Maravai LifeSciences Holdings, Inc. (MRVI) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, and welcome, everyone, joining today's Maravai LifeSciences Q1 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Deb Hart, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. The press release and slides accompanying today's call are posted on our website and available at investors.maravai.com. As you can see from the agenda on Slide 2, our CEO, Bernd Brust, will provide a business update; and our CFO, Raj Asarpota, will review our financial results. Dr. Chanfeng Zhao, our Chief Scientific Officer, will join us for the Q&A session. Management will make forward-looking statements and refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures during today's call. It's possible that actual results could differ from expectations. We refer you to Slide 3 for details on forward-looking statements and our use of non-GAAP financial measures. The press release provides reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, and we also post reconciling schedules to our investor website. Please also refer to Maravai's SEC filings for additional information on the risks and uncertainties that may impact our operating results, performance and financial condition. Now I'll turn the call over to Bernd.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our first quarter performance, which represents a strong start to 2026 and builds on the momentum we exited with last year. The quarter results reflect solid execution across the business and reinforce our confidence in the trajectory we outlined on our call in February. Turning to Slide 5. We delivered total Q1 revenue of $65.8 million. That's 41% year-over-year growth and 10% year-over-year growth in our base business when you exclude COVID-related CleanCap revenue. This performance was driven by improved TriLink demand, steady contribution from Cygnus and continued progress against our strategic priorities. TriLink revenue grew 65% year-over-year with a base business growth of 15%, supported by strong demand in both GMP and Discovery consumables. At Cygnus, revenue grew a little more than 1% year-over-year. We saw solid underlying momentum with high single-digit growth in North America and low single-digit growth in EMEA, reinforcing our confidence in the positioning of the business. This was partially offset by lower contribution from China due to distributor ordering timing. From a profitability standpoint, we delivered adjusted gross margin of 65.3% and adjusted EBITDA of $20.3 million. These results reflect the benefit of higher revenue, favorable product and customer mix and the cost disciplines we have implemented across the organization. We also generated $4.2 million of positive free cash flow in the quarter, which is the first time the company has been cash flow positive since Q3 of 2024. We see this as another clear indication that the structural improvements we have made are taking hold. Given our strong start to the year and improved visibility into the balance of 2026, we are increasing the range for our full year revenue expectations and substantially raising our EBITDA guidance. Raj will walk through that in more detail shortly. Now let's turn to Slide 6 for an update on our performance against our three strategic pillars: commercial execution, operational excellence and, of course, innovation. Starting with commercial execution. We are seeing strong momentum across the business. Our increased focus on customer engagement is translating into better forecasting, improved visibility and stronger order conversion. We are securing more annual and multi-quarter purchase orders, which is improving the stability and predictability of our revenue base. This is a meaningful shift from where we were a year ago and reflects the effectiveness of the changes we have made in our commercial go-to-market approach. That said, our business has a disproportionate number of large orders that can result in quarter-over-quarter performance variation. Large orders tend to align with customer program progression. And as a result, revenue can vary between periods. What gives us confidence is not the timing of any single order, but the strength and continued expansion of the underlying opportunity funnel. Within TriLink, our portfolio now spans enabling technologies such as CleanCap and ModTail, along with custom and catalog mRNA, enzymes, oligonucleotides, including guide RNAs and a broad range of nucleotide chemistries, including NTPs. This breadth allows us to participate more deeply across the mRNA and gene therapy workflows. We also recently launched all-in-one IVT kits, which simplify the production of capped RNA and provide early-stage researchers with easier access to our platform. At TriLink, our model continues to work as intended. We establish relationships early in discovery, embed our technologies and customer workflows and then grow with those programs