Thank you, operator. Hello and welcome to everybody.

Joining me today are Michael Grosse, our CEO; Florian Funck, our CFO; René Fáber, Head of Bioprocess Solutions and CEO of Sartorius Stedim Biotech; as well as Alexandra Gatzemeyer, Head of Lab Products and Services. As always, we will start with prepared remarks followed by Q&A.

The call is scheduled for one hour. Please limit yourself to one question to allow as many participants as possible to take part.

If time permits, we will, of course, take follow-up questions at the end. Please note that management's comments will include forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties, and for details of the relevant risk factors, please refer to the safe harbor statement in today's press release and also in the presentation.

With that, I'm pleased to hand over to our CEO, Michael Grosse. Michael, please go ahead.

Thank you, Petra, and a very warm welcome from my side as well. I'm happy to report a solid set of results for the first nine months of 2026, with both of our divisions contributing to growth.

At the same time, we further improved profitability and generated strong cash flow. This allowed us to continue deleveraging and further strengthen our balance sheet, all in line with the financial priorities we outlined at the beginning of the year.

Let me share some high-level views here. At the group level, we saw solid growth during the first nine months of the year.

Looking at the divisions, the strong operational sales growth in Bioprocess Solutions was driven by healthy recurring business and the continued recovery of the non-recurring business, which grew year-on-year. Overall, this confirms the equipment recovery we anticipated at the beginning of the year and supports our confidence in its further progression.

Lab Products and Services performed particularly well and even exceeded our expectations. Growth was broad-based across the portfolio, with particularly strong momentum in our bioanalytics business and some pull-forward in Q3.

Here, AI-driven drug discovery workflows are becoming an increasingly relevant growth driver, and especially our Octet platform is very well positioned to benefit from this trend and the opportunities it creates. Overall, we are very pleased with our top-line performance, especially considering that tariff surcharges shifted from a benefit to a headwind in Q3, and MatTek is now fully reflected in our organic baseline.

If we strip out all tariff effects, our underlying growth actually accelerated compared with the previous quarter. Turning to profitability, higher volumes, together with continued cost and operational discipline, keep us well on track with our profitability objectives for the group and for both divisions.

The combination of profitable growth and continued discipline on working capital translated into a substantial improvement in free cash flow. As a result, we further reduced leverage and continued to strengthen our balance sheet.

Overall, we are very pleased with the progress we've made so far this year. The positive momentum is based on end markets that remain fundamentally intact.

We are seeing healthy pipelines and increasing research activities across our customers, which has supported demand for lab instruments and consumables. As these programs move through the pipeline, production volumes increase, and so does the need for bioprocessing solutions.

In bioprocessing, customers are increasingly focused on improving productivity and efficiency while reducing cost. We saw the strong interest firsthand at our recent process intensification forum in Guxhagen, which brought together 130 participants from 54 biopharma companies and 30 external speakers across the industry.

The discussions ranged from intensified upstream processing to continuous downstream manufacturing, automations, and data analytics. My key takeaway was that the industry is increasingly moving from discussing the potential of process intensification to how to implement it in practice.

Sartorius is very well positioned for this transition, with technologies spanning the workflows from early process development to next-generation bioprocessing. Of course, we do not stand still on the innovation front.

First, in BPS, we have expanded our portfolio with technologies that improve oxygen transfer, enabling further process intensification in upstream, and ready-to-use cytokines in closed sterile bags and a new animal-component-free cell culture medium. Second, in LPS, we added an AI-powered Incucyte module for faster label-free stem cell analysis, and a new Octet biosensor for faster antibody measurement with less sample preparation.

Building on this, let me briefly turn to our outlook. We confirm our full-year guidance and continue to expect operational group sales growth around the midpoint of our 5% to 9% range, and an underlying EBITDA margin slightly above 30%.

For BPS, our expectations remain unchanged, while we have refined our expectations for LPS following the strong nine-month performance. We will come back to the details shortly.

With that, I will turn the call over to Florian for the financial highlights. Florian.

Thank you, Michael, and a warm welcome also from my side. Let me start with the group's top-line performance.

Overall, our top line continues to build on the positive trajectory of recent quarters. First, we are seeing sustained strength in consumables alongside continued growth in our non-recurring business.

Second, growth is broad-based across all regions, with APAC performing particularly well, also supported by the continued recovery in China. Finally, our lab division showed substantial growth as the recovery continues to progress.

With that backdrop, let's look at the financial results for the period in detail. As a brief reminder, we introduced operational sales growth last quarter.

This measure excludes the effect of tariff refunds and the corresponding customer compensation. We don't consider this to be part of our underlying operating top-line performance.

In Q3, we received an additional $5 million in tariff refunds from the US Treasury. This brought the amount received in the first nine months to 31 million, while we claimed approximately 40 million in total.

We are still expecting to receive the outstanding amount by year-end, but there is a level of uncertainty to timing, of course. Corresponding customer compensation reduced sales growth by around 120 basis points in the first nine months.

In Q3 alone, the impact was almost 60 basis points. Excluding this effect, group operational sales grew by 8.1% in constant currencies.

Including it, growth was 6.9% in constant currencies. Now turning to the divisions.

Bioprocess Solutions continued to deliver solid, broad-based growth. Operational sales increased by 8.1% in constant currencies.

