Agilent Technologies, Inc. (A) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Q3 2026 Agilent Technologies, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the call over to Tejas Savant, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, to Agilent's conference call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2026. With me on the line are CEO, Padraig McDonnell; and CFO, Adam Elinoff. Joining for the Q&A will be Simon May, President of the Life Sciences and Diagnostics Markets Group; Angelica Riemann, President of the Agilent CrossLab Group; and Mike Zhang, President of the Applied Markets Group. This presentation is being webcast live. The press release for our third quarter financial results, investor presentation and information to supplement today's discussion, along with the recording of this webcast, are available on our website at investor.agilent.com. Today's comments will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP measures are supplemental and should not be considered a substitute for GAAP results. You'll find the most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations in the press release and on our website. Unless otherwise noted, all references to increases or decreases in financial metrics are year-over-year and references to revenue growth are on a core or organic constant currency basis. All references to profitability metrics are on a non-GAAP basis. Core or organic constant currency revenue growth is adjusted for the impact of currency exchange rates and any acquisitions and divestitures completed within the past 12 months. Guidance is based on forecasted exchange rates. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about the financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and are only valid as of today. Agilent assumes no obligation to update them. Please refer to the company's recent SEC filings for a more detailed description of the risks and other factors that could cause our performance to differ from these forward-looking statements. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Padraig.

