Earnings Labs

Quanterix Corporation (QTRX)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 9, 2020

$3.36

+4.52%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+2.59%

1 Week

-26.94%

1 Month

+18.81%

vs S&P

+18.88%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Quanterix Corporation Q4 and Full-Year 2019 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Amol Chaubal, CFO of Quanterix. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Amol Chaubal

Analyst

Thank you, Cathy. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. With me on today’s call is Kevin Hrusovsky, our CEO, President, and Chairman. Before we begin, I would like to remind you about few things. Today’s call will be recorded and will be available on the Investors section of our website. Today’s call will contain forward-looking statements that are based on management’s beliefs and assumptions, and on information available as of the date of this call. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. The risks and the uncertainties that we face are described in our most recent filings with the Securities and the Exchange Commission. During today’s conference call, we will discuss some financial measures that are not presented in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or non-GAAP financial measures. In the Q4 earnings release and in the appendix of our presentation, which are available on our website, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations of these measures to comparative GAAP measures. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures provide investors with relevant period-to-period comparisons of our operations. These financial measures are not recognized under GAAP and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for a measure of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. With that, I will turn the call over to Kevin.

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Thank you very much, Amol, and thanks everyone for listening in. I’ve built an agenda today that I'm going to talk primarily about our strategic and financial progress, and inside of that we'll talk about certainly Q4 and the full year highlights, but also the vision and strategy both around the execution and the aspiration of our company’s opportunity. We’ll also talk specifically about our goals and several of the key growth catalysts that are in place for 2020. Amol will then spend some time going through a little bit more detailed look at our financials, and then we’ll open up for Q&A. Before starting, there has been a lot of news in the last couple of weeks and we've been getting a lot of questions regarding the impact of the coronavirus on Quanterix. Our top concern is our health and well-being of our employees around the world. We have had a task force in place for several weeks monitoring the latest developments. We meet regularly with our executive team to stay on top of the situation. As of today, the situation has not had a major impact on our operations. Our commercial team is in regular communication with our customers, and we're continuing to support day to day field operations. We've also taken steps to assure continuity of supply. We're also closely following the latest developments from the CDC and developed contingency plans should the situation further deteriorate and necessitate some of those contingency plans. And just in way of the financials, about 13% of our revenue comes from Asia, of which only 7% comes from China. Only a negligible portion of our revenue comes from Italy. While we have seen minimal impact on revenue and supply so far, we would be remiss if we didn’t comment that the…

Amol Chaubal

Analyst

Thanks Kevin. I'll be referring to Slide 27, as I go through this. As Kevin noted, revenue in Q4 of 2019 was $15.9 million, and came at the midpoint of the range we had provided at the JPMorgan Conference. This represents 46% revenue growth compared to $10.9 million revenue in Q4 2018. Product revenue grew by 53% driven by 74% growth in consumables and 30% growth in instruments. Service revenue grew by 26%. For the full year, the total revenue was $56.7 million, a 51% increase driven by 86% full-year growth in consumables and 55% full-year growth in instruments. On a non-GAAP basis, full-year revenue growth was 56%. As stated previously, we are not providing revenue guidance. Demand for HD-X, HD-1 trade-in program and strong adoption momentum contributed to our revenue growth although the success of our trade-in program negatively impacts gross margin, as we had expected. As stated in previous quarters our goal is to deliver meaningful growth each quarter, while continuing to build backlog for future quarters. On a non-GAAP basis, Q4 gross margin was 47.3%. Q4 2019 gross margin includes a 410 basis points negative impact from our HD-1 trade-in program, which continues to outpace our expectations. As discussed in our Q3 earnings call, while this may create near-term unfavorable impact on gross margins, it is a very compelling investment to drive future consumables growth and excitement around our technology. Our non-GAAP gross margin excludes the impact of non-cash acquisition-related purchase accounting adjustments and provides investors with a relevant period-to-period comparison of our operations. Excluded from the Q4 2019 non-GAAP gross margins are $0.7 million in non-cash purchase accounting adjustments, relating to the Uman acquisition. We expect similar quarterly Uman acquisition-related purchase accounting adjustments going forward, subject to movement in acquired inventory. On a GAAP basis, our…

