Good afternoon, all, and welcome. My name is Fawzi Kawash, and I'll be moderating today's session. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Jiang, CEO and Chair, and Bill McCombe, CFO, Paul Goodson, Head of IR, to the JPMorgan Conference. And without further ado, I'll hand it over to Dr. Jiang.
Good evening. Looks like I'm the one between you and the evening parties, so I will be quick so safe harbor statement. I'm not going to read. I'm sure you all know what it is so Cytek is a cell analysis company and really empowering the scientific discovery in this community. In fact, we have been very well recognized in the space, and as evidenced, validated by Cytek being named as one of the fastest growing companies by TIME , along with other well-known companies, public companies in the U.S. Cytek has also been named as the Company of the Year by the Clinical Leader and the Journal, as well as our Guava Muse, which was launched last year, being named as the Innovation Award by the Journal here, a Technical Award of the Year.
Cytek has, throughout the years, been really driving the discovery and development in the cell analysis space and has shown up here, as you can see. Throughout the years, since we launched our first instrument in 2016, 2017 so far, we have shipped, delivered more than 3,000 instruments in the space. More than 3,000 technical journals have listed Cytek as being the technology instrument, helping them to develop during their discovery work. We have now more than 2,000 customers and unique customers. Our instrument has also gone to more than 70 different countries in the world. We just released our preliminary results this Monday, and last year, our results showing with $201 million, slightly above the year before. Overall, by towards the end of Q3, our cash, $262 million.
Cytek is really a global company, and we have our manufacturing operation across the world, including the U.S., Singapore, and China. Through this operation, we are now doing region-for-region manufacturing that enables us to support customers across the world, across all the continents. Our revenue has been supported by our shipment across all the countries, including the U.S., now carrying more than 50, around 50% of our revenue and a mere 26% APAC, including China, 24%. Also, if we look at the industry, about 59% of the revenue is coming from biotech, pharma, as well as through distribution, and 41% through academic and government-supported agencies. In fact, we are in industry, in the market, supported by big or large opportunities. Based on the market reports published just recently, in 2025, the overall market opportunity is about $5.1 billion, and throughout 2032, and with a CAGR of 8.8%.
That will enable us to reach $9.2 billion, and that's kind of a large market for the company, and this is where we are. That basically gives us a great opportunity going forward to continue to develop, to evolve, and to support these business opportunities. Cytek is supported by the five business pillars. That's what the company is built upon, which include instruments, applications, bioinformatics, and clinical. As we all know, we started from instrument. That's how the company is built upon. And we continue to invest in advancing our technology on the instrument side, including to continue to improve performance, provide more intelligence, and provide harmonization across all the instruments, which is absolutely needed today, and by all the clinical trials, and by the pharmaceutical companies, as well as supporting all the clinical studies as well, so to can harmonize all the data from different instruments, different labs.
Reliability is another aspect we continue to pay attention to, which is very important to continue to drive the adoption of our instrumentation. Of course, cost is always something in mind by our customers, by our users. Application is where we develop, drive reagent-recurring business based upon our installed base. So Cytek has been developing reagents focused on expanding the application based on the full spectral technology embedded into Cytek's technology. This is where the recurring revenue will continue to help to sustain and grow our business going forward. Bioinformatics, in fact, this is another area which substantially differentiates Cytek from many of our competitors. Through bioinformatics, we have accumulated more than 20,000 users who are on Cytek Cloud every day to develop panels and to drive the application utilization of Cytek instruments.
Of course, bioinformatics. Cytek Cloud also provides far more benefits for our users, including the automated optimization of the panels and data management, and also eventually will enable our users to exchange information across over the Cytek Cloud. This is a platform we'll continue to evolve, continue to improve, continue to expand. And lastly, our business pillar is clinical. As we know, we have our instruments already clinically approved for applications in China and Europe. And our clinical instrument, and due to the technology involved, that due to the harmonization and really can drive the application, as well as to provide more sensitivity and higher panels that enable to drive the application, including leukemia MRD.
This is one of the areas which is unique for our technology, for what we have developed, because for MRD, one of the, as we know, flow cytometry has always been the tool being used. But one of the problems previously with flow cytometry is regarding the sensitivity. Now, based on what we have developed, we have improved the sensitivity by a factor of two to three and to really get to 10 to the -5 to -6 kind of sensitivity. AI is another aspect. We are focusing on the clinical side for the data analysis to drive the clinical applications.
