Great. Welcome, everybody. My name is Andrew Cooper. I cover diagnostics and life science tools here at Raymond James. We are happy to be joined by the kind folks at Cytek Biosciences. We've got Dr. Wenbin Jiang, CEO, Patrik Jeanmonod. Hopefully, I got that pronunciation close to right, as well as Paul Goodson in IR. I'm gonna hand it over to Wenbin briefly here for a presentation, and then we'll do a little bit of Q&A as well, once we get through that. Wenbin?
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining this session. I'm Wenbin Jiang, CEO, and I'm going to spend the next 15 or 20 minutes to introduce you about Cytek. Cytek is a cell analysis company based on the full spectrum profiling technology we pioneered nine years ago. Safe harbor statement, I'm not going to read it. So the company is based on four business pillars. What we have, start with instruments. This is where the company got started, and we built the great technology and the instruments to support our business. This is most of our revenue is based on today. The second part is applications.
Application is really the solutions out there to build recurring revenue, recurring revenue, based upon the tools we have provided. Here, we focus primarily on kits and panels instead of individual reagents. The reason for that is because we believe this is where the value is, with those high dimensional cell analysis technology we have developed. This is where we can differentiate Cytek from other reagent companies out there for our business. And the third one is bioinformatics. As you know, with the technology we have developed for the large panel, as well as the full spectrum technology, there are lots of data generated. How to manage the data, how to build those larger panels, this is where we can contribute, we can help, we can support, relying upon the cloud-based systems.
So through this, Cytek Bioinformatics, we build a Cytek Cloud, and we provide the customers with the panel construction, panel optimization. And also through this, Cytek Cloud, we enable customers to purchase reagents to support those applications on Cytek instrument. Last business pillar we have been investing on, we have been building on, is the clinical. This is where we feel will drive customers toward our application and the instrument for diagnostic applications. We actually started from China, get our instrument cleared for the China market, followed by the European EMEA clinical solution. Last year, we got our instrument IVDR cleared, along with the single laser TBNK solutions out there. We feel this is going to start to make a contribution this year for the European clinical business.
In the U.S. today, we are focusing on LDT-based solutions on Cytek Northern Lights -CLC, as well as Cytek Orion instrument. We are also working on the 510(k) in the U.S. to drive our true clinical applications. One of the benefits of Cytek technology for clinical application is the unique features of our technology enable standardizations, which outperformed all the other flow cytometers out there. And standardization is important for really the clinical application. So also through this, we have developed the AI, and this it was a technology we initially acquired from our Luminex FCR acquisition for our ImageStream technology. For image processing, the same technology can be ported over for supporting our clinical applications.
So relying upon our four business pillars, this is what we have achieved during the last seven years since we launched our first product. As you see, the company, our first product, Cytek Aurora, which is the first full spectral tools we launched in 2017. And throughout the time frames, and with this initial success of our Cytek Aurora full spectral tools, to support, expand the applications, take full advantage of the full spectral technology capabilities, we developed our own, initially focused on unique reagents. On top of the standard off-the-shelf flow cytometry reagents, they help us to expand the capability to way beyond the 40 colors, which at that time, was really nobody was able to achieve, because at that time, with conventional tools, the number of parameters or colors for flow cytometry was limited to around 25-28 colors.
And we changed that with our reagents together with the conventional off-the-shelf reagents and our full spectrum tools to get beyond the 40-color. This is historical, and the first time we was relying upon fluorescence-based technology to get beyond that milestone. And then around 2021, we went public, and right before we went public, we launched the cell sorter. The reason for our cell sorter was when customer relied upon our technology, really the first time found some very interesting cells, which couldn't be seen before. Then they really want to see, okay, is this something real? I want to take that cell out. I need a technology to rely on your full spectrum tools to analyze this. With the same panel, I can put onto the sorter, so I can take that cell out.
That means I need a cell sorter matching the analyzer, and with a panel that can move back and forth. That's where our sorter comes along. This is the only sorter right now on the market, which becomes a pair as an analyzer. No other sorter is available out there to match this full spectrum analyzer. So this forms a real nice pair for it. And a few months afterwards, we acquired Luminex, a reagent company, as I said, and we would really like to expand our reagent consumable business. And Luminex gave us a leg up with the antibody, actually mouse-based antibody, in particular, to support our reagent business expansion.
