Participants

David Clair; Investor Relations; Bio-Techne Corp

Kim Kelderman; Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Director; Bio-Techne Corp

James Hippel; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President - Finance; Bio-Techne Corp

Puneet Souda; Analyst; Leerink Partners

Dan Leonard; Analyst; UBS Investment Bank

Hannah Hefley; Analyst; Stephens Inc.

Matt Larew; Analyst; William Blair & Company L.L.C.

Catherine Ramsey; Analyst; Robert W. Baird Incorporated

Dan Arias; Analyst; Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated

Connor McNamara; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets, LLC

Patrick Donnelly; Analyst; Citi Global Markets Inc.

Sung Ji Nam; Analyst; Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets

Lucas Baranowski; Analyst; Keybanc Capital Markets Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Bio-Techne conference call for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to David Clair, Bio-Techne's Vice President, Investor Relations.

David Clair

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me this morning are Kim Kelderman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Hippel, Chief Financial Officer of Bio-Techne.
Before we begin, let me briefly cover our Safe Harbor statement. Some of the comments made during this conference call may be consider ward-looking statements, including beliefs and expectations about the company's future results. The company's 10-K for fiscal year 2024 identify certain is that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements made during this call.
The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements because of any new information or future events or developments. The 10-K as well as the company's other SEC filings are available on the company's website within its Investor Relations section.
During the call, non-GAAP financial measures may be used to provide information pertinent to ongoing business performance. Tables reconciling these measures to most comparable GAAP measures are available in the company's press release issued earlier this morning on the Investor Relations section of our Bio-Techne Corporation website at www.bio-techne.com.
Separately, in the coming weeks, we will be participating in the Cowen, Leerink, and Barclays healthcare conferences. We look forward to connecting with many of you at these upcoming events. I will now turn the call over to Kim.

