Mettler-Toledo International Inc.
Q3 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 6 Nov 2015

[Operator:]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Third Quarter 2015 Mettler-Toledo International Earnings Conference Call. My name is Ronny and I will be your audio coordinator for today. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I would now like to turn our presentation over to our hostess for today's call, Ms. Mary Finnegan. Please proceed, ma'am.

[Mary T. Finnegan:]

Thanks, Ronny, and good evening, everyone. I'm Mary Finnegan. I'm the Treasurer and responsible for Investor Relations at Mettler-Toledo, and happy that you're joining us this evening. I'm joined by Olivier Filliol, our CEO; and Bill Donnelly, our Executive Vice President. I need to cover just a couple administrative matters. First, this call is being webcast and is available on our website. A copy of the press release and the presentation we'll refer to is also available on the website. On page 1, we have our Safe Harbor language, let me just summarize it quickly. Statements in this presentation, which are not historical facts, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see our recent Form 8-K. All of the forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by a reference to the factors discussed under "Factors Affecting our Future Operating Results" and in the "Business and Management's Discussion & Analysis" in sections of our Form 10-K. Just one last item. On today's call, we may use non-GAAP financial measures. More detailed information with respect to the use of and differences between non-GAAP financial measures and the most directly comparable GAAP measure is provided in the 8-K. I'll now turn the call over to Olivier.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Thank you, Mary, and welcome to everyone on the call. I will start with a summary of the quarter, and then Bill will provide details on our financial results and guidance. I will then have some additional comments before we open the lines for Q&A. The highlights for the quarter are on page two of the presentation. We continue to execute very well. Spinnaker and field turbo programs are allowing us to leverage our strong product portfolio to gain share. The Americas have particular strong growth, and Europe came in as expected. We also had very good growth in certain emerging markets. However, these strong results are masked (2

[William P. Donnelly:]

Thanks, Olivier, and hello everybody. Sales were $604.2 million in the quarter, that's an increase of 3% in local currency. On a U.S. dollar basis, our sales decreased by 4% as currencies reduced sales by approximately 7% in the quarter. Now, turning to page three of the presentation, we outlined sales by geography. In the third quarter, local currency sales increased by 10% in the Americas, 1% in Europe, and declined by 1% in Asia/Rest of World. All of these are compared to the prior year. Overall, the BRC countries continue to underperform in the quarter and reduced sales growth by about 4%. BRC was specifically down 12% in the quarter with China down 9%, which is slightly better than we expected. Now, turning to the next slide, our year-to-date sales increased by 4% in local currency. By region, for the nine-month period, local currency sales increased by 7% in the Americas, 3% in Europe and 1% in Asia/Rest of World. Our growth excluding BRC is 8% year-to-date. Now please turn to slide number five. There we outlined sales growth by product line. Laboratory had growth of 7% in local currency. Industrial declined by 1%, while Food Retailing increased by 7% in the quarter. On a year-to-date basis, as shown on the next slide, Laboratory increased by 7% in local currency, Industrial was flat, and Food Retailing grew by 6%. Now turn to slide number 7 please. Let me walk you through the key items in the P&L. Gross margins were 56.2%, that's 160 basis point improvement over the prior year margin of 54.6%. We're very pleased that increase. Currencies contributed approximately 100 basis points to the increase and includes the benefit of the gain on the Swiss franc-euro hedges. In constant currency, our margins were up about 60 basis points. Pricing and material cost reductions further contributed to our margin improvement. These improvements were offset by our investments in our field service organization. Research and development expenses were $29.7 million, that's a 3% increase in local currency. SG&A was $175.5 million, that's a 1% increase in local currency and includes increased investment in our field service organization as well as some employee benefit costs offset by our cost savings program and lower variable compensation. Adjusted operating income was $134.3 million in the quarter, that's a 6% increase over the prior-year amount of $126.7 million. Currencies reduced operating profit by approximately $6 million. Excluding this headwind, our operating profit increased by 10% in the quarter. Our operating margins were 22.2%; that's an increase of 210 basis points over the prior year. Margins benefited by 70 basis points due to currency as the percentage impact on currency and the sales line was larger than the impact on operating profit. The core underlying margin improvement was a very strong 140 basis points. Our incremental OP margins reached 60% in the quarter on a constant currency basis, which is particularly impressive given the meaningful investments we're making via our field turbo program. Now, a couple of final comments on the P&L. Our amortization was $7.8 million, while our interest expense was $7 million in the quarter. Our effective tax rate continued to be at 24%. Fully diluted shares for the quarter were $28.1 million (sic) [28.1 million] (7