Thanks, Tejas, and welcome, everyone. We delivered an excellent third quarter with strong performance on both the top and bottom lines. Our results clearly demonstrate the sustained momentum unlocked by our exceptional commercial and operational execution and the Ignite Operating System against the backdrop of steadily improving end markets. For the third quarter, Agilent reported $1.88 billion in revenue, growing 7.3% on a core basis and exceeding the high end of our guidance by 140 basis points. Our operating margin of 27.2%, excluding the net benefit from tariff refunds, was 80 basis points ahead of our implied guidance of 26.4%, providing further evidence of the strong operating leverage and execution discipline embedded in the business. Including the net benefit from tariff refunds of $20 million, our operating margin was 28.3%. Our earnings per share of $1.56 on an ex refund basis were $0.06 above the high end of our guidance range of $1.48 to $1.50, representing robust year-over-year growth of 14%. Including the net benefit from tariff refunds, our earnings per share were $1.62. Make no mistake, our extraordinary Q3 results are no accident, nor are purely a function of improving end markets. Rather, they reflect the momentum created by our 4 key elements of our strategy. First, we continue to build on our unparalleled customer intimacy and trust. This differentiation is increasingly translating into share gains across key workflows and geographies. Second, that customer intimacy informs our innovation engine, resulting in distinct solutions that drive success for our customers and Agilent. Third, at the core of our success is a deep and increasingly capable bench of talent. As our organizational capabilities continue to strengthen, we are improving speed, agility and operational discipline, resulting in a step function improvement in execution. And finally, the compounding benefits of Ignite are now increasingly visible. I want to take a moment to reflect on our transformation journey. We announced our Ignite transformation in late 2024. Our earliest efforts emphasize strategic pricing, procurement and tariff mitigation. Since then, Ignite has broadened and now underpins every aspect of how Agilent operates. This includes reinvigorating our innovation engine, strengthening our supply chain agility and operational discipline and streamlining our structure and unlocking greater value through our integrated business model, which drives meaningful cross-selling of our LC and GC solutions across our pharma and applied customers. The enterprise capabilities we have developed with Ignite across commercial execution, innovation, manufacturing, supply chain and digital have strengthened the business and created inherent resiliency throughout the organization. All this positions us to deliver superior performance and navigate uncertainty in any environment. Before providing specifics on our third quarter results, I want to talk about Agilent's key growth drivers going forward. These include stronger commercial execution against improving conditions across our largest end markets, renewed momentum in China, innovation, the instrument replacement cycle, pharma and semiconductor reshoring and Ignite's compounding impact on our results. Starting with our end markets. Our largest end markets continue to improve, and our teams are converting that improvement into results through strong commercial execution, while a differentiated portfolio and best-in-class service drive share gain. Pharma grew 12% in the quarter, well ahead of our high single-digit expectations and growth rates reported by our peers. As our large customers remain on a sound footing, we are starting to see stronger funding environment translate into improved spending from our small and mid-cap biotech customers, which is reflected in our excellent results. Our advanced therapeutics division, which includes NASD and BIOVECTRA specialty CDMO operations grew nearly 30%. ATD's performance reflects strong demand and disciplined execution as we expand our capacity and prepare for the next phase of our growth. Like pharma, we saw particularly strong demand across our applied markets portfolio. Chemicals and advanced materials grew 7%, ahead of our mid-single-digit guide. Growth was led by an outstanding performance in advanced materials despite a low double-digit year-over-year compare. Our leadership across the applied markets and the strength of our installed base positions us well to benefit from semiconductor investment and a broader AI infrastructure build-out over the near and medium term. Diagnostics and clinical grew at the high end of the mid-single-digit range, slightly below our high single-digit guide. However, underlying orders grew at a robust double-digit rate, giving us confidence in the durability of the business and its growth outlook. The improving end market picture was complemented by a notable step-up in China, which grew 9%, well ahead of our flat expectation. Our long-standing presence and deep customer relationships in the country, along with localized manufacturing, go-to-market capabilities and exposure to attractive end markets underpinned our exceptional performance in the quarter. Importantly, we delivered this performance despite minimal China stimulus benefit and see the momentum continuing into year-end. The upside was driven by strong execution with commercial accounts, especially within the pharma and food end markets. We saw competitive wins in China that highlight the strength of our differentiated portfolio and services offering. Those wins include 2 leading CXOs and an enterprise service contract win with a marquee local pharma customer. In applied, a leading commercial testing lab chose us over the competition to serve their increasing PFAS testing needs. As we look ahead, we are well positioned to benefit from 3 emerging growth drivers in the region. First, biotech innovation in China, combined with investment from global pharma companies is creating meaningful demand for our CXO customers. Our customer support and service infrastructure continues to differentiate Agilent and our unparalleled customer intimacy positions us as a trusted strategic partner for these CXOs. Second, we are seeing an inflection in contract testing laboratory volumes, particularly testing activity related to food safety and materials exports. Demand for our differentiated PFAS testing solutions is strong. Our complete end-to-end workflows from sample preparation and analytical instrumentation to application and regulatory expertise is enabling us to win against the competition. And finally, the AI capital investment build-out in China plays directly into our strengths in GC, GC/MS and spectroscopy. The recently launched 9500 Triple Quad ICP-MS is off to a strong start in the region with semiconductor supply chain customers already contributing to robust order funnel. Last quarter, we announced the launch of our China Innovation Center and are now in the early phase of lab automation software co-development with a leading commercial testing customer ahead of building a fully automated lab. We are also partnering with a cutting-edge local biotech company that is leveraging AI to automate drug discovery workflows on our instrument platforms. These partnerships are generating positive momentum for us in the region while strengthening our R&D capabilities in AI and automation to better support our customers. Even as instruments such as the Infinity III LC continue to drive our performance, we're looking forward to contributions from the next wave of innovations that will strengthen our installed base and support recurring consumables and service pull-through. Our recent product launches at the ASMS conference in June are all off to a strong start. The 9500 ICP-MS, the flagship GC systems and our Altura column family are tracking ahead of plan simultaneously. This shows our innovation engine working across the portfolio, reducing our reliance on any single star product. We are seeing strong demand across all regions for the 9500 and already have exceeded our ramp to volume target despite beginning shipments in late July. The funnel now exceeds $60 million. The 9500s value proposition, increased productivity, lower cost of ownership and ease of use is resonating strongly while supporting customer technology migration from single quad to triple quad systems. We have also received excellent customer feedback on our new 8890B and 8860B flagship GCs. Customers are excited about the productivity and GC Assist intelligence features on the systems, which started to ship in July. Orders over the first 2 months exceeded expectations by more than 2x with strong demand across all regions. Turning to our consumables portfolio. We further expanded the Altura family at ASMS by launching columns for analytical workflows in protein peptide therapeutics, large oligonucleotides, gene therapy and vaccines. We have seen fantastic customer response to date since shipments began last month. The increasing set of high-profile applications that our growing Altura portfolio is addressing has resulted in land-and-expand dynamic in customer accounts. We saw 28% quarter-over-quarter growth in the number of new accounts adopting biopharma Altura columns. In multiple biopharma accounts, we have seen the initial adoption of one Altura column for a single application translate into the customer purchasing multiple Altura column chemistries for different applications. And we're not done yet. Expect continued expansion of the Altura family for new use cases in the quarters ahead. In pathology, expansion of the Omnis family continues to bring laboratory automation to an entirely new customer set. Moreover, the recent close of the Biocare transaction in late June builds on that momentum by expanding our clinically focused antibody menu and complementing our pathology offering. The business is off to a solid start and the integration is progressing well. Turning to spectroscopy. We continue to build momentum with the Raman Insight series. Following the initial $9 million contract win with the TSA we mentioned earlier this year, we've seen use cases expand from airport security checkpoints at FIFA World Cup host cities to other cities in the U.S. Both the new Insight BRT and Insight300 aviation security products have achieved major milestones this quarter and are now certified