HIGH-TECH
Lab, Measurement, and Test Equipment
World's Most Productive Companies
Instruments & Analytics: Recurring Models Under Funding Pressure
Across research tools, analytical instruments, and factory metrology and automation, these suppliers share four structural traits. They sell a mix of durable instruments and higher-margin recurring revenues, including consumables, reagents, service contracts, and software. They are recurring-revenue instrument makers exposed to biopharma, academic, industrial, and electronics demand cycles. Shared features include installed-base monetization, FX sensitivity, China volatility, and capex gating by funding and rates. Despite near-term variability, secular growth from advanced analytics, bioprocessing, automation, and semiconductor recovery underpins strategies centered on software and bolt-on M&A.
Between 2019 and 2024, five key forces significantly impacted the operating performance of these companies. COVID surges then fade; higher rates and weaker biotech funding slow lab capex; China’s anti-corruption and export controls pressure demand and supply chains; FX swings hit reported growth; yet secular adoption of advanced analytics, automation, and semiconductor recovery persists. Portfolio reshaping and expansion of software and services cushioned volatility.
Flat productivity is consistent with offsetting forces. Efficiency gains from service digitization and automation were offset by COVID whiplash in utilization, elongated sales cycles amid tighter funding, China compliance burdens, export-control diligence, FX headwinds, and integration costs from portfolio reshaping. Net effect: capability up, but measured productivity flat.
2024 productivity dipped as COVID-19 revenue normalized, China’s anti-corruption wave suppressed hospital procurement, labs continued to destock, FX fluctuations hurt reported results, and M&A integrations added costs. Demand recovery remained uneven, resulting in prolonged sales cycles and tight pricing despite improving semiconductor-linked orders.
Top 100 World's Most Productive Companies - Lab, Measurement, and Test Equipment
Productivity Snapshot
The Lab, Measurement & Test Peer Group has faced several challenges over the past six years. The peer group experienced a flat but substantially similar productivity trend compared to many other industries: a surge in productivity from 2020 to 2022, followed by a decline in productivity starting in 2023 and 2024.
- Productivity in the sector has increased by 8.7% overall over the last six years. This Peer Group performed slightly better than the overall average for manufacturers represented in the IPI and follows the general trend of a productivity bump in 2021, followed by a return to stagnation and regression over two years.
- 11 of the 17 companies in this peer group had negative productivity growth in 2024.
- In 2024, Productivity declined by an average of 5.7% across these companies.
- Revvity distinguished itself as the World's Most Productive Company in this peer group by improving productivity nearly six times the average of this peer group through several initiatives, including evolving end-to-end solution sets, AI adoption, Human Capital development through STEM partnerships, and refocusing the portfolio for shorter time to impact.
