MTD
#Could I clarify your question.
You're asking about lab in China.
Our Chinese business, the first quarter was our strongest quarter of the year.
We would have grown a little more the last couple of quarters, except for some tough comps on our AutoChem business.
But we see no reason we can't grow high single digits in our lab business based on what I see out there.
On a year-to-date basis, we're up approximately 200 basis points.
Very much the lab business leading the way there with numbers actually north of that.
And our industrial business is somehow being somewhat laggards to that in retail.
We struggle to have global price realization in the retail business.
In terms of next year, I think that we should be able to get something in the 150 basis point range.
If you're wondering why a little bit less, we did make some extra moves this year, particularly driven in countries where we wanted to push through a little bit of extra pricing because of the strong dollar.
For example, in places like Southeast Asia, we pushed through a little extra price increases there to try to make up for some of the currency impacts.
Sure.
I would describe, first of all, a bright spot would be the lab business overall.
And of course, our lab business has a slightly different mix then some of the other guys.
We have a little bit less healthcare, a little bit more industrial within our product portfolio.
But overall, as mentioned I think pulling out the impact of some large AutoChem orders last year, we think that can be a high single-digit business in the coming quarters.
If I look at other parts of the portfolio, actually retail would be an area that has been growing there.
And of course that is being driven by the increasing GDP per capita increasing consumer spending.
Our industrial businesses continue to be weak overall, but we do see pockets of growth there in some specific product categories where we are trying to push product categories.
But probably, they're small enough it is not so helpful for us to mention.
At this point.
Material costs should be down, let's say somewhere in the 1% range to 1.5% range.
You can multiply that number by 0.3 or 0.4 to get a sense for what kind of impact that would have on the gross profit margin.
I think I'd like to give it a range, but I would certainly say high single digits.
2016 it's going to do better than that.
If you look at our industrial business, we would expect, because the levels of decline are still large that it is going to take a few more quarters to stabilize that business.
So, I think the beginning of the year you'll continue to see declines in our Chinese business overall.
Whether we get to a flat business or modest growth business in the second half of the year I'm not quite sure yet.
Definitely not materially.
We have, to a certain extent, because such a high percentage of our Chinese business is Chinese manufactured products, clearly that piece will again, at least decline in the first half of the year.
We have, of course, always every year a handful of products that we are transferring there, activities that we are transferring there.
But I would not expect the overall percentage to move materially.
Give me a second.
We repurchased 390,548 shares.
In terms of our industrial business overall, I think the Q3 is in line with our year-to-date numbers.
We would expect to have, maybe some slowing in some of core industrial areas.
But maybe some acceleration in terms of our food safety product inspection related businesses.
Our lab businesses in the Americas did very well in the quarter.
And we expect continued good performance in the fourth quarter as well.
This year we added about 200 field resources.
This ---+ typically they take a few quarters to ramp up in terms of the first quarter you have training, onboarding, and so on.
And then, it takes them a few quarters to build up the pipeline.
I would say, after two years they should actually be really profitable, contributing to the overall situation.
We prioritize, of course, on product categories that have the highest profitability.
And so they're going to certainly have above group average contribution.
For next year, I expect, if things continue to go as expected in terms of market demand, to add about the same amount as we did this year.
John you're on the line.
No.
They're very different.
This is really pure water analytics.
Totally different.
The synergy is, with our [fountain] business that you might know.
Particularly, related to TOC and conductivity measurements.
These are the three measurement points that you would find ultra-pure water.
For example, an application is water for injection.
And when you have water for injections in pharma, you need to be USP compliant.
And that's the [fate] parameters that are relevant here.
No.
You shouldn't read anything into it.
It wasn't unusual for us at all.
We have a certain strategy to expand the product portfolio, in terms of leveraging the access to the channel for Life Science applications and so on.
But that is something we have been done over a couple of years.
And what you've seen more recently was product launches for retail industrial, as well as for the last product introduction.
No.
Certainly not related to Ohl House, no.
I don't.
Everything is as usual.
We built in some additional service growth over product growth.
And maybe that would be the short answer, <UNK>.