to variants of the latest U.S. and European detection standards, respectively. Both systems contain truly first-of-its-kind technology to enhance safety and streamline operations at security checkpoints. We continue to be optimistic that the opportunity could expand through further RFPs in the U.S. and adoption in Europe and beyond. Turning to the instrument performance in Q3. We had another very strong quarter of instrument revenue, delivering high single-digit growth against a high single-digit comparison as we continue to reap the dual benefit of our LC and GC replacement cycles. LC revenue grew low double digits despite a mid-teens comparison. This is a truly outstanding result, reflecting strong customer response to the Infinity III LC and the value customers are seeing in upgrading fleets to improve productivity, reliability and workflow efficiency. On the GC side, we saw low single-digit growth, a strong result considering the high single-digit year-over-year compare. Q3 book-to-bill came in above 1, marking the 10th consecutive quarter where instrument orders met or grew faster than revenue. Our healthy book-to-bill supports near-term demand and our LC and GC replacement cycles come with an ample runway ahead. The excellent momentum we are seeing across the portfolio is also reflected in our latest Agilent customer experience survey with more than 85% of our customers rated their experience as highly favorable in relation to purchasing decisions, onboarding solution use and support. I'm especially delighted that we saw our highest score ever for onboarding and support with a satisfaction rate at or above 95%. Beyond the instrument replacement cycle, early gains from reshoring dynamics are now beginning to materialize, underpinning a sustainable multiyear instrument growth opportunity ahead of us. In pharma, we booked our initial reshoring orders in Q3 ahead of our expectations, and the funnel continues to build. The steady increase in the number of active construction sites following the 17 pharmaceutical manufacturer agreements announced under the Trump administration's MFN program reinforces our top-down view of the pharma reshoring opportunity we laid out last year. Moreover, our commercial teams are now engaging in meaningful dialogue with most of these customers, 3/4 of whom happen to be part of our strategic customer program. In fact, we have secured reshoring orders from 5 of the top 10 pharma companies in the world in the third quarter alone. We continue to expect more meaningful order benefit from pharma reshoring around year-end, with revenue contributions building in fiscal 2027 and beyond. Further, the reshoring opportunity for Agilent extends beyond pharma to semiconductor, a key differentiator for us compared to our peers. Semiconductor customers continue to invest in regional supply chain capacity, which in combination with AI CapEx build-out should underpin the robust growth in our advanced materials end market over the medium term. The Ignite Operating System is powering our commercial and operations organization as well as accelerating innovation momentum. The scope and impact of Ignite once again clearly visible in the third quarter. Our strategic pricing initiatives delivered approximately 200 basis points in Q3. We have now surpassed our initial full year target of more than 100 basis points. While strategic pricing supported the top line, our operating profit is growing faster than sales. Operating margin in the quarter, excluding the tariff refund net benefit of approximately 110 basis points, expanded by over 210 basis points year-over-year. We're generating more returns on every incremental revenue dollar, giving us financial flexibility. This traces back to Ignite, the engine at the heart of our company-wide operating system. Another shining example of Ignite in action is our push for manufacturing excellence. There, we are being front-footed in building resilience across our business and setting up the organization to deliver durable long-term growth while nimbly navigating shifts in end markets, trade and geopolitical dynamics. And our internally developed AI-enabled supply chain control tower is improving prediction and enabling adaptive calibration of supply and demand plans. During the quarter, our order to shipment conversion rate improved meaningfully year-over-year, reinforcing the agility we have built in operations. Enhanced shipment prediction and greater risk visibility ensure our ability to rapidly flex supply across our instruments and consumables portfolio in lockstep with customer demand. Rapid factory turnaround is also helping us respond to demand faster with the customer requested delivery date performance reaching a record 95%. As part of our global operations transformation, we moved to a more agile, regionally led distributed manufacturing model. This structure enabled our regional hubs in Asia to respond quickly during the quarter to strong demand conditions. Importantly, we did so without adding headcount and despite having to navigate rising material costs and supply chain headwinds. As Ignite strengthens our operations, we are applying the same disciplined approach to building our next-generation digital and AI capabilities. Our digital initiative continues to make it easier for customers to do business with Agilent while lowering our cost per transaction. Customers' overall experience on agilent.com continues to track ahead of our targets with new online orders growing in the low teens in Q3. Starting last quarter, we have moved our enterprise AI strategy into execution. We mobilized our partnership with OpenAI and BCG X, advanced solutions focused on the commercial customer journey and continued building the Agilent AI center of excellence to help us move from individual initiatives to repeatable enterprise delivery. While AI capability is advancing quickly and becoming broadly available, our differentiation lies in how we apply it. Combining AI with Agilent's proprietary data, scientific knowledge and customer understanding enables us to redesign workflows, improving how decisions are made and how work gets done. This is how we move beyond isolated productivity gains to create durable value that is difficult to replicate. We are leveraging AI to transform software development to create highly integrated enterprise solutions that deliver a seamless and superior customer experience. Our use of AI is not simply about helping the developers code faster, but will shorten the software development life cycle from planning and design through development, testing and deployment. Our targeted approach will accelerate the pace at which we bring differentiated software releases to market. In parallel, we are focused on delivering near-term value in priority workflows, including the commercial customer journey and our manufacturing operations. We continue to scale our AI investments with discipline based on our demonstrated customer outcome adoption and business value. Before I turn to sharing financial details of our Q3 results, I want to highlight the marked progress we have made in the area that is important to our customers, employees and shareholders, sustainability. This quarter, we continue to programmatically embed sustainability in everything we do, facility design, engineering projects and product design and are making excellent progress to our committed pledges. Through a formal structure, dedicated leadership within our global operations function and a thoughtful road map, we're seeing the impact of our efforts. Agilent was named as TIME's World's Most Sustainable Companies and Newsweek's World's Greenest Companies in 2026. Further, our latest MSCI ESG assessment resulted in an upgrade from AA to AAA. We also joined the United Nations Global Compact and received My Green Lab's 2025 Sustainable Lab Product Innovation Award for our flagship Infinity III LC. These achievements reflect the collective efforts of the teams across Agilent to strengthen our sustainability programs. I'm delighted to see that progress recognized externally. Now let me share some additional details on our Q3 results, starting with our end markets. As I mentioned earlier, pharma grew 12% this quarter. Within pharma, biotech grew double digits and small molecule grew mid-single digits. Our GLP-1 momentum continues, delivering more than 70% year-over-year growth in the quarter with a robust contribution from both our CDMO and analytical lab businesses. CAM grew 7% and environmental and forensics delivered 5% growth, both exceeding our expectations. Importantly, PFAS grew 20% despite a low double-digit compare. Diagnostics and clinical grew 6%, just shy of our expectations. Robust double-digit order growth in pathology in the quarter gives us confidence in the underlying demand and health of this business. Food was roughly flat in the quarter, ahead of our expectations for a low single-digit decline. Academic and government, our smallest end market, declined 3%, modestly below our expectations. However, on an ex-China basis, the end market was up low single digits. Most importantly, our customer-centric approach is working, and we continue to win against the competition in all major geographies. Turning to updated guidance. Building on an excellent third quarter and with the outlook for our end markets broadly continuing to improve, we now expect core growth of 5.8% to 6% for the full year. At the midpoint, this represents an increase of 65 basis points versus our prior guide. Our full year growth is now poised to approach the midpoint of our long-range plan. Moreover, on a 2-year stack basis, our revised guide implies that core growth has now accelerated from flat in 2025 to almost 11%, an exceptional outcome separating us from our peers. Importantly, our robust top line performance is translating into excellent operating leverage. We're increasing our EPS expectations to a range of $6.18 to $6.21 for the full year, $0.15 higher than our prior forecast at the midpoint. Excluding the net benefit of tariff refunds of approximately $0.06 in the third quarter, earnings per share of $6.12 to $6.15 are now expected to grow at 10% at the midpoint for the full year, in line with our long-range plan of double-digit EPS growth. And with that, let me hand over to Adam, who will provide additional details on the quarter and our financial outlook for the remainder of the year.