Kim Kelderman

Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter conference call. I'm pleased to report that we delivered yet another strong fiscal quarter that exceeded the initial projections that we made at the beginning of our fiscal year, improving biopharma end market, particularly on the large pharma side benefited our GMP reagents in their protein analytical implementation. This, combined with continued traction in our ExosomeDx and spatial biology franchises drove our 9% organic revenue growth for the quarter.
We are also seeing the benefits of the organizational and operational efficiency improvements that we have implemented over the last 1.5 years. During the second quarter, our adjusted operating margin increased 110 basis points sequentially to 30.1%, and I'm confident that we are well positioned for ongoing improvement in our peer-leading operating margin profile as our end markets continue to recover. Jim will provide more details on these results later in the call.
I hope that many of you had a chance to see the latest corporate presentation we provided last month during the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. For those that have not seen it, I would encourage you to visit the Investor Relations section of Bio-Techne's website. We presented the company's strategy through a slightly different lens this year by outlining three major challenges we help our customers solve.
Enabled the discovery of novel biological insights, we support the development and manufacturing of advanced therapeutics, and we enable precision diagnostics. Our product portfolio and solutions are uniquely positioned to reliably and efficiently support our customers in advancing science across these sectors.
Now let's review our Q2 results, beginning with an overview across our end markets and geographies. Sales to our biopharma end markets increased mid-teens in the quarter as we experienced strength in both the US and European regions. This strong performance included a notable improvement from large pharma customers with particular strength in both GMP and reagent orders as well as in our protein analysis instrument portfolio.
For our academic end market, the team delivered mid-single-digit revenue growth. As a reminder, our academic end markets grew upper single digits in the prior year period, and we achieved this quarter's mid-single-digit revenue growth despite the challenging comp as well as the reduced number of selling days related to the midweek holidays in December.
Now for our regions. In the Americas, we grew low double digits for the quarter. This performance was primarily driven by the aforementioned strong demand from our cell therapy customers as well as the strength in our automated protein analysis portfolio. Our EMEA region grew low double digits as well, which was also driven by our automated protein analysis portfolio, which grew more than 20%.
In addition, we expanded our geographic reach through two new distribution agreements. First, we announced a partnership of Leader Life Sciences to fortify access to our portfolio across the Gulf cooperating countries. We follow this with a distribution agreement with Medcomtech to expand access to our portfolio in Turkey and Azerbaijan.
In China, sales declined low single digits as the challenging economic environment remained a headwind to growth in the geography. It's worth noting that the Q2 performance is in line with our expectations that the negative growth would ease and will shift to modest positive growth in our fiscal Q3 due to the expectation that the targeted stimulus program and a modest improvement in government funding will slowly materialize.
As a side note, Jim and I were just in China to visit our team and of course, to meet a variety of our customers. It was clear that our team remains extremely motivated and committed to our mission, and our customers continue to value the consistent quality across the breadth of our portfolio. In the long term, the modernization of health care will remain a high priority for the Chinese government and Bio-Techne is looking forward to playing a key role in enabling the evolution of health care for its citizens and the world.
Now let's discuss our growth pillars, starting with our portfolio of cell therapy workflow solutions. During the quarter, we experienced robust growth within our GMP reagents portfolio as customers that are progressing their advanced therapeutics for later-stage clinical trials require materially more temper reagents. We now have over 500 customers lying on our GMP reagents for their cell therapy across all stages of development. Within this expanding customer base, 85 are in various phases of clinical trials, including 6 currently in Phase III.
For Q2, our GMP reagents revenue increased over 90%. As a reminder, our GMP reagents business can be lumpy as orders from customers further along their clinical trials can be much larger, therefore, order timing can make quarterly growth volatile. So we view trailing 12-month revenue as a better performance indicator. Our current TTM for our GMP reagents sits just over 40% organically.
Now let's discuss our protein analysis growth pillar, where we experienced strong sales momentum across our portfolio of automated workflow solutions. Once again, the ease of use, precision and reproducibility offered by our Simple Western automated Western blood instrument, our Simple Plex automated multiplexing immunoassay system, and our spatial biologics platform drove strong consumable utilization on our installed base.
Customers continue to appreciate the labor and cost savings these innovative platforms bring to their laboratories. Overall, instrument specific consumables increased high teens in the quarter. This marks eight out of the last nine quarters where we delivered at least double-digit consumable growth across our growing installed base.
It was not just consumables that showed strength, though. We also experienced growth in new instrument placements. Globally, our instruments increased low single digits for the quarter and grew mid-single digits, excluding China. This marks the first quarter in the last two years in which we delivered positive instrument growth.
Separately, I'd like to congratulate the team on the successful early access launch of our next-generation, high-throughput Simple Western platform called LEO. The team capitalized on our growing order funnel and shipped several of these high-end LEO instruments at the end of the quarter.
Wrapping up our platform discussion, I'd like to give an update on MauriceFlex. Our biopharma customers are increasingly utilizing MauriceFlex for protein analysis in a rapidly growing number of gene therapy applications as well as sample fractionation methods for mass spectrometry sample preparation. During the quarter, we announced a co-marketing agreement with Waters Corporation, aiming to expand the market awareness of the biotherapeutic characterization capabilities of the MauriceFlex.
Now let's turn to our core portfolio of research use only, or RUO, proteomics reagents. Let me highlight that over the last [four to eight] years, we've amassed a catalog of over 6,000 proteins and 400,000 antibody types. This biological content is relied upon by customers across the globe to gain novel insights into biological pathways to develop and manufacture advance therapeutics and to enable precision diagnostics.
Our everyday run rate business continued to modestly improve sequentially while larger bulk orders of our RUO reagents to biopharma customers also picked up in the quarter. We view this as an indicator that our end markets are gradually starting to improve. All in, our core portfolio of RUO reagents grew low single digits in the quarter.
Sticking with our core reagent portfolio, I wanted to give an update on our AI initiatives within Bio-Techne. As we have mentioned in the past, we see tremendous potential leveraging AI to develop proteins and antibodies with enhanced functionality.
During the quarter, we continued to utilize our internal know-how and our fast data set, which we generated over the last several decades to train our generative AI models and develop designer proteins. These patentable proteins are engineered to exhibit hyperactive properties, announced heat stability and other mobile features. These attributes are relevant for many applications, including cell therapies. We added four new designer proteins to our catalog in Q2, bringing the total portfolio to 6. You can expect a steady cadence of new designer protein launches going forward.
Overall, I'm very excited for the Protein Sciences team as they delivered 8% organic revenue growth. This is the best performance of this segment since the market headwinds that were related to the aftermath of the pandemic began in the first quarter of our fiscal 2023.
Now we will move to the growth pillars within our diagnostics and spatial biology segment, which delivered 12% organic growth in the quarter. That started with our spatial biology business, where we continue to make significant progress with the launch of the COMET system, a fully automated multiomic spatial biology instrument. As a reminder, we recently enabled our new scope capabilities on the COMET to allow for visualization of up to 24 proteins and 12 RNA targets simultaneously.
We are actively upgrading COMET's installed base to enable researchers to fully leverage the multiomic capabilities of the platform. Additionally, we continue to launch Bio-Techne's RNA systems-branded antibodies for use on the COMET system. The RNA scope capabilities, paired with the growing portfolio of validated antibodies, will support a consumable stream that is expected to be the highest pull-through of any instrument under the Bio-Techne umbrella. During the quarter, our special biology revenue increased mid-teens, and we are positioned for continued leadership in this fast-evolving space.
Next, I'd like to give an update on our Precision Diagnostic tools business, previously referred to as a molecular diagnostics business. We believe the new name is a better reflection of the focus of this team, which is to provide clinical laboratories with precise diagnostic tools that leverage our exosome-based diagnostic technology combined with Asuragen's proprietary chemistries.
During the quarter, we announced the launch of a test for ESR1 mutations in breast cancer. This is the first kitted test to utilize our exosome-based technology and Asuragen chemistries. We commercialized this test through a laboratory channel, which we also obtained for the acquisition of Asuragen. Meanwhile, our ExoDx prostate cancer test continues to enjoy rapid adoption as unit volume grew more than 30% in the quarter.
In summary, I'm extremely pleased with the execution by the Bio-Techne team across all our businesses globally. We believe that the strength of our growth pillars in cell and gene therapy and proteomics analysis, combined with the momentum that we saw in our core products, are indicative of an early-stage recovery in key biopharma end markets.
If you then add to that, the performance of our best-in-class spatial biology franchise and our high-value precision diagnostic tools platform, you will understand why I'm confident that we have positioned Bio-Techne for continued differentiated growth going forward.
With that, I will turn the call over to Jim. Jim?

