We're good. All right. You guys ready to go? Yep. All right. Let's do it. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. I am Doug Shankle with Wolfe Research. It's my pleasure to welcome Jason Garland, Chief Financial Officer of Repligen, as well as Steven Chalmers from Investor Relations. Thanks to you both for being here. So. Thank you. Repligen is, as everybody in the room knows, but just in case, Repligen's really one of the only publicly traded pure-play bioprocessing companies available to invest in. The company not only stands out for that reason, but there's just a tremendous history of innovation, tuck-in acquisitions that feed into that innovation, which together has fed consistent above-market growth. We appreciate you both being here. In terms of the agenda, I thought we would spend a couple of minutes just recapping some loose ends from Q3. It feels like that was a while ago now, but it wasn't—I guess it wasn't that long. Maybe a few things to talk about just in terms of, I think, things that might be helpful to double-click on as we think about momentum into next year. With that in mind, then I actually wanna talk about the framework for next year, which I think has got a lot of focus coming off of the Q3 call, which I bet you guys have heard here and there. Yeah. And then, I wanna get into some longer-term growth drivers. That obviously includes ATF, but we'll go beyond that as well. Okay. That's fine. Q3 revenue was you beat the street by about $7 million. There was strength in analytics and proteins. Very quickly, how much of that was fundamentally just better than expected versus timing dynamics? Yeah. No. First, you're right. It was a great quarter. We were up 18% organic, and, you know, underlying that, there was really strength across the portfolio. To your point, there's a couple of standouts I can talk about, but we saw strength across the franchises, across the regions, across our customer base. Really happy with the results. I think to your point, some of the beat on expectations were really driven by those two that you highlighted, the proteins business as well as analytics. I think with proteins, just think that can be lumpy, right? You can have just deliveries that hit all at once. That was primarily the driver there. A little, you know, push and take within the year, but overall kind of a lumpy delivery that happened. Analytics, I think what we've seen is now a real strong momentum within our CTech piece. If you remember as well, our 908 acquisition, the assets we bought from them are in that bucket as well. The real strength was this momentum we're seeing on an upgrade cycle that we've started. You know, as a quick refresher, in our CTech Analytics, this is our PAT technology. We do measurements inline, which we often connect to our filtration systems, downstream filtration systems. Then we have an at-line product, so you have to take a sample and measure. That product was, call it 10 years old plus. We launched a new version. Think of it as the next version, more features, functionalities, earlier in the year. We've been pushing that upgrade cycle. It caught quite a bit of positive momentum in the quarter, a little bit maybe higher than we'd expected. Great news is that we're in early innings, right? I mean, we've got more than 2,000 units install base. I think our calc is maybe we've covered 3% of the upgrades, you know, sort of to date. A lot of good runway on that as well. I think to answer your question, some positive momentum there, a little bit of timing we're on the proteins piece, and just again, the lumpiness that you can have, you know, across really the franchise. Really happy with the third quarter. equipment, which is about 20% of sales. Mm-hmm. I mean, we cover, you know, I think the full spectrum of bioprocessing companies. Yeah. You're seeing strong consumable growth across the category. You're not seeing it almost anywhere on the equipment side. To say you guys are outperforming the peer group, you know, with a quarter where I think you were up 20% on the equipment side is probably the understatement of the day. What's going on there? Like, is it mostly ATF or is it broader than that? It is broader than that. And, and so again, if you think about our hardware, you know, the equipment side, there is the downstream filtration systems. I think we would say that though we have seen, you know, some, some positive momentum, it is still not back to where we would hope or expect it to be. Maybe more consistent with the, you know, the overall messaging you are hearing. What has really then helped pick up that whole group for us is ATF and then the analytics. I mean, to close out the analytics, the same thing we just talked about, all of the momentum on the upgrade cycle, that would fall into our hardware bucket as well. Obviously, it is at a lower price point than many of the other equipment pieces, but still a positive lift. And then, in addition to that, ATF. You know, when we sell ATF, there's certainly the single-use, you know, filtration cartridges, if you will, and those elements. But we also sell controllers with it. The controllers would be grouped within our hardware. I think our view is that it's outside the economic cycle that some of the other, you know, hardware would be, right? If companies are thinking, or pharma or CDMO are thinking about capacity expansions or those type of investments with some of the, "Hey, what's going on in the industry?" sort