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Thanks, Bill. Let me start with summary comments on business conditions. Lab increased 7% in the quarter, with good growth in almost all product categories. We're executing quite well in our Laboratory business. The combination of strong product pipeline, Spinnaker sales and marketing initiatives, and our field turbo investments. Our Lab business does very well, and I expect results in the fourth quarter and into 2016 to continue to be solid. Industrial declined 1% in the quarter. Product inspection had growth of 3% and our outlook for this business continues to be very favorable. As we discussed last quarter in some detail, we are well-positioned in this business with strong relative market share, the most extensive product portfolio and the largest service network in the industry. We expect product inspection to have strong growth in the fourth quarter. And while they will face tougher comparisons as we get into 2016, I expect solid growth in 2016. Core industrial declined 3% in the third quarter. We had good growth in the Americas and decline in China. Europe was flat. We expect conditions in core industrial to remain challenging in fourth quarter and into first half of 2016, principally due to China. We may see some growth in later part of next year as we will benefit from easier comparisons. Finally, retail was up 7% in the quarter with particular good growth in the Americas due to project activity. Retail will be down in the fourth quarter due to timing of activity and I would expect moderate growth in 2016. Now let me make some additional comments by geography. As mentioned earlier, Europe sales growth came in as expected. We had growth in Western Europe and most Eastern European countries outside of Russian-centric countries. We do not expect much growth in fourth quarter due to prior year's comparisons, but expect to continue to execute well and further capitalize on our Spinnaker sales and marketing initiatives, field turbo investments, and strong product pipeline in this region. We expect moderate growth in 2016 in Europe. Americas had an excellent quarter with sales growth of 10%. We had good growth in all product lines. While I don't expect another 10% growth quarter, our outlook for Americas is good. Asia/Rest of the World decreased 1% in the quarter and increased 9% excluding China. As Bill mentioned, China declined 9% in the quarter. We had growth in our Laboratory business in China, while Industrial was down 18%. I would expect Industrial in China to be down at similar level in the fourth quarter. Looking to 2016, we expect sales will decline but not to the level we saw in this year. Outside China, in the third quarter, we had very good growth in Australia and Korea, and good growth in India and Southeast Asia. We expect market conditions in Asia outside of China to remain solid for the remainder of this year and into 2016. Service had good growth in the quarter with local currency revenue up 5% as compared to prior year. We had good growth in all geographic regions and in most product lines. Let me update you on our field turbo program. We are very pleased with our progress and results to-date. The growth opportunities we identified are yielding tangible results, and the additional field resources are allowing greater attention and focus to our high priority accounts. At the same time, we are executing very well on our productivity and cost initiatives throughout the organization. These initiatives focused on lean manufacturing and values (19

[Operator:]

And your first question comes from the line of Brandon Couillard with Jefferies.

[Brandon Couillard:]

Hey. Thanks. Good afternoon.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Hey, Brandon.

[Brandon Couillard:]

Bill or Olivier, just curious, if you could elaborate on some of the productivity and lean initiatives that you plan to tackle next year. Just in more detail give us a few examples. And just how much runway do you see on that front to be able to still fund growth investments elsewhere in the business?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

So, let me say that we have these programs in place now for quite a while and there's a continuation of what we have been doing already this year. And we have lean initiatives on factory floor, where we are optimizing layouts, where we are optimizing planning processes, and we are optimizing the logistics parts between suppliers and ourselves, but also at the logistics part between the different factories. These all helped us to expand the margins. And on top of that, we always have selective restructuring projects that are helping us. For example, last year we consolidated a plant in the U.S. and there is certainly also things that we continue to do in terms of leveraging low-cost countries. We have moved one product category actually to low-end part of that product category from Switzerland to China that will help us also next year. So these are continuous things that we do, sometimes project specific and sometimes just global initiatives. And then, of course, we continue also to do things on the supply chain management, optimizing our logistics (28