James Hippel

Thank you, Kim. I'll start with some additional details on our Q2 financial performance and then give some thoughts on the financial outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. Starting with the overall second quarter financial performance, adjusted EPS was $0.42 compared to $0.40 in the prior year, with foreign exchange having an unfavorable $0.02 impact. GAAP EPS for the quarter was $0.22 compared to $0.17 in the prior year. Q2 revenue was $297 million, an increase of 9% year-over-year on both a reported and organic basis.
Recapping our organic growth by region and end market in Q2 that you previously heard from Kim, North America and Europe increased low double digits year-over-year, driven by strength from our biopharma customers particularly in our cell therapy and proteomic analysis portfolios, while China and APAC decreased low single digits.
By end market in Q2, excluding China, biopharma increased mid-teens and academia increased mid-single digits in the quarter. Our biopharma business benefited from larger reagent and instrument orders in our pharma and cell therapy end markets, while our run rate business in biopharma showed modest improvement year-over-year.
Below revenue on the P&L, total company adjusted gross margin was 70.5% in the quarter compared to 69.7% last year, driven by the impact of favorable product mix and productivity initiatives.
Adjusted SG&A in Q2 was 32% of revenue compared to 31.2% in the prior year, while R&D expense in Q2 was 8.5% of revenue compared to 8.4% in the prior year. The increase in SG&A was driven primarily by the reinstatement of incentive compensation accruals, partially offset by the benefit of structural streamlining and diligent expense control.
Adjusted operating margin for Q2 was 30.1%, up 110 basis points sequentially and flat compared to the prior year due to the impact of favorable volume leverage and cost control, offset by the reinstatement of incentive compensation accruals. We continue to execute cost containment measures and prioritize our growth initiatives to drive efficiencies throughout the organization with the goal of optimizing operating leverage during the ensuing market recovery.
Looking at our numbers below operating income, net interest expense in Q2 was $0.7 million, decreasing $2.7 million compared to the prior year due to lower net debt levels. Our bank debt on the balance sheet as of the end of Q2 stood at $300 million, unchanged from last quarter. Other adjusted nonoperating expense was $1.3 million in the quarter, an increase of $4.4 million compared to the prior year. The increase was driven by the foreign exchange impact related to our overseas cash pooling arrangement.
Moving further down the P&L, our adjusted effective tax rate in Q2 was 21.5%, down 50 basis points compared to prior year due to geographic mix.
Turning to cash flow and return of capital. $84.3 million of cash was generated from operations in the quarter, and our net investment in capital expenditures was $6.8 million. Also during Q2, we returned capital to shareholders by a way of $12.7 million in dividends and $75.6 million through a 1.1 million share stock buyback. We finished the quarter with 160.6 million average diluted shares outstanding.
Our balance sheet finished Q2 in a strong position with $177.5 million in cash, and our total leverage ratio remains well below 1 times EBITDA. Going forward, M&A remains a top priority for capital allocation.
Next, I'll discuss the performance of our reporting segments, starting with the protein sciences segment. Q2 reported sales were $211.6 million, with reported revenue increasing 7% compared to the prior year. The exclusion of the fetal bovine serum business, which was classified as held-for-sale business and subsequently divested in the quarter, unfavorably impacted reported segment revenue growth by 1%.
Thus, organic revenue for this segment increased 8%. As Kim previously mentioned, the strength in the segment's organic growth was driven by our protein analysis portfolio as well as our GMP protein business where several large orders that we initially expected to be placed in our third quarter were requested by our cell therapy customers in Q2.
Operating margin for the protein sciences segment was 41.2%, an increase of 90 basis points compared to prior year as the impact of favorable volume leverage, cost management, and structural alignment initiatives were partially offset by the reinstatement of incentive compensation accruals.
Turning to the diagnostics and spatial biology segment, Q2 sales were $84.1 million, with both reported and organic growth increasing 12% compared to the same quarter last year. All three businesses within this segment are core diagnostics reagents, Facial Biology and Precision Diagnostic tools, all contributed nicely to growth.
Moving on to the diagnostics and spatial biology segment operating margin, at 3.9%, the segment's operating margin decreased compared to the prior year's 6%. Excluding the impact of incentive compensation accrual reinstatement, operating margins would have expanded approximately 200 basis points year-over-year due to the impact of favorable volume leverage. We anticipate improvement in the diagnostics and spatial biology operating margin as Lunaphore continues to scale.
In summary, Q2 was a very solid quarter. Earlier than expected in the fiscal year, we saw improvements in all types of order activity from our larger pharma customers, including CapEx spend for instruments, bulk order reagents requests, and increased daily run rate purchases. We view this as a positive sign that much of the R&D pipeline repositioning by our large pharma customers is behind us, and that a more broad-based increase in R&D funding from discovery through the clinic is more likely in calendar year 2025.
We also saw continued outperformance in our GMP protein business in Q2, although much of this unexpected upside came from the timing of large orders by several cell therapy customers who are progressing their programs through clinical trials. Thus, the organic growth outlook for the second half of fiscal year '25 that we've provided the past two quarters is still intact. For Q3 specifically, this means the upper range of mid-single-digit organic growth.
As you think about our expected organic growth performance in Q3 relative to Q2, there are a couple of headwinds to consider. First, the year-over-year comp in Q3 is more difficult by 4 percentage points than it was in Q2 as our revenue declined 2% in Q2 of last year and then grew 2% the following Q3. Also, the previously mentioned timing of several large GMP protein orders that we had in our recent Q2 are not expected to reoccur in Q3.
However, on a more positive note, the earlier than expected momentum we are seeing from our larger pharma customers, as well as an expected return to growth in China in Q3, allows us to hold the organic revenue outlook that we shared since the beginning of our fiscal year. The early improvement in large pharma activity also strengthens our confidence that we can exit our Q4 with organic growth in the high single digits as we have predicted all year.
As it pertains to reported revenue growth, with the recent strengthening of the US dollar at current foreign exchange rates, we do expect a headwind of approximately 1% of sales in the back half of our fiscal year. As much of the top line foreign exchange falls directly to the bottom line of our P&L, we do expect a negative impact to adjusted operating margins by approximately 50 basis points.
Thus, we are now forecasting adjusted operating margins in the second half of fiscal year '25 to be between 50 and 150 basis points higher than the prior year. This still represents a significant step-up in margin from the first half of the fiscal year due to higher volume leverage, continued improving product mix, and the full impact from productivity initiatives.
That concludes my prepared comments. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator to open the line for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Puneet Souda, Leerink Partners.

