 20% FCF margins is highly likely. So while I do think Agilent is a good company in the life sciences tools space (and performing well), it's hard for me to get comfortable with a valuation that already assumes double-digit long-term annualized free cash flow and/or a forward EV/EBITDA multiple more than twice the likely growth rate over the next three to five years.

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While Performing Well, The Expectations Around Agilent Are High

Seeking Alpha: Semiconductor Spending Looms Large For FEI

A lot of the "yeah, but's" that I mentioned in my last piece on electron microscopy company FEI Company (NASDAQ:FEIC) have come to pass. Spending on semiconductor equipment has disappointed as major fabs like TSMC (NYSE:TSM), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), and Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) revise their plans, oil/gas demand has dried up, life science demand has been consistently inconsistent, and the company lowered its long-term revenue growth guidance during its midyear analyst day.

None of these really surprised me, particularly the guidance revision, so the impact to my valuation wasn't too extreme. There's still ongoing risk to the quarterly results given the uncertainty in semiconductor industry spending, but the valuation is pretty interesting for a market leader with multiple growth drivers. There's still a risk that the company's margin targets prove too ambitious, but at around 15% below my fair value, it's worth a closer look.

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Semiconductor Spending Looms Large For FEI

Seeking Alpha: Newly Agile Agilent May Yet Be Weighed Down By Expectations

The life science tools market doesn't offer quite as much organic growth as many investors seem to think, but the high barriers to entry, relatively short product cycles, and consumables/service streams do tend to support good margins for the established players. The question facing Agilent (NYSE:A) isn't so much about whether the company can remain a strong player in markets like separation, mass spec, and pathology, but rather whether the company can reverse a long history of failing to live up to expectations and truly make the most of its technology and market positions.

At this point I'm a skeptic. Agilent shares may hold some appeal if you believe they can generate Waters-level (NYSE:WAT) FCF margins relatively soon, but I consider that to be a very ambitious expectation. Likewise, I'm a little concerned about the company's relatively weaker position in clinical markets next to Waters, Thermo Fisher (NYSE:TMO), Danaher (NYSE:DHR), and Bruker (NASDAQ:BRKR). Although I have little doubt that Agilent as a company will be fine, I'm concerned that there's too much optimism in the shares now that Agilent operates as a pure-play on life science and science tools.

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Newly Agile Agilent May Yet Be Weighed Down By Expectations

Seeking Alpha: A Focus On Margins And Clinical Opportunities Could Transform Bruker

Due in no small part to the willingness of large life sciences companies to grow by acquisition, there are not all that many small-to-mid cap companies with solid technologies, products, or market shares. Bruker (BRKR) is definitely one of the outliers, as the company has established a significant presence in areas like nuclear magnetic resonance, molecular spectroscopy, and advanced X-ray technologies.

Bruker has historically been more focused on product development and revenue growth than profitability, but that has started to change. The company has also started to alter its end-market focus, with clinical microbiology emerging as a very worthwhile opportunity. Bruker certainly has to prove that it can execute, and competing with companies like Agilent (A), Danaher (DHR), and Thermo Fisher (TMO) is no picnic, but Bruker seems to offer some appealing growth potential. The valuation isn't a slam-dunk at today's price, but there are definitely some bull-case drivers that could emerge to propel even better sales and margin performance down the line.

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A Focus On Margins And Clinical Opportunities Could Transform Bruker

Investopedia: Pricing Still A Long-Term Risk, But Illumina Continues To Build A Sequencing Fortress

Between the disruptions created by Thermo Fisher's (NYSE:TMO) acquisition of Life Technologies, Roche (Nasdaq:RHHBY) all but raising the white flag in sequencing, and Oxford Nanopore's ongoing commercialization challenges, Illumina (Nasdaq:ILMN) continues to build on its already considerable lead in the sequencing space. I do maintain my concerns about the company's ability to maintain pricing on a long-term basis, as well as reimbursement pressures in diagnostics, but it's hard to find much fault with a business that can be driven by ongoing sales of high-margin reagents and consumables.

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http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/081513/pricing-still-longterm-risk-illumina-continues-build-sequencing-fortress-ilmn-tmo-brkr-rhhby.aspx

Investopedia: Agilent Still A Name Worth Owning

Even for companies with a solid record of performance, macro and sector worries can dominate the story to a large extent. That would seem to be the case with Agilent (NYSE:A), as worries about the recovery in electronic test and measurement and the health of the life sciences market weigh down the shares of what is otherwise a very interesting and well-run company. Although Agilent may not be the best pick for investors who want to make a fast buck, investors with a long-term inclination should take a deep dive into this story.

