All right. Good afternoon. My name is Doug Schenkel, and on behalf of UBS, it is my pleasure to welcome Justin McAnear, Chief Financial Officer of Alamar, to the 2026 Healthcare Conference. Alamar is a relatively new issue, really exciting, relatively new entrant to the public company arena.
It is a fantastic platform that launched in early 2024, and since then, the company has seen rapid adoption across both the academic and biopharmaceutical end markets. The company reported another strong quarter last week with revenue up, I think it was 68%.
That is right.
Not too shabby. Consumables up 79%, gross margin getting to a record 61.5%. The company also announced major collaborations with the UK Biobank and GSK, and on top of it, you raised your 2026 revenue outlook, so that was a good call. What I was thinking we could do is talk a bit about those developments as a starting point, and then really turn to the more longer-term outlook for durable growth driven by improved installed base economics, content expansion, and a more pronounced move into diagnostics. So, that is the agenda.
That sounds like a great list.
Yeah, let's see what we can do.
Yeah, happy to be here, and thank you very much for having us.
Awesome. Justin, you and I have known each other for a little bit. What attracted you to Alamar, and what about the technology and business opportunity convinced you this was the right place to be?
Well, I think that's a great question. A number of things, actually, and I'll start with the technology. It's truly breakthrough technology, and it takes a novel approach to proteomics that other systems can't replicate, and that NULISA focuses on suppressing the background noise rather than just amplifying the signal.
The result is a huge increase in sensitivity. We are the only platform that combines the five pillars of ultra-high sensitivity, high specificity, flexible multiplexing, broad dynamic range, and seamless automation. Because of that technology, we don't need to make trade-offs across those five as we move to lower plex or higher plex. The technology itself is truly fantastic. The business model was attractive as well.
It's a traditional razor blade business model, where we sell instruments at a list price of $400,000 per instrument. We have a durable consumable business as well, with highly differentiated content on leading the premium side of proteomics. I think the timing was really attractive as well.
Advanced proteomics does not have a clear market leader right now, and to come in and be a part of something and be a part of a team that has a novel solution when you're aspiring to go lead that category, that's an exciting place to be. I would say the vision overall. Yuling has a fantastic vision in going from discovery all the way through to clinical applications on the same platform.
It's a strong business today, and there's the potential for a highly durable, much larger business in the future as the company goes through different stages on the way to clinical and diagnostic support.
Actually, sticking with the term durability, I'm sure the team does extensive competitive intelligence work. I mean, as we sit here today, clearly NULISA's sensitivity, specificity, and multiplexing capabilities are far ahead of most in the field. Do you think that those areas of differentiation are going to remain durably intact for the next several years as you look at the competitive landscape?
I do. Because of our unique approach in suppressing the background noise, no other platform approaches the problem quite like this. Like I said, the result is that you can not have to trade off on your ultra-high sensitivity as you move into higher multiplex, and the seamless automation definitely helps as well. As far as the durability over the coming years, we have patent protection.
We basically have five years of trade secrets, which would be extremely hard to replicate, built up as well. The result is right now, as we move into advanced proteomics and more interest in being able to detect the lower abundance part of the proteome, we are uniquely positioned to be able to do that because of our high sensitivity and be able to maintain that ultra-high sensitivity in a multiplexed panel.
The market opportunity. You've sized research proteomics as roughly, I think, an $11 billion opportunity over the next decade. How do you get to that number? As you think about moving into adjacencies, not saying $11 billion isn't big enough, how much bigger can this opportunity get?
Well, the area that we operate in, we call advanced proteomics, and so that is ultra-high sensitivity multiplex solutions. Like you said, we expect that to grow to $11 billion in the next decade. That's about $3.7 billion today.
On top of that, there's also this clinical diagnostics opportunity, which is relatively small today, about $0.4 billion, and we see that growing to roughly $9 billion in the coming decade. You combine those two for about $20 billion, when a market that is combined about $4.1 billion today. We think that there's a massive amount of headroom to grow as this market is growing over the next decade.
That's a nice lead-in to the discussion about the growth outlook for the next several years. We talked in my preamble about how robustly you grew again in different areas of the business in the third quarter.
You're on track to add at least 100 instruments this year, and you've talked about the placement funnel already taking shape and being attractive. How should we think about the ability to place more instruments as we move into next year, based on everything we've talked about? If anything, it seems like that still should be an area where there's a ton of room for growth.
