Earnings call transcript: Avantor Q2 2025 sees stable revenue, stock jumps

Avantor Inc. reported its second-quarter earnings for 2025, showing flat revenue year-over-year at $1.68 billion. Despite a slight decline in adjusted earnings per share (EPS), the company's stock surged by over 10% in aftermarket trading, reflecting investor optimism about its strategic initiatives and future guidance. According to InvestingPro data, the stock has shown strong momentum with a 3.27% gain in the past week, while trading at an attractive P/E ratio of 13.94. Analysis from InvestingPro suggests the stock is currently undervalued based on their proprietary Fair Value model.

Key Takeaways

• Avantor's Q2 revenue remained flat at $1.68 billion year-over-year.
• Adjusted EPS decreased slightly to $0.24.
• Stock price increased by 10.09% in aftermarket trading.
• The company launched new digital platforms, including the Avantor Navigator AI.
• Full-year revenue growth is expected to range from -2% to flat.

Company Performance

Avantor's performance in the second quarter of 2025 was marked by stable revenue and a slight dip in adjusted EPS. The company continues to face challenges in certain segments, such as biotech funding and large pharma customer pressures. However, its strategic focus on digital innovation and operational efficiency appears to be resonating with investors, as evidenced by the significant aftermarket stock price increase.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $1.68 billion (flat year-over-year)
• Adjusted gross profit: $554 million (32.9% margin)
• Adjusted EBITDA: $280 million (16.6% margin)
• Adjusted EPS: $0.24 (down $0.01 year-over-year)
• Free cash flow: $125 million

Outlook & Guidance

Avantor's guidance for the full year reflects cautious optimism. The company expects organic revenue growth to range from -2% to flat, with adjusted EBITDA margin guidance between 16.5% and 17%. Adjusted EPS for the year is projected to be between $0.94 and $0.98, and free cash flow is anticipated to be between $550 million and $600 million.

Executive Commentary

Michael Stubblefield, CEO of Avantor, emphasized the company's strategic focus, stating, "Our strategy here is to protect and grow our share." He also expressed optimism about market recovery, saying, "We remain incredibly bullish about the ongoing recovery." CFO R. Brent Jones highlighted the company's strategic wins, noting, "We are not excited about the margin piece of it, but we are excited about the wins and what they mean for the prospects of that business."

Risks and Challenges

• Biotech funding headwinds could impact future growth.
• Inflation and policy challenges are pressuring large pharma customers.
• Margin pressures in the Lab Solutions segment remain a concern.
• The competitive pricing environment may affect profitability.
• Global economic uncertainties could influence market stability.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts raised questions about the competitive pricing intensity and bioprocessing challenges. The company addressed these concerns by highlighting its efforts to improve operational efficiency and its focus on strategic contract extensions. Additionally, the upcoming leadership transition with new CEO Emmanuel Ligner was discussed, indicating potential shifts in strategic direction.

Full transcript - Avantor Inc (AVTR) Q2 2025:

Emily, Conference Operator: Good morning. My name is Emily and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to Avantor's second quarter 2025 earnings results conference call. After the presentation you will have the opportunity to ask any questions, which you can do so by pressing star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Allison Hosak, Senior Vice President of Global Communications. Ms. Hosak, you may begin the conference.

Allison Hosak, Senior Vice President of Global Communications, Avantor: Good morning and thank you for joining us. Our speakers today are Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, and R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The press release, as well as a presentation and supplemental disclosure package accompanying this call, are available on our investor relations website at ir. A replay of this webcast will also be made available on our website after the call. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our SEC filings. Actual results might differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we make today.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or other developments. This call will include a discussion of non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures can be found in the press release and in the supplemental disclosure package on our investor relations website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: Thank you Allie and good morning everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. Before we discuss our second quarter results, I want to briefly address the leadership transition we announced last week. As many of you saw, Emmanuel Ligner has been appointed Avantor's next CEO, effective August 18th. Emmanuel brings over 30 years of deep experience in the life sciences industry and is eager to hit the ground running. While I will continue to serve as CEO until his official start date, today marks my final earnings call with Avantor. It has been an honor to lead this organization for the past 11 years and I want to sincerely thank all of you on the call today for your partnership and support. Let's now move on to our second quarter results beginning on slide 3.

Despite ongoing challenges in the operating environment, we remain laser focused on executing the strategic initiatives we outlined last quarter. Driving growth, improving operating efficiency, strengthening execution, and delivering long term value for the quarter. Organic revenue growth improved sequentially by 200 basis points and was flat year over year. Adjusted EBITDA margin contracted to 16.6%, adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.24, and free cash flow was $125 million with adjusted conversion at 100%. We remain on track with our cost transformation program and continue to expect $400 million in run-rate savings by the end of 2027. In Lab Solutions, which makes up roughly two thirds of our business, organic revenue growth was in line with expectations, increasing sequentially compared to Q1 and finishing modestly.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Down year over year.

