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Text: Joining in the Q&A after Bob and Mike's comments will be Jacob Thaysen, President of Agilent's Life Science and Applied Markets Group; Sam Raha, President of Agilent's Diagnostics and Genomics Group; and Padraig McDonnell, President of the Agilent CrossLab Group.
You will find the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations on our website.
Core revenue growth excludes the impact of currency and the acquisitions and divestitures completed within the past 12 months.
Tachi was much more than a knowledgeable, deeply involved Agilent Board member for nine years.
As many of you on the call already know, Tachi lived a very full life as a doctor, a scientist, as a humanitarian who was driven to help others.
I know that the Agilent team is not alone and recognize that Tachi Yamada will be greatly missed and we extend our deepest sympathies to Tachi's family.
Now, on to the third quarter review and our updated outlook for the year.
In Q3, the very strong broad based momentum in our business continues.
The Agilent team delivered another outstanding quarter, exceeding our expectations.
Q3 revenue of $1.59 billion is up a reported 26% and is up 21% core.
This is against the mass decline of 3% in Q3 of last year, so we are well above fiscal year 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
In addition, as other positive sign of continued momentum, orders outpaced revenue during the quarter.
Our growth is broad based across all business groups, markets and geographies.
The combination of strong top line performance and execution translated into excellent growth and profitability and earnings per share.
Our Q3 operating margin is 26%, this is up 230 basis points from last year.
EPS is $1.10, up 41% year-over-year.
Agilent's success continues to be driven by our build and buy growth strategy and execution prowess.
We are developing market-leading products and services, investing in fast growing businesses while delivering outstanding customer service and continue to drive profitability.
Since the onset of the pandemic, we have taken actions to ensure Agilent emerged even stronger as a company.
While we have yet to leave COVID-19 in the rearview mirror, our Q3 results are another indicator our actions are delivering the intended results.
Bob will provide more details on end markets and geographies, but I want to briefly highlight our performance in our two largest end markets, pharma and chemical energy.
We continue to perform extremely well in pharma, our largest market growing 27% with strength in both small and large molecule segments.
Our large molecule business grew roughly 52% in the quarter and now represents 36% of our overall pharma revenue, up from the mid 20s just a few years ago.
In chemical energy, our business is recovering faster than expected, expanding 23% in the quarter.
This is an acceleration of the momentum we achieved in the first half and our order funnel continues to strengthen.
Looking at our performance by business unit, The Life Sciences and Applied Markets Group generated revenue of $680 million.
LSAG is up 22% on a reported basis, this is up 18% core, off just a 4% decline last year.
LSAG's growth is broad based across all end markets.
Our performance is led by strength in pharma, which is up 22% and chemical energy up 31%.
All businesses delivered strong growth led by Cell Analysis at 38% growth and our LC and LCMS businesses, which grew 22%.
We continue to strengthen our position in the fast growing large molecule market segment.
During the quarter, the LSAG team launched three InfinityLab Bio LC systems at the well attended InfinityLab LC Virtual Conference in June.
These new products further extend our LC leadership position.
In addition, building on our already strong pharma offerings, we launched new compliance ready LC/Q-TOF and LC/TOF solution to our portfolio in the quarter.
The Agilent CrossLab Group posted revenue of $560 million, this is up a reported 21% and up 15% on a core basis.
These results are on top of 1% growth last year.
The business is benefiting from increased activity and customer labs and instrument connect rates.
This is leading to more contracted services, on-demand services and consumables consumption across all end markets.
All end markets grew mid teens or higher with the exception of environmental and forensics, but still grew 9%.
The pandemic has shown ACG to be our most durable business, with ACG grown each quarter since COVID-19 first emerged.
Our customer-focused approach and digital investments continue to pay dividends.
Looking forward, instrument placements and demand bode well with continued strong performance by ACG as we drive attachment rates and increased customer lifetime value.
The Diagnostics and Genomics Group produced revenue of $346 million, up 44% reported and up 37% core, compared to an 8% decline last year.
