Qiagen at Morgan Stanley Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) participated in the Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference. The company showcased strong growth in Q2, driven by its diversified business model and innovative product offerings. While Qiagen reported robust gains in key areas, it also acknowledged challenges such as tariff impacts and a SaaS transition in genomics.

Key Takeaways

• Qiagen reported a 6% growth rate in Q2, with significant contributions from clinical and life science sectors.
• The QuantiFERON-TB test maintained over 20 quarters of double-digit growth.
• QIAstat-Dx exhibited 30% growth, bolstered by FDA-approved menu expansions.
• Margin improvement of 300 basis points over two years, targeting 29%-30% EBIT margin this year.
• Tariffs expected to pose a 90 basis point headwind on margins in 2024/2025.

Financial Results

• Qiagen achieved a 6% overall growth rate in Q2.
• Revenue evenly split between clinical (50%) and life science (50%) sectors.
• QIAstat-Dx grew by 30%, driven by expanded FDA-approved menu options.
• Companion diagnostics sales increased by approximately 20% in Q2.
• The company aims for a 29%-30% adjusted EBIT margin this year, with a target of over 31% by 2028.

Operational Updates

• Qiagen’s QIAstat-Dx platform holds the number two position globally in syndromic testing, with consistent placements above 150 machines per quarter.
• The platform’s menu has expanded from respiratory to gastroenterology and meningitis.
• Launches of new instruments like Qiagen Symphony, Qiagen Sprint, and Qiagen Mini are anticipated to drive future growth.

Future Outlook

• Qiagen plans to continue growing QuantiFERON-TB through market penetration and test improvements.
• Digital PCR is expected to be a key growth driver, with applications in minimal residual disease testing and liquid biopsy.
• Despite some headwinds in PCR product and genomics, Qiagen anticipates high single-digit or low double-digit growth in genomics.
• The company is addressing a 90 basis point tariff headwind expected in 2024/2025.

Q&A Highlights

• Qiagen emphasized the competitive advantage of QIAstat-Dx due to its fast, easy-to-use system.
• The company highlighted its unique position in companion diagnostics, with over 25 FDA-approved assays.
• Digital PCR was compared to the transition from a Nokia phone to an iPhone, offering enhanced capabilities.

Qiagen remains focused on strategic growth, leveraging its product innovations and market penetration strategies. For further insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference:

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: I guess we can start. Can everybody hear me? Yes. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst with Morgan Stanley. I have with me on the stage Mr. Roland Sackers, CFO of Qiagen, and for the first time in my career with Morgan Stanley, Mr. John Gilardi, IR of Qiagen. For research disclosures, please check morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. Let’s start. Thanks everyone for being here today. Roland, for the benefit of investors, could you kind of provide a recap of your recent second quarter earnings?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: I’m happy to do so. Thanks for having us. I would clearly state that Qiagen overall had a very good start into the year. We had a good growth rate not only in the first quarter, but also the second quarter came in with a 6% overall growth rate, which I do think, particularly given the in the dates, which are a bit more volatile, if you think on the academic franchise here in the U.S. or even on China, showed the strength of our overall business. I do think it’s very clearly also attributed to the fact that 85% to 90% of our overall business is a consumer-related business. We are clearly part of daily operations in all different customer groups.

Just as a recap, 50% of our revenues go to the clinical settings, lab organizations, 50% going to what we call life science, including pharma and applied testing customers. The area which is probably a bit more volatile in this date is the U.S. academic funded business, which is around NIH, for example, for Qiagen is around 4% of total revenues. I would say it has a certain impact, but as I said before, we’re still growing quite nicely. Nevertheless, I would also say that the focus areas of Qiagen are delivering quite nicely. Clearly, I think our largest product in this date is our lead TB test, QuantiFERON-TB, a very solid track record now. I don’t know, 20-plus quarters of double-digit growth rate. Overall, we are also a penetration story.

