Mettler-Toledo International - Earnings Call - Q4 2020

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the quarterly earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you should require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today, Ms. Mary Finnegan. Thank you, ma'am. Please go ahead.

Mary Finnegan (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Katherine, and good evening, everyone. I'm Mary Finnegan. I'm responsible for Investor Relations at Mettler-Toledo, and happy that you're joining us tonight. I'm joined on the call today with Olivier Filliol, our CEO, and Shawn Vadala, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me cover just a couple of administrative matters. This call is being webcast and is available for replay on our website. A copy of the press release and the presentation that we refer to on today's call is also available on our website. Let me summarize the safe harbor language, which is outlined on page two of the presentation. Statements in this presentation, which are not historical facts, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statement. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see our most recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the SEC from time to time. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors discussed under the caption, "Factors Affecting Our Future Operating Results," and in the business and management discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations section of our filings. Just one other item. On today's call, we may use non-GAAP financial measures. More detailed information with respect to the use of and differences between the non-GAAP financial measure and the most directly comparable GAAP measure is provided in our Form 8-K.

I will now turn the call over to Olivier.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Thank you, Mary. Good evening, everyone. I'm calling in from Switzerland tonight while Shawn and Mary are in Columbus, Ohio. Patrick Kaltenbach is also joining the call with me from Switzerland, and we are excited to have him on board. Patrick and I have had very productive onboarding sessions over the last few weeks, and he most recently has begun to meet with the senior leadership team, who is very happy to welcome him. Patrick, I will turn it to you, as I know you want to make a few comments.

Patrick Kaltenbach (CEO)

Thanks, Olivier. Good evening, everyone. I am very happy to join this call tonight, and more importantly, to be part of Mettler-Toledo. I've spent my time so far working with Olivier, meeting senior leaders virtually throughout the world, and studying thorough strategy documents, comprehensive materials on Spinnaker approaches, and detailed R&D and SternDrive priorities. I am truly impressed with the depth and sophistication of the strategy, initiatives, and programs that are in place. A fantastic foundation has been built, and I'm committed to the organic growth strategy and look forward to leading the team to further enhance our performance and continue this successful journey. Olivier and Shawn will lead this call today, and I look forward to our interactions on the next call and in the future.

Before I hand it back, I want to make a personal thank you to Olivier for the excellent onboarding process and for handing over to me such a unique franchise. Under your leadership, you have developed Mettler-Toledo into a jewel with a tremendous track record and future potential. I am very pleased to know that you will continue to be part of the company. Olivier, I will turn it back to you now.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Thank you, Patrick, for these very kind words. From my side, we're off to a great start, and I look forward to our continued teamwork. I will start with a summary of the quarter, and then Shawn will provide details on our financials. I will then have some additional comments, and we will open the lines for Q&A. The highlights for the quarter are on page three of the presentation. We ended the year with a very strong fourth quarter, which came in better than we expected. Local currency sales increased 7% in the quarter, and growth was relatively broad-based throughout the world. Our laboratory business and our Chinese business did particularly well in the quarter. We benefited from strong execution and were well-positioned to capture growth as customer demand improved. However, we continued to be negatively impacted by COVID-19 in certain areas.

From the onset of the global pandemic, our focus has been to identify and pursue pockets of growth within our end markets and to be well-positioned to capture growth as demand improved, which is what we saw in Q4. Our innovative go-to-market approach really played very well into this environment and allowed us to capture this growth. Good cost control and the continuous benefit of our margin and productivity initiatives contributed to strong growth in adjusted operating profit and very strong growth in adjusted EPS in the quarter. Finally, cash flow, not only in the quarter, but also for the full year, was excellent. 2020 was an extraordinary year with some of the most challenging market conditions we have faced in more than a decade. Our organizational agility helped us to quickly adapt approaches and processes to the new environment.

Our broad end market diversification and the use of sophisticated data analytics allowed us to shift our sales and marketing focus to the most promising end markets early on. It also helped to ensure we were well-positioned to capture growth as demand improved during the latter part of the year. We adapted our supply chain and service organization to maintain superior performance that strengthened our franchise and introduced many new digital sales and support tools to provide top-quality customer interactions despite the remote settings of our customers and sales teams. Throughout 2020, we increased our customer engagement and customer satisfaction, which translated into accelerated market share gains in many product categories. With the strong end to 2020, we have very good momentum as we start 2021 and believe we're well-positioned to continue to gain share and deliver good results.

We will have some additional comments on 2021, but first, let me turn it to Shawn to cover the financial results.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Thanks, Olivier, and hello, everyone. Sales were $938 million in the quarter, an increase of 7% in local currency. On a U.S. dollar basis, sales increased 11%, as currency benefited sales by 4% in the quarter. On slide number four, we show sales growth by region. Local currency sales increased 8% in the Americas, 7% in Europe, and 8% in Asia rest of the world. Local currency sales increased 12% in China in the quarter. The next slide shows sales growth by region for the full year 2020. Local currency sales increased 2% in the Americas, 1% in Europe, and 3% in Asia rest of the world. China local currency sales grew 7% in 2020. On slide number six, we outline local currency sales growth by product area. For the fourth quarter, laboratory sales increased 12%, industrial increased 1%, with core industrial up 5% and Product Inspection down 5%.