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: As previously shared, Cory Walker joined us in late March as President of the segment. His early focus has been a comprehensive review of the business, assessing strategy execution and opportunities to grow and retain key accounts while aggressively pursuing new ones. In partnership with the commercial team, I'd like to highlight a few of the findings and action plans from Cory's early efforts. Cory has spent significant time with customers and heard consistently about the power of our channel. Customers recognize our unique scope, reach, and engagement, and most importantly, they value the solutions we deliver and enjoy doing business with us. At the same time, these conversations revealed opportunities for improvement and ways we can strengthen our offerings for our customers. Cory and team are fully focused on executing an action plan to implement these initiatives while continuing their comprehensive review.

For example, service levels are an essential part of our value proposition. We've driven substantial improvements in recent quarters, and the team is executing an aggressive plan to further differentiate our delivery performance going forward. Cory's deep dive into the business also validated the investments we are making to enhance our digital platform. As we discussed last quarter, we are focused on empowering self-service, simplifying ordering, and providing greater visibility into order status and fulfillment, enhancing every step of the customer journey. One of the tools being rolled out is Avantor Navigator AI platform, our first AI application developed completely in house, which helps customers discover products and services matched to their research needs. Another is a digital buying experience platform designed to unify customer intelligence and provide a seamless, personalized experience across web and mobile channels.

We also made significant progress with pricing optimization, including the development of a new pricing tool that increases agility, speed, and competitiveness. At its core, it ensures our customers see market-relevant list prices when they engage with us through our digital sales channel, which not only makes their buying experience more efficient, but also reduces abandonment rates and significantly increases conversion. These efforts are already driving results in a competitive market. We were awarded contract extensions with several top 15 global pharma accounts in the quarter. These awards will result in more than $100 million in share gains, which we expect to realize once fully commercialized. We also executed a five-year extension of our contract with Bio Business Solutions, the largest cost savings purchasing program for the life sciences industry. Over 10,000 companies have access to purchase Avantor's laboratory and production products and services through this agreement.

Collectively, Bio is our largest customer, and this extension ensures we are uniquely positioned to benefit when funding levels return to historical norms across the biotech industry. These are significant wins, particularly as competitive intensity remains high across our industry. Our priority in this environment is to protect and grow share while preserving absolute profitability as volumes recover and the benefits of our delivery, digital, and pricing initiatives take hold. As a result, our full-year outlook contemplates pressured margin rate assumptions through the balance of the year. However, we remain confident in our ability to expand margins over time. Turning to bioscience production, where our bioprocessing performance fell short of our expectations this quarter. While demand for our core monoclonal antibody platform remains strong, results were negatively affected by two discrete headwinds.

First, quarterly throughput was impacted by planned maintenance efforts at one of our manufacturing facilities that extended longer than planned and led to an increase in backorders. Second, and more significantly, a few of our large customers faced major unexpected headwinds during the quarter, which slowed the rate of recovery in controlled environment consumables and impacted demand in other elements of our offering. Specifically, a leading gene therapy platform encountered regulatory and patient safety setbacks, a key mRNA platform scaled back their outlook, and one of our longstanding MABS customers had a negative phase three readout and other commercial challenges. We expect these headwinds to persist through the balance of the year. R. Brent Jones will discuss the impact to our guidance. Benoit Gourdier and the bioprocessing team are taking decisive action to offset these headwinds and strengthen our market-leading platform.

Emmanuel Ligner's expertise will be additive here when he joins the company later this month. The team's efforts are centered on three: optimizing our supply chain to enhance delivery performance and improve operational efficiency across our manufacturing and planning functions, increasing field intensity through new sales leadership and sharper execution discipline, and expanding our product offering through ongoing innovation and customer-focused development. Outside of bioprocessing, the other key components of the bioscience production segment performed in line with expectations. We delivered particularly strong performance in our Nusil branded silicones platform, which grew low double digits year to date. Growth of the medical platform is running well ahead of patient procedure counts, so we expect demand in our Nusil platform to moderate in the second half of the year.

With that, I'll now turn it over to Brent to discuss the second quarter results in more detail and to walk through our outlook for the second half and full year.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I'm starting with the numbers on slide 4. Second quarter reported revenue was $1.68 billion, which was flat year over year on an organic basis. Adjusted gross profit for the quarter was $554 million, representing a 32.9% adjusted gross margin. This is a decline of 130 basis points year over year, driven primarily by price actions in Lab Solutions to protect and grow market share, unfavorable product mix, and increased supply chain expense in the form of higher than expected freight expense and fixed cost under absorption. As expected, we were able to fully offset the dollar impact of tariffs on cost of goods sold through targeted pricing actions and sourcing agility.

We had another quarter of solid cost control, with adjusted SG&A expense better than planned and prior year, and we continue to identify meaningful additional cost opportunities to help offset the margin pressure we are facing. Adjusted EBITDA was $280 million in the quarter, representing a 16.6% margin. Our shortfall in adjusted EBITDA margin was driven by the headwinds to gross profit and margin and only modestly offset by SG&A savings. Our multi-year cost transformation initiative continues ahead of plan, and we remain on track to deliver in excess of our commitments for 2025 and the entire $400 million program. Adjusted operating income was $252 million at a 15% margin. Interest and tax expenses were in line with our expectations. As a result, adjusted earnings per share were $0.24 for the quarter, a $0.01 year over year decline.

