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Seer, Inc. (SEER)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 7, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Seer, Inc. 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 Kelly Gura, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kelly Gura

Analyst

Thank you. Earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 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 e-mail 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 Presentations 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 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 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, August 6, 2025. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Omid.

Omid C. Farokhzad

Analyst

Thanks, Kelly, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I will begin our call today by providing updates on our business, and I will then turn the call over to David to provide more details on our financial results for the second quarter of 2025 as well as our outlook for the full year. Beginning with Slide 3. Q2 was a pivotal quarter for Seer as we continue to execute with discipline, advance key commercial and product milestones and accelerate the validation and impact of our platform. The Proteograph Product Suite is unbiased, meaning it's inherently untargeted and enables the scientists to view an unprecedented breadth of the proteome from the most abundant proteins to the least abundant proteins. This deep unbiased proteomics platform is based on our proprietary engineered nanoparticles that is core to the Proteograph Product Suite. In the second quarter, we launched the Proteograph ONE workflow, announced a landmark 20,000 sample population scale study with Korea University and continue to build commercial momentum with strong instrument placement and continued traction with our Seer Technology Access Center or STAC. We also saw increased third-party validation through high-impact publications and compelling data presented at major industry conferences. Back in January, we laid out 4 core growth catalysts for 2025, and I'm proud to share that we've delivered progress across each one. We have always believed that our technology would redefine the trajectory of proteomics and make a meaningful impact within the scientific community. We believe our progress in the second quarter is a clear demonstration of this impact. We ended the quarter with $4.1 million of revenue, representing 32% year-over-year growth and a strong balance sheet of approximately $263 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. We continue to make highly concentrated and impactful investments in R&D…

David R. Horn

Analyst

Thanks, Omid. Turning to Slide 10. Total revenue for the second quarter of 2025 was $4.1 million, representing an increase of 32% compared to $3.1 million in the second quarter of 2024 and was primarily due to higher product and service revenue. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments, consumable kits and service revenue. Product revenue for the second quarter of 2025 was $2.7 million and consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments and consumable kits. We were pleased by the traction we saw in terms of instrument shipments and the purchase of consumable kits in the quarter despite the continued pressure we are seeing on CapEx budgets and elongated sales cycles for the outright purchase of new instruments. Service revenue was $1.2 million for the second quarter of 2025, including $409,000 of related party revenue and primarily consisted of revenue related to STAC service projects. We remain encouraged by the strong customer interest in running projects through STAC, particularly as more users gain access to Proteograph data. Sample volumes increased again this quarter on a year-over-year basis. We may continue to support projects for key strategic studies and marketing initiatives that will result in additional presentations and publications in the near term. These efforts, while impactful, are offered at lower price points than our typical STAC service projects. Other revenue was $119,000 for the second quarter of 2025 and consisted of leasing and shipping revenue. Total gross profit was $2.1 million for the second quarter of 2025, representing a gross margin of 52% compared to $1.7 million in the second quarter of 2024, representing a gross margin of 56%. Gross margins were driven by higher consumable and service revenue in the second quarter of 2025, offset by an increase in instrument installation and training costs relative to the…

Omid C. Farokhzad

Analyst

Thank you, David. Moving on to Slide 12. I'm proud of our team's execution in the second quarter as we brought new products to market and drove deep unbiased population scale studies in plasma that were not possible before Seer. We are operating in a challenging and dynamic macro environment, yet we continue to position ourselves for strength ahead. We remain focused on advancing our 4 key growth drivers in 2025, and I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. With that, we will now open it up for questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

David R. Horn

Analyst

Prior to our first question, I just wanted to clarify one comment in my prepared remarks. Free cash flow loss of $27.3 million is for the 6 months ended June 30, 2025, rather than the quarter ended June 30.

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from Daniel Brennan with Cowen.

Kyle Boucher

Analyst

This is Kyle on for Dan. I guess maybe to start, can you share any early feedback you're getting on the new Proteograph ONE assay? I guess what's the uptake and usage looking like so far in that new assay?

Omid C. Farokhzad

Analyst

Yes, Kyle, thank you. As you know, we launched the Proteograph ONE assay and the high-throughput SP200 automation instrument at the ASMS in June. It was an important inflection point for us because it became possible for customers to do very, very large-scale studies. It doubled the throughput, reduced the assay run time on the instrument to about 4.5 hours. It could easily sit within an 8-hour workday. And then the precision, excellent, and you could run 80 samples at once in a 4.5-hour run. And because the assay went from 2 mass spec injection per sample to 1, it also then increased the throughput on the mass spec side. The feedback that we've received so far, Kyle, has been fantastic. KOLs love it. We had done early access of the instrument to some KOLs, and they did present some data on the -- at the ASMS and the data was great. And then importantly, because of the enhanced throughput, this is now enabling large-scale population scale studies to be done with the mass spec. And of course, you heard that we had done the DLS study that was 10,000 samples. And then we just announced also the -- at ASMS a 20,000 sample study with Korea University. And there's other population skill studies that are on the launch pad, Kyle, and none of it would be possible if we had not increased the throughput. So the feedback has been great and the impact of it is already becoming evident.