[William P. Donnelly:]

Maybe I'd add to what Olivier said, Brandon, that one of the things we're leveraging more with Blue Ocean is that having most of our plants now on the Blue Ocean system allows us to have kind of common measures and KPIs around productivity, things that get measured and get done, so we are able to drive productivity improvements in kind of solving to the best-in-class standards within the group. And then I would add on top of that that – and these are now more back office costs, we see opportunities for shared service centers. We've certainly done some of our initial shared service centers coming out of Blue Ocean but we see continued opportunities there. In general, we gain productivity, let's say, 10% or 15% when we do a shared service center just within the Western world and more than that then if we can we go to a low-cost country. And those should be good runways. We actually had a review together with the rest of GMC colleagues this week as part of our GMC meetings and one of the comments I made to the guys kind of relates to a question investors often asked me, ask of me and that's how much more opportunity do we have. The whole review of this productivity and shared service center activities, I drew the conclusion preparing for that that we still have a long runway to go. We have a lot of good ideas to continue to enhance our margins in the coming years.

[Brandon Couillard:]

Thanks. That's helpful. And then one more for you, Bill. Two things. Could you – what have you baked in for net pricing next year and then, what does your EPS outlook contemplate for local currency incremental margin?

[William P. Donnelly:]

So, in the first question, we're building in, I think, about 150 basis points, based on what we see today. In terms of the incremental margins, they're going to be in the mid-40%s on a constant currency basis.

[Brandon Couillard:]

Thank you.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Operator, do we have other questions?

[Operator:]

We do. Your next question comes from the line of Richard Eastman with Robert W. Baird.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Yes. Good afternoon.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Hey, Rick.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Hi.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Olivier, could you expand just a little bit on the strength in the Lab business? Really just kind of speaking maybe a little bit to the verticals – pharmaceutical, food, just maybe where the strength was, and are there any laggards in the verticals there?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Actually, absent of the BRC, I would say, we experienced a good growth across all product lines and actually, also across this end user segment. I think there's really good momentum. And I attribute that certainly that demand is healthy, but then the programs that we have in place are actually relatively broad-based and yield good results. So I wouldn't single out here a particular segment. If I look at the U.S. market, it has been really broad-based. And typically, when we are – when we have good results across all the product lines, that's a signal that it's not a segment-specific topic.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Maybe the one area would be, some of the Lab side, in particular life sciences, look good.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay, okay. And then, Bill, just on the gross margin, just kind of looking at the drivers on the incrementals quarter-to-quarter, and it was pretty substantial, 75% kind of gross margin incremental from Q2 to Q3. Is that – I'm just going to surmise that that might be a mix issue, with Lab as strong as it was. But is there a way that you could give us a feel for that?

[William P. Donnelly:]

Yeah. Hey. I think, Rick, this is probably like a classic. You're looking at it may be slightly different than how we look at it. Actually, the way we look at it, it's always Q3 on Q3, Q2 on Q2. And if I look in Q2, actually, our year-on-year margin expansion was a little bit less in Q3 than it was on a year-to-date basis. I think the absolute sales volume is partly explaining that. If I look at the growth comparisons, Q – the two-year growth rates are maybe relatively similar, maybe slightly more in Q3, which could contribute a little bit to what you're talking about. But I...

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay.