of question marks, you can dial that down, right? You might wait. But ATF, it's outside of that economic cycle. I mean, and in fact, it actually supports that because in many cases, the decisions customers are making is, "I can invest in ATF and prevent the need to build a new line," right? Or delay that need for a new line. And again, even if it's just a, I'll say not a capacity decision, but just a yield or a faster output, again, that's an economic decision that is contained within that ATF purchase and not the broader. I think that's why we've seen some sort of outpacing of overall hardware, kind of those two dynamics. It, I, I'm gonna ask a somewhat related follow-up. Yeah. Sure. You've done better in equipment hardware for the reasons you discussed. What we've seen more broadly is, you know, there's just been a lot of, like, we'll just call it policy uncertainty. Yeah. As we all know about, that's led to basically a freezing up of a lot of customer activity on the equipment side. As we hopefully move past that, you know, with the new MFN agreements and then really kind of to the crux of the question as we think about the possibility of reshoring. Mm-hmm. Leading to orders, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe in 2026 with revenue in 2027 seems like the right way to think about it. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Based on what we know now, you still get to participate in that. Absolutely. Even though you've been more resilient in a tough period. Oh, absolutely. I think a couple of dynamics. I mean, our downstream filtration systems are still in a place where we can take share, right? Through the innovation we have, the differentiation, you know, even connecting it to analytics. We now couple our inline PAT technology within those systems as well. We at least one in four get that as a part of that system. There is a real differentiation there. We have just the underlying strength and momentum on that product set. Beyond that, I think to your point, in the grand scheme of things, we have not been around that long, right? As the company and the product portfolio that we have today. When many of these originator drugs came out, we were not there, right? Now. You're in the game. We were not in the game. Now flash forward to where we are today, if you have new capacity being built through onshoring or other, you have biosimilars, you have next-gen originating drugs that are being developed. We now have a seat at the table. That timing, coupled with what the team has done on our key account strategy that we have talked about, just being able to have more robust partnerships with key pharma, key CDMOs, bringing a larger portfolio. Now, to link it to the onshoring, as those RFPs or discussions come up, we believe that we will have a rightful place at the table to be able to compete, right? Through the RFP process and through that next-gen process. We do think it will be a tailwind for us. We also believe another, I'll say advantage we bring is that we can deliver almost all of our portfolio from U.S. production sites as well. Of course, that couples well with the concept of the onshoring. We believe we're well-positioned to participate in a strong way. Maybe to state the obvious, but to the extent that reshoring is really reshoring. Right. You know, where you're actually moving production that would've been done in a less expensive environment than the United States, some of the efficiencies you bring to the table are, you know, essentially very important to what you described in terms of gaining share opportunities. Absolutely. I mean, that's the commonality, I think, across our portfolio is the idea of providing efficiencies, either it's faster or higher yields or, or other, you know, cost savings measures that again helps the onshoring to be, to be more competitive. Absolutely. All right. As long as I'm veering into policy dynamics, why don't we, why don't we close that out? On, I guess between MFN and reshoring, and I would think the MFN agreements would lead to a more near-term change in behavior. Onshoring is gonna take a little bit longer. One, do you agree? And then two, are you seeing a little bit of a change in tone of discussions with customers as we've got a little bit more certainty out of Washington? I think you're right. We'll see some more of the onshoring opportunities probably a little later. I mean, you said it earlier, and I'll just kind of confirm that we might expect some 2026 orders and then sales, you know, coming later. I think if in 2027, if there are greenfield types of expansions, you might see some of that pushed out. I think to your point, MFN could happen a little quicker. Again, it's the same thing we just discussed that our products in general will help bring cost reductions and more efficiencies. That's why, again, we think that we'll have the chance to compete and offer our value proposition. That's really across the portfolio. I think again, that's what's much different today versus the past is we bring a much broader portfolio, and can fill more of the workflow. And again, in a way where it, you know, it's more valuable when you think about a, an MFN project or an onshoring that we can offer a bigger selection, they're gonna wanna spend time with us, right? If it was just, "Oh, no, hey, we'll get to you later when we wanna talk about ATF or other," right? That's a different discussion that brings us earlier to the table now. It does seem like