Okay, great. I'll get started. I'm Puneet Souda. I cover Life Science Tools and Diagnostics here at Leerink, and it's my pleasure to be inviting Team Bio-Techne. Jim Hippel, CFO, joining us on the stage, and also David Clair from Head of Investor Relations. Welcome, guys. Great to have you here. Thanks, Puneet. Thank you, Puneet. Always good to be here. Okay. Awesome. Maybe just to start with the topic that's on everyone's mind, given February 7, NIH Indirects came out, that we had an expectation you're going to see some impact in Q1 calendar and then sort of continue through the year, potentially. Things have seemed like so far maybe somewhat status quo on the consumables end, but again, we'll see when the numbers come out. NIH news is necessarily not necessarily turning positive. We're obviously hoping that it turns positive one day because obviously this is the number one medical research position that the U.S. has, the number one position in that, that no one would like to lose, ultimately. Maybe just we continue to see layoffs in intramural. There was some $400 million cut to a university, other things that continue to remain here. Anxiety levels are high. I guess at a high level, what are you hearing from the customers? What are you seeing on the ground? What are the field reps telling you? Yeah. Thank you, Puneet. Yeah, it's been a fun month, February has. Honestly, we had a sales meeting with our sales leadership yesterday to get a beat on what's going on in the field. Frankly, it was already old news because most of their information was Monday through Thursday. Of course, they did an announcement Friday from the new incoming NIH, which was some positive news. Maybe I'll sum it up in terms of how we're thinking about it based off of what we're hearing from our customers, what we're seeing in our run rates, and what we're hearing from the administration, what we're hearing from analysts, try to put it all together. We think about it really in three time frames. The most important, of course, is the long term. Long term, the very, very short term, meaning this quarter, and then the intermediate term, which is kind of somewhere in between, which to me means when the dust settles and the uncertainty is gone, whatever the answer is, we know what the answer is, right? The long term, regardless of what the outcome of the answer is of all these different iterations of edicts and so forth that have come down the pipe, we're not overly concerned about it. We start with first framing the actual, call it, exposure, if you want to put it that way, that we have to this issue. When we actually looked at all of the publicly, it's public domain which universities and institutions get NIH funding, we mirrored that to our database of customers and looked at our TTM revenue and said, "Okay, worst case scenario, if there's a reduction in NIH funding," and there have been numbers that have been thrown out as much as 8% to 15% indirect cap sticks. We use that as a worst case scenario because not all the revenue from these customers comes from NIH, but we don't know how much does. 8% slice off of all that revenue was about 50 basis points of headwind. In the absolute worst case scenario, which is there'd be an 8% reduction in NIH spending and all that spending gets spent on us by those customers, that's the worst case scenario. It's not a huge exposure. We make an argument there's actually an upside. If you actually read the writing of the message that came out of the NIH regarding the 15% cap, it actually said that the intent was not to reduce net dollars that universities get, but to have the indirect money instead go into direct, which if you read that by the letter of what it says, would actually suggest maybe an increase in direct spending. We're not saying that's the case. Either my point is it's somewhere in the middle, which is probably status quo. Our exposure is not great, and the impact is not going to be a big deal. What's more important to us, and we've always said this for our company, is when NIH funding goes up and down, the boats drift up and down with it, with the water level. What's most important for us is where the current of the water is. Really, for the last three or four years, we've been more out of the current than in the current because much of those double-digit increases that have gone to NIH funding increases have been directed towards COVID, COVID-related disease research, and vaccine development. That's not where we play. If this administration actually puts its money where its mouth is in terms of prioritizing funding towards those grants that are more towards chronic disease, like they've said, cancer, diabetes, neurological disease, guess what? That is our wheelhouse. That is where we play. Regardless of what this outcome is, we think we will benefit ultimately long term. Okay. Long term, no strategic change is being made because of this. The very, very near term, this quarter here and now, clearly when there's uncertainty, I don't care whether it's investors, whether it's customers, or what industry it is, whenever there's uncertainty, people clam up, they pause. I don't want to use the word freeze. That sounds rather draconic, but they do pause in their activity. Clearly, after the first week of February, we started to see that as well. Now, having said that, it wasn't a cliff drop. It was just a—we had very strong momentum in our academic daily run rates at the end of our Q2 and into January. We saw