Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Seer first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Kelly Gura, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. So earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter ended March 31st, 2025. If you've not received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to investor@seer.bio. In addition, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be accessed on the Events and Presentation section of Seer's Investor Relations website. Joining me today from Seer is Omid Farokhzad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board; and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of 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 titled forward-looking statements in the press release Seer issued today. For a more complete list and description, please see the risk factors section of the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31st, 2025 and in its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Seer disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or 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 May 13th, 2025. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Omid.

Thanks, Kelly, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I will begin our talk today by providing updates on our business, and I will then turn the call over to David to provide more detail on our financial results for the first quarter of 2025, as well as our outlook for the full year. Beginning with Slide 3, we have always believed that our technology will redefine the trajectory of proteomics and make a meaningful impact within the scientific community. While near-term macroeconomics volatility, including the recently introduced tariffs and ongoing government funding challenges, are expected to persist and limit visibility for the balance of the year, our long-term vision and opportunity remain unchanged. In fact, I'm more confident in that belief than ever before. We delivered a strong start to the year with $4.2 million of revenue in the first quarter, driven by increasing demand for the Proteograph product suite. We shipped as many instruments in the first quarter as were shipped in all of 2024, and saw continued traction for Seer Technology Access Center, or STAC. Our impact is clearly reflected in the high-quality data our customers are generating and the acceleration of publication that further validate the power of our technology. Despite the heightened macroeconomic uncertainty and headwinds that our customers are facing, we're reiterating our full year 2025 revenue guidance of $17 to $18 million, representing 24% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. As the policy landscape continues to evolve, we will closely monitor the impact of U.S. policy changes on our customers as we navigate through this dynamic environment. We continue to view our strong balance sheet of approximately $285 million in cash, cash equivalent and investments as a key differentiator in the current environment, and we remain disciplined in deploying it. In this…

Thanks, Omid. Turning to Slide 6. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2025 was $4.2 million, representing an increase of 37% compared to $3.1 million in the first quarter of 2024. It was primarily due to higher instrument consumable and service revenue. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments, consumable kits, and service revenue, of which $52,000 was attributed to related parties. Product revenue for the first quarter of 2025 was $2.9 million, including $5,000 of related party revenue, and consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments and consumable kits. As Omid mentioned, while we continue to see pressure on CapEx budgets and elongated sales cycles for the outright purchase of new instruments, we were pleased by the traction we saw in terms of instrument shipments in the first quarter. Service revenue was $1.2 million for the first quarter of 2025, including $47,000 of related party revenue, and primarily consisted of revenue related to STAC service projects. We continue to be encouraged by customer interest in running projects through STAC and their ability to gain access to Proteograph data, including a significant number of new customers. Sample volumes increased on a year-over-year basis. As we have stated previously, we may continue to undertake projects for key strategic studies and other marketing efforts that will result in additional presentations and publications in the near term, but are conducted at a lower price point than our typical STAC service projects. Other revenue was $60,000 for the first quarter of 2025, and consisted of lease and shipping revenue. Total gross profit was $2.1 million for the first quarter of 2025, representing a gross margin of 49%, compared to $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2024, representing a gross margin of 44%. Gross margins were driven by a higher mix of…

Thank you, David. Moving on to Slide 8. Our performance in the first quarter is a testament to the value our technology brings to our customers, especially given the challenging and dynamic macro environment. Looking ahead, I continue to believe we're well-positioned for a strong year ahead. We remain focused on four key growth drivers in 2025, which include expanding our user base and continuing to enhance access, driving larger cohort studies, continuing to drive product innovation, and enabling more customers to generate meaningful and actionable biological insights. I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress, and with that, we will now open it up for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions]. We have a question from the line of Rachel Vatnsdal with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon. Thanks so much for taking my question today. So, one thing, you talked about this life sciences project. Can you just walk us through the magnitude of this on the Discovery Life Sciences project that you called out, and then how long do you expect that to last for?

