Azenta - Earnings Call - Q3 2017

Transcript

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Brooks Automation Q3 Fiscal Year twenty seventeen Financial Results Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded Wednesday, 08/02/2017. I would now like to turn the call over to Lyndon Robertson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ash, and good afternoon, everyone. We would like to welcome each of you to the third quarter financial results conference call for the Brooks fiscal year twenty seventeen. We will be covering the results of the third quarter ended on June 30, and then we will provide an outlook for the fourth fiscal quarter ending September 30 this year. A press release was issued after the close of the markets today and is available at our Investor Relations page of our website, www.brooks.com, as are the illustrated PowerPoint slides that will be used comments during the call. I would like to remind everyone that during the course of the call, we will be making a number of forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Litigation Securities Act of 1995.

There are many factors that may cause actual financial results or other events to differ from those identified in such forward looking statements. I would refer you to the section of our earnings release titled Safe Harbor Statement, the Safe Harbor slide on the aforementioned PowerPoint presentation on our website and our various filings with the SEC, including our annual reports on Form 10 ks and our quarterly reports on Form 10 Q. We make no obligation to update these statements should future financial data or events occur that differ from the forward looking statements presented today. I would also like to note that we may make reference to a number of non GAAP financial measures, which are used in addition to and in conjunction with results presented in accordance with GAAP. We believe that these non GAAP measures provide an additional way of viewing aspects of our operations and performance, but when considered with GAAP financial results and the reconciliation of GAAP measures, they provide an even more complete understanding of the Brooks business.

Non GAAP measures should not be relied upon to the exclusion of the GAAP measures themselves. On the call with me today is our Chief Executive Officer, Steve Schwartz. We will open with his remarks on the business business environment and our third quarter highlights. Then we'll provide an overview of the third quarter financial results and a summary of our financial outlook for the quarter ending September 30, which is our fourth quarter of the fiscal '17. We will then take your questions at the end of those comments.

During our prepared remarks, again, we will from time to time make reference to the slides I mentioned available to everyone on the Investor Relations page of our Brooks website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over now to our CEO, Steve Schwartz. Thank you, Linden. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. We're particularly pleased to announce the results from a very strong June, in part because the results that we've delivered, but more importantly because we're able

Speaker 2

to demonstrate the earnings power of our business, which is made up of a portfolio of strong market leading technology positions in key growth segments of the semiconductor and life sciences markets, a foundation that we strongly believe will continue to deliver going forward. Revenue at $182,000,000 was up 7% from March and up 23% over the prior year. Gross margins increased sequentially by 100 basis points to reach 40%, which is a very meaningful threshold for the company and a heavy lift from the 32% to 33% gross margins we delivered in fiscal twenty eleven, the year we first entered the life sciences space and began to restructure our semiconductor product portfolio. The top line and gross margin performance led to a non GAAP earnings per share of $0.36 more than double what we delivered in the June one year ago and up 27% from the March. Growth came from both segments as we delivered our eighth consecutive quarter of growth in Life Sciences and Semiconductor, which is riding the wave of strong momentum in the capital equipment space, also benefited from our expanding market share position in our key growth segments.

The part that we find most energizing is the momentum that we've established inside company to continually ratchet down on costs and improve efficiency, while we advance new product development and sales activity to deliver top line growth. We continue to see more potential and that's what drives us even harder. Today, we report on some of the highlights from the quarter and give color as to what makes us enthusiastic about the prospects from the very solid positions we've captured in two important markets. I'll begin my comments today with a recap of our Life Sciences business performance. Revenue came in at a robust $37,000,000 that's up 6% from March and represents organic growth of 27% from the June one year ago.

And including organic growth and revenue from acquisitions was our seventh consecutive quarter of greater than 25% growth. Bookings at $42,000,000 added another $7,000,000 to backlog, which now stands at $260,000,000 And though gross margin was slightly softer on mix, Life Sciences delivered $2,000,000 of operating profit in the quarter even as we made additional investments to expand our global sales team. I'll add just a few additional highlights from the quarter. Our Automated Storage Systems business grew 63% versus prior year coming from both bio and cryo automation solutions we delivered to compound and biobanks, cell therapy and regenerative medicine applications. In a particularly positive sign, our BioStore three cryo system bookings topped $2,000,000 for the quarter with account penetrations in North America, Europe, China and The Middle East.