We are still converting the 120-year-old skin test, which still accounts for probably 60% to 65% of the total tests performed on a yearly basis. There’s, I think, an ongoing opportunity for us to accelerate and to grow that kind of a business, going forward as well. Same is true for sample preparation, which is a significant part of our revenues as well. Clearly, most analysts, I’m not sure what your number now is here, Aisha, but I think most analysts have us somewhere like 50% to 60% market share. It’s not as easy for us to outperform the market here, at least in the short term. Mid-term, we do believe there’s an opportunity for us with the launch of new instruments coming up for 2026.

Of course, also the other areas, particularly on the clinical side, if you think on QIAstat-Dx, which is a product which we offer to our clients for syndromic testing, having a significant run rate, 30% growth rate last quarter, has to do with us offering now a much broader menu than 12 to 24 months ago. We had four significant FDA approvals just end of last year. Having them rolling in is clearly being helpful for us. Last word on margin expansion because it’s clearly also true that revenue is one part of the story, but clearly, profitability is another part. So far, significant progress over the last two years, 300 basis points of margin improvement. Probably this year getting somewhere between 29% and 30% of an adjusted EBIT margin. Clearly, one of the highest in the industry.

Nevertheless, we still see room to improve going forward while absorbing some other impacts like tariffs and others.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Fantastic. I want to start with Qiagen because that’s been a very exciting growth driver for you this year. We’ve seen some mixed dynamics in your other peers who are also launching in the multiplex technology space. Qiagen has clearly performed, you know, exceeding expectations since the launch of your new panels. What do you think resonates the most with, you know, the placements where you are taking share? Is it automation, the size, pharma partnership angle? My understanding is that even the Mini panels are not CLIA waived, so they can’t be done in the outpatient setting. Just highlighting the share-winning KPIs here of this platform.

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: That’s clear. I’ll jump in for sure. I do think we, in the meantime, we have probably a solid number two position, globally on Qiagen’s purposes, symptomatic testing. Our advantage is clearly the performance of the instrument. I do think it’s fair to say when we launched that instrument, we were clearly very limited around respiratory during the COVID days, and therefore, we were focusing also on respiratory as well. The machine by itself had significant advantages in terms of turnaround time, in terms of that we can give to the customers both quantitative and qualitative results, something what others typically can’t offer. Of course, it’s really a fully integrated workflow. It doesn’t have the issues like other machines having where it spills, where it’s loud. It’s an easy walk-away solution.

It’s literally a cartridge which you scroll in a machine, push a button, and after 45, 60 minutes, you get a solution. Over time, we were able to expand the menu, north of respiratory to gastroenterology, meningitis, and John can probably give you some insight what is happening now in the FDA next year. I do think what we’re clearly seeing is that the benefit of the machine in terms of also clarity of results and easy to use helps us to gain momentum and market share. We always said if we are able to place more than 150 machines per quarter, it was a good quarter for us. Clearly, Q1 was nicely above that. Clearly, Q2 was nicely above that. I’m quite sure that Q3 will be a good quarter as well. We are tracking ahead of the $200 million goal we gave ourselves for 2028.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Yeah. To pick up on that point, we’re talking about syndromic testing where you have a patient come in, respiratory, gastro, meningitis are the big three tests. You don’t know what’s wrong with the patient, so you’re going to test that sample against often more than 20 different pathogens. Let’s give our competitors absolute credit. They built an outstanding market here. They were there during the pandemic and did an outstanding job of being helpful. We all did our part in the pandemic, but they played a key role too. The challenge, like Roland was saying, with the incumbent in the market is that system, the technology, it’s getting kind of old. It’s a very cumbersome, clunky system. It was actually built for military applications. People forget that. If you look on their website, there’s a company that sells that machine for military applications.

It was meant for use in battlefield conditions. In our system, it’s purpose-built for clinical labs. It’s fast. It’s quiet. It’s cost-efficient. It’s so easy that IR, even I can use it. That’s how simple the system is. Why we’re winning is because we have the three panels now in the United States, more than half the sales for the system outside the United States. That’s where we’ve had all three panels for a while. That shows we can win. Last year, we got all the panels in the United States, the big three that we need. We’re able to compete. You bring up the mini panel issue. There’s two different markets. There’s an inpatient market for testing in hospitals. That’s under what we call DRG, reimbursement in the United States. That’s where we have a good business in building.

