Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to Bruker Corporation's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call.

My name is Joe Kostka and I'm the Director of Bruker Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are Frank Laukien, our President and CEO, and Gerald Herman, our EVP and CFO.

In addition to the earnings release we issued earlier today, during today's conference call we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be downloaded from the events and presentations section of Bruker's Investor Relations website. During today's call, we will be highlighting non-GAAP financial information.

Reconciliations of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and are posted on our website at ir.bruker.com. Before we begin, I would like to reference Bruker's safe harbor statement, which is shown on slide two of the presentation.

During this conference call, we will or may make forward-looking statements regarding future events in the financial and operational performance of the company that involve risks and uncertainties, including those related to our recent acquisitions, geopolitical risks, wars or blockades, market demand, tariffs, currency exchange rates, competitive dynamics, or supply chains. The company's actual results may differ materially from such statements.

Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in today's earnings release and in our Form 10-K for the period ending December 31st, 2025, as updated by our other SEC filings, which are available on our website and on the SEC's website. Also, please note that the following information is based on current business conditions and our outlook as of today, May 6th, 2026.

We do not intend to update our forward-looking statements based on new information, future events, or for other reasons except as may be required by law prior to the release of our second quarter 2026 financial results expected in early August 2026. You should not rely on these forward-looking statements as necessarily representing our views or outlook as of any date after today.

We will begin today's call with Frank providing an overview of our business progress. Gerald will then cover the financials for the first quarter 2026 in more detail and comment on our reconfirmed full year 2026 financial outlook.

Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Bruker's CEO, Frank Laukien.

Thank you, Joe. Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining us on today's first quarter '26 earnings call. While US academic demand, tariff, and currency headwinds have continued to pressure our year-over-year results, we are pleased that our first quarter '26 financial performance came in well ahead of expectations.

We are also encouraged that in the first quarter, our Bruker Scientific Instruments segment, or BSI, bookings grew organically in the high single digits. We saw strength in industrial research orders and encouraging double-digit bookings growth year-over-year in in academic orders from outside the United States.

This demonstrates, we think, that our novel and performance-leading post-genomic disease biology research solutions are truly enabling and that we can expect momentum in US acad-gov demand once the NIH funding environment improves. In the first quarter, we benefited from strong demand in a few areas more unique to Bruker, as our AI-driven semiconductor metrology business and our similarly AI-driven SciY scientific software and lab digitization businesses, as well as our European Middle East security detection business, all saw organic bookings growth of greater than 20% in the quarter.

Let me give you a little bit more color. Order strength in semi metrology, which is now a greater than $300 million annual revenue business for Bruker, was driven by AI demand for memory chips and for advanced packaging, particularly in the US and in APAC.

Many of the world's top semiconductor manufacturers rely on Bruker metrology tools for front-end and back-end applications, including development for their next-generation products. The rapidly increasing need for computing power and emerging applications for artificial intelligence provide strong secular tailwinds in semi metrology.

Another area that may have been less visible to you so far, another area of our portfolio benefiting from the AI megatrend is SciY, which is now about a $50 million revenue business. SciY offers lab digitization and scientific software going from research through development all the way to manufacturing, and enabling integration, automation, and digital transformation.

These SciY solutions facilitate the capture, ingestion, and standardization of data so that it is AI-ready, alleviating bottlenecks in the digital transformation that is revolutionizing science revolutionizing scientific research, and paves the path to so-called self-driving labs, or SDL, which can accelerate R&D, quality control, and also chemical and biomolecular manufacturing. In another area, our security detection business, we are seeing significant demand for our explosive trace detection systems from airports in Europe and the Middle East, as well as for CBRN detection solutions.

Our security detection business has grown from a niche business a few years ago to about $70 million in revenue expected this year. Finally, we are delighted in the turnaround in our BEST segment, where we have obtained in the first quarter about $80 million of multi-year orders for our Research Instruments subsidiary, fusion technologies, fusion energy, and in the last 5 months, December through April, about $600 million of multi-year orders for our high-performance superconductors from major MRI customers.

All good at BEST. The strong academic demand for our post-genomic solutions outside of the US and these mentioned areas of idiosyncratic strength were contributors to our BSI book-to-bill ratio, which in Q1 was again comfortably above 1.0, now the third consecutive quarter.

This encouraging momentum is expected to carry us back to organic revenue growth in the second quarter and for the remainder of the year. Very importantly, Bruker's innovation engine has been quite impressive, we think, this year already, and we have introduced very impactful new products and solutions at recent scientific and medical conferences.