Thanks, Padraig, and good afternoon, everyone. In my comments today, I will provide additional details on revenue in the quarter as well as walk through the income statement and cover other key financial metrics. I'll then cover our updated full year and fourth quarter guidance. Starting with Q3. Revenue was $1.88 billion. On a core or organic constant currency basis, we posted growth of 7.3%, while reported growth was 8.1%. Currency had a favorable impact of 0.2%, a lower tailwind than our May guidance. LDG revenue grew 10% on a core basis, nicely ahead of expectations. Low double-digit growth in LC and nearly 30% growth in our specialty CDMO advanced therapeutic division drove performance. We expect flattish growth in ATD in the fourth quarter when the segment laps a tough year-over-year compare of over 40%. As you might recall, we achieved mechanical completion of our Train C build-out last quarter, positioning us well to begin revenue generation at the new facility next spring. Our cancer diagnostics business was driven by strong growth in companion diagnostics and genomics. Biocare delivered $10 million in Q3 following close of the transaction. We are excited by the solid start and look forward to the impact of Biocare's clinically focused antibody menu on our pathology business. AMG grew 7% in the quarter on a core basis, well ahead of our low single-digit expectations. Growth was led by high single-digit increase in spectroscopy in addition to double-digit performance in vacuum. Like last quarter, those businesses continue to see strong demand for their market-leading tools to support semiconductor production. ACG grew north of 5% in the quarter on a core basis, modestly ahead of our forecast, driven by strong performance in consumables. Looking ahead, our ongoing installed base expansion will fuel consumables uptake in addition to service revenue growth following the initial warranty period. On a geographic basis, the biggest driver of upside in the quarter was China, where we grew 9%, well ahead of our flat expectations, driven by double-digit growth in pharma and food. Asia ex-China revenue also grew 9% with robust double-digit growth in pharma and CAM. Americas grew 10%. The growth was broad-based with low to mid-teens performance in pharma, diagnostics and clinical and environmental and forensics. Europe grew low single digits on a tough year-over-year compare with mid-single-digit growth in diagnostics and clinical, CAM and academic and government. Q3 gross margins were 56.4%. Excluding an approximately 160 basis point net benefit from tariff refunds, gross margins were 54.9%. This represents a healthy 180 basis point improvement year-over-year from strong leverage on incremental volumes and Ignite momentum. Operating margin was 28.3% in the quarter. Excluding an approximately 110 basis point net benefit from tariff refunds, operating margin was 27.2%, an increase of 210 basis points year-over-year, driven by our healthy gross margin performance and compounding Ignite efficiencies. Moving below the line, we had $5 million of other income, while our tax rate of 14.5% was as expected. Finally, we had 283 million diluted shares outstanding in the quarter, in line with expectations. Putting it all together, Q3 earnings per share were $1.62, which includes a $0.06 net benefit from tariff refunds. Excluding this impact, earnings per share of $1.56 grew 14% year-over-year, a reflection of our superior execution and Ignite-led structural improvement in our operations. Now let me turn to the cash flow and balance sheet. Operating cash flow in the quarter was $519 million, and we invested $80 million in capital expenditures. The strong operating cash flow performance reflects operational excellence and improved collections as well as the net benefit of tariff refunds. Our free cash flow of $439 million represents a non-GAAP net income conversion ratio of 96%. We purchased $78 million in shares and paid $72 million in dividends in Q3. Finally, in conjunction with the Biocare acquisition, we successfully completed our $600 million senior notes offering in late June. We ended the quarter with a net leverage ratio of 1 turn, maintaining our strong balance sheet. Now let me share some additional details on the updated outlook for the year and the guidance for the fourth quarter. Based on the strong performance, we now expect fiscal year '26 revenue to be in the range of $7.49 billion to $7.51 billion on a reported basis. This range represents growth of 5.8% to 6% on a core or organic constant currency basis, an increase of 65 basis points at the midpoint versus the prior guide. Currency is now expected to be a 1.6% tailwind during the year. Turning to our end markets, business segment and geographic growth assumptions. Based on strong results year-to-date and our outlook for the fourth quarter, we are raising our full year expectations for CAM from mid- to high to high single-digit growth. Our growth assumptions across the rest of our end markets remain unchanged. Turning to our segments. We now expect mid- to high single-digit growth for both AMG and LDG versus our prior mid-single-digit forecast to reflect our strong year-to-date performance and continuing momentum into year-end. We continue to expect mid-single-digit growth for ACG. Regionally, we are increasing our expectations for China and Asia ex China. We now expect China to grow at mid-single digits, while Asia ex China is expected to grow double digits. In Europe, we now expect low single-digit growth for the full year, while our growth assumption for the Americas remains unchanged at mid- to high single digit. Moving down the P&L. On an ex tariff refund basis, we are increasing our full year operating margin expansion target to over 100 basis points at the midpoint of our revenue guidance versus our prior forecast of 85 basis points. Including the tariff refunds we received in the third quarter, this represents operating margin expansion of over 130 basis points. Our expected tax rate is unchanged at 14.5%. We continue to expect $31 million in other income and 283 million diluted shares outstanding for the year. On an ex tariff refund basis, fiscal year '26 earnings per share are now expected to be between $6.12 and $6.15, an increase of $0.09 at the midpoint, representing robust earnings growth of 10%. Including the net benefit of refunds received in Q3, earnings per share are expected to be between $6.18 and $6.21, representing growth of 11%. For your modeling, let me share some additional expectations we have incorporated into our guidance for the year. While the Middle East conflict and demand for memory chips continue to pressure our costs, we are confident that the Ignite Operating System will deliver meaningful efficiencies and help absorb those inflationary impacts within our Q4 outlook. There is no change to our operating cash flow range of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion and we expect to invest approximately $450 million in capital expenditures. The updated full year guidance implies that reported revenue in the fourth quarter will be in the range of $1.98 billion to $2 billion. This represents growth of roughly 5.2% to 6.2% on a core or organic constant currency basis, while currency is expected to be a 10 basis point headwind. It is important to note that this growth represents continued structural acceleration on a 2-year stack basis, excluding ATD, which we expect will be flattish this quarter, as I stated earlier. Our fourth quarter guide also includes revenue contribution of approximately $23 million from Biocare. Together, EPS is expected to be in the range of $1.71 to $1.74, representing growth of 8% to 9%, assuming 283 million diluted shares outstanding. And finally, I wanted to be clear that our fourth quarter guide does not include any future benefit from potential tariff refunds. With that, I'll turn the call over to Padraig for closing comments.

