Global segment. And in order for our partnership with Thermo Fisher to continue to progress with two customer sales in the quarter, including one conversion from an evaluation by a French lab. That's converted to a sale. The other is a new facility or a new site, I should say, in the United States. It's worth noting that those two instruments were sold out of Thermo Fisher's existing APAS inventory, which clearly benefits our annual recurring revenue.
However, it's not going to contribute to upfront revenues for the company in FY 2026. Worth noting that there is no further inventory held with Thermo Fisher. In summary for the quarter, you know, really what we've done here is continue to progress in building a higher quality, more diversified customer base, and a pipeline, which we believe is the key driver to sustainable long-term growth. I'll hand it over now to Ray to take us through the financials.
Thanks, Brent. I will now provide an overview of the financial results we reported in our Appendix 4C lodged with the ASX in April. All figures are in Australian dollars in accordance with ASX listing rules. They're not audited. Pleasingly, the company remains in a solid financial position with AUD 2 million in cash at the end of the quarter, together with expected cash inflows of at least AUD 2.6 million in the next two quarters, largely comprising instrument sales committed or nearing that contracting stage or close to execution, and also the R&D Tax Incentive claim. The company has other advanced opportunities beyond that, with the potential to also progress to firm commitments before June 30, which is not included in that AUD 2.6 million figure. For the quarter, the company had total net cash outflows of AUD 1.1 million.
That was represented, basically all represented by operating and investing activities, which included AUD 1.1 million in inflows from customers and AUD 2.2 million in cash outflows from expenditures. That was higher than usual, being impacted by the final payments related to the latest replenishment of instrument parts for the manufacturer of the instruments. Overall, the company remains well capitalized and maintains a disciplined management of cash flows. Back to you, Brent.
Great. Thanks, Ray. Looking ahead, our strategy really remains unchanged, but I think the level of execution and the opportunity continue to improve. Our primary focus remains on that global pharmaceutical customer segment, where we see, really, the largest long-term opportunity. There are three areas I want to kind of draw attention to. First, expanding the customer base. We do expect to add at least two additional top 20 pharma customers in the next two months, and this is all about continuing to build that depth and the resilience in our customer base aligned with our strategy for this financial year and beyond. Second, progressing the pipeline. Over the next six months, we expect to advance current evaluations, moving those customers into a validation process, and finally, to progress towards that broader deployment, that expanded phase that we keep talking about.
This is central to our land and expansion strategy. We do expect this to increase to larger rollouts as we move through FY 2027 and beyond. Finally, strengthening the market engagement. A great example of this is our first APAS Discovery Day, which is being held at AstraZeneca in the U.K. in June, so just a couple of months' time. It's really an important initiative that's gonna bring together existing customers, new customers, with some key opinion leaders, and these stakeholders will really get to understand how AstraZeneca went through their process and managed to roll out and standardize on APAS on a global level.
Of course, participants being at the AstraZeneca facility will be able to see the instrument in action and have quite a lot of engagement with the AstraZeneca folk, as well as a contingent from our company that is obviously going to be there to support it. As we wrap up here, the final sentiment, just wanted to kind of outline from a company standpoint, is that we're on track to deliver what we set out to and really to close out what we believe is going to be a successful FY 2026 over the next couple of months. With that, Jack, I'll hand it over to you to facilitate any Q&A.
Thank you, Brent. We will now commence the question- and- answer session. Please remember, if you'd like to ask a question, either use the Q&A function on the Zoom control panel at the bottom of your screen, or raise your hand and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request at any time, simply remove the raised hand. Our first question is from Stella Wang. Thanks for taking questions. Are the two more units expected in quarter four likely from two new pharma, or will they be evaluations or orders?
Yeah. The first part is that there are two new pharma, so two global pharma companies that have not been named or identified. It's incremental, therefore delivering really on our strategy of expanding that global user group. In terms of whether it's going to be an evaluation or a lease or an order, look, we'll disclose that to the market as we finalize these contracts.