These launches further strengthen our leadership position in NMR. I think we are clearly leading the way in multiomic, high-fidelity, and high-plex spatial biology.

We're also bringing major innovations to clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics. Let's dig in.

Let's turn to slide four now for the P&L performance of the business. Our Q1 reported revenues of $823 million increased 2.7% year-over-year, an FX tailwind of 4.5% and a growth contribution from M&A of 2.6% more than offset an organic decline of 4.4%.

BSI segment revenues were down 5% organically, while BEST saw organic revenue growth of 3% net of intercompany eliminations. Our first quarter '26 non-GAAP gross and operating margins were 50% and 10.2% 7th respectively, both down year-over-year and both inclusive of significant headwinds from foreign currency trends year-over-year, but also both ahead of expectations.

Our Q1 '26 diluted non-GAAP EPS was 31 cents, down from 47 cents in the first quarter of '25, but meaningfully ahead of our prior expectations. Please turn to slides five and six, where we highlight the first quarter constant exchange rate, or CER, revenue and bookings performance of our three scientific instruments groups and our BEST segment year-over-year.

In the first quarter, BioSpin Group revenue was $198 million with a CER decline in the high single digits percentage. Revenue growth in preclinical imaging systems, SciY software, and our services business were more than offset by weakness in NMR systems due to soft acad-gov performance in China and Europe.

In the first quarter, BioSpin installed the world's highest-field preclinical MRI system, an 18 Tesla preclinical system, at the Champalimaud Institute in Lisbon, Portugal. However, BioSpin saw a headwind to revenue growth from the 1.2 gigahertz NMR installed in the first quarter of '25, as there were no gigahertz-class systems in Q1 of '26.

Right. In Q1, our CALID Group had revenues of $316 million with mid-single-digit percentage CER growth.

CALID growth was led by molecular spectroscopy, which also saw strength in security detection orders. Microbiology and infection diagnostics had solid revenue growth, and in life science mass spectrometry, contributions from our recent M&A more than offset revenue software in US acad-gov.

Encouragingly, life science mass spec orders growth in the US acad-gov was positive in Q1 year-over-year. Perhaps it is stabilizing.

Of course, we'd like it to come back and rebound, but maybe that'll happen in the next couple of quarters. Turn to slide six now.

In Q1, Bruker Nano revenue was $246 million with CER revenue declining mid-single digits percentage. Strong revenue growth in semi metrology was more than offset by weakness in acad-gov and industrial markets.

Nano had strong orders across the group, including tools for X-ray industrial research, spatial biology, high-bandwidth memory, and advanced packaging metrology, all driven by AI. Finally, first quarter BEST CER revenues grew 3% net of intercompany eliminations, driven by our superconducting wire business.

Research Instruments, RI, business saw very strong orders in Q1, as I said earlier, from fusion, and BEST received very large multi-year superconductor orders in the last 5 months from all three major MRI OEM customers. Moving on to slide seven, I won't, the next three slides I will not read everything, but I'll give you a highlight.

We had pretty significant NMR innovations at the Experimental NMR Conference in Asilomar in 2026 for research and pharma markets. A lot of it is software, a lot of it is AI-driven, making protein NMR really much easier.

In the past, I think protein NMR had a disadvantage compared to cryo-EM or X-ray crystallography in that it required more expertise, but that's really pretty changing pretty rapidly. AI, with its unique abilities to get dynamic and binding information, is becoming much, much more accessible.

There's some other innovations from extreme new sensitivities that enable new fields, shown on the right, to just a good old next-generation NMR console, the Avance Neo X, which we think will unlock a replacement cycle. Moving to slide eight, at AGBT and then following AACR, I really think Bruker is clearly leading the way in spatial biology for capturing complexity of disease biology and integrating it from, well, even 3D genomics with a very unique Paint-Seq system that we launched to the CosMx system, which is upgradeable for our customers, and which of course we're already a year ago, we showed multiomic whole-trend human transcriptome.

We've added now a whole mouse transcriptome, we're doing T-cell receptors, microRNA, and most importantly, or very importantly I would say, we have we have added high-plex proteomics. That combination of whole transcriptome and high high-plex proteomics is really very, very powerful and readily adopted by comprehensive pathways for better LLMs or just for better disease biology.

We think that's continues to be very unique. Enough on that slide.

Let me talk about clinical microbiology in slide nine. We had another conference, a crucial conference, the global ESCMID conference, which stands for clinical microbiology and infectious disease, in Munich.