The outpatient market is moving towards these mini panels where you have a maximum of five pathogens for reimbursement before you start getting into step checks or specialists to be able to use the larger panel. We’re starting to roll out the mini panels to be able to serve both because a lot of the customers we have are serving both markets. We’re not going for a clear wave system like you discussed. We’re not going to compete in that with our system. That would be a future step down the road, but we’ll see. The reason we’re winning, in particular, in the U.S., is that our competitor has challenges with their gastrointestinal panel, and we were able to use that as an entry point into a lot of labs and then be able to move left and right.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. As you think about the mix, we know today most of the market, 70% is still respiratory testing, and then there’s still an untapped or underpenetrated market for multiplex and GI and ME and these other indications. Where do you think that mix gets to over the midterm? We’ve heard from bioMérieux, for example, 60-70% are using two panels, just respiratory and GI, and then 20% is using three panels. Walk us through how you see that developing over time.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: The respiratory market is seasonal in terms of where flu is. I know this time of year, we always get the question, what do you think of Australia and the Chile flu season? We’ll see how the flu season is here. With COVID, you have a new dimension of respiratory illness in that there is no seasonality to COVID. That’s one thing you’re seeing there. On GI, you also have a season for GI testing through the year. We have what we call the summer panel. This is what we call the barbecue panel because of salmonella poisoning or this type of situation. In winter, you have the norovirus panel. That’s where we have also good spreads for the year for both tests that are developing. To your point, we’re starting to see some good uplift of GI, but respiratory is still the dominant player.

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: I do think we should also add another layer of opportunities for Qiagen, which is open to us, which is not open to other companies, which has to do with our pharma companion diagnostic business. Of course, you know that we just recently signed two larger agreements around QIAstat-Dx with pharma companies, one with AstraZeneca, one with Eli Lilly, where I do think it shows also the opportunities of, again, what I said before, being able to offer to your partner quantitative and qualitative results because it helps you to decide if, for example, a certain treatment should be used or not. The benefit for us is, of course, they typically pay all our R&D efforts while we retain 100% of the outcome because the upside for them on the treatment side is, of course, significantly larger than what we can do on the diagnostic side.

Nevertheless, it is a significant difference compared to anybody else in the field.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Yeah. You’ve actually stolen my next question from me. I wanted to double-click on that a little bit. You know, companion diagnostics opportunity, you signed, you know, these few partnerships. Can you talk us through, and you’re actually one of the only few who actually does pharma partnerships with your multiplex instrument. Talk us through how that contract is structured. Are these alongside clinical trials? What does the cadence of revenue look like for an AstraZeneca or a Lilly partnership?

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: We’re the only ones who can offer them, the pharma companies, because our multiplex technology is based on real-time PCR, which is the windows of our industry. There is no black box. People know what they’re getting. You get, like Roland was saying, a yes-no answer, but you can also get quantitative results. That’s what’s important with these systems, to be able to help people get the quantifiable information. What we’re doing with the companion diagnostics is they’re paying us, in a sense, to do the clinical development for the companion diagnostic assay that’s going to go into the FDA or go in at the same time the drug’s going to be submitted, or it’s going to be a retrofit for a drug that’s on the market. What we’re getting is we’re getting paid various amounts of money over time as we’re doing that R&D development for them.

Once the companion diagnostic is approved, we sell the companion diagnostic, they sell the drug, and we work together commercially. That’s where the financials stop.

