Provide a few cautionary notes. This event is being recorded and will be archived in the investor section of our website. It is our intent that all forward-looking statements regarding our financial results and commercial activity made during today's event will be protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected or discussed. All forward-looking statements are based upon current available information, and Illumina assumes no obligation to update these statements. We also refer you to Illumina's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Forms 10-Q and 10-K. For today's agenda, we'll start the day with Jacob discussing Illumina's vision and growth strategy. Steve will cover our innovation roadmap, and Ankur will speak to our financial outlook before handing it back to Jacob for brief closing remarks. After that, we'll move to Q&A.
You're welcome to submit your questions at any time during the presentations. With that, I'll turn it over to Jacob Thaysen, Illumina's CEO, for his presentation.
Thank you, Salli, and good day, everyone. As Salli said, my name is Jacob Thaysen, and I'm the CEO of Illumina. I joined Illumina in September last year. I was educated as a physicist, and with more than 20 years in oncology, diagnostic, and life science, I have a deep respect for the power of science and technology. Next-generation sequencing has a real impact on people's lives. This is what gives me and all of us at Illumina our true purpose: to join patients in their fight against disease and give them a real shot at fighting and winning. Before we get started and dive into the strategy and financial outlook, let's spend a moment listening to a patient. 12 years ago, Ajay Patel's health suddenly began to decline out of nowhere.
He was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, a horrible shock to his, to this active father of three. We have a quick video so you can hear him share his own words about his journey.
A positive biomarker means that your cancer can be treated with targeted drugs or therapy that will put the brakes on the cancer from multiplying, and that is the key to life. At the 24th-month mark, brand-new Ajay had appeared, and so I began to feel that I beat the disease. I am a survivor, and if I'm a survivor, you can be a survivor.
Without Illumina's contribution to next-generation sequencing, Ajay and many other patients might not be here today. Being told you likely have cancer by a physician is among the most devastating messages any patient can get. From that second, your world has changed. Worse still, in many cases, the patient is still left to wait, sometimes for weeks, to receive an accurate diagnosis, and the waiting is agonizing. Our job is to reduce the wait from weeks to days and help provide the most accurate diagnosis so the patient can stop waiting and start fighting. This is why I'm here. Ajay's story makes it real, and this is why I'm honored to be a part of this company. Okay, let's get started. With an enduring mission and a legacy of innovation, Illumina has been redefining what is possible through the power of genomics for more than a quarter century.
Illumina is a biology platform company rooted in NGS. We enable the heroes in the healthcare, academia, and pharma to answer pressing questions, from a fundamental mechanism of disease to patient-specific diagnostics and treatment monitoring. Illumina pioneered the growth of NGS from a nascent technology to a foundational tool for biology. Along the way, a focus on innovation reduced sequencing cost at a significant rate, enabling discoveries and applications that was unthinkable at the beginning of the millennium. But now, we have reached an important pivot point. Sequencing is not always the main cost of getting high-quality answers to biology questions. We need to look at the full end-to-end workflow. Going forward, you will see a shift from emphasis from cost per gigabase to the highest quality of biology insights for the lowest end-to-end cost. We refer this as the total cost of workflow.
Illumina is uniquely positioned to provide this value at scale. We'll continue to build scalable platforms and to introduce the most comprehensive genome that includes structural variants. We'll also introduce solutions in the fields of methylation insights, protein analysis, single cell, IVD, and more. Innovation has always been at the core of Illumina.... To broaden our impact, Illumina needs to collaborate more deeply with customers and key opinion leaders. We'll put even more emphasis on supporting our customers and continuously strive to deliver an extraordinary experience that ensures our customers are successful in their work. Today, we'll cover five areas. First, Illumina continues to have a significant opportunity ahead. We have made progress in 2024, but there is much more to do. Second, we need to involve the industry from basic cost per giga, gigabase to total cost of workflow.
Third, expanding into multi-omics is a key element of our roadmap. Our customers want multifaceted answers from their samples, and the NovaSeq X Series is a key enabler for making this a reality. Fourth, we're highly focused on accelerating our revenue growth to high single digit by 2027. We have a clear strategy to get there, with distinct building blocks we will talk about today. And finally, we are putting ourselves on a path for delivering a differentiated margin expansion and EPS growth story that is rooted in operational excellence. Illumina's market opportunity remains significant. Out of the more than $125 billion total addressable market, only $10 billion is served by next-generation sequencing today. NGS will further penetrate the total addressable market over the coming years. We anticipate this is happening in a few different ways.
The research market will continue to focus on understanding diseases, not only through genomic profiling, but also through additional multi-omics, including the transcriptome, epigenome, and proteome in modalities like bulk, single-cell spatial, and beyond. This all requires high-intensity sequencing and more samples. For the clinical market, penetration will increase as biomarker profiling becomes standard of care, reimbursement growth, and physician use NGS as a powerful diagnostic tool. Liquid biopsy stands out as one of the areas that illustrates the overall clinical potential. Today, the market for Illumina in liquid biopsy is close to $800 million. That is actually expected to grow at a 34% CAGR over the years. For simplicity, liquid biopsy can be split into three categories: therapy selection, minimal residual disease, MRD, and early detection of cancer. To get a sense of the massive opportunity within liquid biopsy, let's take a look at MRD.
Currently, approximately 20 million patients are diagnosed with cancer annually. Let's assume that 10 million of them could benefit from MRD after their treatment. There's a push for whole genome sequencing to be used for MRD. This gives most shots on the goal to detect recurrence. NGS consumables could readily cost $1,000 per patient per year, creating a total of $10 billion opportunity. This is coming, and we are in active dialogue with our customers to support their MRD products. Illumina has led the industry in creating broader awareness and adoption of sequencing, and the NovaSeq X will be at the center of the next generation of applications. We are poised for the next wave of innovation that will drive progress for customers in both research and clinical markets across the globe.
Over the past 10 months, I've been here at Illumina, I've looked at both stabilizing the base business and positioning us to accelerate profitable growth. We have made substantial progress this year. We have built on the successful launch of the NovaSeq X Plus to increase our installed base to 469 instruments since we began shipping in March 2023. Our customers are leveraging the power of this technology to sequence more than ever. At the end of the second quarter, almost half of high-throughput data was sequenced on the X Plus. As we shared during our earnings call last week, average pull-through on the X Plus has topped $1 million per instrument, and we expect this will further improve.
Supporting our customers' move to NovaSeq X and driving incremental sequencing volume will continue to be one of the key areas of our focus throughout the strategy period. The X is enabling new application that are much more sequencing intensive, and Ankur will speak about how we see this developing over the next years. Building on that, Illumina has made organic and inorganic investments to expand our reach into proteomics, single cell, and software that supports enhanced visualizations. The bottom line is, Illumina will provide solutions for analyzing each omics layer, the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, and proteome, while making interpretation straightforward. And our focus on our own operational excellence is starting to show results. We improved both our gross margin and operating margin since the end of 2023 and increased our operating margin guidance for the full year.
As you have seen, we've made great progress in setting up a new leadership team that will steer Illumina through our transformation and beyond... We have put together a strong combination of proven Illumina leaders and new to Illumina leaders that brings new perspectives. We are also taking a much more proactive stance on competition than I observed when I joined the company. This is beginning to have a meaningful impact, both in the market and culturally within the company, and we are intensifying our focus on R&D project returns. While this is all good progress, we're just getting started. Over the next decade, NGS will become broadly adopted and have an even more significant impact. We see a future where NGS will be deeply embedded in healthcare, and where hospitals around the world will routinely sequence whole genomes as a part of standard of care.
This will provide the highest quality of insights to ensure patients are given the most effective personalized care, with continued monitoring when in remission. And in addition, sovereign nations will embrace whole genome sequencing, moving from sick care to healthcare. NGS will be the foundation for every decision from infancy through old age, including annual early cancer detection screening. This will drive a tectonic change in how we think about healthcare, increasing the quality of life and improving overall life expectancy. Over the past decade, NGS completely changed our understanding of the genome, and now, the power of NGS will unlock deeper insights from multi-omics. This will again change our understanding of biology and disease, and it will enable research to unlock new treatment strategies.
Finally, AI-powered cohorts of whole genome sequence population data, combined with longitudinal patient data, will provide insight that have not been achieved in any clinical study. This will change how pharma companies think about drug discovery, and insights across diverse populations will reveal new types of drug targets. This is the power of NGS, and Illumina will lead the next era of its use. A key part of delivering the vision is our deep commitment to our customers. While each customer is unique and has specific needs, there are three main customer groups. First are the research market. We have long served these customers. They are focused on answering fundamental biology questions, including disease pathways and regulations. Research markets are funded by grant programs and national research initiatives. These learnings open door to the clinical market applications. The second customer group is the clinical markets.
Over the past decade, Illumina has built out the infrastructure and capabilities to serve these customers, and clinical customers use biology discoveries to guide and personalize patient care. They also do their own research and are focused on quality, turnaround time, and ease of use. Key clinical customers include life science companies that develop specific tests, core testing labs, clinical research labs, and point-of-care testing organizations. Looking forward, we see an opportunity to add a third customer group, pharma, which has historically been underserved. A combination of NGS, large cohorts, and multi-omics will allow for AI-driven data models to predict drug targets with high accuracy and will significantly accelerate drug discovery. And these are supported by one key element of commercial transformation at Illumina, which is renewed focus on customer centricity.
To achieve this level of progress, the industry needs to shift from current value paradigm to total cost of workflow. The big question then is: how does this translate into an actual strategy, and what does total cost of workflow really look like in a customer value proposition? From my conversations, it is very clear that different customers are looking for different ways to produce the highest quality of insights with the lowest end-to-end cost. And if you boil it down in a few key strategic themes, they would be, one, provide a whole genome with an extremely simple workflow and all the relevant genomic insights beyond short and long reads. We call the theme Reinventing the Genome. Two, unlock more comprehensive omics insights enabled by the powerful NGS workflow solutions. Three, make NGS easy to operate by providing full workflow solutions, including best-in-class software and informatics capabilities.