Including the effect from tariff compensation to customers, growth was 6.8% in constant currencies. Performance continued to be driven by our consumables business, which delivered healthy single-digit percentage growth in the first nine months of 2026.

Core consumables grew at a double-digit rate. Please be reminded that our overall consumables business was partly diluted by volatility in our advanced therapies portfolio in Q2, which is obviously included in our nine-month view.

We continue to expect these ATS orders either towards the end of 2026 or in 2027. Overall, recurring business continued to benefit from healthy activity across our customers' drug development pipelines, supported by clinical trial activity, new drug approvals, and growing commercial manufacturing volumes.

We were also encouraged by the ongoing recovery in the non-recurring business, which grew year-on-year. This confirms our view that the bottom is behind us and that the market continues to improve in a steady, consistent manner.

Now let's turn to the LPS division. LPS delivered a very strong Q3 that exceeded our expectations.

Operational sales grew by 8.3% in constant currencies in the first nine months. Including the effect from tariff compensation to customers, growth was 7.5% in constant currencies.

We are clearly seeing positive underlying business trends across the LPS division, but in our view, part of the Q3 performance reflects demand pull-forward and timing effects. This should be viewed in the context of a prolonged period of subdued customer investment and should therefore not to be extrapolated as the new run rate.

Growth was supported by the recurring consumables and service business, as well as by instruments, with particular strength in bioanalytical solutions. This was supported by improving biotech funding, rising research activity, and a gradual release of customer capex.

Finally, MatTek contributed approximately 2 percentage points to LPS growth, performing fully in line with our expectations. Overall, we are very pleased with the top-line performance, especially considering that tariff surcharges turned from a tailwind in the first half into a headwind in Q3.

The reduction in surcharges rates from around 15% last year to approximately 10% this year represented a growth headwind in Q3 of roughly 40 basis points for both the group and BPS and roughly 50 basis points for LPS. Taking this into account, our true underlying business momentum remains very solid.

Now let's talk about our regional performance. Overall, we saw broad-based positive development across all regions in the first nine months of 2026.

Starting with EMEA, sales increased by 6.4% in constant currencies. BPS was the main contributor, while LPS also delivered a positive performance.

In the Americas, operational sales increased by 8.4%, with both divisions contributing. Including tariff-related customer compensation, growth was 4.9% in constant currencies.

The region was still affected by the Q2 project delays in ATS I mentioned earlier, but Q3 did not show any unusual ATS sales effects. Asia Pacific remained our strongest region, with sales up by 11% in constant currencies.

Both divisions delivered double-digit growth, also supported by a continued recovery in China. Let me now turn to profitability.

Overall, we continue to make good progress during the first nine months of the year. Underlying EBITDA increased by 6.9% to €828 million, while the corresponding margin expanded by 50 basis points to 30.2%.

As in the first half, higher volumes and operating leverage were the main drivers of this improvement. These effects more than offset an unfavorable product mix and our continued investments in future growth areas.

On a net basis, tariff surcharges and the related customer compensation balanced each other out and had no impact on profitability of the divisions and the group. Looking at the divisions, Bioprocess Solutions generated underlying EBITDA of €714 million.

The margin improved by 80 basis points year-on-year to 32.3%, primarily driven by higher volumes and operating leverage. In LPS division, underlying EBITDA came in at €114 million.

The margin was broadly stable year-on-year despite our continued investments in future growth initiatives. The clear sequential improvement in profitability was supported by the very strong top-line performance in Q3.

Overall, we are pleased with the continuous progress in profitability, which remains fully in line with our expectations for the year. Let's move on to have a look at performance below the underlying EBITDA.

Earnings as well as cash generation developed well in the first nine months. Underlying net profit increased by around 7% to €260 million, reflecting the improvement in operating profit discussed earlier.

Underlying earnings per share increased accordingly to €3.76 per ordinary share and €3.77 per preference share. Reported net profit attributable to shareholders increased by 51% to €188 million.

This was primarily driven by the strong improvement in operating profit and significantly lower extraordinary expenses compared to the prior-year period. Turning now to cash flow, where operating cash flow increased to €562 million, up around 10% year-on-year.

Higher earnings and the refund of US tariffs more than offset an increase in working capital. The working capital increase was basically in line with the growth of the underlying business.

Free cash flow increased significantly by 55% to €310 million, driven by higher operating cash flow and lower capex. Capex ratio was 9.6%.

While capital expenditure remained below the prior-year level, we continue to invest in key strategic projects and growth initiatives. Finally, let me briefly turn to balance sheet and leverage.

Strong earnings and cash generation supported further balance sheet improvement. The equity ratio that you can see on the chart increased to 42.8% from 39.8% at year-end 2025.

Net debt decreased to €3.68 billion, which is almost 200 million less than 12 months ago and well above 60 million less than at year-end 2025. Net debt to underlying EBITDA improved to 3.3 times.

This shows that we are continuing to make good progress on our deleveraging path while still investing in the future growth of the business. Overall, these developments reflect our disciplined approach to capital allocation and our commitment to maintaining a strong balance sheet and solid investment-grade credit profile.

Before we move on, let me briefly flag an upcoming change to our financial reporting. A new standard called IFRS 18 will become mandatory for financial years starting on or after January 1st, 2027.

This standard mainly changes the face of the P&L by dividing it into an operating, investing, and financing part and introducing standardized subtotals. It also increases the transparency around alternative performance measures and how these reconcile with the profits shown in the P&L.