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Thank you very much, Amol. Just wanted to show one last slide before opening up for Q&A. Its Slide 28. Basically, this is a summit that we run called Powering Precision Health. Quanterix actually is one of the lead sponsors, however on the left-hand side, you can see all the companies that sponsor. And this makes it a free summit for most of our attendees as a result of all that sponsorship. And you can see in 2018 it was in Amsterdam, in the level of attendees and number speakers. And in 2019, it was Barcelona. And then in 2020, we're expecting it's going to be in the month of October, November in Boston. Also want to let you know that we have a webinar plans for Nf-L on March 12. If you're interested to participate, please let us know. It's already got a very significant participation, where we’re just going to further describe some of the things around our Nf-L opportunity. So, with that, we’ll open up for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question is from Doug Schenkel of Cowen.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

This is Chris on for Doug today. Thanks for taking my questions. Kevin, on Slide 6, oncology revenue increased sharply at your accelerator services business in 2019. Could you just talk about the key drivers of this growth and was that all generated on your SPX system? Additionally, do you believe this is a good leading indicator for SPX placements in 2020? And does that give you confidence in your SPX placement target?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes interestingly, we have had recently a very nice surge of SP-X interest at a services level. And when we launched our HD-1 back five years ago, we didn't really have an accelerator business, and we converted somewhat of a promotional opportunity where we ran samples for customers into our service business, and it really was key to growing the instrument placements was to get a bolus of activity in our services lab. And so, this has been a good leading indicator for us that we've begun to see strong movement in the - we’ll call it the planar technology. We also do have good movement in the bead-based technology for planar. I'm sorry for oncology as well, but we really are primarily wanting to make sure we maintain the bead-based technology, primarily for neurology because we think that in oncology the bead-based is actually a little bit limited versus the planar, and that's part of the acquisition we made where we can do 10-plex and having a larger multiplex and still maintaining the sensitivity is important to interrogate the immune system. So, we're pretty excited now that - both in inflammation and cancer, we’re seeing a nice uptick for services which bode well for 2021 for placements of instruments.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay and maybe on the coronavirus situation. Do you have enough backlog in the accelerator, and I guess demand from others is to offset coronavirus related growth, revenue growth headwinds in APAC, does that materialize more meaningfully?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes we don't actually provide that level of granularity in guidance, but what we can say was we were planning for the conversion of our installed base of HD-1 to HD-X, and we knew that as customers in the first half of 2020, we're revalidating that technology that it would slowdown consumable purchases, while that is being revalidated. And during that period, they would likely utilize our services in order to get the data that they need to continue while they're doing the revalidation. The good news here is that because we anticipated that, we did and are continuing to have a very healthy backlog of our services business for the purposes of what we consider to be an important installed base conversion. Probably one of the things that we've noticed though that further augments this kind of somewhat coronavirus resistance relative to what I know a lot of the companies will experience is that if a company does go in what we call lockdown, and they have some level of quarantining occurring, or they're working from home, it could impact their ability to run their instruments; and again, could impair somewhat consumable purchases as well as instrument sales. So, having this service is really quite opportune for this particular issue that you cite, the coronavirus, which - that wasn't our initial intent. I think some of that, the harder we work, the luckier we get maybe, but having that strong backlog is very productive, obviously, for both of those reasons.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Maybe just the last question on gross margin, how should we think about phasing in 2020 just given the trade-in system that you have in place?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Could you repeat that question?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