Kyle Boucher

Analyst

Got it. And then maybe just moving over to STAC. It seems like that's really starting to bear some fruit here. You mentioned half of the instruments you placed in the quarter were from customers that had used the STAC program. Can you discuss your pipeline of potential customers who are currently using the STAC program, but are an opportunity to place an instrument in-house? I guess as a percentage of your expected placements for the rest of the year, how many of these do you think are coming from these STAC customers versus otherwise?

David R. Horn

Analyst

Yes, Kyle, it's David. Thanks for the question. Yes, you're right. STAC continues to be a great pipeline for placing instruments and as well as the SIP program as well. So the 2 together kind of work really well. Hard to quantify. I think if you look at the first half of the year, it certainly was the majority of shipments were former STAC customers. So I think as STAC continues to build, we get new customers taking our first step through the STAC, doing a project and then wanting to bring the technology in-house. I think we'll continue to see the benefits. I think we'll continue to see strong benefit of having that STAC to drive the follow-on instrument shipments. And I would expect -- no reason to expect that the second half of the year wouldn't look a little bit like the first half of the year and that most of our customers have first experienced the technology through a STAC project.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Rachel Vatnsdal with JPMorgan.

Jaden Nyjai Rismay

Analyst · JPMorgan.

This is Jaden on for Rachel. So my first question is regarding your co-marketing partnership with Thermo. Could you provide a little bit more insight on how much revenue is attributed to this partnership compared to other sources such as your large-scale study revenues? And then how meaningful do you expect this partnership and programs to become for you in the near future?

David R. Horn

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Yes. Thanks, Jaden. I think we're continuing to see a lot of benefits from the Thermo partnership. As Omid mentioned in his prepared remarks, not only from a population scale study perspective, but also active opportunities. I can say that we have seen some of those opportunities come to fruition. But I will say that the revenue is still extremely modest. So again, I think we'll continue to see that probably pick up in the back half of the year. But to date, it's been very modest. Remember, we only fully trained the sales force at the end of the first quarter, beginning of second quarter, and then it's been rolling out kind of globally for them. So it's kind of right on the time frame we expected. And so again, I think we'll continue to see that momentum build. But most of the revenue is coming from our own direct sales team as well as some of these of our population scale study work that we're doing. And so again, I think we'll continue to see both our own direct efforts as well as the efforts with Thermo drive revenues in the second half.

Omid C. Farokhzad

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And I would just add, I mean, I think you can expect that, for example, in Q3, we'll begin to recognize the first revenue from the collaboration come to fruition. But importantly, the pipeline of the opportunities, remember, they've been only added for less than a quarter, is growing. So I'm very encouraged by that, but we are being cautious and modest in terms of our assumption for the guide for the year. But I do expect the first revenue from the collaboration to come to fruition this quarter.

Jaden Nyjai Rismay

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Okay. Yes, that's perfect. And then just on competition, could you discuss the competitive landscape regarding customers choosing to use your technology in a research setting compared to other existing proteomic technologies that might be more aligned with a biased proteomic method, just given that the space has seen more interest from other companies within the past year?

Omid C. Farokhzad

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Yes, of course. Look, I think if you look at the competitive landscape at a very high level, I always frame them into 3 buckets, those that consider a mass spec not to be a good detector and therefore, they're developing their own novel detector. That includes Quantum- Si, Nautilus on the public side; Erisyon, Encodia on the private side. And then there's a targeted ones, you know them all too well. On the public side, Soma, Olink, now part of Thermo and then maybe Quanterix; on the private side, [ Alamar ]. And then there is unbiased proteomic and scale. And I think Seer uniquely sits in that space, and that's a space that we pioneered. That's the space that we've continued to execute on, and that's a space that is now allowing large-scale studies to be done. Now we are relatively new to this game because technologies like SomaScan or Olink have been around for many, many years. In the case of Soma, almost 20-plus years and Olink 10 or 15 years. Seer is relatively new. And so the publications and the customer validations are just emerging. Now before Seer, it was just not possible to do large-scale studies. And so biobanks and any investigator that needed to do large-scale studies was forced to use the only available tool to them at the time, which was a targeted approach. And so those technologies scaled. Seer fundamentally changed the arc of proteomics, making unbiased proteomics, deep unbiased proteomics be scalable. Before Seer, the largest deep unbiased proteomic that was published was a study of 48 samples. And the deepest study, by the way, from Broad Institute was on a study of 16 samples that went to a depth of about 4,500 proteins. We've now had in just in 2025,…

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.