NEW YORK — Bruker on Thursday reported a 5 percent year-over-year increase in first quarter revenues, with gains across all of its business segments but missing analysts' expectations.
Separately, Bruker said it has closed its acquisition of diagnostics firm EliTechGroup for €870 million ($929.3 million) in cash, excluding the carved-out EliTech clinical chemistry business. The deal was originally announced last December.
For the three-month period ended March 31, Bruker's revenues climbed to $721.7 million from $685.3 million the year before, coming in below the consensus Wall Street estimate of $729.9 million.
Growth from acquisitions was 4 percent, and currency exchange did not meaningfully impact revenue during the quarter.
Bruker's CALID unit, which includes its life sciences and mass spectrometry businesses, posted a 4 percent decline in revenues for the quarter to $227.9 million from $236.7 million a year earlier. Going forward, EliTech will become the Bruker Molecular Diagnostics business within the Bruker Microbiology & Infection Diagnostics division of the CALID group.
Bruker BioSpin revenues were up 1 percent in the first quarter to $182.8 million from $180.3 million in Q1 2023, while Bruker Nano's revenues rose 15 percent to $240.4 million from $209.6 million. Bruker Energy & Supercon Technologies (BEST) revenues edged up 18 percent to $73.1 million from $62.2 million.
During a conference call following the release of the Q1 results, President and CEO Frank Laukien discussed the company's recent spate of acquisitions, which in addition to EliTechGroup includes its recently announced $392.6 million purchase of NanoString Technologies and its 2023 acquisition of PhenomeX.
Addressing analyst concerns about the company's ability to smoothly integrate these companies, Laukien expressed confidence to be able to do so but noted that the opportunities for these deals were somewhat unexpected.
"We did not expect either that we would be able to acquire the former PhenomeX… [or] that NanoString would already… run into their Chapter 11 reorganization," he said.
"This wasn't going to wait until Q4 or until we got around to next year," he said of the NanoString deal. "This was a strategic opportunity that is incredible, in a complicated situation — we'll admit that."
Laukien said Bruker would not be commenting on the legal dispute between NanoString and 10x Genomics, which was a major driver of the NanoString's bankruptcy. Last November, the firm was ordered to pay 10x Genomics $31 million in damages as part of a patent infringement lawsuit relating to its GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler. In December, a European patent court overturned a preliminary injunction against NanoString in its EU patent dispute with 10x, allowing it to resume sales of its CosMx Spatial Molecular Imager in 16 countries in Europe.
Laukien said the company found the deal appealing in that it could acquire at a "very reasonable valuation" a firm that would significantly boost its presence in the spatial biology space.
"The driver was spatial transcriptomics. That is a really big deal if you want to be a leader in spatial biology," he said, noting that Bruker has a "complementary but much, much smaller spatial proteomics business" with Canopy Biosciences.
"This really puts us on the map in spatial transcriptomics," Laukien said.
Bruker reported a first quarter net profit of $50.9 million, or $.35 per share, compared with a year-ago net profit of $76.5 million, or $.52 per share. Non-GAAP earnings per share in Q1 2024 were $.53, topping the consensus Wall Street estimate of $.46 per share.
The Billerica, Massachusetts-based company's R&D costs in the quarter increased 18 percent to $81.7 million from $69.0 million, while SG&A spending rose nearly 20 percent to $195.4 million from $162.7 million.
Bruker ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash of $343.3 million.
Looking ahead, Bruker raised its revenue guidance for full-year 2024 by $60 million to between $3.29 billion and $3.35 billion, implying 11 percent to 13 percent year-over-year revenue growth. It maintained its prior guidance for organic revenue growth of 5 percent to 7 percent. The company said the EliTech business is expected to generate approximately $100 million in revenues during the remainder of 2024.
Bruker now expects non-GAAP 2024 earnings per share between $2.79 and $2.84, up $.08 from its prior guidance. It said EliTech is expected to add between $.08 and $.10 per share to non-GAAP EPS after acquisition financing costs.
During early morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Bruker were down 9 percent to $71.73.