We added 26 new customers expanding our base across a broad spectrum of customers in the pharma, biotech, healthcare, clinical and academic end markets. We also delivered on some important milestones that will generate future revenue. We launched BioStudies, a bioinformatics platform that enables customers to virtualize and visualize all of their global samples. And we received a first order from a major biobank by demonstrating the utility of this configurable sample management software platform. We completed and commercially launched two new configurations of our BioStore three cryo automation products, one that stores a common life sciences industry standard sample container called an SBS rack and the other, a variable temperature version of the B3C for customers who like the automated configuration and liquid nitrogen sample security, but who want to store at user selectable temperature set points anywhere between minus 80 and minus 190 Celsius.

Initial units of both new products have already been shipped to a major customer. In our consumables and instruments sector, we released a universal instrument that will allow customers to simultaneously cap and decap 96 sample tubes of various types and brands. This is a first in the market. And we just recently developed a new small footprint, minus 80 degrees C automated store that expands our customer universe to include those who need automated minus 80 storage, but for whom up to 300,000 samples is adequate storage capacity. And at the beginning of last month, we completed the acquisition of Pacific Biomaterial Management or PBMMI, a highly regarded biological sample transport and storage company with customers that include Memorial Sloan Kettering and Mount Sinai Hospital, plus an A list of research and academic institutions that they won because of their high quality and outstanding service capability.

Along with a strong and talented team, we add more East And West Coast geographic footprint and more than two fifty customers that meaningfully expands our academic market presence. And with each sample under management, we have the possibility to deliver more value to customers from the broader portfolio of offerings that we've developed at Brooks over the years. Our cold chain sample management portfolio is proving its value as we provide customers with a one stop shop for all of their cold sample needs. We're working to increase the depth and breadth of all of our offerings along the cold chain. Our new product development initiatives and the addition of PBMMI are all representative examples of this strategy in action.

In Life Sciences, our priority is growth. We continue to invest in new products, additional go to market sales capability and acquisitions that allow us to grow in this important and expanding space of Sample Management. And although we're focused on growth, we are careful to strike the right balance to maintain profitability as we grow. This business has tremendous earnings leverage and we know that if we elected slow investment for growth, we could deliver much higher profitability. As a matter of fact, we maintain our position that the potential profit margin of Life Sciences is greater than in our semiconductor opportunity.

But for now, we believe that the best thing that we can do for shareholders is to continue to make investments to capture more of this market through targeted investments in organic and inorganic growth opportunities. We believe that we're taking the right steps and I illustrate with two examples. First, we've meaningfully expanded our customer base over the years. When we started in the automated stores and services space, we acquired companies that gave us approximately 200 customers. At the beginning of fiscal twenty fifteen, when we acquired FluidX, a consumables and instruments company, we added another 300 customers.

BioStorage Technologies came with an additional 300 customers and PBMMI two fifty more, bringing the number of customer relationships to more than 1,000. Over the past three years, this represents a fivefold increase in the number of potential opportunities we have to expand our cold chain offerings. We've already started to leverage this portfolio to win more business at many of these customers who are eager to streamline their sample management solutions. In terms of results, Life Sciences revenue for the 2017 was $105,000,000 almost equal to the $108,000,000 of revenue we delivered in all of fiscal twenty sixteen. That represents 37% growth over the same period one year ago.

And for the fiscal year to date bookings totaled $154,000,000 up 35% over the same period last year. We're forecasting another strong quarter for Life Sciences and we expect to deliver double digit sequential revenue growth in Q4 with revenue above $40,000,000 and we expect revenue will continue to grow in every quarter of twenty eighteen. I'll now turn to the Semiconductor business, which remains our main cash and profit engine. In our semiconductor business, we set a number of new high watermarks as we successfully tested our operational capabilities against another surge in customer demand. We delivered revenue of $145,000,000 up 8% sequentially and up 22% versus the same quarter one year ago.

It's important to note that this 8% quarter to quarter growth was net of reduction in our CCS revenue of approximately $5,000,000 due to the decrease in leading edge foundry spending that some of our OEM customers have already mentioned. This makes the growth in our semi business all the more impressive as it's driven mostly by three d memory capacity and advanced packaging. I'll provide a quick update on these three growth drivers starting with Vacuum Automation. The tremendous growth in Vacuum Process Technologies, primarily deposition and etch, led us to yet another record in vacuum robots with revenue up 14% from this previous record we delivered in March. These are unprecedented times and we're reaping the benefits of our powerful market position in the vacuum automation space.