it noticeably, momentum start to soften a bit in February, not unexpectedly. If you think about it, at the end of the day, what researchers are working on in the academic labs today was from funding that was approved much earlier. Those do not just stop automatically. Does the CapEx environment for future slow down a bit? Yes. Our exposure in CapEx and academic is fairly minimal. Our CapEx as a company is fairly minimal. To the extent we have it, it is more geared towards biopharma. The here and now, it is not the momentum we saw in Q2, but it is not earth-shattering either. Not enough for us to feel overly concerned about some of the soft guidance we gave for the quarter in terms of mid-single-digit growth. We are seeing strength in other areas. We continue to see strength in pharma, or I should say a recovery happening in pharma that could potentially offset any short-term headwinds we have because of this February, call it, pause we had in activity or a pause in momentum. The real concern for us was the intermediate, meaning as long as there's not new NIH programs being funded, the longer that goes on, there's going to be an air pocket in the future. We were concerned that if this dragged on in the courts or otherwise for three, six, nine, well, six, nine, twelve months, it could become a problem for us perhaps in fiscal year 2026 in terms of a bit of an air pocket. Friday was great news because the new incoming NIH director basically said they're going to turn the spigot back on on March 24th. Not only that, but take a look at the 15% cap and see what makes sense there, which is code for negotiate and come up with something more reasonable. Because what we are hearing from customers is that the ones who have a 15% cap today do not even understand or cannot comprehend why some universities get 60-70%. Is there froth in the system? For sure. Anyone who has toured, I have toured a lot of universities on customer visits, and you see Zen gardens and cafeterias that are nice and everybody taking my wife out to eat, right? I mean, maybe a little bit exaggerated here, but money is that it goes into a general fund, and God only knows where it is met. Overall, 15% probably is a bit too tight. Where we are at, where we have been in the past is probably a bit egregious. If it ends up being somewhere in the middle, I think everyone is going to be just fine. It is encouraging in the interim that they are turning the spigot back on so there is not a major gap in programs rolling off and new programs coming in. We are less concerned about that air pocket now. Got it. No, that's a very helpful perspective. I mean, I know it's hard to say given just a lot of the moving parts still, but I know you usually don't give guidance, but you said sort of mid-single digit to high single digit in the second half. Is that just given the comments that you made about sort of what happens in the medium term, was that already at the time you provided that, was that already baking a level of prudence, or does it need to have more prudence now? I mean, we've had that soft guidance we've maintained throughout the year up to our last earnings call. That was, of course, before all the stuff came down with academic and the 15% cap. It is a new wrinkle in it. It is so dynamic, Puneet, that I'm not about to call it a risk item for sure. Every two days, it seems to change. At this point, not enough of a change for me to say there's no way we can still achieve what we set out to achieve in our Q4 at the start of the year. No way would I say that at this point. March will be an interesting month to see how it plays out, March into April. Okay. Just shifting to another macro topic. One is China tariffs, but on the flip side is China stimulus. Could you talk a little bit about, again, I believe your exposure is not that large, and a lot of it is consumables still. Maybe just talk to us about, and maybe I need to be corrected on that, if you can provide sort of instrumentation versus consumables mix for China, how you fare there, and how should we think about the tariffs risk, but on the flip side, maybe the stimulus coming back. Sure. As a reminder, our business in China is roughly 8% of our revenue these days. It was as high as 10% at one point, but it is in the 8-9% range now. Historically, it has been a mix of about 50% instruments and 50% consumables. It is our highest concentration from a region perspective of instrumentation. That mix has probably shifted a bit in the last year or so. I do not have an exact figure off the top of my head, but it is still instrument biased for sure. We were just in China in December, and there is no doubt the macroeconomy is probably going through the toughest period I have seen there in 25 years. You can tell by just talking to the people on the street that they are feeling it as well. Our space there has been feeling it for a lot longer. There were actually some hopeful signs that the bottoming process is in, and I think a gradual recovery is in the works. There is the quote-unquote stimulus, which I'll get to in a moment. For us, what's more meaningful and more important is them getting kind of back to more of a business as usual with regards to their equivalent of NIH funding. Their National Academy of Sciences, I think is what they call it, Dave. Because we are much more consumable-based there, we're much more heavily, we're not CDMO or as heavy industry-wise there. We're much more heavy towards academia, institutions, and