as they advance into GMP. Mentions of TriLink technologies and scientific publications remain strong, underscoring their role in customer workflows, which we view as an important leading indicator of future demand. A key highlight in the quarter is the continued adoption of ModTail. We now have more than 70 customers using this technology across both large pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechs. We are seeing growth in new customers, repeat orders and increasing use across multiple applications. We also see continued strength in our GMP funnel with GMP customers expected to grow 22% in 2026, representing nine existing RUO customers transitioning to GMP customers, two of which we have already converted this year. Many of these programs are progressing into later clinical stages, which supports the durability of the demand as a long-term GMP supplier. At Cygnus, we saw growth from our newer DNA quantification and extraction kits as well as from our MockV product offering. These product lines extend us beyond our traditional HCP franchise into adjacent applications. While still early, we are encouraged by the traction we are seeing as customers look for high-quality analytical tools across their development and manufacturing workflows. And finally, at Cygnus, our kits continue to play a critical role in the market with a 100% attach rate supporting the safety testing of all 29 of the 29 FDA or EMA-approved CAR T cell and gene therapies. Now turning to operational excellence. This remains a core focus and a key driver of our improved financial performance. The restructuring actions we implemented last year continue to deliver results, and we now expect to achieve more than $65 million in annual EBITDA savings. These savings span labor, facilities and controllable spend and are creating a more efficient and scalable cost structure. This is clearly reflected in our margins. We are benefiting from both cost discipline and a favorable product mix, particularly as higher-margin GMP consumables represent a larger portion of our revenue. At the same time, our operating model is now positioned to absorb incremental volume without significant increases in fixed costs, supporting continued margin expansion as we grow revenue. We are also making progress on our digital and operational initiatives. Our e-commerce channel continues to expand with more customers placing orders directly through our platform, improving speed and efficiency. In Q1, our website delivered record revenue, reflecting both improved customer engagement and the scalability of our digital platform. Finally, turning to R&D. Our focus remains on translating innovation into revenue and strengthening our competitive position across our customers' workflows. At TriLink, we are making strong progress on our enzymes portfolio. Our GMP facility has now been completed, and we expect to launch GMP quality enzymes this quarter. Early customer engagement has been encouraging, and we see this as an important extension of our capabilities. With ModTail, we are building on the strong discovery adoption and expect to launch GMP-grade ModTail later this year. We are already seeing customer demand for GMP material to support clinical programs. This is a clear example of how our innovation pipeline feeds future revenue growth. More broadly, our portfolio continues to diversify across custom mRNA kits and catalog mRNA, complementing our existing CleanCap and oligo product lines. This strengthens our position and reduces reliance on any single product or customer. At Cygnus, in addition to host cell protein assays, which remain the gold standard for clinical and commercial drug product lot release, we now offer an expanded suite of HCP analytical services, utilizing advanced mass spectrometry methods and state-of-the-art instruments. These innovative analytical capabilities deliver critical insights to customers throughout drug development and into commercialization, helping ensure their products remain safe and effective. We continue to invest in and expand our IP portfolio across our core platforms, including CleanCap, ModTail and Cygnus assays. During the first quarter, TriLink received two additional European patents, including further strengthening protection around our CleanCap technology and methods for synthesizing RNA. In addition, Cygnus was granted a new U.S. patent related to its MVP mock viral particle technology, supporting our assay and analytical capabilities. In summary, the first quarter represents an incredible start to the year. We are executing well across all three pillars, driving commercial momentum, delivering operational discipline and advancing innovation. The fundamentals of the business are strong, and we believe we are well positioned for continued growth, margin expansion and cash generation in 2026 and beyond. I'll now ask Raj to provide details on our first quarter performance and our updated guidance. Raj?