Four, use the power of data to provide deep insights from large cohorts to allow for greater understanding of the genome, powering better and faster drug discovery. You will hear Steve speak about these themes in a few minutes. Illumina is combining our deep understanding of biology, chemistry, and platform development with a powerful informatics platform. This system thinking approach is enabling innovation that are not just incremental, but step changes in value propositions for our customers. This goes way beyond cost per gigabase and directly illustrates how we think about total cost of workflow. Soon, you'll be able to load your sample directly on the sequencer and get all the insights that short and long read techniques have historically provided... epigenetics will no longer require separate workflow.
It'll become the fifth base in the genome, powered by chemistry and our DRAGEN engine, and there is much more to come. Looking at the total cost of workflow through a different lens, it is clear a sole focus on cost per gigabase will not be enough to help our customers be successful. In the chart here, we show a clinical whole genome sequencing workflow. You can see that today, approximately 40% of the cost is from sequencing, and approximately 45% is data analysis and interpretation. So from a customer perspective, there is more value in driving down the cost of interpretation and informatics, ideally in combination with sequencing cost. Illumina's powerful combination of the NovaSeq X and DRAGEN directly addresses this. In another example, a single-cell workflow, sample prep is the main cost and with the most important element to address.
But even in this situation, interpretation informatics needs to be addressed. Anyone who has done large-scale single-cell experiments knows that it can take several days to process all the data, which can mean you probably won't even start a new sequencing run until this step is complete. With a deeper integration of workflow, Illumina is now reducing this compute time to hours and allow customers to optimize their time from experiment to result. There are many other hidden costs in a sequencing workflow: the number of failed runs, system downtime, instability of supply, and waste and storage, to name a few. These pain points are difficult to quantify upfront and are largely forgotten in the cost per gigabase discussion. Illumina will continue to optimize the entire workflow. I'm super excited about Fluent BioSciences become a part of Illumina.
The single-cell solution will be a key element in the next wave of biology. The simplicity of the workflow allows new customer segments to more easily obtain single-cell solutions, and we see opportunities for ultra-high volume sequencing that is of interest of large university centers. Along those lines, I'm pleased to announce that the next step in our decades-long relationship with the Broad Institute. They are adopting the Fluent workflow for ultra-high volume Perturb-seq experiments. Perturb-seq has already demonstrated it can significantly advance the understanding of healthy gene networks and what goes wrong in the context of disease. We believe it will set the scene for the next revolution in biology. Illumina remains committed to an open ecosystem and will continue to work with all our partners, including single-cell companies, to provide our customers with the flexibility to leverage the solution they want.
This is the power of Illumina. Our multi-decade experience that has informed the global services and support we deliver, our demonstrated thought leadership in the medical and technical publications, our installed base of more than 21,000 instruments, the interpretation software we have built, integrated, and honed to provide deep insights, the work we have done to limit unclassified variants that stall progress and answers, the direct access our customers have to our significant innovation pipeline, our expansion to multi-omics readouts that give a richer view of a sample, to the comprehensive application coverage that only Illumina can provide. I can't wait to see where these next few years will take all of us. With that, I would like to introduce Steve, who'll talk about our innovations roadmap, and then Ankur will discuss our financial outlook.
Thank you, Jacob. As someone who's been here part of Illumina's journey since 1998, I'm absolutely thrilled to continue the discussion of Illumina's strategy from a technical point of view. I'm particularly excited about revealing some groundbreaking innovations that are emerging from our R&D pipeline. I consider this a really exciting time in our industry. As Chief Technology Officer, my main objective is to ensure that our product roadmaps address customers' biggest challenges and make them successful in their missions, whether that be in the fields of research, applied genomics, or clinical settings. Let's take a moment to reflect on what we've really accomplished over the last 25 years. We've created the largest instrument install base in the world, with direct access to thousands of customers. This access allows us to understand our customers' needs and helps us drive our innovation priorities and investment allocations.
Along with our customers, not only have we helped birth a new industry, but we helped mature a nascent technology into a standard tool used in science and medicine, impacting lives on a daily basis. Throughout our journey, we have built a highly sophisticated R&D engine and established a culture of innovation, powered by world-class scientists and engineers. Our core competencies in engineering and the sciences are at the heart of our success. This expertise has enabled us to develop a cutting-edge intellectual portfolio with more than 100 invention disclosures filed so far this year, contributing to our pool of nearly 9,000 patents. We manage our R&D pipeline by envisioning the future with process, discipline, and financial rigor. Simply put, our R&D pipeline is the outcome of our 10-year vision that we refresh every year at our future sequencing strategic planning process.
Today, for the first time, I'll share with you some of those innovations in our pipeline. It is our belief that these innovations will bring transformative technology to the marketplace, supporting our customers as they achieve their goals and their ambitions. First, I want to address in general where the industry stands today. While our innovations have made NGS more accessible and established it as a standard tool, we're not done. Our customers are still limited by the tools, workflows, assays, and data analysis capabilities currently available in the market. For example, when I talk to customers, most tell me that they want both genetic and epigenetic information to have a more comprehensive view of biology, disease, or drug development. This is especially important in fields like aging and oncology.
What's preventing them from getting both pieces of information are today's technology constraints of sample input, workflow complexity, cost, and scale. Today, most researchers find it difficult to invest in obtaining both pieces of information. The innovations in our pipeline are aimed at breaking these types of constraints. What we are building will allow customers to expand their ambitions, searching for greater insights across the many omics to gain more complete view of biology. We have already seen customers move from small disease cohorts to population-sized studies, from hundreds to millions of cells, with aspirations to billions of cells, from admixtures of cells, to understanding the complexity of tissue organization. Our vision of the future rests on four main pillars: the evolution of sequencing platforms, the expansion of biological content, the integration and simplification of workflow processes, and the comprehensive data analysis and visualization.
In the next few slides, I'll guide you through our plan to bring this strategy to life. Let's review the first pillar of the evolution of our sequencing platforms. Our investments helped lay the foundation for what is now a robust market. Over the last decade, we've enabled significant step changes in output and throughput. With the launch of the NovaSeq X last year, customers have had access to more than 320 times more throughput than they did a decade ago. We went from 25 G per day to 8,000 G per day. NovaSeq X allows our customer base to acquire, process, and analyze millions of genomes per year. This is the platform that unlocks the expansion into high-intensity sequencing, such as the fields like multi-omics.
The release of the NovaSeq X has created an inflection point for cost, output, and throughput, moving us into the next phase of the industry. We are now at a point where we must step back and reconsider the way we define value. The old school of thought is reductionist, focused on a single measure of cost per G. The new school of thought is expansive, focusing on the total value of workflows, providing comprehensive answers to our customers. Jacob presented a view of the total workflow. Now, let's talk about it from a technology perspective. We can break down the total value of the workflow into its component parts: library prep, sequencing, data analysis, and interpretation. What makes Illumina stand apart is our deep connection to our customers and our 25-year history of innovation in the field.
We are leveraging our innovations and applying them to every step of the total workflow. When we integrate our chemistry and advanced instrumentation in informatics and AI, we create a more powerful, comprehensive, and integrated workflow. In the next slides, I'll share how we're uniquely positioned to combine our expertise to deliver cost-effective, complete, and actionable workflows that our customers are asking for. We set a new industrial standard with the launch of NovaSeq X. The NovaSeq X brought customer scale and price point advancements with innovations, XLEAP-SBS chemistry, stable reagents, nanoimprint technology, and ultra-sensitive imaging, to name a few. But we aren't satisfied just developing a sequencer. We recognize the significant workflow challenges our customers face when there's a step change in scale and output. Leaving these problems unaddressed would mean pushing them, costly, complex problems, onto our customers.
Instead of pushing these problems to our customers, we added user-friendly features to the sequencer. Labs want the flexibility to split projects easily and partition different applications to optimize their operations. So we designed flow cells containing up to eight lanes to allow users to split projects and applications more easily. Customers want to run different sample types and run multiple analyses on the same flow cell, and they also don't want to wait for their answers. So we've added DRAGEN and onboard simultaneous secondary analysis for up to four applications per flow cell. Customers can perform omic analysis straight on the instrument. Customers ask for less packaging and waste. We know now that carbon footprint requirements are becoming more mainstream. So we've coined innovations in chemistry and cartridge design and packaging to enable ambient shipping and reduced overall packaging weight and waste by near 90%.
We see a future where shipping cold and storing cold will no longer be tolerated in labs or in industrial settings. So let's pause and ask ourselves what we've created here. The NovaSeq X is the fastest-growing, high-throughput sequencer in our history. We've solved customer workflow challenges to make it easier to do bigger science with greater operational efficiency. With this, we've launched the highest-output universal readout of biological information of any instrument in our portfolio. This is a fundamental tool that enables expansion into big science and to really look at biology at a deeper level. But the sequencing platform alone isn't enough. We're combining our expertise in chemistry, flow cell, and informatics to maximize value around the sequencer, which I'll speak to next. Here's a glimpse into our pipeline and what I'm most personally excited about.
I'm previewing a couple of innovations that will launch within the next 12-18 months. These game-changing products will completely reinvent the genome while making NGS workflows easy. First, I'll talk about our 5-base genome. This is a game-changing technology that gives customers both variant and epigenetic information from a single library prep. The methylation accuracy of our approach matches the current industrial leading standards, and variant accuracy surpasses existing solutions, all at the lowest cost in a single workflow. This product will redefine what a standard genome should be. It will deliver more information per sequencing run, reduce costs, and simplify workflows. Groundbreaking innovations like these are only possible because we combine the advancements of protein engineering, assay science, and our deep expertise in informatics. Next, I'd like to talk to you about our comprehensive genome. This product has two main advantages.
