Your background is quite impressive.

Regarding the Cytiva piece, I was surprised it was approved. Cytiva still has about 80% of the market in chromatography resins, which is huge. They could never get a filtration company and were in competition with Danaher for buying Pall. The same goes for Thermo Fisher. The pairing of Pall and Cytiva has been great for them as we move forward, as long as they don't become too insensitive to customer demands. Sometimes with big companies, that can happen.

There's a lot to unpack there. On your last point, could you elaborate on what you mean by being too insensitive to customer demands? Are they culturally more like mercenaries instead of partners with their customers?

Thermo Fisher, Pall Cytiva, Sartorius, and Millipore captured market share by giving away razors, at cost ,to capture consumables. Now that facility expansions have slowed down, I think there will be a more challenging road ahead for them in the next couple of years.

Your perspective seems more cynical than others I've heard from, who expect maybe another two quarters of destocking on inventories and repurposing Covid equipment to other areas. They believe that by the second half of this year, we might see similar growth levels as pre-Covid. Why do you think you're more cynical than most, and how do you see this playing out over the next couple of years?

The available capacity today compared to a year ago is quite drastic. I don't have exact numbers, but I suspect that where people were close to capacity, now only about 70% is utilized. I think demand for future builds will drop a bit until we know more about the recession or non-recession. From what I've heard, funding is not as readily available, and people with ideas have to justify their business plans, with VCs being more disciplined in their decision-making.