Nautilus Biotechnology, Inc. (NAUT) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nautilus Biotechnology First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Ji-Yon Yi, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Earlier today, Nautilus Biotechnology released financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. If you haven't received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to investorrelations@nautilus.bio. Joining me today from Nautilus are Sujal Patel, Co-Founder and CEO; Parag Mallick, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist; and Anna Mowry, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release Nautilus issued today. Except as required by law, Nautilus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial or product pipeline projections or other forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast on April 28, 2026. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sujal.

Thanks, Ji-Yon, and thank you all for joining us today. Before turning to the quarter, I'd like to begin by recapping the Q1 announcements we highlighted on our last earnings call. At that time, we discussed the launch of our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program in January, the debut of the Voyager platform to the proteomics community at US HUPO in St. Louis, Missouri, and our announcement of a collaboration with the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar to advance development of an alpha-synuclein proteoform assay for Parkinson's disease. We also highlighted our progress moving into the later stages of our broadscale assay configuration change and our plans to make 2026 a pivotal year focused on commercialization. We also outlined a series of key milestones for 2026, including progressing early access customers into active tau services projects, expanding early access in the second half of the year to include a second proteoform assay focused on an oncology target, introducing broadscale capabilities into early access later in 2026 and placing Voyager instruments externally through beta deployments. We also said we expect to initiate our commercial launch in late 2026 by opening the platform for preorders with customer installations beginning in early 2027. This would be followed by general availability of broadscale capabilities in the first half of 2027. This quarter, I'm pleased to say we are executing well against that road map. Today, we'll discuss the meaningful steps we've taken toward commercialization, including building out our commercial team and growing customer engagement in the early access program. We'll also cover the scientific and technical progress we've made across our Iterative Mapping assay portfolio as well as how we continue to manage our resources prudently while investing in the opportunities ahead. A key priority for 2026 has been building the commercial organization needed to support launch activities. During the quarter, we welcomed Amber Faust as our VP of Global Sales, and we have since hired 2 additional sales team members. These are experienced industry veterans thoughtfully selected for their expertise and commitment to the field of proteomics, and we're excited about the depth of expertise they bring. With this team in place, we believe we are well positioned to engage prospective customers ahead of our commercial launch. Building on the successful launch of our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program in January, we're pleased to report growing momentum in customer interest for the Tau assay and for custom assay development. Inbound interest has been steady and broad-based, spanning academic centers, nonprofit research institutions and biopharma organizations. Today, we're excited to reiterate that last month, we announced our first named EAP customer, Baylor College of Medicine. Combined with our existing collaborations, we're pleased to be working with several academic institutions with deep expertise in proteomics and disease research. This is a meaningful milestone. We believe that it reflects the excitement top-tier institutions are placing in the Voyager platform and marks an important step in translating our development progress into active real-world scientific partnerships. While these early engagements are not intended to drive near-term revenue, they are designed to enable real biological discovery, support publications and grant applications and ensure our workflows and data outputs align closely with customer needs. Importantly, we are beginning to receive requests to expand similar offerings into oncology-focused targets as well. What has been particularly encouraging is the quality of customer engagement we are observing. Researchers are increasingly recognizing how Nautilus' single molecule analysis of proteoforms and proteoms produces unique and highly differentiated data. We view this data as critically important across a variety of biological questions and also as a powerful foundation for training next-generation AI models. Taken together, we believe these developments represent meaningful steps towards commercialization and reinforce our confidence that we have a highly differentiated platform and are addressing important unmet needs in the market. On the technology front, we continue to make progress advancing the core Voyager platform designed to execute a diverse family of Iterative Mapping-based assays. On the targeted proteoform assay front, we moved forward with our oncology proteoform target down selection process, narrowing our focus to the highest priority candidates for our next Early Access Program expansion. On the broadscale front, we continue to advance our assay configuration changes and improve assay performance. Parag will walk through these technical updates in more depth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Parag.

