Thermo Fisher Scientific, a maker of laboratory equipment, said it will focus on expanding sales in emerging markets to help drive annual revenue growth in the mid-single-digit percentages over the next five years.

Thermo executives, speaking at an investor meeting in New York on Wednesday, set a goal of deriving 25% of company revenue from emerging markets by 2016, up from 19% currently.

The company plans to put a greater focus on South Korea, Brazil and Russia with the aim of replicating the success it has had in China and India, where a huge emphasis on improving air and water quality and in building fledgling pharmaceutical biotech industries has played into Thermo's strengths.

Thermo specializes in high tech lab equipment used in pharmaceutical and biotech research, as well as environmental and food quality testing and medical diagnostics.

"Mid-single-digit topline growth on the back of two years of essentially 3% topline growth is a positive sign," said Morningstar analyst Alex Morozov. "It implies recovery in the U.S. market, it implies European markets not down too much, but a real issue is that emerging market growth is really going to be the driver there."

Chief Financial Officer Peter Wilver laid out the case for the company's long-term growth prospects, whose drivers also include income from recent acquisitions, sales of new products and cost-cutting. The company projected adjusted earnings per share growing in the low to mid-teens each year through 2016.

Based on his projections, the CFO said revenue in 2016 could reach $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion, while adjusted EPS could reach $7.50 to $8.75. The company had revenue of $11.73 billion in 2011 and adjusted earnings of $4.16 per share.

Wilver said he believed the long-range projections to be "entirely achievable."

Thermo Fisher also maintained its 2012 forecast for revenue of $12.27 billion to $12.43 billion and adjusted earnings of $4.71 to $4.83 per share. Wall Street estimates are already above the midpoint of the Thermo range, predicting EPS of $4.80 and revenue of $12.42 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"As the year goes on we typically narrow the range," Chief Executive Marc Casper told Reuters.

Near-term uncertainty

The company said it gave a long-term view due to near-term economic uncertainty, particularly the possibility that failure by the U.S. Congress to agree on a budget would trigger automatic cuts to national spending on research laboratories.

Casper said even if that should happen, he was confident that the company could deliver earnings per share growth of better than 10 % in 2013.

"Since we don't know what's going to happen with government funding it's important to know that these guys are committed to double digit growth," Cowen and Co analyst Doug Shenkel said.

"It shows you the strength of the operating platform that they can actually offset whatever weakness they see in government and still manage to get their earnings growth to double digits," said Morozov. He views Thermo Fisher stock as undervalued at its current price, and sees the fair value as $70 per share.

In the past year, Thermo Fisher bought Phadia, a maker of blood tests for diagnosing and monitoring allergies and autoimmune diseases, and Dionex, a manufacturer of sophisticated laboratory technology. It sees the two companies combined contributing 35 cents per share to 2012 earnings.

Casper said the company would look for deal opportunities, but dismissed questions about whether Thermo would be interested in Illumina for its genetic sequencing products. Illumina recently rejected a $6.8 billion takeover bid by Swiss drugmaker Roche.

"I think we have a great portfolio today," Casper said. "There's not something that we don't have that we have to have."

The company said it still expects cost savings to come from recent acquisitions. It also sees savings of $20 million this year from manufacturing site consolidations and expects to save $20 million annually from expanding manufacturing in lower cost regions, such as China and Eastern Europe.

By 2016, the company sees 50% of its China revenue coming from products manufactured in China.

New products will also fuel growth, executives said. The new Q Exative mass spectrometry machine that does high speed analysis of proteins used in drug research is on track to exceed $100 million in sales this year.