Earnings Labs

Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (PACB)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 8, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the PacBio Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Todd Friedman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Todd Friedman

Analyst

Good afternoon, and welcome to PacBio's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Earlier today, we issued a press release outlining the financial results we'll be discussing on today's call, a copy of which is available on the Investors section of our website at www.pacb.com or as furnished on Form 8-K available on the Securities and Exchange Commission website at www.sec.gov. A copy of our earnings presentation is also available on the Investors section of our website. With me today are Christian Henry, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Gibson, Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements, including, among others, statements regarding predictions, estimates, expectations and guidance. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements because they are subject to assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected or discussed. Please review our SEC filings, including our most recent Forms 10-Q and 10-K and our press release to better understand the risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ. We disclaim any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. We will also present certain financial information on a non-GAAP basis, which is not prepared under a comprehensive set of accounting rules and should only be used to supplement an understanding of the company's operating results as reported under U.S. GAAP. Reconciliations between historical U.S. GAAP and non-GAAP results are presented in our earnings release, which is available on the Investors section of our website. For future periods, we are unable to reconcile non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP operating expenses without unreasonable effort due to the uncertainty regarding, among other matters, certain acquisition-related items that may arise during the year. A recording of today's call will be available shortly after the live call in the Investors section of our website. Those electing to use a replay are cautioned that forward-looking statements may differ or change materially after the completion of the live call. I'll now turn the call over to Christian.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Thank you, Todd, and good afternoon, everyone. Our financial results in the second quarter demonstrate that we continue to make significant progress towards our goal of increasing the adoption of our long-read sequencing platforms and driving the company towards positive cash flows. We delivered both year-over-year and sequential revenue growth, reduced our quarterly cash burn, and we are on track to achieve the strategic initiatives that we laid out earlier this year. We reported $39.8 million in revenue, up 7% sequentially and 10% compared to Q2 of last year. This was driven by strong international growth with revenue in our APAC and EMEA regions combined, up 45% compared to Q2 of 2024. Non-GAAP gross margin was 38.3%, ahead of our expectations, driven by a favorable product mix with a better-than-expected contribution from consumables. And we ended the quarter with approximately $315 million in cash and investments, also above plan, reflecting our continued cost discipline and lower-than-expected operating expenses. Second quarter instrument revenue was $14.2 million, up sequentially and down 4% year-over-year as funding constraints, particularly with academic and government customers continue to pressure higher CapEx purchases. Consumables were strong during the quarter with revenue totaling $18.9 million, up 11% year-over-year and ahead of our expectations. Annualized Revio pull-through remained within our expected range of the low to mid-$200,000s per system, with steady utilization across our installed base. Our recently launched SPRQ chemistry is driving growth and expanding HiFi adoption. Compared to prior chemistry, it increases throughput up to 33%, lowers the cost per genome and reduces DNA input requirements four-fold. As a result, sequencing gigabase output hit an all-time high in Q2, up approximately 66% year-over-year. Turning to the full year outlook. At this point, we are starting to see the impact from tariffs in China to be lower than…

James R. Gibson

Analyst

Thank you, Christian. I will be discussing non-GAAP results, which include noncash stock-based compensation expense. I encourage you to review a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures in our earnings press release. As discussed, we reported $39.8 million in product, service, and other revenue in the second quarter of 2025, compared to $36 million in the second quarter of 2024. Instrument revenue in the second quarter was $14.2 million, a decrease of 4% from $14.7 million in the second quarter of 2024 due to lower Revio unit shipments, partially offset by 38 Vega systems as we commenced shipping this platform late last year. We ended the quarter with 297 cumulative Revio system shipments and 73 cumulative Vega system shipments. Turning to consumables, revenue of $18.9 million in the second quarter increased 11% from $17 million in the second quarter of 2024, with annualized Revio pull-through per system at approximately $219,000. Vega consumables continue to grow sequentially with the expansion of the installed base, and we anticipate providing an expected pull-through range at a later date once there is a larger and more established installed base. Finally, service and other revenue grew approximately 57% to $6.7 million in the second quarter, compared to $4.3 million in the second quarter of 2024 driven by an increase in Revio service contract revenue and revenue related to a large population sequencing program in Southeast Asia. From a regional perspective, Americas revenue of $17.7 million decreased 15% compared to the second quarter of 2024 with the region most affected by government funding headwinds and NIH funding uncertainty. We re pleased to see Vega making progress with this customer base as over half the systems went to academic or government customers. For Asia Pacific, revenue of $12.6 million increased 53% compared to the second quarter…