[William P. Donnelly:]

I, overall, would say, on a constant currency basis, the margins were very good. Good expansion in Q3, but probably a little less than what we had seen earlier in the year.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay, okay. Fair enough. And then just one last question, I mean given the outlook in China, certainly for China industrial and maybe the trailing performance there, no quick fix there from an end market perspective when you're talking about the Industrial business, and potentially a pretty long cycle downturn here. But is any of your restructuring actions targeted at China? We've talked about moving assets around a little bit, but what are you doing with the asset base on the industrial side in China? Is that stable? Are you taking that down or...?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

We have been working on resource shifting in China for quite a while. And when I say resource shifting, there is parts of restructuring, head count adjustments, reflecting the pockets of future growth that we are anticipating. So, we are adjusting. We are assessing kind of the difficulty that we have in Industrial business, and you would have seen us, already in the last couple of months, still adding people, for example, for Laboratory business and for certain territories that we see a good future prospect. As for Industrial, we have been reducing head count. So, we are proactive on that. We have started last year, and this is still ongoing.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Rick, maybe one – because you used the word asset. And in terms of thinking about plants, maybe the one thing I'd remind you too is, we have our manufacturing for the Chinese domestic business, which clearly has been hurt on the Industrial side. But we continue to leverage those factories in terms of moving new products there and so things that were previously manufactured in the West. So the picture, inclusive of intercompany sales, would maybe show a better leveraging that you might expect just looking at the Industrial piece of the business. I would add to that that we see some facility consolidation opportunities in China, because we didn't own all of our office space. We have some office space and things we can take advantage of there – rental spaces.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay, okay. Very good. And again, given your primary global competition on the Lab side, probably more than Industrial, do you have a sense of – I mean, is more of your product sold in China manufactured in China vis-à-vis, say, Sartorius on the Lab side? Do you have a sense of that?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

I would say, in general, I think, of all of our competitors, we are very advanced in leveraging low-cost countries. And, in that sense, China as a production base is certainly significantly larger for us than for our key competitors.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

I see. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thank you much.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Willoughby with Cleveland Research.

[Steve B. Willoughby:]

Hi. Good evening. A couple of quick questions for you guys. First, you made a comment about some lower variable comp here. Was that for the third quarter? And if so, why did that happen?

[William P. Donnelly:]

Because a year ago we raised our bonus achievement expectations in Q3 a year ago. This year, we have about the same expectation as we did a quarter ago.

[Steve B. Willoughby:]

Okay. That makes sense. And then, Bill, is there any way to sort of quantifying the impact from field turbo? As of yet, I know it's still rolling out and you guys are expanding, but is there any way to quantify the revenue contribution or anything like that?

[William P. Donnelly:]

We struggle to be precise there because, of course, we're often – the field turbos can often be splitting territories and things like that. I think, for us, the – what's that expression about the pudding – sorry, the proof in the pudding is the growth in non-BRC. I think given global economic, we just don't think our markets are growing that fast. It very much – the outsized growth very much ties to geographies and product categories where we've made field turbo investment. So, I think, our success is in those markets is very much explained by the investments we made in 2015, but as well the ones we started in 2014.

[Steve B. Willoughby:]

Okay. And then just one follow up on that then. Even in the BRC markets, is there a way to gauge how you're comparing, your growth compares to what you would consider the market would be? Are you seeing – even though the business is declining, would you say you're seeing the similar type of kind of outperformance versus the market?

[William P. Donnelly:]

So, hey, let's maybe exclude Brazil and Russia that we're talking in those two cases, $30 million, $40 million of sales spread across 20 product categories. So it would be wrong for me to imply we have that level of visibility vis-à-vis competition because you're talking about really small slices. In the case in China, we certainly listen to what direct competitors that would have conference calls, i.e. – e.g. or i.e., Sartorius. And we feel good about what they do as well as our local market intelligence. We see on the industrial side, a couple of our industrial competitors have gone away in China. So we think we do reasonably well on a competitive basis there as well. And – yes.

[Steve B. Willoughby:]

Okay. Thanks for all the color, Bill.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Ross Muken with Evercore ISI.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Hey, Ross.

[Ross Muken:]

I was just hoping that you could go through your expectations for margins in 2016, if you can give us like your idea what the pacing is going to be like, what the core expansion and any FX impacts you guys are expecting?