biotech that is ultimately semi-funded through the government. Government funding is very important for our business in China. When we were there in December, what we were hearing was that for the first time in what seems like two years, their equivalent of NIH was becoming much more vocal about encouraging grants to be submitted in the upcoming year. We have not seen much activity from that yet because usually it starts to kick in after the Chinese New Year, month-long celebration, which just finished. We will see that. That is more important because it is more sustaining for us. Our team there feels like it will allow us to turn into the black, perhaps as early as this quarter in January, I mean, in China, and get to mid-single digit growth in 2025. Now, specifically as it pertains to the stimulus, it's not stimulus in the sense of what we've gotten used to with Chinese stimulus, what's kind of almost a broad-based cut a check for whatever you want for your purchases. It's very, very targeted towards replacement of equipment for a technological reason. For us specifically, there's really only one instrument platform that pertains to because our most popular instrument in China is our Maurice Biologics Instrument, but almost everyone has one. They've all replaced their iCE instruments over the past two years. It's more of the Simple Western platform where many customers still have the old discontinued Wes platform. We're looking to upgrade them to a Jess. We know exactly which customers they are, and we know what the opportunities are because we literally have to almost hold their hand and go through the technical specs in the application process to get it through. We have seen that. We actually started to see that, saw a couple of those trickle in last quarter. We expect a few more to trickle in this quarter. The brunt of those will probably happen in our Q4, which will help Q4 for us. It is not a needle mover by any sense, and we are not necessarily expecting it to. It is just another firming of the base, so to speak, is how we think about it. Yeah. No, that's helpful. Thank you for that. What's interesting is you started to see some pharma and biotech recovery in fiscal first quarter of yours, and fiscal second quarter, you saw a strong growth in GMP proteins. Maybe just what's the latest update from the pharma side and maybe the early biotech side? What are you seeing from those customers? Yeah. As a reminder, when we had to be the first ones to kind of stick our neck out for into 2025 calendar year and talk about soft guidance, we had a kind of a staggered approach where we thought the biotech subsector would, smaller biotech subsector would start to recover first just because of the strong funding we saw earlier in the year. We expected that to start to happen in our Q2, and then China to come on board and create a growth as opposed to a drag to growth in our Q3. Large pharma not really start the recovery process until our Q4 just because we were assuming that pharma budgets would become more normalized, meaning not the amount that they spend, it would be any different in terms of growth, but in terms of how they distribute it among their programs. They'll get back to more traditional spread among full range of discovery, translation all the way into the clinic as opposed to last year. It was definitely much more geared towards later stage clinical stuff. We wouldn't see that, we thought, until the April timeframe when budgets get approved and get pushed down to the lab level, who are actually our ultimate customers. We started to see biotech momentum pick up even a little bit earlier than expected in September and then in October. What pleasantly surprised us was that in November, we started to see pharma pick up, which was much earlier than we expected and even more so than biotech, frankly. That momentum has continued into January into our third quarter. We are pleased by that, what we were hearing from customers. The substantiated this was that we had orders, some larger reagent orders and some instrument orders where our clients, our customers really wanted them, but they kept on getting turned, they were in their budget, but they kept on getting turned down for approval by their evil CFOs. All of a sudden in November, they made one more pass at it and it went through. It was not like there was this edict that came from a top that said, "Spend it or you're going to lose it or whatever." It was more just all of a sudden things were getting through the system and getting approved, which, putting myself in my customer's shoes, if I was one of those evil, I am an evil CFO, but if I was one of my customer's evil CFOs, I sure would not be giving a perception to the employees that things were all clear if they were not. I think it was a positive sign, and we saw that carry through in January, which is encouraging. Got it. Okay. If I could switch gear to GMP proteins, the business has done well for you there. There was a bit of a pull forward that you talked about. How should we think about the growth in context of that pull forward into the sort of second half, 2025? Maybe if you can sort of level set us in terms of how this business, again, this has been a strong growth. It's offset some of the other challenges in other parts of the market that you had, but maybe just talk about the sustainability of it. Yeah. Our GMP protein business is obviously one of our growth pillars for a reason. It has gone from less than $5 million of revenue to north of $60 million on an annualized basis in about five short years. Considering our UO protein business is a little over two to three times that size, but took 40-50 years to build, right? Pretty remarkable growth. What we are seeing now is we have over 500 customers, about 85 of them or so are actually in clinical trials, and about a half dozen of those are now as far as long as phase III. What we're starting to see as these customers get into clinical trials and progress through them is pretty much what we hypothesized all along, which is that the amount of volumes are going to increase exponentially from these customers as they progress all the way through the clinical trials and then really explode once they get to commercial. That hypothesis is proving out to be true because these half dozen or so customers, when they buy, they buy a lot of material. Now it's causing lumpiness. It's a good lumpiness. It's a good problem to have. As we get more and more customers into clinical trials and progressing through clinical trials, the lumpiness will smooth out, not because at an individual customer level they smooth out, but in aggregate, they'll start to smooth out. That causes some heartburn for folks like us in the finance mind, folks like us in the room are trying to forecast this stuff. That is why we started talking more and more about our trailing 12-month growth rates as it pertains to our GMP protein business because it is how you think about how you should think about the growth trajectory. That is now standing at 40%. Our long-term view over the next 10 years is for a 30% CAGR. We are above that long-term view. That is the way I would be thinking about it. Yes, we are sitting at whatever it is, 80% or so year- to- date growth. As you mentioned, and pull-ins is not a word I like to use because pull-ins would suggest we pulled it in. We did not. Our customers called us up and asked to say they needed it earlier. We're like, "Great." That will cause some choppiness from a quarterly growth rate perspective for sure. As you think about building out your one-year plus models, be thinking 30-40% plus. That's how I would be thinking about it. What's interesting is that when we look at the cell and gene therapy backdrop in the market, I mean, the sentiment is not so great, but you guys are obviously levered to some of these trials that are doing well. They're needing more proteins. Just along those lines, I mean, Wilson Wolf, can you sort of update us where Wilson Wolf is today, size of that position, and when do you expect to be able to pull the trigger and just remind us what that criteria is? Yeah. I mean, even in this more difficult time for biotech in particular this past year and a half, Wilson Wolf is also doing well. I think year- to- date, on our fiscal year- to- date, they're roughly 20% growth right now. They're doing well like we are. What's really exciting about Wilson Wolf is they have over 800 customers. They're in about 45% of all the immuno-cell therapy trials today. They've got almost half a dozen, I think five of the nine therapies that have been approved for immuno-cell therapy, they're in five of them, so over half. Those five customers have provided forecasts for their launch in the upcoming year. Just those five customers alone will give Wilson Wolf multiple double-digit growth rates, even if the other 795 customers do not grow, which is probably not the case. Again, we're seeing exactly what we expected in terms of that massive inflection once you go commercial with Wilson Wolf. That's what's going to be in our sights with our GMP proteins eventually. As it pertains to purchasing the remaining 80% of Wilson Wolf, as a reminder, they have a bogey to hit either $326 million of TTM revenue or $136 million of TTM of EBITDA. 226. Sorry, 226 and 136. Thank you. That's why you're up here. Keep me honest. If they hit any of those, they'll hit the EBITDA one first. That gives you a sense of how profitable they are. John Wilson still thinks he can hit that perhaps as early as early 2027. That's great. Forever optimist. We're still going down the path that we'll probably end up purchasing it at the end of 2027 at a contracted 4.4 times TTM revenue. It will be in that ballpark one way or the other in terms of the revenues we expect. Pretty much on plan. Got it. Just wondered, since we're talking about potential acquisition, just, I mean, given the state of the market right now, biotech, that's an important pillar to Bio-Techne, are those acquisitions. Maybe they are starting, when they start, they're a little bit diluted, but then they catch up. You've been disciplined about that, and you have a great profile whenever you acquire those assets. Maybe just give us a sense of what you're seeing in the marketplace today and given the challenges of the market. M&A market, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. I think you're seeing it in the public markets, and we see it in the private markets because that's kind of where we play historically is in the private space, typically sub-$500 million deals, right? The assets that are very cheap are cheap for a reason, generally speaking. I guess true in the public sector, but also definitely true in the private sector. The assets that are strong assets that have a lot of potential, real exciting science, really don't have any problem getting funding. Those owners, why would they sell in an environment like this that's in a