Thank you, Bernd. Building on Bernd's comments, the first quarter reflects solid execution across both segments with improving base demand and strong margin flow-through. I'll focus on the key drivers behind the quarter, including revenue composition, profitability and our updated outlook. Let me start with a closer look at revenue on Slide 8. Our business remains well diversified across end markets. Base revenue by customer type was 32% biopharma, 31% Life Sciences and Diagnostics, 4% academia, 7% CRO, CMO, CDMO and 26% distributors. By geography, base revenue was 60% North America, 25% EMEA, 8% Asia Pacific, excluding China and 7% in China. Turning to Slide 9. Our GAAP net loss before noncontrolling interest was $6.4 million. This compares to a GAAP net loss before noncontrolling interest of $52.9 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was $20.3 million for Q1, exceeding our expectations and improving by more than $30 million year-over-year. This was driven by stronger revenue, favorable mix toward high-margin GMP and discovery consumables and high-margin contribution from COVID CleanCap. Basic and diluted loss per share in Q1 was $0.02 compared to a loss of $0.21 per share in Q1 2025. Adjusted EPS was positive $0.01 compared to a loss of $0.08 per share last year. Moving to the balance sheet, cash flow and other financial metrics on Slide 10. We ended the quarter with $165.9 million in cash and $242.9 million in long-term debt following the voluntary $50 million debt prepayment during the quarter. We generated $4.2 million of positive free cash flow, reflecting improved EBITDA and disciplined capital management. Depreciation and amortization was $11.4 million. Net interest expense was $3.9 million and stock-based compensation, a noncash charge, was $6.7 million for the quarter. Turning to segment performance on Slide 11. TriLink represented 72% of total revenue in the quarter. Excluding COVID CleanCap, TriLink represented 64% of total revenue with base growth of 15%. TriLink was the primary driver of adjusted EBITDA improvement, benefiting from high-margin product mix and improved operating leverage. The segment generated $17.3 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing an improvement of more than $26 million year-over-year. Cygnus represented 28% of total revenue or 36% of base revenue and continue to deliver strong profitability. Cygnus generated $13.6 million of adjusted EBITDA with margins of 73.8%. Corporate expenses impacting adjusted EBITDA were $10.5 million in the quarter. These expenses include HR, finance, legal, IT and public company costs. Turning to our updated guidance on Slide 12. Our outlook reflects a strong first quarter and increased confidence in the base business trajectory. We are raising our revenue range to $205 million to $215 million, representing growth of 10% to 16% over 2025. We expect TriLink to grow in the high teens, driven by continued strength in GMP consumables and a return to growth in Discovery. We do not currently expect additional high-volume COVID CleanCap revenue in 2026. However, we continue to view $10 million to $20 million of annual endemic demand as a reasonable baseline longer term. For Cygnus, we continue to expect low to mid-single-digit growth, and we view the Q1 softness in China as timing related. We are substantially raising our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $30 million to $32 million, representing an improvement of $61 million to $63 million year-over-year, primarily driven by performance in TriLink. This reflects the composition of the growth we are seeing. We continue to see strong demand in higher-margin areas of the portfolio, particularly GMP consumables, our higher-margin discovery consumables and key Cygnus product lines. That mix shift, combined with structural improvements we've made is driving the outperformance in EBITDA. Additionally, we expect continued gross margin expansion of greater than 1,300 basis points, supported by restructuring actions, cost discipline and favorable product mix. The remainder of our guidance framework we provided in February call is unchanged. Importantly, we expect to generate positive free cash flow for the remainder of the year, representing a meaningful improvement from 2025. Overall, we are encouraged by the momentum in the business. Improved commercial execution, a more efficient cost structure and favorable mix are driving meaningful financial progress, and we remain confident in our outlook for 2026. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Well, congratulations on a very nice start to the year. Maybe first up and real high level, I'm just curious what you're seeing from your pharma customers and kind of segmented large versus small and your expectations for those two groups as the year progresses. Obviously, the funding has improved, and there's been a lot of talk about that. But what are you seeing from a spending perspective for that -- the smaller pharma and biotech group?