Today, we calculate underlying EBITDA starting from EBIT and adding back depreciation, amortization, and adjustments. Under IFRS 18, we will start with the newly defined P&L line operating profit, while the add-backs remain quite the same.

Most important takeaway from this: underlying EBITDA will remain our central profit KPI, and the content of this number stays consistent with recent reporting. The new presentation will also not affect net profit or net cash flow.

We will disclose underlying EBITDA as a management-defined performance measure and provide a reconciliation to the closest IFRS-defined subtotal, which will be operating profit. In a nutshell, nothing changes in terms of Sartorius' underlying business performance reporting.

IFRS 18 mainly changes how certain line items are represented and classified mainly in the P&L and, to a limited extent, in the cash flow statement. With that, Michael, back to you.

Thank you so much, Florian. Now let's take a look at our full-year guidance.

We confirm our expectations for the group and BPS while raising them for LPS following the strong performance in the first nine months. At the top of the slide, you see our guidance ranges for sales revenue growth.

These ranges cover both our operational view and the expected development, including customer compensation related to tariffs. On an operational basis, we continue to expect growth broadly around the midpoint of our guidance ranges of 5% to 9% for the group and 6% to 10% for Bioprocess Solutions.

For Lab Products and Services, we have raised our expectations and now expect growth around the upper end of the 2% to 6% range. Including customer compensation for tariff surcharges, we continue to expect growth in constant currencies to be in the lower half of the respective guidance ranges for the group and BPS.

For LPS, we now anticipate growth around the upper end of the range. As a brief reminder on tariffs, we submitted refund applications of approximately €40 million.

By the end of September, we had received around €31 million. We are expecting the outstanding €9 million to be paid by year-end, but there's a level of uncertainty to timing.

On M&A contribution, no changes here. The contribution from the MatTek acquisition remains unchanged of approximately 30 basis points for the group and 1.5 percentage points for LPS.

Turning to profitability, we continue to forecast an underlying EBITDA margin of slightly above 30% for the group and slightly above 32% for Bioprocess Solutions. Following the strong development in LPS, we have raised our margin expectations to slightly above 21% compared with our previous expectations of slightly below 21%.

Finally, our expectations for the other key financial indicators remain largely unchanged. We have modestly lowered our full-year capex ratio expectation from around 12.5% to around 12%.

Our expectation for net debt to underlying EBITDA of slightly above 3 times at year-end remains unchanged. Looking ahead to Q4, we continue to expect solid underlying development with further recovery in equipment and continued growth in consumables.

However, Q3 benefited from some pull-forward and timing effects in LPS, and Q4 faces a not too easy comparison base across both divisions in absolute million euros. In addition, MatTek is now included in the organic comparison base, and tariff surcharges represent a headwind compared to a tailwind in H1.

Therefore, the strong Q3 growth rates should not be extrapolated into Q4. Finally, a brief update on FX.

For the full year, we currently model an FX headwind of slightly more than 1 percentage points on reported revenue growth. For Q4 in isolation, however, we expect FX to turn into a tailwind of slightly below 2 percentage points.

Further modeling assumptions can be found in the appendix of this presentation. Overall, our message is straightforward.

Our underlying business continues to be strong. Consumables remain strong.

The recovery in equipment is progressing as expected, and improved visibility reinforces our confidence in the full-year outlook. As our goal is to continue to grow profitably above market.

To achieve this, we are focusing on three key areas: our portfolio, customer experience, and operational excellence. Put it simply, we want Sartorius to become a more customer-centric, more focused, and more efficient company.

To make this happen, we are adapting our operating model and are moving forward from our divisional structure and will no longer manage the business in separate divisional silos. This also means change to the Executive Board responsibilities and to our external reporting structure from next financial year onward.

Before we get into the details, let me first explain the key changes and why we are making them. At our Capital Markets Day, we talked about our ambition to further improve customer experience and become an even better partner for our customers.

We want Sartorius to be easier to work with, better coordinated, and simpler to navigate. As our portfolio has become increasingly interconnected, customers are increasingly looking forward for complete solutions rather than only individual products.

That's why we want to present Sartorius as one company, with one face to the customers and easy access to our full portfolio. This is why we bring our commercial activities together under one organization.

Alexandra Gatzemeyer will lead our global commercial organization as Chief Commercial Officer, responsible for account management, marketing, and customer and technical services across the group. This allows us to present Sartorius as one company with clearer customer ownership, better coordination across our portfolio, and a more consistent experience for our customers worldwide.

Second priority we discussed at the Capital Markets Day was maintaining our innovation leadership while continuously improving operational excellence. To support this, our groups are being brought together under René Fáber as Chief Product Officer, and he will be responsible for research and development, product management, technical sales, and manufacturing.

This creates clearer accountability and helps bring decisions closer to the business and our customers. Last but not least, we created a global operations function under my leadership.

Bringing these activities together allows us establish common standards across the group, share best practices more efficiently and effectively, and further strengthen our operational excellence. Just to be clear, René will continue in his role as CEO of Sartorius Stedim Biotech, and I will continue in my role as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Stedim Biotech.

With these changes, I'm convinced that we have the right organizational setup to deliver on our ambition of becoming a more customer-centric, more focused, and more efficient company. I also believe that we are well positioned for our next phase of growth.