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Investopedia: Forget Nano, FEI Is Real

Like all fads, the craze for everything "nano" pushed up a lot of junk stocks and produced few real companies before investors moved on to the next new new thing. While FEI Company (Nasdaq:FEIC) has gotten attention for its nano credibility, investors would probably do well to see this more as an analytical technologies company like Waters (NYSE:WAT), Thermo Fisher (NYSE:TMO) or Agilent (NYSE:A) than a hot next-generation tech story.

While the company does still have a large footprint in the cyclical electronics sector, the company is finding more and more applications for its technologies in sectors like natural resources and life sciences. Moreover, as the company continues to drive down the costs of its own technology, electron microscopy adoption could grow at an accelerating rate, as it has happened before with many other analytical technologies.

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Investopedia: Renewed Realism May Make Life Tech A Buy

It's easy to get sucked into the "gee-whiz" aspect of a lot of new technology, and that probably explains why bubbles are much more common in tech and health care than in industrials or transports. It's easy to dream of how gene sequencing might change the world; quite a bit harder to imagine the same from a new hydraulic component. Unfortunately, the reality is that life sciences is not the eternal growth engine that investors have long hoped.

Although investors in life sciences stocks like Life Technologies (Nasdaq:LIFE) have seen a lot of pain as Wall Street reorients its expectations, the worst may be over. With more realistic expectations in place, it may be time to consider Life Tech as a good blue-chip play on a sector that may not be the stuff of dreams, but is hardly a nightmare. (For related reading, see A Primer On The Biotech Sector.)

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Investopedia: Illumina Investors Get Schooled

For some time I have been warning Illumina (Nasdaq:ILMN) investors that they ignored Congressional budget wrangling, and the health of state university funding, at their own peril. Apparently that all came home to roost this quarter, as Illumina announced a significant shortfall in its third quarter revenue and warned that the fourth quarter could be difficult, as well. Though Illumina is clearly a technology leader, and likely will remain so for at least the near term, its customers don't fully control their own spending and that has been an underappreciated risk factor in the stock.

Problems Come Home to Roost in Q3  
After the close on Thursday, leading life sciences tools company, Illumina, announced that revenue for the third quarter was going to be well short of prior expectations. Though management has typically been conservative with guidance, and often surpassed it, revenue for the third quarter looks like it will be on the order of $235 million, well short of the $278 million average estimate and also well short of the $260 million Street-low estimate.

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http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2011/Illumina-Investors-Get-Schooled-ILMN-AFFX-PACB-LIFE-TMO-A-WAT1007.aspx

Investopedia: Agilent Beaten Down To Bargain

You would think that a company with a global revenue base, diverse industry exposure and solid returns on capital would get the benefit of the doubt. But in the case of Agilent (NYSE:A), you would seem to be wrong. Agilent may not command as much respect for technology leadership as a company like Illumina (Nasdaq:ILMN), but Agilent's diverse and growing business deserves more respect and investors should consider using this market pullback as a chance to buy some shares in this high-quality company.


Third Quarter Results Better than Feared
Even though there was not much sign of it in the published analyst estimates, sentiment had definitely been souring on Agilent going into this earnings cycle. Nevertheless, Agilent reported that sales grew more than 22% in the fiscal third quarter, with 19% organic revenue growth. Growth was led by the electronic measurement segment (up almost 24%), where growth in the communications business was especially strong. Life sciences delivered solid 21% growth (18% organic), and chemical analysis was the "laggard" with 16% reported and 11% organic revenue growth.


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Investopedia: Illumina Gets Capped And Cut

Fans of go-go growth stocks are fond of saying that valuations don't matter. And maybe they're right. There was little fundamental support for the valuation of genetic tools company Illumina (Nasdaq:ILMN) going into its second quarter earnings, and the nearly 18% drop immediately afterward also seemed to have little to do with any sort of sober valuation calculation. When growth is all that matters, rational trading goes out the window.

Q2 Results Not So Bad  
Illumina did not sell off because of the Q2 results the company reported. Revenue rose 36% from last year, with sequencing revenue up about 53% and micro-array revenue up 10%. Consumable sales were up 26% (and up 7% sequentially), and the company did seem to experience a lesser degree of pull-through for its HiSeq platform.

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Investopedia: Agilent Overshoots

It really was not so long ago that electronic measurement, chemical analysis and life sciences conglomerate Agilent (NYSE:A), was overlooked, under-followed and trading at a discount to its intrinsic worth. The market is always changing, though, and Agilent now trades much more like a popular growth company with multiple revenue drivers.