First, it eliminates library preparation steps ahead of the sequencer. Library prep is a cumbersome and time-consuming process for our customers and limits the adoption in the clinic. Eliminating these steps cuts down on customer labor, reduces turnaround time, while minimizing failure points and variability. Second, our comprehensive whole genome gives customers the most complete genomic readout. This innovative method enables coverage of the challenging gene regions, complex structures such as pseudogenes, large structural variants, and phasing information. We believe this product could be the de facto genome of the future, offering expanded information, and more importantly, simplicity to the clinic. This is another great example of bringing our innovative capabilities to all steps in the total workflow, bringing library prep onto the flow cell with novel surface chemistry, and then wrapping all that specialized data analysis and interpretation together to give customers the most complete information possible.
Our multi-omic vision is already a reality. What you see on this slide is available on the market, and we have more in the pipeline. The solutions on this page are comprehensive and address every part of the workflow. They are wrapped with software and integrated with our sequencer and software ecosystem. Fluent is poised to help us accelerate multi-omics by breaking down historical constraints. Customers have expressed a strong desire to conduct more and larger single-cell experiments, but they face barriers due to high sample preparation costs, instrument purchases, and complex workflows. Fluent solves these challenges. It's a straightforward workflow with market-leading cost per cell across all throughputs. Fluent has the potential to transform single-cell genomics, making it more accessible, pushing into hundreds of thousands and even millions of cells, enabling large-scale experiments that were previously out of reach.
Next, we're currently in the early access phase of Illumina Protein Prep. Customers have told us that existing proteomics products fall short in terms of the number of protein targets detected per assay and the variability, but they aren't willing to sacrifice quality for scale. We're able to deliver this using novel protein detection technology to provide broader proteome coverage within the NGS readout. But this isn't just about the assay. We've integrated with our deep expertise in informatics to deliver the quality and results customers need. This technology is poised to become the gold standard for proteomics research, particularly in high-impact areas such as drug discovery and biomarker research. Early feedback from customers has been extremely positive, and we're excited about the full launch at the beginning of next year.
Finally, to wrap everything together with Partek, this platform integrates the analysis of multiple omic data types, genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, and proteomics into a single, intuitive interface. Integrating large omic data sets is difficult for customers. Partek transforms the traditionally complex process of multi-omic analysis, enabling seamless correlation across different omic layers. It has a no-code environment with automated workflows, making informatics more efficient and expediting the research process. By streamlining the multi-omic workflow, Partek empowers researchers to focus on discovery and innovation, ultimately accelerating their scientific endeavors. Fluent, Illumina Protein Prep, and Partek are just a few examples of how our innovations are lowering cost, simplifying operations, and expanding the available information to drive new discoveries. But we can't stop there. As sequencing becomes more accessible and more data is generated, the real challenge lies in efficiently analyzing and interpreting this vast amount of information.
NovaSeq X and our innovations to make workflow efficient and easy will drive sequencing demand. The higher the intensity sequencing will result in an explosion of data. To make sense of this data, our software tools leverage AI to help customers understand complex biological relationships, turning them into actionable insights. Increase in actionable insights will drive more adoption, which will generate more sequencing demand and data generation, and the cycle continues. Unlike others who focus solely on low-cost sequencing, Illumina offers a complete end-to-end solution. Our blend of cutting-edge software, AI, and deep scientific expertise makes us the partner of choice for biobanks, pharma, and national sequencing initiatives.
We have a proven track record of delivering insights from large genomic cohorts, such as finding targets in the 250,000-genome Alliance for Genomic Discovery with Nash Bio and Vanderbilt University, and using Primate AI and Splice AI for target discovery and splicing prediction. We just don't sequence data, we turn it into actionable insights, driving the future of genomics. I began my remarks with our vision for removing the constraints of cost, scalability, and fragmented workflows to enable deeper understanding of biology. I'll conclude by introducing to you our modular platform that enables workflow integration across library prep, sequencing, analysis, and insight. This is how we deliver on our promise to our customers. The modularity of our components means that customers of every type can use our complete suite of products across the workflow together or separately. Not all customers will want everything.
Some will want a sequencing box, others will want total answers. Everything will work out of the box with other components or with equipment customers already have in their labs. Our software tools and infrastructure tie it all together, whether the customer buys the complete workflow or pieces of the workflow to meet their needs. When customers buy into our technology, they are buying into a robust roadmap and a future groundbreaking innovations. They've expressed their confidence in this roadmap with the growth of our install base and have shared their excitement at conferences and customer meetings. Our scale allows us to address multiple opportunities for the future growth, as demonstrated by the innovations I just walked you through today. Together with our customers, we are pioneering a new era of deeper biology and once again, redefining the next wave of the industry.
With that, I'll hand it over to our CFO, Ankur.
Thank you, Steve. Pleasure to see you all, and thank you for your time. As many of you know, I have been at Illumina for about 4 months now and have been very impressed by the innovation culture at this company and the dedication of our team. The transformative progress we are making in genomics, and now also multi-omics, is truly remarkable, and it's an honor to be a part of this journey. In this section, I will be discussing our financial outlook, highlighting our strategic investments tied to the growth opportunities, and will share our plan to drive long-term value for our shareholders. Illumina is operating from a position of strength. With an active install base of more than 21,600 instruments, our technologies are integral to genomic research and clinical applications worldwide.
This extensive deployment reflects our market leadership and the trust our customers place in us. Steve shared some of the dimensions on which Illumina is innovating. We intend to maintain innovation leadership across the genomic workflow, offer solutions across the throughput spectrum, and drive the full global NGS ecosystem forward.... Illumina's revenue is highly diversified across products, markets, and geographies. Our leading technologies enable breakthrough research that is increasingly transitioned into clinical applications and powers a strong business model, where new research and new content is driving attractive pull-through consumables business, which now represents more than two-thirds of Illumina revenue. Our strong balance sheet, coupled with healthy free cash flow generation, demonstrates our financial strength and provides additional capability as well as optionality. The last few years have been challenging. However, we are seeing early signs of a transformation for Illumina. Illumina's revenue has remained range-bound since the COVID years.
This has been driven by two factors: First, post-COVID capacity utilization, followed by a macroeconomic constrained environment, and second, transition of Illumina's flagship product in high throughput as we continue to make sequencing much more accessible. In the following slides, I will provide an update on the transition and share how our refresh strategic focus is aimed at adding new growth businesses on top of our strong core franchise. At the same time, there are clear signs of transformation already taking hold at Illumina. The team's focus on disciplined execution and margin improvement is already yielding results. We've taken several steps to streamline our cost structure. We've made tough choices of reducing our global workforce, and we have strategically optimized our real estate in California.
Our team has demonstrated the ability to achieve operating leverage amidst a challenging macroeconomic environment, and intends to continue to do so while returning revenue to growth. With our refresh strategy, we have the opportunity to do both, growth revenue as well as expand margins. Now, let me tell you how the key strategies that Jacob outlined are aimed at returning Illumina to high single-digit growth by 2027. We expect this will be achieved by three key drivers. First, our core sequencing business, including the continued NovaSeq X transition. This is a strong core business with multiple drivers of near and long-term growth. In addition, as we transition high-throughput volumes to X, a larger portion of that volume growth turns into revenue growth. Second, our scalable entry into multi-omics. By expanding into this rapidly growing field, we complement our core sequencing business with new high-growth revenue streams.
Third, expanding our complementary services, data, and software offerings. These are scalable, high-margin businesses with recurring revenue potential. Combined, Illumina has a diversified portfolio that is well-positioned for growth. These three key drivers, advancing core sequencing, scalable entry into multiomics, and expanding our services, data, and software offerings, will enable continued penetration in current markets, as well as capture new market opportunities and drive revenue growth. Our position of strength and continued focus on innovation gives us confidence in our strategy to return to high single-digit growth by 2027. Let me take you through the details. About the core. Sequencing volumes, which represent underlying utilization and demand, have remained robust.
The GB output from our connected high-throughput and mid-throughput sequencers is what we use as a proxy for assessing this demand growth, and have seen over the last 5 years, an average growth above 25% in this GB output. In recent quarters, this growth has been north of 35%-40%. This demand growth speaks to both new applications being developed on NGS, and also increased volumes in clinical settings. The recent impressive increases also underscore the growing adoption and utilization of the NovaSeq X. As we discussed during our recent earnings call, transition of high-throughput business to NovaSeq X is well underway. We're nearing the milestone where half of the volume sequenced on high-throughput sequencers is on X. And at the current trajectory, we are projecting that around mid-2025, approximately two-thirds of the volume and half of high-throughput consumables revenue would have transitioned to X.
As more volume moves to X over time, the impact of price reduces, and we see a higher portion of that volume translate into revenue. This underlying demand, combined with reduced impact of price transition, gives us confidence in our high-throughput consumables growth moving forward. But it's not only when high throughput customers will transition to NovaSeq X, but also what applications they will transition to that will be a key contributor to underlying demand. We see several drivers for growing demand across both clinical and research customers. A lot of you are very familiar with our clinical customers, and see the series of liquid biopsy-based tests, both under development and also recently being approved. We see a broad range of activity, especially across oncology screening, therapy selection, and also MRD, where several of our customers are developing tests using whole genome and comprehensive gene profiling approaches.
Many of these have potential to be volume accretive within the next 2-5 years time frame. On the research side, we expect multi-omics translational research to remain a driver of applications and throughput demand. Illumina's core sequencing technologies have been enabling this development, and this underlying demand, combined with reduced impact of price transition, gives us confidence in high-throughput consumables growth moving forward. Shifting to the mid-throughput segment, this part of our business has seen a higher impact, speaking relative to high throughput, from macroeconomic conditions, and has historically been more indexed to China. However, the newly launched XLEAP chemistry and P4 cells are being received very well. As we mentioned recently, nearly 60% of NextSeq 1000, 2000 customers have made the required software upgrades to take advantage of the higher quality and lower cost offered by this chemistry.