Thank you so much. Let me have actually David comment on the DLS project. That's the relationship David has been managing for the last two years, and it's a very exciting project. It's a 10,000-sample study. David?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Rachel. This is a really interesting project that's been evolving over a number of quarters in that this particular customer wanted to look at a large 10,000-sample cohort in deep proteomics and to really try and understand potential biomarker signatures and other things. I can't go into a ton of detail yet. They are going to have a press release likely coming out over the next month or so that will kind of go into detail. But really, it's the first-of-its-kind database that we know of that's going to be created. And I think, as Omid mentioned in his remarks, this is really something where they did an extensive analysis of all the available proteomics technologies and came to the conclusion that the Proteograph with the Astral performed, the service will be performed by Discovery Life Sciences, would give them the best, most robust data set for this cohort, such that they could then mine it for potential targets and biomarkers. So, we're really excited about this. It's the first real kind of population-scale study, and I think it's going to be really impactful in terms of the overall scientific impact of it. It will take some time. I'd say over the course of the next kind of 12 months to 18 months, I imagine. But it really just depends on how quickly they kind of bring together the cohort and things like that. So, we're excited about it. And more details to come here over the next month or so.

And, Rachel, let me just add to David's comment in that, about 9 months ago in September, and this was at the Morgan Stanley Conference, I alluded to the fact that 2025 is the year where we're going to start seeing population-scale, deep, unbiased proteomics go live on the back of the Proteograph product suite that enables them. So, this 10,000-sample study is the first. I expect over the course of the coming months, you'll hear other announcements of even larger studies. So, we are in a new paradigm in terms of deep, unbiased, mass-spec-based proteomics really taking the scale. And I think the platform and the roadmap that we have, even 100,000 samples or hundreds of thousands of samples, are completely within the realm of reality in terms of cost-effectiveness, in terms of feasibility. And so, I'm super excited to keep you informed over the coming months.

Then maybe just in terms of the academic and government weakness, obviously, you talked a little bit about that in the prepared, but can you give us the updated expectation in terms of what are you expecting your U.S. academic and government customers to decline for the full year? And then can you unpack for us a little bit in terms of the trends that you saw in March, or excuse me, in the first quarter and maybe just the month of March as well, but also what you saw in April. Have you seen orders and trends across that customer group continue to get worse, or have they kind of stabilized at this point? Thanks.

Yeah, and Rachel, maybe let me open up, and then I'll hand it to David for kind of a deeper color. So, as we had discussed with you at your conference, academic and government together is about 30% of our revenue and that 30% breaks down into roughly 18% academic and 12% government. So, and the guidance that we provided actually represents our expectation of weakening in terms of these two market segments in 2025. Now that said, if I look at the Q1 of 2025, there was actually a very nice balance both in terms of revenue and in terms of instrument placement between academic and government and biopharma. So, I think to answer directly, I would say we're now stabilized, but that said, I would only caveat it by saying it's such a moving target that maybe next week, I would have a completely different perspective. But if everything stays as is, then I think we are more or less stable and our guidance for the year holds. David, do you want to add additional color, please?

Yeah, Rachel, thanks for the question. In terms of the trends we're seeing, obviously, we're very happy with the first quarter. I do feel like people are getting more cautious with things in terms of just the general trends out there, whether it's tariffs or NIH funding or even now with the commercial side with some of the drug pricing control proposals that have been floated in the last couple days. But again, I think given our customer base and given our installed base and the prospects and the funnel we have, we feel like it really will come down to kind of a case-by-case basis. I do think it's important to remember that any reduction in the NIH budget will likely impact future grants and non-existent grant funding. So, what we're arguing from some of our customers is they do have funding for the balance of the year, and it's a question of whether they, they seem to be able to have access to it but it's the going forward after that that, I think is the big question mark. So, kind of remains to be seen, but we are seeing a little a little more weakness here in the second quarter relative to the first quarter.

[Operator Instructions]. I'm showing no further questions in queue at this time, so that will conclude today's question and answer session. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.