Food retail increased 7% in the quarter. We estimate that we benefited 1%-2% from COVID tailwinds in the quarter related to our pipette business for COVID testing. The next slide shows sales growth by product area for the full year. Laboratory sales increased 5%, industrial declined 1%, with core industrial up 2% and Product Inspection down 7%. Food retail declined 4% in 2020. Let me now move to the rest of the P&L for the fourth quarter, which is summarized on the next slide. Gross margin in the quarter was 59.6%, a 60 basis point increase over the prior year level of 59.0%. Our margin initiative centered on pricing and SternDrive, as well as temporary cost savings, contributed to the margin growth, offset in part by higher transportation costs and unfavorable business mix. R&D amounted to $39.9 million, which represents a 6% increase in local currency.

SG&A amounted to $226.4 million, a 5% increase in local currency over the previous year. Increased variable compensation was offset in part by our temporary cost savings and ongoing cost containment initiatives. Adjusted operating profit amounted to $292.8 million in the quarter, which is a 14% increase over the prior year amount of $256.3 million. Operating margins increased 80 basis points in the quarter to 31.2%. We're very pleased with this margin growth. Currency benefited operating profit growth by approximately 2%, but actually hurt operating margin expansion by about 50 basis points. A couple of final comments on the P&L. Amortization amounted to $14.7 million in the quarter. Interest expense was $9.5 million in the quarter, and other income amounted to $3.7 million. We reduced our effective tax rate for the full year from 20.5% to 19.5%.

This is the rate before discrete items and adjusting for the timing of stock option exercises in the quarter. We're very pleased with this reduction and expect to maintain this rate in 2021. Moving to fully diluted shares, which amounted to 24 million in the quarter and is a 3% decline from the prior year. Adjusted EPS for the quarter was $9.26, a 19% increase over the prior year amount of $7.78. Currency benefited adjusted EPS by approximately 2% in the quarter. On a reported basis in the quarter, EPS was $9.03 as compared to $7.84 in the prior year. Reported EPS in the quarter includes $0.12 of purchased intangible amortization and $0.11 of restructuring. We also had two offsetting items for income taxes. We had a $0.20 increase due to the difference between our quarterly and annual tax rate due to the timing of stock option exercises.

This was offset by a $0.20 benefit from adjusting our tax rate to 19.5% for the first three quarters. The next slide shows our full year results. Local currency sales increased 2% in 2020, while adjusted operating income increased 8%, and adjusted operating margins were up 130 basis points. Adjusted EPS amounted to $25.72, an increase of 13% over the prior year amount of $22.77. Currency was neutral to the full year adjusted EPS. Given the unprecedented challenges we faced in 2020, we are very pleased with our performance and believe it reflects the agility and strong culture of our organization, the effectiveness of our growth and margin expansion initiatives, and resiliency of our end markets. That is it for the P&L. Now let me cover the cash flow.

In the quarter, adjusted free cash flow amounted to $218 million, which is an increase of 20% on a per-share basis as compared to the prior year. We're very happy with our cash flow generation. DSO declined approximately three and a half days in the quarter to 36 and a half days as compared to the prior year. We're seeing concrete results from the use of analytics and productivity improvements in receivable collections and cash flow management during this period. ITO came in at 4.3x. For the full year 2020, adjusted free cash flow was $648 million as compared to the prior year amount of $531 million. On a per-share basis, this is a 26% increase in earnings flow-through of more than 100%.

We're very pleased with this performance, which demonstrates the strength of our franchise as well as our focus on continuous process improvements to drive cash flow generation. Let me now turn to guidance. Forecasting continues to be challenging given the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 and the ultimate impact for the global economy. Market dynamics are fluid, and changes in customer demand can happen quickly. With our strong fourth quarter performance, we continue to feel confident about those factors within our control, namely executing on our sales and marketing initiatives and continuing to launch new products with clear value-added benefits to our customers. We believe we have been successful in identifying and capitalizing on pockets of growth and are well-positioned to continue to gain share. We also continue to feel positive in our ability to generate margin improvement by our pricing and SternDrive initiatives. Now let me cover the specifics.

For the full year 2021, we now expect local currency sales growth will be in the range of 5%-7% as compared to 2020. We expect full year adjusted EPS will be in the range of $29.20-$29.80, which is a growth rate of 14%-16%. This compares to previous adjusted EPS guidance in the range of $27.50-$28.30. With respect to the first quarter, we would expect local currency sales growth to be in the range of 11%-13% and expected adjusted EPS to be in the range of $5.55-$5.70, a growth rate of 39%-43%. Some further comments on 2021 guidance. Let me start with the pacing of the year. We expect the first half of the year will be much stronger than the second half. We are starting the year with excellent momentum coming off a strong Q4.

The first half of the year will also benefit from easier comparisons and the continued COVID tailwind in our pipette business. As we look to the second half, we'll face more difficult comparisons, particularly with respect to our business in China. Our COVID tailwinds will also turn to a headwind as we lap comparisons. We also feel more uncertainty exists for the second half of the year, especially with respect to COVID's potential impact to the global economy. We recognize that we're currently benefiting from strong momentum, which will not necessarily continue. We'll provide additional quarterly guidance on our next call, but I thought it would be helpful to provide this context now. Some additional comments on guidance. We expect interest expense to be approximately $40 million in 2021 and total amortization to be approximately $55 million.