We introduced our new myGEnie PRO higher-throughput system, sample-to-answer higher-throughput system for all the markets that we drive from Bruker Elitech, and delightfully, this is also the system that Hitachi is introducing in Japan using our molecular diagnostic assays. This is very an important development.

Meanwhile, we have many, many introductions, too many to to specify, in the MALDI Biotyper workflow and identification, and even hospital-acquired using the IR Biotyper. I won't go through it.

This is more for your reading if you are interested. Significant innovation in microbiology, typically a staid area of diagnostics.

Right. In summary, good execution, disciplined management by our teams drove us drove us to outperform our expectations in the first quarter.

Order trends are improving, including in unique areas of our diversified portfolio, and we're optimistic that improved organic growth will follow. Importantly, we are very committed to controlling and reducing costs, which is crucial to improving our margin profile rapidly.

Benefits from our cost out plan with Bruker Management Process will be explained by Gerald, but are now clearly evident in our P&L, and we're further expanding these cost-cutting initiatives, as Gerald will discuss shortly, keeping us on track not only for significant margin expansion and strong EPS growth this year, but also into next year and beyond. Given the dynamic macro, shall we say, and geopolitical environment, we believe it is prudent for now to confirm our prior '26 guidance.

The outperformance in Q1 has been encouraging, an encouraging start to the year, and it provides us with improved visibility and confidence, and we look to build on that momentum in the second quarter. With that, let me turn things over to our CFO, Gerald Herman.

Go ahead.

Thanks very much, Frank, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm pleased to provide more detail on Bruker's first quarter 2026 financial performance, starting on slide 11.

Despite significant macro and foreign exchange headwinds in the quarter, we delivered financial performance ahead of expectations we outlined in our earnings call in February. The first quarter '26 reported revenue increased 2.7% to $823.4 million, which reflects an organic revenue decrease of 4.4% year-over-year, well ahead of our original expectations.

Acquisitions added 2.6% to our top line, and foreign exchange was a 4.5% revenue tailwind. The highlight of the quarter was our strong bookings performance, with BSI segment organic bookings up high single digits and bookings growth across all groups.

We saw order strength in academic-government research, excluding the US, in industrial and semi end markets, and geographically in Europe and the rest of the APAC region, with marked order improvement also seen in China. Back to revenue for the quarter.

Geographically and on a year-over-year organic basis in the first quarter of '26, our Americas and European revenue both declined in the low-single-digits percentage, while Asia Pacific revenue declined in the low-double-digits percentage, driven by a greater 20% decline in revenue performance for China. In our EMEA region, revenue was up low single-digit percentage.

From an end-market perspective, we saw organic revenue growth in semi, biopharma, and hospital clinical markets, more than offset by double-digit declines in academic-government research and industrial markets. Within the BSI segment, systems revenue declined in the low-double-digit percentage, and aftermarket revenue grew in the high-single-digits percentage organically year-over-year.

Q1 2026 non-GAAP gross margin decreased 130 basis points to 50%. Non-GAAP operating margin was 10.2%, a decrease of 250 basis points year-over-year.

The decrease reflects headwinds of 350 basis points from lower volume and unfavorable mix, 170 basis points from foreign exchange, and 30 basis points from tariffs. These headwinds were partially offset by a 300 basis point benefit from our cost-saving actions taken in fiscal year '25, now helping our performance in fiscal year '26.

On a go-forward basis, we expect the year-over-year foreign exchange and tariff headwinds on margins to ease as we lap the introduction of US tariffs and the significant appreciation of the US dollar, which occurred in the second quarter of 2025. On a non-GAAP basis, Q1 '26 diluted EPS was 31 cents, down from 47 cents in Q1 of '25.

Our non-GAAP EPS performance includes a foreign exchange headwind of 5 cents and a 5 cent impact from the MCP offering we completed in September 2025, net of interest cost savings. On a GAAP basis, we reported diluted EPS of 2 cents compared to 11 cents in the first quarter of 2025, with the decline mostly due to lease impairment and restructuring charges related to our cost-saving actions.

Beyond the $100 to $120 million in annualized cost-saving targets that we announced last year, we're now tracking around $140 million in expected savings on an annualized basis. We cleared most European labor hurdles in the first quarter and expect to see the majority of savings reflected in our second quarter and second half results in fiscal year '26 and beyond.

