Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Bill Ong with Merriman.
Bill Ong - Merriman
When you look at your quarterly bookings run rate since the beginning of 2007, $150 million plus bookings run rate appears to be sustainable in 8 out of the 12 quarters with an occasional spike and dip from time to time. Looking out over the next three years and giving your market penetration rate of your tools, what kind of quality bookings run rate can we expect? In other words, can you sustain, let's say, $170 million quarterly booking run rate years out and what would be driving that?
Don Kania
As we look out over that three-year horizon, we view the company in a couple of major pieces when we look at growth. One is our core businesses, electronics and research and service. We think that those pieces of the puzzle in more normal economic circumstances can grow at high single digits growth rate average over that period of time with some potential upside in the research marketplace. That has been growing at a relatively higher rate during that period during the last few years.
Then as we look at our higher growth segments, life sciences, which has been growing robustly at 36%, and we think natural resources, over that period will start to have a meaningful contribution to the growth of the company and those will grow, in our view, greater than a 15% growth rate over that period. So, you can certainly envision as the world evolves between '10 and '12 that, in fact, $170 million is achievable at some point during that period on a quarterly run rate basis.
You want to spin that back. The way we've been running, as you highlighted, flat over the past couple of years, what's really happened during that period is semiconductor has gone into a relative secular decline from the peak in '07 to-date. We've grown our other businesses significantly during that period to offset that decline. So, the other piece of the puzzle underneath it all is, as semi picks up, that would just be a plus for us overall relative to performance over the past multiple quarters.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of JoAnne Feeney with FTN Equity Capital.
JoAnne Feeney - FTN Equity Capital
If I could ask about the order outlook for this quarter and perhaps your visibility through stimulus funding, I think we may have been expecting a little bit higher guidance for the current quarter's order outlook. Is it the case that what you've done is look now at timing of the different grant work processes out there and have noticed perhaps that, as you were saying, the larger grants are being pushed off a little bit? Is that why the orders seem a little light this quarter?
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