Other income, which is below operating profit, will be approximately $9 million in 2021. As I mentioned earlier, we would expect our effective tax rate in 2021 to also remain at 19.5%. In terms of free cash flow for the year, we expect it to be approximately $690 million. We will continue to repurchase shares and expect to end 2021 in a targeted range of approximately a 1.5x leverage ratio. Some additional details. With respect to the impact of currency on sales growth, we expect currency to increase sales growth by approximately 3.5% in 2021 and 5% in the first quarter. In terms of adjusted EPS, currency will benefit growth by approximately 3% in 2021. That is it from my side, and I'll now turn it back to Olivier.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Thank you, Shawn. Let me start with some comments on our operating results. Our lab business had exceptional growth in the quarter. Pipettes had excellent growth and benefited from COVID-related testing demand. Process analytics had another quarter of strong growth, while demand for analytical instruments and balances recovered nicely in the quarter. Sales growth in all regions was very strong. We expect lab to continue to be very strong in the first half of 2021 due to favorable biopharma trends, vaccine research, and testing and bioproduction scale-up and production. Lab will face tougher comparisons in the second half of the year. With our excellent lab product portfolio, including our power-to-bench solutions focused on automation, digital interfaces, and data management, and proven spin actor sales and marketing strategies, we believe we're well-positioned to continue to capture share.

In terms of industrial business, core industrial did well in the quarter with a 5% increase driven by double-digit growth in China. We returned to growth in core industrial in Europe, while Americas was flat, although they had very good growth in the prior year. We are particularly pleased at how resilient our core industrial has proven throughout 2020, given the challenges of the pandemic. We believe this reflects the strength and diversity of our product portfolio, our success in identifying and pursuing pockets of growth, and strong focus on execution. Our outlook for core industrial remains solid, but we acknowledge we are not immune to the overall economy and will face difficult comparisons in China during the second half of the year. Product Inspection came in weaker than we had anticipated, with a 5% decline in the quarter.

Both Europe and Asia declined, while Americas was flat with the prior year. While our outlook has improved for this business and we expect to start 2021 with solid growth, we are cautious as large packaged food companies continue to face operational challenges at their manufacturing sites related to COVID. We believe pent-up demand exists for our instruments, but ultimate timing is still hard to determine. Food retailing came in better than we expected, with 7% growth overall and growth in all regions. Now let me make some additional comments by geography. Sales in Europe increased 7% in the quarter, with excellent growth in lab and good growth in core industrial and food retail. We expect solid growth in Europe in 2021. Americas increased 8% in the quarter, with excellent growth in lab, offset by flat results in both Product Inspection and core industrial.

We expect good growth in Americas in 2021. Finally, Asia and rest of the world grew 8% in the quarter, with both lab and core industrial doing very well. As mentioned, China had 12% growth in the quarter, with excellent growth across product lines. We expect market conditions in China to be very favorable as we start 2021, while they face much tougher comparisons in the second half of the year. One final comment on the business: service and consumables were up 13% in the quarter and 8% for the full year. That concludes my comments on the business. As I reflect on 2020, I'm very pleased with our performance given the exceptional challenges we faced. This performance would not have been possible without the strong foundation and well-ingrained corporate programs that we have in place, which allowed us to quickly pivot and adapt to the new environment.

We have always considered agility and focus on execution a key pillar of Mettler-Toledo, and I think you saw evidence of both of these in our results. Probably most important, however, our success in 2020 sets the stage for us to continue to capture growth in 2021 and beyond. Our strategy over many years has been remarkably consistent. As a leader in fragmented markets, we have established strategies that allow us to gain a little market share each year while continuously expanding our margin. The initiatives within these strategies will evolve and evolve, but strategies remain the same. As we look to 2021, let me comment on how we are going about this. I will start with our spin actor sales and marketing initiatives. As we discussed on our last call, we made some leapfrog advances in digital transformation during 2020 that positioned us very well for the future.

We will continue to refine our sophisticated analytics to guide our sales force to the best opportunities. We will continue to support our market organization with tools and methodologies to increase sales force time with the most strategic accounts while leveraging our value selling and cross-selling tools to further penetrate opportunities. We will also continue to leverage digitalization to develop new approaches that drive sales force efficiency and refine techniques to improve the effectiveness of telesales teams, but also look forward to returning to visit accounts to generate new opportunities. Finally, we will look to execute more telemarketing campaigns and enhance tools to increase order conversions. Service will continue to be an essential element of our customer value proposition. Our almost 3,000 service technicians are an important competitive advantage for us.

This year, we will focus on further iBASE penetration and utilizing many of the same sales force guidance, telesales, and digital tools that we use for product sales to further drive service sales. Our team in China did an exceptional job in 2020, not only in continuing to serve customers and penetrate growth opportunities, but also in terms of manufacturing and supply chain. The team's priority is to continue to optimize the organization to focus on high potential growth areas and attractive segments and further leverage digital technology to engage customers and generate leads. Introducing products for the local market, such as an entry-level X-ray instrument for our Product Inspection portfolio, is also an important element to growth in China and throughout emerging markets. We remain very optimistic about the growth potential, not only in China but throughout emerging markets over the medium term.

Constantly coming to market with new product launches is another important strategy. Given the diversification of our product portfolio, a new product launch will never be material by itself, but together, these launches reinforce our market leadership, help trigger replacement in existing customers, help open doors to new customers, and help support our price differentiation. Later this month, we will launch a new automatic laboratory balance that will set a new standard for weighing of powders and liquids in research labs, testing labs, and quality control labs. Addressing the needs in the laboratory for automation, smaller sample sizes, flexibility, ease of use, and seamless documentation, this new balance offers an unmatched value proposition. It is a simple, fully integrated solution that will support our customers in their everyday operations.

It is just one example of the many product launches we will have this year, but illustrates how we are continually focused on bringing products to market that demonstrate clear value to our customers. Similar to the continued evolution of growth strategies, we also continue to develop our pricing and productivity initiatives. We have good developments within pricing, utilizing analytics and some machine learning to most effectively price our offering. On the supply chain side, the team was able to continue to make progress on their SternDrive productivity goals in 2020, but we will be able to make further progress in 2021 when the team won't have as many challenges as they faced last year. Finally, I think you will continue to see us market strategic acquisitions that leverage our technology leadership and global distribution.