there's a little more momentum behind biosimilar initiatives in the U.S. That's a, I think this is a quick answer, but that's a good guy for you guys for all the reasons we've talked about. Exactly. All the reasons. We were not around when the originator maybe came out, and now we are here. The other thing I would add though is we also believe it might give us another swing on the originator next-gen because now they need to compete at a lower cost base with the biosimilar. Yeah. That's the other place where we feel like we could add value, is helping the originator to be more efficient or cost-efficient. A lot of investors are speculating that the MFN agreements specific to Lilly and Novo are gonna lead to, well, lower pricing on GLP-1s and then higher volumes. I don't think you participate directly there, but to the extent that that logic applies on the biologic side where maybe you get better pricing and that could lead to some pickup in volume. Yeah. Is that a potential good guy moving forward? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's just the broader biosimilar, that same concept, right? Lower cost, higher volume. We do have some GLP-1 and we continue to determine are there ways that we can expand our exposure in there. We haven't lost sight of that as well. Okay. Jumping back to the quarter, emerging biotech, it's only around 10% of revenue. Right. I think revenue was the highest in three years in the quarter. We've been waiting for some signs. Yeah. Of life on the emerging side. How important was that? We were encouraged to see it as well. I guess I'll, it's the data point on one, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see how the trend continues. I think coupled with just the, you know, performance in the quarter, we saw funding up significantly in September, and I think we've seen it again, another big step up in October. I think those as well or those dynamics on funding helped this. Now, again, you're probably talking six to nine months before that funding might translate to different orders that we'd see. Those couple of data points were absolutely encouraging for us. Again, it's 10% of the business, maybe a little bit more if you pull through some, you know, kind of tier two, you know, CDMO work that might be in that. Again, it's just painting a more holistic sort of positive view of the portfolio. 'Cause I would've said that kind of coming into the quarter, you know, really the only two soft spots we've continued to see was emerging and China, right? It's an overall sort of good indicator for the, for the, the industry. All right. Let's, let's talk a little bit about 2026. Okay. We've kind of gotten, gone there to some extent already, but let's, let's talk specifically about guidance. Right. So. Haven't given it yet. There. You wanna do it now? No? No. Okay. I will say, I mean, it's obviously been a tough time for the group. I think a lot of us thought 2025 was gonna be a good year for the group as we moved past some of the post-COVID. Yeah. Era challenges. I think that held up for about two weeks. Then we got to February, we heard a lot about the policy dynamics. Oh, geez. Then we got to Q3 earnings and it was, you know, one company put out guidance and then it was kind of like, "Hey, hold my beer, I can go lower." and, again, you guys did not formally guide, but you talked about, you know, listen, if, if, if the market is growing, you know, the peer group is growing, and correct me if I am messing this up, but, you know. Oh, okay. Single's. Yeah. You guys expect to grow five more than that than the market. And then you got a two-point headwind, due to one major customer. Yeah. You know, that takes you, you know, my math, not yours, I guess technically, 11-13, you know? And I think that was a little bit below, you know, what I think some folks were looking for. You know, it was maybe to use my clumsy way of putting it, but was this a little bit more of a hold my beer moment for Repligen than you intended? Look, I think, again, I said we did not give guidance because we shared a framework, right? You said it well, right? It is, "Hey, we on average have been able to grow five points above the market, expected to be able to do that in 2026." To your point, you know, two points of headwind from a specific customer, so plus three. I think if you had gone back to maybe the summer when we had shared some of this initial framework, I think the overall view of the market may have been more aligned with that 8-12 range. Call it 10 in the middle. Mm-hmm. Right? I think to your point, third quarter came around and we saw some other big players in the industry indicate more high single digits. That was just a starting point change for us. Here's the reality. When February comes and we do issue guidance, it'll be on what we see, right? We'll have two to three more months of visibility from where we are today. We'll have better visibility for the year. We'll share what our guidance is, you know, kind of agnostic to the market, right? Of course, still within our framework overall, but that's what we'll share. What today is we're just kind of bouncing off of a baseline that we haven't necessarily changed with just the overall tone of discussion. No, it makes a lot of sense. It's just if I think about what we just described and then think about where we spent the first, you know, 10, 15 minutes of these. Yeah. That's fair. There, there's a lot of good going on. Yes. Yes. Right now, especially