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

To close, I want to come back to the core of why we believe the company is positioned to deliver long-term value to its stakeholders. HiFi technology is fundamentally different from anything else in the market. It enables researchers and clinicians to read native single DNA molecules at lengths up to 25 kilobases with exceptional accuracy, while simultaneously detecting epigenetic modifications, such as 5mC and 6mA, in the same sequencing run at no additional cost. We believe no other platform matches this level of biological insight at scale. With SPRQ chemistry, Kinnex RNA kits, PureTarget panels, and our upcoming multi-use SMRT Cell capability, we re delivering true end-to-end solutions, reducing barriers to adoption through improved cost efficiency, higher throughput, and workflow simplicity. Together, these innovations are setting the stage for broader adoption in clinical and population-scale genomics. We believe that we are well on the path to supporting not just tens of thousands of genomes, but ultimately hundreds of thousands, to even millions of genomes. And we re doing this with focus and financial discipline. By investing efficiently and narrowing our strategic priorities, we ve meaningfully reduced our cash burn and are tracking toward our goal of becoming cash flow positive as we exit 2027. That s the opportunity ahead. That s why we ve refocused on long-read innovation. And that s why we believe PacBio is well positioned to lead the next chapter of genomic medicine. With that, I'd like the operator to begin the Q&A portion of this call.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from David Westenberg with Piper Sandler.

David Michael Westenberg

Analyst

Great job on the quarter. I want to start off with the tough macro situation in the U.S. Are you seeing it impact just instruments? Are you seeing any kind of differences in consumable behavior, either by stocking or even putting off? And then I just wanted to follow up on that one and just ask, the Senate definitely sounds like they support NIH and will not allow the cuts to go through. Are you hearing the actual labs feeling that way? Or do they really need to see the proof in the pudding here?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, David, and I appreciate the kind words on the quarter. We're proud of what we accomplished in Q2. It is -- the macro continues to be tough in the U.S. and that certainly impacts instruments. In fact, most of our Revio placements were to commercial type providers and not academic customers in the quarter. And I think that's going to continue until we get some more clarity around NIH. Consumables is a little bit different. What we're seeing is consumable utilization across the board has been basically pretty healthy and even trending up in some modest increments here and there. But what we don't -- what it's always difficult to know is what experiments are customers putting off because of the NIH uncertainty. And that's -- there certainly is some of that. But so far in the United States, that hasn't hurt our consumable revenue. And we think the back half of the year will continue to look strong on the consumable front. With respect to the government and NIH, I do think customers are cautious. They are skeptical of the government right now in general because of all the upheaval. When I talk to funding bodies and administrators, the people making the decisions, there still is confusion. There still is high levels of uncertainty when funding will happen. And so we've heard the same thing you have that the Senate is very supportive of the NIH. We believe that the cuts probably won't be as dire as perhaps has been outlined earlier in the year, but we will have to wait and see. Where I want to leave this at least with the NIH is the reality is the rest of the business across the world is growing extremely strong. We saw our international growth at 45%. In fact, EMEA individually grew 35% in the quarter and APAC grew 53% in the quarter. So these are really strong results, and they're really driven by -- in EMEA -- well, actually in both territories, increasing adoption and utilization of Revio with Vega driving our ability to land and expand across a much broader array of accounts than we ever could. So we're very encouraged by the portfolio right now, and we just have to figure out how to keep moving in the U.S. in this tough macro.

