All right. I think we're going to get started here. Welcome back to the 45th Annual TD Cowen Healthcare Conference, day three. I am hoping everybody's hanging in there. I'm Brendan Smith, a Senior Biotech and Life Science Tools Diagnostics Analyst. It is my pleasure to introduce you to gentlemen from Cytek Biosciences. To my left is the CEO, Wenbin Jiang, and to his left is the CFO, William McCombe. They're going to give some presentation and a few remarks up front, and then towards the end, we'll have a few minutes for moderated Q&A.
If anybody in the audience has any real questions that have kind of just burred through your pocket, feel free to send me an email: brendan.smith@tdsecurities.com, and we'll work it in towards the end of the conversation. Gentlemen.
Thank you for joining us and to spend the next 30 minutes to listen to the Cytek story. Safe harbor statement, and you're all familiar with. Cytek is a cell analysis company enabling the scientific and medical communities with our advanced flow cytometry products and the technology. We are, in fact, the leading flow cytometry technology companies out there and in a market which what we call, in fact, a mature market, a very well-established market with great market size. Now we are leading in that market.
Compared to many of the technology in the life science tool space these days, we are in a market which doesn't really require us to convince our customers because this flow cytometry is a basic life science tool used in almost every biology lab today. This is a must-have instrument.
We are the most advanced tool right now out there. We are really driving the adoption of our technology, taking market share. This is what the company is. Just a summary of what we have achieved so far. Since we first launched our product seven years ago, 2017, our first what we call the full spectral profiling technology-based instrument, by now and eight years, we have already deployed more than 3,000 Cytek instruments in the field, including in fact more than 300 publications by the academic users citing the use of Cytek instruments for their needs and for their applications.
We have more than 2,000 customers today and across more than 70 countries already with Cytek instruments, Cytek technology. Cytek is cash flow positive, and we have now close to $280 million in cash. In fact, with the revenue guidance, we guided $240-$212 million. In fact, the company is cash flow positive. We are in fact using the cash generated from our opportunity today, buying back our own shares. The board just authorized another $50 million share repurchase for the year. Of course, in the meantime, we are aggressively looking at opportunities through merger acquisition for the year now and to expand our market access.
In addition to the organic investment into our R&D to drive more products to serve for our customer base, about 20% of our revenue are in fact invested in developing new products and to grow organically. Just take a look at our performance. In 2024, our revenue, $200 million, and adjusted EBITDA, $22 million. That actually reflected a 77% year-over-year growth. The company has always been cash flow positive.
On an adjusted EBITDA basis, we have been profitable. We are one of the only very few companies, frankly speaking, in the life science tool space like our size, which generates positive adjusted EBITDA. Our gross margin is 59% in Q4 2024. In fact, throughout the quarters, this has been improving quarter by quarter and getting close to 60%. We expect we'll continue to drive the nice 60% gross margin over 2025. Now, on a unit basis, in fact, our unit overall deployment growth last year, 2024, is 8.5% growth compared to the previous year. You may look at, okay, why revenue growth only 4%.
By the way, in our life science space, the overall market was a negative growth. In fact, in this negative growth, we maintained the positive revenue growth year- over- year. Our unit growth, in fact, is double the revenue growth. Of course, that is also reflected in the mixture of products. We have a whole portfolio of different products, which I will show in the following slides. In addition, among our whole portfolio, our sorter is basically looking at our product. Sorter is an analyzer after the analysis of the cell, and then you pick certain cells out, enable you to do so. You can move over to the downstream further analysis for genomics or PCR, the type of studies.
You can pick those single cells out. That is what sorter does. Our sorter growth was 13% year- over- year. The Northern Lights. Northern Lights is an entry mid-level product. Compared to our early first generation, which is really for the high end of the application Aurora, our Northern Lights, in fact, last year grew by 12%, also year- over- year. They all actually grow faster than overall instrument growth. The highest growth last year was our service revenue, 30%. We expect the high growth of service will continue on because service pretty much is based on the installed base growth. In 2024, our total instrument growth was almost more than 20%-25%.
That is the kind of trend. Service basically is after the warranty. Normally, our instrument has a one-year warranty. After warranty, customer buying service contract on a year-over-year basis is very consistent. Also recurring revenue. Looking at our overall distribution of our revenue, now academic, our revenue actually is about 60%. What we call commercial customers, pharma, hospitals.