We now, through the years of development, we have already built up a very broad portfolio of best-in-class cell analysis tools, including from conventional to full spectral, as well as the imaging-based flow cytometry to support various applications among our user base. In addition, with the installed base we have built upon and we started to enter into the reagent space, we have a very broad portfolio of reagents today that enable our users to develop applications and to support their research needs. And then I mentioned about Cytek Cloud and for the bioinformatics, as well as the services, which in fact is one of the fastest growing space and also the segment for Cytek on our revenue. Now, one of the things that differentiates Cytek, compared to many other life science tool companies, is flow cytometry is a basic life science tool.
It's essential tool required for driving applications in almost every life sciences labs, so this is something you must have compared to many other technology and tool, which is nice to have. Due to this, and even under a very challenging environment, as we all know, 2024 was kind of challenging, but still, our revenue continued to grow, and our business continued to evolve, as evidenced by the data we presented this Monday, and Cytek tools is built upon our core instrument, Orion, Northern Lights Analyzer, Aurora Evo, and also Aurora Analyzer. Evo is our new generation of high-end research tool for the data analysis, and also as well as the Aurora Cell Sorter, which is in fact the fastest growing tools across our portfolio, and those instruments have been driving the applications for our users.
And the latest Aurora Evo we launched last year has been also growing very fast because this tool has provided many of the features. And our customers, especially our pharma, have been expecting to, including the high throughput, better sensitivity, nanoparticle detection, data harmonization. Those kind of features have all been built into this Evo system, part of the reason why it has been receiving great acceptance among our user bases. And many of the users come back, actually start to replace the early instrument they acquired from Cytek. And so this is a tool we believe is going to continue to grow through 2026 and years forward. And I mentioned the application and driving the regional adoption.
Cytek throughout the year has been, and due to the cumulative installed base, we're working on, and we have been working on developing reagents specific to enable us to expand the application of full spectral technology. And through that, that helps us to really drive the research applications in immuno-oncology, in infectious disease, as well as inflammatory diseases. Of course, this is just a few. And in fact, our application can also drive way beyond the life science basis, which we are also looking at.
Throughout this process and enable Cytek's instrument application to be built into the typical pharma's drug discovery and genomic and immunoprofiling and technology, we have built big panels and standard panels to enable our users to get onto application quickly, fastly, and also enable them to leverage what we have developed on the panel as a backbone to help them to quickly get onto their study, their research. In the meantime, we have also developed those single-color and single-laser and six -color TBNK panels to drive the clinical applications in China as well as Europe. Our instrument today, as earlier I mentioned, on the clinical side has been cleared for clinical applications in the U.S. as well as in Europe, and this is another opportunity for us to continue to drive our revenue growth over the next few years.
Cytek Cloud, as another business pillar I mentioned, and Cytek Cloud, in fact, one of the biggest nice features for Cytek Cloud is, in fact, to enable our users to be able to build a panel very quickly. Typically, especially when you get to those high-dimensional data analysis or cell analysis, a large panel normally takes weeks, if not months, to optimize. Cytek Cloud has built into AI features to enable users to get the panel designed automatically. And so that will really enable them to really speed up their experiment. In the meantime, Cytek Cloud also provides virtual experiment on Cytek Cloud to help them to optimize the panel before they actually take the panel over to the real instrument for the real lab, a wet lab experiment. Now, we have also built features to enable users to buy reagents after the panels are optimized.
Through this process, we really help our users, our customers, to expand their application more effectively, quickly, and also cost-effectively. In fact, Cytek Cloud has been very well received among our user base. Over the last, actually, just by 2025, through Q3, we expanded the user base by more than 40%. By now, certainly, we exceeded the number listed here. Cytek Cloud is a tool and is going to really drive, continue to drive Cytek's instrument as well as reagents and revenue growth going forward. Now, looking at our revenue growth, we reported $62 million for Q4 and the full year, $201 million. In fact, if you look at the quarter-to-quarter revenue growth, it's a continuous acceleration factors. Q1, -8% compared to the previous year, then get to -2% year-over-year.
Then we quickly recovered in Q3, 2%, and Q4, 8% year-over-year. And throughout the year, and as you can see, our business continues to improve. And this is reflected by how we execute our business and how the market improves, how our technology is helping drive the business. Among this portfolio and this acceleration of year-over-quarter revenue growth, and it's actually, if you go into look further deeper into our business, 50% of our business is supported by services, reagents, that's the global service and reagents, plus the APAC instrument revenue. And that carries about 50% of our overall business. And that business, in fact, throughout the year has been growing by actually multi-double-digit growth. And then look at another half of the business, which is based in Europe and the EMEA and North America. And that part of business has been stabilizing over the year.