Yeah, I think that when we go from this year into next year, the drivers are going to remain the same. I think that you can look at our past trajectory. We ended last year with 102 instruments placed. We placed about 66 over the course of that year. This year, we put out the goal of placing at least 100 instruments, so we would be effectively doubling.
Doubling the install base.
Yeah, doubling our install base from the end of last year till the end of this year. When you think about how quickly we've grown, really with having two main panels, immunology panel, inflammation, and neurology. Think about what kind of growth opportunities we have, not only in expanding usage of the panels that we already have on the market, but if we were to enter into new disease areas as well.
The drivers on placing instruments, I do think that there's plenty of headroom for the panels that we already have on the market, but we've also talked about releasing a panel for a new disease area next year. Cardiometabolic disease and oncology have been of particular interest to us, and we see huge opportunities in both of those.
Is there a cadence to how frequently you want to release new panels and new disease areas?
Well, I would say, internally, we're working on multiple panels, and we've put out the goal for one next year, but we're working on more than one.
Okay. So, could be more. We'll see what happens. What's the best leading indicator for the business? Again, the opportunity is huge. The attributes of your technology are clearly differentiated. Just putting on your CFO hat, what do you look at in terms of leading indicators, instrument pipeline, the ability to repeat place instruments, to place instruments at the same places, how consumable utilization is ramping? Or I guess another metric could be the impact of advancing large studies that generate more interest for the platform.
Yeah, I think it might be more interesting to start with some of the things externally and then shift into the-
Yeah, let's do it.
internal ones. Starting with the large studies, we had two really exciting large studies that we announced this quarter. You alluded to them
Yep
in the intro. The first is with the UK Biobank. This is 80,000 samples that are going to be part of this study. It will be largely complete over the course of 2027. This is really the first. Well, UK Biobank, one of the largest repository of biologic samples in the world, and this is the first time that they're doing a study like this with brain-derived proteins.
We're particularly suited, our brain-derived low-abundance proteins, we're particularly suited for this study due to our multiplexability and keeping the ultra-high sensitivity. The result of this study is going to be a publicly available dataset focused on Parkinson's disease. We're going to have thousands of researchers around the world that are going to have access to this dataset, and just the visibility for Alamar that this will drive, we're very excited about.
The other announcement that we made was the collaboration with GSK. This will be at least 60,000 samples run across two of our panels. Some of the samples will go through both, some will go through one, but both the Immune 340 and the Neuro 220. For this study, they'll be focused on supporting their drug development efforts, but across five different disease areas.
Respiratory, liver, kidney, neurology, and immunology. Very excited about what this could bring as well. This also shows the interest that large pharmas are having beyond neurology and inflammation right now. I think seen large studies like this being launched on our platform. Not only this, but also the larger studies for Alzheimer's that were supported by Gates Ventures, and that was super exciting as well.
I think that's a great leading indicator because we believe that that's going to continue to help drive future adoption for the platform.
What's the flywheel there? What I'm getting at is, there's the direct revenue associated
Yeah
with these, right? 80,000 samples from UK Biobank, 60,000 from GSK. But out of these, folks are going to want to access the data, folks are going to do their own follow-on studies. There's the, I would think, precedent for these leading to a decent number of new customer additions. Am I describing it the right way, and is there any way to at least size up how big the follow-on opportunity can be that comes out of these types of partnerships?
No, I think you're sizing it the right way. Having this dataset available publicly and having potential customers be able to interact with that, we think is invaluable. We think also it highlights not only the quality data that you'll get off of the Alamar platform, but one thing that we haven't talked about so much is just the ease of use.
Oh, yeah.
The seamless automation. A platform like this is very well-suited for doing these large studies because it is true walk-away automation. I will say, Doug, I actually ran a sample myself with
Nice job. Yeah.
with my boss. It worked. It came out great. Excellent data. But that just goes to show how easy it is to do, and that definitely you need that to support very high volumes.
That is interesting. That ease of use, I mean, obviously it is always better if an instrument is easier to use, but I would think that that would be a clear differentiator when you think about the clinical end market.
Absolutely.
I think that's the case, but it's interesting. You think this is also important to biopharmaceutical customers and some of the folks that are working on these big programs?