David Michael Westenberg

Analyst

Got it. I wanted to follow up on Vega because I think instrument revenue probably beat all of us. Can you talk about the dynamics? I mean, before Vega, I think we had this conversation about overcapacity in the market. You did mention 60% are new to new customers. So I'm curious if these were predominantly actually ones that were outsourcing to large institutions in the past and you actually are seeing that dynamic where instead of sending it out to insources, they're in-sourcing it and you're seeing not this kind of overcapacity. So supply and demand are more in equilibrium today than maybe a few years or a few quarters ago.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. I think that it's always -- when you look at the new customers, most of the time, those customers probably have done some experiments that have been outsourced to get them into long reads, but not always. And it's really the array of applications, microbial, small amplicon sequencing, targeted panels, things like that, that -- where Vega is a perfect fit. And so they can -- those customers can implement it in their lab with much faster turnaround than if they were to outsource it. At $169,000 at list price, it's a great bargain. And in fact, if you look at Vega compared to low throughput short-read sequencers, leading short-read sequencers, it's actually cheaper to run Vega than it is to run those other low-throughput platforms. And so we're seeing some customers saying, "Hey, I've always wanted to get into long reads. And now I'm surprised at how inexpensive it is and how easy it is to use , as I kind of pointed out in my prepared remarks. And so I do think there's a bit of balance in the market relative to a few quarters ago, as you kind of said. And it was -- this has been the strategy that we outlined in 2021, quite frankly, that you have a suite of sequencers that meet the customers where they are with a combination of throughput, cost and relative performance, but all of them with the hallmark of PacBio HiFi, highly accurate epigenetics in every run for free and single molecule sequencing so that you can do a lot more with the product. So we'll see.

Todd Friedman

Analyst

Thanks for the questions Dave. Gary, we ll take the next question in the queue.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from Jack Meehan with Nephron Research.

Jack Meehan

Analyst

I wanted to talk about clinical customer adoption. It felt like in the script, you made a lot of progress on that front over the last few quarters. Is it possible to get a rough estimate of how much of your consumables are coming from clinical now and just how that growth rate compares to the overall?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. I mean, right now, it's roughly 15% of our consumables are coming from those clinical customers. And that's a figure that's growing, and we expect to see that continue to grow. Most of these clinical customers are still in validation phase and developing their assays and preparing them for prime time. A few of them like Quest have launched products, which is super exciting to see. But -- so I do think 15% is -- as a proportion, probably will grow over time here and will be a key driver of consumable growth overall.

James R. Gibson

Analyst

And when we factor in translational clinical research too, so like the ALS program we're part of, that's not included in the 15%. 15% is mainly Dx and LDT labs or direct in hospitals for genetic disease. There's -- if you add in clinical research on top of that, it's a much larger figure.

Jack Meehan

Analyst

Got it. And then the Revio pull-through in the quarter, I know it can bounce around a little bit. It stepped down from 1Q. The guide assumes it picks up. I was just curious the dynamics around pull-through in the quarter. Do you think any of the funding issues might have impacted that? And also, how did the SPRQ rollout kind of influence overall consumables revenue?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. So if we think about pull-through, as always, it does bounce around from quarter-to-quarter. And in the quarter, it did step down a little bit from Q1. But in Q1, we had the Japan impact for example, that had a very significant bump to -- Japan was year-end, and therefore, we had an inordinately high number of consumables going into Japan in the quarter. And so that kind of helped boost Q1. Q2, we really -- it was a pretty normalized quarter. I suspect that it's kind of bouncing around in the range. I don't expect it to -- I do think it will continue to bounce around in that range through the rest of this year and probably a key change point will be as we were talking about before with clinical is as these bigger customers start to use it in routine ways, I suspect that might have an impact on it. If you look at SPRQ, the SPRQ chemistry has been quite remarkable, actually. We were seeing up to a 33% improvement. So that's basically lowering the cost per sample for our customers and enabling more samples to get on the system. Could that have a modest impact in the short run? Perhaps. We're seeing probably, at this point, though, over 90% of our runs are with the SPRQ chemistry. And so any pull-through impact from that will probably normalize itself out over, say, this quarter, next quarter. We're kind of seeing all of that adoption effectively happening now. So we'll start to see a normalized rate from it, if that makes any sense.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord.

Kyle Alexander Mikson

Analyst

Congrats on the quarter. I'm going to ask a multipart question. The first is on the clinical, just as a follow-up to Jack. You said 33% or I guess, 1/3 of the Revio placements were to LDT or hospital labs and you're replacing legacy tech. I just want to ask if these labs are typically using multiple long-read technologies. I'm curious if you're winning head-to-head or permanently displacing legacy shorter long read. And then secondly, on the placements, I mean, the instruments were great in the quarter, as Dave said before. How are you thinking about placements going forward? Was there any pull forward, I guess, from areas besides Asia, for example, in the second quarter?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Kyle, can you repeat the second part of the question again because I didn't quite -- I didn't get it all written down actually.