Thanks, Sujal. Overall, Q1 was a productive quarter for our product and scientific teams. From the Voyager platform development perspective, we made meaningful progress across our assay portfolio. In addition, we gained greater clarity on the remaining work required to reach our next assay development milestones. Critically, we are also increasingly applying the platform to generate biological insights not accessible to existing proteomics technologies, which drives enthusiasm and engagement from the scientific community. In addition to our ongoing platform and assay development activities, we continue to advance exciting studies with our collaborators. These studies highlight the unique insights enabled by Iterative Mapping and by the Voyager platform. During Q1, we continued supporting the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the Allen Institute for Brain Science as they advance findings towards publication. We believe that these projects have generated the most extensive and quantitative view of the Tau proteoform landscape to date. These studies now span multiple genetic risk factors, brain regions and disease severities, clearly demonstrating that Iterative Mapping can reveal biology beyond the reach of conventional proteomics. Taken together, these studies show that our data is not only technically robust, but biologically meaningful. We believe this new class of proteoform level information can deepen understanding of disease mechanisms, uncover novel therapeutic targets and enable more precise biomarkers, ultimately helping improve drug discovery and development. Among the most exciting results were findings from the Buck Institute performed with the Alpha instrument at their site. They specifically examined the relationship between the gene ApoE, which is strongly associated with risk of early onset Alzheimer's disease and proteoforms of Tau. The specific linkage between ApoE and Tau was previously intractable to study. The Buck Institute's data revealed for the first time distinctive proteoform distributions associated with ApoE mutations. We look forward to them sharing their findings in a forthcoming manuscript submission. Progress on Proteoform assays was strong in Q1. During the quarter, we formalized our service lab capability to process customer samples, an important operational milestone as we support the Iterative Mapping Early Access Program. Underpinning this milestone, we completed a formal verification and validation study of the service lab and also standardized our customer-facing data and results packages so that researchers receive consistent publication quality outputs. The assay as performed within our service lab passed verification, demonstrating that it met our requirements for accuracy, dynamic range, reproducibility and stability. We look forward to sharing initial biological findings from our early access program engagements in future quarters. In parallel, we advanced our alpha-synuclein proteoform program under the Michael J. Fox Foundation funded collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. During Q1, we made early progress on assay development using commercially available affinity reagents. Although custom reagent development from our Weill Cornell collaborators experienced delays related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we progressed the assay with commercially available reagents and will incorporate collaborator developed reagents as they become available. Despite this timing shift, the program is on track scientifically, and we view this collaboration as an important opportunity to further demonstrate the breadth of Iterative Mapping beyond Tau. While much of our current momentum is in neurodegeneration, it's important to emphasize that Iterative Mapping is a highly general approach and not limited to neuroscience. We see meaningful long-term potential across oncology, immunology, cardiology and beyond. In Q1, we made meaningful progress on our oncology proteoform down selection process. After evaluating multiple candidate proteins across key oncology indications, we have narrowed our focus to a prioritized set of targets that we believe offer the strongest combination of biological relevance, assay feasibility and customer interest. Examples of proteins we are examining for developing proteoform assays include EGFR, AKT1 and p53. Proteins like these have been prioritized from a larger field of candidates because they represent a wide spectrum of proteoform complexity that is clearly connected to disease processes of interest in pharma and across biomedical research. Critically, they are among the most clinically relevant signaling proteins in cancer biology. EGFR is a well-validated oncology target with numerous approved therapies and known resistance driving proteoforms. AKT1 sits at the nexus of the PI3K mTOR pathway and is implicated in a broad range of tumor types with multiple emerging therapeutics. And p53 is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancer. Across each of these targets, proteoform level resolution is essential to developing next-generation therapies, targeting and optimizing existing therapies and generally accelerating drug development pipelines. Given our progress in Q1, we believe we are on target for having one oncology-focused proteoform assay enter early access in the second half of 2026, consistent with the time line we have communicated. We believe oncology represents a compelling next market opportunity, providing access to a broader customer base while also aligning well with the capabilities of the Voyager platform to deliver proteoform level resolution and highly reproducible measurement in complex biological systems. In summary, we have made significant progress on both transitioning our existing Iterative Mapping-based proteoform assay to a commercial offering and expanding the portfolio. This quarter also saw good progress on advancing our Iterative Mapping assay for broad-scale proteome analysis. As a reminder, the core components of the Voyager platform are assay agnostic, relying upon the same instrument and software stack. The primary differences between the assays are in the consumables. Consequently, advances in the maturity of targeted proteoform assays carry over to supporting broadscale assays. This quarter, we saw advances in key components of our broadscale assay configuration, including in our flow cells, surface chemistry and computational models that are expected to form the basis of our launch configuration. We have seen performance improvements with each iteration and side-by-side comparisons of our new assay configuration versus the prior configuration show meaningful gains in critical areas, including our ability to increase the percentage of our affinity reagent catalog that is compatible with our assay configuration. In previous quarters, we have mentioned that we were concurrently iterating our assay configuration alongside testing a large portion of our affinity reagent catalog on new configurations towards the goal of increasing the percentage of our catalog that is compatible with our assay configuration. Concretely, our current catalog consists of thousands of probes that have been shown to bind to trimer epitope targets. However, this is the first step in a rigorous characterization process that includes verifying probes bind in a given assay configuration with strong differentiation between on-target and off-target binding in a single molecule context. In addition, extensive profiling is performed to define models for which epitopes each probe recognizes. We require each of these criteria to declare a probe to be assay compatible. In Q1, we nearly tripled the number of probes that have been qualified as compatible. The major driver of this increase has been the newer assay configurations and our work testing a larger portion of the catalog through these configurations. Outside of these studies, we also achieved our largest number of high-cycle decode experiments to date. Furthermore, we have been continually stepping up the complexity of our sample inputs and are now routinely including lysate mixtures and full lysates in our large-scale experiments. Additionally, we are now actively developing a validation pipeline for single molecule identifications, an important commitment to scientific rigor. Because the Voyager platform may identify proteins at levels not previously observable, we are focused on ensuring we have robust methods to validate those identifications and benchmark them against orthogonal analysis methods. We expect to provide further updates as this work progresses through the year. Overall, we believe the progress this quarter reflects maturation of the Voyager platform across both commercial-ready targeted applications and next-generation broadscale capabilities. With that, I'll turn the call over to Anna to review our financials.