Weighted average diluted shares outstanding in the first quarter of 2026 were 152.7 million, an increase of 800,000 shares or 0.5% from the first quarter of 2025. Turning now to slide 12, we generated $71 million of operating cash flow in the first quarter of '26, up slightly compared to the prior year.

Capital expenditure investments were $24 million, resulting in free cash flow of $47 million for the quarter, an improvement of $8 million year-over-year. We finished the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $133 million.

During the quarter, we continued our delevering actions with $180 million debt paydown, eliminating a Swiss-franc-based term loan. At the end of the first quarter, our net leverage ratio declined to 2.9 times.

Turning now to slide 14, we are reconfirming our full year '26 outlook using the stronger execution in the first quarter to substantially de-risk the second half ramp in growth, margins, and EPS. Therefore, we're reconfirming the following guidance: reported revenue of $3.57 to $3.60 billion, representing reported growth of 4% to 5% compared to fiscal year '25; organic revenue growth of 1% to 2% year-over-year, with acquisitions contributing 1.5% and an estimated foreign exchange tailwind of also 1.5%.

We continue to expect organic non-GAAP operating margin expansion of 300 to 350 basis points, largely driven by our cost-saving actions, offset partially by approximately 50 basis points of foreign exchange headwind, and resulting in a non-GAAP operating margin expansion of 250 to 300 basis points compared to the 12.6% operating margin posted in fiscal year '25. On the bottom line, we continue to expect non-GAAP EPS for fiscal year '26 in a range of $2.10 to $2.15, or non-GAAP EPS growth of 15% to 17% compared to fiscal year '25.

We're estimating a foreign exchange headwind of 8% to fiscal year '26 EPS, implying non-GAAP CER EPS growth of 23% to 25% year-over-year. Other guidance assumptions are listed on the slide.

Our fiscal year '26 ranges have been updated for foreign currency rates as of March 31st, 2026. Now to add a bit of color to the second quarter 2026, we've now delivered three consecutive quarters with a BSI book-to-bill over 1, and expect to return to organic revenue growth in the second quarter.

We estimate second quarter organic revenue growth to be in the low to mid-single digits percentage year-over-year. With the easing of tariffs and foreign exchange headwinds we experienced in the second quarter of '25, in the second quarter of '26, we expect a meaningful year-over-year step-up in non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP EPS, with continued improvements in both metrics expected in the second half of the year.

To wrap up, Bruker's first quarter '26 results were pressured by macro and market headwinds, but our teams executed very well to deliver results ahead of our expectations. Coupled with continued momentum in our order book, this gives us further confidence in our ability to deliver solid financial improvements for the remainder of the year and beyond.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back to Joe. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Gerald. We'll now begin the Q&A portion of the call.

As a reminder, to allow everyone time for questions, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Operator?

We do not hear a question.

Great, sure. I'll take that.

Thanks, operator. Thanks, Frank.

Congrats on the quarter and appreciate all the commentary. I want to start with some of your comments on demand trends OUS.

You talked about A&G being a little bit better OUS. The US weakness is not surprising.

Would love any additional color you can provide on sort of how sustainable that is. You've got good visibility into order trends.

Just do you think that could persist going forward? Especially your comments on China and Europe.

Thanks.

Hi, Mike. Thank you.

Thanks for your comments. I think the order growth in Q1 outside of the United States in acad-gov was particularly high.

That's probably not sustainable, but it's healthy. It's quite healthy and also shows that even with incremental growth in acad-gov budgets outside of the United States, that our tools are very much in demand and are a high priority.

People really want the proteomics, metabolomics, multiomics, very differentiated tools, the second-generation proteoform tools, functional proteomics tools with the timsTOF Omni is in very much in demand. I think it's ushering a new era in proteomics.

We're leading the way in spatial biology and good old NMR. NMR and related techniques are just very powerful and becoming less the domain of just experts, becoming via AI quite honestly, becoming more accessible.

You need the results and the insights, not necessarily how to run the spectrometer. It's good trends and I think it shows that we're not just going with the macro A&G trends, but I think that we're hopefully have our right to win, as it's sometimes called, with particularly relevant tools that are truly enabling.

I think it's a good indicator. I wouldn't quite take the OUS Q1 order rate and extrapolate from that.

I think we can look at high-single-digit growth in these types of orders. I am more optimistic the NIH funding and funding disbursement will come back now in Q2, and maybe that makes for good Q3 orders.

We shall see.

That's helpful. Then maybe for my follow-up, the other point that I thought was really interesting was some of your commentary on some of these really niche Bruker-specific end-markets or applications where you're benefiting from some of the more recent macro disruptions, security, defense, things like that.