In this context, we will also adjust our external reporting as of 2027 and align our segment reporting more closely with our corporate structure, taking into account our French-listed subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech. The new segment structure will comprise three building blocks: the former Bioprocess Solutions division will become the Bioprocessing Solutions segment, exactly mirroring Sartorius Stedim Biotech.

As a result, sales revenue and EBITDA differences previously caused by product allocations and structural considerations no longer exist, simplifying modeling for analysts covering both companies. The Lab Products and Service division will become the Research Solutions segment and comprise our business outside Sartorius Stedim Biotech.

Consequently, we will also find a separate reconciliation line in our financial reporting, which primarily reflects intercompany eliminations. At the end of the day, these changes require only a limited restatement.

They do not affect Sartorius Group revenues or underlying EBITDA, and the separate reporting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech remains entirely unchanged. I'm sure many analysts covering both Sartorius AG and Sartorius Stedim Biotech will appreciate the modeling simplification that comes with this.

We are announcing the intended reporting change early to give investors and analysts sufficient transparency and preparation time. For the 2026 full-year results, we intend to report the year under the existing segment structure and additionally provide pro forma figures for 2025 and 2026 under the new reporting structure, including a reconciliation.

Our 2027 guidance will be presented on the basis of the new structure. Actual reporting under the new segment structure is scheduled to begin with the first-quarter 2027 results.

From that point onward, we would no longer report the previous BPS and LPS segmentation. In summary, the adapted operating model and the planned reporting structure are both designed to support our One Sartorius approach, emphasizing customer centricity, clear portfolio focus, and a simpler reporting.

With that, I'm now handing over to René. René, please.

Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. Looking at the first nine months of 2026, I'm very pleased with our performance.

The bioprocessing business continued to develop well and broadly in line with our expectations. Demand for biologics remained robust, supporting healthy growth in our recurring business, with consumables again making the main contribution.

In advanced therapies, underlying market activity remains encouraging, particularly in earlier-stage pipelines. Our equipment business grew nicely year-on-year, confirming an ongoing recovery.

Utilization rates continue to increase, triggering new equipment orders. Demand for high-throughput process development systems is high, supporting healthy activity levels of our customers.

I'm also encouraged by the continued traction of our innovative platforms, which help customers develop processes faster and manufacture drugs in a more efficient way. What I hear from customer is that there's no way around implementing every possible innovation in manufacturing.

We have launched new intensified bioreactor bag enabling to make more product in lower volumes. Interest in our bionic intensified downstream platform is high, and we believe our portfolio is very well positioned to support customers as they continue adopting high-efficient, single-use manufacturing.

Let's now turn to our financials. Starting with the top line, on an operational basis, excluding tariff-related customer compensation, sales revenue grew by 7.8% in constant currencies compared with the first nine months of 2025.

Including customer compensation, sales were up by 6.5% in constant currencies, reaching €2.29 billion. Customer compensation for tariff surcharges amounted to €28 million in the first nine months, including €4.5 million in Q3.

Our recurring business remained an important driver of top-line growth, increasing at a healthy, high single-digit rate. Core consumables grew at a double-digit rate.

The equipment business also continued its positive trend, supported by customer investments in process development, productivity, and faster timelines. Turning to profitability, underlying EBITDA increased by 4.8% to €716 million.

The margin remained robust at 31.3%, improving by 20 basis points year-over-year. Positive volume effects and operating leverage offset an unfavorable product mix.

Tariff surcharges and related customer compensation balanced each other out, and on a net basis had no impact on profitability. Please note that underlying margin development was stronger than the reported 20 basis points increase suggests as a higher brand name fee was a 25 basis point headwind compared with last year.

We already discussed that one in Q1. Overall, a strong margin underscores the strength and the scalability of our business model.

Looking at regions, all three contributed to growth in the first nine months. EMEA maintained solid momentum, with sales increasing by 6.5% in constant currencies to €982 million.

In the Americas, operational sales grew by 7.6% in constant currencies. Including tariff-related customer compensation, growth was 3.9% in constant currencies, with sales reaching €783 million.

The region was also still affected by the project delays in advanced therapies, as Florian mentioned earlier. Asia Pacific was our strongest region, with sales increasing by 10.6% in constant currencies to €524 million.

This development was also supported by continued recovery in China. Overall, the regional picture remains broad-based, with positive contributions from all three regions.

Let's move to net profit and cash flow. Both developed well during the first nine months.

Underlying net profit grew by 9.4% to €350 million. Underlying earnings per share increased accordingly by 9.4% to €3.59.

Reported net profit increased by 26.7% to €277 million, supported by the improvement in operating profit and lower extraordinary items compared with the prior-year period. Operating cash flow increased by 11.6% to €498 million.

Higher earnings and the US tariff refunds more than offset the growth-related increase in working capital. Free cash flow grew strongly by 58.5% to €264 million, driven by higher operating cash flow and lower capital expenditure.

Capex ratio was 10.1% compared to 12.6% in the prior-year period. We continue to invest our global research and production infrastructure while staying disciplined on how we allocate the capital.

A quick look at our balance sheet metrics. The equity ratio increased to 54.6% compared to 51.7% at the year-end of 2025, reflecting our strong capital structure and earnings development.

Net debt decreased to €2.14 billion. The ratio of net debt to underlying EBITDA improved further to 2.26 times compared to 2.38 times at year-end of 2025.