Kyle Alexander Mikson

Analyst

Yes. I just asked 2 upfront to avoid being taken off. So just instrument placements going forward, given it was -- you were ahead of expectations, at least our expectations in the second quarter. And I was thinking there might have been like a pull forward or like an acceleration from 3Q to 2Q. So just thinking about like a run rate for placements going forward if we should use the second quarter as a good basis.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Okay. Fair enough. Okay. We'll start with the clinical labs. So these -- many of these labs are using multiple technologies, multiple sequencing technologies. Most of them certainly use short-read sequencing technologies. And what's happening is that they're implementing our technology alongside the short-read sequencing technology to help them get answers that they couldn't get, and we're replacing legacy molecular biology techniques such as various PCR, southern blot, other things. In some of the labs where we've won head-to-head, we are replacing other long-read technologies, which is exciting. But in many labs, they're running -- they're definitely running multiple technologies. What we're hearing from our customers is now that we've achieved the innovation with PureTarget and with SPRQ Chemistry, the economics of running Revio in a clinical setting are fit within their envelopes and the accuracy and the performance of our system and the ease of informatics is significantly better than other long-read technologies, which will help them be more efficient, save money and get better answers to patients. And so we're very excited about what's happening in the clinical accounts. And we've designed our products to be very, very robust and very easy to use with clinical aspirations. And given the -- where most of the team has come from, you can imagine that's kind of just ingrained in what we're all about. So very excited about that. If you look at instrument placements into the back half of the year, we expect to see Vega continue to grow. And we don't think we've hit the steady-state placement rate by any stretch. We do think there's a lot of opportunity there. The sales funnel continues to grow. One of the things that we're really excited about with respect to Vega is that we're seeing the sales cycle be much faster than Revio. And we're seeing lots of opportunities crop up in the first month of the quarter, for example, and close intra-quarter, which isn't that common, quite frankly, with Revio. And so the velocity of sales of Vega is helping us, and I do expect to see us grow in the back half. Vega will be dependent -- I mean, Revio will be dependent on how NIH funding kind of emerges. We still see tremendous amounts of opportunity internationally. And as we've said -- even as we said back in February, we thought Europe would be our fastest-growing region this year. We continue to believe that. A lot of that is based on rare disease work with Revio. So I think that we will see -- our forecast now are kind of flattish on Revio sorts of placements as a baseline and maybe we'll do a little better some quarters, a little lower in some other quarters, if that helps.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Douglas Schenkel with Wolfe Research.

Douglas Anthony Schenkel

Analyst

So my first question is just on -- not really trying to get a

Operator

Operator

Mr. Schenkel your sound is breaking up.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Doug, you broke up. Can you start over for us?

Douglas Anthony Schenkel

Analyst

Is that any better, guys?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes, it is, actually.

Douglas Anthony Schenkel

Analyst

Guys, can you hear me now?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

We can.

Douglas Anthony Schenkel

Analyst

Okay. Very sorry about that. The first one is on -- I was going to say backlog, but it's not really backlog. It's almost like the activity that's really close to officially getting an order on Vega and on Revio. I'm asking because I'm just wondering like how close you are to getting orders that you think would turn into orders and ultimately revenue if we get a good or better than bad or better than worst case NIH funding scenario. I'm wondering like if there's any way to quantify almost the pent-up demand that exists pending resolution. And I'm also wondering if that's a potential source of revenue upside this year or if that's something we should be contemplating as we look ahead to 2026.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes, Doug, that's -- boy, that is a crystal ball question, no question about it. And thank you for that. The -- Todd and I were actually just talking about that before the call, looking at the third quarter forecast and where we are right now. And what's really interesting is that the number of near forecasted opportunities is significant, much more -- much bigger than what we normally see. And I think I would probably -- I'm speaking principally of Vega, by the way. And I would characterize that as probably what you're trying to get to. And I can't give you a number really. I don't think that really makes sense. But you are right that we're seeing a lot of opportunities that are near opportunities that we will -- that are not in the official forecast, but are near the forecast. And so depending on, for example, let's say that there is a budget flush in the third quarter, some of those could probably come to fruition, which would likely be a source of upside for us. We're not anticipating any budget flush. I don't think that it -- until we get some resolution on what's going on with the NIH, it's difficult to know. But it certainly could be a source of opportunity. We're also seeing that outside -- even outside the United States, because the sales funnels are improving overall. And so what will be interesting for us to execute on in the second half is how do we accelerate those near opportunities into real opportunities that close that may not be completely dependent on NIH. They might be dependent on other macro factors. And I do think that, that's a source of potential upside for 2025 and certainly sets the stage for 2026.