Thanks, Adam. Our third quarter performance once again demonstrates the accelerating momentum of the business and the quality of Agilent's execution. We delivered excellent top and bottom line results while continuing to invest in capabilities that will drive profitable above-market growth in years ahead. Our value proposition remains highly differentiated, a broad and resilient portfolio across attractive end markets and geographies, leadership in essential analytic and clinical workflows, an innovation engine grounded in customer intimacy, commercial and operations excellence and best-in-class service. All underpinned by the Ignite Operating System, which is raising performance across every facet of Agilent. Together, these strengths give us multiple avenues to succeed and position Agilent to sustainably outperform the competition. We are looking forward to finishing the year on a strong note and entering 2027 from a position of strength. Before we close, I want to thank our customers for their trust and express my gratitude to the Agilent team. Their commitment, customer focus and our exceptional execution made these results possible. And with that, I'll turn back to Tejas.

Thanks, Padraig. Operator, can you please share the instructions for the Q&A?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jack Meehan with Operon.

I wanted to focus on the specialty CDMO business. So strong growth, nearly 30% in the quarter. That was ahead of what I was expecting. Can you talk about the visibility on this business into 2027? Obviously, the GLP-1 demand has been very strong, but I get a lot of questions about some of your top customers in NASD as well. I was just wondering if you could talk about the outlook for this business.

Yes. Thanks, Jack. I'll pass it over to Adam here in a second. But first of all, really pleased with the performance of nearly 30% growth, which was really within our expectations and moving along nicely. But Adam, do you want to add some detail on that?

Sure. Thanks, Padraig, and thanks, Jack. Effectively, as you think about the CDMO business over the longer term, we've talked about a mid-teens growth over the LRP period, and we still feel very confident about that. The second piece is we have Train C coming online, and that's in the spring. And so as you think about that, that will start generating revenue in that period. And then over the next 6 to 8 quarters, that's when we expect it to ramp up to full capacity. The other piece, and you asked about our confidence in how we're thinking about the business, our order book is really building very nicely, and we have the majority of our capacity available in Train C spoken for already. And then just as the last piece as you're thinking about the business, just recognize as we start to bring Train C online, we'll start -- our capacity in the base CDMO business will start to hit full capacity. So then that incremental Train C will allow us to grow again. So I feel very confident going forward.

Excellent. Okay. And then just to stick on this topic, I was wondering if you could talk about margin dynamics related to the specialty CDMO business. I was just trying to figure out, obviously, 27.2% strip out the tariff dynamics in the quarter, it was a very healthy result. I was wondering how much the CDMO business contributed to that because I know it can be healthy margins and what's contemplated in terms of the phasing into 4Q?

Yes. So in general terms, we don't break out the CDMO business. But in general terms, the way we think about it is it should be roughly aligned to our broader business when it's running at full capacity. Then if you think about next year, especially as we're bringing on Train C, we'll be hiring staff in advance, and we'll start depreciating the facility in the early part of the year and then starting to get revenue later part of the year. That said, any margin -- negative margin impact, we've committed to mitigating through our Ignite Operating System.

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

Congratulations on a nice print here. Maybe, Padraig, my first one was on your comment on reshoring was interesting. You noted 5 customers. You received orders, and this is ahead of expectations, right? So is there any way to quantify what the order size is? Any change in your $1 billion expectations for the industry and how to think about contribution for fiscal '27?

Yes. So I think we're -- we sized the opportunity at about $1 billion through 2030, and we expect to at least win 1/3 of that. We feel really good about that, Vijay. Having visited a number of these sites over the last few months, it's been great to see the momentum and how we're moving with setting up and getting ready to get it ready to put its systems in, et cetera. So one of the things that's kind of probably good to say is the broader benefit versus peers, we include LC services and GC in these companies where we've seen 45 onshoring sites that have been designated. We see that we have about 15,000 instruments installed globally. So we have a large installed base that reflects future going forward on the reshoring sites. And it's going to take a bit of time. We already have some orders coming in, which is great to see, and these are in forward stocking locations ready to go into sites. And of course, our teams are helping plan how the labs are set up, et cetera, on it. So I think we feel very good about it. We're going to see the revenue start to come in, in '27. It's going to be not linear. I think you're going to see differences in different quarters as we go forward, but I think it's going to be really important. And one of the things that's been very compelling to us is that we -- out of the first onshore reshoring orders that we've done, it includes 5 out of the top 10 global pharma companies in Q3 alone. And what you will see going forward is that we expect that to continue. One of the things that we invested in, in the company a number of years ago, which is really playing dividends is our strategic customer program. And 75% of the MFN signatories are in that strategic customer program. So that's what means we have a global read on what's happening. So that's how we read it. So we feel really good about it.

That's helpful. And then maybe one more follow-up for. What gets -- when you think about fiscal '27, we're exiting Q4, 6% organic. High level, what gets better, what gets worse when you think about GLP-1s, PFAS, new products, China, et cetera, any high-level comments on what gets better versus worse?