suppressed overall market for our space when they know they can get more in a more normalized market? They are in no hurry, and they are willing to wait. From our viewpoint, you'll probably pay the same a year from now or two years from now that you'll pay now, but with much clearer skies than we maybe have right now. It is not to say we're sitting on our laurels doing nothing. We've done a lot to actually beef up our CorpDev organization. We've got some really strong professional people we brought in from the outside to not only hone our M&A strategy, but hone that with our overall company strategy overall and really focusing much more targeted on what we want out of M&A so that when the time is right, we're in a much better position to strike and be seen as a favorable acquirer by those potential companies. A lot of activity goes on behind the scenes before you ever pull the trigger. Got it. We touched on sort of the state of the market. Maybe I can just briefly talk about the spatial platform that is well positioned on the closer to translational. Just wondering if you're seeing any impact there too, or is that more defensive? Because COMET has grown over the last few quarters. Yeah. It's all relative, but naturally, it's going to be somewhat impacted in the sense that spatial overall, and not just the COMET, but our ACD business is more heavily weighted towards academic than the rest of our portfolio is. Of course, in the case of Lunaphore, it's a higher-priced instrument. From a CapEx perspective, it's going to be more sensitivity. Despite all that, it's still got tremendous double-digit growth, and it's got an amazing pipeline of opportunity. I don't think we've had one dissatisfied customer that it's been brought to our attention. We have one customer who's not just bought one or two or three, but has bought eight of them. You don't buy eight of these instruments unless you really see the value in it. The future there is still just amazingly exciting. The fact that it can do that well in this environment, I think, is a testament to the underlying technology of the product. This is a question we've been getting around, and I should have asked it with the M&A question. I mean, just given the state of the academic market, does it change your view at all on things that you could potentially pursue on the M&A side? Or this is more of a, again, a temporary situation? Again, our long-term view is that it's not going to be impactful to any of our strategy, and that would basically include our M&A strategy as well. Okay. All right. Then just briefly, given the time, let me touch on margins. Obviously, your great margin profile, 72% gross margin, you're targeting 30-40 long-term target on the operating margin line. Maybe just talk to us, what drives your confidence in the step up in the second half? Again, recognizing that there have been challenges and that could gate it, if those were to resolve, what are the margin levers that you can pull? If things were to be tough, what are the margin levers that you can pull? I think we've already pulled a lot of those margin levers in the sense that we know last year, year and a half, and especially in the last year since Kim has been on board, we've really done, as you would, kind of a house cleaning, right? What you do when you're running 100 miles an hour for three or four years, and then you realize you've left a lot of trash, not to say trash, but you left a debris behind that you got to clean up, right? Whether it's right-sizing the organization for the areas that are growing versus the areas that are not growing as much, whether it's realigning some of our portfolio, which we've done so we don't have so many distractions. We definitely have held the line on costs, and we're positioned very, very well for margin expansion when the growth returns. I would say now what gives us confidence in the lift of incremental margin from first half to second half, honestly, it all comes back to volume pull-through because if you look historically at our profile of our revenue, our second half revenue is always higher than our first half. It is really just a dynamic of when people take vacations. You got to remember, much of our revenue is generated by the individual at the lab. If they are in the lab, they are buying our stuff. If they are not, they are not. Heavy vacations in the fall quarter, heavy vacations with holidays in the winter quarter, not so much in the spring and early summer. That is why our revenues are always higher in the second half. With our cost base maintaining relatively the same, you get that incremental margin lift, and you see that pull-through come through the bottom line. It is just really as simple as that, which is why if there is any risk to the margin guidance we gave in the second half, it really comes down to the revenue. If the revenue is not as strong, the margin may not be as strong, but it still will be incrementally higher than the first half. You have not asked it, but I expect you will. What gives us confidence about in the future getting to 35% to back to 40%? It is that same confidence that how we can get such a big step up in margin from first half to second half demonstrates the amazing pull-through we have on our revenues. When we get back to double-digit growth, you can get back to that 35% plus rather quickly. All right. We're almost at the time. This was always helpful, Jim. Thanks for taking the time, Dave. Thanks for being here. You bet, Puneet.