Puneet Souda

Yeah, hi guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, congrats on the quarter here, really strong. But can you talk a little bit about the pull forward that you saw from 3Q to 2Q in cell and gene therapy GMP products? You seem to be talking about essentially the biopharma momentum continuing, China also improving, so that is offsetting. But can you elaborate a bit on where you have more confidence in recovery among those sort of 3 vectors that you talked about? Where you think you'll have recovery in the third quarter, whereas were there things could be more -- a little bit softer just given the backdrop of the market right now and sort of the concerns around NIH as well?

Kim Kelderman

Yeah, Puneet, thank you very much for your question. First of all, I think let me talk about the cell and gene therapy orders you mentioned. Fortunately, we're very happy to see that there is tremendous traction there, right? We grew about 90% on the GMP proteins. And some of these larger orders, right, from customers that are further down in their clinical studies we have anticipated for the second half of the fiscal year.
And upon customers' demand, these were pulled into Q2 and were delivered earlier than we originally anticipated. This, of course, drove several points of growth, and we feel confident that this is also a very positive sign for the overall markets, and we're quite happy with the traction we have there.
Going to China, we did see that the replacement funding, some early effects in our Q2 and a handful of instruments were sold related to this replacement funding. We know it's a three-year plan so we expect continued traction related to the funding.
And then the interesting thing is that the China National Science funding, which you can apply for during the calendar Q1 and the deadline is March 20, that should also provide some additional lift in China that eventually, our forecast or our original projection that we anticipated for China, where we would go from slightly negative to positive growth in Q3, we're still very confident with that view. And maybe, Jim, you want to add something?

James Hippel

Yes, sure. So Puneet, think the only thing I'd add is that it gives us confidence with regards to holding our forecast in Q3 despite the timing of the cell and gene therapy of large orders is really the broad-based strength we saw across pharma. As I mentioned in my comments, it wasn't just cell and gene therapy. We saw it, of course, in our instrument portfolio -- our Protein Simple franchise did phenomenally well, especially in large pharma.
And even our run rate business within the large pharma also improved from our prior quarter. So it's -- that's what gives us some confidence that it's a broad-based large pharma start of recovery. It's not back to normal yet. Our run rates aren't back to normal, but it was a noticeable improvement from the prior quarter.
And you mentioned NIH and concern around that, so I'll kind of hit that head on as well. It is very early days and all the kind of noise and chatter and a lot of what's happening, what we're reading is that's not all that unusual in terms of what happens in administrative change with regards to kind of freezing or holding certain department funds as the new administration comes in and assess.
All I can tell you is that so far in January, we've seen no -- we've actually seen improvement in our academic overall growth rates and improvement in our run rate as well. So we're not overly concerned about the noise you're hearing out of Washington right now regarding NIH.