How should we think about - I guess, pacing of the gross margin expansion in 2020 just given that you have the HD-X trade-in dynamic in place?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Perfect, I’ll…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Do you expect that to be more first half weighted or second half weighted?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes, I'll start that answer, and then I think Amol will provide some color. Absolutely, the trade-in program does dampen the pace in which we grow our gross margins. We still plan to grow them. It's just that the pace of growth we've been running at about 400 basis points a year over the last couple of years. We're projecting on a full year basis that it's going to be more like 200 basis points. And so, most of that is the effect of that trade-in program and we probably also have some level of mix effect that's occurring in the first half based on those large trials that Novartis ran with the Nf-L last year in the first quarter. So, I would say that there's an overall effect that we expect, it's just going to slow the pace of gross margin expansion. And I do expect that we'll probably see a bigger issue in the first half than we will in the second half based on that changeover. Amol, you might want to comment as well.

Amol Chaubal

Analyst

Good and thanks, Kevin, and to build on it Chris, the headwinds we will see is on the first half of the year from the trade program. On a full year basis, we are seeing 200 basis points. So, in Q1 and Q2, we expect gross margins to start coming up from the Q4 levels as some of our mix and productivity kicks in. But the effect of it, you will only see in Q3 and Q4.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Puneet Souda of SVB Leerink.

Puneet Souda

Analyst

Yes hi, Kevin, Amol thanks. And thanks for the details on the slides and thoughts on strategy going ahead. So, I think the bigger question here for investors is the long-term guide. So, I just wanted to make sure you – I mean you posted 51% growth here in fiscal year 2019 and 65% last year. Given the number of growth drivers that you're pointing to, is it safe to assume that you will continue to be a 40% CAGR longer term despite being 30% to 40% topline growth that you're mentioning for this year?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes, we do think that - in some ways there is a little bit of a correction this year. Not really a correction off of a pretty strong growth pace, but I think when you consider the types of things that were doing with the overhaul of our installed base. Coupled then with the fact that our denominator is bigger and we know we had just a small amount of one-time large trials from Novartis. When you add all that up, we feel very confident in this three-year CAGR of 30% to 40%. Where we end up this year? We don't guide it in annual basis, but there are as you point out lot of healthy growth catalysts. We just - as you know are very conservative and wanted to make sure that we don't get ahead of our skis relative to a lot of the transition that's occurring this year. This is a year where we've got tremendous growth catalyst in place, but it's also a year that we don't want everybody to just simply add all those growth catalyst up and look like we're going to have another 50% growth year, which we've had the last two years. So, our commentary is pretty common with the way it's been historically. So, we feel very good going into this year that we have a lot of nice growth catalysts in place. But at the same time, we do think that as a denominator gets bigger and with the level of execution stuff that we're trying to achieve this year, it's going to be smart for investors not to expect the high end of this curve right out the gate. But obviously, there's opportunities for upside as we traverse through this year.

Puneet Souda

Analyst

But for the longer term 40% CAGR is still something that you are still aspiring to and then you're confident of.

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes, we basically have stated that actually in our slides that we have a 30% to 40% CAGR for a three-year period. And that assumes that the denominator is getting bigger each of those years. And it also assumes that that is for research. And as you know, we're making a lot of headway on possibilities for measuring Nf-L and clinical studies. And so we don't have any of the potential upside of let's say if we were successful moving into LDT, single side LDT for Nf-L. We don't incorporate and - at this point plan on any of that revenue but certainly we're working towards that as you know.

Puneet Souda

Analyst

And then on clinical trials, those have been obviously a major driver of growth this year and last year. So on Nf-L, can you help us - help me understand whether these biomarkers that are coming from Uman, would they be exclusive to you when the Nf trials were to turn into a companion diagnostic? And could you maybe give us a sense if the or could they be used on competitor systems as well, meaning the antibody being used on competitor systems as well and they’re still license from Quanterix? Just help us understand how should we think about the actual companion diagnostic product if the drug was to improve with that product?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

