Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first quarter 2026 Illumina earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Head of Investor Relations, Conor McNamara.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Illumina's 1st quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, we will review our financial results released after market close and provide prepared remarks before opening the line for Q&A. Our earnings release is available in the investor relations section of illumina.com. Joining me today are Jacob Thaysen, Chief Executive Officer, and Ankur Dhingra, Chief Financial Officer. Jacob will begin with an update on Illumina's business, followed by Ankur's review of our financials. We will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation to GAAP can be found in today's release and in the supplementary data on our website. Unless stated otherwise, all growth rates are presented on a year-over-year reported basis. Organic growth adjusts for the impact of currency and acquisitions, and rest of world organic growth also adjusts for the impact from our Greater China region.
A reminder, starting in January 2026, we changed the geographical reporting segments to better align with the respective commercial organizational structure, and the supplementary file on our website shows historical results with the new geographic reporting. This call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website. It is our intent that all forward-looking statements made during today's call will be protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. To better understand the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, we refer you to documents that Illumina files with the SEC, including our most recent Forms 10-Q and 10-K. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jacob.
Thank you, Conor, and good afternoon, everyone. We are off to a great start in 2026 with Q1 revenue, margin, and EPS all coming in above our guidance range. Our solid performance reflects disciplined execution across the organization, along with strength in our clinical markets and growth across all regions, excluding China. Our focus on delivering for our customers and shareholders is fueling the sustained success that positions us for continued growth well into the future. We are raising our 2026 guidance to reflect the Q1 outperformance, which we will discuss in more detail later in our prepared remarks. I want to recognize and thank the entire Illumina team for how they have managed through a higher cost environment while maintaining strong operational performance and delivering the quality and reliability our customers expect. As it relates to Q1, I'm going to focus on three areas.
Our disciplined commercial execution with continued momentum in clinical end markets. Product innovation and roadmap updates from our R&D team in the quarter, and progress we're making against our long-term strategy and targets. Overall, I'm very pleased with how the company delivered in Q1, giving us more confidence that our strategy is working. Building on momentum for 2025, our team delivered another quarter of solid performance. Highlights from the quarter include rest of world organic growth of 3.5% above the high end of our guidance, driven by strength in sequencing consumables and instruments. Approximately 7% growth in rest of world sequencing consumables, including approximately 20% growth in clinical, reflecting continued adoption of sequencing-based diagnostics and more sequencing-intensive applications. Over 80 NovaSeq X placements in the quarter, approximately 20 more than Q1 2025, with year-over-year placements growth in both clinical and non-clinical markets.
New high-volume clinical applications are being built on the NovaSeq X as the platform becomes more embedded in clinical workflows and supports continued consumables growth over time. The successful close of the SomaLogic acquisition, with the business performing in line with our expectations on both revenue and profitability. Margins approximately 150 basis points above guidance, driven by solid revenue performance and disciplined expense management in higher cost environment. These results reflect our consistent execution and how we dedicated resources to best capitalize on a growing and evolving market. The investments Illumina has made over the last 2 decades to make sequencing technology more accessible are driving meaningful impact with continued clinical demand. Clinical made up more than 65% of our sequencing consumables revenue in the quarter, driven by both the expansion of sequencing-based diagnostics and the increased use of more data-intensive applications.
Customers are launching new assays with ongoing progress in reimbursement, supporting broader adoption of sequencing in clinical decision-making. At the same time, demand for approaches such as comprehensive genomic profiling and whole genome sequencing is growing. This is driving higher sequencing intensity, an area where the NovaSeq X is playing an increasingly central role as customers scale these applications. We see a long runway of continued growth in our clinical business. In research and academic markets, demand remains cautious as customers navigate funding uncertainty. We are confident in the long-term opportunity in these end markets, and we continue to invest in leading technologies, including proteomics and single cell, with additional offerings in spatial on the way. These markets serve as an important entry point for new technologies, helping to drive long-term clinical adoption over time. Customer interest in our new product offerings remains robust.