Puneet Souda

Got it. Just quickly, if I could ask on your updated thoughts on M&A, your ability to lever just given the backdrop of the market and some of the challenges that some of the small cap tools companies are seeing, how does that shape your opportunity base when looking at M&A?

Kim Kelderman

Yeah, M&A will continue to be a priority for capital deployment. And during the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, we've been relatively clear as to our strategy and where we feel we would like to add to our portfolio. Fortunately, we don't really have any huge gap so it's not that we have to move. But we do like the area of discovery of novel biological insights, right? There are various analytical platforms that we will be interested in.
And we would love to continue to support the development and manufacturing of advanced therapeutics. And you ought to think about any processes that are sitting before and/or after the G-Rex and any other analytical tools that would support the cell and gene therapy workflows. So those are really the areas that we are very interested in.
And we do have a nice timeframe here between the acquisition of Wilson Wolf at the end of 2027. And right now, with a very strong balance sheet and a very, very precise strategy and capable management to integrate a new M&A activity.

Puneet Souda

It's good, helpful guys. Thank you.

Kim Kelderman

Thank you.

Operator

Daniel Leonard, UBS.

Dan Leonard

Thank you. I want to circle back on a couple of Puneet's points. I guess, first off, when you think about your current run rate business, where do you think you're currently trending? Is it that upper mid-single-digit figure you talked about for Q3, and then you need progressive market improvement to hit the high single digit for Q4? Is that the way to -- the right way to normalize what you called out as being positive lumps in the December quarter?

James Hippel

I'll try to answer your question, if I understand it correctly. It's about our run rate. So our day-to-day run rate business is going to perform closer to the overall market, and it's our growth vectors, our growth pillars that we talk about that really caused us to have the differentiation and the acceleration versus the market. And so the way to think about that is that our run rate is performing closer to market, but the market is gradually improving and thus so are our run rates.
So our run rate growth is lagging the overall company growth. In a normalized market of mid-single-digit growth, we do expect our run rate business to be at least mid-single-digit growth. And when it is, we expect to be a double-digit growth company because of our growth vectors and the acceleration that provides, if that helps?

Dan Leonard

Okay. And just a quick follow-up, Jim. The comment you made on January run rate, was that in academic -- a US academic and government comment specifically? Or were you more commenting broadly on your run rate business in the month of January?

James Hippel

That was a specific comment regarding the US academic market.

Kim Kelderman

Dan, This is Kim. I would like help you quantify the NIH exposure. Jim was talking about the overall academic market globally, which represents about 21% of our revenues. And then if you think about the US portion of that is about half of that, which is 11%. And then if you think about NIH exposure, you would say it about more or less half of that. So that would be mid-single digits. And then revenue directly related to NIH itself would be less than 1% of our revenue. So that really kind of scopes for you the exposure there.

Dan Leonard

Sure, thank you, but the January comment was specific to that 10%-ish of revenue that's US academia government, correct?

James Hippel

Yeah, that is correct.

Dan Leonard

All right, perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Jacob Johnson, Stephens.

Hannah Hefley

Hi, Thanks for taking the question. This is actually Hannah on for Jacob. How much of a benefit from larger cell therapy customers? Do you think there was in the quarter? Is there any way you could quantify this for us?

Kim Kelderman

Yeah. I can give it an initial shot, and then Jim can follow up. The -- so I don't think we really quantify the mix there, but we did see a very nice traction of our customers in general. So overall order rate from our by now 500 customers in this field is doing really well. But in the meantime, several of these customers are moving up the chain if it comes to their clinical studies. And we used to talk about 57 of those being in clinicals rather than in preclinicals. And by now, those are 85 customers that are in the clinical stages, of which 13 or so in Phase II, and then a little bit more than a handful, 6 to 8 that are sitting in the Phase III clinical stages.
And of course, these -- the customers that are sitting in these later-stage clinical trials, those orders are also relatively larger and that creates some of the lumpiness that we've talked about in the past. But nonetheless, we are growing 40% organically if you look at the 12 months trailing, which is very encouraging and that's also where we hope or expect to be.

James Hippel

And I'll just add a little bit to an answer Kim gave to Puneet around the same topic around the larger cell and gene therapy customers and what got accelerated into Q2 that was originally forecasted in Q3. There was about 2 points of overall growth that was attributed to that for cell and gene therapy. I think Kim mentioned 3, but that's because there was probably another point of revenue that also moved within our core diagnostics reagent division.
So we talk about that, we talk about that for years. It's a very lumpy business and it's not always easy to predict exactly when those orders will come through from our large customers there, and we saw some orders there come in earlier than expected as well, and that won't necessarily repeat either. So I'd say about 2 points that's coming from cell and gene therapy large customers and about 1 point is from our diagnostic reagents [to visit] core division.