Year over year, our vacuum robot business was up 56% and indications are that we're in for a period of sustained strength in the equipment industry and that vacuum process steps that serve three d memory will continue to be in high demand into 2018. Our leading market position at more than 15 OEMs who supply vacuum equipment virtually assures us that any capacity additions are a benefit for Brooks. In Advanced Packaging, we saw a 60% increase in Automation Solutions from $9,000,000 in March to more than $14,000,000 in June. Advanced Packaging growth was driven by strong investment by Chinese OEMs as well as increased shipments of 200 millimeter vacuum systems to support the unique packaging needs for MEMS, power and plasma dicing markets. We also added to our share by winning the automation design for an advanced packaging lithography tool.

Looking forward, we see positive momentum for additional investment in leading edge foundry to support integrated fan out. The Advanced Packaging business is robust and the opportunities that exist are expanding to a broader number of companies, which are building lines to adapt these new technologies. As a result, we feel that we're in a step change from the $40,000,000 annual run rate that we sustained for most of the last couple of years to something that can be meaningfully higher. The only part of our Semiconductor business that was not up in the June was Contamination Control Solutions, which still came in at a healthy $20,000,000 but was down from a record $25,000,000 in the March. This reduced level was expected as leading edge ten and seven nanometer foundry spending, which drove extremely high shipments in December and March, has subsided as that manufacturing capacity is brought online.

On the positive side, we believe we've won 100% market share for all 10 nanometer and seven nanometer manufacturing capacity that's being installed. And as these technology nodes ramp, so too will our CCS business. But we're forecasting CCS to be down again in the September by another $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 as leading edge foundry spending is expected to remain low. That said, we're counting on new factory capacity in China and the restart of foundry spending to be meaningful drivers of additional market opportunities in 2018. And our forecasts, which are based on new fab capacity expansion plans, are for CCS business to grow again in 2018.

Finally, in the quarter, we also supported another jump in our cryovacuum pump business, which was up 10% from the prior quarter and up more than 50% from the prior year as both ion implantation and PVD activity has strengthened. Our Polychold Cryochiller business that supports applications for advanced displays was similarly in very high demand, more than double the level of the same quarter one year ago and at levels we've not seen for several years. We anticipate similar revenue for our Cryovacuum products in the September. In total, we forecast our Semiconductor business to be down approximately 7% to 8% in September, after a record June, which included a couple of million dollars of pull ins to help customers who wanted more product in June. But even with a pause in September, we'll be very busy in manufacturing operations as we'll be preparing for what we are forecasting to be some high demand quarters after that.

So although revenue will be slightly less, we'll be no less busy in our preparedness for a strong demand outlook. Overall, we're extremely pleased with our performance. We're in two growth businesses that are supported by strong market dynamics in which we hold defensible positions that we continue to build. Our outlook for Life Sciences for more quarters and years have accelerated top line and margin expansion as we continue to build a growth engine centered in the sweet spot of sample management. This market is exploding as bio samples are the key elements that support drug discovery, cell therapy, regenerative medicine and cancer research.

The demands for our capabilities are accelerating and our ability to define standards of handling and transport are going to be essential for our success and to the benefit of the industry. In the semiconductor space, we're benefiting from the strong growth in three d memory and all of the vacuum equipment that requires. We are well positioned for advanced packaging automation opportunities where we have shown our capability to capture share and we're far and away the market choice for CCS solutions for wafer and reticle carrier cleaning. All in, we see another strong quarter in September even with a pause in the semiconductor business. We remain extremely bullish about our position in both markets and we anticipate growth in the December from both segments.

That concludes my formal remarks and I'll now turn the call back over to Linden.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Steve. Please refer now to the PowerPoint slides available on the Brooks' website under our Investor Relations tab. To start the remarks, would like to draw your attention to Slide three, which is a consolidated view of our operating performance. Our top line revenue increased 7% sequentially to $182,000,000 driven by an 8% increase in Semiconductor Solutions and a 6% increase in Life Sciences. In the GAAP results, operating income expanded 27%, driving GAAP earnings GAAP based earnings per share upward $05 to $0.25 per share.

Looking at the non GAAP picture, adjusted earnings per share was 36% or $0.36 per share, an increase of 27 from the second quarter. The non GAAP gross margin increased 100 basis points to 40% driven by improvement in the semiconductor segment. At the bottom line, we produced $25,000,000 of non GAAP net income and $37,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA. Comparing these results on a year over year basis to third quarter of fiscal twenty sixteen, revenue was 23% higher and our adjusted EBITDA has increased 93%. Turn with me over to Slide four to start our discussion of segment results.

