Earnings Call Excerpt
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (BIO)
Q3 2008 Earnings Call
November 6, 2008 5:00 pm ET
Executives
Ronald Hutton – Treasurer
Christine Tsingos – Chief Financial Officer, Vice President
John Goetz – Vice President, Group Manager - Clinical Diagnostics Group
Norman Schwartz – President, Chief Executive Officer
Brad Crutchfield – Vice President, Group Manager - Life Science Group
Analysts
Brandon Couillard – Banc of America Securities
[Doug Fischer – Kennedy Capital]
Presentation
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Third Quarter 2008 Bio-Rad Laboratories Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's conference, Mr. Ron Hutton, Bio-Rad Treasurer. Please proceed sir.
Ronald Hutton
Thank you very much. Before we begin the call, I would like to caution everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements about management's goals, plans, and expectations. Because our actual results may differ materially from these plans and expectations, I encourage you to review our filings with the SEC, where we discuss in detail the risk factors in our business. The company does not intend to update any forward-looking statements made during the call today.
With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Christine Tsingos, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Christine Tsingos
Thanks, Ron. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. Today we are pleased to report quarterly net sales of $441.8 million, an increase of 30% versus the same period last year's sale of $339.7 million. This increase includes our DiaMed business which finished the quarter a $63.5 million. Excluding DiaMed, our sales growth for the third quarter was 11.4% while currency-neutral organic growth was 5.6%. During the quarter we had good growth within our diagnostics group especially microbiology, quality control, and diabetes products. Our core life science division also increased with strong sales of protein expression, gene amplification, and consumable products.
The gross margin for the quarter was in line with expectations at 54.4% compared to 55% last quarter and 55.4% in the year ago period. The third quarter reported gross margin reflects approximately $3.7 million of amortization plus an additional $2 million charge as required under purchase accounting. The gross margin for the base Bio-Rad business improved year-over-year to 56.2% which can be attributed to favorable product mix as well as better manufacturing utilization in our life science business.
SG&A expenses for the third quarter were $150.5 million or 34% of sales compared to $117.7 million and 34.6% of sales last year. The current quarter SG&A expenses include $2 million for amortization of purchasing tangibles plus the incremental DiaMed operating expenses when compared to last year. The sequential increase in SG&A margin is in line with our historical patterns and will likely increase further in the fourth quarter.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