even relative to the peer group. Right. Not fair. If the overall industry does start to or does not go as high, then we are not immune to what the overall market is seeing, right? We will still directionally be pushed one way or the other. I say that is all we are acknowledging. We have our strategy and roadmap that allows us to beat that, and we will execute it and be able to share more in February and how that kind of looks to what the rest of the industry is calling for for 2026. That's helpful. Thanks, thanks for indulging me. Yeah. You bet. on the margin side. Yeah. I thought all of this was helpful, but I think the key message is it's not gonna be a straight line, right? You know, I think we have, I think to some degree with your help and your team's help, you know, believe that, you know, okay, you have about $1.2 billion in revenue capacity. If I'm trying to dumb it down for myself as you get toward to 80% capacity utilization, that's where the margins can move back to where we saw them a few years ago. The important point is if that's a good basic framework to apply here, that doesn't mean it's gonna move linear with revenue over the next three to five years. Is that right? Yeah. I, I, I'd kind of say it this way, right? We've shared that, you know, we think that five-ish years from now we get close to that 30% EBITDA, right? And kind of back to, you know, high-ish 50s on the gross margin, right? I think the reality that I share is leveraged. It's more tied to that top line. You see that more at the EBITDA, right? You see, or EBIT, you know, out margin. That's just by this equation of you grow your OPEX less than your top line, you will get leverage, right? That's the way we're thinking about it. I think the gross margin gets some volume leverage, but not the same order of magnitude. Then price will help, right? The little single digit price that we get kind of year after year. You know, having enough productivity through our factories and other initiatives we take to more than offset the inflation that we end up, right? You walk in every year and you've got your salaries up and you've got some other market inflation. Between the productivity and the sourcing, that has to wash or maybe net positive. You get your volume fall through and you get a little bit of price. That, that's, that's the algorithm, right? We see, you know, we've talked about maybe one to 200 basis points of gross margin kind of each year. I think if we grow OPEX at a rate lower than top line, then we'll see even more leverage at the EBITDA or EBIT margin level. I think the story on that, back to your point of the trajectory, is we believe that we still have some investment to make in our teams, our infrastructure, call it our systems, the processes that we have in order to have sustainable growth, especially if we reach $1.2 billion or, you know, double the size of the business. You know, and what took us from $100 million ten years ago to today is different than what we need to sustain a much more comp, right? Just think about the product portfolio we have today versus what we did. Even, we were having this discussion with some of the folks earlier about go to your COVID years, huge, huge volume, right? A lot of profitability. You had a small number of real products that you were selling, the simplicity of that. We just know, and it's Olivier, it's myself, it's my peers and the team. We've all been at big companies and we know the process structure that we need in order to do this right. That's why we feel like 2026 and probably even into 2027, we're investing at a rate where that growth of OPEX is a little bit closer to the top line growth. I think, you know, as we get beyond that, we'll be able to maybe dial that down a little bit and accelerate in some of that scale. I know people reading this, the transcripts can't see my faint hand, but it's that, you know, it's the, you know, and then spike up in the latter part of the year. That's the way we're thinking about it. For me, it's playing the long game, right? Yeah. Could we squeak out some more margin over the next couple of years, but at the risk of not having something that's robust to grow and grow going forward? I think that's the short game, and we're playing the long game on this one. Yeah. And to, to maybe put it a little differently and in my words, I mean, it's, if you look at where the portfolio or how the portfolio has evolved organically and inorganically, kind of seems like you've earned the right. And frankly, as investors, we want you to do more of that. Yeah. Absolutely. That's great. Thank you. Subsequent to the compliment, a question. Are there still, you know, some key areas where you think, you know, some investment is warranted to build out the menu? Yeah. And I, and it's really across the board. Again, you know, you bring in world-class leaders. And again, when you look at Olivier's staff and even, you know, our staff below that, kind of that N minus two, I mean, we brought in world-class leaders. They've all been industry experts, sometimes within industry in bigger companies. You know, you bring in new leaders, well, they understand, well, here's where we're at, guys. Here's where we need to go. And here's some of the spend. And so it's really across the board, you know? And, but it's also this idea that we can make some spend now and then it doesn't just keep going, right? You, we are gonna see synergies, efficiencies. You're gonna, you know, start to