I acknowledge that we have not had an acquisition for a while but continue to believe we can benefit from acquisitions. However, these acquisitions will be smaller and strategic, not transformational. I believe our franchise is stronger than ever, as demonstrated in how we performed in 2020 despite all the challenges. As I look back over the last decade-plus years, we have made much progress in many areas. Our continuous improvement programs of Spinnaker, sales and marketing, and SternDrive productivity, which I just discussed, are well ingrained throughout our organization and will continue to evolve and be important ingredients for the future. Emerging markets, an important growth driver, are 35% of sales today compared with 25% in 2007. Similarly, our faster-growing laboratory business is now 54% of sales, up from 44%. Finally, service and consumables is now 33% of sales as compared to 28%.

Redirecting resources and investments to faster-growing businesses has always been at the heart of our initiatives, and these businesses will continue to fuel growth in the future. The strength of the organization and how well we are positioned for the future contributed to my decision to step down as CEO. Under Patrick's leadership, I believe we have the organization, corporate programs, senior leadership team, and tools in place to continue to gain share and continue our successful track record. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now I want to open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, just as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, that is star and the number one. Your first question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson with JPMorgan.

Tycho Peterson (Managing Director of Global Equities)

Hey, thanks. Olivier, I know you have one more quarter, so we won't congratulate you on the transition just yet, but maybe thinking about the service and consumable numbers you highlighted, third of sales up 13%. Can you maybe just talk about the durability, how much of that was pent up versus maybe some of the newer initiatives, especially on the service side?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. We would estimate that the core retail wind was about 1%-2% for the group, and that was really related to the consumer business mainly or almost exclusively around tips that we produce in our Rainin and Biotix facilities. That was actually really strong, but then the remainder of the service and consumable business was healthy and quite sustainable. I was actually pleased to see how we continue to perform service well even under, again, more difficult lockdown situations, particularly also in Europe, started end of Q4. Nevertheless, our service business could nicely hold up, and I would expect the same for this year. I would almost say for our service business, we have a healthy environment, and I continue to expect similar growth as we had in the past.

Tycho Peterson (Managing Director of Global Equities)

Okay. That's helpful. Then Product Inspection, I know you've been talking about pent-up demand with the CPG customers for a while. Obviously, we're not seeing it yet. Maybe talk a little bit about what you're hearing in that channel.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. So indeed, we still see good demand for quotes. We feel we have a very good market position, but we see that customers are just not committing to upgrades and new packaging lines and so on, which is not surprising. All these food companies really need to protect their production from any COVID exposures, and you can imagine they have very rigid safety procedures, not wanting to let in any external suppliers, and that really drives the demand. I would not be surprised if this takes another six months. There are many production companies here that really hold back on CapEx, and as a reminder, more than 70% of our revenue in Product Inspection is coming from food production.

Yeah, we count on the second half that we would really see a strong pent-up demand, but I do expect that already Q1 we will see better numbers, but not necessarily coming from pent-up.

Tycho Peterson (Managing Director of Global Equities)

Okay. Lastly, on China, last quarter, you talked about some pull forward. You still had good growth, 12% overall, industrial double digits. Maybe just talk a little bit about the sustainability, and then if you could quantify what is baked in the guidance for China growth this year.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. Let me take the first part regarding the specifics, then Shawn can add in. Yeah, indeed, we are very happy about how Q4 came together. The Chinese team did perform really, really well. There is also a good market for us. We see that the Chinese local investment is going very well. We benefit from that. The investments also go in the right market segments for us that we can benefit from, and I would certainly expect that this momentum will still go on for a while. We have here, for example, Q1, I still have good expectations. For the second part of the year, however, we are going to face tougher comparisons, and that is certainly one of the reasons why we guide when it comes to China, a good start, but then a slowdown in the second part of the year.

Now, Shawn, do you want to add some flavor to that last comment?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Olivier. And hi, Tycho. Yeah. For the full year in China, Tycho, we're now looking at high single-digit growth for the full year. That's an improvement from our previous guidance where we were saying mid-single digit, and right now we're feeling that that high single digit would be both in the laboratory and the industrial business. As Olivier mentioned, the pacing is going to be pretty unique, just giving the whole situation with the comparison in Q1 of last year and then when we look at the second half of last year as well. Just to be even a little bit more specific on that, in Q1, we expect China to be up mid to high 20% in terms of growth, but again, that was versus a -13% in Q1 of last year.

Of course, we're going to have to lap some of these tougher comparisons, which included 17% growth in Q3 of last year and now 12% in Q4 of this year.

Tycho Peterson (Managing Director of Global Equities)

Okay. Thank you.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yep.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Derik De Bruin with Bank of America.

Derik De Bruin (Managing Director of Life Sciences Tools and Diagnostics Analyst)

Hi. Good afternoon. How are you doing?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Derik.

Derik De Bruin (Managing Director of Life Sciences Tools and Diagnostics Analyst)

Hey. I guess the first question is, how did pricing come through in 2020? I am just sort of curious, because you got better pricing than normal given the huge demand for pipettes, and just if you took some price advantage there, and just sort of what are you expecting in the 2021 numbers for pricing?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Derik, I'll take it, Shawn. In the fourth quarter, we did just under 2.5% in terms of price realization, so that was a little bit of an improvement from what we were seeing earlier in the year. I think each quarter we started to see things progressively get a little bit better. Part of that improvement was that we were able to take a little bit more price in the area of pipettes, as you just mentioned. We also were able to do a couple of other things where we're trying to offset some of these higher transportation costs as well.