When we look at that group, it's kind of consistent across the board. Big pharma has been very healthy and specifically some larger discovery orders. But Discovery or smaller biotech, smaller pharma has been pretty consistent as well across the board. I think the area where we still see the most significant softness is in this academic research world. That's not a huge part of our revenue any longer. But when it comes to pharma, biotech, it's pretty consistent, healthy.

That's great. And then maybe just speaking to China. Obviously, there's a little bit of an order timing issue there, but it sounds like that's going to pick up. But as a whole, when you look at the year, is China starting to come back? Or what are you seeing?

When you look at our Cygnus business, we have one distributor who represents us there. They're a solid company. We are certainly continuing to explore other commercialization options there. Raj and Dr. Zhao were actually in China last week for both Cygnus and TriLink. So we look at China for this year, probably still as a sort of mid-single-digit growth engine, and I think we should be able to get there. The problem is a little bit these are all larger orders, right? There's not really any run rate modeling behind that. But we feel good in general about where that is sitting. On the TriLink front, we really haven't done much business in China. That's actually the main purpose for being in China last week. We had some great interactions with customers there. I think you're going to see some progression happening there over the next months to come. And so China as a whole, revenue-wise, not a super critical component of the business, but certainly something we're going to continue to work on enhancing.

Congratulations again on the start to the year.

We'll now move on to Matt Stanton with Jefferies.

Maybe to go back to the demand question. Just the base TriLink business, mid-teens growth year-over-year. Can you just unpack the demand a little bit more what you saw in Discovery versus GMP? I think you said you expect GMP to grow over 20% for the year. I did you see that here in 1Q? And then last quarter, you sounded pretty upbeat on kind of order trends, funnel activity. Would just kind of love to hear how that trended for the rest of 1Q and here into 2Q in terms of some of the future demand indicators. I assume pretty good just given the guidance rate, but would love to get any more anecdotal color just on some of the funnel and order activity as well for Discovery and GMP.

Matt, I think when you look at TriLink, like we said, that grew 15%. And while that Q1 kind of base growth was strong, as you kind of extrapolate for the balance of the year, like we said, there's some variability in larger GMP orders. we characterize that underlying growth in the second half in TriLink to be in the low to mid-single digits. And we do remain very positive on the longer-term trajectory as we kind of look for more consistent growth. We have -- we talked about ModTail as a particular call out on the R&D side that is starting to kind of get good traction. We've seen revenues from last year into this year steadily climbing. And then as that starts to turn into GMP level in the second half, we should see some more positive growth as these programs get traction towards the end of the year and into next year.

Great. And then maybe just on ModTail, just it sounds like how is that tracking to expectations? It sounds like maybe better 70 customers, new customers, repeat orders. And then the scope to launch the GMP in the back half of the year, just how meaningful is that? And is that kind of accelerated as it relates to what you've seen so far in the activity levels on that product?

Yes. Certainly, ModTail is well performing above what our expectations are. 70 customers is a pretty big number. I think the dollar amount is right in line with what we had expected for the whole year. Now it's still a fairly small portion of our total revenues, of course, it being a newly launched product. But the fact that we have some larger customers already asking for GMP quality product is pretty unique so early on after launch. So yes, we're moving quickly on that based on some of these earlier customer indications. I don't think the GMP consumables and ModTail will have a material impact in 2026. But certainly, if you start seeing demand there, it should set us up for a very nice 2027 for that product line.

[Operator Instructions] We'll move next to Justin Bowers with Deutsche Bank.

Can you talk about the funnel and how that's shaping up and maybe any metrics around growth there and RFPs over the last few quarters or a few months? And then also what you're seeing in terms of decisions and time lines there? Any change in the velocity?

Let me maybe give a high-level comment, and I'll let Raj get maybe into some more details here. On the GMP front, the funnels continue to be good. I think we pointed out in our comments earlier that we have nine or so new discovery customers that are moving into clinical trials forecasted for this year. Two have already started. The remainders we're expecting sometime in the remainder of this year to start. That funnel is always fairly easy to manage just because it has a fairly long outlook. And so we have a pretty good grasp on what's happening there and it's good growth for the remainder of this year. On the larger discovery orders, it's been great velocity. In fact, it's been faster than we had expected. Customers that we were expecting to buy later in the year, bought earlier in the year. Hopefully, that's a good indication around them accelerating their experiments, their work and further growth moving forward. The challenge in that part of the business a little bit for us is that the average sales cycle there is like 2 months or 3 months. So the GMP, we pretty much know in advance what's going to happen. On the large discovery segment, we don't quite grasp yet what's going to happen in Q3 and Q4, just given again, the sales cycle that comes with this. The trajectory has been great. We see no reason why that shouldn't continue that way. Certainly, that's what we are seeing in the first 4.5 months or now of this year. But all in all, great, great growth trajectory in both areas. Any specifics Raj, you want to add to that or?

