but there were a couple of real nice bright spots. Like, if you look at our service business, you know, our service business was up 6%, and that was on top of 15% growth Q1 last year, and I think we did double-digit growth in the year before that. So we continue to have very good momentum in service, and we continue to see that as a really nice opportunity. We also feel like the organization is executing really well. You know, we see that throughout the business in all different types of facets, and, you know, maybe we'll give some examples during today as well, too. But I felt like execution is very well. And, you know, we've also been just preparing ourselves quite a bit over the last few years in terms of a lot of investment. We talked about it on this call, we talked about it on our last call, and I just feel like we've also set ourselves up well, as market conditions improve kind of going forward. Okay. I want to touch on the logistics component first. Yeah. So as you said, you know, you had that issue in the fourth quarter with the logistics supply provider. You saw a resolution to it in 1Q, and it resolved slightly better than I think you expected in terms of some of the catch up of that shipment, but I think it was only maybe an incremental 100 bps Right ... versus your expectations. So the rest of the business did beat, you know, by 300 bps-400 bps, something like that. So it wasn't just shipping that led to the beat. The core business did come in better, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, our guidance for Q1 was a sales decline of 4%-6%, so call it five at the midpoint, but that included an estimated 5% benefit- Yeah ... from the shipping delays. So if you exclude that, the guidance would've been down nine-11, with 10 at the midpoint. Yep. Of course, we did flat sales on a reported basis, with 6% benefit from the shipping delays. So the shipping delays added 1% of that- Yeah ... five-point beat at the midpoint. Yeah. But the other four points was just better than expected. And, you know, we kind of, you know, when we kind of think about last quarter, you know, we all came off that tough Q4, right? And where our end markets were very cautious with their spending. There was a lot of belt-tightening going on. Mm-hmm. We very much expected our markets to start the year more cautiously this year. Of course, it's difficult to determine what degree of cautiousness there was there, but we were, you know, frankly, pleased that we did much better than what we expected in terms of how we started. The results were relatively broad-based, and as I mentioned, I think the teams are doing also a good job executing. You know, like, we really do try to find those opportunities where there are growth, identify them, pursue them, capture them, and I think if we, you know, if we look at the results throughout the organization, we did, you know, just a little bit better in a lot of different places, and I think that part of that also is related to good execution. Okay, that's helpful. I wanna just touch on the logistics one more time, just to completely put it to bed. Yeah. So, again, you highlighted last year how the steps you were taking to resolve that and move past that. You know, you recovered a lot of the revenues in the first quarter. Is that completely behind you now? Is that, that's it, we're not gonna be talking about the logistics situation ever again, hopefully? A- absolutely. Okay. It's very much behind us. Of course, there's things that we can do to continue to optimize processes going forward with our new service provider, but in terms of getting the backlog down, we're very pleased we were able to get it down. You know, when I reflect on it, and I talk internally about it with our organization. You know, we spend a lot of time talking about our culture, and I think culture matters most when you're faced with adversity. And I think this was a really good example of how the culture really stepped up. There was fantastic teamwork, fantastic collaboration. And then, and of course, our new service provider worked well with us and also made a lot of important changes on their side, too. As we kind of described it last quarter, there was a lot of blocking and tackling here. There was never an issue with integrations or systems. Mm. It was just a lot of process and things that we knew that we could focus on and improve. Okay, great. And then turning to the fiscal year guide, as you said, you modestly raised the fiscal year guide, both local currency sales and EPS, but you beat 1Q pretty handily. Yeah. So how much of that did you pass on to the rest of the year, and sort of what is your new assumption for 2Q, 3Q, 4Q? Did you sort of pocket some of that beat? Well, I mean, you know, we kind of like the increase to the guide, you know, largely reflected the fact that we did a little bit better on the shipping delays. But the reality is there's still uncertainty in the world, and we just felt like we would like to get a little bit more time here, you know, get a