Overall, these developments underline the very robust balance sheet position of Sartorius Stedim Biotech as a solid foundation to support future growth while maintaining financial flexibility and discipline. Two quick points before we move onto our guidance.

First, IFRS 18, which Florian explained earlier, will of course also apply to Sartorius Stedim Biotech reporting as of Q1 2027. Second, let me also underline that the One Sartorius approach does not change the reporting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech.

SSB will continue to report separately and with the same level of transparency as today. The underlying principles, governance, and transparency will remain unchanged.

To our guidance, let me briefly comment on our confirmed 2026 outlook for Sartorius Stedim Biotech. On an operational basis, we continue to expect growth around the midpoint of our guiding range of 6% to 10%.

Including customer compensation for tariff surcharges, we expect reported growth in constant currencies to be in the lower half of this range. As a brief reminder on tariffs, we submitted refund applications of approximately €35 million.

By the end of September, we had received around €28 million. We are expecting to receive the outstanding amount by year-end, but there's a level of uncertainty to timing.

Turning to profitability, we continue to forecast an underlying EBITDA margin of slightly above 31% for the full year. Finally, we have modestly lowered our full-year capex ratio expectation from around 13.3% to around 13%, reflecting our more focused prioritization of investment projects.

Our expectation for net debt to underlying EBITDA of slightly above 2 times at year-end remains unchanged. FX headwind would be approximately 1.2 percentage points on reported revenue growth for the full year.

For Q4, we expect now a tailwind of approximately 1.7 percentage points. Michael mentioned earlier, when thinking about Q4, please keep in mind that tariff surcharges will represent a headwind and that we are also facing a demanding comparison base, with Q4 last year being our strongest quarter in absolute sales.

Putting it all together, the underlying business remains healthy. The first nine months give us a solid basis for the remainder of the year.

Our focus now is on execution and finishing the year strongly. With that, I will hand over to the operator for the Q&A.

Hello. Zain Ebrahim, J.P.

Morgan. Thanks for taking the question, and I'll stick to one, which is just if you could provide more color on the demand trends you're seeing from customers in bioprocessing, both on the recurring side of the business and non-recurring.

Specifically, how did market conditions evolve in Q3? It sounds like it's steadily getting better, Florian, from your comments, but if you could maybe elaborate on that.

I think previously you had a guidance for equipment of flat to slight growth for the year, what's your latest view there?

Could you just get this question in full? I didn't understand fully acoustically.

Can you just quickly repeat the main points of the question? The acoustics is not brilliant.

Sorry, hopefully you can hear me clearer. It was on latest demand trends in bioprocessing on recurring and non-recurring, and how that's changed in Q3, and what your latest view is on equipment for 2026 revenue growth.

Okay. Thanks, Zain, for the question.

Let me take that on. I think we see and build on the continuation of, first of all, a strong demand base on the volumes for the recurring business part.

If we look at our core consumables specifically, we see the continuation of the first six months of the year as well prolonged in Q3 across the board. Secondly, I think, as highlighted during the presentation, we've seen a strengthening progression in the recovery of the instruments and equipment business, as well quite widely across the regions.

Here, I think to outline is really the specific strong demand that we see on the bioanalytics front and as well on further desktop systems. We expect, of course, this trend to further continue.

We have good visibility for the full year, particularly when it gets to the instruments and equipment side, supporting our full-year guidance as we outlined.

Thanks very much. Then

Hi. Charlie Haywood, Bank of America.

Thanks for taking the question. It's actually on the LPS side.

After obviously a very strong third quarter showing an early demand signal there, obviously appreciate there is some phasing element to that, but wanted to just understand more broadly how you see the potential opportunity here from I guess AI and AI-driven drug discovery initially on the bioanalytics and LPS side and then maybe longer term on the bioprocessing side. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Charlie, for the question.

I think the LPS part of this Alexandra will take.

Yes, thank you. Let me take part on LPS drug discovery.

If you think about AI drug-driven drug discovery, this was one of our strategic growth pillar we was talking at the Capital Market Day, and we already play in this area. One of the example Michael was talking earlier in introduction about Incucyte, for example, where we have collaboration with NVIDIA, and we have AI-powered assays already on instrument.

A second example, it's Octet. It's Bio-Layer system where we have it's real-time measurement, label-free.

We do see this instrument participating in workflows at a customer site. We would expect even further grow on innovations into that direction, because then it's instrument, consumables, software part, and of course services.

Thank you, Alexandra. Anything to add there, René, on the BPS side when it gets to the particularly AI-driven part of this?

Maybe what I think is interesting to see the discussions we are having with our customers who do process development. Those discussions are around how to get prepared for the increased number of drugs which are coming due to the AI development and the discovery.

The expectation clearly is the AI will help in drug discovery to get more drugs into the manufacturing, and also increase the success rate of these drugs. The process development people are, yeah, already preparing for that, how to deal with the increased numbers.

Of course, the high-throughput systems like our Ambr system is exactly the solution to deal with that wave which is potentially coming.

Thank you. Then

Thank you. As we look into 2027, 2028 and we think of the likely demand for new facility fit-out, particularly in the US in BPS, there's a big investor debate on whether Sartorius will lose share to your competitor with a 5,000-liter single-use bioreactor.

My question is really, where are Sartorius on scaling up your bioreactor volumes in single-use? Do you think it will be a competitive advantage?

