This story originally ran on July 28.
In second-quarter earnings calls this week, officials from Waters and Bruker each reported strong revenue growth in their companies' mass spectrometry businesses.
President and CEO Douglas Berthiaume said Waters' mass spec business was the firm's "strongest performer across the line" with revenue growth "well into the double-digits," and sales of high-end mass spectrometers like the company's Synapt series even stronger.
Bruker CEO Frank Laukien, meantime, similarly noted that his company's life sciences mass spectrometry revenues and new order bookings showed double-digit growth in the first half of the year.
Both officials also cited new platforms released at this year's American Society of Mass Spectrometry annual meeting – Waters' Xevo G2 QTof and Xevo T-QS and Bruker's Solarix MALDI FTMS and Maxis ETD – as sources for additional growth in coming quarters.
In particular, Berthiaume said that Waters' Xevo T-QS triple quadrupole instrument gave the company "an opportunity to gain share in applications where… the ability to see trace amounts of organic [molecules] or biomolecules is of primary importance," which he called "the largest market opportunity in mass spectrometry-based instrumentation."
Order volume for the Xevo T-QS "ramped up nicely," in the second quarter, Berthiaume said, adding that the company plans to begin shipping the product to customers in the third quarter.
Instrument sales for the company's Waters division, which houses its mass spec systems, were up 8 percent year-over-year, said Waters CFO John Ornell during the call.
Overall, Waters' revenues rose 7 percent to $391.1 million from $362.8 million in the year-ago period. Its net income increased 21 percent to $84.9 million, or $0.90 per share, from $70 million, $0.72 per share, in Q2 2009.
Bruker's scientific instruments division posted revenues of $284.9 million, an 18 percent increase from $241.3 million in Q2 2009. The company as a whole reported a 19 percent jump in second-quarter revenues to $300.9 million compared to $252.5 million last year.