While we're not making a call when conditions will change in China, we are confident about our improving portfolio of mid-throughput consumables and services. On top of the core genomics business, our strategy to provide integrated multi-omics solutions is expected to add a second layer of growth. The multi-omics offerings, to start with, have opportunities in research and pharma services areas. By virtue of offering an integrated workflow, Illumina's aim would be to improve upon the science and economics of the workflows for the customer, enabling a greater number of tests for a given budget or grant. At the same time, these are high-intensity sequencing applications in which Illumina's participation in library prep is net additive to the workflow. Steve shared some of the exciting innovations in multi-omics that this team is working on to enable deeper biological insights at scale.
Over the next 12-18 months, as we launch these products, and as our customers increasingly move into multi-omics, we are uniquely positioned to deliver integrated solutions with analysis and interpretation software that were previously cost-prohibitive for a broader adoption of these applications. We see this strategy as adding a second layer of growth on top of our strong core genomics franchise. And third, with our large installed base of instruments, global services scale, and growing datasets, which will now include multi-omics data, we have services businesses generating over $500 million a year in revenue and growing at mid-single digit rate. We see opportunity to meaningfully scale these businesses over time, especially in the area of pharma data cohorts.
We see opportunities enabled by datasets that combine genomics, epigenomics, and single-cell data, powered by our AI insights, where Illumina can provide targeted services to our pharma partners in drug discovery and development. We have recently had successful partnerships in this area with whole genome sequence datasets and see increasing interest in our go-forward strategies. While we have most of the resources we need, we are strategically organizing these businesses within Illumina so they get the right leadership, talent, and focus to scale. We expect these initiatives to start contributing revenue within this strategy period and add a third layer of growth on the core, core business.
As we transform our organization, we are realigning and reprioritizing our investments in areas that are directly aligned with our strategy to develop solutions, addressing our customers' full workflows, and also bring those solutions to market in a way that acknowledges the growing diversity of our customer base and their wide range of needs. As you heard from Steve, we are approaching R&D in a systematic and methodical way. We are evaluating all product development investments based on their market value and returns. At the same time, we need to ensure we are aligning our sales and marketing functions with the increasing diversity of both our customer base and our suite of product offerings. As an example, we are adding specialists, including in various areas of multi-omics, who can help our customers optimize the economics of their full NGS workflows....
We are set on serving customers as their partners, not just their vendors. This means reshape, sharpening our commercial focus, understanding and assessing our customers' needs, and making them successful. The combined effect of all three, bringing the core back to growth, adding multiomics, and incremental services business with sharpened focus on customer success, is aimed to returning Illumina to high single-digit growth by 2027, with accelerating growth each year during the next three years. Now, about margins. Our intention for Illumina's margin performance is to be in the top quartile amongst our peers over time. For the next three and a half years, we are setting a goal for ourselves to make significant strides towards that and expand operating margins by 500 basis points through 2027.
This would be on top of the roughly 21% operating margin guidance for 2024, and to progressively improve each year. Teams here at Illumina have taken decisive actions towards optimizing the cost structure of the company, and these decisions have included reductions in headcount, as well as optimizing areas of external spend across COGS and R&D, and other areas of infrastructure. We have reduced our headcount by approximately 10% from recent peak. This year, we are on track for delivering $100 million in expense savings, which is ahead of our expectations at the start of the year. This focused execution is allowing us to expand margins despite the challenging top-line growth environment.
As you know, our Q2 results, with over 200 basis points of gross and operating margin expansion versus FY 2023, reflect the effect of actions taken by the team, but we are nowhere near done. We remain focused on margin improvement that is multifaceted, with a no stone unturned approach that looks across all functions and all geographies for optimization opportunities. We see several levers, including setting up centers of excellence for all our functions, reducing complexity in our portfolio, focus on continuous improvement and productivity, and redirecting investments towards higher priority areas that can yield $200 million in gross run rate savings over the next three and a half years. These actions will reflect across gross margin and OpEx leverage and are expected to be a large contributor towards the differentiated margin expansion goal we are setting for ourselves.
That margin profile should translate into meaningful free cash flow generation, starting close to $950 million in free cash flow for 2024, and growing as we expand margins each year. In terms of how we will allocate the significant free cash flow that we generate, our first priority is investing back in the business, both for driving growth and improving capabilities and productivity. You've heard today the areas that are of strategic interest to Illumina, technologies that develop and expand the multi-omics ecosystem. We have a healthy product line, and our M&A intention is focused on bolt-on or tuck-in type acquisitions. Our three key criteria for evaluating M&A acquisitions include, one, whether they expand our served addressable markets, two, the accretion to revenue growth and earnings, and third, the return profile.
While doing that, we intend to take a disciplined approach towards maintaining a strong balance sheet and maintaining our investment-grade rating. At the same time, we do not intend to accumulate cash either. We intend to repurchase enough shares to offset the dilutive effect of stock-based compensation over time, and opportunistically repurchase more, depending on several factors, including available excess cash and market conditions. To that effect, our board has authorized a $1.5 billion share repurchase program. So bringing it all together, we are putting Illumina on a path towards revenue growing in high single digits by 2027, embarking towards differentiated margin expansion as we take steps towards being top quartile performer amongst peers, meaningfully deploying the strong free cash flows and returning excess cash to shareholders, and delivering differentiated double-digit to teens earnings growth for next three and a half years.
With that, I will return the mic back to Jacob.
Thank you, Ankur and Steve. Before we turn to Q&A, I would like to revisit a few of our key messages from today. I am very excited for the path ahead. We have a great foundation to work from and a clear plans to go after the next wave of innovation in our ecosystem. We will accelerate and step our revenue growth back into the high single digits by 2027. The NovaSeq X Series is key of unlocking more and larger sequencing projects. The addition of multiomics and our increased focus on services, data, and software informatics will add further layers of growth. We will partner closely with customers to ensure our innovation roadmap is directly linked to their plans, and our margin and EPS story is just getting started.
I've enjoyed sharing the vision and strategy with you, and we're looking forward to your questions and our continued conversation. I'll now turn it over to Salli for Q&A.
Today's program. Before moving to Q&A, I wanted to share that we will be posting a replay of today's presentation and the slides on our website at investor.illumina.com. I will be moderating the Q&A session, leveraging the questions that were submitted online. I encourage everyone to submit their questions through the Slido function on the right-hand side of the webcast screen at any time. With that, we'll go ahead and get started. Our first question here comes from Vijay Kumar at Evercore. So is Illumina committed to double-digit EPS growth in 2025?
Yeah, great question. Thanks for starting from there, Vijay. So let me, let me start with this: fully acknowledging where Illumina's EPS is for the year 2024, we just gave you at the end of our Q2 results what the core Illumina now looks like, excluding GRAIL, and getting close to about $4 as a base, which is obviously, there is a lot of pathway in front of us to get it back towards a strong earnings momentum that this company has. Both Jacob and I are fully focused and committed towards driving a differentiated earnings growth for the company, bring it back towards the higher earnings potential that this company has. And to that extent, in our message, you've seen a range of double-digit to teens growth.
That's the range that we expect us to be in. I don't expect us and we are committed towards not falling outside of that range during that entire period. And as more particularly, also, as we build the top-line growth, as the revenue growth comes back up towards where we're trying to set as a baseline, we're also anticipating there will be continuous improvement in that earnings growth as well. So very excited, very committed of driving the earnings power back here.
Mm-hmm.
I'm gonna stay on this topic just for a second more here, because it's, it's of great interest to, to everybody in the audience. So just to go into that a little bit more, will EPS accelerate over time, like, like the revenue growth that you're stepping into?
Yeah, again, a great question. As we build the revenue back, obviously, there is a contribution that our revenue would add to our earnings power. But let me tell you this, if you've looked at our results here in Q2 and some things that we've been doing in 2024, we have been able to drive our operating margins, that's the core earnings power, despite not having revenue growth. Q2 is a case in point, where results of several of the actions that we have initiated is becoming visible in our results. As the revenue comes back, and we've outlined in detail the three-point plan there, the flow-through to the earnings, we expect that to be accretive and really solid as the revenue growth comes back.
Great. I'm gonna do one more, 'cause good things come in threes.
Okay.
So, is EPS dependent on high single-digit revenue growth? That's in from Doug Schenkel at Wolfe.
Okay. Hey, good, great question, Doug, and I think I just touched on that in the previous answer as well, where, as you've seen in Q2, both our intent, as well as the actions that we are taking, is to take this company back towards the strong earnings power, that this business model in itself really attributes it to, and we're committed towards that. Some of that benefit will come through from revenue, but at this time, as a management team, we're really focused on driving that earnings power.
Okay. I'm gonna shift over to pricing, which is an important strategic topic here. So, this is from Catherine Schulte at Baird. So, is lowering the price point of sequencing still a core part of your strategy going forward? And then, how do you minimize the impact of pricing on your consumables business?
Yeah, I think I will take that, Catherine, so thanks for that. As I mentioned also, I think first and foremost, our key focus areas will be to continue to drive high-quality insights with the lowest end-to-end cost. So as I also show in the presentation, is that that comes in different formats. So it depends whether what workflow you're actually looking for and what problem the customers are looking to solve. So we will continue to drive down improved efficiencies, drive up improved efficiencies, and thereby, there will also be applications where we'll drive down cost of sequencing. So pricing will always be a part of it, but we think pricing differently today and going forward, that maybe we've done in the past here, where we've only focused on the cost per gigabase.
And now we're looking at pricing across the whole workflow, and we'll continue to drive really the quality of the high insights that we actually think is the most important part of this.
Yeah.
Yeah, Jacob, may I add something to that?
Yeah.
So if you go back to our investments and our roadmap in the sequencer, we're nowhere near the end of our density roadmap, so information per square area. So we're heavily invested in that. We're gonna bring that to all our HT, MT, and LT systems. So it's on the roadmap.
Yeah
... and we're very excited that we see the future over the next 10 years of that improving.
Yeah, I think that's a good point, Steve. We have many levels to run for, and what we're focusing on is to drive the highest-value to our customers.
I'm going to stay on pricing for just one more question here from Puneet Souda at Leerink. He's asking, "What is your approach to pricing with new instruments going forward? Should we expect material changes in how you price your instrument products?
