Bruker Corporation 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

I would like to welcome everyone to Bruker Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Joe Kostka, and I am the Director of Bruker Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are our President and CEO, Frank Laukien, and our EVP and CFO, Gerald Herman. In addition to the earnings release we issued earlier today, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be downloaded from the Events and Presentation section of Bruker's Investor Relations website. During today's call, we will be highlighting non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and are posted on our website at ir.bruker.com. I would like to reference Bruker's safe harbor statement, which is shown on slide two of the presentation.

During this conference call, we will or may make forward-looking statements regarding future events and the financial and operational performance of the company that involve risks and uncertainties, including those related to our recent acquisitions, geopolitical risks, wars or blockades, market demand, tariffs, currency exchange rates, competitive dynamics, or supply chains. The company's actual results may differ materially from such statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in today's earnings release and in our Form 10-K for the period ending December 31st, 2025, as updated by our other SEC filings, which are available on our website and on the SEC's website. Please note that the following information is based on current business conditions and on our outlook as of today, August 4th, 2026.

We do not intend to update our forward-looking statements based on new information, future events, or for other reasons, except as may be required by law, prior to the release of our third quarter 2026 financial results, expected in early November 2026. You should not rely on these forward-looking statements as necessarily representing our views or outlook as of any date after today. We will begin today's call with Frank providing an overview of our business progress. Gerald will then cover the financials for the second quarter of 2026 in more detail and comment on our full-year 2026 financial outlook. I'd like to turn the call over to Bruker CEO, Frank Laukien.

Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's second quarter 2026 earnings call. We are pleased that Bruker has returned to organic revenue growth in the second quarter, and that our focus on cost reductions and profitability improvements resulted in solid margin expansion and non-GAAP EPS growth. Demand for our differentiated products and solutions improved further as our scientific instruments segment achieved 10% organic bookings growth year-over-year, a fourth consecutive quarter with a scientific instruments book-to-bill ratio above 1.0. Organic bookings in biopharma grew more than 20% in the second quarter, driven by demand for our NMR, X-ray, and mass spectrometry solutions. In our academic medical research business, bookings in Europe and China were up strongly. However, U.S. academic orders still remained weak in Q2.

We saw notable Q2 order strength in our deep tech semiconductor tools and energy research technologies, with both at over 50% organic order growth year-over-year. In semiconductor metrology, we sell robust and innovative metrology equipment for chip manufacturers with significant demand increases for high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging driven by AI scaling. In energy research, we provide unique tools and modules for fusion energy development and high-energy physics research. These proprietary deep tech capabilities, which also include our security detection systems, are valuable to have in the portfolio as life science research demand recovers gradually. These deep tech tools tend to have longer delivery times, in some cases of 9 to 24 months, determined by facility readiness, for example, for a new logic or memory chip wafer fabs or for large-scale fusion development projects.

As a result, some of our strong deep tech bookings will benefit our Q4 and then 2027 and even the outer years. We are continuing to take costs out to drive margin expansion and double-digit EPS growth this year, and also again in 2027. We have made good progress in the second quarter, realizing more cumulative cost reductions. We are well on track for our stated goal of delivering $140 million of annualized cost savings in 2026. I would like to thank our teams for their very important efforts in this area. Effective as of July 1st of this year, Bruker has adopted a new operating structure that combines our BioSpin, Daltonics, and Optics divisions into a new Bruker BioSpin group led by Group President Juergen Srega.

The newly merged Biosystems group addresses the growing need for scientific integration in the post-genomic era, which combines complementary life science research workflows into more comprehensive disease biology insights. Across post-genomic drug discovery, multi-omics, and applied markets, our customers connect structural, molecular, and cellular information to understand complex systems biology or advanced materials research. The Biosystems group brings together NMR, mass spectrometry, FTIR, Raman, preclinical automation software, and applications expertise in any of these areas for connected workflows from research to quality control. Examples include metabolomics, RNA characterization, or protein analysis, where NMR and mass spectrometry provide important complementary insights. As another example, in battery research development and battery life cycle QC, where NMR and FTIR characterize electrolytes, electrodes, and chemistry.