And along with that, early last year, we acquired Amnis and Guava instrument from Luminex to expand our portfolio, our offering. Amnis is an imaging flow cytometer. The Amnis today is the best imaging flow cytometer out there, provide you the best resolution and on a single-cell basis. It, in reality, is a fast single-cell microscope. Guava is another tool for the entry level, mostly for the industry level, QC/QA type of applications. One of the nice thing about Guava is, all the other conventional flow cytometer, as well as our full spectral tools, carry those two big tanks for sheath, which for research is great, but for those industry QC application, seems kind of cumbersome. And Guava is microcapillary technology-based. There's no sheath.
Every day, it consumes only two tubes of small waste, very easy to dump to remove. So this is a nice thing about the Guava. Also, it is manual-based. That means it makes it so easy to operate. Guava, including also a lowest cost solution out there, which called the Guava Muse, which was just for CD4 counting purpose, and which was very helpful for actually, especially for HIV diagnostics in Africa. And then, in Q4, we launched Orion, a new product. This is actually a cocktail make mixer, automatic cocktail mixer for the pharma CRO applications. As you can see, when they get to the clinical trial, especially with the larger panel, if we want to make reagents again and again, with manual process, you are going to make a mistake, which will be a disaster if it happens.
And this Orion is an automatic, cocktail mixer for larger panel, construction. And so this removes all the human error possibilities out there. A great tool, and the big pharma CRO have been telling us this is a great piece of tool, which they are interested in. And so overall, by last year, we just announced our overall revenue for the full year was $193.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA, $13.7 million, and after removing the stock-based compensation. That means on a, adjusted EBITDA basis, without the stock compensation Cytek, in fact, is profitable. As you can see, in the life science tool space, this is, very rare. And so we have more than 1,500 customers. Our instruments have gone to beyond 70, different countries.
Of course, we are also supporting those instruments across those 70 countries. We have, in total, 2,148 instruments, Cytek organic instruments, and that does not include the instrument acquired from Luminex. That means it does not include the Amnis and the Guava shipped last year. Total publication, cumulative publication, based on full spectrum technology we have developed, reached 1,650 in total, and company has more than $260 million in cash. Our operation, organic operation, does not really rely upon our cash. Okay, so that means we have enough here to support our expansion for our merger acquisition, for our internal R&D, all those needs.
We provided a guidance for this year, 5%-10%, $203 million-$218 million. Now, we mentioned about four business pillars. Those four business pillars are supporting our revenue generation based on these products, including instruments. As you can see, we have a complete portfolio of instrument for analyzer to sorters to accessories. And that's our first revenue stream, which is about 75% of our total revenue. And then second part is the reagents, and third part revenue stream is services. Software, there's a small portion, mostly in SaaS space, for imaging analysis, for Amnis. So those three account for about 25% of the revenue. So recurring right now is about 25%, and instrument capital expenditure is about 75%.
The company is; we are small, but we are a global company, and our headquarters is in Fremont, California, where we also do our instrument manufacturing, Aurora and Aurora CS sorters. Seattle manufacture our imaging flow cytometer, ImageStream. San Diego is for our reagent manufacturing. Bethesda is our sales and application centers for the East Coast-based customers. Our European headquarters is in Amsterdam to support EMEA business. And then we have our Tokyo, Cytek Japan, over there to support our business in Japan. And then we have two facilities in China: Shanghai for our global R&D, as well as software development. Also, the sales and the marketing for the China market.
Wuxi is our manufacturing facility, primarily for the sub-assembly used for the U.S. manufacture, as well as for the clinical instruments for both China and the European market. Globally, I already mentioned about the number of customers we have, and, especially here, we have more than 150 biopharma customers. And we have about 650 employees. And overall, our business, 57% considered as commercial customer, like pharma, biotech, CRO, hospitals, and the distributor. 43% on the academic applications. And then, in terms of distribution of business, U.S. accounted for 53% of our overall business, EMEA, 28%, APAC and the rest of world, 19%. Now, the overall, when the business become mature, we feel it should be 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3 .