In fact, by the last quarter, it started to show the positive growth. This is how overall, and as you can see, the business environment and as well as our prospects continue to improve. This is how we believe and going forward is going to continue to drive our revenue, our business growth. Cytek continued to invest substantially in R&D and reflected throughout the years by the product launched. Since we launched our first product in 2016, and as you can see, and we built up a broad portfolio of product through our technology innovations, including our first flagship product in 2017, Aurora Analyzer. Through 2021, we have the Aurora CS. Then in 2025, we launched our new generation of cell analyzer, Aurora Evo.
In fact, throughout the years, our product has been really through those innovations, technology innovations, we have been generating great customer traction and supporting our customer needs. That has been very well recognized by our user base, by our customers. So through that period of time, earlier I mentioned about the reagent business we have built upon. In 2021, right after we went public, we acquired Tonbo to help drive our reagent revenue growth. In 2023, we acquired the Luminex assets to help us expand into the imaging space. Now, through all those internal technology development, as well as the merger acquisition that expanded Cytek to cover all the broad portfolio of applications, we now have a product covering the full applications needs in the flow cytometry space to support our customers.
And that broad portfolio is going to continue to drive Cytek going forward for our growth going forward. And of course, we'll continue to invest in the R&D side to drive innovation to, as you can expect it, which has been showing here. So going to 2026, and in fact, multiple angles, we can take a look at how our revenue can continue to grow. Certainly, one, as you can see, this increased installed base will continue to drive our service revenue, which is in the double-digit range. And this expanded installed base will also help continue to drive our reagent revenues. And also, flow cytometry market, earlier mentioned, the CAGR of 8.8% through 2035 is going to give us another opportunity angle to drive our opportunity for the continued revenue growth.
And then this R&D new innovation for us will enable us to continue to launch new products to support the customer needs. And we are also in a cycle for the conventional instrument replacement. And this also provides us a great opportunity. This is evidenced in fact in 2025. We see our Cytek Aurora CS growing double-digit. Part of that growth is driven by this replacement cycle. This process will continue throughout 2026. And Cytek Cloud, as Cytek Cloud earlier mentioned, helps improve workflow and utilization. And lastly, clinical is going to help us to drive our growth through EMEA and China. This is another opportunity for the year. So looking at why you want to invest in Cytek, clearly, and all those factors to show Cytek is well positioned for growth and profitability and going forward, this is why you should invest.
Number one, first, we are a technology leader in our space. Through what we have done, Cytek has already built a name recognition. Being the real innovator, we have changed the whole landscape of the flow cytometry industry and moving from conventional to full spectral. Everybody today is, of course, following Cytek, but we are a leader. We'll continue to invest to maintain this leadership. Second, we are a global company. That global diversification allows us to weather all kinds of situations. So we have manufacturing operations across multiple continents. We have our sales marketing activities across almost all the important market region territories. And we have our service organization cover across more than 70 countries to support our customers. This is another reason why Cytek will continue to evolve, continue to grow.
And then with this more than 3,000 instruments in the field that will continue to help drive our recurring revenue opportunity through services and also reagents. And lastly, Cytek is actually one of the very few companies financially in the life science tool space, which is generating positive cash flow. And so we'll continue to be that way. And we will continue to manage the Cytek very efficiently, profitably, and to drive our business. So that's all we have today. Thank you. Any questions?
Great. I have a few questions. Thank you for that. Firstly, many companies in life science tools have seen a contraction in revenue in recent years. Yet now your fourth quarter seems to represent a return to growth. Is this primarily composed of market growth or market share capture or both? And do you believe that will continue in the future?
I think our revenue growth mostly is due to the market share, taking market share from our competition, which is very evident. And looking at the overall market 2020 to 2025, which was very, very challenging. And overall investment clearly has been contracting. But under this contracting market, especially for the life science capital expenditure market, we in fact managed double-digit growth for our cell sorter. This just means we are taking market share under this environment. But of course, towards the end of the year, we have also seen some recoveries with regard to investment, especially in the academic space. And we have also benefited from this. Overall, we feel we are growing due to taking market share.
Understood. And you mentioned that you're seeing signs of demand stabilization in both the U.S. and Europe. Why do you think this is? Do you expect this will continue? And is this across the board among your various customer types?
If you look at overall growth, in fact, APAC has always been doing nicely on the instrument side throughout the years. Early last year, we had some challenge. We saw some challenges in both U.S. and Europe, especially in Q1, U.S. with all those and NIH funding reduction or freeze and tariff, which caused lots of concern with regard to the spending. Then Europe, the challenge with regard to prioritizing the government spending to some different other field outside of the life sciences. So this clearly has caused some issues. What Cytek has done is we continue to invest. We continue to innovate. Throughout the process, we launched two new products, and Aurora Evo, as well as the Guava Muse . All of those have been doing very well after they were launched, which had showed up in Q3 and Q4 with all the revenue growth.