First thing I would say, I wouldn't look at it as a negative. We actually look at it as a positive that we think it's important that we get multiple pathways into the market utilizing our antibody peers or it will never be the standard. It will actually get reinvented and could dismiss a lot of the long term value creation opportunity. So a lot of what we're doing is proactively establishing a long-term value for this Nf-L franchise. And so the one place so far that we have licensed and we've only licensed that for the purposes of a long-term IVD diagnostic is to Siemens. Siemens has an installed base of 10,000 - 7,000 to 10,000 instruments and we believe there are some use cases that you'll be able to deploy, in an IVD setting, inside of their instruments that we think it bodes well for us to work with them to get the Nf-L and an IVD basically franchised. And so they will be making investments, significant investments over the next several years to get our Nf-L as an IVD on their platform. Now that is a non-exclusive, meaning, that we can in fact, move that on to other diagnostic platforms and we do think that Roche and Abbott, both are very significant installed basis. All of these companies Roche, Siemens, and Abbott do primarily singleplex, they don't do multiplex. We think longer term, that for a drug - for disease specificity, having a panel is going to be important because Nf-L only shows neurodegeneration. So it's kind of like the cholesterol of the brain, that could be a lot of different things that cause cholesterol to go up. And so there's a lot of pathology that different drugs go after. We now have drugs going after Nf-L, believe it or not, as a target. And so, our view is if that, longer term, when there is interest for specificity, is it Alzheimer’s that’s created the neuronal disease or is it MS, or is ALS, or is it concussions? We think the specificity is going to require other markers to be added to the panel, and that’s something that unfortunately, many of our IVD partners - we have two right now, we have Siemens for Nf-L and we have Abbott for blood screening but not with the Nf-L but just in the general category. They would not necessarily be able to utilize it in a multiplex because they don't do multiplex and if they did they would not have sufficient sensitivity for those use cases. And so in a way we think we're building a very bold market for Nf-L and for Samoa given that we think longer term a multiplex is going to be very much needed to get sufficient neuro disease specificity.

Puneet Souda

Analyst

And then so last one on the current commercials for us that you have in place. I wonder if you could give us a sense of where do you stand with the sales reps and remind us as you move towards these efforts should we expect any expansion there in the commercial organization and more importantly the sales force?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes. We typically are making investments in our sales force at about the 20% to 30% level per year so you would expect growth in that headcount of 25% on average. We have also recently brought in what we consider to be some of the top sales leaders in the entire landscape. We started searching for a new North America sales leader back about a year ago and Hether Ide has now joined us from Thermo and she took over the reins - right when the year started and her first sales meeting was focused on what we called one team. It’s part of our insider revolution campaign where they basically are taking the field applications scientists which are primarily PhDs that support the sales force coupled then with the field service engineers that are in the customer shops fairly routinely at least at a monthly level coupled them with the salespeople and team selling. So, we call it one team, but she's kicked that off as our European team has a leader two that we brought in about a year-and-a-half ago, [indiscernible] one of the top European commercial leaders. She also launched one team in Europe. We also brought over from SomaLogic one of the top commercial Vice President leaders from that company. His name is Andy Keys. He's running all of our services on the accelerator and that's why we've seen such a bolus of growth. We've got these three sharpshooter leaders that are really honed in on the inside of revolution of what we call one team and now we're focused on Asia. That's the next major focus point, is to further build out our Asia operation. And we had a lot of meetings over the last six months. We have about five or six people that are on the ground, but we're primarily using distributors throughout China right now. But we do see longer term, maybe not in the first half this year given the coronavirus, but we do see significant opportunities. It's only, today, 7% of our sales, and so we're pretty underpenetrated. But we see a very significant opportunity. So, I would say that you'll see a 25% investment in head count, but it's the quality of what we're bringing in that is really high quality and they're actually linking into our investor base that's providing its leads because of the drugs that they want to get approved with our technologies.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Sung Ji Nam of BTIG.