In particular, what in the Sartorius portfolio gives you confidence that you'll win your fair share of the RFPs when they come?

Thank you, Matthew. This one is for René.

Yes, thank you very much for the question. I think what you are saying, and this is what we also hear, customers are, yeah, preparing for increase of the capacities.

Customers prefer single-use, single-use is often the technology of choice. Now to the volumes, what we see and on our discussions, and we recently had a nice few platform wins, or conversion of competitors' bioreactor platforms to ours, due to the reason that the main driver and the main thinking of the customers is with the improved titers from the process development and the intensification of processes, the expectation is that the volumes of 2k and below covers the majority of the demands of our clients.

Of course, we are watching the 5k topic here. Far, we see it's rather a quick increase in capacity for this older, legacy, low-titer processes, which we don't believe is the future, but we are in close contact with customers to see what they exactly need.

Thank you.

Hi. Charles Pitman-King from Barclays.

Thanks so much for taking my question. My question is just also thinking about kind of 2027, 2028 dynamics as we roll forward off a strong year.

Just thinking about potential benefit from this US reshoring and timings compared to some peers. You've previously said you expect orders over 2027, 2028 with late 2027 and 2028 orders.

I'm just wondering if that remains your expectation given what you've seen over the year so far. Also just if you can provide any further commentary around whether you think this US reshoring is driven by MOFN expansions, or is actually more reflective of a preference to shorten supply chains post-COVID, and is therefore a bit more structural.

Thank you.

Thank you, Charles, for your question. I take that one up here.

Basically we stay in line with our indications of the way of how we look at the demand for the years 2027, 2028 when it gets to particularly the non-recurring business and capex investments from the policy changes and regulatory demands. We of course have been very pleased in order to see the one or other brownfield additions and capex demands coming from North America already during this year and the second half of this year so far.

At the same time, we don't necessarily say that we would attribute that to reshoring discussions, huh? If we take that, we still believe if we see some of the specific groundbreaking is taking place as we speak, we continue to see that the expectation on order intake is there for the later part of 2027 and 2028, and then we'll basically spend over a longer period of time.

Our judgment so far is not necessarily yet a very structural demand that comes from that. We still believe that there will be a specific regional overcapacity or a global overcapacity be the consequence of those investments.

We see these investments that will come and span through these years from 2027, 2028 onwards for the coming years to build up regional capacity particularly for the capex investment parts.

Thank you very much.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question.

You've now delivered roughly 8% operational growth through the nine months, with consumables healthy and equipment recovering. As you look into 2027, what needs to be true for Bioprocess Solutions to sustain the high single-digit growth?

How much confidence do you have that equipment can still become a meaningful contributor rather than the growth primarily coming from consumables? Thank you so much.

Thank you for your question, Subbu. I think at this point in time, we don't want to preempt the exciting discussions that we probably will have then in 2027, there's no need right now for us to talk about 2027 guidance.

We're in the middle of our discussions in the executive team and then with the supervisory team to look at our budgets for the future. Of course, we see the momentum on the basic demand for our core consumables and broader recurring business to be robust and taking us into the year-end, and therefore there's as well no need to believe that those trends and the underlying demand of our customers in terms of increasing volumes in their output will change, huh?

In this respect, we think this is for sure a guiding principle into the coming year. Again, we think it's too early now as well to make a clear note about how the non-recurring business will further develop.

However, of course, given the lead times, we have a bit better look here. That's the reason why we are rather confident with our projections for this year on the non-recurring side that we will see a slight growth for the full year, and we see this as a progression of the normalization in that part of the business.

Again, having said that, it is important to see that the demands in capex and capex investments generally follow a higher degree of cycle and I would say some volatility on the basis of capacity and capacity utilization.

Thank you so much.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions.

I wanted to zoom into the strength of the LPS division in Q3, please. Could you give us a sense of roughly what proportion you saw from demand coming from bioanalytics on the AI drug dev like the Octet and Incucyte instruments, then broader LPS product demand from biotech funding, and also to what extent pull-forward helped you here?

Thank you.

Thank you for your question, Odysseas. This is one for you, Alexandra.

Yes. Thank you for the question.

Yes, we're very happy to see our performance in this nine months for LPS division. I think fair to say that we would not tell exact numbers of the estimation even on pull-forward from Q4 into Q3, but definitely that performance is truly driven by consumables, or recurring revenue within LPS.

We see that bioanalytic instruments are in use and in high use at a customer site. It's released of their capex by academia and biopharma, execution of their planned projects on which we was working from the beginning of the year, and that's the drivers for this three quarters of the performance of LPS.

Thanks. Then

Good afternoon. The integration of the functions from the two businesses is obviously a major step for the business.

Can you tell us how far through this process are you? What do you think the key risks are, and what do you anticipate as the benefits?

Is there a way that you'll be able to report on the progress here going forwards in a quantitative manner?

Thanks for the question. Appreciate that, Charles.

I will take that on. We started to build this on a progressive basis, this new organization, starting in summer, and we think that now, of course, we will formalize and have a full life then in the beginning of 2027 with these new responsibilities.

We are well underway in the company in order to outline what does it mean in the new interfaces, in the interaction with the teams. We're driving workshops and alignment sessions, overall, I think I would say the spirit and the satisfaction with the team on the new structure is there, and people have found mostly their place.