[William P. Donnelly:]

So, first of all, maybe we are – if you pick the – we're saying 3% to 4% top line growth with about a 1% impact due to currency with that weighted towards the first part of the year. So a little more than 2% headwind in the first quarter and about 2% in the second and about 1% in Q3 and flat in Q4. Our margin expansion should be pretty well paced with maybe the fourth quarter being slightly more than the earlier quarters. But, overall for 2016, we're looking at 50 bps. And then in terms of our incremental operating margins, we're looking at a number in the mid-40%s for the full year. And if I kind of look at the pieces, the only one that – only quarter we don't see a number in that kind of range would be a little less than that in the second quarter. And that has to do with year-end (41

[Ross Muken:]

Thanks. That was really helpful. I'll just hop in the queue.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Derik DeBruin with Bank of America ML.

[Derik De Bruin:]

Hi. Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for the call. So, China came in a little bit better than expected at – declining only 9% versus the 22% declines that we saw in the last two quarters. I was wondering if you could just share with us some of the dynamics as that improved in China.

[William P. Donnelly:]

So – and maybe the first comment just to clarify some things. So our Industrial business was down in the low-20%s in China. Earlier in the year, it was down a little less than that in the high-teens. And, correspondingly, our overall business in China was down a little bit – 2% less this quarter than it was last quarter. You can see that if we're down high-teens in Industrial, but only down 9% overall, that reflects growth in areas like our Laboratory business largely. So in terms of the areas of our Laboratory business, it's – I think, overall, we have pretty solid growth. Probably the only area we didn't have good growth in Lab was AutoChem and frankly that's driven by – we're up (43

[Derik De Bruin:]

Yes, you did. Thank you.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson with JPMorgan.

[Tycho W. Peterson:]

Hey. Thanks. Olivier, can you maybe just give a little bit more color on growth by segment expectations on 2016. If you're going to get to 4% local currency or better on the top line, best case, would that be driven more by Lab or where do you see the strong factors (44

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Let me have Bill comment, because of course we model that thing.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Yeah. So – hey, we – Tycho – first hello, Tycho. And we should be doing mid-singles in our Laboratory business. We have, relatively speaking, a somewhat tougher comp in Q1, but the rest of the quarters should be all kind of in that range. Our PI business, product inspection, will continue to do well. We should get high-single-digit growth out of that. Our Industrial business will probably be flattish. We would expect China to again be down in Industrial, but we'll have some growth in the other parts of the world. And I would guess that that will be a little bit better in the second half of the year than the first half of the year largely due to comps in China. And, hey, our retail business is lumpy due to large projects but we're not building in a lot of growth overall, maybe a low-single-digit growth for that business.

[Tycho W. Peterson:]

Okay. And then the bacterial contamination business that you picked up, how large is the opportunity? I mean it seems like it could be a pretty large for pharma.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

So, we bought mainly a technology here that we are now improving and then bringing to the market. As always when you launch a product with the new technology, it's going to take a while until customers will really adapt to it especially because you need to address your quality systems, you need to address standard operating procedures and so on. So, while in the long-term we see it as a very nice product category very similar to the TOC, we do expect that it's going to take a couple of years. But as mentioned also in the prepared remarks, it's very synergistic and we feel we have a really great customer access, we have the right team. And so from a competitive standpoint, we feel like we have a really unique position here to leverage.

[Tycho W. Peterson:]

Okay. And then last one, capital deployment. It was good to see the buyback step-up, maybe just if you could comment on what you're seeing from an M&A perspective, given the market volatility, are you looking at more opportunities and any appetite to do something a little bit larger and some of the smaller bolt-ons?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

M&A strategy really remains – I'm very confident on that. As a reminder, we feel that from a strategic standpoint, there is no need at all for us to do something big. But we are very committed and very interested in doing these bolt-on acquisitions because we feel we can have a franchise that we can really leverage, if we have synergistic technology or if there are opportunities to develop a certain market access. So very committed to that, constantly looking at opportunities. We have our own radar (47

[Tycho W. Peterson:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Paul Knight with Janney Montgomery Scott.

[William March:]

Hi, guys. This is actually Bill March on behalf of Paul. How are you guys doing tonight?

[William P. Donnelly:]

Good. How are you, sir?

[William March:]

Doing well. I was just hoping you could speak to maybe the potential for growth in the Food Retail segment just in light of the potential Food Safety Modernization rules coming online.