We are gradually getting there, to moving towards that directions. That means going forward, you probably we would like to see more higher growth in EMEA and APAC than the U.S., to get us to that kind of stability. So where are our tools being used? Flow cytometer, in fact, is a basic life science tools. You can find it probably in most of the life science labs. General, lots of applications. But our tools are primarily used based on the publications. Earlier, I mentioned about 1,600 publications. Looking at where they are being used, as you can see, 23% for oncology, 26% vaccine/viral infections. Actually, lots of those are, of course, COVID-related. Immunology, and about 17%, and inflammation/autoimmunity, 20%, and drug development, 13%.
So wide range of applications. So why customers want to use Cytek? If we really want to summarize, three areas, even though the list is far broad, but three areas. One is high dimensional cell analysis, provide really deep understanding of the cells. Okay. And so which no other instrument or technology will be able to provide. Second is about cost. It can do this at much lower cost than whatever is out there with a competitive technology. And lastly, is standardization. I have repeatedly mentioned, standardization is a great feature of our tools. Okay, because that's needed for clinical trial, that's needed for clinical applications, for clinical diagnostics. And conventional instrument is very difficult, very challenging to get there. This is what we can provide. So this is why customers coming to Cytek for our tool, for our technology.
So, talk about applications, where and we know it's basic life science tools, where they are being used on the diagnostic side. This is what we see. And a whole, look at the human process here, therapies here. That, that's where they can be used. Lots of applications related to human therapies here for diagnostic purposes, including leukapheresis, T cell isolation, T cell activation, T cell engineering/transduction, MRD, very important aspects also for the clinical LDT. Right now, we have been working with many labs on the MRD side. And all of those applications, as you can see, the importance of our technology, our tools. And looking at where our tools are being used here. For the first one, we have the...
Earlier, I mentioned this Muse, super low-cost instrument, I think lower probably than any of the flow cytometer out there you can see. This is the application. And we have T-cell isolation, the tools we have, Muse, EasySep, Northern Lights. Northern Lights is a entry to mid-level full spectral tools technology to support this application. And then T cell activation, in addition to what we talked about, we have Aurora Image Stream, right? And then, as you can see here, and the T cell engineering, the tool we have, MRD. Actually, what we are focusing on right now to support MRD is with Northern Lights in Europe, China, as well as Aurora in the U.S., with many, labs out there. And then, cancer cell kill, kill cells, modify the T cell expansion.
So we have basically a complete portfolio of instruments to support the whole cycles of therapies, to support the customer applications. Another nice thing about, I want to mention is, as many of you may know, FDA approved the first gene therapy to treat patients with sickle cell disease. All right? In fact, to support this first therapy, our ImageStream has been used to identify normal cells versus the sickle cells. As I mentioned, ImageStream is a high-speed single-cell microscope. That's how it enable us to be used for this purpose. And this is a tool used to validate if the treatment is actually effective or not. So with regarding to where we are heading toward, right? This is where we start from focusing on initially our cutting-edge application to drive the reagent business, to support the core labs.
One of the focus of the company going forward to drive our recurring revenue, drive the reagent business, is in the pharma biotech and the CRO side. We work with them, focus on volume, focus on application, larger panels to support them. Through this, we drive the application into translation. So, as you can see, once you get to clinical space, then there are lots of reagent panels application, which are linked directly to the instruments. Lastly, through all of those, from core labs to CRO, pharma to the clinical, to drive our full cell analysis solution, to support the whole customer base. This is where we are focusing on with regarding to business development, the focus of our reagent recurring business. I mentioned about Cytek Cloud, bioinformatics, and talked about the features we are doing.
Soon we are going to launch. Now, panel design is very important, especially for larger panel. One of the area we are going to launch is, we are going to automate this panel design. That means users only need to input the markers I want to see, then the system will provide you the best combination of fluorochrome with the antibody. Best design out there automatically. You don't really need to specify what fluorochrome you need. In the old days, when you build those panels, especially large panel, you have to figure out exactly what dye you are going to use, exactly what antibody, how you match them, combine them. Our tool is going to automate that process.