Academic, normally university, cancer research institutions, 40%. Geographically, US right now is 46%, EMEA 31%, and APAC and the rest of the world, 23%, which includes China, Latin America, and Canada, all falling into this APAC and the rest of the world. This is actually quite healthy because overall in this market, in the flow cytometry industry, US is about 40% of the total market, Europe about one-third, and the balance falls into the rest of the world and the APAC. We are actually moving gradually toward that direction because Cytek started with 100% US. Now we are moving more and more toward the right direction.
In fact, last year, Europe and the APAC made great double-digit growth compared to the previous year on the revenue side. Also geographically, Cytek is headquartered in Fremont, California, in the Bay Area. We have also a manufacturing site in San Diego and Seattle, as well as our service center in Bethesda for help supporting our customers in the East Coast. In Europe, our headquarters is in Amsterdam, but we do have a presence across almost all the European countries, specifically U.K., Germany, France, Spain. In Asia, we have our Cytek Japan and over there in Tokyo. We have two facilities in China, Shanghai and Wuxi.
Shanghai is our R&D center. Wuxi is one of our manufacturing sites. Just recently, we established another manufacturing site in Singapore. Now, on the instrument side, we manufacture primarily in the U.S., Singapore, and also China across those three areas to support our global customer base. Now, a portfolio of our products. We have instruments on the top left side from full spectral profiling technology tools, and then also the imaging flow cytometry, which is Amnis. If you attend CYTO, which is the top premier conference for a company like Cytek in our industry, last few years, you can see there are only two major themes for CYTO.
One is full spectral profiling tool technology, which is what Cytek pioneered. The second part is imaging flow cytometry, which Amnis is part of. In fact, Amnis continues to be the best high-resolution imaging-based flow cytometry out there. People call Amnis a single-cell high-speed microscope. That is basically what it is. The second part of the business is reagents, as you can see. With our installed base continuing to grow, reagent is another possible revenue stream for the company, which today is about together, actually, reagent and service. I just mentioned about service is 30% growth year- over- year.
Reagent and service together is about 30% of our business, which is recurring today. Instrument is 70%. That's the kind of distribution: 70% capital expenditure and recurring about 30%. We expect over the time, recurring is going to continue to grow towards more like 50% and capital expenditure about 50%. That becomes a more healthy distribution. That's a reason you are going to see service, reagent, and software, those will grow faster than the instrument over the time. That's the kind of direction. Just to summarize and here on the instrument side, we have this Northern Lights, Aurora, Aurora cell sorter. Those are full spectral-based tools.
Aurora is a cell analyzer, which was the first product we launched and continued on. This is more for the high end of the research market as well as the pharmaceutical discovery applications. Northern Lights is the entry-level and for many of the daily individual labs, as well as actually for clinical. We do have Northern Lights clinically approved for China and Europe. Our cell sorter actually matches exactly as the Aurora on the panel side, but Aurora cell sorter functions as an analyzer plus the sorting function to enable you to pick the individual cell out one by one when you find something interesting.
The Amnis and the Guava instrument, which actually we got this product portfolio two years ago through acquisition and from Luminex. At that time, the reason for that acquisition we pointed out is three reasons. One is for its imaging technology, which continued actually with the development over the last two years. Clearly, we see and the imaging is one of the key themes in the flow cytometry industry. Amnis continues to be the best imaging flow cytometry out there. The second reason for the acquisition was to enable us to have a larger installed base to help improve our service operation efficiency. As you know, service, we have to have our people in the field.
The more density, better efficiency over there. The last reason for the acquisition at that time is the Guava over there. Amnis has been in the field for 20 to 25 years, has a large installed entry-level product. We feel that customer base will enable us to grow into that space. Coming together now, let's take a look at what we have achieved over the last two years. First is imaging. In fact, indeed, 2024, our imaging revenue grew by 14% compared to 2023, the first year of our acquisition. Imaging indeed is growing faster than the overall revenue growth in our industry. The second part is our service gross margin.
In 2022, our service gross margin was 15% because at that time we only had Cytek's own instrument. Now, combining those two businesses, we are looking at 57% in 2024 for the service. You can see the tremendous improvement with the operation efficiency. The low end, I just mentioned, our Northern Lights grew by 12%, again, faster than our overall instrument unit growth. We have achieved all the objectives of that acquisition. Certainly, we would like to continue to repeat the success we had going forward.