[William P. Donnelly:]

So, maybe to clarify a little, the Food Safety Modernization Act has more impact for us in our product inspection business, and I would describe it as kind of an indirect impact. There is already – the principal driver of our product inspection business relates to brand protection and food safety topics. We certainly view the act as positive but for most of the guys, this is a little bit catch-up for maybe 20% of the market and probably 80% of that was largely covered already in people standard practices. The Food Retailing business itself won't really have any impact due to this.

[William March:]

Great. Thank you. And then maybe just to follow up on China in terms of kind of Lab. What are you seeing maybe between the first half and the second half of the year in terms of – has there been a pickup in spending? And if so, if you think that continues into 2016? Thank you.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Yeah. I talk – maybe could I clarify your question? You were asking about Lab in China and...

[William March:]

Correct.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So our Chinese business, PI (50

[William March:]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

And your next question comes from the line of Isaac Ro with Goldman Sachs.

[Isaac Ro:]

Hey, good afternoon. Thank you. Bill, just wondering if you could maybe give us an update on pricing. I think it's obviously been a successful area for you year-to-date. But could you maybe give us a year-to-date view on what that's been, and maybe what's embedded in your guidance for next year? Thank you.

[William P. Donnelly:]

So, on a year-to-date basis, we're up approximately 200 basis points. Very much the Lab business leading the way there, with numbers actually north of that, and our Industrial business is somehow being somewhat laggards to that. And Retail, we struggle to have global price realization in the Retail business. In terms of next year, I think that we should be able to get something in the 150 basis point range. If you're wondering why a little bit less, we did make some extra moves this year, particularly driven in countries where we wanted to push through a little bit of extra pricing because of the strong dollar. So, for example, in places like Southeast Asia, we pushed through a little bit extra price increases there, to try to make up for some of the currency impacts.

[Isaac Ro:]

Great. And then, maybe a second question would be just sort of, on the China point, you guys have put a lot of color on that, I appreciate. But wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit more about which end markets were, maybe not the weakest, but maybe the strongest. I'm just kind of curious, within that 9% number, how wide the range is between your various either end markets or product areas, because I have to imagine there are some bright spots, but curious about the dispersion on what you're seeing in China. Thank you.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Sure. So, hey, I would describe, first of all, a bright spot would be the Lab business overall and, of course, our Lab business maybe has a slightly different mix than some of the other guys. We have a little bit less healthcare, a little bit more industrial, within our product portfolio. But, overall, as mentioned, I think, kind of pulling out the impact of some large AutoChem orders last year, we think that that can be a high-single-digit business in the coming quarters. If I look at other parts of the portfolio, actually, Retail would be an area that's been growing there. And, of course, that's being driven by the increasing GDP per capita increasing consumer spending. Our Industrial businesses continue to be weak overall, but we do see pockets of growth there in some specific product categories where we're, I think, trying to push product categories. But, hey, probably they're small enough that it's not so helpful for us to mention at this point.

[Isaac Ro:]

Understood. Thanks for all the color. I appreciate it.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Yeah.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Rodgers with Great Lakes Review.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

Hello, everyone.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Hi, Jason.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

Looking at your forecast for 2016, what is your assumption on material costs?

[William P. Donnelly:]

So, material costs should be down, let's say, somewhere in the 1% range to 1.5% range. And you can kind of multiply that number by 0.3 or 0.4 to get a sense for what kind of impact that would have on the gross profit margin.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

And then, looking at China overall, did you say it was going to be off around 9% in the fourth quarter, or is that just the Industrial side?

[William P. Donnelly:]

I think I'd like to give it a range. But I would certainly say high-single-digits.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

And then how about 2016?

[William P. Donnelly:]

2016, it's got to do better than that. If you look at our Industrial business, we would expect the levels of decline are still large, that it's got to take a few more quarters to stabilize that business. So I think the beginning of the year, you'll continue to see declines in our Chinese business overall, whether we get to a flat business or a modest growth business in the second half of the year, I'm not quite sure yet.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

And then, looking at the percentage of your products manufactured in China, you expect that to change materially next year?