Sung Ji Nam

Analyst

Just a couple of questions. Maybe going back to Chris' first question, I was wondering if I could get a bit more color on the oncology market opportunity near term. So, it seems like a lot of the near-term opportunities are coming from better characterization of later-stage cancers. I'm not sure if I'm later stage cancers. I'm not sure if I am interpreting that correctly but was wondering if there are kind of meaningful opportunities in the - in the near term for some of the earlier stage screening to disease recurrence monitoring and things like that near term. And then, when you talk about the utility of HD-X as well, do you think HD-X is more - their utility, therefore, kind of even the earlier, the more sensitivity needed, I guess, segment of that market?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes. You're asking some pretty interesting questions, Sung Ji. They border between the left-hand side which is research and execution to the right-hand side which is our aspirational liquid biopsy opportunity assessment that we're doing this year. Starting on the left-hand side, the product that we've launched as a CorPlex. It's an assay of 10 of the most important cytokines, interleukins, interferons that basically today you can't really see them at baseline healthy levels with the competitor’s technology on a routine basis. And we think that on most of the markers that we have in our panel, you're able to clinically distinguish and discriminate the baseline levels. And so, any movement from baseline for immunotherapies is a very important finding in measurement because in general, if you look at like KEYTRUDA in some of the immunotherapies, they have response rates that are less than 20% and they also have cytokine storm or lethal toxicity that's around 10%. And so basically 80% of the time these drugs are not providing the cancer patient any benefit. And of that 80%, a portion around 10% of that time they're actually up-regulated immune system that becomes toxic and kills the patient. So we think that seeing these cytokines at baseline levels is a great research opportunity. And today, we have competitors in this landscape where we don't really have a neurology competitors but in this oncology landscape, there are a few companies that are incumbents, that we're disrupting what our sensitivity. And it's not only the ability to see these cytokines have baseline movements and seen them earlier but it's also the ability to get better clarity and less false positives and negatives through the dilution of samples. And so we're pretty excited that we've got kind of an avalanche of interest in our…

Sung Ji Nam

Analyst

Great. That's very helpful. And then just my follow up is on instrument placement. I was not sure. Remind me again if from an intra-quarter standpoint, for the instrument and shipment I guess cadence within the quarter, do you see the majority of that in the last month of the year? I mean I'm sorry - last month of the quarter…

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes. I would say…

Sung Ji Nam

Analyst

…as many other tools companies do. I was just curious if you guys also see that.

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

I would say the last couple of years we've probably, Sung Ji, I have had pretty good visibility throughout the quarter so I think that we do know with the launch of the HD-X that in Q1 and Q2 we are going to probably see some increase in our growth rate and the services that cover for a lot of the validations going on with this newer technology. But in general we have pretty good visibility to instruments throughout the quarter and we do see purchases, not just at the end of the quarter, but also early in the quarter. So it isn't uncommon that you do see a little bit of a fourth quarter surge in capital equipment purchases versus other quarters. That's not uncommon. But I would say that for us our first half is going to be really increasing the mix of services which does two things, we have great gross margins in our services, but it also creates future demand for our instruments. So we're pretty excited about those prospects as we try to build out the longer term consumable pull through which we've had I think five years in a row now of very strong growth.

Operator

Operator

And your next question is from Tycho Peterson of JPMorgan.

Tycho Peterson

Analyst

Kevin, I have a follow-up question on the partnerships as we think about Abbott and Siemens. Are milestones we should be paying attention to and then thoughts on time lines of when we can actually see something on the market?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes, I would say that we are in our strategic goals for this year attempting to land another IVD relationship. And you might remember we had a deal where you - we got all those rights back. And so now we're in a position where we can kind of re-cash into the right landscape and application space. [Bill Maher] was not focused on neurology and oncology and we do think that Abbott and Roche and Siemens do have very nice participation in those categories. So, hey, we can't time a deal like this but I can say from a strategic standpoint, we are setting up a target to try to get another one landed this year. We did the Siemens last year, which was primarily only on the Nf-L. This one, we hope to achieve this year, would be more aligned with where the opportunity landscape is for these diagnostics and we think that there is tremendous potential to use our Simoa technology to not only someday, advance into a point of care, but also to enable significant benefit to core labs today with just much better economics, given that the sensitivity allows you to get answers from smaller samples more productively. So we're very bullish on an IVD relationship opportunity in 2020. We can't time it. We can't tell you when that would happen, but I do think that it will be a fairly significant milestone for our company, further validating what I consider to be disruption that we could create with this technology. And one of these diagnostic companies acknowledging that opportunity and teaming up with us.