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: It’s two upsides to the $2 billion growth graph.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Understood. You mentioned sales grew for the companion diagnostics piece around 20% in the second quarter. How should we think about that going into the second half in 2026? Are there further partnerships that you’re kind of working on at the moment?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: There’s two businesses which are nicely picking up again. I think I got a lot of the questions today a couple of times. How is your overall pharma business going to doing right now? I do think for us, it’s probably somewhat different than for other players because it has different parts. Companion diagnostics is clearly one of them. Of course, for example, cardiac acuity digital PCR is another one which is doing quite well. Long story short, we see actually a nice development. It is a bit more lumpy because, as you said, it has to do with signing deals. Sometimes you also have certain upfront milestone payments on that. I would say it is a bit more lumpy, but on the longer time period, it is a nicely double-digit growth for us.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Remember, on companion diagnostics, I think we’re now well over 25, approaching 30 FDA-approved companion diagnostics for drugs on the market. We have a day-one program where we’re helping customers like NeoGenomics, Quest, LabCorp, others, be ready to offer these right away for use to get the uptake of the drug. The pharma companies want these because they want the right patients getting the drug, the right drug. They get better efficacy, they get fewer side effects, a cleaner label to go to market. What you’re seeing, though, is that Qiagen is able to offer quantitative PCR, digital PCR. Cardiac acuity is also in the nursing platform for partners. Plus, we have the multiplex technology. Don’t forget that we’re getting deals with NGS. We just signed a deal with Insight for a CALR test for their bone marrow cancer drug that’s in development.

We have more than 25 of these partnerships out there as well.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Very interesting. One question on sample tech, which has been relatively resilient to funding pressures versus your peers. However, it’s also not growing at its historical, you know, low single-digit growth rate either. What would need to change in the market for this to accelerate into 2026? You’ve got some product launches kind of planned. You know, talk to us about those and how they can contribute to that.

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: No, I think it’s a fair observation that really, sample prep started, flourished slightly negative in Q1, improved then in Q2. I do think it should probably, somewhat advance also in the third quarter, as we said in our call. Nevertheless, it’s very clear also that that is a business where the overall consumer business, particularly the automated consumer business, is actually doing quite well, clearly also driven by the clinical environment being a bit easier than the overall life science environment. While the instrumentation part, which also in sample preparation is probably 10%, 15%, is a more difficult franchise because, again, also here, in some jurisdictions, people rather want to see how the funding flow is playing out and probably being a bit more cautious than we normally are.

Nevertheless, I would say the overall underlying trends are going in our favor, meaning automated probably a bit better than manual. Now we are facing three significant instrumentation launches for Qiagen. End of this year, we will launch the replacement for our so far flagship instrument, which is Qiagen Symphony, an instrument which we sold actually since 2008, quite successful, and there’s a new version coming up. We have it already since a couple of months now, tested with a good number of A customers, or we would probably call them, and I would say feedback is very strong. We believe that launch will go quite straightforward. There’s two more launches coming up next year, probably more in the second half of the year. One is Qiagen Sprint, one is Qiagen Mini.

The Qiagen Sprint is therefore important because it is the first time that Qiagen moves into high school preparation. While everybody knows and believes that we have an overall market share, as I said before, 50%, 60% of the overall sample preparation market, there are certain pockets where we don’t have any presence, and high school preparation is one of them. We were always looking for the one instrumentation solution where we believe it gives the customers a generational shift in terms of improvements. We do believe that we developed that together with our partner over the last three years, and I don’t think that anybody has doubt that we have the right consumables for that machine. I do think that machine will make an impact for us. Again, as every instrument, it is not like overnight, but I’m quite sure it will help us to accelerate the growth rate.

The third machine is what we call Mini. It’s rather a low-scope machine, probably only $5,000 in terms of cost. Actually, particularly interested for solutions if you think of an academic environment and you have cost pressure, but you want to keep your volume. You have finally a walk-away solution for a couple of thousand dollars, keeping the same pull-through where you probably typically need a full-time person. Instead of that, with a walk-away solution, I do think it might come at the right time as well.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Very interesting. One on QuantiFERON. What, in your view, drives the next leg of growth acceleration for this business? Will it be LIME? Will it be other kind of QuantiFERON iterations planned for the future? Just talk through that.