little bit more visibility into that second half. And then I think we'll be in a much better position to have more clarity in terms of, like, what the second half of the year looks like. You know, I tried to make it clear on our call last week, we're not seeing any negative changes in the business. It's just more that we prefer to take a more cautious approach at this time. Okay, that's good. And in terms of the... You know, you, you touched on how in the first quarter, the way you characterized it, I thought was good, was you did a little better on a bunch of small, different little things. Is there any reason to think that any of those won't continue? Or I guess put another way, are any of those, you know, true one-timers in terms of comps or timing or pull forward? Did you have any of that in the quarter or? No. I mean, we talked a little bit about some industrial project activity in the Americas- Yeah ... that we didn't expect to see in the second quarter, which I think explained a little bit the guide difference from Q1 to Q2 and on industrial. But other than that, you know, I think the teams are executing really well. We have a really great portfolio of products. We talked a lot about innovation on our call this time. We have these new corporate programs that we have announced, like that next generation on our last call, where I think we have good traction and momentum. I mean, it's still early to say that, you know, the latest version of Spinnaker 6 is driving incremental share gains at this point in time. But just the focus that it puts on the Spinnaker program in general, I think is a net positive. And of course, these things are evolutionary, too. And I've just seen, like, a lot of good work in terms of our progress towards digital processes, increasingly advancing our sophisticated analytics to identify opportunities and pursue them. But you know, saying all that, you know, market conditions were still soft in Q1. We expect them to be soft in Q2, but we do face much better comparisons in the second half, you know? I think that's, you know, we have seen like a moderation, I think, of longer term CAGRs here during the last few quarters, and I think we have a much better setup as we kind of get into the second half of the year. Okay. All right, let's move on from that. Let's talk about China. You know, you talked about some continued softness there. Yeah. You're still expecting a high single-digit decline for the year. Mm-hmm. It's consistent with what a lot of others companies have called out. You've got really good visibility in China market, given your presence and history there. Could you sort of talk us through qualitatively what you're seeing there? You know, any early signs of recovery- Yeah ... any early signs of stabilization, or is it just, you know, what are we waiting for? Yeah. Hey, maybe I give a little bit of color on Q2 and then, and how we're thinking about- Yep. I mean Q1, and then how we're thinking about Q2. Q2, that was Q2. Yeah. Yeah. So in Q1, we did a little bit better than we expected. I think we're down, like, 19% in the quarter. If you exclude the benefit of the shipping delay, I think we're down 21%. Our lab business was down a little bit worse than our industrial business. I think lab would've been down, like, low 20s%, and the industrial would've been down, I think it was like mid-teens% or something like that. Lab, of course, is facing, I think, more challenges over the last year. I think there was just so much spending that occurred during COVID. I think also the nature of the lockdowns, people were stocking a lot more, particularly on the lab side. And then, of course, you know, we all see the headlines with the economy, real estate market, and these things. Coming out of COVID, I think we all expected the government to focus more on the economy and to support the economy. I think absent of some of those stronger signals last year, confidence in the country kinda like wasn't particularly high when it came to investing. But I think what's nice at the moment is, even though things are down, they haven't gotten worse, you know? And if you kinda look at our Q2 guide, you know, yes, the reported growth is a little bit down. It's gonna be down. Our estimate is down mid-20s. But for us, what's kinda nice is that we're finally gonna turn the corner on some really, really difficult comparisons. And when I say comparisons, I'm looking over the last three, four years. And so we really feel like the high watermark in terms of comps on a dollar or RMB basis is gonna be in the second quarter, and then those comps get much better in terms of the second half of the year. In terms of the businesses, we kind of view both businesses to be down similarly in the second quarter. I think a lot of that has to do with comps. But then, as we get into the second half of the year, you know, we are looking forward to growth again. I was just on the phone with the team again the other night, and they also feel quite optimistic about returning to growth, and a lot