Jon Cohen
Analyst · Dana Flanders with Guggenheim
Thanks, Steve. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by discussing our core business, which includes routine clinical testing, our specialty testing services comprising oncology, urology, and women's health, and genetic testing. As the majority of providers are returning to normal, our specimen volume has improved and our base business is now down only high single-digit percentage compared with our pre COVID levels. Although patient visits to providers in some specialty areas continue to lag, we expect these trends to slowly improve over the next six months. Some subcategories of women's health have fully returned to pre COVID levels and 4Kscore orders are on track to be on the same level as pre COVID by the end of the fourth quarter. We've had some significant growth in our oncology franchise beyond pre COVID volumes, with particular growth in our hem path offerings. Also, gen path oncology had exciting news this past quarter, with the launch of OnkoSight Advanced, a next generation sequencing assay that enables revolutionary DNA mutational profiling of tumor samples. This assay provides critical insights for many different cancers and is aligned with the latest National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the World Health Organization guideline recommendations. We have seen very positive response to this offering. Our Strategic Venture Initiatives continues to grow as we continue to build out that team with additional wins of medical groups, hospital reference business, federally qualified health centers, and other large provider organizations. With regards to GeneDx, our volumes have returned to pre COVID levels. We announced an agreement with Pediatrics Medical Group, which is the nation's largest leading provider of maternal fetal and pediatric medical and surgical subspecialty physician services. Under this new agreement, we will offer state-of-the-art next generation genomic sequencing to provide clinical diagnosis in the neonatal intensive care units, staffed by pediatrics affiliated neonatologists. The sequencing is designed to enhance diagnostic capabilities in order to lessen the impact of disease and facilitate the development and novel precision medicine solutions for pediatric care. The initial offering includes whole exome and whole genome sequencing and genomic support services under the brand, Detect Genomix. And initial clinical diagnostic support services will be made available to hospitals and patients across the country. In addition, we launched GenomeXpress, a rapid genome sequencing test to identify variations in any part of the genome to help in diagnosing genetic diseases. By including both protein coding and non-coding regions of the genome, GenomeXpress allows for the detection of pathogenic variants not accessed by exome sequencing. A rapid diagnosis can alter management, shorten hospital stay, reduce costs, and save lives. As for COVID testing, to date we have performed 6.75 million COVID-19 PCR tests. In the third quarter, we performed 3.5 million COVID-19 molecular tests, up from 2.2 million last quarter. We have a current capacity of over 70,000 PCR tests per day and expect to have a capacity to do 100,000 tests a day within the next six weeks. Our average turnaround time remains less than 48 hours in most cases. In addition, we are constantly employing new technologies and new offerings, including pooling and saliva. Along the lines of new offerings, in preparation for the flu season, we recently launched our combination COVID flu A/B test. This test provides testing for both viruses from one swab. We will also be announcing our home kitting solution within the next several weeks. The past quarter, we performed more than 300,000 tests measuring SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody levels. Although we have not experienced demand for serology tests on a par for viral testing, we see an increased interest in these tests as we get closer to having a vaccine available. As a result, within the next several weeks, we will have available a quantitative antibody assay for viral spike protein to measure patient immunity. We continue to experience significant demand across different customer verticals, including government agencies, universities and schools, core legacy providers, nursing homes, employers, sports organizations, hospitals, nursing homes and our partnership with almost 600 retail pharmacies from Rite Aid and CVS across 24 different states. Recently, we announced additional testing agreements with the New York City Schools through a continued collaboration with New York City, the Department of Health and Hospital Corporation, the Test and Trace Corporation and the Department of Education. Through these agreements, BioReference is testing students, teachers and staff in nearly 1,000 public schools. In addition, we recently restarted testing the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority's employees for COVID-19 on a routine basis. Last quarter, we announced the CDC award for an indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract to provide antibody testing to determine COVID-19 seroprevalence across the country. And last week, we were notified by the CDC that we were approved for an extension of the original contract for an additional $5.2 million. Two weeks ago, we announced the successful completion of the COVID-19 response strategy for the National Basketball Association's season restart playoffs and the finals in Orlando, with 150,000 tests performed for NBA players, staff, press and onsite partners. I would like to extend my congratulations to the league, the executives, the players, the coaches, and the staff for their remarkable achievement. The NBA executed with diligence, precision and compulsive attention to the most current scientific evidence throughout the program. The result of that commitment to the rigorous safety and COVID-19 testing protocols in this model was a positivity rate of zero percent. Finally, we continue to evaluate the role of rapid point of care testing, both antigen and PCR in different settings. We believe PCR in the lab will remain the gold standard, but there is a market and role for point of care testing. As a result of our leading position in COVID-19 testing, we've been able to expand existing relationships while establishing new ones. We remain highly optimistic and confident in our position to be able to grow our top and bottom lines over the long term, as we meet the testing needs of the public and private sector customers to manage the ongoing pandemic and beyond. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Adam.