Thanks, Parag. Turning to our financial update. We continue to demonstrate prudent management of both operating expenses and cash, and we remain on track or better against the full year guidance we previously provided. Total operating expenses were $16.1 million for the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 14% from the prior year period. Research and development expenses were $9.7 million for the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 16% from the prior year period. This decrease was driven primarily by a $1.0 million decrease in salaries and related benefits related to the reduction in force implemented in the first quarter of 2025, with the remaining portion coming from reduced development costs, lower facilities costs and lower stock compensation expense. General and administrative expenses were $6.4 million for the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 12% from the prior year period. The decrease was primarily due to a $0.6 million decrease in stock-based compensation expense, along with a $0.3 million decrease in salaries and related benefits. We ended the first quarter of 2026 with $143.4 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Cash burn in Q1 2026 was $12.8 million, which benefited from lower spend overall and $1.1 million in cash generated from stock option exercises. Based on our current trajectory, we still believe our financial plan supports a cash runway that extends through 2027. With respect to revenue, recognition associated with the Michael J. Fox Foundation grant has moved more slowly than originally anticipated due to delays related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. However, we continue to expect approximately $0.5 million in total revenue for the year, with a greater portion now shifting into later quarters. Overall, we remain confident in our financial plan and believe our capital position supports execution against our strategic milestones. Back to you, Sujal.

Thanks, Anna. To close, this quarter represented another period of solid execution against the plan we laid out for 2026. We're making meaningful progress towards commercial launch through the build-out of our commercial team, growing our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program customer engagement and improving market awareness. At the same time, we're advancing the Voyager platform performance overall, improving the science behind both our targeted and broad-scale offerings and expanding the proteoform portfolio into additional disease areas such as oncology. We remain focused on the milestones we previously described for 2026 and believe the work completed this quarter keeps us on a strong path toward launch readiness. I'm proud of what the team has accomplished and grateful to our collaborators, customers and shareholders for their ongoing support. Thank you for joining us today. With that, we'll be happy to take your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Subbu Nambi from Guggenheim.

My first question is how many customers are actively submitting samples through tau early access today? And what's the sample throughput being like?

This is Sujal. So to answer your question, so the only launch EAP customer that we've announced so far is Baylor College of Medicine. But the EAP pipeline, the service offering is being used for a number of collaborator samples. And Parag can comment on a few of those names that he had mentioned in the prepared remarks.

Absolutely. So I think amongst continued work with the Allen Institute, the Neural Stem Cell Institute and others are actively ongoing.

Perfect. Beyond Buck, Allen and Baylor, how many active engagements do you have in the pipeline right now? You mentioned you have exposure or interest from both academic, nonprofit and pharma, but I was just wondering about the mix there.