of it does have come down to these comps. You know, we're not necessarily building in any big pickup in the economy. We're not building in anything for stimulus opportunities. We just think the comps themselves and maybe a more normalized seasonality of what we would've seen in terms of quarterly progressions, kind of on a pre-COVID basis, will kinda start to play out a little bit more naturally here, now that we've kinda had a more of a resetting of the baseline here over the past year. Okay. You touched on stimulus there briefly. Obviously, a lot of news on that in the last month, but it seems like so far it's just news and, and press releases. Any indication on, you know, timing delay? And just given some of the stuff, some of the headlines we've seen, you know, a lot of instrument focus, a lot of CapEx focus, your portfolio would seem to be, you know, really well, really strong fit for that. You know, would you agree? And just sort of, you know, what's your, what's your breakdown of the stimulus and potential? Yeah, you know, it's still needs to be defined. You know, we view it clearly as a positive data point. You know, a lot of it... But it's still, I think, too early for us to tell how much, if it's gonna move the needle or not. You know, and so we'll see how it plays out. If we see some benefits, I don't think we'd see anything until the latter part of the year. You know, to put it in perspective, though, like, when we talked about stimulus in the past, there's all different types of forms of stimulus in China. Yep. I think that's very important to differentiate. You know, in the past, we would've benefited from, you know, this kind of thing, where they're really focusing on our specific end markets, maybe with life sciences or technology. But then, you know, what we're not seeing necessarily is a lot of the broader economic stimulus, you know, that we would've seen. I think part of that is because of some of the softness in the real estate market, which historically was a source of funds for a lot of those stimulus programs towards economic development. But in the end, it's about confidence, you know, and the more the government can do to reestablish confidence in the end markets, I think that's a good thing for business, and I think that's what... I think that's what the market's kind of looking for. And I think maybe the timing of this, as well as everybody lapping maybe the same challenges that we are in terms of, like, comps, and people start to see growth again, can help the environment overall as we kinda move forward. Okay. And that confidence, you haven't seen that come back yet in the broader, just in the, in the country. It's still- Yeah- ... still- I think, you know, hey, the country's gone through a pretty significant- Yeah ... adjustment. I think, I think there's a, you know... I hate to, you know, use the word stabilization, but I think people are certainly happy that, you know, things haven't gotten worse. I think that starts to create a base that people can now build on and plan for going forward. But I, but I think, you know, I, I can kind of feel like, you know, people are looking forward to turning the corner. Okay.... And then, one last bit on China is sort of the geopolitical situation, you know, the BIOSECURE Act, things like that. Any way you can characterize your potential exposure there? You often talked about how, you know, your, your local China brand and your local China presence lets you skirt some of that U.S.-China geopolitical tension. Any differences to that this time around, and just sort of how much worse is it getting? Yeah, I mean, I feel like we are well-positioned on these topics. I think that, you know, we've, as you know, we've been there for a long time. We have a lot of success in the country. We manufacture a lot in China for China. Our products tend to be relatively lower priced, so we tend to stay out of the radar on some of these topics as well. And our products are also pretty niche-y in terms of what we're doing, so we, you know, so we tend to not get caught up in these things. If you get, like, more specific, like a BIOSECURE Act or something like that- Yeah ... you know, certainly, some of our customers might be affected by that. We certainly-- We're a global company, you know, so we also, when there's risk in one area, there's often an opportunity in another area. So I think our job is to kind of follow the opportunity and take advantage of it. But, you know, maybe just, you know, kind of wrapping up China a little bit, you know, going forward, we're still very optimistic here. You know, like, we feel like China is certainly not gonna grow at the levels that it grew in the past, but we do feel like it's positioned well for us going forward. You know, a lot of our business we've talked about in the past is focused on the private companies in China. More than 60% of our business is sold to private companies. Less than 15% is sold to multinationals, so we have a little bit less exposure on the multinational piece. And