Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). We will go first to Jonathan Plummer with Thomas Weisel Partners.
Jonathan Plummer - Thomas Weisel Partners
Hi Lucas, hi Craig.
Craig McCollam
Hi Jonathan.
Jonathan Plummer - Thomas Weisel Partners
Hi. Lucas I was wondering if you could start off by just may be giving us a little more color on what happened in North America in the quarter? Was it stronger IC or HPLC that really drove that mid-teens growth?
Lukas Braunschweiler
Well, fortunately, we can say both business lines contributed nicely. We had a great comeback in HPLC. We commented several times that, with the transition to the new product line more than a year ago in North America it took us someone longer to really adopt it, and we have obviously greatly overcome that, and they had a particularly strong performance in HPLC, but also IC was doing very, very well. So it’s broad-based.
Jonathan Plummer - Thomas Weisel Partners
And then from a end market perspective, was that mostly life science?
Lukas Braunschweiler
In North America it's pretty much along the corporate average.
Jonathan Plummer - Thomas Weisel Partners
Okay.
Lukas Braunschweiler
As we said that ?life science? and ?environmental? are the two key markets. They are up nicely corporate wise as well as in North America. And then of course North America has quite a nice share for us in chem/petrochem, and that market is still performing solid.
Jonathan Plummer - Thomas Weisel Partners
How would you describe the strength of North America in terms of your visibility going forward? Do you feel comfortable that this level of growth is or may be slightly below this level is sustainable?
Lukas Braunschweiler
Well, definitely, when we look back, we have a look back also a little bit; two years, and I say, we had a tremendous growth in this quarter. We have to be a little bit fair that last year we had probably really not such a strong quarter in North America, so we have immediate comparison.
But even if you take the compounded general growth over two years, it's a pretty solid number. So from that end I will conclude and also from the bookings dynamics momentum, the order flow, that at least what we see for a moment we should been in a good position to home a series of good quarters in North America.
I sense that you referred to the general economic worries here. So far in our end market we haven't seen that. And when I read this morning that obviously the third quarter, calendar third quarter sales in the US economy were 3.9%, it conference that I am not so worried about the ends markets. For us all are more worried that pharma might not get off the ground.
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