Yeah, let me start that again, and, and, you know, we, we are always excited to come out with a new product and new solutions, and, and, Steve did show you quite some insights on our roadmap, some of the things we're really very excited about that will come out, and maybe some questions will go through that also. But, but let me just start saying also that, that we showed you some insight on our roadmap. We're not showing you everything. There is much more to come. Some is really just because we don't want to share that too early for, for obvious reasons. But we have you only saw the top tip of the iceberg, so to say. So much more to come on that.
We are also looking at the next generation platforms, obviously, and we will take a very... We will take a look at how we price that. I think- I don't think we're going to do global pricing going forward as we've done before, going out and say a number for, for everything. So we will think about that more from an application workflow perspective and geographical also.
Okay. I'm going to go right where you said, Jacob-
Okay
... and touch on some of the innovations that Steve talked about. So on the 5-base genome, Dave Westenberg at Piper Sandler is saying, "Some existing technologies can already call 5 bases. Will there be any additional cost from running it on Illumina?
No, and we think this is a really game-breaking, game-changing technology. It's essentially a whole genome workflow with one added step. It interrogates the methylation directly, and then has the data interpretation at the end. Where we see the biggest benefits is a shortened workflow with very little hands-on time compared to what's on the market today. The data quality, both the variant and the methylation information, is the second big point, and sample input, and it scales, so that's the big thing. So whatever you're doing now for large cohorts, you can do exactly the same thing and get the methylation information. So it's very different than what's on the market.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think you will be able to run it very efficiently on the Illumina sequencer, but I think it's also important to say, there are other application or other workflows out there, and we will, of course, continue to support everything that is in the market. But we actually think that, that what we have in our hands is, is very, very, compelling for our customers.
Yeah. Just to confirm, so will the 5-base genome be compatible with the comprehensive WGS workflow, the whole genome?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that it's again this roadmap conversation, is that we will, of course, come out with something that we feel is compelling enough for our customers-
Mm-hmm
... and we'll continue to build on that. This is never an end of, end of the line. We'll come out with something. We'll continue to drive, of course, create more and put more value into it, and of course, also continue to think about pricing and so on, for these capabilities. But I'm actually quite excited about that. We've had already the comprehensive genome out in, in some, out and being tested with some customers-
Yes
... and have already received very, very strong feedback. So,
Yeah
... very exciting.
Yeah. As I said, these two products are what I'm personally most excited about in the near future. And as Jacob said, we are actually interacting with customers, getting their samples in-house, and then moving to early access very, very quickly with these products because there's such a demand.
Yeah.
So our customers we spoke to are seeing a whole new way of looking at what they're doing in the clinic or with the cohorts they're working with now. So, it's really something that we're excited about pushing out very, very quickly.
Yeah.
And again, you know, I think we will spend more time on that. We'll do that at some-
Yeah
... technical conferences also here coming up, so there'll be much more coming out on what we shared with you just on the highest level.
Great. Well, all these great innovations. I know, Ankur, you touched on three different drivers of revenue growth. So, can we think about, from Subbu Nambi at Guggenheim, how the weighting of those different growth drivers is?
Mm-hmm.
And then one more to add: If multi-omics were not to materialize, how much would that impact the top-line, high-single-digit revenue?
Yeah, great, great question there. So let me just outline the three areas of growth here again. First and foremost, we shared a little bit during our Q2 call, but I am personally now, having been in the company for 4 months, the part that excited me the most was the underlying applications demand.
Mm.
When I looked at what our connected instruments were showing from a data growth perspective, and in the last two quarters being north of 30%, gives me a lot of confidence in the underlying business model and the underlying demand for our applications and our services here that we are providing. So, as you think about returning the business back to high single-digit growth, the core sequencing business is by far still the largest contributor towards that. We have now outlined to you how the transition of X is proceeding. We have achieved one milestone here, anticipating hitting the second milestone of getting half of the revenue on X by about mid-next year or so, and the impact of pricing.
So the volume's been growing very, very well, and by the time we get to the mid-next year, the impact of pricing should continue to abate, as the volumes makes. So bringing that business, the core sequencing business back to strong growth, is the underlying assumption, that we feel good about. And the core strategies, like multiomics, as well as we've talked about, within the liquid biopsy space, as well as within the oncology space, we do see our customers working on both a lot of new applications and tests, as well as we see the volume growth of the existing tests that are on the market.
Yeah.
So both of them give us good confidence from an underlying demand perspective, and hence, the core sequencing business is what we feel good about. The multiomics strategy, we feel adds a good, solid leg of growth, not just for next three years, but if you take a five- to 10-year view, that adds a very strong second layer on top of genomics. It will start contributing, 'cause Steve is going to launch some products here within the next 12-18 months. We have now participated with Broad to further develop what we just acquired from Fluent. So these are pieces that are coming together. We do expect some contribution within our three-year period as well, on top of the strong core.
However, the long-range trajectory of the multi-omics should be bigger than what we can see within that three-year period. And then the last piece, which is around the services and the data insights, that business is already growing at mid-single digits. What we will do on top of that mid-single digit is really focus on pharma-based data cohorts and the services we can build in that area. We have been, as you know, from some things we've disclosed over the last year, we have been working with most of our large pharma customers. But based on things like Fluent, things like multi-omics, the kind of interest that we are getting, especially around the drug discovery and drug development side, actually gives us good confidence that we can build meaningful, scalable business in that area.
So again, within the three-year period, largest contribution is still from the core sequencing business. We feel good about that. And then incremental additions from the other two, that should keep growing even after the three-year period that we're talking about.
No, I think you're absolutely right, Ankur. I mean, the power of the X and our platforms is that and the roadmap we have, is that when customers buys into that, there is plenty of things you can do with it. The X is just as Steve was also talking about, is just the beginning. But there is substantial underlying demand for just the genome and genomic information. So the multi-omics, as I see it, is almost more an upside over the next period of time. But if you look at, you know, as you were talking about, Ankur, the Broad's interest to use Fluent, also to look at Perturb-seq, I think it's going to drive substantial demand over the next period of time. Our relationship with...
What we're doing in proteomics together with Standard BioTools, I'm really excited about that. We've been out here in early access, and I think there is a lot that could come from that. But again, we are highly committed to drive out the X and really drive volume on the X going forward here.
I think I know the answer to this, but for the sake of clarity, Sung Ji Nam at Scotiabank is asking: "So are there scenarios, or do you see a path to potentially accelerate above high single-digit growth in 2027 and beyond?
Yeah, I think, let me start then, and Ankur, you can chime in also. But, as we are mentioning here, we are seeing ourselves accelerate a step into high single-digit growth over the next three years. And for us, it's more getting up to what I would call a new baseline. So obviously, there are. We're not saying that's the end of it, we're not saying that that's we can't go higher than that, but we think that that's the right way of positioning ourselves over at least the next three years. And then, of course, wherever multi-omics and other things are taking us, and as mentioned also, there's a lot going on in MRD.
This could, of course, drive things higher, but we feel good about going back to a high single digit at this point.
Yeah, well said.
Uh-huh. I've got one more. You were talking, Ankur, about the volume growth, the activity, sequencing activity. So, from Connor McNamara at RBC: "We showed a scenario of 25% volume growth-
Mm-hmm
... with 15% pricing conversion headwinds. So does that imply double-digit revenue growth in high-throughput sequencing consumables?
Yeah, I think the way that part of the math works is that specifically on the high-throughput consumables, that would relate to more like mid- to high single-digit growth in the consumables, whichever way that math works. But let me go step back and give you how we're thinking about it. The scenario we have outlined at 25% reflects how the GB growth over the last four to five years has been. And as we think about where some of the applications that we're seeing being developed and potential new tests that are coming to the market, we kind of feel like that's a good base on which to build our plans on.
There could be several factors that could drive that GB growth to be higher, like we've seen in the first two quarters of this year, or remain range bound in that range. But as X transitions, as the impact of price comes down, we will get a much larger share of that volume growth flowing into our revenue. After the point with our clinical customers, it's going to be a long tail, but still anticipating roughly half of the revenue would have transitioned and, what, 75% of the volume would have transitioned by the time we get to the end of the year here in the second half of 2025. So good confidence, but overall, good contribution to the top line there.
Yeah, and again, going back to what we showed about the opportunity in the market space, is that we still, we still have plenty of opportunities. So there's a little bit of how fast this is actually going to go, over the next period of time. So there is, there's plenty of room for growing, that's for sure.
All right. I'm going to shift over to innovation, because we've got a series of questions that are about the workflow and different-
Mm-hmm
... parts of it. So, on the front end, from Luke Sergott at Barclays: "So Jacob talked about sample prep, and upfront workflow being a significant area of the total cost of sequencing. So what are the plans for innovation and strategy around this area?
Yeah, and again, thanks for that, Luke. And, and I'm excited about the whole workflow. This is how I grew up also in the IVD space, where I could really see that having control over, or not control, but having ability to deliver a full workflow gives you a better way to optimize, both in terms of, of course, cost, but probably more importantly, also the quality of the insights that is coming out, because you can optimize an odd element. And, and as Steve was talking about, this compounding, so it's really giving you much more insight.
So we know, of course, that there are areas that we can do, that we have the, that we have kind of good experience in to optimize for, but we also recognize that we need to do this together, with partners, with customers. So we're also talking about this open ecosystem, where we allow customers and partners, and, and partners to develop on, on our ecosystem to help us really drive, applications out there. And so we will look at from workflow, workflow application to applications, to really figure out how do we both drive, things that we can do. And I think what I'm excited about, what we can do, is not only-...
Do some new sample prep, but really combining our understanding of the biology and chemistry together with, of course, our platforms and our informatics, and combine that in new ways that you wouldn't just think about of saying A plus B plus C, but really it's almost a square root of very exponential. I don't want to go into a mathematical conversation here, but I think you understand what I mean is that, and this is where we see the comprehensive cancer comprehensive genome and the five base genome also, is that it changes completely how you think about the workflow. So we will clearly also focus on that because we think there is a lot of value for our customers to simplify that.