Absolutely. I mean, you take away the manual processes, you eliminate that wherever you can, and at the very beginning, it's pipetting the samples into the plate, loading up the reagents.
Basically hitting the touchscreen with what you're doing, and you hit the button and walk away.
It also leads to less potential for user error, and then ultimately supports really what we've seen across studies, that you get nice repeatability on the platform.
Totally agree. Absolutely.
When we combine this with the fact that I think you added more than 35 publications in pre-prints in the third quarter, you are now up above 200. Does this actually drive more repeat orders within biopharma customers?
I mean, the data is out there, the comfort with the platform is there. Sometimes it takes a long time to get in there for the first time with a customer. Once you are in there and there is more data generated in the ecosystem, you tend to see more interest even within existing customers. Is that what you are starting to see?
Yeah. I agree. We did have over 35 publications added. We are over 200 now. That is another important leading indicator of the future business.
Sure.
Just having peer-reviewed papers like that, having pre-prints, we do think that that helps drive future business and increase the validation of the platform. It gives researchers more confidence to try it themselves, and they want to spend their time in pursuits that they believe have a higher degree of success, and this absolutely helps with that, having that momentum there.
With the Neuro 220 rollout, is there anything we can kind of glean from that experience in terms of how quickly new content can increase utilization?
Yeah. That rolled out at the beginning of the year, and the adoption was very quick on that. Most customers have switched over. We do offer customers the ability to trial that through our TAP program b ut we are able to turn that around fairly quickly, and I do think that that was a great case study in how quickly we can roll out a new panel and cut folks over to it, so.
Is that relevant as we think about some of the new disease panels that you are talking about rolling out over the next few years, at least one next year?
Yeah, Neuro 220 had the advantage of building off of CNS 120.
Yeah.
And so, you already had the customers lined up that were using that product. They wanted to be able to see the data on the new panel, check the box, and then moved on. I think moving into a new disease area where you are bringing on potentially new customers who might not be using one of the panels today, they might want to do more work in TAP before.
We have found that TAP is one of the strongest tools in driving adoption, because when the customers provide their samples and then we run that and provide them the data, typically they are pleased with the data, and that gives them more confidence and also gives them the documentation for the funding to go ahead and buy the instrument.
If I can take a step back on just this new panel plan, what characteristics make a disease area attractive enough for your business to warrant the investment you need to make in developing that panel, working it through TAP, and then making the commercial dedication required to actually drive revenue for those new products.
Yeah. I think looking for a larger population with an unmet need that would be particularly suited for multiplexed ultra-high sensitivity solutions is, that is a good first step in identifying the area that we want to. And I think just with the state today, there are a number of those opportunities, but we have identified two, I think, that are very well-suited for our platform, that we are confident making investments in today.
Pivoting to diagnostics, ARGO HT/DX is targeted for FDA submission, I think by the end of next year, correct?
By the end of next year.
You are going to partner with folks to provide disease expertise?
Yeah, so maybe I will talk a little bit about our diagnostics enablement strategy.
That would be great.
Like you said, we plan to submit the ARGO HT/DX and a single assay for FDA clearance by the end of next year. We think that that is, well, that is an important step to give customers the confidence to then build content on our platform.
That clearance goes ahead and opens up that platform for potential customers to build what could turn into LDTs or IVDs. Then we would provide the infrastructure and enable them, and then we would also work with them to ensure that we capture the fair share of economics for whatever test results from that they are comfortable with as well.
How important is it for those partnerships to move forward to get authorization? Basically, does the FDA submission and approval get you to the point where it is going to start to unlock the activity with the partners?
Yeah, I think that there is work and there are collaborations and deals that could be done before that, where you are providing a RUO product. But I think that what the FDA clearance does is it provides the validation and the confidence for customers to go ahead and commit resources on their end into building out those tests.
How do we think about the economics with these partners? When they develop a successful LDT or IVD on the platform, what does that mean for your business?
Well, I think it depends on what it ultimately turns into. There is going to be revenue from selling kits to them. But depending upon the test or the assay that is developed from that, and ultimately the economics that they will capture on the backend when the reimbursement comes in, we think that it would be appropriate that, say the reimbursement comes in low, well, in that case, we would probably be happy with the kit revenue. But if it were to come in higher, we would want to make sure that we are capturing the fair share of the economics for providing the infrastructure to enable that.