As funding uncertainties start to ease, we expect to see a return to growth in research and academic markets. This quarter, we also saw our innovation strategy come through clearly in how we are expanding the value of our platform for our customers. At AGBT, we focused on how our end-to-end workflow approach is helping customers unlock new discoveries and generate deeper insights with the quality and reliability that only Illumina can offer. Our approach is becoming an important shift in how customers evaluate solutions, not just at the instrument level, but across the full workflow. We highlighted several examples of this at AGBT. We launched TruPath, enabling whole genome sequencing with deeper insight while eliminating traditional library prep, reducing hands-on time to about 10 minutes.
Customers are showing significant interest, particularly in areas like rare disease, where some are using it to simplify the standard of care by consolidating multiple types of tests into a single TruPath workflow. This is helping them get to answers faster and with greater confidence compared to traditional approaches. Several customers are already in various stages of clinical studies using TruPath, and we expect customer demand to continue increasing in the coming quarters. We also saw very high engagement around our spatial transcriptomics offering, which is a good example of how we innovate with our customers to address their needs. Early access users have shown that the offering can generate data in highly challenging sample types, such as lymphatic tissue, that has previously been difficult to study. We remain on track to launch later this year and look forward to bringing this capability to the market.
At the same time, we are continuing to expand what customers can do on the NovaSeq X. We introduced our 18-month roadmap, including new 14B and 35B flow cells, staggered flow cells run, and our ability to improve data quality with Q70 performance. These innovations on the X will offer more flexibility, increase throughput, and improve overall workflow efficiency for our customers. These introductions and platform improvements are driving higher NovaSeq X placements and increased demand. Even three years after we shipped our first X instrument, we exited the quarter with a solid backlog, giving us confidence to raise our full-year instrument outlook. As we step back and look at the quarter, the most important takeaway is that our strategy is working.
We are increasing the value of the NovaSeq X through continuous innovation, which is showing up in our financial results as customers scale and expand what they run on the platform. As sequencing moves further into clinical and research settings, customers are running more samples, generating more data, and relying on more sequencing-intensive applications. This is where the NovaSeq X continues to play a central role. As we expand what customers can do on the platform, we are enabling them to do more with the systems that they already have and support more complex applications over time. It gives them confidence that they can use their X well into the future to drive their own success. As our customers succeed, the success shows up in our results. We are also extending this into data and AI with BioInsight, which we introduced late last year to help customers accelerate discovery.
A key program within BioInsight is the Billion Cell Atlas, which we introduced earlier this year to better understand how genes drive disease through Perturb-seq. We are seeing growing interest from partners, with additional companies looking to participate. With hundreds of millions of cells already generated, customers are starting to see insights that can support AI-driven models for drug discovery. Turning to our outlook, building on the strong start of this year, we are updating our outlook relative to the guidance we provided in Q4. Importantly, the current end market dynamics we are seeing are consistent with what we expected going into 2026. Clinical continues to lead, while research and applied remain more cautious. Our first quarter performance came in ahead of expectations, and we are raising our full-year revenue outlook. This is driven by the strength in our business and how it carries into the rest of the year.
We are also raising our operating margin expectations and EPS outlook, reflecting the Q1 outperformance and higher revenue. We also remain on track toward our 2027 targets. The investments we are making in R&D and product innovation position us to deliver high single-digit revenue growth, continued margin expansion, and double-digit to teens EPS growth for years to come. I want to thank the entire Illumina team, our customers, and all our stakeholders for another excellent quarter. I also want to thank our three outgoing board members for the years of service and contribution to Illumina. I'm very proud of how Illumina has progressed since I joined the company in 2023, especially given the dynamic macro environment we have been operating in. With that, I'll hand it over to Ankur to walk through the financial details before we move to Q&A.
Thank you, Jacob. Good afternoon, everyone. I will walk through our first quarter financial results, provide additional color on revenue, expenses, earnings, and our balance sheet and capital deployment, and then discuss our updated outlook. Before I get into the details of the financial performance, let me provide a high-level view of how the first quarter played out. During the first quarter, Illumina's revenue of $1.09 billion came in $20 million above the midpoint of our guidance, driven primarily by better-than-expected instrument sales, as we placed more than 80 NovaSeq X instruments in the quarter above our targeted range of 50-60 per quarter. Clinical consumable sales also came in at the high end of our expectations for the quarter. The higher revenue flowed through to margins and EPS, with non-GAAP diluted EPS approximately $0.10 above the midpoint of our guidance.