Our adjusted EPS performance in the quarter reflects the flow through of our adjusted EBITDA results as well as continued reductions in net interest expense. Our cash generation was strong, with $125 million in free cash flow in the quarter when adjusted for cash costs related to the transformation initiative. Our free cash flow conversion was 100% of adjusted net income for the quarter. Our adjusted net leverage ended the quarter at 3.2 times adjusted EBITDA, unchanged from Q1, as cash generation was largely offset by FX impacts on our euro denominated debt. Deleveraging remains our top capital allocation priority, and we continue to target adjusted net leverage sustainably below three times. Let's now take a closer look at each of our segments on slide 5. Lab Solutions revenue was in line with our expectations at $1.122 billion.

On an organic basis, we declined 1% versus prior year but grew 2% on a sequential basis. As Michael noted, we continue to navigate increased competitive intensity as a result of funding and policy-related headwinds many of our customers are facing. In this environment, we are focused on not just retaining but growing share. A particular bright spot was our self-manufactured Lab Chemicals, which continued its track record of growth on a regional basis. Our European business was nearly flat, outperforming the Americas and Asia, which felt the greater brunt of policy headwinds. Adjusted operating income for Lab Solutions was $133 million for the quarter with an 11.9% margin. Although we were able to implement pricing and sourcing actions to offset tariff cost headwinds, the competitive actions to drive share have come at the cost of margin. Mix was also a negative contributor to margin.

Bioscience production revenue was $561 million in Q2, up 2% organically on a year-over-year basis and up 7% sequentially. Silicones had another strong quarter, up low double digits, and our Applied Solutions business was down low single digits, both in line with expectations. The key disappointment in the quarter was bioprocessing, which as a reminder comprises roughly 2/3 of our revenues in bioscience production. Although bioprocessing grew 5% sequentially, it was flat year over year with declines across the business driven by the customer headwinds and the longer than expected maintenance at our manufacturing facility. Within bioprocessing, controlled environment consumables (CEC) was down mid single digits year over year but grew sequentially, benefiting from commercial actions taken by the team. Single-use also grew sequentially but was flat year over year after increasing high teens in the first quarter.

Lastly, process ingredients and excipients grew high single digits sequentially and low single digits year over year. While we have limited control over the customer headwinds, the team is actioning on the initiatives Michael outlined to improve execution and performance. Adjusted operating income for bioscience production was $140 million for the quarter, representing a 24.9% margin. While this represents a 100 basis point sequential improvement, margin was down year over year largely due to under absorption and manufacturing-related expense. Given our first half performance and current visibility to the business, we are reducing our full year organic revenue growth expectation to negative 2% to flat versus prior guidance of negative 1% to plus 1%. Year to date our organic growth is negative 1% so this updated midpoint reflects a continuation of current trends.

To bridge to actuals, there is a 2% headwind due to the clinical services divestiture and approximately 1% tailwind due to FX, resulting in reported revenue growth at the midpoint of negative 2%. This assumes a Eurodollar rate of 1.15 for the back half of the year and a 1.12 blended rate for the entire year. On a segment basis, we now expect Lab Solutions growth to be minus low single digits, down from minus low single digits to flat. This assumes a continuation of first half performance in the back half of the year. Conversion associated with the recent share gains described earlier will be a tailwind to our outlook as they are implemented. Consistent with our Q2 performance, we are assuming no material top line impact from tariffs.

We now expect bioscience production to be flat, down from up mid single digits, driven by our performance in the first half and headwinds in both bioprocessing and in our medical grade silicones platform. We expect bioprocessing to be flat to up low single digits, down from up mid single digits. This reflects our expectation that despite continued strong underlying demand for our core monoclonal antibody platform, we will continue to face the headwinds we described earlier. Single-use is expected to increase mid single digits for the second half and the year, and we expect process ingredients to be up low single digits for the second half and the year. In controlled environment consumables, we expect performance to continue to improve modestly on a sequential basis as we move through the second half of the year, translating to a low single digit decline for the year.

After mid teens growth in the first half of the year, our medical grade silicones platform will take a step back in the second half of the year as customers rebalance inventory to bring full year growth in line with patient procedure count. Accordingly, we expect mid single digit decline in the second half, resulting in modest growth for the full year. We are updating our adjusted EBITDA margin expectations to between 16.5% and 17% and our adjusted EPS guidance range to between $0.94 and $0.98. We are also reducing our free cash flow expectations to $550 million to $600 million before transformation expenses. The reduction in free cash flow is a result of the significant contract extensions in the lab business that Michael discussed earlier. While we are excited about these awards, some come with meaningful prepaid rebates, which are accounted for in our updated guidance.

In terms of Q3, we expect organic revenue growth of -4% to -2% with both segments down. Similarly, our clinical services divestiture represents a 3% headwind, and based on current spot rates, we expect a 2% tailwind from FX. This leads to reported revenue growth of -4% year over year. At the midpoint, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to be somewhat lower than Q2 and in the low 16% range. With that, I will turn the call back to Michael.