In addition, Bruker Microbiology & Infection Diagnostics, which we sometimes abbreviate as BMID, previously a division within the CALID Group, has now been established as a group under the leadership of Dr. Wolfgang Pusch. This BMID group has a fast-growing microbiology and infection diagnostics portfolio from microbial identification, molecular diagnostics, hospital hygiene, to emerging antimicrobial resistance testing and next-generation sequencing for sepsis and reflex testing. This modified group structure aligns Bruker more closely with markets and our customers. By organizing around connected workflows, we strengthen group-level agility and our ability to prioritize investments that deliver innovation with the most impact. Following these changes, Bruker now operates in four groups: Bruker BioSpin, Bruker Nano, BMID or Bruker Microbiology & Infection Diagnostics, and Bruker Energy & Supercon Technologies or BEST. This new structure is expected to drive an additional $20 million of cost reductions in fiscal year 2027.

All right, on to the quarter. Let's turn to slide four now for the P&L performance of the second quarter. Our Q2 2026 reported revenues of $839 million increased 5.2% year-over-year, with organic growth of 2.8% or 3.4% organic growth excluding tariff refunds in the second quarter. The revenue contribution from M&A was 1.5%, and constant exchange rate or CER growth was 4.3%. The 0.9% FX revenue tailwind was actually 50 basis points lower than originally expected. BSI segment revenues were up 2.3% organically, while BEST achieved organic revenue growth of 8.9% net of intercompany eliminations. Our second quarter 2026 non-GAAP gross and operating margins were 52.1% and 14.1% respectively, both up significantly year-over-year, albeit in comparison to a weak second quarter 2025, and including a net U.S. tariff refund benefit that Gerald will describe in a moment.

Our second quarter 2026 diluted non-GAAP EPS was $0.49, up 53% from $0.32 in the second quarter of 2025. Moving to slide five, H1 2026 revenues increased by 3.9% to $1.66 billion. First half organic revenue was still a decline of 0.8%, consisting of a 1.4% organic decline in scientific instruments and 6.1% organic growth at BEST, net of intercompany eliminations. Our first half 2026 non-GAAP gross margin, operating margin, and EPS were all up year-over-year, and their performance is summarized on slide five. Gerald will go into more detail on the drivers shortly. Please turn to slides six and seven, where we highlight the first half 2026 performance of our three scientific instruments group and of BEST, all in constant currency and year-over-year basis. In the first half of 2026, the BioSpin group revenue was $393 million, down mid-single digits percentage year-over-year.

BioSpin saw strong revenue growth in hospital, clinical, and biopharma, offset by weakness in China, AcaGov, food testing, and automation. NMR preclinical and preclinical imaging had robust order growth, both up double digits in the first half year-over-year. For the first half of 2026, CALID group revenue of $627 million increased in the mid-single digits percentage driven by mass spectrometry, including the Softwork acquisition. CALID saw strength in biopharma, security detection, and European AcaGov, partially offset by weaker revenues in the U.S. First-half revenue growth in molecular diagnostics was solid, while microbiology was roughly flat. Please turn to slide seven now. First half 2026 Bruker Nano revenue was $507 million, with a low single-digit percentage decline. Nano saw weakness in AcaGov and industrial markets, while weakness in U.S. AcaGov funding continued to impact spatial biology.

This was largely offset by robust strength in semiconductor metrology due to AI-driven orders for memory and advanced packaging metrology tools. Finally, the first half of 2026, BEST revenues were up 6%, net of intercompany eliminations, with strong growth in the superconductor business and solid revenue growth at Research Instruments, or RI. In the first half, RI secured very strong multi-year orders for fusion energy and high-energy physics technologies, and I'll come back to that in a moment. Moving to slide eight and nine. On slide eight, we highlight our semiconductor metrology nanotools, which are now clearly moving the needle for Bruker. I won't go through the technical details, but invite you to read those at your convenience. The first half of 2026, organic order growth was greater than 30%, and the first half 2026 organic revenue growth was greater than 15%, obviously somewhat lagging behind order growth.

This business is very profitable. It has about a 30% EBIT margin. Longer lead times in this business, which can be 9-24 months, can result in revenue lagging order growth by several quarters. If you go to slide nine, we touch on our other deep tech areas, our security detection on the left and energy research on the right, those two businesses also seeing considerable strength. The first half detection orders and revenue were both up approximately 20% year-over-year. Whereas, as I just mentioned, our first half Research Instruments, RI energy research orders were up well over 100% year-over-year. In general, for perspective, keep in mind that Bruker and our orders tend to lag. Our revenues tend to lag the order trends by a couple of quarters.