Masoud Toloue
Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open
Thank you, Joshua and good afternoon. First quarter results exceeded our expectations, highlighting the resilience of our instruments and consumables business and strengthening our confidence in the long-term growth potential. While the quarter was stable, we have revised our guidance more conservatively to account for the broader macro funding environment rather than any company-specific factors. I want to spend some time discussing our position in the market. Let's begin with the key fundamental. Demand for human health is not going away, and we're optimistic about delivering solutions to meet this demand. First, Quanterix's ultrasensitive protein detection platform is unmatched, empowering early disease detection, accelerating the development of new therapies through clinical trials, and enabling precise monitoring of neuro biomarkers in long-term studies. Second, we believe proteomics will be a cornerstone of non-invasive liquid biopsy solutions, offering real-time insight into human health and providing a dynamic view that complements genetic and methylation data. Third, we are building our leadership in neurology, applying the scientific and business expertise we've gained to expand our addressable market into immunology and oncology, areas where we are poised to lead in early biomarker detection. And finally, as long as people seek longer and healthier lives, the demand for high-sensitivity detection tools will remain and Quanterix is at the forefront with our customers, advancing the science to meet this enduring need. On to the quarter. In the first quarter, we reported revenue of $30.3 million. While this represents a decline of 5%, we recorded our highest consumables quarter and expect consumables performance to remain strong. Our adjusted gross margin was approximately 50% and our adjusted cash usage was $9 million in the quarter, representing a greater than 50% improvement versus last year. Vandana will describe this in more detail. However, I want to emphasize, we are committed to achieving positive cash flow in 2026 with a balance sheet well north of $100 million. Turning now to our pending merger with Akoya Biosciences. Nearly two weeks ago, we announced an amendment to our proposed transaction. I want to highlight some of the key financial details of this amended transaction. First, the equity value of the transaction is being reduced by 67% from $201 million to $66 million. The number of shares being issued is reduced by over 9 million shares, increasing Quanterix's shareholder ownership of the combined company from 70% to 84%. And we expect Akoya will contribute 37% to top line and 40% to Quanterix's gross profit dollars at 16% pro forma ownership. At the core of our strategic rationale for this transaction is the tremendous synergy for tracking protein biomarkers from tissue to blood. Diseases like cancer start in tissue and ultimately, leak into blood, causing morbidity. Enabling our customers to track cancer biomarkers such as ORF1p, which plays a critical role in both blood and tissue, will open new opportunities for Quanterix to expand its impact and accelerate our growth beyond what would be possible as a standalone entity. Customers and industry KOLs are excited about the potential of bringing technologies from Quanterix and Akoya together, and we have already begun considering matched tissue blood biomarker detection solutions. Now, an update on our strategic initiatives. Our first grow menu is already delivering results. In Q1, we launched four new immunology assays, building on the 20 new assays we introduced last year, which enabled us to achieve our highest consumables revenue quarter. Our continued investment in this powerful product development engine is paying off. We are expanding our assay portfolio to reinforce our leadership in neurology, adding inflammation biomarkers, and initiating development in oncology applications. With more than 1,000 instruments installed worldwide, each with significant throughput potential, we are committed to maximizing their value through the introduction of novel biomarker assays. Our second strategic focus is expanding into adjacencies, starting with the launch of Simoa ONE, an instrument and reagent platform on track for release by year-end. We expect this next-gen platform will break current sensitivity barriers, delivering up to 10x the sensitivity of our existing systems with expanded multiplexing of the 10-plex and improved specificity through code matched barcoding, all with an intuitive workflow. Simoa ONE will extend our category leadership and set a new standard for performance in the field. Our third area of focus is Alzheimer's diagnostics, where we're making rapid progress. Last year, we signed agreements with regional labs and hospital networks, generating $6 million in revenue. This quarter, we expanded our footprint through a new collaboration with ARUP Laboratories, a premier national lab. ARUP will now offer the pTau217 blood test for Alzheimer's disease using our platform and assay kit, leveraging antibody technology licensed from Eli Lilly and validated on samples from Lilly's Phase III TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 2 trial. This is a critical step toward building a global infrastructure for non-invasive Alzheimer's testing, a priority we will continue to advance throughout 2025. We also anticipate introducing pricing for our LucentAD Complete test later this summer, a multi-marker algorithm-driven Alzheimer's risk assessment tool. This test is currently progressing through four clinical trials with enrollment expected to complete by Q4 of this year. Now, a few final words on our current market environment and the three actions we are taking to succeed in it. First, as I said earlier, despite market headwinds around academic funding and biopharma spending, demand for human health in the near or long-term is not going away. And today, we're pleased to announce for the first time a new footing for Quanterix to deliver Simoa sensitivity at scale. In response to capital and resource constraints among academic and biopharma customers, we will democratize access to our technology. Starting in 2026 through an early access program, customers will be able to use unlocked Simoa ONE assay kits on over 20,000 existing flow cytometers worldwide, eliminating the need for a high capital instrument purchase. This is made possible by breakthrough reagent innovation. Digital ultrasensitive Simoa signal detection is now embedded in kinetic dye-encoded beads, enabling compatibility with a far broader installed base, one that is at least 20x greater than our own. This is a massive advance that we will make available after our Simoa ONE platform launch expected at the end of the year. Second, we are scaling the success we've established in neurology into adjacent fields, immunology and oncology through our grow menu initiative and the acquisition of Akoya Biosciences. Day one of the acquisition, our installed base increases by 1,300 instruments and our addressable market expands from $1 billion to $5 billion. Liquid biopsy is expected to eventually surpass the market size of all other diagnostic testing combined, and it has become abundantly clear proteins are the next frontier. Our ability to measure biomarkers across the tissue-to-blood continuum will accelerate the pace of novel diagnostic test. With this expanded footprint, we are executing a strategy grounded in scale and speed unlike other technologies that are still reliant on capital equipment sales in a risk-averse market. Third, we are operating with discipline and purpose. We are committed to achieving positive cash flow by 2026, supported by a balance sheet exceeding $100 million. Today, we are announcing a $30 million core operating cost reduction, scaling to $55 million annualized savings by 2026. These savings are driven by operational efficiencies and our expected synergies from the Akoya acquisition aligned with our stand-alone revenue forecast of $120 million to $130 million for 2025. Now, I'll turn the call over to Vandana.