Hannah Hefley

Thanks, and then you also mentioned that instruments grew in 2Q. Could you just talk about, is this comment around placements growing again versus consumables?

Kim Kelderman

Yes, it is. We're very proud that we, on the consumables side, have had eight out of the last nine quarters in which we grew double digits on the consumables side. And we always anticipated that such growth in consumables kind of indicates a capacity constraint eventually in the market, and therefore, we anticipated that at some point in placements of our instruments would be growing again. And this quarter, we indeed went back into the black when it comes to growth in our installment base.

Hannah Hefley

All right. Thanks. I'll leave it there.

Operator

Matt Larew, William Blair

Matt Larew

Hi good morning, You referenced the academic market and mentioned that within biopharma, mid-teens. Wondering if you could break that out? Is it still -- it sounds like it's mainly large pharma where most of the recovery is. What, if any, recovery are you seeing in terms of the smaller customers for the biotech customers? Or if not, are you seeing any signs of green shoots?

Kim Kelderman

I can answer high level and then have Jim double-click on it. The overall, the biotech portion of our end markets, which is around 30% of our revenues, was more or less recovering in line with our expectations. And you might remember how we laid out the year and our expectations in the different markets. And we certainly expected some of the good biotech funding to trickle through into that market. And that is happening in line with our expectations.
A little bit better than expected is large pharma. And that's driving some additional momentum in our Q2 at the last quarter of the calendar year. And we're quite happy to see that momentum. It gives us confidence that our second half will also roll out in line with our expectations.

James Hippel

Yeah. The only thing I would add, Kim, is that we're not claiming full recovery mode yet in either one of those markets. But we did continue to see the smaller biotechs gradually progress. And as Kim alluded to, what was a nice surprise was with the beginning of the recovery in larger pharma that we weren't really expecting until April, May time frame, we started to see that already here in our Q2, which was nice.

Matt Larew

Okay. And then flipping to the Diagnostics and Spatial side. I want to focus on Lunaphore. Obviously, there's been a couple of mergers in the space in the past six months. You now are about a year or so into launching the multiomic solutions to RNAscope. What is your assessment of the competitive landscape at this point?
And then what's key to flipping that from really a significant operating margin headwind into more of a tailwind? Is it just a function of consumable pull-through? Or are you having any issues on the manufacturing side with the instruments? Good to get a sense for how that will progress throughout the year?

Kim Kelderman

Yeah. Thanks for the question. So there has been activity in the market, which we deem positive. A positive sign overall that spatial biology is a market to be in. Yes, a year ago, we launched the COMET, and we have been very happy with the uptake and the capabilities of an instrument.
I do want to correct you a little bit that the RNAscope capabilities, at least in the multiomic setting, have been launched last quarter. So those are rolling out as we speak. And then we've also been able to launch 45 R&D systems-branded antibodies on the instrument. And with that, we expect the pull-through of consumables on the COMET to be one of the higher pull-through instruments in our portfolio.
We do not have any manufacturing constraints anymore on this product line, which is good to know. And I forgot the third leg of your question. But do you mind repeating that part?

Matt Larew

Oh yeah, just had you've obviously called it out as a headwind to operating parts and in on that site and so I mean [that's flipping], yes.

Kim Kelderman

Yes. So the two components there, of course, will help. And one is continued uptake of selling the instruments, right? And then the pull-through, if it comes to the reagents. And both will be very important going forward to us. So we are measuring us against hitting certain milestones. And we see positive traction in both these aspects as well. So our profitability will increase as a result of those finding the traction.

Operator

Catherine Schulte, Baird.

Catherine Ramsey

Hey guys, thanks for the questions. Maybe first on China. What was regent performance versus instrumentation in the quarter? And how do you expect that to trend in 3Q as that region returns to growth?

James Hippel

I would say that the growth was relatively comparable for the two. Again, it was very stable at low single-digit declines in China, and we see it gradually improving and turning to the black in our Q3. And I think it will be very comparable again, both on the instrument side as well as the reagents. So not a notable difference there.

Catherine Ramsey

Okay. Great. And then maybe for RUO reagents, you said up low single digits in the quarter. What was academic versus pharma performance there? And what's your expectation for that as we get into the back half of the year?

James Hippel

I'm sorry, Katherine, academic versus pharma performance with regards to what?

Catherine Ramsey

Within RUO region?

James Hippel

RUO reagents. Actually, it was, again, relatively comparable, but slightly stronger in Europe with respect to the RUO run rate reagents both in biopharma and in academic. But again, both our European and US growth totals were like within 1 point or 2 of each other. So we're not talking about a massive difference.

Catherine Ramsey

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Dan Arias, Stifel.