Yes. What I would say is that -- so one, it's important to recognize that Amber Faust, our VP of Global Sales, just joined us, I think, just about 2 months ago here. And we have 2 additional members in the sales organization. So a team of 3. That team came together last Monday and yesterday. And so it's still very early in the development of our commercial sales organization, but we're really excited to have what we consider to be a full team right now. As we are beginning to prospect for customers for the Tau Early Access Program and as well starting to build the early pipeline, for our oncology targets. The sales cycles are a little bit different between academic and pharma. We've got a few very engaged on the academic side that are very interested in moving forward on the tau side of things. And we're just starting to see some really interesting and compelling activity from pharma, and we're looking forward to the sales team that's just been hired to pick up those engagements and start to build that pipeline further as we move through the year with tau early access and as we enter early access for our oncology proteoform in the second half of the year.

Super helpful. And I know this is all early, but just trying to get a sense of early engagement -- my last question, when a pharma company evaluates the Nautilus technology, what's the typical diligence process look like? Are they asking for a head-to-head comparison against any existing solution? Or are they evaluating this as a net new capability?

Yes. Parag, do you want to take this one and then I can add some color.

Absolutely. I think one of the things that we're seeing very clearly is that it's incredibly apparent to people that our platform is hugely differentiated relative to existing platforms, both mass spectrometry and typical affinity-based platforms. And so oftentimes, the conversations really are about the diligence is them looking through our submitted manuscripts, asking us many technical questions, really digging into how the technology works and the data that we've generated so far. There is significantly less interest in head-to-heads, I would say, because it's clear that the data that we generate is very different than the data that comes out of existing platforms.

Yes. And this is Sujal. Just to add one comment to put a fine point on this. I think having been at US HUPO myself in the last quarter and talking to a lot of prospective customers and KOLs, I think that the thing that's most exciting for the folks that I talk to is that the data that we generate with this Tau proteoform assay and that we will generate with our future proteoform assays is data that isn't reasonably collectible with any other method on the planet. There's no other way to gather this data. And so what that gives us is it gives us a very unique conversation and a very powerful conversation to have with the customer, which is very different from other newer entrants in the Dx and tool space where they come in with technology that might be cheaper, it might be higher performing. This is net new biological insights that the world hasn't seen that increasingly, as we look at our collaborators' work seems to be incredibly relevant to disease pathology and incredibly relevant to human health.

Our next call comes from the line of Dan Brennan of TD Cowen.

This is Kyle on for Dan. I just want to start maybe on the oncology side. I guess, what's the reception been so far on oncology samples? And is Baylor ready to run them on site?

Great. Well, so as I kind of mentioned, the reception from potential customers to the EAP program capabilities, tau assay capabilities has been really incredible. If you'll recall, today, we have a tau services offering. That means customer sends us a sample, we analyze it in our facility, and we send back a standardized report package to the customer. And as Parag mentioned in the prepared remarks, that is the service offering that has now fully completed verification and validation and the first set of official EAP customer samples that will go through, i.e., not including our collaborators, which are already going through will be the Baylor College of Medicine, which will happen shortly. You'll also recall, not from this earnings call, but from previous ones that we have one alpha unit that's been in the field for approximately a year, maybe a little bit over a year. That alpha unit is physically in the lab at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. And so when the Buck generates data, the Buck is generating on their own instrument, all of the other engagements for early access will be through our service offering until we reach the second half of the year, where we do expect in late Q3 and Q4 to begin placing a few beta units with additional customers to prove out the on-site capabilities, the kits, the shipping and work through final bits of feedback ahead of a planned commercial launch as we hit the end of the year with first instrument availability and shipping in the beginning of next year.

Got it. And then maybe just on the broadscale assay configuration. It sounds like it's progressing well there, but are there any technical hurdles that you still have to overcome before it's ready for launch?

Maybe I'll take this one, Dan. I think as we've messaged and you're correct in your assessment, we have definitely made tremendous progress on that assay configuration and the set of iterations of configurations that we've been working through. In addition, we've made tremendous progress on characterizing the library and how it is performing in these iterations of the configuration. In terms of technical work, I think as we went through with the tau service offering, once we had the assay up and running and stable and we're very happy with its performance, we then went through an incredibly rigorous verification and validation process as well. And so as we look forward, that's really the work that we're looking forward to is getting to a place where we are happy with the performance characteristics of the assay and then have done the full suite of verification and validation before we place it in customers' hands.

Thank you very much. This concludes our question-and-answer session. At this time, thank you for your participation in today's conference, and this does conclude our program. You may now disconnect.