You called out a couple of those. I was just wondering, any way you could kind of aggregate that sort of what percent of your portfolio in industrial is exposed to some of those end-markets where you're seeing that 20% growth now?

Like you said, a bunch of those might be $50 million, $70 million of revenue, on the one-off, it's things that can kind of slip under the radar. You lump them all together, that can be a nice little offset to what's going on in A&G and pharma.

It's well above 10%, right? We haven't done that, but yeah, a quick math would show that it's 10, greater than 12%.

They are some others of these, what Street loves to call them idiosyncratic growth drivers. Yes, we have them too.

We will do that. It's moving the needle.

It's more than 10%, 12%, but we'll aggregate that at some point. I don't have it at my fingertips.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Hi, Frank. Thanks for the questions here.

First one actually maybe for Gerald. On the margin side, could you elaborate a little bit on the second-half ramp?

Congrats on the quarter, but just it is a steep still. Could you maybe talk a little bit about in terms of overall, is it just organic growth recovery or are you expecting more from the cost initiatives?

Maybe just give us the puts and takes given the ramp here. Yeah.

Hi, Puneet, it's Gerald. I think, generally speaking, we are expecting continued improvement in the overall revenue performance sequentially as we march through 2026.

Our operating margin performance is very strongly driven by our cost-saving actions, and you've already heard me describe those in my prepared remarks. We're expecting 300 to 350 basis points of organic improvement.

That gets better as we move through the year, starting in the second quarter because of some of the headwinds that I mentioned on foreign exchange and tariffs get dissipated in the second quarter. More fundamentally, as we march through the third and the fourth quarter, we expect to see stronger operating margin performance, mostly driven by improved market conditions, as you just heard about our order performance, and, of course, the cost-saving actions.

Got it. And

The bigger driver are the cost-saving actions this year, Puneet, yeah.

Got it. Maybe just Frank, just on spatial and AI, two areas I just want to touch on.

Maybe on AI, can you provide what level of visibility you have from the customers, your confidence in continuing to grow that here in '26 and then '27, or is it just something that we should just observe sort of the AI demand in the broader macro? On the spatial side, there was an instrumentation launch in the market.

Just wondering how you're thinking about potentially freezing of the market this year and then longer-term demand for NanoString products there. Thank you.

Yeah.

The AI trend and that, of course, always and included logic and next-generation logic chips and GPU and other that's been strong all along. Advanced packaging continues to be very strong.

It's also not only one company anymore. There are now some other companies that are now also really benefiting from that.

Then really the big step-up more recently, as you've all read, of course, and we're benefiting from that, is in high-bandwidth memory. Of course, again, advanced packaging for including all of that.

That's an additional boost. That looks quite durable.

I don't think that was a lucky quarter or two or three. I think that looks like a very durable trend.

We're built into that supply chain with our semiconductor metrology tools and even our RI tools that are now also north of $25 million a year. They go into the lithography, the extreme UV via the Zeiss-ASML supply chain.

There's an additional driver that's now becoming significant. These are strong trends.

On the SciY side, the lab digitization and not just for our instruments, for other instruments, and just about all the data in the lab, and then the scientific software to do something with that, the FAIR reporting principles, these are very strong drivers primarily in biopharma, but also in other industries, and yeah, even some academic customers are benefiting from us, but it's primarily driven by biopharma. Again, a very high priority for all of them.

Sometimes the Street worries about, well, are they still buying instruments with all this AI? Yes, they're buying instruments, but boy, are they investing in software and digitization and projects to get their labs, not only R&D, but QC, and QC accompanying the transition to manufacturing and then scale-up.

These are very strong trends. I think that business will continue to grow very rapidly.

Spatial biology, it was remarkable to read that someone invented what we did a year ago. Anyway, not to be too cagey here.

I think it's a confirmation of what we've been driving, this whole genome, whole human genome, now whole mouse genome transcriptomics, but we're still very much ahead of that with additional transcriptomes. We're actually delivering this stuff.

This isn't just all promised for later this year. We've been delivering it since last year.

Very importantly, we have the high-plex or fairly high-plex proteins, which really makes pathway analysis so much more powerful. I feel really good about us leading the way and really benefiting from the new trends in spatial biology.

We'll leave it at that.

Got it. Okay.

Thank you.

Hey, thanks. Frank, just to circle back on the semi comments.

You had a pushout $40 million last quarter. Did you recapture that in this quarter?

