NEW YORK – While reporting its first quarter revenues on Monday, Revvity said that it has initiated a series of internal measures to further streamline the company’s operations and save costs.
"We entered 2024 accelerating our efforts to eliminate standard costs from our recent transformation and offset the return of variable expenses, which were reduced last year," Revvity President and CEO Prahlad Singh told investors in a call recapping the company’s Q1 financial results. "These cost containment efforts continue through the first quarter and will help us further optimize the organization moving forward."
As part of the company’s restructuring efforts, Singh said, the firm has recently established an enterprise operations team to help capitalize on more significant internal opportunities in the coming years. These initiatives include footprint consolidation, logistics optimization, vendor consolidation, and several "very intriguing" in-sourcing opportunities, he added.
Additionally, Singh said the company realigned the management of a few of its business brands earlier this month. As a result, the founder and CEO of BioLegend, Gene Lay, currently a brand of Revvity following its acquisition by PerkinElmer in 2021, will now become the head of the firm’s overall life sciences business segment.
"This change in leadership is part of a broader streamlining of my direct organization and builds on the recently completed successful integrations of several acquisitions, including IDS, Oxford Immunotec, and Nexcelom," Singh told investors. "With these changes, we are now poised for tremendous internal collaboration, and the company will be in an even stronger position to drive key initiatives going forward."
The company did not respond to a request for comment about whether Revvity has reduced its workforce as part of the restructuring.
Also, Revvity reported Monday that its Q1 2024 revenues declined 4 percent year over year, or 3 percent organically.
For the three months ended March 31, the Waltham, Massachusetts-based life sciences and diagnostics firm booked $649.9 million in total revenues, down from $674.9 million from the year-ago period but above the average analyst estimate of $646.8 million.
Geographically, Revvity declined in the low single digits in the Americas, declined in the mid single digits in Europe, and declined in the low single digits in Asia, with China declining in the mid single digits, CFO Max Krakowiak told investors during the call.
By business segment, Revvity’s first-quarter life sciences revenues were $303.0 million, an 8 percent decline from $328.4 million in Q1 2023. Organic revenue for the segment also dropped 8 percent during the period.
Within the segment, life science instrument revenues were down in the mid-teens during the quarter, Krakowiak said, and the company’s reagents, technology licensing, and specialty pharma services revenues declined in the high single digits. Revvity’s Signals software business grew in the high single digits during the quarter, he added.
According to Krakowiak, during Q1, the company saw delays in customers finalizing their budgets for the year and observed continued lower lab activity levels from customers. While the company is "observing pockets of more favorable trends, we have not yet seen this result in a meaningful improvement in underlying order rates outside of normal seasonality," he noted.
Revenues for the diagnostics business segment were $347.1 million, which remained essentially flat compared to $346.6 million in the prior-year period. Organic revenues for the segment increased 1 percent year over year compared to a year ago.
In particular, the immunodiagnostics franchise, which makes up the largest portion of the company’s diagnostics business, grew in the low double digits in the quarter, Krakowiak said. This consisted of high-teen organic growth in China, and high-single-digit growth globally outside of China.
The company’s newborn screening business also "continued to perform well," Krakowiak pointed out, with mid-single-digit growth overall, and double-digit growth outside of China.
As for the firm’s reproductive health business, revenues grew in the low single digits organically in the quarter, Krakowiak said. Still, he noted that Revvity’s Chinese reproductive health business "faced incremental headwinds," as the country’s birth rates declined in response to COVID lockdowns ending and the impact of the reopening.
Finally, Krakowiak said the pressures for the company’s applied genomics business, which it started to experience in the latter half of 2023, continued into this year, resulting in the business decline. While the company expects its applied genomics business to improve as the year progresses, management continues to anticipate a high-single-digit decline for the full year.
Commenting on the company’s business in China, Krakowiak said that while there had been talk regarding additional stimulus that could impact the industry, at this point, the firm has not yet seen the benefits reflected in orders.
"Consequently, while we are ready to capitalize on any opportunities that could arise, we are getting cautious as it pertains to our assumptions on the potential impact on our business this year," Krakowiak said, adding that the company continues to assume its China business to be roughly flat for the full year.
Revvity’s Q1 R&D expenses were $50.4 million, down 11 percent from $56.7 million in Q1 2023. The firm’s SG&A spending increased 5 percent to $260.6 million from $248.6 million a year ago.
Revvity reported net income for Q1 2024 of $26.0 million, or $.21 per share, compared to $569.5 million, or $4.50 per share, in the year-ago quarter. It also reported an adjusted EPS from continuing operations of $.98, slightly beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $.93.
During the recently completed quarter, the firm reported a loss of $2.7 million from discontinued operations compared to a gain of $544.6 million a year ago.
The company ended the quarter with $998.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and $697.3 million in marketable securities.
Looking ahead, Krakowiak said the company expects that it will not return to positive organic growth until the second half of the year while expecting organic revenue to decline in the low single digits in Q2 2024.
For the full year of 2024, Revvity is narrowing its total revenue guidance from the previously announced $2.79 billion to $2.85 billion to the new range of $2.76 billion to $2.82 billion, to reflect recent changes in foreign currency exchange rates. The company reaffirmed its adjusted EPS guidance of $4.55 to $4.75 and its organic growth guidance of 1 percent to 3 percent.
In Monday afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Revvity’s shares were up 3 percent at $104.63.