Douglas Anthony Schenkel

Analyst

Okay. Super helpful. One technology road map question. You've talked about development of reusable SMRT Cells, understanding those would help reduce costs for customers. I'm just wondering which type of customers -- essentially, which customer class do you think would be more open to this? Is this something that you think could work on the research side? But as you think about clinical endeavors, is it really less relevant in that category?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes, Doug. No, we've had lots of conversations with all kinds of different customers and customers are really excited about it, whether it's clinical customers or research customers. So we think it will be a broad adoption of this capability. Now we will -- we're going to be very thoughtful about how we roll this technology out because it is real innovation, and the industry hasn't seen this before in a meaningful sort of way. And so we will focus on our higher volume, high throughput customers likely first because they'll get the most benefit out of it. The way we will implement the technology will be in a very automated way. So it's very customer-friendly and simple, consistent with everything we try to do here at PacBio. And so we do think that, that will really help those higher throughput customers, both on the clinical side and on the research side. And the beautiful thing about this technology is not only does it lower the cost per sample for our customers, it substantially increases our gross margin at the same time. So it's one of those unique innovations that provides a double win, lower prices and higher gross margins, which is what we're looking for.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Subbu Nambi with Guggenheim Securities.

Subhalaxmi T. Nambi

Analyst

You saw a really strong performance outside the U.S., and I know you're assuming status quo with tariff environment. But how much growth internationally is factored into your guidance with respect to tariffs? And is there any risk that outperformance internationally could be a risk to guidance?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes, Subbu, that's a great question. We've considered -- we have been thoughtful about how we think about tariffs and so we're not saying tariffs that we're out of the woods on tariffs. And so we've taken a pretty conservative view on that. In spite of that, we've seen substantial growth in the first half, and we think that will continue in the second half. Especially with respect to China, we've been -- the situation continues to be volatile and none of us really know where the answers are. So we have built our guidance around more conservative cases than less, but perhaps not as conservative as we were last quarter is the best way to see that. And the reality is we're already halfway through the year. So when you were looking into Q2, starting with Q2, you were -- if you remember, when we gave the guidance then, we were still all trying to grapple with Liberation Day and what China was saying, what we were saying and China was saying and what the U.S. was saying about China. We think it's a little bit more clear now, but not much. So we didn't overreach on that at all. We're still taking a very conservative view with our guidance.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Tycho Peterson with Jefferies.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

This is [ Priya ] on for Tycho. Just a question on pricing. Are you able to take price to account for tariff dynamics? I know one of your competitors had called out a 5% tariff surcharge. So I was wondering what your thoughts are on pricing there.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

So we have not adjusted pricing for any tariff dynamics. And quite frankly, we're not really seeing any tariff impacts. And so -- at this point. And so I think that's masked as just a price increase, not a tariff surcharge. I think if we really were seeing tariff -- a significant impact from tariffs, we would certainly have to evaluate whether we either change our price or add a surcharge as others will do. But at this point, I don't think we've seen any substantial impact to merit kind of evaluating that. But we would if we needed to.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Mason Carrico with Stephens.

Mason Owen Carrico

Analyst

A lot has been asked here, but maybe I'll just stick to one. You've highlighted how some of these larger scale projects like the Estonia Biobank have helped driven strength in Europe. How concentrated, I guess, is 2025 revenue in these types of initiatives? And do you see similar opportunities, similar POPSEQ projects on the horizon that could sustain EMEA growth into 2026?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. Great question, Mason. Thank you so much. So you're right, the larger scale like the Estonia project has helped buoy some of the growth in Europe. But one thing I'll point out is in the second quarter, the European team placed Revio's into several hospitals in the Nordic region for rare disease, clinical -- routine clinical rare disease, starting with translational research, but really moving into what you could consider national programs for rare disease. And so the growth in Europe has actually been much broader based than just the Estonia project. It has been with principally in what we're seeing in a rare disease in the hospital setting. So this is all clinical, and it's happening throughout the Nordics and into the continent of Europe itself. And so we're actually pretty excited about that. Looking at the rest of the world, there are several POPSEQ programs that are percolating around and moving forward, whether that's the Precise CRISPR program continuing on in Singapore, programs in Thailand, programs in other parts of the world as well. These are all significant opportunities, and I wouldn't be surprised if in 2026, some of these projects actually start driving PacBio's revenue growth. We haven't -- I don't want to report on anything we don't -- any projects we don't have yet, but I do think that there's a lot of substantial opportunity. And there's -- and these are principally outside the United States where there's funding available. So stay tuned on that, and I look forward to keeping you posted.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Luke Sergott with Barclays.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