As we look to 2021, we were previously guiding a little bit more cautiously in the 150 basis point kind of a range with the concern that inflationary forecasts a few months ago were quite low for 2021, but still feel extremely good about the momentum in the program. Olivier also alluded to a few of those things in the prepared remarks as well. At this point in time, we're looking at probably a range of 150-200. Wouldn't be surprised if we were more towards the higher end of that range. As we kind of see some of the dynamics in the market, we do see some opportunities to maybe gain a little bit more price than we saw maybe a few months ago, and we'll see how that plays out, but that's certainly something on our mind right now.

Of course, the other side of that is that some of these opportunities in price are also looking at higher material costs in certain areas that we're mindful of that we might be facing as well.

Derik De Bruin (Managing Director of Life Sciences Tools and Diagnostics Analyst)

Great. That's really helpful. Olivier, you made an interesting comment in the opening remarks just talking about accelerating market share gains in many categories. Can you sort of give us a little bit more color on that?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. Like always, it's difficult to have hard data on that. Our competitors do not publish specific comparable numbers, and so we need to base this on the observation of our field force. We certainly also observe kind of the growth momentum we see in the different industry segments and what we can expect, and based on that, we feel actually really good. We have also clear anecdotes that we are winning share, and I feel we are outpacing the market. We have this MVDP benchmark, and I certainly feel that we are outpacing that. That gives us all this confidence of the share gain. There are some other data points that we use internally. I mentioned that we leverage data analytics to guide our sales force. Last year, we had a special effort to guide the sales force to non-customers.

We did so because suddenly our sales force spent much less time behind the wheel. They have much more time doing cold calling and engaging new customers through virtual demos and virtual calls, and that was then the base for us to expand the targets to our sales force, and we were very pleased to see the results in converting more than ever non-customers. That gives us kind of the confidence that this allows us to win share. In a nutshell, we feel that we protected well our existing customer base while we accelerated the access and the conversion to non-customers. Certainly a strategy that we're going to pursue.

I many times said the crisis last year was for us an opportunity to leapfrog some of the changes in terms of go-to-market, leapfrog the adaptation of internal new tools and techniques, and one of them was certainly all about the sales force guidance and reaching out to non-customers. We're going to certainly maintain that one.

Derik De Bruin (Managing Director of Life Sciences Tools and Diagnostics Analyst)

Great. Thanks for the detail.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.

Vijay Kumar (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hey, guys. Congrats on a nice spring share. Olivier, maybe I'll start with a high-level question for you. The guidance here, five to seven, it's a pretty solid guide. What is it assuming from a business environment perspective? Are you assuming the environment is back to normal, or is there some cushion for perhaps disruption from second wave? Your comments on M&A, it felt like a tone change. I'm curious if we read that the right way. Is that a change in tone?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Let me take the first. We assume a relatively stable environment in terms of second wave. In Europe, we are in the middle of the second wave. We are definitely on a quite strict lockdown in many of the countries. It started already before Christmas. It feels very different to the first lockdown. The business, while we or many of us are in home offices, we have here an infrastructure and an understanding with our customer base that business is going on. We definitely leverage all these. We have also less customer visits, but effective relationships, and we do not see that the core customer base is putting investments on hold. That is why this second wave is very different to the first wave when it comes to the business impact. On personal levels, it feels kind of similar, but not on a business level.

If the environment stays about what it is right now, that's probably our base for our guidance here, and yeah, I'm not particularly worried that the lockdown situation will significantly impact our business. That means if the lockdown gets more severe or if everything would suddenly ease up, it looks like we have built here a certain resilience in our own business approach as well as the business or the industry segments that we are targeting. I want also to remind we did quite a shift last year in terms of the industry segments that we are targeting, and that shift we're going to maintain. Don't wait too much around the M&A language. It's really in the sense that a reinforcement of the strategy that we have been running in the past. We are very interested in adjacencies.

We are interested in companies that fit well in our current business focus, and my point was even that we have here a leadership transition. Patrick and I share a common understanding here that we do not need any transformational acquisitions. We are not seeking any additional legs to the company. We feel we have an excellent franchise, but we want to leverage the franchise when there are good opportunities out there. Again, technology synergies or selective market consolidation opportunities. These are the typical adjacencies that we did in the past and that we certainly are going to continue to pursue.

Vijay Kumar (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

Thanks, Olivier. Hey, Shawn, one quick one for you. On the margins, it looks like the margin guidance, it's implied it's gone up versus the prior guide. Is that a fair statement?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

I'm sorry, Vijay, can you repeat that question?

Vijay Kumar (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

On the margin guidance, it seems versus your prior expectations, margin expansion perhaps is closer to triple digits at the high end of the guidance. Is that correct?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

No, no, no. For the full year, I mean, for Q1, of course, we have triple digit numbers, but for the full year, just to be clear, we're expecting the operating margin to expand about 60-70 basis points if we exclude the impact of currency. Currency will be favorable to operating profit, but it will actually have a negative impact on the margin, and that negative impact will probably be in the range of 20 basis points. Just to kind of link it back to your comment about what we were saying before, we were saying before that we would be a little bit below our typical guide of 70-100 in terms of our midterm expectations.

We might be slightly lower, but we're a little bit more optimistic just given the higher sales volume as well in terms of what we'd expect. I think the other thing to always remember is we did 130 basis points this year. Now when we're looking at the two-year combined growth, we're probably in the 190-200 basis point expansion excluding currency, which we feel really good about. As we kind of mentioned in the comments before, we feel like there's really excellent momentum on all the different margin expansion initiatives, whether it be pricing or SternDrive, et cetera.