But informatics is an important part of this also going forward, just simplifying the interpretation and helping our customers. So then don't end up with situations in the clinic where you have a lot of variants of unknown significance. So you might be able to, the physician sits there and gets a report out and say, "Great news, you don't have the BRCA gene, but there is 10 other variants of unknown significance that I don't know anything about." That is uncomfortable for a physician to have that conversation. So there's a lot of energy, or a lot of focus from our end also to simplify and make it very easy to interpret. And it really doesn't matter whether it's for the physician or whether it's actually for the researcher.
We want to make it NGS really made simple, so which I think is going to open up for substantially more applications. Steve, anything to add?
Yeah. I think the other major change in the strategy, Jacob, is that because the market and our customers are very heterogeneous, we can't predict perfectly what they want. So we're going to have to be open to bringing the best content onto our platforms. And in that, there'll be a dialogue with these partners to get their content on our end-to-end solutions and work with them for the best analysis going through DRAGEN or the best interpretation through AI. This is a brand-new world for us. We haven't done this historically, but moving forward, it really is about providing the best solutions for our customers.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm going to go right where you ended there, Steve.
Mm-hmm.
This is a question from Tycho Peterson at Jefferies.
Yep.
So you're talking about the cost of interpretation, informatics.
Mm-hmm.
We have DRAGEN, you mentioned AI. Can you give a little bit more color on the strategy around what you're doing in that part of the workflow, and how much you think you can reduce customer analysis cost?
So I think it's significant. And there's three aspects of that. First of all, it's just as we accumulate so much data going through the instruments, of having the power of DRAGEN on board really simplifies the handling of the data before you have actually go into those next steps of interpretation. So you get a major benefit there. If you try to do this without DRAGEN, you're in hours versus minutes to a large degree. Then we go to the next step of the interpretation, layering on various applications that may be designed by us or other people in our total workflow is where we're going. So once again, it's taking a step back and saying, "Okay, what application are we talking about?
And what are sort of the speed bumps that, or constraints that need to be unlocked to actually make that customer successful?" So it's, it's a part of a total strategy, and we're going through major applications now and, and looking at those, and working with our customers, and understanding what they're having problems with. So, so that's really where we're going with the informatics sort of strategy.
And if I can say also something here-
Yeah
... is that, I was very impressed coming into the company and seeing the capabilities we have from an informatics perspective. I think everybody understands what Illumina have done for the sequencing platform and how we have drive down cost per gigabase over the last decades. And that has been impressive, very impressive, and really changed how we think about biology. But it's a little more complicated when you go into informatics and explain that.
Yeah.
But what I'm excited about is I see that we serve a lot of different customers. The customer that is saying, "Look, we have our own pipeline, but can Illumina help, you know, bring us to the cloud and host it in the cloud and drive that?" And we've done that again and again, many times. But as soon as we enter into that conversation and help the customer, then it turns out that there are other chances. In reality, fewer and fewer customer wants to own their own pipeline and control that. I don't think you see bioinformatics being excited about that thing anymore to maintain a pipeline.
And when they start to see that, look, if you bring onto, go onto the Illumina pipeline and use our tools, you are also part of our roadmap and, and what we're going to develop over the next period of time. And then you can actually start to use your own resources in, in a different spot. And, and there's coming. We see more and more customers going that direction, both big, you know, academic centers, but also into the, into the healthcare, that they, that they can see the power of what we can provide. And that excites me. I think this is what's going to happen is that, why not just use what is out there, which is now starting to, which is Illumina, that is starting to be very comprehensive, and you can actually do what you need to do?
We will help them, depends on, you know, your ecosystem, we can help being flexible and put that in place. I'm pretty excited about just that ecosystem logic on it. But what we also have in Steve's organization is the AI group that is really, really helping to reduce the variants of unknown significance, simplify how you think about, you know, in interrogating the genome. You should imagine eventually that this is like talking to and, you know, going into a ChatGPT or something like that, that you can interrogate, or you can get insights on your genome. You pretty much upload your genome, and it provides you feedback on what's actually going on and what would you recommend to do. That is the future that we're looking into.
... Yeah, just to continue that thought, Jacob, I mean, Illumina is in a very unique position with access to probably more genomic data than anyone. Applying large language models to that is really where the field is going to support interpretation and analysis. So that's just a simple example of how we're supporting sort of this next decade of interpretation.
I'm gonna head over to expense questions.
Okay.
Your favourite. So let's see, from Patrick Donnelly at Citi: "Is there upside or additional opportunity beyond the $200 million cost target?
Yeah, so let me start, and then, Ankur, you can go in. You have much more details here. But I think what you've seen over the last period of time, the last 10, 11 months that I've been here, is that there's been a first and foremost a strong focus on getting back to growth in the company, and that is still something we're working. That is our priority number one. That is where we believe we need to bring ourself up to at least high single digit and really see a strong business, which I think is where Illumina should be, at least. But we're also saying that I believe that any good company needs to also focusing on operational excellence. Always look at: How can we do things better?
How can we actually drive even more with the same or with less? And so that mentality is something that we also are building up in the company. And therefore, we're also looking into our cost base, and there's different ways to do that, but there's no number. This is not a number game. I think we were just providing that, saying, "This is what we actually are committing to." But we are. There's no stone we won't turn over and look for and see if there are opportunities. So this is a journey for us.
Yeah.
Yeah, and the—Well said, Jacob. I think the... Let me just quickly outline what was in the prepared remarks. So, the team has, in 2024, it is on track to deliver roughly about $100 million in expense savings, just slightly higher than where the team was anticipating to be at the start of the year. And you are beginning to see that in both the Q2 results as well as how we've guided to 2024.
The $200 million number, again, the way of thinking about it is we see several opportunities around our manufacturing environment, but also around our infrastructure costs, our G&A functions, strategies around centers of excellence, et cetera. What you're hearing is more speaking to driving a continuous improvement culture within the company. The $200 million size of the programs is what we have launched. We anticipate that those are the kind of results that, over the next three years, we will set in motion. But as a management team, the culture we're driving here is you're not done, you're not shooting for a very specific number.
You kind of typically, as a management team, you would start programs which are higher than 200, and then you think about the puts and takes to say: Yeah, we feel good about 200 being delivered, but if everything goes the way we've planned, and if everything actually works in our favor, there could be potential upside there, too. And you don't stop there, right? You get to a point, then you reassess and then find a next set of opportunities and kind of keep working that. So that's the mindset we're kind of going into with as we're setting our overall margin expansion goal for the next three years.
Okay. Maybe just following on the breakdown there, so from Dan Brennan at TD Cowen: "Can you provide some details on the 500 basis points of margin gains between COGS, SG&A, R&D?
Okay. Yeah, so good, very good question. Let me set the, at the highest level, the... So 500 basis point, again, I'm sitting back, thinking about, as a management team, our intent is to bring the company and the margin performance of Illumina to be in the top quartile of where most of the tools and DX companies are. What that means is within that high 20s range, and what we're doing or setting ourselves to do for the next three years is to make significant strides to get closer towards that. As I just said, it's not one and done, but as you think about the $500 million, I'm anticipating a larger part-
Sure.
... so 500 basis points of margin expansion. Thanks, Jacob. 500 basis point margin expansion, a larger part of that, up to two-thirds and maybe a little more to come from the operating leverage, and the remainder to flow into the, into the gross margin side of things. The within the operating leverage, though, let me tell you, our focus is to find areas where we can operate much more efficiently. At this point, I'm not trying to optimize for individual lines like R&D, sales and marketing, et cetera. In my prepared remarks, you've seen areas, especially within R&D and sales and marketing, where we will make some investment to build up capabilities, but most of those I'm anticipating would come through realignment of investments and not net incremental, going into, in, into that area.
So, overall, not trying to optimize each line, but feel overall looking at the kind of opportunities we have across our operating cost structure, to drive a lot of cost out and be able to deliver that margin expansion.
Okay. While we're on financials, I'm going to do one more, and then I have a whole other list of questions here. So, back from Vijay Kumar at Evercore: "So this, this path or this stepping into the high single digits, is it a linear path from here to there? or some other path?
I sense this is 25 guide questions.
Yes.
I just wanna say again, we're not gonna give guide right now. It's too early. As we also mentioned last week in the earnings call, is that this, you know, there's still a lot of things going on, moving parts in the economy, so we need a little more time to give you a full insights on 2025. But yeah, we, as we said, we expect us to step ourself into this.
Yeah. That's it.
... I want to ask about this, SKU rationalization, Jacob, that you mentioned actually-
Yeah
On the last earnings call, and just ask about the timing for that. So is it, you know, is... The question here is from Tejas at Morgan Stanley. So is that off the table for at least the near to medium term? Is it a longer-term initiative? And then how much margin opportunity do we think we could—it could unlock in the next few years?
Yeah, as I mentioned last, last week, just for, just to remind everybody about that, is that we, when we talk about, operational excellence and what we do, I wanted to come with an example showing this is actually what it means. So it's just, you know, the buzzword, but it's actually real activities that we are doing. And this is one program among many. So, so what we are looking at saying, look, I mean, we have, of course, when Illumina is 25 years old, you end up with a lot of products, and some of those products, we actually, sample preps and, other things, we realized that we actually... We have better generations of products out there in the field already.
So, we see some of those products that people are, or customers are not really buying anymore, but we still have them on the shelf. When we have them on the shelf, you need to have your inventory, you need to have somebody that owns them from a quality perspective, and so on, so forth, and manufacturing capabilities, and so on. So there actually is a cost to the company, but in many times, not a lot of value for the customer.
Mm-hmm.
And that's why we are now cleaning that up. But there's always some customers that might still be on it, so we need to help them transfer onto other and better products, and sometimes we just give them a timeline and saying: "Look, this is not going to be available anymore." But our big aim is, of course, to help them transfer on, so they have a good experience here. But this is standard business.
Yeah.
It's just not something that I think Illumina might not have done, done well. So we're doing it now. I won't be able to share the details about the margin improvements associated with it, but this is happening as we speak.