Now, what does it really bring? We discussed that a bit before.

The main driver is threefold. On the one hand side, we always think that structure needs to follow strategy, with our clarity that we're going to focus our strategy on the three pillars of products and innovation, on customer centricity, and operations, it's clear that we want to drive clear accountabilities and focus areas in the new operating model with that.

Secondly, we think the customers will really appreciate that step, with a very clear note of one face to the customer to provide a clear entry point, a clear coordination of all efforts, and therefore, as well, a better way of coordinating and an easier way for us to interact. Last but not least, we look at our portfolio in its growing complexity always from a total workflow perspective, all the way starting from drug discovery, molecule development, process development, upstream, downstream manufacturing, and taking as well now a consistent approach for all of our product development and product management across portfolio will drive a strengthening of that part as well.

Last but not least, bringing on an operational team in order to set the standards for quality, for operations, and drive it in a consistent manner across the supply chain and operations framework will support our appetite for operational excellence improvements.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thibault Boutherin from Morgan Stanley.

Just it's not clear if the tariff surcharge was refunded by all of your competitors. Do you have any customer feedback on what you did in terms of refunding this tariff surcharges, and do you see some positive outcome in your conversations with your customers?

All right, good. Then Florian will take that on.

Yeah. Thibault, as you can imagine, I think it is clear that first of all, we wanted to stay true to our word that if we are charging extra for the tariffs, that would also be refunds.

Secondly, this was generally taken up very positively, of course, by the customers. Thirdly, we are currently in the process of getting these refunds out to the customers.

Thank you very much for taking the questions. I want to push a little bit more on what the strength from AI drug-driven drug discovery workflows means in practice.

Is this sort of AI-native companies? Is it biotech potentially benefiting from biotech funding, or is it large pharma companies in terms of the customer category?

Then is it customers running more experiments per instrument, it's higher consumables pull-through, or is it a mixture of that and instrument purchases? Thank you.

Then I think just to follow on actually, you said the pull-forward or the demand was very strong excluding the pull-forward. Can you just give us any sense to get comfortable that this wasn't simply a tender effect or very large pull-through that fully washes out and it is a signal of true improving underlying demand?

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Harry, for the question. Alexandra, that's for you.

Yes, thank you for the question. Let me start from the answer on the last part.

Fair to say there was no big tender what you're saying, which affects this results like one-time effect. It's rather underlying strong performance across different segments and different geographies, but that's the results you can see now.

Maybe to explain a little bit more on the AI-driven drug discovery on the customers and who do we see looking into this processes and looking into the instruments, it's actually currently we are you could say in the beginning of this journey. We see it at biopharma customers, we see it at academia, which are buying these instruments and running more experiments that they would run otherwise, because you can generate more results in real time with, again, Incucyte or Octet.

Then you can feed your models with this data to create proposals for new targets, and then you again need to go into the wet lab to test this target. You actually, at the moment, generate more work in a wet lab through our portfolio and then testing new targets again using the portfolio which we can offer, whether through LPS portfolio or, as René was saying, on the bioprocess side.

We see our products being purchased through our customer base. It's not that much by AI companies.

I hope that that gives you more colors.

Great. Very clear.

Could I just ask one quick follow-up? What are you seeing overall across the entire business in terms of US academia and government?

Thank you.

We see the performance slightly improved, but we can't see maybe the performance we saw years before.

Thank you so much. Then

Oh, yeah. Thanks so much for taking my question.

I just wanted to talk about China. There's obviously quite some kind of progress in the R&D activities in this kind of country.

Can you just talk to your market position in this kind of early-stage companies in China and how that compares to the rest of the world? Part of this discussion, can you also add what you see generally in terms of local competition, which product groups are affected, and what kind of dynamic do you observe?

Thank you.

Thanks for the question, Oliver. Take that on.

I would say we don't necessarily see a different level, let's say, of customer segments that we are active and we are well positioned in China compared to other countries. Secondly, I think if we look a little bit into the evolution in China and to the performance that we've seen there now recently, of course there's an encouragement by the extra level of activities around the pipeline with really fueling a lot of the demand there on consumables, but pretty as well on the research side.

This I think is rather positive, and we see that I would say on the biotech side, on the larger biopharma front, on academia, and to some degree as well, of course, by the CDMOs. Overall, I would say from our expectation and from our perspective there, we see that is a healthy contribution that we've seen throughout the first half of the year and continuing in Q3, and we have reasons to believe that the underlying demand there will remain, looking at the approval rates, looking at the extra molecules that come on track on that.

Can you say a word in terms of where do you see most of the local competition?

If we take the local competition, yeah, I would say is not a large change in its position, I think the majority of the focus of local competitors remains in the like-for-like local market for the local-for-local production and activities in the biopharma market. It's as well in the segment mainly active where would say there's more comparable level of or less differentiated demands or less differentiated product profiles.

Thanks so much.

Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question.

I'd just like to ask about the bioprocessing market and your position. We hear a lot about higher titers and demand for single-use, but a larger CDMO recently showed some data how most of the volume for biologics is driven by relatively few products in stainless steel, and late-stage pipeline likely has lower titers than are often cited by bioprocessing players, though there's obviously some flex for hybrid setups.

Essentially, could these changes take 10 to 15 years to play out in practice? My question is, do you agree with that view in terms of how the titers will take an awful lot longer to come through?