Vijay Kumar (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

Understood. Thanks, guys.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yep. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi.

Patrick Donnelly (Director)

Hey, thanks, guys. Olivier, maybe just one on the core industrial side. Certainly proved a lot more resilient than we expected, and it sounds like maybe you expected as well. Can you just pull back the curtain a little bit in terms of what you saw in Q4 and then also the expectations going forward? Again, kind of held in there a lot better, particularly in the developed markets than we would have expected. Would love a bit more color on the performance and then the expectations as we go through 2021 here.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. Hey, yes, our expectation was that our industrial business would be more exposed to the slowdown of the economy. We are very pleased to see how Q4 came together across the globe pretty much and also across the different product lines in industrial. I expect this will continue on to be relatively healthy, but of course, in the second part of the year, comparisons might also play again, and certainly also China where, of course, we have this very significant industrial business. I would attribute it to a little bit the same things that we see for the whole group, that we early on did go for the pockets of growth that still exist in this market, redirecting our resources and our attention to the most attractive accounts, and that played well. There are industry segments that are very healthy at this stage.

The whole pharma production, there is transport and logistics that is healthy for us, and many other subsegments. In combination with the sales force guidance topic that I raised before, offered really good opportunities in spite that the overall economy is challenging. There are segments that are down for us and other segments that were nicely up, and it is really up to us to focus on the right ones.

Patrick Donnelly (Director)

Yep. Understood. Maybe in response to the last question, it seems like you kind of acknowledged there's potentially some upside to the revenue guidance, maybe it's baking in more kind of status quo than much of a recovery. I guess when you think about that five to seven for 2021, when you look at it, what do you think are kind of the one or two segments that have the most upside in terms of the lever to if you kind of end up beating that number? Where do you think the most conservatism is in your projection, kind of when you go through the numbers there?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

I wouldn't talk about conservatism. I think we recognize that there are industry segments with good upsides and others that will be more difficult. At this stage, we would extrapolate kind of the trends that we have seen also in recent months where we say biopharma is strong and certain chemical subsegments are strong, and that should remain that way. I would expect that in the second part of the year, we're going to see good growth in PI, pent-up demand, as we mentioned before. On the flip side, you have, of course, the comparison topics. China will, for example, be rather down in the—down, no, not the same growth rate in the second part of the year. That's a bit.

In terms of where we might experience positive or hopefully not negative surprises, Product Inspection and China are certainly the ones that have potential in both directions.

Patrick Donnelly (Director)

Understood. Thanks, Olivier. I appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Arias with Stifel.

Dan Arias (Managing Director)

Good afternoon, guys. Thank you. Shawn, just to follow up on Tycho's question on Product Inspection and then some of the comments that Olivier just made there, I think the comp in PI gets eight points easier for you guys next quarter than it was here in Q4. I certainly appreciate Olivier's point on maybe some of the pent-up demand drying up, but I think you said up 5% this quarter. Is there a reason why you would not get the high singles, maybe even low doubles in Q1 in Product Inspection?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Hey, Dan, just to clarify, for Q4, Product Inspection was down 5%. It was not up 5%. It was down 5%.

Dan Arias (Managing Director)

Okay.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. That probably helps a little bit. You're right. It does have an easier comparison in Q1. As we kind of look at Product Inspection, this continues to be the one business in the portfolio that's been the most negatively impacted by COVID and high case counts. As Olivier was describing earlier, these customers really are operationally distracted at the moment. We do think that there's a really great opportunity for pent-up demand at some point, but the timing, of course, is just very difficult to predict at this point in time. When we look at the guidance, mid-single digit is kind of what we're looking at for Q1, and mid-single digit is kind of what we're looking at for the full year.

Dan Arias (Managing Director)

Okay. Very good. Thanks for the clarification there.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. Thank you.

Dan Arias (Managing Director)

Olivier, on your point on new product launches, if I think back to the last time you guys actually held a site visit down in Tampa, which seems like a long time ago, we were focused on the PI business, obviously, just given where we were, but you guys talked a lot about what you were doing in terms of product development for biopharma. Do you feel like 2020 was a year where you saw some traction there, just given the things that you were doing? Should we think about 2021 kind of being the year that 2020 could have been, just given the pandemic-related headwinds? Also, the fact that it sounds like some of the launches this year are pointed in that direction.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. I don't want to overstate the impact of our product launches on the top line. We often talked—our strategy is to continuously upgrade and launch new products, and they add up, but I would say from one year to another, there's not that much difference. Of course, the products that we showed to you in Tampa, these were particularly also products in the area of AutoChem. These products are going very well. Very happy with the adoption rates. They will also continue to contribute very well this year. They are in all other categories, being it process analytics, being it industrial. I talked before about lab balances. At other moments, I talked in the analytical space about new products we had for UV/Vis, for example, and so on. This is the whole portfolio that makes the difference to keep the technology leadership, but it's a continued thing.

Last year or also 2021, I wouldn't highlight a particular product that will make the big difference to the top line.

Dan Arias (Managing Director)

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Beuchaw with Wolfe Research.

Steve Beuchaw (Analyst of Life Sciences and Med Tech)

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for bringing me on here. I wondered if I could spend a little time just trying to understand more deeply, Olivier, how do you think the operating environment evolved around COVID over the balance of the year, just so we have as much context as we can for your planning assumptions? Sorry, I hate to try to put words in your mouth, but my sense is that you think that in the back half of the year, there will still be some amount of macroeconomic pressure. Maybe there's a lingering impact of the virus, and so the macro is a little tougher. That's part one.