Great. I've got a series of questions here that really touch on the end markets, the research and the clinical end markets.
Mm-hmm.
So going to tackle one from Puneet Souda at Leerink Partners. He's asking: How will Illumina serve research and clinical customers at the same, you know, with the same instruments and same pricing structure? Can that be feasible as these two groups diverge?
But I think that... And, and I think that's a really good point, and really also part of my assessment coming into the company, is that if you think about it in a very simple way, for the last few decades, you could serve all customers with a cost per gigabase logic. And that's exactly to the point, saying, our customer segments and what, what they are looking for has changed.
Mm-hmm.
Granted, there are customers that is very focused on the cost per gigabase. We need to serve them. But there's also customers, likely more in the clinical space, that is more focusing on quality, turnaround time, and ease of use, and we need to serve them in a different way. And cost is a different, has a different ring to that part of the segment versus the other part of the segment. But what goes for each customer and everyone is that we need to bring the highest quality of insights, and we need to give the best customer experience to all of them.
So we need to make sure we have, and we, and we segment our customers in a better way, and we thereby also, you know, provide the best opportunities from a workflow perspective, of course, from a pricing, and so on, for those customer segments. And you're right, if you look at the highest level, you can look at the research and the clinical, but we actually think about it more granular than that. And that's how we will think about it, also from a segment or from an application perspective going forward, how we price that. So anything else to add there, Steve, maybe?
You know, I think it starts with, first of all, the innovations, finding where they're most applicable in either the research or clinical environment. The two innovations I just talked about, particularly one, the comprehensive genome, due to its attributes of extremely simple workflow, that's the type of product that will move to the clinic much, much faster, and we'll wrap those requirements around it. So there'll be this natural pull-
Yeah
... in the applications. And, as we go through our R&D pipeline, we, you know, we debate these things, and we find those opportunities, and we, we focus our energies on where those products go. So, I think it's an evolving pros-
Yeah
... process, and the market will tell us which ones are going to go to the clinic and how far, how fast we should push them. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think what you're saying, Steve, also, why the comprehensive genome will go to the clinic is that when you have a very, very simple workflow-
Yeah
... that you fundamentally have a sample, one or two steps, and then you add it onto a sequencer, and it gives you all the information you need. It is actually very, very valuable for, you know, for diseases, pediatric cancers, and all those where you really need to have an answer immediately.
Mm-hmm.
But I think that's the starting point for the comprehensive genome. I think—
Yes
... eventually, it's going to be the standard genome out there.
Yeah, that basic technology is in its infancy right now, and we are going to invest, of course, over the next decade into it. So we see it evolving into a more complete genome, and that could be the de facto genome we're offering to the marketplace at large scale.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Just not in the clinic.
Right.
No.
Only in the clinic.
All right, we've talked a lot about single-cell as we-
Mm
... went through the presentation today. This is from Rachel Vatnsdal at J.P. Morgan: Can you spend a minute discussing the spatial market and the potential roadmap there?
... Yeah, so, as also mentioned, we were super excited about the acquisition of Fluent, and also extremely excited about the announcement also with the Broad relationship, where I think that Perturb-seq and going after 1 billion cells is again gonna be very, very exciting from a research perspective. And I think it's gonna create insights that we hadn't even thought about at this point. So can't wait to be a part of this, and really help Broad be successful on that. As I mentioned also before, you know, we are only showing you some tidbits into our R&D roadmap, which we think is important to share with you right now to show the power of the roadmap, but also provide some insights to our customers.
As you can imagine, there are other things that at this point, we have decided not to talk about, and so I'll leave it with that right now.
All right. While we're discussing R&D, and the broader R&D roadmap, we've got a question. This is Patrick Donnelly at Citi, Tycho Peterson at Jefferies, along the lines of: Can you break down how the $1 billion in annual R&D spending is allocated? How do you see that level trending in the next three to five years? Is there, is there a leverage there?
Yeah, so let me, let me start, Ankur, and then I, I'm sure you, you can give us a little more insights on the breakdown.
Yeah.
But I wanna just emphasize again that how we think about R&D, and Steve is driving this every day, it's not R&D as just a budget itself, but really each project, and how we, of course, drive that to the market, but also how we think, so really drive the timelines and so on, but really how we think about it from an ROIC, NPV consideration. And really make sure that we only and we solely focus on the ones that are really the ones that provide us the highest return to us and our, and of course, all of you shareholders.
Yeah.
But also, of course, thinking about that from an innovation perspective, these two things goes hand in hand, is that some of those that requires higher innovation focus, is also the ones that gives us highest return. So that's why we're excited, where we can really combine our strength across the different disciplines we have in R&D, and I think that's the power of Illumina. The other thing is that what I'm excited about is that we think about, and this is what Steve talked about, we think about our roadmap holistically. So really not just one product here and there, but how they all come together.
And how, if you buy into the Illumina ecosystem, how we will take you, as a customer, on a journey to continue to get new innovations in, that can continue to, you know, make sure that you're successful, and you are the hero in your laboratories out there. So that's, that's on the highest level, how we think about, R&D, and, and why innovation will continue to be a, a core, pillar in Illumina. But yeah, maybe you can help break it down a little bit.
Yeah, let me give you a little bit more color, especially now having spent some time on it in the last 4 months, and also making some tweaks around the pipeline and the programs that we're working on. So from a breakdown perspective, I can tell you at least or roughly 75% of that spend is focused on innovation. Like, just whether it is on the instrumentation side or on the multi-omics software, and as well as additional content side of it. So heavily focused on continuing to innovate in that area.
The one thing I would add to where Jacob was going was, when I've looked at the programs, now having gone through looking at the market potential, looking at the returns potential, one of the additional or the big lens that is applied into that is, if you think about the Illumina business model, where the instruments this year make up less than 15% of the revenue, and the larger part of that is coming through the consumables, we still see very good opportunity to keep driving both the pull-through on our instruments through increased content, either ourselves, but more importantly, also working with a lot of our customers.
And there is very good innovation potential that is coming out. Steve spoke about some of them, that that keeps driving that virtuous cycle of improving content and more consumables pulling through to the business. We see that in the almost 70% gross margin that comes through in our business model, by virtue of that innovation that's going into the cycle. Now, to step back, we've given you color on the innovation and the content side. There's always a follow-on question towards: Is that too high as a percentage of revenue? And I can tell you, my immediate focus is to both drive top-line growth, as well as expand margins.
Mm.
We're focused on expanding margins by looking at all lines of the P&L, not just specifically R&D or some other line. We'll find opportunities. We intend to deploy capital based on where we see good opportunities of return, but at the same time, be able to outexpand margins in a really differentiated way over the next three years.
But I think you're right, and I just wanna stress that also, we are looking at all lines in our P&L.
Yeah.
There's nothing that we say, "This we can't touch anything." But we're also looking at from an, how can we do things better?
Mm-hmm.
That's our starting point. Are there things we can be more efficient doing? Are there things we can do in a different way, that actually gives us more or the same for less? Or how can we accelerate things?
Yeah.
That, that's our starting point, but it also, in the end, sometimes comes down to a cost question.
Yeah, and some of the early proof points are in our Q2 results for that.
Yeah. All right, I wanna touch on, and this is an R&D philosophy question a bit-
Mm-hmm
... from Catherine Schulte at Baird. So if instrumentation development is no longer centered around lowering the price point of sequencing?... which is a premise. What is going to drive future instrument upgrade cycles? Will they look more like elongated replacement cycles?
Yes, let me just start there and say, I'm not sure I agree with the premise, that... What we're saying is that we will continue to drive for the highest quality insights with the lowest end-to-end cost, and that also includes drive down the cost of each part in that workflow, including the sequencing. But we're saying we're taking a broader view on it, that sequencing itself is not enough to drive and provide that benefit to our customers. So we will clearly continue to think about where we need to go from a cost perspective, but also, as importantly, also from innovation on how you operate with the instrument, what are the different things you can work on it? How do you simplify it?
How to actually build more of sample prep maybe onto the instrument and informatics into actually interpretation and so on. So I don't think you should at all not interpret this as we are saying that it's just more, you know, upgrades to current technology. We are still looking at deep innovations in how we think about our instrument portfolio going forward. Steve?
Yeah, for somebody who's been around since the very beginning of sort of the $1 million genome, to the $100,000, to the $10,000, to the $1,000, to the $100s now, having been a part of that technology roadmap, it's not done yet. It's turned into essentially just fundamental basics of our investment. What we're talking about is investing in that to continue that ability, because information density is key. I don't care what field you're in, right? Especially in genomics, right? Genomics is an information-heavy field. We will continue in those investments, but we're layering on top many other investments to take advantage of that information coming out. That's the way we need to be thinking about it. It's fundamental to our investments, but they're also this additive layers to expand knowledge, right?
To take the 10,000 protein product that we're offering in Q1 and extend it to 20,000 proteins, to add methylation to the whole genome. So these are types of things that are going to take advantage of that fundamental investment. So, that's the kind of way we think about it.
There will be applications that need to, where we need to drive down the cost of sequencing. But I think that more in combination with, as you say, the 5-base genome or comprehensive genome panel, there's some that now opens up for new application we haven't thought about, and thereby drives substantially more sequencing also.
I think this question follows very nicely onto this, this discussion that we're having here. So from Tejas Savant at Morgan Stanley: "So the price per insight model appears intuitively appealing, versus a narrow focus on price per Gb. That said, it hasn't really resonated with customers, at least on the long read side, the way everyone thought it would. Why do you think that is, and how will your approach be different to ensure buy-in?
Yeah, I think, and, and that's why we also spent time on explaining some of the new products that we are seeing coming out from R&D, is that, for the comprehensive genome, we will still likely price it as a, as a cost per genome, but now you get a much simpler, simpler workflow, and you get much more insights. And therefore you, therefore, you can also think about pricing it differently than just saying cost per gigabase. And I think that's what, what we think about. We're not saying we're gonna change all pricing in the logic that, that we're gonna call it the price per insights or something like that.