Dan Arias

Morning guys. Thanks for the questions, Jim, two for you on GMP reagents, if I could. Number 1 is, what kind of growth expectations do you have for that piece next quarter? Obviously, you have the pull forward that you mentioned, but it does sound like you like the overall direction that, that business is headed in. So just given how wide the range has been for that piece, it will be helpful if you could kind of put some guardrails just on what we might see there.
And then the second question is, can you comment on where the margin profile for that business is? I mean, I know you don't get too specific on individual parts of the portfolio, but it's a piece that's moving the needle and so it would just be helpful to understand the mix impact that, that business has as it accelerates. Thanks so much.

James Hippel

Sure. I appreciate the question, Dan. As you know, we don't give guidance down to that level of fidelity. What I'd say is that it is -- as we talk about with these large orders, it can be very lumpy. If you back out the larger orders, the underlying growth of our customers continues to increase every quarter in cell and gene therapy and the revenues do as well.
We talked about the TTM being roughly 40%. I cannot necessarily say it's going to be that next quarter, but it will definitely not be the large contributor to growth that it was this quarter, which, again, I think as I said a lot about the underlying strength of the rest of the business and the end markets improving and the fact that we can still hold our forecast for Q3 that we've been saying all year.
With regards to the margin profile, it is a very nice profitable business for us and not quite as profitable as our core RUO reagents, but very, very close. It's probably the second most profitable product line within our business. But again, we're not necessarily calling that out as any kind of margin issue for Q3, even though that mix will change just because we do see continued improvement within our RUO business that will compensate for that.

Dan Arias

Okay. Just to maybe get you on the growth. So it sounds like for GMP reagents, we can model that up, decently up, but not anywhere near where it's been for the first half of the year? Is that fair?

James Hippel

That's fair.

Dan Arias

That's fair. Okay, thank you.

Operator

Conor McNamara, RBC.

Connor McNamara

Hey guys, thanks for the time and congrats on a really strong quarter. First off, on the handful of programs in cell gene therapy that are in late-stage Phase II or Phase III, is there any way you could quantify or give us color on those programs and the incremental opportunity as those advance either from Phase II to Phase III or as they come to market?

Kim Kelderman

That's really hard, Conor. The -- so in general, you would see roughly double the size and orders that each time there is a clinical progress to the next stage. But then again, it really varies with how often the customer orders and how large the clinical study really is. So there's -- it's really hard to give you a standard template there. It really depends on each customer.

Connor McNamara

Okay. That two axes. That's helpful. And then just on cell and gene therapy strength, how did Wilson Wolf do in the quarter? And can you remind us if there's any opportunity to consolidate that prior to 2027 given this rebound you're seeing in that end market? Thanks for that.

James Hippel

Yeah, I'll take that one. So with regard to Wilson Wolf, I would say that their core growth business mean they're noncommercial wise businesses was consistent with our earlier stage growth. So we're seeing consistency across the cell and gene therapy market there.
I will remind you that they have five customers now that are commercialized and just the preliminary forecast from just the -- from three of those alone will be enough to put them into very, very, very solid double-digit growth for calendar year 2025. So future is very bright there.

Operator

Patrick Donnelly, Citi.

Patrick Donnelly

Hey guys, thanks for taking the questions. Maybe a follow-up on China. I know you guys mentioned you were over there last month. Can you just talk about, I guess, what you saw in terms of the environment, confidence level in terms of the recovery. Obviously, a lot of noise over there. Just curious from the ground, what you guys saw and the expectations there?

Kim Kelderman

Yeah. I think a couple of aspects. We -- the drive to continue the research in life sciences continues to be there. I am certain in the country would love to make big steps forward in in designing treatments and helping the Chinese citizens as well as the world getting access to better treatments.
On the other hand, we are encouraged that there are some more activities on the funding, government funding level, which historically has been elevated compared to the last couple of years. So we do see some increased activity there again, and that's also why our expectations are that China is going to be back into the positive growth slightly.
But on the other hand, there is no doubt that there is a tough economic environment in China and that things are not all in the green just yet. And we just continue to hope that things will improve and that -- and Bio-Techne will be ready to support all the science activities in order to get to a better situation there.

Patrick Donnelly

Okay. That's helpful. And then, Jim, maybe one for you. It sounds like the margins in 2H, FX is a little bit of an offset there. Can you just talk about the moving pieces, the expansion opportunity, and again, anything else under the hood other than FX in terms of the shift for 2H? Thank you guys.

James Hippel

Yeah, sure. So nothing's changed with regards to our outlook in the second half margin. We knew we initially guided to 100 to 200 basis points higher in the beginning of the year. Now with the changes in FX, as you heard me say in this call earlier, there's about a 50-point headwind into that, but still significant margin improvement year-over-year at 50 to 150 basis points, in that range. And the even more significant step-up when you think about it sequentially from the first half of the second half.
And it just shows the power of our contribution margin that comes from our products. So with the -- both the seasonality and the continued acceleration of our growth year-over-year, but also sequentially seasonality wise, that step-up in revenue has very nice pull-through. And we've done a lot to make organizational efficiencies over the past 1.5 years to be ready -- more ready than ever for margin expansion when the growth returns. So that's been the story all year and hasn't changed.
And that, coupled with, not just the volume leverage, but also the mix improvement as we saw this quarter when PSS returned to solid growth, you can see the great pull-through that we get from that. And we expect that to continue in the second half.