All you need is just to provide the antibody input, what you want to see, then system will tell you what dye you should use and how the panel is going to look like. Then tell you then automate the data analysis. Okay, this is the functions we are doing. Of course, Cytek Cloud, our bioinformatics, is a continuing evolving process. Okay? Through that process, as you can see, all the customers' data will stay. We are going to provide a service, provide the data storage. The reason is, with our technology, lots of data. And the manual data is a headache for many customers, for many users, and we are going to provide that service, help them.
Through that process, we will enable users to stay with Cytek technology, stay with our solution, because we are providing them what they need to make their life easier. And I have already mentioned about our clinical, and I don't need to duplicate. So this is our overall objective, purpose for the year. Okay, this is what we are going to through this, we are. Pretty much the company is going to continue to keep our commitment to shareholder value creation. How we do this? First, cost and capital efficiency. This is we are going to continue to drive down our operation cost, continue to improve our cash utilization efficiency. And second part is operation excellence. That means we need to drive our inventory down. We are going to keep improving our gross margin for our business.
We want to make sure we deliver based on what customer needs, to meet the user's expectation. I'll talk about we are going to maximize our free cash flow and areas of focus. What's important for the whole year, we all know in this space, previously, people always talk about growth at any cost. But this is not what we are going to do. Profitable growth. We are going to maintain our high growth, but in the meantime, we want to make sure we stay being profitable. It's going to be a focus of profitable growth. Execution speed is another areas of focus for any program, any new R&D. We want to make sure it's efficient, it's fast. We have to execute effectively, efficiently, and this is one of the area people always miss.
Many R&D program takes long, always longer than what you would like to see, right? We want to make sure our execution speed has to be there. And finally, is a smart position. We'll continue to look at possibilities, opportunities. We have the cash, give us an opportunity, but on the other hand, we want to be smart, not any acquisition. One of the criteria for us to look at here, not only it has to be synergetic to our business, it has to be able to turn profitable within the next 12-18 months. That means whatever acquisition we are looking at, our either there's a synergy on our sales marketing, or synergy on our R&D, or synergy with our operation, or all of those, to ensure we can have a great synergy to turn the business profitable. So this is what we are committed.
That's how we can generate shareholder value for the company. That's all I have. Thank you.
Great. We've got two or three minutes left, so maybe at least a little bit of Q&A. So maybe just first, you know, the macro has been a big topic for everybody in this industry. You know, you talk about sort of the 6%-8% overall flow cytometry market growth. So maybe just when you think about that, you know, how much of that is true, sort of net instrument installation growth versus sort of utilization? And I ask that just to say, you know, how much do you need install growth to come back to, to drive growth at Cytek versus, you know, "Hey, with the install base we have, there's just a utilization component moving into FDA-approved," et cetera? Just would love some thoughts around that.
The overall flow cytometry business has been traditionally, it has been growing at 6%-8%. Last year, of course, is a unique year, and a kind of negative growth. But from Cytek perspective, if we look at the overall flow cytometry market, as I said, it's a large market, used in almost every life science labs. Looking at our revenue of close to $200 million, comparing to the overall market size, we are talking about less than 10%. So that just means we have a few—quite a few more years to go, and for us to really feel the kind of saturation position or close to our competitor, closest to competitor. That's one thing.
Second part is the unique features of what we have come to, the full spectrum, actually also, and introduce a new applications, which conventional is not capable of. That means we are creating additional market, expanding the market versus the conventional market. This is another area we feel we have an opportunity for us. So looking at here, first is we have the replacement market, which we feel a great opportunity for us. Second is every year's natural growth of the conventional market, we have opportunities to capture. And lastly is a new market that we created by our technology. That's an expanding market for us. So that's the kind of opportunity for Cytek. Anything to add?
No, I think you summarized it so well.
Well, I'm tempted to ask another, but we're right at the end of our session, so we can move downstairs into the breakout in Amarante Two, and appreciate-