The original guide I think for the year on semi was low single digit. Maybe just given what you're seeing in the order book, talk a little bit about how you feel about that as a bogey for the year.

Don't have all the details at my fingertips. I think we recaptured only some of that in Q1.

Some of that has to do also with customer site availability, and as in that industry, you deliver precisely when they want it, not when you have it ready. I don't think it's completely captured, but some of it went into Q1.

Sorry, I don't have a really crisp answer for you, but the answer is some, not all.

For the full year, just is low single digit still what you're thinking on semi?

On the revenue, I need some help from my team here. I don't have that at my fingertips.

We may be able to get back to you on that during the call. Someone's nodding, the answer seems to be yes.

Yes. That's our calculation.

Awesome. Maybe just US academic, Frank, your comment, you kind of let it slip you thought it could pick up in 2Q potentially.

I'm just curious what you're seeing out there, how expectations changed since February. What gives you that kind of confidence we'll see it maybe sooner rather than later?

It certainly seems to have bottomed or stabilized. Now, we want more than that.

Yes, a few weeks ago, we got news that a lot of or a number of our applicants, especially from NIH, got emails. Not only did they have a good score, but that they would probably get funded.

The checks did not come immediately or the money transfers, but now I read in some of the industry reports, right, from you and others that also disbursements are now going up sequentially at least. We know what the budget is.

We know how little has been spent so far in a way. We're doing the math that everybody else is doing.

When you go to conferences, people aren't bullish, but in US academic conferences, but they expect this to stabilize somewhat and maybe also There's still political uncertainty, for sure, and I expect it will pick up obviously, and I think we've bottomed. I'm somewhat optimistic that there will be a fair amount of funding between now and the end of the government fiscal year at the end of September, and perhaps that will relate to good Q2 and or Q3 orders, and some of that will go into Q4 orders if money is released in Q3, calendar Q3, some of that will go into Q4 orders.

We're not bullish on that, but we think it's stabilizing and poised to pick up a little bit. We have many other areas of strength, for this year, we're not banking on that.

Most of that will then go into next year's revenue for us anyway. We're expecting a gradual improvement and perhaps good orders from US academia.

Wouldn't that be nice in the second half of this year. We're not building that into our guidance, we can deliver, we think, our guidance with or without that.

If it comes, it's going to be actually upside.

Okay. That's helpful.

Then just quickly for Gerald, can you give us the 2Q margin target? I don't think we got that.

Should we assume B to B holds above 1 for 2Q?

To answer your last question, yes. On your earlier question, we mentioned in my script the low to mid-single digits organic revenue growth color for the second quarter '26.

A significant margin pick

up. Margin non-GAAP.

We didn't give any numbers. We didn't give any ranges, yeah.

That's right.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Tycho.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, Frank.

Be great to get some color on China. I think you mentioned revenues were down over 20%, but Gerald kind of alluded to a market improvement in orders.

Just unpack where you see it across the end markets there and whether that's maybe starting to pick up a bit.

Brandon, it's Gerald. I'll just take that one quickly.

We did have a significant drop in overall revenue in the first quarter, but that's largely driven by weaker order demand in the prior year. We think that's just played out.

With respect to the first quarter order performance in China, it was solid, I guess I'd say. Now, again, we're coming off of relatively softer comps, but still very encouraging in China to see some improvement on a order basis in the first quarter.

Okay. Then, Frank, care to touch on the BioSpin leadership given Falko's departure recently?

He's been there a long time, and leadership in BSI has been immutable the past decade. Just curious if you have any more color.

Thanks.

That's right. By the way, on China, I wanted to add, because of some news yesterday, some of the diagnostics businesses of other companies are under pressure, reimbursement or competitive or otherwise in China.

Most of our diagnostics businesses, we have very, very little exposure there, which is primarily focused on Europe, the US, and the rest of the world ex-China. That's a headwind we don't have, for once.

BioSpin leadership, yep, Falko indeed has effectively left, but I think he has several months that he's still nominally with us. We stepped with other people into the leadership, and I'm taking the opportunity to reorganize that a little bit, including the group structures, and we'll probably give you a better idea of the new group structures by middle of July.

I think it's on a very good path, and I think you'll actually have a team with even more closeness to customers and very impactful, not just innovation for innovation's sake, but very impactful innovation, very very customer-driven, cost-effective, but also I think very accountable. I'm actually pretty pleased in what we're doing at BioSpin.

More in July.

Thanks.

Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I want to follow up on one of Tycho's questions.