The growth was broad based across product lines and regions and was led by our NASD GMP oligo business.
The ramp of our facility in Frederick, Colorado continues to go very well.
The quarterly results exceeded our expectations, easily surpassing the $30 million revenue milestone, while one quarter does not make a trend, our team has done a tremendous job increasing the output in a high quality manner.
This gives us increased confidence in our ability to exceed the $200 million annual run rate of revenue with existing capacity.
In addition, the Train B manufacturing line expansion is well underway and on schedule.
Our genomics instrumentation and consumables businesses rebounded strongly in the quarter as did our pathology-related businesses.
For the first time in several quarters, we saw a diagnostic testing above pre-pandemic levels.
While we are watching Delta variant very closely, to date we have not seen a meaningful negative impact on testing volumes.
I also want to highlight our performance in China.
While still less than 10% of DGG revenue, our China business grew 50% in the quarter.
We continue to see tangible progress in building a stronger China market position.
In Q3, we signed our first ever companion diagnostic development services agreement with a China based biopharma company.
Earlier this month, we also announced the initiation of in-country manufacturing for our SureSelect product line.
We are very bullish about long-term growth prospects in China for our DGG product and services offerings.
In addition, the integration of Resolution Bioscience team is going well and we are very pleased to enter and expand our participation in the fast growing NGS based cancer diagnostic market.
It was a busy quarter at Agilent.
So, I have a few other achievements I'd like to share with you.
Last month, we published Agilent's 21st Annual Corporate Social Responsibility Report.
At a time when some are just starting to look at issues like sustainability and societal impact, this has always been a key part of who we are as a company.
We've been addressing these issues since our founding more than two decades ago.
I would encourage you to review our report on the Agilent website.
We're also very pleased to receive recognition of the Great Place to Work in United States by the Great Place to Work Institute.
This result is just one more example of Agilent having a highly engaged and energized team, and as you know, teams with high engagement win in the market.
Looking ahead, building on another excellent quarter and the momentum we're seeing, we expect the business to continue to perform well as we close out what we believe will be an outstanding fiscal year 2021.
As a result, we are once again raising our full-year revenue and earnings guidance.
I will share more details, but we are expecting a continuation of our excellent top line growth and earnings generation.
While the world has yet to fully emerge from a global pandemic, Agilent is well positioned to deliver excellent results again in the fourth quarter.
I remain very proud of the Agilent team's ability to consistently deliver for our customers and shareholders.
I will now hand the call off to Bob.
In my remarks today, I will provide some additional details on Q3 revenue and take you through the income statement and some other key financial metrics.
I'll then finish up with our updated outlook for the fourth quarter and the full year.
As Mike mentioned, we had an excellent result in the third quarter.
Revenue was $1.59 billion, reflecting reported growth of 26%, core revenue growth was 21%.
Currency added 4.5% for the quarter and M&A added 0.5 point.
In addition, COVID-related revenues were in line with the prior year.
All end markets performed well with pharma and chemical and energy as standouts versus our expectations.
Our largest market pharma grew 27% during the quarter, after growing 2% last year.
The performance was led by the continued strength in our Large Molecule business growing 52%, while our Small Molecule business grew mid teens, and all regions in the pharma market grew double-digits.
Our Large Molecule business was driven by our NASD division and demand for LC and Mass Spec instrumentation and solutions, while our Small Molecule business was primarily driven by QA-QC refresh.
Chemical and energy also performed well this quarter with 23% growth.
Even after accounting for the comparison against the 10% decline last year, this was clearly our best quarter since the onset of the pandemic.
This result was driven by increasing momentum in demand for advanced materials and the general global economic growth.
Our view is that the chemical and energy market still has additional room to grow moving forward.
The diagnostics and clinical market grew 28% against the decline of 10% a year ago, our softest quarter last year.
We are very encouraged with the continued recovery in the market as our genomics and pathology businesses saw very good growth.
On a regional basis, all regions grew with China up 41% and Americas delivering 38% growth.
In the academia and government market, we delivered 12% growth as most research labs continue to open globally and expand capacity.