Thank you, Brent. Before we move into Q and A, I would like to briefly recap today's key takeaways and reiterate our priorities moving forward in a challenging operating environment. We are successfully executing the strategic initiatives we outlined last quarter in our Lab Solutions segment. We are pleased to deliver sequential revenue growth, and we are committed to protecting key accounts and competing hard to win market share. These efforts resulted in several significant contract extensions in the quarter. Our bioprocessing performance fell short of our expectations this quarter, primarily due to discrete customer headwinds. We are taking action to offset the impact, and demand for our core monoclonal antibody platform remains strong.

As I reflect on 11 years leading this business, I am incredibly proud of all that we have achieved, including the acquisition of VWR, a successful IPO, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, and the implementation of a new operating model. Despite recent performance headwinds, I could not be more confident in the strength of our platform and Avantor's future success under Emmanuel's leadership. You'll hear more from Emmanuel at the Q3 earnings call, where I expect he will share some of his early observations and priorities for the business. With that, I'll now turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q and A session.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please do so now by pressing star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind or you feel like your question has already been answered, you can press star followed by two to withdraw yourself from the queue. Our first question today comes from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question, Michael. Wishing you the best as you transition here. Maybe on the guidance here, your third quarter, you know, organic of minus 3%, what is it assuming for the segments.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: You know, particularly in bioprocessing.

It feels like it should step down both bioprocessing and lab. It worsens from second quarter trends. Maybe talk about what changed versus Q2. Yeah, thanks for the question. It's Brent here. We see about ratable performance in each segment along with the full company. The dynamic there is really consistency in lab by and large with what we've seen in Q2 and the first half of the year. There is some seasonality with the vacation times in Q2, and in bioprocessing and in bioscience we still have the recovery on the headwinds due to the manufacturing and that. There is some timing slowness in silicones there. That's really how you tie that math together.

Understood.

I'll let others jump on the segments, but maybe on margins here. Brent, EBITDA margins came down 125 basis points. How much of this was mix, sort of volume impact, versus some of the pricing commentary you made on initiatives to gain share within lab? Yes. The dynamic in the quarter was really a combination of price and mix, price being the most significant piece of that, and largely in the lab business there when you somewhat underperform in bioprocessing, that's.

Also.

That's also diluted to margin as well. It's largely a price and then mix dynamic.

Sorry.

Are these expected to continue in the fiscal 2026? Should pricing actions annualize? Any thoughts on margin cadence here, how.

We should think about for fiscal 2026?

Yeah, I think that's probably a bit in the future there. What I, you know, going to some of Michael's comments on the intensity winning the contracts, incremental revenue that comes from that. Once we get on those contracts, we always show or extend them. In these instances, we show the ability to create margin as well as we absorb better with volume there. Probably wouldn't get ahead of ourselves on 2026 here, but certainly we're going to see impacts through the balance of the year.

All right, thank you guys.

Thank you.

Emily, Conference Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Ryskin with Bank of America. Please go ahead, Michael.

Great, thanks.

Want to dig into the bioprocessing first? You've had a couple of really sort of idiosyncratic challenges this year. The controlled environment consumables, the site shutdown running along some of the customer specific in gene and cell therapy, but certainly much more disappointing bioprocessing number for the year than what we previously talked about and what we're seeing elsewhere in the market. Just want to get your thoughts on that business longer term. Do you still feel like bioprocessing is a high single digit long term grower? Sort of a number of one off issues that keep propping up that kind of point to maybe some underlying problems. I just want to gauge your confidence that these are one time and that once you resolve these, business is as strong as we previously thought it was.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Good morning, Michael. This is Michael. A couple of thoughts on that. Firstly, if we look into the second quarter, absent a couple of these discrete headwinds, the business really did want to perform in that mid to high single digit range in line with the rest of the market and would underscore that the demand for our MABS platform, which is the biggest part of our bioprocessing business, remains incredibly strong and certainly in line with what we see in a recovering end market. No doubt fell short of expectations in the quarter. With this facility, maintenance is something you do periodically every few years. As we got into the turnaround, it went a bit longer than we had anticipated. The plant came back online before we ended the quarter and the team's working hard to restore normal backlog levels.

These customer headwinds that we encountered in the quarter were certainly unexpected and developed as we got into the quarter for very specific discrete customer related headwinds, particularly in these emerging modalities, which I don't know that it's all that surprising that the industry itself is going through the normal growing pains of launching new technologies. The FDA processes and some of the concerns around patient safety that are top of mind certainly have to be a consideration there. As demand fell off for some of our key customers in that space, it impacted the quarter. Fortunately it was contained to two or three customers overall. When we look at the broader platform that we run there, the platform is incredibly well positioned.

We've got a great pipeline, long standing customer relationships, and I would expect, particularly as Emmanuel comes in with his background in this space, this business will, as we work through some of these headwinds, will continue to grow at or above market over the long term. Okay.