Yes. I mean it's -- I knew you had to ask, Vijay, the question, but I think we're -- we'll wait until the next quarter to talk about '27 in detail. But what I can say is that we're going in Q4 with a lot of momentum. You see the progress in China was very, very positive, a step-up. We see that continuing. It might be linear through next year, but we see that continuing. So we're really feeling good about the momentum in Q3 going into Q4.

Your next question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson with Jefferies.

Maybe just starting with the CDMO guide here. So you're guiding 12% had been mid-teens. So how much of what you saw in this quarter was kind of a timing issue? And I appreciate, Adam, the comments on Train C. I'm just curious if you can quantify anything around bookings or how much of the expected growth is being driven by existing programs versus new demand? I know you've talked about multiple high-growth indications in the pipeline for Train C as we think about that next year.

Yes. So why don't I start, and I'll just give you some more color on the 2026 guide. So once again, 30% growth we saw in the quarter and then year-to-date, we're at about 16% growth. And where we're calling for flattish, that's really driven by the timing of some regulatory-related submissions of our customers. And so those are expected to have responses right toward the end of the quarter. So depending on where those come out, that's how the full year guide will play out. And then specifically for 2027, and I'll pass over to Simon in a moment just to talk a little bit more about the longer-term view of the business. Like I said, we have more than a majority of the capacity filled with bookings from a variety of different customers. Importantly, though, these are some larger scale programs, and we're excited about where they'll go and the opportunity for the future. So with that, I'll pass it over to Simon.

Yes. Just a couple of quick things to add. I'd say in terms of the FY '27 ramp, we've continued to make good progress with the Endeavor mechanical completion and marching towards the next spring go-live. And we're focused there initially on a high-volume commercialization process implementation in train. So of the available capacity that we're going to have in FY '27, I'd say 75% of that is currently spoken for with POs. We've also had a couple of other notable process validations for larger indications in the last quarter alone. And I think this just really reinforces the medium, long-term view that we've got on this business and how well positioned siRNA is as a modality with these larger indications. The pipeline is very strong. The demand signals that we're seeing from our customers are very strong. And I think the timing of Train C is really well timed.

Yes, that's great, Simon. Just one thing to remind everybody as well, Q4 '26, we expect flat growth, but it's over a very challenging 40% year-over-year compare [indiscernible].

Okay. That's helpful. And then my follow-up just on margins. I understand you don't want to talk a lot about '27 at this point, but you'll do over 130 bps this year. You've made a lot of progress on Ignite. As we think about next year, you don't have the tariff or refund impact. You've been pretty clear on kind of the pricing strategy. So I guess, any color or comments you're willing to say on margins for next year? I mean the Street is at 80 bps. I mean it feels like you could do north of 100. How do you think about just the margin trajectory over the next year?

Yes. So I'll take this one. Thanks, Tycho, for the question. We're not going to be guiding for 2027, as you would expect. But I would say that we do feel very good about the momentum of the business, but also about our Ignite program, which we've talked about. And that gives us confidence in the long-range plan we have in place now. And as we work through the numbers here in preparation for our Q4 call, we're in a good position, and I feel very good about both 2027 and beyond.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ryskin with Bank of America.

Maybe I will start on China. You kind of called out the strength there, and you bumped the guide on that. And that's on China A&G being a little bit weaker. And as you called out, I think the stimulus was not having a big impact yet. So I just like to unpack that a little bit more. I mean I think you called out pharma and food. Maybe go into a little more detail on where you saw that, if that's more local customers, multinationals, biotech or more like the CDMO side. Just want to get a little bit better sense of how China turned around so much this quarter. I got a follow-up.

Yes. And just recently back as well, which was great to be there opening our innovation center and seeing the pace of the business there was great and also meeting the teams and customers. I think if you look at our pharma, strong double-digit growth, you see, first of all, our GLP-1 and peptide testing. We see continued adoption of innovative therapies and increased investment from biotech. Biotech grew double digits, and that was due to the influx of investment into China by pharma. Everybody can see that from the large pharma investments. But also, I would say you have R&D coming in, but also you have homegrown innovative drugs that are really taking shape now. And the momentum is really driven by that new R&D and new modalities. One thing that we are very pleased about is our small molecule grew mid-teens, and that's growing investment in the R&D pipeline for novel first-in-class small molecule drugs. And that, of course, benefits us because we're downstream with our tools on that side. And you can see that China is becoming more and continuing important region for drug development. And just moving along, if you look along the businesses, our CAM business grew high single digits, and that's over a really tough compare of low double digits year-over-year. And you see that driven by really a number of things. First of all, the AI infrastructure expansion and our advanced materials business in China grew high teens. Although we saw a little bit of a bit softer in C&E due to macroeconomic pressures, we're also seeing our spectroscopy and vacuum products growing double digit. Again, food, a really bright spot for us, robust mid-teens growth in food. And again, that's really great across the testing volumes that we're seeing. So I think growth is driven by broad-based government contract labs, academia and research lab investments. And what we're seeing is a number of competitive wins in the quarter because of the strength of our portfolio. We see the Altura columns doing well and really strong, I would say, demand for PFAS, which continues to grow in that area. So I think we won a number of really key marquee wins with a competitive win with 2 leading CXOs and of course, winning in PFAS. So I think we're very bullish about China for the future. Again, we were stable at about $300 million a quarter. You see the inflection point now. Of course, there's a long way to go. But in Q4, we're guiding strongly as well. But we see strong momentum into China continuing to the year-end, and we're increasing our guide from high mid-single digits to -- from flat and our Q4 guidance is high single digits.