The reagent part, as we know, as we continue to have more and more of our instruments in the field, we expect and we should draw revenue from those recurring applications. Now, due to the nature of our technology, in fact, now Cytek allows the use of many reagents conventional flow cytometry would not be able to support because conventional flow cytometry has fixed grid, while full spectral technology Cytek developed is very flexible. It can work with any wavelengths. Cytek internally has been focusing on developing certain reagents to fill the gap of the conventional to enable us to expand the panel size, expand the parameters for the applications.
In the meantime, we have been focusing on kits because for Cytek, we feel and what's important is to develop a certain specific large panel kit to help customers, to make it easy for our customers. We have also developed our 1- laser and 2- laser 6-color TBNK for the clinical applications, especially for the 1- laser 6-color TBNK. TBNK is the largest clinical application using flow cytometry. The conventional TBNK application is 2- laser-based. Okay. Now, with Cytek technology, that enables us to drive 1- laser 6-color TBNK.
That's the standard clinical application with single laser, as you can imagine, less laser, more reliable, lower cost, and data becomes more consistent. Now both 1- laser and the 2- laser 6-color TBNK reagents are approved for clinical use in China. Our 1- laser 6-color also is approved for clinical application in Europe. We have a whole bunch of certified clinical single kind of reagent and applications out there. Those cover all the reagents out there we have today.
Looking at our overall revenue and on the reagent side, kits today continue to be the most popular reagent for our customers simply because of the reason I have just mentioned, ease of use and make our customer easier over there. One of the growths over the last two years, we launched this two years ago, is Cytek Cloud. Cytek Cloud helps our customers regarding panel design and panel optimization and data processing, data management, data analysis. This is an area that grows so fast. Just in two years, that's like 16,000 users already developed towards the end of Q4. In fact, just 2024, our user base improved by 160%.
Cytek Cloud also allows our customers to purchase reagents through that platform after the panel is optimized. This is a great opportunity, great value assets. Think about this. Right now, on Cytek Cloud, we have many of our partners' reagents on that platform, allow customers to purchase. Looking at just 16,000 users, just think about, let's say, 10,000 reagents every year they use. That's $160 million potential. That's what we are seeing. In fact, on average, flow cytometry, every year, users about $100,000 reagents they do. You see how powerful it is with this platform going forward. I just already mentioned about our clinical applications.
This Northern Lights system, this is the only full spectral technology-based clinical instrument in China and Europe. One of the nice best features with full spectral is because of the number of parameters it supports. It actually can help many of the applications due to its sensitivity, for example, like MRD. Typical MRD is, and you require 10 to the minus 6 kind of resolution. Normal flow cytometry, although flow cytometry has been used for leukemia diagnosis 50% of the time, that has been used. The sensitivity is just not good enough. For MRD, those type of applications, that's a reason why people need to go to other technology.
Now, with Cytek instrument, due to the sensitivity it has enabled, it can get to the kind of level and sensitivity. You see the benefits for that type of applications. Yes, flow cytometry is cost lower. It's much faster. In a couple of hours, you have all the results. There are lots of benefits with regarding to leveraging what we have and for clinical application. In fact, due to the instruments cleared for China and Europe, that's where they have been used today and over there. That also helps us to drive the reagent kit application in those markets. Let's look at overall and offering.
Another part, which is very differentiative with Cytek's instrument compared to conventional, is in our instrument is the only flow cytometry that technology enabled standardization across many different labs in different countries. That's very important for pharma when they get into clinical trial. That's a reason why you see the application during the research stage. They start with Cytek technology. Today, pharma, when they do the study, they actually not just do this in one lab. They have labs globally, multiple institutions. They want to ensure the data coming from different labs, different institutions, they are all consistent, trustworthy.
Our technology, due to the capability to be able to be standardized and can be harmonized. Today, pharma are getting to jump onto Cytek technology exactly for that reasons, to support their future applications and for their drug discovery, and as well as going to clinical harmonization, standardization in clinical is mandatory. You do not want the data coming from different lab is different. Unfortunately, conventional flow cytometry exactly plays that role and it is very difficult to standardize. Cytek tool does provide that capability.
There are, of course, other applications in the industry setting due to the standardization and harmonization capability coming out of the Cytek technology. As you can see, Cytek has been adjusted EBITDA base has been profitable and cash flow positive. In fact, we have also hit a really inflection point. Our operation costs pretty much stay flat. As you can see through the last four quarters, as we continue to go on, you can see just a somewhat revenue growth. You can see most of those converted into our net income and adjusted EBITDA growth.