A Strong Second Quarter
Inherent to the Agilent structure is the idea that the more stable life sciences group can offset the more cyclical electronic measurement business. Right now, though, both are doing quite well. Total revenue rose 32% in the second quarter, or 21% on an organic basis. Growth was led by the chemical analysis growth, with a 60% jump in reported revenue, though life sciences and electronic measurement did fine at 39% and 19%, respectively. Order growth of more than 26% (18% organic) was also encouraging, though this number seems to be decelerating.

Gross margin did decline on a year-over-year basis (55.4% versus 56.9%), one of the few blemishes of the quarter. Operating income, though, grew more than 61% and the operating margin jumped three and a half points on controlled SG&A and R&D spending. Agilent still spent close to 10% of its revenue on R&D, though, so it is not as though Agilent is robbing the future for present growth.


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Investopedia: Agilent Goes Three For Three

It is interesting to see that however sophisticated the markets get (or market participants think they are), there are still plenty of oddities. For a decent stretch of time, Agilent (NYSE:A) was undervalued. Then it began moving on no particular news and not only made up the valuation gap but perhaps overshot it a bit. Individual investors can look at this in one of two ways: Take heart from the fact that the "professionals" leave plenty of fat opportunities on the table for retail investors, or despair that the market is less about finding and assessing value and more like a casino full of hyperactive traders with attention deficits. 

The Quarter That Was
Agilent reported a very solid beginning to its fiscal year. While revenue was a bit light relative to expectations, that seems to be solely a byproduct of some revenue recognition adjustments tied to the acquisition of Varian. All in all, revenue rose more than 25% from last year (though down 4% sequentially). Organic growth was led by measurement and test business (up 31%), with both chemical analysis and life sciences chipping in high single-digit growth as well.

Profitability was a little bit of good and bad news, more heavily weighted toward "good". Gross margin slipped almost a point from last year, but moderate growth in SG&A and R&D spending allowed the company to deliver nearly three full points of operating margin improvement. Although gross margin is important, there is still a "settling in" process going on with the company's acquisitions and divestitures, so this quarter's decline really does not seem like anything to worry about at this point. (For more, see R&D Spending An Profitability: What's The Link?)


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Investopedia: Danaher Hopes To Revive Beckman Coulter

Ending weeks of speculation, industrial conglomerate Danaher (NYSE:DHR) announced a bid for Beckman Coulter (NYSE:BEC) on Monday morning. Assuming that the deal goes through, and that is likely given the Beckman board's support, Danaher will join the likes of Abbott (NYSE:ABT), Siemens (NYSE:SI), and Roche (Nasdaq:RHHBY) as the biggest fish in the diagnostics pond. That said, Danaher is paying a rich premium for the chance to apply its operational magic touch to a company that desperately needs help. 

The Deal
Beckman has been trading on deal speculation since early December, and it was only last week that a Reuters article speculated on private equity bids in excess of $5 billion for the company. At that time, little mention was made of a strategic buyer for the business, though this author has been maintaining that Danaher would likely be the most credible buyer and that a price of eight times trailing EBITDA would be a fair price.

Lo and behold, Danaher has offered $83.50 in cash for Beckman, a nearly $7 billion deal that values Beckman at a trailing EV/EBITDA of just a bit over eight. That bid also represents a 45% premium to Beckman's pre-rumor price, and a pretty generous price for a true turnaround project. Given the operational improvements that Beckman needs and some of the peculiarities of the business, the last large deal in diagnostics (Siemens' acquisition of Dade Behring for 16 times EBITDA in 2007) is really not an apples-to-apples comparison, so Beckman shareholders should not feel too badly abused in this transaction. (For related reading, Does Beckman Bow To The Inevitable?)

What Danaher is Getting
In Beckman Coulter, Danaher is acquiring a diagnostics business with some major heft in many sizable markets. Beckman is a leader in the clinical chemistry market and has been at the vanguard of the fast-growing lab automation market (where expensive and increasingly hard-to-find technicians are being replaced by machinery). Beckman is relatively less of a factor in the faster-growing immunoassay market, but has a large share in the hematology market and a decent foothold in flow cytometry, where it competes with Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX) (among others).


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2010 - The Year in Med-Tech Deals

Medical technology has always been a sector with a high level of M&A activity in any given year. Large companies are always on the lookout for technologies and assets that can boost their growth rate, while a plethora of single-product/single-market outfits hope for the boon of a big-time payday. That said, 2010 was a bit of a disappointment in terms of deal activity. Though there certainly were notable deals throughout the year, the pace was slower than what most people predicted in late 2009. Perhaps, then, that means that 2011 will be an above-average year as economic recovery puts some life back into this lagging sector. (For more, see Where The M&A Action Is, And What's Next.)