A further question from Stella. Any supply and logistics challenges experienced since the Middle East conflict, and has that conflict impacted the customer decision-making timeline?
I think very broadly speaking from a supply chain perspective, the short answer is no. I think there are two elements. One is, can we get components to build and manufacture our instruments? That's, you know, kind of one element. Because we buy in kind of lots of batches of inventory, we haven't seen any material impacts there. The second one is, can we get our product into the various countries, and we ship all of our products? The answer to that is no. At the moment, we haven't seen any issues relating to the supply chain. That's for getting the parts to build our instruments. No issues there, we haven't seen issues in terms of getting our instrument to our customers.
Questions from Andrew Gray. Pfizer has been under evaluation for multiple quarters. Is there a defined endpoint to that evaluation, or is the timeline open-ended? At what point would a stalled evaluation become a concern rather than a normal pharma procurement?
Great question. Thanks for that one, Andrew. Pfizer has been under evaluation for some time, and this is at their Melbourne facility here in Australia. Look, I can't go into a lot of detail about their internal process 'cause that's kind of confidential. I would say it's taken longer than we would've expected or hoped on both sides, and it comes down to various priorities that the customer kind of goes through and has. We don't see it at the moment as a negative outcome. We see ultimately a longer term that this is going to be a positive process with that key and important customer. I think, yes, longer than expected, no, you know, we don't see any kind of longer- term issues. In fact, we still see that the Pfizer group has an opportunity for us on a go-forward basis.
A further question from Andrew. Thermo Fisher no longer holds instrument inventory. Future clinical orders must be supplied directly by Clever Culture Systems. What's the manufacturing lead time per instrument, and can you handle a cluster of Thermo Fisher orders without a supply bottleneck?
Yeah. Look, we're manufacturing or building one instrument a month, and that's kind of been pretty well the cadence we've been having over the last year, and that will kind of continue. We can ramp that up to two a month if needed. We don't see any supply chain kind of issues with respect to orders. I think I would say that, look, our sales cycle is long; if Thermo Fisher were to have a demand to buy multiple systems, we're going to know about that with a long lead time. In a similar way with our existing customers, if one of those global customers is looking to expand in a similar way AstraZeneca did, I can share our example with AZ. We knew exactly when they wanted to kind of roll that out, so we had a very clear line of sight. We don't see any supply chain issues.
A question from Peter Gregory. Can you tell me how the instruments under evaluation are reflected in the financials? Are they still in Clever Culture Systems' inventory?
Ray, do you wanna take that one?
Sure, Brent. The short answer is yes. Where there's a paid evaluation, it's quite simply a cost that's charged upfront as a non-refundable deposit. They have the right of return, so we don't recognize the full sale, and it remains in our inventory until they've completed their evaluation.
Another question from Peter. Will Thermo Fisher be less enthusiastic now that they have cleared their inventory?
Look, I think, generally speaking, you know, we, the Thermo Fisher relationship continues. It's great to see a bit of life actually in that clinical market. As we've reported, you know, it hasn't been a focus for the company. We certainly support our channel partner, Thermo Fisher. We support our clinical customers through the, you know, recurring revenue that we generate through the annual software license and maintenance contracts. You know, look, I can't really answer it definitively. We collaborate on an ongoing basis with Thermo Fisher.
I will note, and it's publicly available, that the Thermo Fisher microbiology division was acquired just earlier this week by a private equity company in Europe for a bit over $1 billion, which is the division that we've been working with specifically within Thermo Fisher. I do see part of that divestment with Thermo Fisher creating some uncertainty, but you know, it could actually longer term be quite opportunistic. Just too early to say. Worth drawing people's attention to that.
Question from James Tracey. Are 10 instruments enough in terms of inventory, and can't these potential customers buy much more?
You wanna take that one, Ray?