How do you see the single-use share in the overall market, and do you see greater relative traction for you in biosimilars than originators? Then my follow-up, if I can, is where do you see the main areas of portfolio differentiation if portfolio intensification, for example, results in higher media demand if you don't see a way to differentiate in a 5k setup?

Thank you.

James, thanks for the question, or for the questions in this case, we'll focus maybe on the first one, so, René, that's one for you.

Thank you, and I try to make it simple. Of course, if you look at ahead, there will be low-mix, high-volume products, and there will be low-volume, high-mix scenarios.

When we look at the pipelines of the customers, what is coming, we clearly see that the low-volume, high-mix is coming and become and growing faster and will be growing faster than a few single blockbusters. Our strategy and our strength of Sartorius is to focus on this low-volume, high-mix scenarios where I believe it's clear that the titers and improvement in these processes they are real.

Customers are asking for more intensified processes to do more in single-use, because the benefits are also clear in terms of costs, flexibility, sustainability. That's where we see our above-market growth.

Again, the few low-mix, high-volume blockbusters, that's real also, and will stay there. Of course, our business in this segment, we sell a lot of consumables in stainless steel facilities, it's not irrelevant for us, but strategic focus is there where the growth above market is coming.

Then

Hi. This is Anna Snopkowski on for Paul Knight at KeyBanc.

Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering if you could talk to the 14% growth you saw on the lab products side, specifically APAC, which I think grew over 20% in lab products.

Do you think you could just talk through what is driving this strength in APAC and how much of that growth is coming from China?

Thank you, Anna. This one is for you, Alexandra.

Thank you. Yes, I think we're again pleased to see our growth in APAC.

It's, again, across portfolio, across the segments: bioanalytics, recurring revenue is also supported by services in this region. If you think about China versus APAC, it would be fair to say that China is leading growth there, driven by our participation in R&D network within the China region.

I think that would be my answer.

Thank you. Then maybe just one follow-up on your overall guidance and talking to the midpoint of the range.

Do you think you could just walk through any of the swing factors that could get us either to the lower end or the higher end of the range, whether that's equipment recovering faster than expected or academic spend, just anything you could highlight there?

Thanks, Anna, for the follow-up. We reconfirm our guidance on the basis of really seeing now enough visibility for the full year in order to stay with that statement.

As well, we looked at the visibility on the non-recurring business side. I think we have a very strong visibility towards the year-end.

On consumables, we have a few weeks to go, but by and large, I think we feel very comfortable with the guidance on stating midpoint guidance for group and BPS, and upper end for LPS.

Thank you very much. At a higher level, how far are we from a full normalization of the equipment business?

I obviously appreciate that you may not be able to provide a precise timeline, but perhaps you could share your high-level thoughts on where we currently stand. Thank you.

Thanks, Falko. Difficult question in the sense, and again, we don't like to make judgments on something that we don't have the data on.

The data tells us that we've seen this rather steady and continuous progression in the recovery of the equipment business now for the last quarters. Again, the visibility in terms of the order book, backlog, opportunity pipeline, and leads pipeline, we think there's good reason to see that this is not changing dramatically from one month to the next month.

To make a projection to where it will look like in 2027, we would like really to wait until we make our guidance, look at our budgets, and bring this together through the group.

Understood. Thank you.

Yes, hello. Good afternoon.

Congrats on the result. Two follow-ups, please.

One regarding the market and specifically what you elaborate during the CMD when it comes to the market share from the R&D and from the commercial let's say drugs in the market already. Have you made any progress in terms of penetration to that dedicated segment?

When you look forward the entire biopharma market, when do you think we're going to reach the capacity, or what can you share with us what you have in your plan when it comes to effectively reaching this capacity? Is that for 2035?

Is that for later? Is it for never?

What is your plan? Second question deals with more the reorg and the impact for Stedim now that we have BPS being exactly Stedim.

Can you share with us if there is anything we need to keep in mind that was at the time of the acquisition and the Stedim quotation regarding Stedim or that makes the sense in a short term to keep the company quoted in the market?

Delphine, could you please repeat the background of your last question? We didn't get that here.

No. The last question is regarding Stedim and questioning about the fact that you have to keep or you need to keep Stedim as a separate entity and quote it in the market now that it's completely BPS.

Okay. I try to address that second question if I'm try to understand what you're after.

We will keep the setup that we're having and the legal entity of Stedim. Now, of course, we want to make that simplification to really make sure that we have one-on-one the same definition of the new bioprocess segments as much as the bioprocessing segment as much as the Sartorius Stedim Biotech perspective.

In this respect, there is no need to change. Again, as that to is well-established that unit, that is highly under control of the AG level, as well for managing the capital inflows.

In this respect, I think right now this is the situation. Is there anything you want to add there, Florian?

Just one point. If your question, Delphine, was into the direction of a delisting, this is not in the cards.

We are very happy with the current situation here.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, operator. This concludes our today's call.

Please reach out to the IR team in case of any open questions. Before we close, maybe one final point.

As some of you may have already noticed in our financial calendar, we are making a small change to our reporting schedule. Rather than releasing preliminary figures and then publishing the annual report and the URD a few weeks later, we will publish our full-year results and both reports on February 23rd.

Means you will have all the complete information available on the same day. We thank you for joining us today, and wish you all a pleasant rest of the day.

Take care, and see you next time. Operator, you may now disconnect.