I want to follow up on an earlier point in terms of the guide for the second half. Brent, you called it out. It looks like you're assuming pretty much very consistent numbers, 1H versus 2H both on organic and on margins. The 3Q 4Q split really surprised us. Down 2% to down 4% organic in 3Q implies plus 1% or better in the fourth quarter. Just both on a percentage basis and on a dollar basis, really big step up. Can you talk about the extent of conservatism in 3Q? Is there anything you're seeing a month into the quarter or just any incremental things to keep in mind in 4Q that'll give us confidence in that ramp?

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: Just.

Absolutely. Thanks. Absolutely. Fair observation, Michael. I would say we're being careful in Q3 there. We are assuming a continuation of the trends in lab. There is some timing in silicones which, if you were to relatively smooth that out, that would make that step up look less as much there. Frankly, just the timing of what we know on the seasonality in the order books and the expectations, if we meet or beat in Q3, that'll certainly make the ramp on Q4 much lower there.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Great.

Thank you. Yep.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Brennan with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you. Thanks for the questions. Michael, obviously, all the best to you. Maybe just on the pricing environment, which, you know, you guys called out competitive intensity throughout the prepared remarks, and you know, obviously you're taking down the free cash flow guide as you lock in some of these contracts. I'm just wondering, could you give us a sense of A, just how much worse this is right now, B, any color kind of within your lab business, kind of what volume and price looks at, and C, is this kind of a new directive? I mean, we understand you guys are trying to be competitive and you've called out some pricing headwinds in the past, but it just seems like things have accelerated here. I'm just trying to get our arms around kind of what changed.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Yeah, thanks, Dan. I think it's important to acknowledge it is a dynamic environment. In the choppiness of the macro environment, we have seen a step up in competitive intensity, particularly in our lab business. Not necessarily broad based across all customer segments. We probably see it most pronounced with our larger biopharma accounts. We've seen that kind of intensifying as we've moved through the year. I will just underscore our strategy here is to protect and grow our share. We have a differentiated platform. The work that Cory and his team have done as he's leaned in here certainly have validated the strength of the platform and how much our customers want to do business with us.

We are being reactive to the environment and ensuring that we've got a strong platform and basis to grow from as these end markets recover and as the actions that Cory and his team are taking begin to take hold. We had a terrific quarter, really a terrific quarter with a number of really meaningful account awards where we were able to not only protect our share, but also grab substantial market share. As we discussed, more than $100 million of incremental revenues will flow into this business in the coming quarters. On the back of those efforts, that'll do a lot of good things for absorption and we've got a long track record of expanding margins and of course you can't do that if you don't have the account to begin with. We think we're as well positioned as anybody out there to compete aggressively for this business.

You see that playing through in the quarter.

Is there any color just on volume, price, or just in the Lab Solutions business? I mean, that's something you guys can break out, and then just as a follow-up to beyond that, just wondering, you guys typically give end market color. You know, there's a lot of focus on what the economic environment is like in the U.S. and also pharma. Would you be willing to share kind of how trends do perform versus expectations there? Thank you.

Let me take the last part of that question, and Brent can give you some color on price volume.

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: Dan, from an end market perspective, I.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Would say as we've moved through the year, we see the end market conditions largely stable. As we sit here today, particularly in academia and government following the big step down in February, we've seen that end market perform relatively stable. The funding headwinds for biotech persist and our large pharma customers continue to be pressured by inflation and other policy related headwinds. We haven't really seen what I would say a pronounced change here in the quarter. When we look at the second half, we're assuming that those conditions persist. One, maybe additional commentary on our performance relative to those end market trends. If you look into our supplemental disclosure, you'll see particularly strong quarter for us in academia and government and consistent with the action plan that we outlined for Cory and his team.

I think that's a great data point on the early benefits that we're seeing of a step up in commercial intensity as well as just the relevance of our platform. You know, we grew that business mid single digit in an end market that, you know, probably was down, you know, mid to high single digits. You're starting to see some of these benefits that Cory and his team are driving. For me it just underscores the strength of our platform.

Following up on the price volume comment there. Maybe rewind to where we entered the year. Just frankly think of the enterprise and Lab Solutions in particular for flattish volumes and then a modest amount of price. Fast forward to here. Certainly, due to the end market challenges, there has been some pressure on volume, but that is not most of the story. It's primarily on the price side there. When you look at our attainment, a little bit of pressure on volume and then the price headwind is the main drop through and that goes directly to the margin.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Rachel Vatnsdal with JP Morgan. Please go ahead, Rachel. Thanks.

Allison Hosak, Senior Vice President of Global Communications, Avantor: Good morning. First up, I just wanted to ask on the Lab Solutions comments. You noted that those were in line with expectations, but you chose to take down guidance for the full year for Lab Solutions by a few points. Can you walk us through what drove the decision to take down the guide there? If it truly did play out as expected, is this just a function of conservatism? Is it underpinned by trends that you've seen throughout July so far? Are you assuming that the competitive intensity steps up even further in the back half for Lab Solutions?