[William P. Donnelly:]

No, not – definitely not materially, because we have, to a certain extent, that – because such a high percentage of our Chinese business is Chinese manufactured products, clearly that piece will, again, at least, decline in the first half of the year. And we have, of course, always every year, a handful of products that we're transferring there ,or activities that we're transferring there. But I wouldn't expect the overall percentage to move materially.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

And then finally, what was the number of shares repurchased in the quarter?

[William P. Donnelly:]

Just give me a second here. So, we repurchased 390,548 shares.

[Jason A. Rodgers:]

Thank you very much

[William P. Donnelly:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Beuchaw with Morgan Stanley.

[Michael Clerico:]

Good evening. It's actually Michael Clerico on for Steve. You drove some good acceleration in the Americas sequentially this quarter. So I'm just wondering what's behind that growth rate and, more specifically, are you seeing any drag from weaker industrial trends, specifically in the U.S.?

[William P. Donnelly:]

Yeah. So, in terms of our Industrial business overall, I think the Q3 is in line with our kind of year-to-date numbers. And we would expect to have maybe some slowing in some of core industrial areas but maybe some acceleration in terms of our food safety, product inspection related businesses. Our Lab businesses in the Americas did very well in the quarter and we expect continued good performance in the fourth quarter as well.

[Michael Clerico:]

Okay. Second question, it seems like field turbo is going well, any updated thoughts on deploying a second wave of reps? And also could you give us an idea of how long it will take the current wave to be fully ramped up in terms of productivity?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

So, this year, we added about 200 field resources. This typically I do – they take a few quarters to ramp-up in terms of the first quarter you have training, onboarding, that's one. And then it takes them a few quarters to build up the pipeline. I would say, after two years, they should actually be really profitable contributing to the overall situation. And we prioritized, of course, on product categories that have the highest profitability. And so, we have both (58

[Michael Clerico:]

Okay. Great. Thanks, guys.

[Operator:]

And your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Groberg with UBS.

[Jonathan Groberg:]

Hey, guys. I'll just follow up with you offline. Thanks.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Hey, Jon. You're on the line.

[Jonathan Groberg:]

Hey. Can you hear me? I said (59

[William P. Donnelly:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Eastman with Robert W. Baird.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Is this bacterial contamination detection technology that you purchased, is there any application or cross application there with your product inspection business?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

No. The application points (59

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay. I was hoping you'd say yes. And it seems to be a big opportunity in bacterial detection on the food side. But maybe that's still to come. And then, Olivier, I was always so curious, during the third quarter, we had noticed kind of a flurry of new product introductions from old house (61

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

No, you shouldn't read anything into it. This...

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay, okay.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

It wasn't unusual for us at all.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

We have a certain strategy to expand the product portfolio in terms of leveraging the access to the channel for life science applications and so on. But that's something we have been doing over a couple of years and what you have seen more recently was actually product launches for Retail, Industrial as well as for the Lab product (61

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Yeah. And then – and there's no bump in your Lab growth? That wasn't big enough, any channel fills since that goes through distribution?

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

No. And certainly not related to old house. No, (62

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay, okay.

[Olivier A. Filliol:]

Everything kind of as usual.

[Richard C. Eastman:]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Arias with Citigroup.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Hi.

[Daniel Arias:]

Good afternoon, guys. Thanks. Bill, maybe just one for me and apologies if you've touched on it when I drop off the line there, but on the outlook for next year, what are you assuming in terms of the payout from some of the efforts that you have going on in service, increasing the attach rate on service contracts et cetera? Is that something that's sort of built into guidance or is that more of the "upside case" so to speak?

[William P. Donnelly:]

We built in some additional service growth over product growth and maybe that will be short answer, Dan.

[Daniel Arias:]

Got it. Okay. Thanks very much.

[William P. Donnelly:]

Have a good one.

[Operator:]

And there are no more questions at this time.

[Mary T. Finnegan:]

Thanks, Ronny, and, hey, thanks, everyone, for joining us tonight. Of course, as usual, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to give us a call or send us an e-mail. Take care. Thanks everybody.

[Operator:]

This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.