Now turning to the details. During the first quarter, Illumina's revenue of $1.09 billion was up 4.8% year-over-year and 1.2% on an organic basis, with currency and acquired revenue each contributing just under 2 percentage points to our reported growth rate. Rest of world organic growth was 3.5%. Sequencing consumables revenue of $726 million was up 4% year-over-year, with the rest of the world organic growth of 5%, roughly in line with our expectations. High throughput volume drove most of the revenue growth as the NovaSeq X install base continues to expand and utilization increased year-over-year. Clinical sequencing consumable demand continues to expand, growing 20% ex-China for the second consecutive quarter.
Continued expansion of clinical volumes for our customers, as well as adoption of information-rich, sequencing-intensive tests in new trials, is driving robust demand in clinical market applications. We see significant growth opportunities in clinical markets as we enable customers to expand their applications across the Illumina ecosystem. This includes simplified access to expanded information sets to offerings like 5-Base Solution and TruPath. Sequencing consumables in research and applied declined 12% ex-China, reflecting continued uncertainty in the funding environment during the quarter. While macro commentary about the funding environment appears to be stable to improving, year-to-date trends have remained consistent with our expectations for 2026. As of Q1, approximately 82% of volumes and 55% of revenue have transitioned to NovaSeq X.
90% of research in applied volume is now on the X, and we are well positioned for a return to revenue growth when that market returns to a more normalized activity level. 76% of clinical volume is now on the X, and we continue to expect that majority of clinical volumes, or over 80% to 85%, will be on X by the end of 2026. On sequencing activity, total sequencing GB output on our connected high and mid-throughput instruments once again grew greater than 30% year-over-year, with clinical growth well above that. Sequencing instruments revenue of $118 million was up 9% year-over-year in Q1 and up 10% on the rest of the world organic basis, driven by increased sales of NovaSeq X.
We placed over 80 NovaSeq instruments in Q1, with demand remaining strong for the platform, especially with clinical, where we saw several multi-unit orders in the quarter. In fact, during Q1, we were supply constrained on the number of NovaSeq X units that were placed as the demand continues to remain very robust. High-throughput instrument placements in research also grew year-over-year. Sequencing service and other revenue of $151 million was up 7% year-over-year and up 5% on a rest-of-the-world organic basis. As we scale up BioInsight, the timing of strategic partnerships and data deals can be lumpy in this segment. Microarrays business was down 20% on a rest of world organic basis, largely due to specific large customers in direct-to-consumer segment. Moving to the rest of the P&L.
Non-GAAP gross margin of 68.2% for the first quarter was up 80 basis points year-over-year, driven by cost efficiencies and higher revenue, partly offset by tariffs. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $506 million, up 3% year-over-year, and largely reflect the addition of SomaLogic team. Non-GAAP operating margin was 21.9% in Q1, spending approximately 150 basis points year-over-year, reflecting increased operating leverage from our improved cost structure. Looking below the line, Non-GAAP other expense, which is largely comprised of net interest expense, was $15 million, and the non-GAAP tax rate was 20.5%. Our average diluted shares were approximately 154 million, down 5 million year-over-year, reflecting share repurchases throughout the year.
Altogether, non-GAAP EPS of $1.15 per diluted share grew approximately 19% year-over-year and came in about $0.10 above the midpoint of the guidance range we provided in February. Moving to cash flow, balance sheet, and capital allocation items for the quarter. Cash flow provided by operations was $289 million for the quarter. Capital expenditures were $38 million, and free cash flow was $251 million for Q1. In Q1, we repurchased 2 million shares of Illumina stock for approximately $242 million at an average price of $120.85 per share. At quarter end, we had approximately $400 million remaining on our current share repurchase authorization. We intend to continue to repurchase shares opportunistically.