In Q2, the year-over-year comparison is the most favorable of the year. In previous conversations with you, we got the sense that you were expecting better than low-single-digit to mid-single-digit organic growth.

With those two observations in mind, was there any pull-forward of revenue into Q1 at the expense of Q2, and are you still expecting Q2 to be the highest organic growth quarter of the year?

Very discerning question. I don't think we had a lot of pull-forward.

Maybe there's quarterly fluctuations and some things move back and forth. That's why we didn't call it out, but maybe there was something like $8 to $10 million one could argue was pulled forward into Q1.

It's not particularly material, and it also tends to be what's typical between quarters. That's not an unusual number.

To your second point, mathematically, yes, that looks to be correct that, as we see it right now, the cadence is indeed that the organic revenue growth in Q2 would probably be the highest of the year. We'll see about that, but that's how it lined up initially and that's how it still looks correct.

Yes, some of that has to do with a weaker Q2 of '25, exactly as you pinpointed.

Okay. Thank you for all that, Frank.

Then, I don't know if this is a Frank or a Gerald question. I think some of the unfortunate developments in the world and the ongoing uncertainty, I guess the silver lining is some of that leads to increased demand for Bruker products and services.

On the flip side, obviously there's an increase in freight and input costs. Keeping in mind you did not change your guidance for the year, the 250 to 300 basis points of margin expansion, does that suggest that you have fully captured and feel very comfortable that within that range, within that target, that you will be able to overcome any freight, input, or related costs?

Doug, it's a fair question. The short answer is yes.

We think that we have built into the guide the variability associated with related energy costs. We think moderate increases will be absorbed through the elements that we've already laid out, we're comfortable with where we are.

As you've noticed, we have not increased guidance. We have not taken the Q1 beat or part of it to guidance.

We just want to have more confidence, even more confidence in our guidance, and maybe want you all to have more confidence in our guidance. We are expanding our cost-cutting, and it's, of course, intended to make sure that we continue on our significant margin ramp also into '27.

Some of that is also I guess a cushion in what we now see, there is increasing freight costs, there is increasing helium costs and things like that. We think we've got it baked in, but that's also why we kept our guidance as is for now.

Okay. Understood.

Thank you very much.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions.

Good morning. Gerald, could you walk us through could you walk us through some of the other end-market assumptions besides academia for second quarter and how that will step up for 3Q and any puts and takes there?

With respect to the guide, we don't provide a lot of detail on the end-market elements, Subbu. What we can say is we are continuing to expect strength in acad-gov outside the US.

We're continuing to expect strength in certain industrial markets and in the semi space for sure. Those would be some of the core elements.

But

I would add to that that I think the clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics business will do well. Their placements, if you recall, for the Bruker Elitech molecular diagnostics last year were something like more than 30% higher than our business plan, which bodes well for consumables pull-through the following year.

Q1 again has been just excellent with placements, something like 40% ahead of plan. That doesn't show up in the P&L, right, initially.

That's a CapEx, if you like, because these are reagent rentals. It very much then has a build-up of consumables that comes after it.

Those are some of the things that you will want to keep an eye on plus the other things that we discussed.

That's helpful. My follow-up to Doug's question.

From the Middle East conflict, would you expect additional tailwinds to the defense business, and at what point does that become an upside to the current guide based on what your starting assumptions that you had at the beginning of this year?

Remember our stuff doesn't shoot, it measures. Nonetheless, detection, of course, is important and people are concerned about things that happen behind the lines and all.

That's already obviously because of Ukraine. Not only the country of Ukraine, but many other European countries thinking, we don't want to become the next Ukraine.

They are investing in detection capabilities, and our detection business over 2 or 3 years has essentially doubled to where it's now meaningful. That has healthy order trends and I expect that to continue.

I don't think it will affect guidance this year. It's just one of the good guys on our list of things that are helping us meet and perhaps exceed guidance.

If there are bigger orders, they tend to be long-term. If you get another big order at some point this year, it's going to go into '27 and sometimes '27, '28 revenue.

These things are not turning quickly. Hopefully, that helps.

Sure.

Great. Thank you for taking our questions.

I wanted to follow up on some of the margin ramp questions and just ask about mix dynamics. Curious to hear what mix impact was on the 1Q margin and then how much of a mix tailwind do you need to see to hit that second half margin step-up and your visibility into that.

Then just a follow-up to that piece, I wanted to just clarify on the cost outs, is the $140 million in expected annualized savings, is that expected to hit by year-end this year? Thanks.