The Life Science business grew six percent sequentially and 26% year over year with $37,000,000 of revenue. Biostorage revenue increased 9% sequentially, while the remaining core life sciences revenue grew 4%. Gross margins came in at 38%, two points lower than the prior quarter. Softness occurred on both the storage and the infrastructure business. On the BioStorage services side, the result was all driven by mix as genomic services revenue came in higher.

Storage service margins remained very strong. On the infrastructure side, the business had certain projects driving a lower margin this quarter. We expect margins to return to 40% next quarter. In the third quarter, new orders and contracts totaled $42,000,000 adding backlog to the business. Year to date Life Science bookings totaled $154,000,000 up 35% compared to just $114,000,000 for the same year to date period in 2016.

The fuel is there to continue to organic growth above 20% year over year. And we will have the added benefit of our latest acquisition of PBM M and I in the biostorage space. They had 10,000,000 of revenue in the past twelve months and are also growing. This latest acquisition fits the margin profile of our current BioStorage business that being about 40% to 45%. Let's turn to the Semiconductor business on Slide five.

This business accelerated with 8% sequential revenue growth this quarter. As Steve indicated, we saw some customers pulling product through in the final weeks ahead of our anticipated schedules. Across the product lines, we saw double digit sequential expansion in vacuum robots and atmospheric robots and cryo pumps and services and in our polycold line. The offset bringing us down to 8% was in contamination control solutions, which was still above $20,000,000 As we have shared previously, these systems sell for approximately $1,000,000 each. So the timing of the fab line expansions can cause a swing in our quarterly revenue.

Based on our fab customer schedules, we anticipate another drop in contamination control shipments again in our fourth quarter and a rebound in the 2018 calendar year, just as Steve outlined. As this drives some variability in our revenue lines, we'll continue to give you visibility to the specifics. But I also want to emphasize the momentum this business has provided. We acquired this business in 2014 for $32,000,000 from an owner that saw $28,000,000 of revenue in their prior year. In 2015, we had $44,000,000 of revenue, in 2016, 52,000,000 and we will be above $80,000,000 when we finish 2017.

We foresee another year of growth in our fiscal twenty eighteen. The adjusted gross margins for Semiconductor Solutions struck above 40% this quarter. The value of our newest products and the reduction of fixed cost over the past eighteen months have made 40% possible. It's the additional volumes this quarter that drove it over the line on improved absorption of overhead. Let me draw a bold highlight around this point.

Our $10,000,000 of expansion in the top line dropped through to operating income at a rate above 60%. In the year to date picture, our semiconductor revenue has grown 24% and has dropped through to operating profit at a rate of 50%. Let's turn to the balance sheet on Page six. With the growth of the business, we've seen expansion of receivables and inventory. The increase in deferred revenue reflects the Life Science bookings that often carry advanced payments.

We finished the quarter with $120,000,000 of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities and no debt. We carried 49,000,000 of this cash in The U. S. At the close of the quarter, which enabled closing the $34,000,000 acquisition of PBMMI in July without touching our credit revolver. Let's turn over to Slide seven.

Net income of $17,000,000 drove cash flow from operations of $18,000,000 We are in our seventh year of paying a dividend returning $7,000,000 to shareholders in this quarter alone. Capital expenditures were $2,000,000 bringing the total for our first three quarters to $7,000,000 Cash from operations has accumulated to 61,000,000 for the nine months ended June 30, rounding out free cash flow to $55,000,000 year to date. In total, our cash balance has expanded by $29,000,000 since the beginning of the year to $120,000,000 on this report. I will highlight again that this is prior to using $34,000,000 on the acquisition of our latest BioStorage acquisition on July 5. Slide eight addresses the outlook of our fourth fiscal quarter of twenty seventeen.

Fourth quarter revenue is expected to be in the range of 172,000,000 to $178,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to be between 30,000,000 to $33,000,000 Non GAAP earnings per share is expected to be $0.27 to $0.31 per share and the GAAP earnings per share is expected to be $0.17 to $0.21 As we drive to this guidance, we're very cognizant of the step change our business has made in this past year. The annual numbers represent a 22% growth at the top line. The non GAAP earnings per share is more than double the $0.47 we turned in for 2016. So that concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn the call back over to Ash, our operator to take questions from the line.

Certainly.

Speaker 0

You. And our first question comes from the line of Paul Knight with Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 3

Hi, Steve. Could you put some color around the equipment versus service size of revenue in the quarter? And any attributes on why maybe a little softer? Was it capital equipment? And lastly, the PacBio deal is closed, correct?