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: First and foremost, QuantiFERON is a conversion story, right? At the end of the day, literally 120-year-old skin tests still have 60, 65% of the market share. We’re still just, again, while we are growing, let’s say, 10+% year over year, the underlying market is also growing 4%, right? Because the global population is growing. We have more and more mandatory testing for legal work and things like that, healthcare workers. We are barely penetrating the market. Therefore, I would say it is a long-term penetration story for us. What is clearly being helpful for us is that more and more papers are coming out, more and more KOLs see that also as guidelines, see that as a new standard test. We’re seeing new jurisdictions in the Middle East, other countries, implementing that as a mandatory test.

I do think there’s a lot of factors which should allow us to grow, as you know, our midterm goal is a CAGR of 7%. Right now, we’re doing better. We feel quite comfortable around that. We’re keeping that. Nevertheless, we are not standing still. We are improving the test in terms of workflow, of automation. I’m not going to say too much today about that because there’s another deep dive session coming up probably sometime next year when we give a bit more insight to what we’re doing there. I would say, again, it is particularly out of the view to make it easier to use for the customers. Our focus right now is clearly on the TB side because, as I said, it is a nice opportunity, not only short term, but also middle and long term.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Very interesting. Moving on then to PCR. If you look at the second quarter, the sales ex-cardiac acuity was a touch light versus consensus in the quarter, and you called out some cautious spending trends. Give some color as to what’s driving that between kind of pharma, academia pressures, OEM trends, etc.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Our PCR product bucket is all of our PCR products that are not regulatory approved. These are products that are sold to academic labs, pharma customers. It also includes our human ID forensics portfolio, which is doing pretty good. There are also some products that are sold to clinical labs that are not requiring an FDA or an IVDR approval here. That business had been a bit on the softer side, the non-digital PCR business, as we’re seeing the macro trends that are in the market right now. I would say at the same time, it’s not like we’re playing one side off the other. The focus on that portfolio is clearly on digital PCR. This is a next huge relay of growth for Qiagen over the next decade.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Talk to us about the competitive landscape for cardiac acuity. Has the market kind of dynamics changed since the Stella Bio-Rad transaction, and are customers potentially holding back ahead of new launches from this competitor?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: I can kick it off. I would argue that we actually probably had a good start into the year. We clearly, I think, probably also won some ground compared to some other companies, as you just said. Some others reported about more difficulties while we were still growing, particularly on the pull-through side. I think it’s fair to say that key academic instrumentation business, as we said before, is not the easiest one, and that clearly is also reflected somewhat in the instrumentation placement in that area. At the same time, areas like biopharma are doing quite well. We still see some momentum and also positive growth rate, for example, in the second quarter there as well. In terms of the Stella acquisition, which was done a couple of weeks ago, I don’t think that influenced a lot, if something at all.

It’s clearly a company which we, as many other companies in the industry, know quite well. It was available for quite some time, and I would say a lot of people took a look. We know that the product got now, I would say, relaunched. I’m not sure that there was any change to that. I don’t think that changed anything in any way the competitive landscape. We feel rather that the overall situation is still quite the same. While the other company did a really good job in launching early into the market, we do believe that we have some better instruments. Now we have dedicated instruments, with what we believe is a much better workflow. They had an advantage to having a larger menu at the beginning with our launch activities. Now, also end of this year, we believe we probably end up at par.

I would say also that advantage is disappearing. We feel quite well positioned going forward.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Yeah. No, and digital PCR, the competition of the game really isn’t us against the other guys. It’s really about how are we going to go out and convert two markets to using digital PCR as a new powerful. We look at digital PCR, and we kind of sell it to customers as going from the Nokia handheld phone to an iPhone. It does the same thing. It makes a call, but the digital PCR can just do so much more. There are so many applications in terms of minimal residual disease testing, liquid biopsy, cell and gene therapy, QC checks in terms of biological drug development, drug discovery efforts in academic labs that digital PCR is enabling that the other technology, qPCR, could not enable. NGS is just overkill and far too costly. That’s where the game is on as to how can you move customers from qPCR.