really start to get the benefit of scale and leverage. You know, I've been sharing with some investors that, you know, we primarily had external counsel for a lot of our legal spend, right? We've hired several lawyers to in-house. You know, yeah, our expense this year is up. Next year it'll actually be flat because now I can have pay internally versus all. The great news is, like, I don't keep adding lawyers year after year after year, right? It's something, and that's when you start to see that scaling, you know, sort of benefit. That's the way we're thinking about it. It's across the board. We've got, again, a leadership team that knows what good looks like and how to get there. That's what you described is, it's broadening the team. It's bringing in new expertise. You know, even in the third quarter, I think there was some. Yep. Sort of one-off FD&A investment. Those are organic investments. I think historically. Yes. I'm sure there's years that are exceptions to this, but you've done one to two bolt-ons. Yes. Should we also expect that moving forward to continue? Yeah. I mean, we've done, we did Tontti in December. We did 908 in February. We closed. We're kind of in that space here for this year. Still very active in our pipeline, pipeline for M&A. Again, we stand by our sort of criteria and philosophy that it's differentiated technology first. You know, it's the ability to create synergy with that, with the existing portfolio. Then it's also then making sure the financials make sense. You know, we've talked about some gaps in the MABS workflow that are always of interest. Even beyond MABS, new modalities brings a whole new sort of set of workflow and opportunities for us as well. Those become the places that we'll continue to watch. We've got some dry powder and flexibility. Absolutely we'll be continued to be active there. and that's all part of the algorithm that gets you to double revenue in five. Yeah. We called out modest M&A, right? If there's something bigger, then it kind of, you know, may expand that algorithm, but sort of modest M&A within that five-year window. Okay. Which is kind of more in line with your point, the bolt-on information. Yep. Yep. Yep. Maybe just with the two or three minutes we have left, we can do a little bit of ATF modeling. Sure. cleanup. So, I'll leave it to my expert on this one. You had the benefit of delivering ATF hardware for a large blockbuster in the third quarter. I don't think you've disclosed it, but our guess is that was about $4 million in revenue. Let's say we're in the right neighborhood. How, I guess the dollar amount upfront doesn't matter as much in terms of where I'm going with this question, but like once the hardware's in place, how long does it take for you to start to see the consumables kick in? Yeah. It's a, it's a fair question. We delivered the hardware in Q3. Just keep in mind it still has to get installed, still has to be validated. This is probably more on the longer project where we got the order a year ago. You could probably expect consumables pull through to start in the back half of 2026 for this program. Okay. Just to outline. We gave a couple of figures, and this is for N-1 processes. If you get into a perfusion process, the economics get a little bit different. In an N-1, you might be having two to three single-use ATFs on the CE Train Bioreactor. Those single-use ATFs are probably in the mid five figures. You're running those per batch. There is an associated controller for those ATFs as well, which typically run in the low six figures. At peak demand for a blockbuster, assuming ATFs implemented across all of the sites that's manufacturing that biological drug, it could be in the $15 million plus. If it's just a regularly commercially approved drug, you're looking at, at peak volumes, probably in that low to mid seven figures on an annual run rate. In between, like you said in the example we're using from Q3, there's very limited consumable revenue until, you know, really for the better part of a year. Correct. You do not go right to 15. It is low single digits gradually moving up to 15. Is that the right way to think about it? Yeah. That's fair because typically they'll start ATF at one site and then they'll implement it across various sites that they're manufacturing that drug. There is a ramp up, if you will. Okay. There are some consumables you deliver, of course, when you sell the initial. Stock up. Right. Exactly. So there, so then your replenishment, you know, has to eat through some of that as well. Maybe the last one, you know, I talked about the doubling revenue in five years, and that's, I think, what happens if you grow 15% a year. I think that's where you end up. Is, you know, is there a scenario where that could occur a year or two quicker based on some of the things we started talking about? Again, it's doubling revenue in five years is pretty good, but just to push you a little bit further, there's a lot that's going right, right now. Yeah. There's always gonna be scenarios that we, I feel like that's the right way we should be driving the business. Again, we're playing the long game here. You know, if we make the right investments, we can do that in a controlled way and build a broader portfolio and a broad portfolio. But yeah, are there scenarios that could be better? Yeah. We'll issue that when we give guidance. Let's see what happens. All right, guys. Really appreciate the time. Super helpful. All right. Thanks a lot.