Tycho Peterson

Analyst

And then thinking about HD-X, you’ve talked about the expecting 50% of the HD-1 installed base to be upgraded by year-end. Can you maybe just talk about what it takes to get the remaining accounts to upgrade and then, how should we think about overall utilization, HD-X has I think 20% higher pull through. So how should we think about average utilization across the installed base as you go about HD-X?

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Perfect. Yes. So first of all, the way we’ve set up the target for the installed base of HD-1 versus HD-X is that by year end, we expect that the total amount of HD-1s will be roughly 150, and there’ll be roughly 150 of the HD-X. So 50/50 by year-end. And off those units that we sell, the share of HD-Xs, we think that probably half of them will be upgrades to the HD-1, the other half would be new purchases at the $200,000level. And from then, as you point out the overall pull through, when we first started, Tycho, we talked a lot about a third of our instrument revenue would be kind of recurring. Well, now, we're up to 50%. And so, we're fairly confident that the total dollars of instrument installed base, we will get that same level 50% or greater of pull through. So, in the case of an HD-X, it goes for $200,000. We would expect that we're going to be able to pull through $100,000. Now, that typically is a quarter to after the install that takes a little bit of time for them to get up and running and the validations will be complete. But the 50% is now a pretty good number to be using for modeling purposes, even though it had been as we pointed out lower than that when we started.

Tycho Peterson

Analyst

And then last one, just on pipeline, if I go back to our conference in January, you talked about potentially inferring liquid biopsy and single cell. I know you mentioned liquid biopsy a couple of times in this call. So, how are you thinking about that opportunity in single cell? And then as we think about the sensitivity improvement, the 100-fold target increase, how should we think about how derisk that is? I think you talked about already having the past in place to get to 40x. But how should we…

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Yes. First, on this liquid biopsy, we clearly - we count proteins versus measure a broader-based concentrations. We’re actually counting the number of them in the way their digital technology works. And so, whether it’d be in the area of doing it with a single cell or whether it's with a lot of cells that your heterogenetically looking across the tumor, our view is that knowing how many of the proteins of interest there are is a unique opportunity. And we think that the protein is much more phenotypic and many of the customers that we have in those liquid biopsy field, has been primarily honed in on molecular, but they're now wanting to augment it with the ability to do some level of protein work as well. So, I think that our goal would be by year end we're going to have the ability to articulate what our position is on our ability to evolve into liquid biopsies. We want to make sure that it's going to be something that makes a lot of sense for our investors because it would be a higher investment profile to move into that landscape. And today, we can watch that many of the liquid biopsy companies really haven't migrated into early detection. They're more into measuring drug efficacy and patient monitoring and residual disease monitoring as opposed to getting to the upstream actual diagnostics and early detection of the cancer. Where we do seem to have an opportunity, the only thing I would say that we're doing is - as we watch the different columns that we see evolving in liquid biopsy and we've got all the logos of these various companies that primarily are utilizing a luminous platform to get to some kind of an answer. We are building those same…

Operator

Operator

And your final question is from Max Masucci of Canaccord Genuity.

Max Masucci

Analyst

So you’re confident as an expanding global footprint, can you just go a bit deeper about how you’re mitigating any supply chain impact from coronavirus? And then, any details around the discussions you’ve had with some key global pharma customers and how their thinking about any impact? Thanks.