How is instrument revenue affected?
Well, they would be buying instruments to put in the lab there. I don't know that we would I think that we're talking about attaching certain economics to the kits.
To the kits.
And then sell the instruments.
I guess part of what I'm contemplating is, would the instrument revenue model be the same, or might there be a little more flexibility given how we think about diagnostics?
Yeah, typically for a DX instrument, just with the higher specs that that has to be built to, it could be more costly.
Hence sold for a higher selling price.
Okay.
Yeah.
Right now, I want to go back and use Neuro 220 as an example, but it's not necessarily about 220, it's more about existing assays and as you expand menu. But I'll use that as an example. I mean, what we talked about is basically moving folks from a legacy kit to a new kit.
That is pretty encouraging to see how quickly you can get folks to move to something new. But if you have an existing customer, if it's a large pharmaceutical company working in different areas, as you move into different disease areas, is there the possibility of driving materially more consumable revenue per box as that customer, as that research institution focuses on different areas?
Yeah, absolutely. I think we're seeing that today.
Okay.
We announced on our earnings call that while the majority of instruments are still going to new customers, this was also our largest quarter for expansion within existing customers. We define expansion as an instrument being placed in a different lab within the same customer or a different geography.
within that customer. It's great, one, that we're getting good internal feedback to give that additional lab the confidence and desire to go buy an instrument. It's also really encouraging to see the platform, even with the two main panels that we have right now, being adopted by different disease areas as well.
Expansion is going to be, I'm in large pharmaceutical company A, there's a different lab working in a different disease area that's buying an instrument versus using the same instrument for different diseases.
Right. They might start off using the same instrument. Like, I actually
It could be both.
Yeah. It could be both.
I've spent a lot of time on biopharma, which became your largest customer group as a percentage of sales in Q3. I think that got up to 49% of revenue versus 42% of revenue last quarter.
Yeah, just last quarter.
We've talked a bit about the clinical opportunity and the attributes that take you there. What about academia? What are you seeing there? That's actually been okay for you guys in a world where it hasn't been good for too many folks. What's going on in that end market, and what do you think's different for you there versus some of the other folks in life science tools?
Well, the first thing that I would say before going into that is, it is great to have a business that I think is well-hedged right now, where we're at roughly a 50/50 split between academic and biopharma. We all know that it's been tough times for academic research over the last couple years. I would say that we still did well in that environment.
I think that when there's pressure on budgets, then people have to prioritize, and I do think that we probably ended up being seen as a must-have in some cases, and that helped us weather this time maybe better than most. I also think that when things turn around and speed back up again, maybe the flip side is that maybe we wouldn't get as much benefit as others that were hurt more, because we weren't hurt as much right now.
I still think academic has done well for us. Biopharma has been growing at a faster rate. I also think that when you look at the academic revenue from quarter- to- quarter, there can still be some lumpiness in there for some of the past larger deals that we've signed. There were some at the end of last year. There were some in Q2 as well. Do not focus too much on the quarter-to-quarter fluctuations.
The other thing that changed from a mix standpoint was consumables now account for the majority of revenue.
Yeah, 53% this last quarter.
Up, what, 79% year-over-year. You are on track to generate over, I think it is $400,000 per box in annualized consumable pull-through this year.
That's right. We put that goal out as well as placing-
Yeah
at least 100 instruments.
How different is the trajectory in an academic customer versus pharma?
Yeah. If you're just looking at pull-through, one thing that we've seen is the biopharma customer is more apt to buy an additional instrument more quickly than an academic customer.
Okay.
And maybe some of that could be the funding environment, but we also think that some of that has to do with the desire of the biopharma customer to be more concerned with the velocity that they have today. Like, how many samples can they get through this week? Not so much how much can they get through in the next year.
They are more concerned about speed a nd so, they will typically buy that second instrument sooner, which puts downward pressure on pull-through. On the academic side, in particular the core labs, we see them loading up the instrument more before buying an additional one. But I will say, if you look at our top customers, it is a pretty even weight. And I am just talking just overall, not pull-through. But it is a pretty even weighting between both academic and biopharma.
How big can a customer become using one instrument?
Wow. So, the theoretical ceiling of the instrument is about 6 million plus. And so, you can load up three plates and run three plates in a 24-hour period, eight hours a plate, back to back to back. And if you figure a plate is $9,000-$10,000, and you were to do that five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that is where you get to the north of $6 million.