Good note of the detail there, Rachel. When we look at the lab performance minus low single digits for the first half of the year, somewhat better performance in Q2, we just don't see the environment changing. The prior guide was minus LSD to flat. Just under that conservatism, I would probably just call it prudence or very realistic outlook on that. We don't see the environment changing materially there. We just extended that for the year. Two other comments on bridging it. It makes the math make the most sense.

Emily, Conference Operator: Great.

Allison Hosak, Senior Vice President of Global Communications, Avantor: Maybe shifting over to bioprocessing, you called out the planned maintenance, took a little bit longer than expected and created this back order dynamic with some customers. Can you quantify for us how much of a headwind those back orders were within the quarter? Is the plant fully back up and running at this point? If that issue is resolved, when should we expect to see a tailwind from those back orders coming back into the model?

Yeah, Rachel, when I think of the bioprocessing underperform in Q2, 1 to 2 points of growth were related to the increase in the backorder and the timing of the maintenance completion. The balance was related to the customer headwinds Michael cited there. That essentially walks you from the mid single digit guide to the flat where we ended up there. The operational recovery, the plant is absolutely back where it needs to be. That operational recovery and driving down that backlog does take time, so we expect that will feather in through the rest of the year. I would not, you notice from Michael's questions, we're being careful about timing of that for Q3 and we're just feathering that in through the second half of the year.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Sergott with Barclays. Please go ahead, Luke.

Great, thanks for the questions. I was just hoping you could size the different headwinds and not go into the specific customer exposure, but really just kind of, you know, from the headwinds you saw in 2Q and then from what's baked into the guide cut for Biosciences, really just trying to figure out what was in your control.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: If you could help size what.

You know, those related due to the.

Extended site maintenance costs versus the issues you have with the customers.

Luke, we cited a couple of discrete headwinds for the quarter. Brent just sized for you the impact of the extended maintenance outage. Think about that as one to two points in the quarter, which leaves kind of two to three points for the two to three customers that encountered significant challenges. We progressed through the quarter, the plant's fully online, and we don't expect that maintenance headwind to impact the second half. When we look into the outlook for the last couple of quarters here, what you're really seeing reflected is a full quarter's impact of these discrete customer headwinds both in Q3 and Q4, as our current assumption is that those headwinds don't unwind as we move through the year. We don't necessarily comment on specific customer detail there, but of the two or three accounts, they all kind of contributed roughly equal to the headwind there.

The other dynamic impacting the BPS outlook for the second half was our Nusil platform. We've off to an incredibly strong start, particularly in our medical implant part of that business, growing mid teens year to date, which is well ahead of procedure count. It's not unusual for that business. You see that the customer is normalizing inventories to bring full year purchases more in line with, in this case, patient procedure count. That creates a little bit of a headwind for us in the second half of the year, but that end market is incredibly strong, and our value proposition there remains fully intact. We're going to have a great year overall, and the setup into 2026 will be very favorable. Great.

Sorry for the doubling up on that question. I missed it was asked earlier.

I guess just sort of a follow up here.

Thinking about the business overall, how integrated are the two segments? When you think about, you know, your, I understand from a channel perspective.

You get a lot of third party.

You also have a lot of.

Proprietary and white label stuff that goes in there. You know, how integrated are the two manufacturing facilities or the manufacturing between the two segments? I'll just leave it with that.

Yeah.

Thanks, Luke. When we put these platforms together more than seven, eight years ago now, there were a pretty significant number of synergies that were implemented and recognized at that time. Obviously, full integration of the back offices and particularly the IT infrastructure and such.

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: The manufacturing facilities, particularly for our proprietary.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Content are fully integrated. One of the important value elements of our offering, particularly in a GMP environment, is being able to supply research grade quantities of product coming from a GMP line. As those programs scale up to commercial scale, the customer isn't having to requalify a new production line. It's all produced on the same line. There's quite some nice synergies there. We have an integrated account structure and both segments leverage the common channel here. There's certainly some synergies that are important to the business. As we think about running the businesses, as you can see, both segment leaders are squarely focused on accelerating the growth of each segment independently.

Great, thanks.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Tycho Peterson with Jefferies. Please go ahead, Tycho.

Hey, thanks. Appreciate you've had a number of questions on kind of the lab dynamics and pricing, but can you help us bridge the free cash flow cut? How is that tied to the $100 million wins on the lab side? Are there mechanics around the rebates here? Should we be worried about channel stuffing effectively giving away some inventory here? What really is the path to margins bottoming in lab? I think that's a key question people trying to get a handle on. Obviously there's new initiatives by Cory, but then you've got these new pricing headwinds and I also didn't hear you kind of quantify anything around pricing. Any color there would be helpful too.

Yeah, Tycho, let me start and then Michael, add some other color on that. The significant piece of the free cash flow range was related to those, that prebate dynamic. There is a piece of it that's the lower EBITDA dynamic. We're working all the harder on working capital to try and mitigate pieces of that. That's how I would click that together. I don't exactly follow your channel stuffing notion there, but when you talk about.

$100 million benefits from new wins. You're talking about the $100 million in benefits from new wins. Are you giving away inventory up front, I guess is the question.