Sure. Yes. The thing is that with these orders from customers , because of the long sales cycle, as Brent mentioned before, we do have visibility of them in advance. At the moment, 10 is enough. Obviously, we would move to purchasing more as we see the pipeline starting to fill out. In terms of manufacturing, and in fact, we would get better purchasing terms by buying more than 10 at a time. 20 would definitely be our next step. I don't see that as an issue. On the manufacturing side, as Brent mentioned, you know, we can produce straightaway two a month from our current one a month. Beyond that, we can negotiate to increase our size at our outsourced manufacturer. We can increase the size of our footprint in the manufacturing zone and increase that capacity.
A further question from James: "Is there any benefit to Clever Culture Systems from leasing instruments?
Leave that with you again, Ray.
Is there any benefit? Yes, most definitely. Look, we prefer a sale up front. If it's the difference that gets a sale to occur, we would much rather lease it. It's definitely in our sales kit bag. Surprisingly, pharma customers rarely mention it, but it's definitely on the table. Yep.
A further question from Andrew Gray, "You flagged growth initially evolving in FY 2027. Is that modeled around simultaneous multi-site expansion across several customers, AstraZeneca style, or is it still primarily a single- site validation phase for most of the new names?
I think in reality it's going to be a combination of the two. I mean, when we talk about land and expand, we should always be trying to land, right? We should always be trying to add new customers and the new large customers , as I mentioned. I think, kind of to the second part of your question, we would certainly expect in FY 2027 that expand part to start happening with some of those newer customers. You know that it will commence in FY 2027 and beyond. As I mentioned, every customer's going to operate their own cadence.
They've got different decision-making processes, and the importance is to expand the base and the number of those customers so that if each of them were to look to buy maybe two or three, well, that starts adding up once you've got six, seven, eight, nine of the big customers. That will kind of trickle through over the future years. This is a multi-year strategy, not just a one-year strategy.
A further question from Stella, "What do you see as the key challenges your pharma customers, including prospective ones, face currently in making CapEx decisions, including ordering APAS?
Generally speaking, with pharma customers, we don't see the CapEx or the financial limitations being the primary issue. I think really where we see kind of the challenges is prioritization. Firstly, they've got to understand our technology exists, and that's why we go to conferences, do marketing, and all these types of activities. Ultimately, there is a lot of internal work that's required by the customer to adopt new technology. This isn't a plug- and- play situation. The manufacturing of sterile drugs is a highly regulated process, and the customer bears all the responsibility associated with that manufacturing process.
My point there is that any change to the manufacturing process, including environmental monitoring and new technology, needs to be very thoughtfully considered and understood, and then executed upon. You know, those projects need to be prioritized, and once they're prioritized, we see a very clear cadence of execution. Until that point, that's, you know, it's kind of we can't progress too much.
Another question from Andrew, "The two top 20 pharma customers are described as expected to close imminently. What specifically is the remaining blocker, and what does imminently mean in terms of weeks versus months?
Look, I think the company said it's going to be this financial year, so that's in the next two months. We're at an advanced stage, and we'd like to kind of move them forward, obviously, as quickly as we can. As soon as we do that, we'll obviously let the market know. I can't give any more guidance other than what we've already provided.
A question from Peter Gregory, "Can you give me a feel of the cost to CC 5 in terms of dollars and people's effort in an evaluation? If you get, say, five orders in the next quarter, will this be manageable?
Yeah. If I'm understanding the question correctly, it's what the internal effort required is to support these evaluation processes. Look, I think the short answer is it five or whatever it might be. The short answer is yes, we're resourced appropriately. There's a combination of obviously our sales team that supports that work on site with our customers, but we do most of it actually remotely. It requires our team here in Adelaide to kind of work across our global customers. Short answer is, you know, I think we've got a cost base that can support additional growth. We're not concerned there. We have got a couple of new roles that we've recently put on.
We've got a software person we've just added to the team to support some of that growth. We're actually kind of advertising for a European-based validation kind of person to help with some of that customer work as well. The company has made some investments in that area to kind of anticipate, if you like, some of the growth that we are expecting on a go-forward basis.
There are no further questions at this time. That does conclude today's investor call. Thank you for joining.
Thanks all.