The north of $400,000 pull-through on average that we are at now, keep in mind, that is the equivalent of running one plate a week, 11 weeks out of the quarter for a year. That gets you around $440,000 pull-through. And so, just think if a customer did, on average, two plates a week, that is more than $800,000.
One of the things that comes up a lot in my meetings with investors, especially over the last three or four months, is the potential for AI to increase interest in and increase demand for large data sets of novel information.
We talked about GSK. We talked about UK Biobank. You've had other big programs. You have all these publications, all these studies. Is that a potential growth driver for the company, more demand from folks that are motivated by wanting more data with the idea that they can use AI to make better sense of that, pursuant to better drug targets and advancing novel drug development?
Yeah. We believe that in the future, this could become really important. We think it's very early days now. Think about the value that AI brings and the kind of data that we're able to produce. We are able to interrogate the low-abundance proteome in an ultra-high sensitive way. We're able to, we think, probably a sweet spot as we move into the diagnostics clinical space. You're talking, it's not just one marker that you're looking for.
Right.
I think The Lancet study, we talked about this on our earnings call, illustrated it. You can be looking at one biomarker that's showing you how you're clearing the amyloid plaque. If you have two different patients who are both showing the same progress on that one marker, there's other markers that could be moving in opposite directions, and those patients could have different outcomes.
You've got to measure multiple markers in a highly sensitive way. Some haven't even really been able to be interrogated in blood until now. Then you think about how AI could use that kind of data across multiple markers to help develop signatures that would then help in development for drugs and therapeutics for there. It makes sense that you would need highly accurate data feeding in order for that kind of work to be done.
I asked you earlier, and then we put it aside, but to just firmly put on your CFO hat
Sure
and strategy hat. I am going to ask you to wear both. You have talked about pulling forward certain R&D programs into 2026 that were originally planned for 2027, I think on the heels of strength in the business, at least in terms of how you have tracked relative to original plan, and just some of the interest you are seeing from some of your key customers and potential and existing partners.
Is that the right way we should think about things, that if we see upside at the top line, if margins track ahead of plan, that you will view that as an opportunity to reinvest in other growth opportunities, at least for the next several quarters?
Yeah. I think conceptually, yes, we are in growth phase. It is important to reinvest in the business. It is important to prioritize growth. It is also important that we do it in a disciplined way. I think that what is important for myself and Yuling and the rest of the company is to make sure that we are just doing the right thing.
That whatever decisions we make to pull forward any kind of spend, that we see a greater benefit that that is going to bring overall in bringing revenue sooner, which would contribute to profitability sooner, those kinds of decisions. It is not just any opportunity we see to pull forward, do it, reinvest the upside. It is making sure that we are taking a hard look at that and making the best decisions that we can. In this case, it is accelerating additional content. There is upfront costs that you need.
You need to do a lot of work on the R&D side to develop these panels. That is part of it. Another part is our clinical ambitions and making sure that we are making the proper investments today that are going to better serve us down the road on internal programs, infrastructure, facilities, and all of that. But I just didn't want to get lost that there still is a discipline here that we are driving the company as well.
All right. In the last minute, thinking about the compelling product attributes that we have talked about, the core technology and how that is being marketed and advanced, the large market opportunities. We have talked about the progress you are making with publications, partners, and studies.
Clearly, there is a compelling story here, and that is not even getting into the margin story and how much revenue can be generated per box by extension. It is a great strategic story, great technology story. It is a really great financial story. If we are sitting here a year from now, what are the three things that you would envision pointing to as evidence that you are well on your way to executing in a way that is consistent with everything we have talked about today?
Yeah. If it's, you've got a year, then you've got even further out. I would think, be looking at the placements, be looking at the utilization, the additional content, additional partnerships, that would give a hint of what we'd be looking to do on the diagnostic enablement piece. I think those would be the key things.
Yeah, it's probably true over the next year, and it's probably true for the next two years.
Yeah. I think we're thinking long term.
Yeah.
We're here to build a durable, long-term, large, successful company.
Okay. That's fantastic, Justin. Thanks for being here.
Yeah. Thank you for having me, Doug. Appreciate it.
All right. Good job.
Yeah, you were great.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate you doing it.
It's good.