Oh, absolutely not.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: These are what I would say about that. You know, Tycho, those are share gains. Those are, that's, you know, incremental business that'll transfer from our competitors to us on top of the business that we have been able to retain. The contracts that go around that will incorporate significant upfront rebate payments. I think that's all Brent's reflecting there in the outlook, just the timing of those that will get paid here in the second half as those contracts are implemented need to be taken into account. The demand dynamics associated with, there's nothing unusual associated with that, Tycho.

Just a question on the path to margins bottoming in Lab Solutions, between some of the initiatives Cory's identified. Anything around pricing, numbers you can give us, we haven't heard anything about to quantify the pricing headwind.

When we look at the gross margin performance in the second quarter, Tycho being down 100, 140 basis points, wherever it landed there, there's a price and mix component to that. Most of that is price that we see living through into the second half. In an environment where volume growth is relatively muted, of course, absorption becomes an issue. One of the things that we're excited about is we don't have it built into the outlook and it will be a tailwind to the prints going forward. As these share gains materialize, those will fall through disproportionately and you'll see some nice things happening there due to better absorption. I think it's important to note and kind of go back to look, this business has a long standing track record of margin expansion. We have a very disciplined approach to offsetting inflation.

You see the actions we're taking on cost. Cory and his team, as you noted, are driving some aggressive actions to continue to lean in to accelerate the growth of the business and improve the operating leverage in the business. The strategy we're deploying in this environment is to protect and grow our shares so that we have the opportunity to expand these margins as we move forward. I don't think our view on long term margins for this business are impacted by the outlook we have here for the second half.

Okay. Then just last on bioprocessing, I want to make sure I understand the dynamics. I mean, the Sarepta headline was in March. You guys guided late April. mRNA demand has been kind of falling off, you know, really a lot this year and end of last year as well. I guess this come kind of, you know, as a surprise to you post guidance. Also, what action specifically are you taking? You flagged, you know, you are taking actions in bioprocessing. What are you actually doing here to improve visibility?

Yeah, a couple of things on that, Tycho. Firstly, the headwinds that impact us in the quarter certainly were unexpected and materialized probably halfway through the quarter. Given that we're talking just really a couple of customers there, we had, given the relationships that we have there, we have pretty tight contractions to our team and they came to us middle of the quarter and substantially cut their outlooks to us at that time. We benefit from being in a heavily regulated environment where we're spec'd in. The downside to that, of course, is trying to offset unexpected headwinds in the near term can be a bit of a challenge. Nevertheless, consistent with our theme of controlling the things that we can control, Benoit and his team really are leaning in aggressively on the things that they can action. Three specific things I'd point you to, Tycho.

Firstly, both for lab as well as bioprocessing, our delivery performance is one of the key differentiators of the platform. Benoit and his team have some really aggressive actions that they're taking there to continue to push us towards best in class, similar to the actions that Cory has taken on ramping commercial intensity, particularly in certain segments. We see Benoit and his team doing that as well. Think about areas like biosimilars, some of the newer modalities, antibody drug conjugates for example, really doubling down in some of the more attractive growth opportunities. Lastly, this is an innovation-driven business. Incredible focus on continuing to extend the technology and make sure that we have relevant content to offer our customers. Those are probably the three most important areas that Benoit and his team are focused on here in the near term.

Okay, thank you.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Donnelly with Citi. Please go ahead.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Hey guys, thanks for taking the questions. Michael, maybe just on the bioprocessing business, obviously you certainly understand the company or the customer specific issues there.

Can you just talk broadly on the.

Business in terms of what you saw.

On the order side?

Maybe you can kind of.

Little bit, some of the one-time issues, you know, where lead times are. Just curious what you're seeing in that business outside some of the near-term noise here. Yeah. Our perspective on the bioprocessing business is that we continue to be extremely encouraged by the ongoing recovery and strengthening of the end market, consistent with the industry or end market exposure here. Most of the revenue is coming from monoclonal antibodies, and the demand for our solutions for that platform remains incredibly strong. We'll just reiterate that had we not run into these couple of discrete headwinds, our platform would have performed very much in line with the end market as well as some of the other prints that you've seen here. One of the things that we have been doing over the last number of years is leaning in on some of these new modalities.

Our revenue exposure there would be probably consistent with the number of approvals you see overall in that end market relative to the monoclonal antibodies, which is to say it's probably less than 10% of our total platform. One of the attributes of developing a technology set like that is there's not a lot of approvals out there, and we have benefited from putting more content on those new modalities than we have historically, just given some of the strengths of our platform and innovation model. When you have a customer encounter some challenges, some growing pains if you will, it does have a bit of an outsized impact on us. I wouldn't use the print in the quarter or the outlook for the back half of the year to read through or aid the strength and relevance of our platform, nor our view on the end market.

We remain incredibly bullish about the ongoing recovery. You asked a little bit about lead times there. Our supply chain has been transacting normally now for quite a number of quarters, which for us means we probably have a 2 to 3 month lag from order to delivery on average. Okay, that's helpful.

Obviously, you know, new CEO coming in.