Part two is it also seems like you think that in some of the life sciences categories, maybe around pharma, that you've had some good tailwinds and that those also maybe sort of taper off in the back half of the year. I just want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly. Is that a fair characterization?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Hesitate here. You're right. We are cautious about the macro environment also for the rest of the year. I don't think the macro environment will just immediately improve when the lockdowns go away. I think there are too many drivers for a macro environment, and we have not particularly forecasted here for an improved macro environment. We more or less assume things remain about what they are today. I wouldn't say this is particularly cautious. I think we just don't know if all these industry segments that are today down will suddenly recover. I would think that the momentum that we see in the industry segments, like in bioproduction, I don't think it goes necessarily away in the second part of the year. I think that can be actually quite sustainable. Yeah.

We had modest benefits from investments in vaccine production, but in terms of share of our total revenue, it remains very small. If that would slow down, that would not necessarily have a big impact on us. The investment in pharma production and particularly also bioproduction, I think, has a long way to go. In that sense, I feel like the current macro environment that we have could last for quite a few more quarters, including the industry mix.

Steve Beuchaw (Analyst of Life Sciences and Med Tech)

Okay. That was extremely helpful. Thank you for that perspective. I've got one more follow-up to ask, but before I ask it, I know it's too soon to say goodbye to Olivier, but I am going to say hello to Patrick. It's good to hear your voice again after a little while. Thank you for being on the call here.

Patrick Kaltenbach (CEO)

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Beuchaw (Analyst of Life Sciences and Med Tech)

The question I would leave with is sort of a follow-up to one that was asked earlier. There was a question asked, which frankly, I would have liked to have asked too, about market share gains and the success of what you've done in this operating environment where some of your nimble approaches really pay off in a unique way. I wonder if maybe we could just zoom in, though, maybe talk about it particularly as it relates to service, where your ability to get people in the field in an appropriate way, of course, and in the right place might be particularly helpful. Can you talk at all about the extent to which you might see service-attached rates or service relationships evolving during the pandemic environment? Sorry, after some very long-winded questions, I'll get back in queue. Thank you.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. On the service side here, I would say this is more an operational topic. Very early on, we were extremely fast in making sure that we equip our service technicians with all the safety gears. We very early on made sure that our customers knew about that. We keep really operations going. You will recall when we talked about Q2, how we did many good things to maintain production going. We were one of the first ones that resumed production also in China and similar things that we did also for the service technicians. We were really up and running. What we continue to benefit from is we do this net promoter score, and we had a very nice jump in customer satisfaction in Q2 that we saw in our NPS. It went on throughout the year.

I feel this gives tribute to really our service force, how well they are performing. Having 3,000 people in the field here is powerful. You also need to know that for service, our biggest competition are local, I would almost say, family-owned companies. For these companies, it is much more difficult to operate in the current COVID environment than for us, where we have a global organization and we have a lot of professional support of the field force. That is one. The second one, our efforts to migrate to contract-based service was very beneficial. That protects a lot of our business.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Couillard with Jefferies. Brandon Couillard, your line is open.

Brandon Couillard (Senior VP)

Here we go. Thanks. Shawn, on the working capital front, DSOs continue to trend lower. You talked about applying some analytics and better productivity tools, which I think are new. I may be wrong, but are you finding new ways to apply these in that area, and how much more room do you think is left there?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. No. Hey, thanks, Brandon. Thanks for the question. These are new tools, and so I'm kind of happy to be able to respond to it. Like many other things in the company, I think it's just a really good example of agility. Back in March, we really kind of launched into a variety of crisis management initiatives around COVID. One of those initiatives, of course, was managed for cash. That's what we refer to it as internally. Within that initiative, we challenged ourselves to come up with some new analytics, but even more importantly, to try to make the connection between the analytics and the actions to be more efficient.

We literally are broadcasting today individual KPI charts that are highly actionable with top 10 lists as well on a very daily basis to each finance organization going to the leader every single day. We found that that in itself has become very actionable, and it's allowed them to work with their local management teams and really get people behind areas for improvement. That's just one example. We've done a lot of other things in the managed for cash initiative during the course of the year. In terms of more legs, we'll see. I think we just hit another good milestone. When I take a step back, I think the best way to look at it is that our free cash flow conversion this year was over 100%. When we look at next year, we'll probably be right around 100% again.

I think this is a level that I don't think is going to get too much more than 100%, but I just think that flow through around 100% is a good range. I'm comfortable looking at that for 2021. I think as we go out, we'll kind of take it on a year-by-year basis. Right now, we feel really good about the cash flow conversion.

Brandon Couillard (Senior VP)

Great. That's it for me. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jack Meehan with Nephron Research.

Jack Meehan (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Good afternoon. First one for Shawn, I was just wondering if you could walk us through the different factors that led to the EPS guidance raise for 2021. At this point, I think I caught China, pricing, FX, and tax rate. What did I miss?

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, probably even bigger picture, Jack. We have increased sales overall for the group. That is not just China. That is just the overall group. The next thing I would say is that we would have and probably within that, yes, you have China being a little bit better. You have Europe being a little bit better. You have core industrial being a little bit better, and you have lab being a little bit better. We have the second thing would be our 2020B. You have a more favorable currency environment. Of course, we have the reduced tax rate. When you add that all up, I think that is how you bridge our guidance.

Jack Meehan (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for walking through that. Just one on food retail. Saw a nice little rebound in the second half of the year, but I was just wondering if maybe that was some deferred sales from earlier in the year and if your thoughts have changed at all around the outlook for 2021 there.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

No. We still look at food retail as a low single-digit business for 2021. The business always can be a little bit lumpy. We are very much tied to customer projects and buying cycles. I would not necessarily read anything particular into the fourth quarter results. Although I would say that we are looking at a more favorable outlook again in the first quarter and probably will start the year more high single-digit there.

