Waters Corp. WAT

Waters Corporation, incorporated on December 6, 1991, is an analytical instrument manufacturer. The Company operates through two segments: Waters and TA. The Company designs, manufactures, sells and services high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC and together with HPLC, referred to as LC) and mass spectrometry (MS) technology systems and support products, including chromatography columns, other consumable products and post-warranty service plans. In addition, the Company designs, manufactures, sells and services thermal analysis, rheometry and calorimetry instruments through its TA product line. The Company is also a developer and supplier of software-based products that interface with the Company's instruments, as well as other suppliers' instruments, and are purchased by customers as part of the instrument system.

The Company's products are used by life science, pharmaceutical, biochemical, industrial, nutritional safety, environmental, academic and governmental customers working in research and development, quality assurance and other laboratory applications. The Company's LC and LC-MS instruments are utilized in a range of industries to detect, identify, monitor and measure the chemical, physical and biological composition of materials, and to purify a range of compounds. These instruments are used in drug discovery and development, including clinical trial testing, the analysis of proteins in disease processes (known as proteomics), nutritional safety analysis and environmental testing. LC-MS instruments combine a liquid phase sample introduction and separation system with mass spectrometric compound identification and quantification.

Waters Products and Markets

The Company's HPLC identifies and analyzes the constituent components of a range of chemicals and other materials. HPLC is used to analyze substances in a range of industries for research and development purposes, quality control and process engineering applications. HPLC is also used in a range of other applications, such as analyses of foods and beverages for nutritional labeling and compliance with safety regulations and the testing of water and air purity within the environmental testing industry, as well as applications in other industries, such as chemical and consumer products. HPLC is also used by universities, research institutions and governmental agencies, such as the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and their foreign counterparts that mandate testing requiring HPLC-based methodologies. It manufactures LC instruments that are offered in configurations that allow for varying degrees of automation, from component configured systems for academic teaching and research applications to fully automated systems for regulated testing, and that have a range of detection technologies, from ultra-violet (UV) absorbance to MS, optimized for certain analyses.

The Company manufactures LC systems for the analysis of biologics, as well as an LC detector utilizing evaporative light scattering technology to expand the usage of LC to compounds that are not amenable to UV absorbance detection. Its chemistry consumable products also include environmental and nutritional safety testing products, including Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) and Proficiency Testing (PT) products. MS is an analytical technology that is used to identify unknown compounds, to quantify known materials and to elucidate the structural and chemical properties of molecules by measuring the masses of molecules that have been converted into ions. The Company offers a range of MS instrument systems utilizing various combinations of quadrupole, time-of-flight (Tof) and ion mobility designs. These instrument systems are used in drug discovery and development, as well as for environmental, clinical and nutritional safety testing. The Company's software platform, UNIFI, is a scientific information system. UNIFI joins its suite of informatics products, including Empower Chromatography Data Software, MassLynx Mass Spectrometry Software and NuGenesis Scientific Data Management System. It also offers Symphony Data Pipeline software, which is a client-server application that automates the movement and transformation of large amounts of LC-MS data.

TA Products and Markets

Thermal analysis measures the physical or thermodynamic characteristics of materials as a function of temperature. Thermal analysis techniques are used in the development, production and characterization of materials in various industries, such as plastics, chemicals, automobiles, pharmaceuticals and electronics. Rheometry characterizes the flow properties of materials and measures their viscosity, elasticity and deformation under various types of loading or other conditions. Thermal analysis, rheometry and calorimetry instruments are used in material testing laboratories and, in many cases, provide information useful in predicting the suitability and stability of industrial polymers, fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, water, metals and viscous liquids in various industrial, consumer goods and healthcare products, as well as for life science research.

The Company competes with Agilent Technologies, Inc., Shimadzu Corporation, Bruker Corporation, Danaher Corporation, PerkinElmer, Inc., Mettler-Toledo International Inc., NETZSCH-Geraetebau GmbH, Malvern Instruments Ltd., Anton-Paar GmbH, Merck KGaA, General Electric Company and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.