On a regional basis, Europe led the way.
The food market continued its double-digit performance growing 12% on top of growing 1% last year.
Food manufacturers continue to invest in increased testing to ensure quality and authenticity.
A developing cannabis testing market, primarily in the U.S. also contributed to growth in this market and regionally the food market was led by the Americas and Europe.
Rounding out our key markets, environmental and forensics came in with 5% growth.
On a geographic basis, all regions demonstrated solid growth led by the Americas at 32% and Europe at 23%, both exceeding our expectations.
The performance was broad-based across all markets.
And as expected, China was up 8% on top of 11% growth last year.
All three business groups grew in China during the quarter.
Pharma, chemical and energy and diagnostics were the key drivers.
Now turning to the rest of the P&L, third-quarter gross margin was 55.9%, up 80 basis points from a year ago despite roughly 40 basis points of headwind from currency.
Our strong top line, some positive product mix, coupled with the strong execution from our operations team drove the year-on-year improvement.
And our supply team is doing a tremendous job getting our products to customers, despite the increase in demand.
Gross margin improvement -- performance along with continued operating expense leverage resulted in operating margin for the third quarter of 26%, improving 230 basis points over last year.
Putting it all together, we delivered earnings per share of $1.10, up 41% versus last year.
Our tax rate was 14.75% and share count was 306 million shares, as expected.
We delivered $334 million in operating cash flow during the quarter, showing a strong conversion from net income and up more than 15% from last year while crossing the $1 billion mark in nine months.
During the quarter, we returned $172 million to our shareholders, paying out $59 million in dividends and repurchasing roughly 800,000 shares for $113 million.
Year-to-date, we've returned $829 million to shareholders in the forms of dividends and share repurchases.
And we ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in cash, $2.9 billion in outstanding debt and a net leverage ratio of 0.8.
Accounting for our Q3 performance and improved outlook in the fourth quarter, we are again raising our full-year projections for both revenue and earnings per share.
We are increasing our full-year revenue projection to a range of $6.29 billion to $6.32 billion, up $125 million at the midpoint from previous guidance and representing reported growth of 17.8% to 18.4% and core growth of 14.5% to 15%.
Included is roughly three points of impact from currency and a small amount from M&A.
In addition, we are on track to deliver roughly $100 million in COVID-related revenue in fiscal 2021, in line with our expectations from the beginning of the year and flat to last year.
We expect to continue our strong operating leverage, and so we are increasing our fiscal 2021 non-GAAP earnings per share to a range of $4.28 to $4.31 per share, up 30% to 31% for the year.
This translates the fourth quarter revenue ranging from $1.63 billion to $1.66 billion.
This represents reported growth of 10% to 12% and core growth of 8.5% to 10% on top of the 6% growth in Q4 of last year when we started to see early signs of recovery from the strict lockdowns.
In addition, while COVID revenue was roughly flat year-on-year for the full year, last year's fiscal fourth quarter represented the high watermark in our COVID related revenue.
And as a result, we expect to see roughly a one point headwind due to COVID revenue in the quarter.
So, our core growth excluding COVID would be comparable to 9.5% to 11%.
We are forecasting higher expenses in the fourth quarter as we invest to maintain our strong momentum, but expect continued operating leverage in excess of 100 basis points.
Non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be between $1.15 and $1.18 with growth of 17% to 20%.
We believe our strategy is the right ones for Agilent, but we couldn't achieve these results we’ve been producing without the excellent execution by the team.
With that Parmeet, back to you for Q&A.
Paul, if you could please provide instructions for the Q&A now?

user
agilent technologies q3 adj earnings per share $1.10.
q3 non-gaap earnings per share $1.10.
sees q4 revenue $1.63 billion to $1.66 billion.
sees fy revenue $6.29 billion to $6.32 billion.
q3 revenue $1.59 billion versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $1.54 billion.
sees fy non-gaap earnings per share $4.28 to $4.31.
sees q4 non-gaap earnings per share $1.15 to $1.18.

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