Okay. And my follow-up is on CAM. Actually, you touched on it a little bit in your comments right there. You talked about advanced materials being a little bit stronger, C&E being a little bit softer because of the macro. Would just love to unpack that a little bit more. I mean, expectations for that to continue? Do you see sort of a light at the end of the tunnel there? Or are you expecting more of the same going forward? And then that's on the C&E side. And then on the other side, on the advanced materials, just talk a little bit about the strength there. You called out some of the reshoring initiatives in semi there, too. Just would love to see how much traction, how many -- how much runway do you think you have there?

Yes. Thanks for the question. So CAM grew 7% in the quarter, and that was above our mid-single-digit guide and robust growth from advanced materials. We had double-digit growth in advanced materials, and that was really important across all geographies more or less. C&E grew low single digits, but that again was against a tough compare of low double digits. And across the C&E business on a regional basis, you see APAC, our Asia business led by refining and base chemical business. China benefited from specialty chemical business. So overall, pretty solid. What I will say going forward in CAM, we see the semi opportunity a really, really important opportunity over the long term. Just to put it into context, the semi opportunity is about 3% to 4% of Agilent's revenue. We see fabs instrument demand 18 to 24 months after the fab. And there's really kind of a number of drivers. First of all, investment in the semiconductor space, you can see that across the globe and as you see tariff policies and, of course, geopolitical reshoring in a number of areas. And we typically see instrument demand 18 to 24 months after the fab. But again, you see after that, you see advanced technology nodes and production volumes. So what comes from this actually in these fabs, et cetera, is PFAS testing, which is going to be a long tail of growth for us. So overall, we're very pleased with the business, and we expect to continue to see it growing.

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Leonard with RBC.

I'm trying to think further on the sustainability of that double-digit growth rate in pharma. How dependent is double-digit growth in that end market on your CDMO business? In other words, what would you have grown without the advanced therapeutics business, 30% growth rate?

Yes. So look, we're really, really really pleased with our biopharma and pharma business. And biopharma, the end, we grew by 12% overall, 9% ex CDMO. And you can see the overhang from the MFN deals really, really help. And the biotech grew double digits. And of course, you see CDMO growing nearly 30%. So I think -- and again, you underpin that with a really strong GLP result of 70% growth. So overall, we see a lot of reason to see this market continuing to grow. You think about a replacement cycle, which is crucial. It's a big part of this business continuing to hum along. Look at our instrument business on the LC side. And also, you see that you talked -- Simon and Adam talked about the demand on the CDMO side and what we're planning for Train C, et cetera, next year. And then you underpin that with reshoring. So you see that pharma, I think we feel really good about the future on that in Q4 and of course, going forward.

And then my follow-up question, Padraig, is on that reshoring point. So now that you're -- you have some early proof points and wins, do you have any sense for how much of the reshoring demand is incremental versus substitution? And really, what I'm trying to balance here is that low single-digit growth rate in Europe with all the positive reshoring commentary around your Americas business?

Yes, it's pretty straightforward. I would say instruments and services are all incremental. Consumables is a little bit different by the nature of it. But I would say you can take it that the instrument and service business is all incremental.

Your next question comes from the line of Puneet Souda with Leerink.

I just wanted to see if you could parse out a bit about the pharma versus SMID biotech versus small biotech. I think you talked about small biotech was still lagging last quarter. Could you talk about how did that fare in the quarter? And I'll just ask my second question here. The mRNA personalized cancer vaccine had quite a remarkable data. The category is expected to expand with further indication expansion. Just wondering how are you thinking about the opportunity there for Agilent? Obviously, you've gone into new modalities and in the expanded positions with CDMO. So just wondering how are you thinking about that?

Yes. I'll take the first part, and I'll hand over to Simon on the mRNA side. So we've seen -- we have a relatively small exposure, but I would say encouraging uptick in small to midsized biotech. And you can see that in general, if you look at the macros in H1 '26, the total biopharma financing rose to $60 billion, doubling from $30 billion. So there's a huge amount of money going into the space. And you have underpinned that with a looming patent cliff, which is heightened demand focus on M&A. You see a lot of the licensing deals that are going in. So we're beginning to see the small and midsized biotech spending return. We continue to -- we expect that's going to continue over the next few quarters given the macros that we talked about. So we feel that's going to be an important part of it. But again, we have a relatively small exposure to that area. But Simon, maybe you can talk a little bit about the new drug modality.

Yes. Certainly, we saw a pretty pivotal clinical trial readout in the very recent past year around mRNA that very much caught our attention. I think we obviously view it as really positive news, but I'd say it's going to be delayed impacts. The mRNA modality has been in the trough for a number of years now for quite a few reasons that I think we probably understand quite well. But I think what this did is really validated real-world potential of mRNA as a modality in oncology applications. And we think that's ultimately going to mean good news both for analytical lab and for CDMO. We've got strong capabilities in both areas. But to be clear, I don't think we'll see any immediate material impact there, but something to look out for, for the future.

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

Great. Maybe just going back to China for my first one. So just China was substantially above what you guys expected 9% versus flat. So on 20% of your revenues, that's almost the whole level of the beat. Obviously, you guys are pointing to strength throughout the whole business. But I'm just wondering like outside of China, when you think about -- I know Europe was a bit weaker than expected in kind of North America. Like how would you characterize the trends outside of China, just given how strong China was?

Yes. I mean China was -- we're really pleased to see what happened there in the businesses. And Americas, growing at 10%, really exceeding our high single-digit expectations, really, really strong. And again, that's without any reshoring benefit yet, et cetera, on that side. In Americas, we saw high teens in biotech and mid-single digits in small molecule. So overall, I think, again, on Americas, A&G slightly declined, but a relatively small business for us. In Europe, again, in Europe, I wouldn't read too much into that number. It grew 2%, but that was over a really tough compare. Diagnostics, clinical and CAM and academia and government all grew mid-single digits. And pharma grew low single digits, but that was against a low double-digit compare in the side of it. Of course, on the academia side and government, we see some funding going into defense, and that's normal to see. I think you can expect that to continue, but again, a relatively small part of the business. And then Asia doing extremely well as well as we go forward. So overall, we feel really good about it. I wouldn't read too much into Europe, and I think China was a real standout for us and a step up.