I'll start in the reverse order. On the $140 million of annualized savings, what you're going to see is those pieces will be fed into the quarters as we move forward.

You will not see the full $140 million for sure in the P&L by the end of year. As we march into '27, you'll start to see the impact of that for sure.

With respect to the mix question, I would say, just generally, in Q1, we did have somewhat of unfavorable mix in the quarter, mostly driven by the gigahertz-class item that was not in Q1 of '26, but was in Q1 of '25. Our expectation is that the mix situation will actually improve as we march through the rest of 2026.

We've had a couple of quarters of more challenging mix issues, and we're expecting to see that improve as we move through the rest of the year. Then I think I said earlier, I think with respect to the operating margin performance of the company, we've taken significant cost-saving actions, which are basically going to secure, we think, the operating margin performance of the business not only in '26, but beyond that.

We expect to see that ramp of operating margin improvement as we step sequentially through the second, third, and fourth quarters. Hopefully, that's helpful.

No. Thank you for that.

Then just a quick follow-up. On BEST, you talked about the major orders coming through on the MRI side up to $600 million now.

Can you talk a little bit about how incremental those orders really are? I believe some of those are with existing customers, it'd just be curious to hear any thoughts on that.

Would also be curious to hear what the lead time is for those orders and if it's safe to assume those would start to contribute maybe in the first half of '27 or if there's any possibility that happens in '26? Thank you.

They're not all incremental, but after maybe a period of uncertainty and some organic decline, moderate organic decline, BEST being a headwind last year, we think this year it's already going to be a tailwind. Some of these orders are kicking in this year.

Some of them are 2, some of them are 5 or 7-year orders, it's pretty long-term. It bodes well for continued moderate organic growth in the BEST business, I would say, compared to organic decline last year.

Now that a lot of these things, these major orders with the major MRI companies of the world are settled for multiple years, we think what's built in there is a healthy single-digit organic growth. That stabilizes, that turns it around.

No, it certainly isn't all incremental. Some of these fusion orders at RI are incremental.

Some of this and mostly in '27, '28 revenue performance. Some of this stuff here is just reversing the trend and setting up a very stable, healthy trend, we think, for multiple years in BEST.

Great. Thank you.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions.

Frank, maybe one for you on acad-gov. Certainly appreciate the commentary on the US and a little bit on China.

Can you talk about what you're seeing in Europe? We've seen some mixed data points from others on that region for acad-gov.

Just curious what you guys are seeing and the expectations going forward there.

I wish I had a better crystal ball, Patrick. I I one quarter for as some there's always fluctuations in that, it was good in Q1, but I I expect, single digit.

I don't even want to specify whether it's low, mid, or high. I expect probably mid to high single-digit organic growth in that also in Europe given the strength.

Not so much necessarily all the budgets, because there's some defense pull on that as well, right? The budgets are not only going up in Europe for research, but funding for our equipment for, proteomics and now Proteomics 2.0, the the age of the proteoform, the intact functional proteins, and leadership in spatial biology, clear technological leadership and applications leadership in spatial biology, and, a recovery of NMR, I think this all bodes well for us to grow ahead of the general funding environment.

If I had to put a number on there, I think it's mid to high single-digit growth opportunity, organic growth opportunity, but there will be quarterly fluctuations.

Understood. Thanks.

Then, Gerald, I also wanted to pin you down a little bit on some of the 2Q moving pieces. I just want to make sure, is there an ultra-high field in the quarter?

Then, I want to follow up on Tycho margin question. If you could just help us out a little bit on the margins, I think previously, folks were thinking mid-teens for 2Q, and then the earnings number, what that might shake out as, would be appreciated.

We can go through some of that in more detail separately, but what I'd say is, first of all, we don't expect a gigahertz-class system in Q2 of '26. I think that will have some impact related to your modeling.

I think, generally speaking, as I said earlier, we are expecting a step-up in operating margin performance fairly significantly in the second quarter and

Sequentially.

Sequentially from Q1, and certainly on a year-over-year basis as well. I think just from an EPS perspective, we expect to do better in the second quarter than we did sequentially from the first quarter of '26.

We can talk about more of the gory details if you'd like later.

Understood. Thanks.

One last question, we probably should wrap it up. It's about 9:00, because there's another company starting their earnings call, and we want to be respectful of that.

Thank you for joining us today. Bruker's leadership team looks forward to meeting with you at an event or speaking with you directly during the second quarter.

Feel free to reach out to me to arrange any follow-up. Have a good day.

Thank you.