There’s a modest upcharge for digital PCR, but it justifies the price premium because you’re getting better precision and you’re getting the results fast, whereas with NGS, you’re able to get results much more cost-efficiently. Our system can look at up to 12 targets simultaneously to get the results. NGS is great when you don’t know what you’re looking for and you want to look at like a 500 gene panel or these types of things. You think about like non-small cell lung cancer, it comes down to four or five genes that really make the decision as to how to make a treatment decision. That’s where digital PCR, with time, as we started out in academia, moved into pharma. We’re moving into forensics now, right now with the FBI partnership. We’re going to start into clinical.

This is going to take years to play out, but this is the technology, a platform that’s going to define Qiagen and its potential really to define Qiagen over the next decade.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Interesting. Moving on to genomics. Also, a bit of a pressure here. You’ve called out sales headwinds from the SaaS transition for a few quarters now. Do you have any kind of timeline as to when this transition completes? Could genomics return to, you know, say, high single-digit growth in the?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: We had a couple of good quarters, right? While we had the SaaS transition, we’re probably halfway through, in all fairness. Nevertheless, the order inflow is quite good. I do think there’s an opportunity for us that we are also moving now next year, probably a quarter business, high single and maybe even low double-digit business while the transition is probably in the larger and later stage then. There’s still a significant demand for solutions, for all the information coming out of the sequences to get interpreted. I would say we like that business quite a lot. As you know, we did a small acquisition into that area as well to access a different, probably smaller group of customers here with a better front end. I think there’s leverage opportunities for us as well.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Just to put a plug in for our deep dive series, that’s hosted by my colleague, Dominika Martoron in IR. We have one on QIAstat-Dx that’ll give you a really good deep insight into the business, and then also one on QuantiFERON-TB that are on our website. There’s one coming up on sample prep before the end of the year.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: The QDI is done, right? That deep dive is over here.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Yeah, the QIAstat-Dx is done.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: It’s the QuantiFERON that’s coming next.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Sample prep is pretty big as well.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Yeah. Okay. One on instrument sales. The sales for sample tech were stable in the second quarter, and that’s despite your peers seeing a lot more worsening double-digit declines in the life science peer group. What’s driving this demand for your instrumentation? Are there any kind of regional dynamics here to note?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: First of all, I would say it’s important to understand that I would say, I don’t know, 80% of our instruments have price points somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000, $30,000. There’s still a reasonable level of you get it done without collecting 25 different signatures from any kind of superior, right? Typically, if you plan to do it, also in terms of return factors, it’s reasonable. We have clearly also instruments, particularly in the fully loaded Symphony, which is a bit more expensive. Again, we’re far away from this sequence on every kind of other instruments, prices, which of course are more difficult. I think that’s one benefit. The second benefit, I would argue that there’s still, not only with our consumables, but of course also with the majority of instruments, are an integrated part of day-to-day operations.

In a way, I think I always like to describe it as a bit like even in a banking office, right? There’s a certain number of costs you can take out easily, right? If you say, my goal is to have five scan personnel, you do the typical things, you take trainings away, you take travel away, you cut back a bit on your parties, but you don’t go on your day-to-day ingredients with your needs. You don’t cut down your Bloomberg, whatever, panels and so on. The same is true for our kind of environment. Sample prep and others, you have, it’s a very, very first step in any lab from academia to pharma to clinical. If you have a biological sample, you want to extract the information out of that. Therefore, you need our product.

The only way to impact us significantly is if you lay off 30%, 40%, 50% of people because then you cut down the volume dramatically. That is not what we’re hearing right now. We clearly see the uncertainty, and into certain areas, as we talked about that. Overall, the market, particularly also outside the U.S., it is quite stable. You see, I’m not sure how much you’re following the 10 years. I know that you follow that, Aisha, in Europe quite detailed. The European Commission, community R&D budget actually nicely increased, right? They’re doing actually the opposite. I will, again, we will see how that plays out.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Moving on now to the P&L. The first one on tariffs.

