Mr. Ro: About 25 companies. I cover Life Technologies, Illumina, Thermo Fisher, Waters (WAT), PerkinElmer (PKI), Bruker (BRKR), Millipore (MIL). I cover Gen-Probe (GPRO), Hologic (HOLX), Qiagen, IMA (IMA), Genomic Health (GHDX), Myriad Genetics (MYGN), Luminex (LMNX) along with a number of of other companies.
TWST: Generally speaking, what is the status of the sector right now? How do things look for life science tools and diagnostics?
Mr. Ro: Pretty good, actually. Obviously 2009 was a tough year for everybody. But these companies weathered the storm reasonably well because they have pretty durable end markets. In some cases, they're levered to improvements in industrial spending. The stocks actually outperformed the markets quite well. The life science tools group was up 50% last year, and the diagnostics group was up nearly 30%.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ILMN, LIFE, Qiagen, TMO
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