In the meantime, and with our Aurora CS taking the opportunities of this replacement cycle and taking market share from our competition, and that truly enabled us eventually to recover all the kind of challenge we see. And that's part of the reason why Q4 we have seen the kind of growth. We feel this momentum is going to continue throughout the quarters with this acceleration in growth. And we feel this momentum will last us into 2026. Earlier I mentioned 50% of our business, including service, reagents, and APAC instrument, is growing about actually growing double-digit. And then with the stabilization of North America and EMEA instrument, we feel in 2026, and we should see substantial growth compared to what we had in 2025.
Got it. And your reagent revenue grew strongly in 2025. You said that there's roughly $150 million per year in non-Cytek reagents being used in Cytek's machines. Do you think you can capture a large portion of that revenues over time?
Certainly, and the instrument, if you look at, yeah, we have more than 3,000 instruments in the field. Assuming if every instrument can support 50,000 reagent consumption, which is not really that much, and that's $150 million opportunities. Of course, today, most of the reagents are supported by other companies in the field simply because Cytek started from being a hardware instrument company, and at that time, we drove our customers toward other companies for the reagent business. Nevertheless, and as we built up our installed base and starting from 2021, and when we acquired Tonbo, and reagent became a very important part of our focus, really to leverage our installed base, and clearly, throughout the years, we have already seen the benefit. Last year, reagent revenue growth was more than 20%. We feel this trend is going to continue.
In 2026, one of the focuses for Cytek is to invest in driving the reagent sales through our focus on sales and marketing activities.
How far do you think you can take recurring revenue as a proportion of total revenue in the future?
I think overall, and as you can see, and first years, if you segment the flow cytometry market overall, $5 billion, right, $5.1 billion today, and among that $5.1 billion today, between $1.5 billion-$2 billion is instrument. And $2 billion-$3 billion, $2.5 billion-$3 billion are the reagents. And then the balance are services. If you look at what we have today, and within the instrument side, if we segment further, we are very well supported on the high end of the market segment for the instrument. And we, in fact, have a very low penetration in the low end and mid end of the market side, low single digits. That basically presents a great opportunity for us to grow into that part of the business. As you can see, we have a very broad portfolio of instruments that support all kinds of applications.
And so, but our focus previously has been on the high end. But now, with the newly established broader understanding and the focus, that gives us a great opportunity to penetrate into that market. That will provide us a great growth opportunity. And then the reagents. And we have, again, a very low market penetration today. But if we just focus on our own installed base, clearly, reagent presents another great opportunity for the year. And so just those two areas of focus, we feel that will drive the opportunities for Cytek, of course. And we'll continue to build new market, new applications, and new products, through new innovations, and to further expand the opportunities for our business, for our opportunities. That's what we see what Cytek is eventually going to be.
And so, Cytek, through what we are doing, we are destined to become a true full solution cell analysis solution company. And with all of those, I think Cytek will continue to grow going forward.
What are you thinking about with respect to capital allocation and M&A in the future?
Actually, Bill, would you like to comment?
So we like to have a balanced strategy where we have capital available both for share repurchase and for opportunistic M&A. So far, in 2025, we've sized our share repurchase to be approximately equal to our free cash flow. We exceeded that a little bit in the early part of 2025, but generally, that's the rule or the guideline that we follow. And we expect to operate in a similar way going forward.
Great. I'll see if there are any questions from the floor. If not, I have one more. What are the key takeaways that you'd like to leave investors with, and what do you feel is most underappreciated about the Cytek story?
I think one of the first is Cytek is today, and we know is the only flow cytometry company, public flow cytometry company. All of our competitors are basically a business unit within a large organization. So that makes it very difficult for the research community to truly understand our business, and they fail to realize what we have is really a must-have technology. What we have built upon is a product portfolio that all of the it's a basic essential life science tools needed for every labs, and no matter the market is contracting or growing, and no matter how challenging the business market is, they will, as long as they want to do experiments, they want to develop new medications, new drugs, or they want to do a good research scientific work, they need our tools.
So that basically is an opportunity for Cytek to continue to thrive within all kinds of situations. This is something, and clearly, of course, Cytek also needs to provide more education to the research, to the investment communities, and with regard to what we have been doing. But in the end, we are a company that has been there to have developed a great technology. We are a leader in our space. This space is very large. Over time, we'll continue to grow, and that gives us a great opportunity going forward. That's the area we feel, and we would like all the investment community to understand this is where we are.
Certainly very exciting. I think with that, we can conclude the presentation. Thank you.