No, I think you covered it, Bernd. I mean maybe on discovery, again, if you -- we segment those under $15,000 and greater than 15,000 orders. And as we've always said, under $15,000, those orders are predominantly academic and early-stage research. And that segment, like we said, is still recovering, but it's consistent with our broader funding environment, and we did see modest growth in this segment in Q1. And then on greater than 15,000 discovery orders, those are kind of dominated by biopharma and biotech development programs, and those are seeing really healthy growth, like Bernd said.

We'll move on now to Subbu Nambi with Guggenheim.

How did the CDMO customer orders perform in the quarter, particularly for Cygnus?

Well, there's not -- in CDMO and Cygnus, I don't think we reported out necessarily. If you're talking about CDMO and some of our work we're doing with TriLink, that business is fairly steady. We have a couple of great programs in there. It's a pretty small part of our business yet. And as we shared last year, we restructured that organization a little bit just to control our costs. But the programs that are there are doing well. It's not a very large group. So there's a lot of lumpiness in there as well. But that's probably the only CDMO we break out. I don't know if we break CDMO out customer-wise for Cygnus. I don't think we have in the past.

Okay. That's helpful. And then when we think of Maravai just zooming out and we want to look at leading indicators, where would -- should investors lean on? Should it be smaller biotech that are working on biologics? Should it be cell and gene therapy companies or in general, the whole bioprocessing end market?

I would go with your last suggestion. I think that the health across the board is starting to get much, much better. And like we said, we're seeing a weakness still and it's such a small part of our business, but it is in the academic, the smaller research world.

We'll move on to Matthew Parisi with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

This is Matthew Prices on for Paul Knight. Congrats on the quarter. As a percentage of revenue, APAC decreased pretty meaningfully in the quarter compared to the fourth quarter. I was wondering what drove that change? And then is that a trend that you can expect for the rest of 2026?

I'll let Raj go into the details here, but my guess is that's largely through sickness. There's not a lot of TriLink activity in that part of the world. So Raj, keep me honest there. TriLink -- sorry, Cygnus, we talked about China. I think the other area was Korea, South Korea, where we saw some softness. I don't know whether we have great behind that.

It's not that meaningful. And again, going back to China, that current softness that we saw in the first quarter is really kind of distributor ordering pattern and it's not end customer driven. We typically have good line of sight to what the end demand is, and that is not impacted. This is purely a timing issue. So we don't see any significant shift for the balance of the year and that demand is not impacted. So we feel pretty good about recovering the demand in the balance of the year.

And if I can just squeeze in one more. I was just wondering about kind of how the engagement has been with the new mRNA builder?

Great. I mean it's still early days, obviously, we saw the highest increase in online activity with the business in this quarter. Our total e-commerce revenues is still under 10% for the business. So it's still a long runway to go here. But -- good engagement. We've seen our first noncontact orders coming through and highly optimistic that, that will be a big driver, specifically as the academic world will bounce back at some point here that allows us to touch those customers without really increasing any kind of human interaction.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now move on to Dan Arias with Stifel. This is [ Rohan ] on for Dan.

Last year, you were pretty adamant that high-volume CleanCap visibility was near zero without binding purchase orders. And today, you've pinned the COVID-19 revenue at exactly $14.3 million. What specifically changed in your forecasting methodology or customer contracts that allows for this level of precision now?

I think that's a misunderstanding, guys. I think we shared last year that we expect COVID in 2026 to be between $10 million and $20 million, and we expect that to be the same number kind of moving forward. We received orders in that this is the dollars that came in. And so we don't expect any other orders for the rest of the year. But I don't think we ever said that we would not have any further COVID-related orders in 2026. We would have said that for 2025.

Okay. And you raised the midpoint of adjusted EBITDA guidance by $12 million or so at the midpoint, right, while only raising revenue by $5 million. Aside from the restructuring savings, how much of this kind of change or delta is driven by higher margin mix from ModTail or the GMP enzymes versus just kind of pure cost cutting?