Speaker 2

The PacBio deal is indeed closed. So Paul, let me give you a little bit on the quarter. So out of the $37,000,000 the I'm going give you really rough numbers. The stores was about 20%, a little bit more 25%. The consumables and instruments was you know, probably about 15%.

And the bulk of the business was the services and the service combined. So when we look at the biostorage and service combined, that was about half.

Speaker 0

Okay.

Speaker 3

And then your offering of genomic services is part of your strategy obviously. Is that your fastest growing business?

Speaker 2

It turns out that all of the elements are growing pretty significantly. The genomics is a little bit is not as steady. In the aggregate, it's growing, but the samples that we provide to that are growing considerably. So that's a business that's still up and down for us. But year on year, we'll see growth in the genomic services.

But we find the activity there is sometimes budget related, and so there are bursts in that business more so than the steady annuity that we get from the consumables and from the storage elements.

Speaker 3

And you've been posting somewhere in the 20s on organic growth. Do you see that as a number that's ahead of us?

Speaker 2

We do. So for the foreseeable quarters, we see that continuing to grow in the 20 plus percent range. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Paul.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from the line of Amanda Scarnati with Citi. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 4

Hi, thanks for taking the question. Just continuing on the Life Sciences business. Steve, I think you mentioned that profitability could be greater than semi down the road. And what are the puts and takes to get there? Is it adding more scale into the business?

Is it continuing to integrate the acquisitions that have been done? Or are there other things that are already in process that are helping to to drive profitability up?

Speaker 2

Sure. Amanda Lyndon and I will share

Speaker 1

this one. So Lyndon will start, and then I'll follow-up. Yeah. Amanda, it's it's a good one because this this has been our focus not just current period, but over the last two years, three years as we built out the life science business. We, last year, just about this time, we outlined our 2019 model.

We said that our operating margins for the life science business would probably cross over and be stronger than our semiconductor business in 2019. We still see that very much on track, and the way acquisitions would fold into that is to accelerate it. Let me, make the point. So our, our our semi business is doing great today. And so you're seeing our semi business still being about 80% of our revenue and life sciences being, you know, 20%, 21%.

You know, on the current guidance, I think you're if you do the calculation roughly, life science will probably tip up to about 23%, 24% next quarter. And life science has the continuity of growth, has continuity of growth over the long term. Not that semi doesn't. We think semi does as well in the long term, but but the life sciences will be able to sustain this 20% level of growth. Investments that we alluded to in the in the call is we're being very, steady and deliberate on investing, but you'll also notice that our investments do not exceed our revenue growth.

So, as we expand our revenue base, it positions us to strengthen that model. We'll gain leverage. And, as we put into our model, we think we're headed to something that that's between 16% to 19% operating margins. And we believe longer term, this business will exceed 20% operating profit on the Life Science side.

Speaker 2

Yes. And Amanda, just to put a little bit more to that, Dusty's got a pretty significant pipeline of opportunities, things he's looking to add to the company. And so when we look at the opportunities to add consumables to acquire more samples that are under management, there are synergy benefits that we'll get by building out scale there. In addition, a pretty significant part of the growth portfolio from this point forward involves informatics. And that's a high margin capacity, high margin capability that will become a more meaningful part of the portfolio.

So we really do have high expectations and a good roadmap for the expansion of the profitability in the life sciences business.

Speaker 4

And then the other question I have on the life sciences business is, you know, what percent of recurring revenue did you have in the quarter? And has that changed at all with the, Pacific Bio acquisition?

Speaker 1

I'd the life sciences as a percentage of total? Recurring revenue. Oh, the recurring So, you know, we've been running just about two thirds. I think in this current quarter, it's just under 60%. So it's puts and takes.

Genomic services, we said, tipped up, to a higher number, and we don't count that as recurring. It comes up and tips up, tips down, and, it's very much on a current quarter purchase activity. So we're just under 60% in this quarter.

Speaker 2

And the PBM on my part will bulk up on the recurring revenue portion.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then one more question if I can sneak it in on the semi side. In terms of the automation growth, are you still seeing a lot of robust shift into more outsourcing or outsourcing towards Brooks in terms of, you know, building out the automation tools?

Speaker 2

Yes, we do. So we're continuing to gain share in the automation space. We have a really high market share in the vacuum automation and the advanced packaging is what's really brought some of the complex atmospheric automation to bear. So we're continuing to get OEMs outsourcing more automation to us. Again, but not core capability.