The Gold Star Goes to Covidien 
Covidien (NYSE:COV) was certainly among the most active players this year. Covidien started off by getting rid of most of its respiratory care business and then turning around and buying peripheral and neurovascular specialist ev3 for $2.6 billion. Shortly thereafter, Covidien decided to expand its monitoring business by acquiring Somanetics in a $300 million cash deal. Time will tell whether the company can leverage these deals into sustainably higher growth rates, but it seemed to help Covidien's stock do a little better on a relative basis. (For more, see Covidien - Better Than People Seem To Think.)

St. Jude Quietly Following the Medtronic Model 
St. Jude (NYSE:STJ) still seems to carry a bad reputation from the days when it was the "other" company competing with Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) and Boston Scientific's (NYSE: BSX) Guidant in the pacemaker and ICD business. Nevertheless, St. Jude has quietly been building an interesting collection of businesses, largely through M&A. This year, St. Jude shelled out more than $1 billion to acquire AGA Medical and its cardiac repair business - a logical outgrowth of a company with interests in heart surgery, valve replacement, ablation, and other cardiology niches.


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Thermo Fisher Pays A High Price For Quality

Dionex (Nasdaq:DNEX) was on a lot of short-lists for potential life sciences M&A, and Thermo Fisher (NYSE:TMO) made that prediction a reality on Monday morning. Thermo Fisher, a large and diversified life sciences company announced that it was acquiring Dionex for $2.1 billion. 

Quality Does Not Come Cheap
Thermo Fisher is acquiring all of Dionex for $2.1 billion in cash, or $118.50 per share. That is a 21% premium to Dionex's price on Friday, and a healthy multiple for this niche company. Thermo is paying nearly five times trailing revenue and 20 times trailing EBITDA. That is well ahead of the current valuations for other niche analytical companies like Bruker (Nasdaq:BRKR), broad analytical companies like Agilent (NYSE:A), Waters (NYSE:WAT) and PerkinElmer (NYSE:PKI), and the acquiring company. In fact, investors pretty much have to turn to companies like Illumina (Nasdaq:ILMN) or Luminex (Nasdaq:LMNX) to see comparable valuations.

By the same token, there are plenty of reasons that validate that price tag. Dionex is one of the best companies in the sector in terms of ROIC and margins, and management have been very sound stewards of the company's capital. Where many companies fall all over themselves in trying to diversify and become a one-stop-shop for life sciences, Dionex has more or less stuck its specialty. That has allowed the company to build a 75% share in ion chromatography, while also building a decent (though small) high-performance liquid chromatography business. 


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Is GE About To Stir Up The Medical Arena?

With the worst of the credit crunch over and plenty of cheap candidates, General Electric (NYSE:GE) may be about to become more active with acquisitions. With some oblique comments from a senior executive, it would seem that this American conglomerate is once again about to leverage its considerable capital resources. Investors may want to consider the sorts of companies that GE may be looking at as potential targets.

Sticking to the Knitting
Although GE is a frequently-mentioned name in the guessing game of healthcare acquisitions, the company is actually rather focused and consistent with its healthcare business. GE is a significant presence in the imaging, diagnostics, life sciences and healthcare IT spaces. By and large, the company steers away from interventional products, so the likelihood that GE would buy a company like Stryker (NYSE:SYK) is quite low.

Cancer Therapy
Although GE is not active in interventional medicine, Varian (NYSE:VAR) might be a logical way for the company to make that transition. An argument could be made that Varian's radiation therapy systems would be a natural extension of GE's diagnostic imaging products. Along similar lines, TomoTherapy (Nasdaq:TOMO) or Accuray (Nasdaq:ARAY) could get some consideration, though TOMO may be too small and Accuray too novel.


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Thermo Fisher Gets Cool Reception

The movements of stocks immediately after earnings releases can be so visceral and idiosyncratic that sometimes investors are better off ignoring the noise. Such would seem to be the case for life sciences company Thermo Fisher (NYSE: TMO). Although the stock sold off sharply after earnings, the outlook for this company was not all that bad, and Wall Street's overreaction may give patient investors an interesting long-term opportunity.

The Quarter That Was
Thermo Fisher is never going to be confused with the likes of Illumina (Nasdaq: ILMN) or Luminex (Nasdaq: LMNX) - Luminex is a more diversified, slower-growing play on global life sciences technology. To that point, sales rose more than 6% this quarter, with organic growth a bit below 5%. While Thermo was hurt by weakness in the healthcare and biopharma sectors, and difficult year-over-year comps caused by the H1N1 flu outbreak last year, the industrial side of the business did well. (Learn more about the healthcare sector; see Investing In The Healthcare Sector.)

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