Emily, Conference Operator: We'll.

We'll wait to hear from him directly, obviously.

In terms of the hiring.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Process, what attracted you guys to him? Any changes we should expect, whether it's capital allocation, the approach to the business.

Curious.

Just the overall view on that front would be helpful. Thanks, guys. I would reiterate, Emmanuel starts here in a couple of weeks, August 18th. As we've indicated, I'll continue to stay fully engaged and direct the business up until then. The board led a very thorough process. I think Emmanuel's background speaks for itself. He's an industry veteran with over 30 years' experience in this space and with a particular strength in bioprocessing. Given the work that he did at first GE and then ultimately over at Cytiva within Danaher, I know that he's incredibly excited to get started. With his experience and familiarity with the space, he'll no doubt hit the ground running. We do have a very good process in place to ensure a smooth transition. I'm confident that will indeed occur.

I certainly wouldn't want to get ahead of the work he'll do here in setting his agenda for him. I know in the early days, he'll be very focused on engaging with our customers, with our team, with our board. You'll hear from him at least in the third quarter call and as his agenda and priorities develop, I'm sure he'll be anxious to share those with you all.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Douglas Schenkel with Wulff Research. Please go ahead, Doug.

Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: A couple on VWR first, I.

Believe you mentioned a major contract extension. As you talked about future share gains, I just want to better understand why are those share gains if they are extensions. Are you getting commitments from some existing customers to spend more, and or are these becoming exclusives?

I just want to.

Better understand the link between those comments. That's the first thing. Second, it sounds like you're using price as part of a share gain strategy that's obviously come up a lot this morning. How does this impact near and long term margin targets, and I guess kind of cutting to the chase, does that mean that LSS margin should stay in the low double digits for the foreseeable future? Those are the two questions on VWR. Last one, and then I'll move back into the queue and listen. On margins, your fiscal year and Q3 guidance implies around an 18% EBITDA margin number in the fourth quarter. Given the bioprocessing challenges and what we just ran through on the VWR side, I'm just wondering what gives you conviction in getting back to that level just given how many headwinds you're facing right now. Thank you.

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: I'll be happy to give you some.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Color on the account wins and share gains in the quarter and Brent can weigh in on your questions around margin. A couple of things on the account wins there. We do have a very clear strategy here of protecting and growing share and that was part of the agenda that we outlined for Cory as he stepped in and leaned in aggressively with our commercial team to protect our business. In the quarter, we had a number of large pharma accounts, several in fact, where the business was being competitively up for bid. We were able to retain the existing business that we had as well as grab some of the business at those accounts that we didn't have. The net impact of the success we had in the quarter was a net increase as the conversion occurs over the next couple of quarters of more than $100 million.

Substantial share gains there. I'd also note, I think we probably drove some nice share gains in the academia market, given the mid single growth era that we printed. We also announced that we extended prematurely our relationship with Bio Business Solutions, which is the largest purchasing consortium serving biopharma and biotech with more than 10,000 customers collectively, making it our largest account. I think you put all that together and you see a couple of things. One, we are eager to invest and continue to grow our business and ensure that we have a customer base to do that off of. More importantly, you see just the relevance and strength of the platform and customers voting to do business with us. We offer a lot of efficiency, a lot of optionality, certainly a broad portfolio and a best in class supply chain here.

Really pleased to see the differentiation of the platform coming through and we'll continue to execute on that strategy. Of course, it is coming at the expense of margin rate, but we're keenly focused on preserving absolute margin dollars overall and over the long term. No doubt we'll have an opportunity to improve the margins as we execute our playbook here.

Hey Doug, jumping off Michael's comments there. I mean, I think your observation in the near term on Lab Solutions segment operating margin is correct. We need to play through these contract extensions. We need the absorption from the additional volume here. There absolutely is a price share dynamic here, but I think this share is super important to us, so that is a necessary consequence of it. We get volume. We'll continue to be vigilant on our own cost, and then we'll have a path to accruing that. We'll talk more about that when Emmanuel is here and in future quarters looking into 2026.

But.

We are not excited about the margin piece of it, but we are excited about the wins and what they mean for the prospects of that business. Your comments to Q4 that that observation is true if you get to the very high end of it. When I sort of think of both organic growth and on a margin basis, you know, if we're at the low end it's sort of very consistent with where we're tracking. This goes back to Michael Ryskin's question as well. You know where we'd be tracking. You not have dissimilar growth in the mid. You need some of that in Q4 and the important point there that we expect more silicones in Q4 as well as some additional bioprocessing there. You get that in the mix up and then at the high end you'd approach margin rates that you were citing.

Also happy to follow up on any of the arithmetic for alignment there. Thank you.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you. Those are all the questions we have time for today, and I'll turn the call back over to Michael for closing remarks.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Thank you everyone for joining us today. Thank you for your partnership and support over the years.

Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avantor: That will conclude our call today.

R. Brent Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Avantor: Hope you all have a great day and be well, everyone.

Thank you.

Emily, Conference Operator: Thank you everyone for joining us today. This concludes our call, and you may now disconnect your line.

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