And we as a very strong provider are winning more both new designs and what they ultimately outsource from the standpoint of even when they have an existing internal robot, when they refurbish a platform often we'll get that vacuum robot into a tool that might have been already a product for ten years.

Speaker 4

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 1

Thanks Amanda.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Hi guys. This is Peter calling for Craig. Thanks for taking our question and congratulations for the strong results. So the first question I have is just your customers talk about a relatively counter flat half on half. Is this kind of what you're seeing as well?

Speaker 2

Peter, that's what we're seeing because that's what our customers are guiding us toward. So for sure, we had a strong first half where we have a little bit of a pause in September. And it's a little bit early for customers to give us firm orders, but they're giving us strong indications about how we ought to be prepared for December. So the announcements they make on their calls are very consistent with what they're also telling us.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then I just want to touch on the service. Some of your customers talk about this being a stable mid single digit to high single digit kind of growth segment. How do you kind of think of service? Or how should we kind of think about service?

Speaker 1

On the semiconductor side, Peter, which I think you're referring to, we see this as one that is the follow through in the insurance for Brooks quality of delivery and service to the fab behind the products we ship both directly to the fab and through the OEM. So we have initiatives in partnership with our customers as well as directly with the end users. So we continue to see this as vital to us. It's a more stable factor because it's driven off of the installed base than it is on the current period financials, which, you know, when you're in high growth, this is more stable than the top line. When you're in a cycle down, it's more stable than the drop.

So we like that aspect of it. So it's a key part of our model. I would tell you that right now we're seeing expansion over the last two quarters in our services line and we're happy about that. It's obviously a reflection on our customers turning to Brooks.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then moving to life science. You talked about the getting the order for the biostudy. Could you guys kind of elaborate on what the opportunity set for that could be?

Speaker 2

Sure. The BioStudies platform is really a foundation for how we help customers to manage their samples and ultimately manage their workflows. So the samples the value of the samples is already extremely high. The value of a sample that's fully annotated and has data associated with it is even higher. And the complexity for our customers to try to do that over a global network of different labs and research facilities and storage sites is extremely complex.

But it's the nature of the core of our business, is that we manage multiple, you know, hundreds of customer samples at various sites. And the fact that we can bring this informatics platform to the customer adds tremendous value to them. And in some cases actually, Peter, we're helping customers to discover samples that they may not have known they had. And I think that's where we find that there's a really good starting point. The capabilities that we build onto that related to things like consent management are extremely valuable and extremely important.

And that's what's being built out in the BioStudies platform. But first and foremost, what and where, and ultimately quality, ultimately data that goes with the samples will be part of that offering. Okay.

Speaker 5

And one final question. Just on the gross margin, the 40% is at the target model. What are some of the levers on sustaining that and what could be, you know, driving more upside?

Speaker 1

So specific to life sciences first, you know, we get a lot of questions on the life science model. And what I would share with, our investors is that, we see our business being really steady around the 40% range right now, and that's made up of our storage services business around biostorage, PBM, MMI being around 40% to 45%. And our infrastructure or the rest of our core of our life science business being somewhere between 37% to 40%. And so I think on any given quarter, you should expect 40% right now. I'll tell you in advance, while we think it'll strike 40% now, I expect that when we get to the December quarter, we'll caution you on that because it'll have a higher genomic services business content.

So, you know, it'll move between 38 to 42, I think, in the in the near term. But, but longer term, what I think moves this business, one, is the things that we always focus on. First, the product value. We keep innovating, and we keep adding new products. Steve gave you examples of the new store systems that we're shipping.

We're seeing we're starting to see the ramp of the b three cryo system. We've got, some new offering and innovation behind our consumables business out of FluidX. And of course, we're seeing a consolidation of customer opportunities around the cross sell offerings, of which, has synergy in itself without having to add infrastructure costs there, so the leverage as well. So first product value, we've continued to take cost out. We have items in motion now to continue to improve our reliability and reduce our cost.

And then finally, the leverage of the size. And so all of these will move us up the ramp on gross margin. I think as you again, when we look toward that 2019 model, our target is 43% to 45%, on a consistent basis there. And when we do an acquisition, we stay focused on this and look for something that fits that model and is aligned with that objective.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Peter, thanks very much.

Speaker 0

And there are no further questions queued up over the telephone lines at this time. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Robertson.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ash. And we really appreciate all the time that our investors and our analysts spend with us, and we look forward to getting a chance to touch base with you this coming quarter during our open part of our communication season. We're really enthusiastic about what this how this fiscal year is going to wrap up. And we look forward to talking to you again this time next quarter. Thank you very much.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.