Terrific. And then maybe just a follow-up just on CAM. Just on the chemical and energy side of that business. I know last quarter was better than expected, and you talked about a conservative guide given the volatile macro. Like what do you -- just how would you characterize the outlook today? It's oil is off the highs, PMIs are still expansionary, but the 10-year is north of 5%. Just wondering, are those customers, is it stable? Is it a little weakening? Is a little strengthening? Any way to characterize the health of that kind of customer base? Obviously, you guys have a lot of idiosyncratic drivers there, but just overall from a demand perspective.

Yes. If you go -- if we kind of double-click on C&E, we grew low single digits on a tough compare. But looking at C&E on a regional basis, I talked a little bit about the Asia demand that we saw in refining and base chemical demand. China is benefiting from specialty chemical growth. APAC was flat, but in the downturn in specialty chemical and EMEA was down due to -- amid the geopolitical disruption and delayed CapEx. But the way to look at it, we're the beneficiary on the production side and a little bit of headwind on the refining side, but we haven't seen any change in that. So we're actually pretty -- really pleased with 7% growth in Q3 and above our mid-single-digit guide. And we feel for Q4, despite the high single-digit compares that we have, we expect growth to continue in the high single-digit range overall for CAM and chemical and energy will be an important part of that, too.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Kallum Titchmarsh with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to dig a little more into some of the pricing initiatives that seem to be tracking ahead of the initial road map. Would love just a little more color on where you're perhaps being more proactive with taking price across the business. And then how you're just thinking about that price contribution across the midterm, particularly if we're looking -- if we're working through that period of end markets themselves improving?

Yes, I'll kick it off, and I'll hand it over to Adam on this one. I think strong pricing year-to-date. It's one of the amazing compounding factors of the Ignite Operating System that we've seen. We've already -- we've exceeded our initial full year guide of 100 bps plus for '26. And we expect pricing momentum to continue into the year-end. And if you look back on our quarters in FY '25, we're well north of 100 bps. That's 2x the pricing power over the previous year. Q1 was 200 bps of pricing. Q2 was 200 bps and Q3 was 200 bps. So we see that continuing to go forward. And of course, that's really important as we deal with inflationary pressure and Ignite is really helping on that response as well as we go forward. But anything to add, Adam?

The only piece I would add is that pricing isn't our only way that we're managing the inflationary pressures. We're also doing a lot around our supply chain management, looking at productivity across the business. And then the other piece is we're really focused on making sure that we're managing our inventory appropriately. So you'll see that our inventory went up a little bit, but that's just in response to some of the inflation that we're seeing and making sure that we have a resilient supply.

Your next question comes from the line of Luke Sergott with Barclays. Your next question comes from the line of Evie Koslosky with Goldman Sachs.

So I wanted to touch on Agilent CrossLab. You've obviously had several quarters of really impressive instrument growth. So how should we think about the lag time between when the instrument is placed and then when you would actually expect to see the service contract booked related to that placement?

Yes. So very pleased with our growth in Q3, modestly ahead of what we put out in our guide. We had service growing at mid-single digits and consumables growing at high single digits across all regions. But in terms of the lag time and what we see, maybe Angelica, you can add a little bit of color on this.

Yes. Thanks, Padraig, and thanks, Evie, for the question. We certainly see the increased demand for instruments translating to increased lab productivity. So it bodes well for ACG overall. As we look specifically at the instrument growth that's also new demand as well as tech refresh, there is a bit of a lag because the first 12 months are under warranty. So we really start to see the cumulative effect of the opportunities to turn that into recurring ACG revenue about 12 to 18 months. And that continues to roll, obviously, as more and more of those instruments are turning from warranty to fully functional and absolute connect rate opportunities to ACG as a whole.

Your next question comes from the line of Casey Woodring with JPMorgan.

So diagnostics grew 6% this quarter. You noted it was a little bit below your expectations. Obviously, diagnostics growth of 11% last quarter, surprised to the upside. So maybe just walk through some of the dynamics you're seeing there. You mentioned underlying orders grew double digits. So just where are you seeing that strength in orders? And would be curious also to hear how the Omnis platform contributed as I know you called that out last quarter as a strong growth contributor also.

Yes. So I'll start at a high level, and I'll bring Simon in. So 6% growth in the quarter. We saw robust double-digit growth in pathology, which gives us really confidence in the underlying health of the business. CDx grew mid-teens, and we have a really unique position in that business and genomics grew high single digits. And that's all underpinned by the expanded Dako Omnis family. But maybe you can provide more detail, Simon.

Yes. So I think overall for Q3, we continue to be really pleased with the momentum that we saw in pathology. We exited the quarter with a robust backlog in our core pathology business. We had very strong order entry in the third quarter, and we continue to see really strong adoption of the Omnis family. The installed base there that we're seeing is well on track, and we think that's a really good leading indicator as we go into fiscal year '27. At the same time, as Padraig mentioned, we also saw robust continuing growth in companion diagnostics with mid-teens. And I think we've just got really solid momentum there between the secular drivers that we see with modalities like ADCs, Agilent's capabilities, and the very strong installed base and underlying reputation that we've got. It was also nice to see return to growth in genomics there with high single-digit growth. So you put it all together, we were a shade light on revenue for the quarter, driven, I'd say, primarily by that backlog that we carry into Q4, but the order entry was really strong, and we're very confident about the fourth quarter and the underlying momentum in the business.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. Mr. Tejas, I will turn the call back over to you.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you soon.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.