Patrick Donnelly

Thank you, guys.

Operator

Sung Ji Nam, Scotiabank

Sung Ji Nam

Hi, thanks for taking the questions. Maybe on the AI capabilities and the new designer proteins, would you be able to comment on kind of how Bio-Techne stacks up against competitors on that front? How game-changing is this capability in this industry right now? And kind of what the competitive advantages are moving forward?

Kim Kelderman

Thank you for the question. We do believe that this -- the AI engineered antibodies as well as proteins will -- are truly a stepwise change in innovation. We do believe there are sustainable advantages because these products are patentable. And we have combined our tremendous internal know-how and the fast database that we build over last couple of decades and invested very early in the AI capabilities. And you really need all three to be successful there.
And I know that we were uniquely positioned to grab this opportunity and run with it. And if you think about the benefits of having these AI engineered proteins, the hyperactivity, temperature stable, so you can really boost your cell-based work. And then the enhanced receptor binding are all very differentiated features and really things that were not possible in the past.
And yeah, we think we will create a real nice stepping ladder for customers where you would normally be constrained to only RUO versions of these proteins, but now you can get enhanced activities by picking the AI designed proteins. And then of course, you can step up to the GMP versions of our proteins, and eventually, we will launch the GMP AI engineered proteins. So we will have a real nice continuum for customers to lean on.

Sung Ji Nam

Great. That's super helpful. And then just on the spatial bio side. The RNAscope assays on the comment that you just launched. Just curious, how quickly do you expect the customers to adopt the multiomics capabilities? Whether that would require further market development? And then also how -- for the clinical market, I think you're gaining good traction there as well, whether the multiomic capabilities also will be a competitive advantage? Thank you.

Kim Kelderman

Thanks for that question as well. Yeah, I think that having the multiomic capability, and we're truly the only provider of multiomics in the spatial market where our customers can look at 12 RNA targets and 24 protein targets, all in parallel on the same slide. And then having the COMET with the features of very high throughput, you can use off-the-shelf antibodies that you've been using in the past so you don't have to change your experiments. 4 slides simultaneously that will give you 20 slides throughput in a week. Those are all market-leading performances. And I think that we're really set up to continue to do really well in the spatial market.
The -- currently, we have key opinion leaders really working with the multiomic capabilities, and we envision this rolling out throughout the market. The instrument is very stable, easy to use and so are reagents. So I don't feel that there's a lot of market development to be done. It was truly the rollout of the product and the solution.
And then last, but not least, you're right, our footprint in clinical has continued to outpace the growth of this overall spatial biology market. So we're really happy that our RNAscope product line, for example, is stable enough and relevant enough to perform in the clinical markets. And also there, we feel that we're one of the few spatial biology solutions that have been successful in the clinical space. So I think we're very, very confident that we're really well positioned to continue to outperform there.

Operator

Paul Knight, KeyBanc.

Lucas Baranowski

Hi. This is Lucas on for Paul Knight. Just kind of sticking with the theme of the previous question. In the press release, you called out signs of improvement for some of your instrumentation businesses. Was the COMET one of those instruments you saw an uptick in interest for? And how are placements for that trending generally? Thanks.

Kim Kelderman

Yes. When we talk about our instruments, we really talk mostly about our protein analytical instrumentation portfolio, which we were very encouraged about getting back into the black. And this is excluding the special biology COMET platform. That still sits and gets reported in the spatial biology vertical, if that answers your question?

James Hippel

I'll just follow on to say that the interest in that still remains very, very high and the growth rates are still very, very, very strong. So yeah.

Lucas Baranowski

And then just one final question. I believe you were expecting China stimulus to primarily benefit your automated western blot equipment. Is that still what you are seeing? Or as interest broaden out to other product groups?

Kim Kelderman

I think you're correct that that will be the primary product line that we will see traction. But then again, we have really good traction in the biological platform as well. So we feel that all three of our platforms will be in a much better position in China going forward.

Lucas Baranowski

Excellent. That's all I had.

Operator

Thank you. Mr. Kelderman, I would now like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Kim Kelderman

Yeah. Thank you, and thanks, everybody, for joining the call today, and of course, for your insightful questions. I'm extremely proud of the accomplishments and the results the Bio-Techne team has been able to deliver this quarter.
And our differentiated portfolio addresses some of the highest growth markets in life sciences and is positioned to deliver best-in-class performance for all our stakeholders going forward. So with that, I want to thank you, and have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.