There might be markets that needs that, and that goes back to our segmentation is, that we will think about that for different segments of the market, where maybe in the clinical, that could be more relevant, while for the academic, they might still be looking at each cost component. We're not, we're not saying that we are gonna change all our business models tomorrow, but we're gonna open up for new types of business model also.
Got it. A timing question: "Can we clarify when we expect the 5-base genome, comprehensive whole genome sequencing, and single-cell solutions will be available to customers?" That's from Dan Arias at Stifel.
Yeah, so let me start, Steve, and then but saying that-
Yeah
... that, what we have done here, and I know, I knew this question would come, obviously, is that, that we wanted to provide more insights, because we think that's important also for our customers to start to, give us insight on, are we on the right direction? If you look at this, comprehensive genome, what are actually the features they need in order to make this super successful? And thereby, we also wanted to share with you, to see this is the direction we go as a philosophy, as a company. Obviously, then the next question is, when can it be in the market? As we mentioned, this, these things are already, we are already in conversation with customers.
Customers are using some of that, or we're getting samples in from customers, and they get the result out. We will share more over the next 6 months, in different conferences that will come up. And as we mentioned right now, we will bring it to market within 12 - 18 months, some of that.
Yeah.
But we're not gonna go into more specifics around the timeline right now. But how do you feel about it, Steve?
Yeah, I think you've summarized it quite well. I want to emphasize this isn't PowerPoint science. We're actually running samples now. We're engaging with KOLs, we're getting the feedback, and over the next, you know, 6 months, we'll be presenting at major conferences-
Right
... sort of the details of these technologies. You know, I'm very excited about this.
Yeah.
So this is real, it's happening, and I think 2025 is gonna be a very exciting year for us.
Yes.
Speaking of real and happening, from Luke Sergott, Barclays: "How does Fluent fit into the high single-digit target? Is it an upside driver, or do you have a contribution for it already baked in?
... Ankur, do you wanna-
Yeah, I think the, so the multi-omics contribution overall, as we think about getting back to the high single-digit growth, the, so all of the contributions of things that we've already announced are already part of the equation there. The of the entire multi-omics portfolio of Fluent, of course, we've just closed is going to be probably the first contributor, whereas some of the others that get launched over the 12 - 18 months will likely have revenue contribution more in the, in the second half of the, of the strategy period there.
But I think overall we are excited about Fluent. We are excited about things that we think that actually the market can be expanded substantially more. And we think there is upside to Fluent. We are... When you acquire a company, my philosophy is that you keep yourself somewhat prudent in how you think about it.
Mm-hmm.
Because of course you need to get the technology in and of course build your workflows around it. So I think there is opportunities with Fluent also. And now we see also where we can go with Broad and the Perturb-seq. So I'm super excited about that, and as I mentioned before, we are not only seeing single-cell as Fluent, but we actually see it as the ecosystem and as many other single-cell technologies that provides great you know great insights, and we'll continue to support them, so our customers have the utmost flexibility in how they address single-cell going forward.
Okay. Another opportunity from Dan Arias at Stifel: "To what extent do you expect population sequencing work to come back into the picture and contribute to growth in 2025 or 2026?
Yeah, I think PopGen is already a big... It is a big part of what we've seen. I think we have approximately 30 programs in running already today. And we see a lot in the pipelines, both current programs that has gone through one stage and is now expanding into the next stage. And then there are new programs, especially with sovereigns, that really wanna implement this into healthcare, and see the first step is to maybe do 100,000 genomes to kind of understand what this is and what kind of insights is this providing. So, but many times, it's also it takes a little longer time to get through the decision-making processes from the sovereigns, and it also depends a little bit about the economy.
So I think we have a pipeline of approximately 50 in the funnel of programs, so it depends a little bit about the timing. We are not, we're not building into the next period of time, that this is gonna be the main driver. But we actually are expecting this to pick up over the next period of time. We also, as I mentioned before, we're putting a new organization in place, the what we call the SAGA organization, where we will have specific focus on genomic access, how we actually even better service our PopGe n customers going forward.
A few financial clarification questions here.
Okay.
So from Doug Schenkel at Wolfe, Ankur: "If we assume a 26% operating margin in 2027, that translates to high teens EPS growth. So when you say teens, is high teens off the table?
Well, the teens go from 13% to 19%. Everything in that range is within that range. But, Doug, there are lots of good puts and takes there. We are focused on, as you may have already done the model, as I can tell, a big part of that earnings growth is coming from organic, just the fundamental actions that we're taking in improving what the contribution of this business is going to be, right? And the more we are able to do there, our focus is to drive that to the bottom line.
And then from Eve Burstein at Bernstein: "you mentioned that, Ankur, for the 500 basis points of margin expansion, about a third will hit gross margin-
Mm-hmm
... But at the same time, you've had to give on price in certain strategic accounts, strategic accounts like in China-
Mm-hmm
... to keep share. So how much of a headwind is pricing to gross margin expansion, and what gives you confidence you'll still be able to expand gross margin?
Great question, and look at our Q2 results, right? We have been in this price transition for the last year, year and a half, especially for our largest part of the portfolio. And in Q2, we were able to expand gross margins by over 200 basis points. There are several actions, so yes, pricing as the X transitions is going to be strategically a drag on the gross margins overall. We know that, but there are several actions within our cost structure that we're doing in terms of the new quality of flow cells and the cost of producing them. We're looking at our instrumentation cost of production that becomes an offset.
And the margins that we are still making on some of these larger deals are still extremely attractive from a consumables business perspective. So it's a combination. You're managing the top line, but at the same time, several actions in just the fundamental cost structure of how we produce these things. And now having seen that we can do that during our Q2 results gives me good to be in the gross margin in that's closer to the 70% range.
Yeah, Ankur, I think it's just a couple points here is, you know, we've always talked about innovation and product release, but there's innovation in manufacturing, too.
Yeah, yeah.
I you know hinted at a couple of them, our nanoimprint technology is absolutely scalable and, you know, our factories have innovations in them. So all of this is gonna be contributing to the margins, too.
Yeah.
There's a bunch of innovations we're working on internally to help that.
I think that's a good call-out, Steve, and I know you and Kevin are always-
Yeah
... hand, hand, strong handshake on how we do this.
Yeah.
And a lot of our innovation, as you said, and that's been a part of the logic, how you could drive down cost per gigabase over the last-
Exactly
... decades, is to drive down, the cost of-
Right
... and that, so that is a mindset in R&D and manufacturing. So I feel comfortable in where we're going with this.
Mm-hmm.
... One more on this point around net cost savings.
Mm-hmm.
How much of the incremental $200 million will you reinvest? And should we expect free cash flow to grow at least in line with EPS growth?
Yeah, great question. So let me address in two parts. On the how much do we reinvest, so we've looked at the 500 basis point margin expansion with the intent of looking at both how much do we need to take out. Part of that gets realigned and reinvested in the R&D, as well as in the sales and marketing lines, which is where some of our focus is. But aggregate, a larger part of that cost actually comes out in being able to offset other aspects like inflation, et cetera.
In the end, what I'm holding myself to, is be able to drive the bottom line improvement, and take structurally improve the cost structure of the company, to a level where, we can manage and grow that spend at a much lower rate than, than revenue over a period of time, and drive that continuous improvement culture. Now, on the free cash flows, thanks for bringing that up. Personally, very excited with that, especially spending in the last 4 months, spent a lot of time with the team. And they've gotten kinda tired about the number of questions I ask about that, is to parse out, what is the free cash flow contribution of core Illumina, right? How much is it being... was being invested in GRAIL?
How much of the cost can we actually take out, just structurally, based on the divestment here? And kind of feel good about, on a core basis, I think we've just said in the prepared remarks, that for 2024 on a core basis, Illumina cash flow, free cash flow generation was—it could be in the $950-ish million kind of range, or approaching a $1 billion. So, very healthy. I do expect that the FCF will grow, as we constructively improve just the overall margin performance of the business, so the FCF should grow in the same lines, as well. And if I may, I know it's not part of the question, we do want to be and intend to remain disciplined and good allocators of capital.
You've just seen Fluent as one of the examples of the business. But overall, from how much additional capital does this business need from that point of view, our focus is still on tuck-in, bolt-on type acquisitions that can expand our SAM or bring in technologies that can work very well on our X platform and improve specifically our consumables businesses. That's how we're thinking of allocating capital, and while we don't intend to accumulate cash either, so to the extent we have excess cash and market conditions are permitting, we will keep returning that cash to shareholders as well.
Okay. Well, I wanna close out with, we have 30 seconds, just what you're most excited about, the one thing maybe that excites you most when you think about Illumina in the next several years.
Yeah. What, what excites me most is really, and the reason I, I joined this company, is as, as we also started, this morning here, talking about the patient, and, and for me, being there and really know that, that we are helping not only society healthcare, but each individual patient, when they get the most devastating information, that we're there to help them, not only fighting against the disease, but also winning. That is something that is... I'm very excited of being part of.
Yeah, for me, definitely the mission of the company is what I relate most to, the kind of difference that our technologies are making in patient lives. But as a finance person, one of the most exciting part for me as I've dug deeper and analyzed more, was just the underlying demand, that the fact that the Gb output is so strong, that our customers are adding more and more applications and using our technologies, gives me a good confidence in the underlying structure of this business. And a solid business model that we can really improve upon here in the short frame of next 2-3 years.
Yeah, as CTO, it's always the R&D pipeline-
Yeah
... right? So we gave you a little bit of a glimpse of what's in the pipeline, but of course, I know everything there. And some of the stuff we're not even talking about is much more exciting that we're gonna release in the next, you know, zero to three years. So it's always about technology, but not for technology's sake. It's really about impacting patients' lives, so and that's the reason we get up in the morning. So-
Mm-hmm
... that's, that's really where it's at.
Well, Jacob, Ankur, Steve, thank you very much for your time this morning. Thank you to everyone for joining us on the line. If you have additional questions, please reach out to the Illumina IR team, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Thank you.