That's a reason you can see our adjusted EBITDA growth has been so fast, high double-digit growth versus our revenue. That's the exact reason going forward. That's where Cytek is going to be a small revenue growth and will drive large increase in adjusted EBITDA. We are in the right time and in that inflection point. I think first is Cytek really is a technology leader in our industry. We are taking market share. Especially we started with high end, now moving toward entry-level and mid-level. We are in a large market, established market, a known market.
We do not need to go to convince customer why you need our technology because we are the best in an established market, in a growing market as well. Cytek financially is very powerful, very strong. As going forward, we are in a position as the market comes back, and we are going to test time to grow and to capture that overall growth. Thank you.
Can you hear me? All right. Great. Thanks for that. I think that is a fantastic lay of the outlook for Cytek. Maybe let me just double-click a bit on let's start with FY 2025 guidance. Right? I think you laid out really nicely the rationale for the diversification of your revenues on a global level. Obviously, there is some conversation. We had the U.S., China panel earlier this morning. Maybe give us just a sense of what is your process for building guidance in FY 2025? Could you really just walk us through some of the scenarios that could get you to maybe the upper versus the lower end of the guidance?
Sure. We think about the business in three buckets: the service business and the reagent business, which is about 30% of total revenue. We disclose services. It's around 25%. The products, which is basically the instrument business, is the remaining 70%-75%. Of that, about 40% markets outside the U.S. The U.S. represents around 30% of the product or the 30% of total revenue, so a little bit less than half the product business. As we look at those three buckets, we thought that we're going to continue to see solid growth in the services business because we're adding meaningfully to the install base.
Last year, if you look at the unit placement data that we released, there were about 500 new units that were delivered in 2024 that will become candidates for service contracts and T&M in 2025 because we have a 12-month warranty. The universe of new candidates is those units that were shipped a year ago. We would expect to continue to see solid growth there. That universe of new service candidates is about a 20% increment to the existing install base. That is how we thought about the growth of that segment. The product business outside the United States grew double-digit in 2024.
It is not impacted by the NIH, obviously. We continue to see solid growth there. The remaining piece, the remaining 30%-ish piece, is the U.S. products business. That is where there is more uncertainty. There is a range of different scenarios that could play out there. That is where perhaps more of the disruptive changes could slow decision-making. If the U.S. business is contracted in 2024, if that were to just stabilize or to start to grow, then that would get us to the upper end of the revenue range.
Okay. I guess just maybe you touched on this a little bit, but I do want to address maybe what are you hearing at this point on U.S. export controls? What can you kind of tell us about maybe why do they target these high parameter flow cytometers, number one, and what that kind of looks like today? I know it's a moving target.
We don't know anything more than what we read in the press release. What was in the undersecretary's press release was a concern about human performance enhancement. I got no idea why the U.S. is concerned about that. Anyway, I won't go any further on that topic. As it relates to Cytek, we have three manufacturing facilities around the world. We have Fremont in the U.S., we have Wuxi, China, and we have a new facility that we just opened in Singapore. Our goal is within a short period of time to be able to make all the products in every location so that we would be able to supply all our customers around the world from one of those three locations.
I know you've all touched on the Singapore plant too, so I think that'll be great for future growth.
Yeah, look, we have a lot of flexibility. If we have the ability to, we believe we can train our workers in Singapore to be able to make all the products, be able to do that quickly. That would give us a lot of flexibility. We therefore should be able to supply what the market needs from us from one of those three locations. That is our...
Yeah. I think just because it's a recurring theme throughout the conference and frankly in a lot of the work that we do, and I noticed on one of your slides, you touched on it as well, would have been on just AI, right? I think a lot of your newer offerings and the technology itself really lends itself to at least integration moving forward. Maybe just speak a little bit to how you're positioned to kind of capture some of that and, I would say, stay ahead of the curve as the flow cytometry space continues to well.
For AI, there are two parts of the AI. One is the utilization for AI and for the data analysis, especially for the imaging flow cytometry. We long actually released a software, data analysis software just exactly for that objective and to streamline the imaging flow cytometry data analysis. The second part of the AI really is to help improve the efficiency of our operation and so across the board. In fact, we are also addressing looking at that part of the needs as well.
Both internally and within the product offerings. Yeah. Okay. I think with that, we are just a little bit over time. I want to thank everybody for listening in. Thank you both for joining me. It's always a pleasure to see you. I know we have a lot of great content left over the course of today. Hang in there for the last day three of the conference. Thanks, everyone.