You’ve got it too, the CFO is starting to come in. You’ve got it to 90 bps headwind on margin from tariffs this year. Is this kind of the right way to think about the impact for 2026 as well? What mitigation factors?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: Thanks for the question because it’s important to understand. It is 90 basis points impact for this year, but it’s also 90 basis points for next year while it’s a 12-month period. The reason for that is, of course, some mitigation continues to accelerate. A good example is right now we ship certain products to Canada. We as a U.S., of course, we’re going to stop that. There are other things, of course, we are going in supply chains. We’re going to improve. There’s clearly also a part of that where we share some of the incremental costs with our customers where we can. I would say overall, while there is a relative impact to margin, we do not expect any larger absolute dollar impact to EPS. I think it’s important to understand. If you share something, you go relatively necessarily down, but you’re not necessarily going absolute dollar-wise down.

We feel with the conventions for next year, which we see right now, I think 252 or whatever, I think that is, we feel quite good about that as well. There are still areas for us in terms of margin improvement, particular leverage in terms of production. Capacity is an important driver for us. Qiagen starts the underlying growth rate. It’s been very helpful for us. Have in mind that we see hurdles from governments, built up our production capacity quite nicely during COVID. We still have to grow into that. Standard costing gets better as we talk, and that’s just one factor being very helpful. On the R&D side, 9-10% of revenues going into R&D is probably a good way to think about it.

We have somewhere around 35-40 efficiency programs in SG&A, on digitalization, on rolling out our new ERP system, but also on footprint and others, which will help us to also net improve margins going forward if you look on a constant exchange rate basis.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. To kind of wrap that comment around margin and profitability, your target is for more than 31% by 2028. You’re probably going to land this year at close to 30% already. Are you going to keep it kind of realistic with tariffs and dampening that? Or could we assume now this is more of a conservative assumption?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: Yeah, I think it’s still an assumption which we have to update early next year. I think there’s no doubt, as I said, we will end this year somewhere between 29 and 30. As I said, while we have some one-time impact on the tariff side, despite that, we are going to improve the margin also next year. There’s no question about that on the constant exchange rate basis. Therefore, I would think that we have to increase our target probably with the guidance for next year also for the mid-term.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. A couple on capital allocation. You’re going to share a buyback or you’ve announced kind of a synthetic share buyback. I guess for the uninitiated, what motivates the decision to do it synthetically as a repurchase rather than a traditional buyback? Some would see this as more of a dividend rather than a buyback. Any thoughts there?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: Yeah, I think we had put all the doubles, but we just also this year initiated a regular dividend. I would say that’s clearly, as we all know, once you start a dividend, your successor still pays a dividend. We’re basically quite comfortable around that. On top of that, with a synthetic share buyback, we have a tool in the Netherlands, which I think is actually the best of both because on the one hand side, you still reduce the outstanding number of shares. At the same time, you pay, more or less, a cash straight to your shareholders. In some legal jurisdictions, it’s even a tax-free distribution. I think it’s the benefit of both. Also, the regular share buyback has some limitations driven by the double taxation treatment between the U.S. and the Netherlands. I think it’s a good combination, helping us here.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. I guess last one on M&A. You’ve made kind of three, your last three acquisitions, you know, GenX, Verogen, BLIRT, have all been of a bolt-on nature. Is there a desire here for a more transformative move given the cost pressures we’re seeing today and the many synergies your business could have with your life science peers?

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: I feel really comfortable. We feel quite comfortable about the acquisitions we did in the past. I do think they’re also playing out quite nicely. I do think in terms of size, we’re happy to look on any kind of deal as long as it generates value and also delivers very reasonable acquisition. Nevertheless, our focus is clearly on this kind of cycles and bolt-on runs. I think we have a we build a good track record here over time, and the likelihood for that to continue is clearly there.

Aisha Noor, European MedTech Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Thank you very much, Roland and John. Thank everybody for joining us today. Enjoy the conference.

Roland Sackers, CFO, Qiagen: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

John Gilardi, IR, Qiagen: Thank you.

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