then the difference would be, like, state-owned companies and the government. And when you look at the country's focus on life sciences, and you think about the whole COVID experience and the desire to develop and manufacture their own drugs, I think there's still gonna be a lot of investment in China for China when it comes to life sciences. We also see a lot of the focus on strategic end markets, whether it's, you know, semiconductors is a hot market at the moment. We continue to see a lot of opportunity there, as well as some of these other hot markets, like new material, alternative energy, et cetera. As they're doing these things, they're also focusing a lot on automation and digitalization, just as much as we talk about it in the West. Our portfolio, I think, is very well-positioned for those trends as well, too. So we still view China very positively going forward for the medium to longer term. When you say, just a quick one on that. When you say won't grow as fast as in the past, you still think it'll grow above company average? Yeah. Ten percent? We still think... Yeah. No, we still think of it as more of a high single digit. High single digit. Yeah. Okay. Frankly, that's kind of how we thought about it with our algorithm at our investor day, not so long ago. We didn't, of course, anticipate - Yeah ... all the zigs and zags along the way. Yeah. But we just assumed it wasn't gonna grow at double digit forever. Yeah. On the lab, on the lab business, maybe specifically on pharma and biotech, and we can talk about A&G later. How have budgets from pharma customers started the year? I mean, there's been a lot of talk about how budget release has been slower, and once you got into March, April, it loosened up a little bit. How would you characterize what you're seeing? Yeah, I mean, you know, we expected it to start slow. Of course, if you think about how the year ended, I kind of mentioned this before, we felt like the belts were pretty tight at the pharma companies to the extent- Mm-hmm ... that we didn't really see a budget flush, and we saw that throughout our portfolio. We did have a slow start to the year. Maybe not quite as slow as we expected, but definitely a slow start. We do see sales cycles to still be elongated. You know, I wouldn't say they're worse than they were last year, but they're still... I hear things about delays, things getting put off now. But at the same time, I hear there's a lot of interest, you know? And so I think over the next few months, we'll learn more about if that interest and those activities translate into orders, and we'll see how it plays out. But still, I think difficult to tell. But if you kind of step back from it, you know, Patrick referred to this in his prepared remarks last week. I mean, you know, we still are very encouraged, right? Like, all the advancements in this end market, all the new products that are coming out, and I just think we're really well positioned here. Again, you know, if you think about all the focus that they have on productivity and automation and digitalization, and with our LabX software, it continues to be a real unique value proposition that we still see continues to differentiate us versus competition, and our ability to automate workflows, and also serve the entire value chain. Like, that's part of our diversity, right? Like, we're not just in one niche-y area. Mm. We're not overly exposed to early research- Yeah ... or we're not overly exposed to bioprocessing. Like, we have solutions throughout the entire value chain, and I think that's always been a strength of ours. But as companies are looking for insights throughout that value chain, I think that creates a lot of opportunities for us, kind of going forward in terms of connectivity and digitalization, too. Okay. In talking about that, that delay, the elongated sales cycle, just again, we're seeing that everywhere. What do you think is driving that? Is that, you know, a combination of inflation, high rates, just bloated cost structure, you know? Yeah, I mean, I don't think inflation- Yeah high interest rates help. Yeah. I also look at it pretty pragmatically. Yeah. If I were in their shoes last year, and I saw how the year developed, and it was much worse than expected, and then they had to implement a lot of cost savings- Yeah And productivity measures, I probably would start the year a little bit cautious. Yeah. Yep. You know, and so I think there's just some normal psychology- Yeah -that goes along with that. I kind of feel like this should hopefully set us up for a more normalized budget flush- Yeah at the end of this year, where there will be more funds available as we kind of progress through the year. Yeah. I think we're kind of seeing something similar, and it would make sense then that as you go through the year and you get a little bit more of a buffer built up, you start to release more and more and more, and- Yeah, exactly. By the time, by the end of the year, you're back to sort of that normal spending pattern and. Ex- exactly. Back