This is [ Jake ] on for Luke. So you mentioned not being able to supply some customers with SPRQ reagents at the end of 1Q, so you had some back orders. Have those capacity constraints been addressed? And could you quantify how much of 2Q consumable revenue was pushed out from 1Q, if it was material?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. I mean I think we had -- we did have some back order in Q1, and we resolved a lot of that during the quarter. It's not really a material push into Q3 at this point. I think we've solved the vast majority of the issues.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Tom Stevens with Cowen and Company.

Thomas Patrick Stevens

Analyst

Just another one on the reusable flow cell. So are you guys still committed to scaling throughput longer term? Or has the model switched to kind of consistent throughput but much higher gross margin? And then I've got another follow-up on kind of your unit costs.

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes. No. So consistent with our strategy, our objective is to deliver not only lower cost and higher gross margin, but also higher throughput. Our objective is to get close to price parity with short-read sequencing and at the same time, get close to parity with the scale of short-read sequencing, too. We think the future will require both for us to achieve both of those aspects. We're starting with -- we have programs in place to develop a higher throughput sequencer. You can imagine we're always working on those kinds of projects. And then at the same time, we are developing the multi-use SMRT Cell that will enable lower prices. And so the combination will enable us to be successful at competing for the millions of samples that are available in the market for us to go after. So we've got both going on.

Thomas Patrick Stevens

Analyst

That's really helpful. And then just a quick one on kind of unit costs. You've obviously made really, really good progress here in a kind of low revenue environment. Have you changed how you guys are perceiving the long-term gross margin outlook given kind of the effective unit cost cuts you've been able to make in the last couple of quarters? Or is this just executing on a plan you guys already had in place?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Well, I think we haven't updated our long-term gross margin guidance, and perhaps we'll do that at another time. But of course, our objective is to dramatically increase our gross margins from here. And part of that is making fundamental innovation improvements, both on the SMRT Cell side and on the instrument side. And we're making progress every quarter on driving the cost of instrumentation down, increasing the yields of SMRT Cells. We had near record yields for SMRT Cells in the second quarter, which is helping push us forward. And so what we're doing is we're putting all of the fundamental cost improvements in place. And then as we scale, we'll get the economies of scale benefits, which will be a further push to help gross margins. But we haven't updated the guidance for the long run. But at this point, we're laser-focused on exceeding -- exiting the year exceeding 40%. And then I'm sure we'll communicate at the right time the next rung on the ladder up in '26. But I do think there is substantial opportunity to significantly increase gross margin here over the next few years.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Yuko Oku with Morgan Stanley.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

This is [ Jason ] on for Yuko. A lot has been asked. I'm just going to stick to one. So I just want to understand the type of applications on Vega. How similar or different are those applications compared to the main ones on Revio? Are the applications similar enough where Vega customers could transition to Revio in the long run if they need higher throughput? Or are some applications just more economical to run on Vega?

Christian O. Henry

Analyst

Yes, that's a great question. So the great thing about our technology, it's the applications are applicable across the instrument portfolio. Some may choose, for example, microbial applications, 60 gigabases of sequencing of HiFi sequencing is pretty -- is a substantial amount of sequencing. But if they need more scale, we have multiplex technologies that will allow them to multiplex more samples and take advantage of the throughput of Revio. And so it really becomes what is the scale of samples that the customer is looking at and how -- and what is the flow of samples in their labs. And so for example, you don't really get -- and this happens with other vendors, too, where it requires an incredible amount of samples to get on a flow cell, for example, to -- in order to get the lowest price per sample that you can, we would face the same -- some of the same things, some of the same challenges on Revio in certain very small genome applications. So if you have a lot of samples, it'd be no problem. And if you have a lot of samples consistently, it'd be even easier. But it is such that the customers can easily go from Vega to Revio and Revio back to Vega depending on what their needs are at the specific time.

Todd Friedman

Analyst

Yes. So we're at the top of the hour. So we'll wrap it up here. Thank you, everybody, for all the questions. We look forward to connecting with you at several conferences later this quarter and when we report our Q3 results next quarter. Have a good one.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.