Okay. So for EBITDA, I think in Q1, we saw the EBITDA disproportionately tied to revenue. We are seeing great benefits, like we mentioned from our commercial strategy kind of focusing on high-value customers and programs. We've improved our pricing discipline and just manage that longer tail of lower-value transactions. So that, coupled with the favorable mix that we're seeing on GMP on the higher-margin orders is kind of improving the quality of revenue and the flow of EBITDA through that. On top of that, our operating expenses are tracking to plan and the cost reset that we did on the restructuring is fully embedded as we modeled, and we're continuing to see savings there. So those are some of the drivers on the EBITDA performance.

It's not a unfair comment. We do potentially put in a little risk on some of our lower-margin service businesses, not tied to commercialization, just tied to project and how will the success of those projects be. If you see some softness there, it won't impact our margins really in any material way. So the product mix is truly a material impact of why we're seeing such great EBITDA performance.

Okay. And just if I could squeeze in one more question. You have GMP enzymes launching in Q2. How much of the 2026 guidance raise is contingent on this launch? And do you have any preorders in place from existing Flanders 2 customers?

Zero is tied to that revenue call. We had assumed this was going to happen. We have orders in hand for GMP. We're running our engineering runs at the moment. I think we would start delivering those GMP orders towards the end of this quarter into early next quarter.

We'll now move on to Matt Larew with William Blair.

Since the new team, Bernd and Raj, you've been in place, obviously, the focus has been on restructuring, rightsizing, kind of improving the operational health. And I think last quarter and this quarter, too, the business clearly has turned a corner and end markets are improving as well. You mentioned being over in China recently to talk about TriLink some new business development opportunities, the some benefits on the website in terms of record sales or new product launches upcoming. I guess just as you think about the shifting the organization sort of velocity or trajectory from one of restructuring and rightsizing to attacking new growth opportunities -- what areas do you think are sort of the highest return or most midterm things that you can do as, again, the market recovers and customers fingers crossed are looking to continue to spend more?

I think maybe pointing out first and foremost, I'd like to really think the team that we put together here, and this was in July, August last year, really combined this focus both on the restructuring while at the same time, focusing on how do we commercially grow this business again. I think on the product front, you saw a great example from our R&D team and launching ModTail and the great response to that product. On the commercial front, you've seen the restructured commercial organization, bringing these products to the customers very effectively with more than 70 customers in place right now. And so I think the restructuring has happened really in parallel with this commercial effort. I wouldn't say that that's what we started first and now we are shifting. That shift has happened for some time, and I think that's why you're seeing the results. I think as far as where do we see the biggest wins, Clearly, you're seeing automation and AI coming into play with our smaller academic basic research orders. We try to avoid having -- we want to have as little interaction, human interaction with those types of orders. And so the biggest windfalls, the biggest gains, I think, clearly sit with big pharma, small pharma, biotech in this large discovery space, where there's just a lot of uptick in activity. And when we listen to our commercial teams, a lot of interaction with customers there. And then clearly, the bet here is that a lot of that effort will lead into future GMP activities where these programs enter some stage of clinical trials. And clearly, that's the entire approach for our business, how do you get your discovery consumables into the GMP consumables, and we're seeing a great future for that. As far as geographic is concerned, obviously, we're spending the majority of our time today between North America and EMEA. I think you will start seeing an increased shift in focusing more on Asia. I think there are opportunities there that we haven't captured. I think it's a little bit early days. I would say, in timing of where we have chosen to spend our time, it has been to obviously rightsize the business, but also focus commercially on the regions I just mentioned. So Asia, for sure, we'll see more effort. I think it's a little early to kind of talk about what that looks like.

And our final question will be from Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum.

All right. With Matt not on the line, why don't we turn it back to Bernd for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Deb. I'll keep this short here as well. Thanks, everybody, for taking the time today to listen to our Q1 results and some great questions. Like the results showed in Q1, we feel great about where the business is heading. When we came in last year and the changes we were bringing forward that always leaves some concern for instability, and we really haven't seen any of that. All of us have kind of commented here also on positive momentum in the market, specifically in pharma and biotech, which is really our bread and butter. And so great Q1. We feel absolutely solid about the remainder of this year, and we feel great about the market. So Asia, I think the question has come up a couple of times. I think there's opportunity for us rather than downside just because our exposure isn't that great there yet. But all in all, we feel great about the business. I appreciate your support and look forward to speaking to you again in about 3 months.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.