to normal. Yep. Exactly. Wanna touch on industrials really quick. You touched on semiconductors. You know, I think when we think about some of the other areas where Mettler plays, it is some of these more, you know, technology-oriented- Mm-hmm ... or sort of newer, high-end parts of industrials and applied. What are you seeing there? Again, there's a lot of investment going on. There's things like the CHIPS Act. Is it still kind of early, or is there actual dollars being spent at this point? A little bit of both. You know, you know, last year, when Patrick and I were on our kind of annual tour of the business during our budget cycle, it really resonated with me that most countries in the world have something like the CHIPS Act. You know, they're all looking at this very strategically. There's investment programs that go out several years, for all these countries. I mean, I live in Ohio. As you know, there's a pretty big plant being built down the street. We can physically see what it looks like to build a plant. This is a multi-year endeavor. So, and so I think that's also a good thing. Now, for, for... That doesn't mean that there's not also investment that's already happening, you know, for the plants that exist. One of the neat things about semiconductor or a lot of these, you know, tech, industrial technology segments that you referred to, is that we provide solutions throughout their value chain. Mm. You know, it's on, you know, from R&D to process development, a lot of stuff that we do throughout production, whether it's to help with quality or productivity, whether it's using our analytical instruments, whether it's using our industrial technologies, there's so many things that we do that are very nichey, but we benefit from. And so we definitely look at this as a nice opportunity and a good example of what we refer to as a hot segment. And I think that's part of our program, is to make sure we're identifying these segments and kind of pursuing them with the Spinnaker umbrella. So... What's the duration on that? I mean, you mentioned, like, plants being built, right? We think of that as, like, a three, five, maybe seven-year cycle. Mm-hmm. Are we just sort of in that first, second year of this, and you could see protracted tailwinds throughout the time? Well, for new builds- Yeah ... I mean, they haven't even purchased the equipment yet. Yeah. You know, so I think that's still much, much more to come. I think it takes usually at least a few years to build one of these facilities. Yeah. The instruments usually come more towards the end- Yeah ... you know? But for existing facilities, there's still a lot of investment in those on a real-time basis, and we see, you know, we're seeing some opportunities there. And again, it's not just a U.S. thing. It's throughout the world. You know, I just—like I said, I was on the phone with China the other day, and they were giving me some examples about how fast semiconductors is growing for them, you know, there. So it doesn't stand out in their numbers, given the downturns in some of the other core market segments- Yeah ... but certainly, viewed as a, as a significant growth opportunity. What's your exposure to that? On semiconductor? Yeah. I mean, I don't have a precise number, but I'd probably... I'd estimate it's in probably a low single digit- Okay ... part of our business, yeah. But like you said, you've got other hot segments- Yeah, there's a lot of hot- It's not just that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the thing, right? Like, and so sometimes something's hot, sometimes it's not, you know, and, and part of it is, is having the agility to, like, kind of pivot, you know? And it's not like we have to develop new products to go after these, to go after these segments. I think you've talked a little bit more in some of the recent calls on innovation, and that's not, that's not typically a focus point for you. So, you know, it's not gonna be any one product, right? There's no one SKU that moves the needle- Right ... but it is sort of across the portfolio. I mean, is that you sort of investing into the cycle, into the funding, you think, coming through on some of these projects and these hot segments? How do you think that's helping you position better than maybe some of your peers? Yeah, so, you know, so when Patrick became CEO, there was a couple of areas that he really wanted to double down on. You know, one of them was in the service business, which we've talked a lot about, and another one was innovation, you know. And as he was spending time with our teams, he just saw a lot of opportunity. And our teams were certainly articulating a lot of opportunity to both of us during their strategic review meetings. So we decided to create a new program called an R&D accelerator program, which where we would, like, literally try to accelerate the rate of innovation by adding additional investment and funding for these programs. They have to basically submit them, there's business cases, all that kind of stuff, and-