Jack Meehan (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Shawn.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. Welcome.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Brennan with UBS.

Dan Brennan (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director)

Great. Thank you. Thanks for the questions. Hoping just to dig in a little bit on lab. I know you've talked about a lot of the initiatives there, but it was a nice beat in the quarter. I'm just wondering, if you could just flesh out, how would you prioritize what the biggest reasons were for the upside? For 2021, I think previously you were thinking mid-single, high single. Is that still the case, or it sounds like it's kind of ticked up a little bit? Maybe you can just kind of walk us through a little bit of lab drivers.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, so hey, maybe I'll start with the last part of the question, Dan. Yeah, so we're thinking high single-digit for lab for the full year for 2021. For Q1, we're looking at low teens. In terms of the results in Q4, we really felt good about the whole portfolio. I mean, of course, the pipette business is, of course, continuing to do well. We probably had a little bit better in terms of the COVID tailwinds in terms of what we were expecting. If I look at the other categories, like process analytics had a great quarter, and we also did really well in our analytical instrument business as well as our laboratory balance business. We feel like generally there's just really good momentum there globally, good market trends.

Of course, there's also pockets of challenge in other industries, but in particular, biopharm is doing very well.

Dan Brennan (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director)

Great. Thank you. Just a second one. Some Product Inspection, just given the delayed spending cycle that's been ongoing here, how much pent-up demand is there? Can these food manufacturers put this stuff off? Is there going to be a big catch-up? How do we think about Product Inspection? I know you talked about a nice recovery in the second half, but then kind of what happens beyond that? Just any color on that would be helpful.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

That's probably quite difficult to quantify, but a little bit the way to see you, we had now a few quarters of declines. I would expect that we can catch up quite a bit of this. The big question will be how fast, and is it going to be at the same time in the U.S. as in Europe or not? There might be also differences by industry segments. For example, the meat industry in the U.S. has been very much impacted by COVID, certainly an area where there was very little investment or activities. Hopefully that will come back not too far away, but then to be seen. Internally, I would say we count on the second part of the year. We were just talking also today with people from the industry.

They were kind of hinting to us that the decision-making might really start to ramp up again in Q3 at customers. That would, yeah, support our hypothesis. It should go on then into next year. I would certainly hope that 2022 has also some good PI quarters.

Dan Brennan (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director)

Great. Thanks, Olivier.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Willoughby with Cleveland Research.

Steve Willoughby (Founding Member, Partner, and Senior Analyst)

Hi everyone. Most of my questions have been asked already, but I just want to touch on one as it relates to pipettes. I believe you have some new capacity coming online this year for pipettes. I was just wondering, given the demand you're seeing these days, where you stand today in terms of being able to meet the demand that you're seeing and any comments on if you're seeing sort of backlogs or order books get extended and what that new capacity means for your pipette business?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

At this stage, we cannot fully satisfy the demand. We have capacity issues. This is around tips, not on pipettes, but mainly on tips. The tips are used in COVID testing. We do expect that this is something that we have a spike right now and will then flatten or go back. We do already extraordinary efforts to increase the capacity. We have increased the capacity in Q4 and will continue to increase here in Q1. In the summer, indeed, we have an additional facility in Mexico or a new facility in Mexico that will go online. It, of course, will also take a few weeks that we can fully leverage that. That will bring additional capacity. Most important is that we can maximize capacity here in these days, in these weeks.

It's commercially attractive, but of course, it has also a relevant contribution also to the health situation in the society. The teams are very motivated here to do the most.

Steve Willoughby (Founding Member, Partner, and Senior Analyst)

Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Sykes with Goldman Sachs.

Matt Sykes (Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. I'll be quick. I just have one. Just Olivier, you mentioned on SternDrive that if you do the challenges that you face in 2020, you might not have gotten as much out of the program as you historically have. I'm just wondering, are there particular cost-savings projects that you have kind of lined up that we should expect some momentum in terms of cost takeouts as we move through 2021?

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. SternDrive is about really dozens, if not even hundreds of projects. Actually, last year, I think we were working on 300 projects. And just due to COVID, we had to put on hold or had some delays on a part of these 300 projects. We will resume the full speed on them here in 2021. The results in 2020 were still good, and I still also expect good contribution in 2021. Hey, the programs have proven to be very powerful. I'm extremely happy about SternDrive and wouldn't be surprised if down the road, SternDrive could have even a bigger impact. I certainly also see Patrick to be passionate about the topic. He had his first review meetings around SternDrive and came back in a very positive manner about it.

He will certainly engage on this, and that will give the team even more momentum. You are going to continue to see us talking about SternDrive and having benefits from it.

Matt Sykes (Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Very helpful.

Operator (participant)

I am showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to the company for any closing comments.

Olivier Filliol (CEO)

Yeah. Thank you. Hey, let me end this call with a simple thank you to you, analysts and shareholders listening here on this call. Thank you for your support and commitment to Mettler-Toledo over the many years. I have truly appreciated your engagement and the rigor you brought to our various interactions during this time. While my focus over the next two months is a successful handover to Patrick and still delivering a very strong Q1, I am also very happy to remain involved with Mettler-Toledo in the future through my Board role as well as supporting Patrick on marketing and other organizational matters. I wish you all a very successful 2021. Again, a big thank you and all the best to you. Bye-bye, everybody.

Shawn Vadala (CFO)

Bye-bye.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.