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

So first, I would say that there are certain customers of ours that have already started some levels of lockdown relative to working from home for a large percentage of their populations. And it's still fairly minor, but we're watching it closely to see how that evolves and I think we've seen announcements, public announcements from Biogen as well as to Takada at this point. We also from our vantage point, started very early. We've had a task force established. We actually had a kind of what we called an insight 1.4 meaning that basically honed in on all the things that could interrupt our ability to be performing in the first half of this year. And some of the things that we cited were supply, and we actually don't see any short-term supply risks based on the current state. Obviously, as the coronavirus continues to spread and - they work on mitigation strategies that could change. But right now, we feel good on the supply side. The demand side, also we mentioned that we have fairly limited exposure based on Italy and China being a very small portion of what we have. The pharma side of this is what we want to keep an eye on because interestingly these pharmas are really trying to utilize our technology to get drugs approved, and that's their value proposition. That’s the number one thing that they really do for their investors. And so, what we've been seeing at least in the short-term in Q1 is an excitement to utilize our services as a way even if they can't utilize their own instrumentation inside because of whatever quarantining or whatever issues they might have. So we are continuing to work hard on our own position making sure that we've got our contingency set to try everything we can to keep our employees safe and effective, and making sure that we don't put them in harm's way. But to the extent that we can continue to evolve productively our services, we're still feeling very good that there won't be an issue from the supply side of what we need to build the kits and the instruments. Even though I would say that like some of our instrument providers do have work from home types of contingencies that they've been setting up. We don't see that impairing our ability to get the instrument supply for the moment and we'll keep a very close eye on that Max.

Max Masucci

Analyst

And then just one broader question. So, I guess how does Novartis’ success with their drug that maybe approved in June kind of set precedent for the use of protein biomarkers in these Quanterix in the future trials? And then on that note, just given that your 10% penetrated in that neurology research segment just speaking to the global demand appetite sustainability of global spending for neurology research in 2020 versus 2019? Thanks.

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Absolutely, one of the things that we saw recently, we had up a major show in Boston and I think there were five Chief Medical Officers attending from some CROs that are doing drug trials as well as from pharma. And there’s a very high level of excitement for neuro filament light being an early indicator of drug efficacy and drug performance. And we’ve just got some evidence that if you turn off the drug in a patient that within a week to two weeks you can actually see the Nf-L levels start to return to disease levels. And so this is a very quick cycle time as opposed to the MRI that we think it could take as long as two years to two and a half years to be able to see brain atrophy as a result of some of these diseases. So, we think we've got a new gold standard of opportunity and there does appear to be robust interest across pharma for the technology which I think that we're still seeing almost a revival in some respects of neuro pipelines with the concept of having an objective biomarker, which they've never really had before. So, we actually got one drug company. We just did a video for if anyone interested on the call it’s with the SARM. They got the SARM protein that they have a drug that they're going after that basically can prevent external damage and neuronal damage. And it's almost like the Nf-L has become a target for them. So we actually are pretty excited that having this biomarker that's so low cost, so noninvasive that also provides the opportunity to measure neuronal health is creating more excitement and more interest for the neuro pipelines. So we feel pretty good and we also feel like there's a national priority on mental health given all the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder. The opioid crisis and also the onslaught of the demographics of how many Alzheimer patients are going to hit the healthcare system over the next 30 years. So all those, we think bodes well for why the FDA has been trying to help researchers use biomarkers to get drugs approved before - the symptoms of dementia and other things set in when it's much harder than for the drug to work.

Operator

Operator

And there are no other questions in queue.

Kevin Hrusovsky

Analyst

Okay, great. Well hey, we really appreciate all the support. We wish everyone the best of luck and good fortune as we all navigate through this coronavirus spread throughout the world. We will keep you abreast of our developments and we're very bullish on how we're going to turn and translate 2020 into another value creation year for our investors. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.