We announced today that Illumina's board of directors has authorized an additional $1.5 billion in share repurchases. During the quarter, we closed the acquisition of SomaLogic on January 30th for a net cash payment of $363 million, plus potential royalties and milestone payments. Subsequent to quarter end, we paid the first milestone of $25 million for the achievement of certain 2025 targets. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.16 billion in cash equivalents, and short-term investments and gross leverage of approximately 1.5 times gross debt to last 12 months EBITDA. Overall, we had a great start to 2026, allowing us to raise our full-year guidance and reinforce our confidence in the progress we are making towards our long-range targets. Now, moving to guidance for year 2026, starting with revenue.
We are raising our reported revenue guidance by $20 million to reflect our Q1 outperformance and now expect revenue of $4.52 billion to $4.62 billion. Acquired revenue is still expected to contribute 1.5 to 2 points of growth. Currency is expected to add approximately 1% of growth. This places our guidance towards the upper end of previously stated growth rate targets, including 2% to 4% rest of the world organic growth. The overall end market demand remains consistent with what we expected exiting 2025. Continued strong demand growth in clinical markets and funding uncertainty in research and applied markets. For rest of the world organic sequencing revenue growth, we continue to expect low to mid-single-digit growth in consumables, with clinical growing double-digit to mid-teens and research and applied declining mid to high-single-digits.
We are raising our instrument guide to flat to low single-digit growth year-over-year, driven by a very strong NovaSeq X demand. As I mentioned, we were supply constrained in Q1 and have a very strong pipeline for NovaSeq instrument placements, especially in the clinical end markets. We are also increasing our profitability expectations for the year, reflecting the overperformance in Q1. Accordingly, we now expect operating margins between 23.4%-23.6%, up 10 basis points from our pre-prior guidance at the midpoint. This represents approximately 140 basis points of year-over-year margin expansion versus 2025, excluding the impact of acquisitions. Similarly, we are raising the top and bottom of our 2026 EPS range by $0.10 and now expect non-GAAP diluted EPS of $5.15-$5.30.
Excluding the impact of SomaLogic acquisition, this represents EPS growth of 12% at the midpoint. Moving to Q2 2026 guidance, we expect rest of the world organic revenue growth of 4%-6% and reported revenue of $1.12 billion-$1.14 billion, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.20-$1.25. Given the strong demand and pipeline for NovaSeq X, we are investing to scale the supply of NovaSeq X units and expect the team will continue to make progress through Q2 and into Q3 as well.
Our guide assumes operating margins of approximately 22%, reflecting higher mix of instruments revenue and related investments, near-term inflationary pressures related to freight costs and higher cost of electronic components, and a full quarter of SomaLogic as well. Regarding the inflationary pressures, we're taking several mitigating actions to fully offset the impact during the year and is reflected in implied margin improvement for rest of the year. Our solid Q1 performance and rapidly growing clinical install base provides a good setup going into the second half of the year. As these Xs come online, we'll add to consumables revenue stream. This improved outlook also gives us confidence in the progress we're making towards achieving our long-range targets for revenue, margin, and EPS growth by 2027.
Excluding the impact of acquisitions, our guidance implies approximately 350 basis points of margin expansion by the end of 2026, representing meaningful progress towards the 500 basis point target by 2027. This reflects the underlying improvement in our operating model while navigating a dynamic and inflationary macro environment. In closing, I want to thank Illumina team for their continued focus and disciplined execution throughout the quarter. We're off to a great start in 2026, and I'm extremely encouraged by the progress we've made in returning Illumina long-term sustainable revenue and earnings growth. Thank you for joining our call today. I will now invite the operator to open the line for Q&A.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. To give as many analysts as possible the opportunity to ask a question, please limit yourself to one question. If you have additional questions, please raise your hand again to be put back into the queue. We will now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Thank you. Your first question will come from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.
Hi, Ankur, and Jacob. Thank you for taking my question and congrats on a clean print here. Maybe high level, my 1 question, I'll stick to the guidance here. Simplistically, you beat Q1, came in above the high end of your organic assumptions, instruments coming in better, clinical coming in better. You've raised instrument guidance for the year. I'm curious why the organic for the year wasn't raised. You know, is there some cautiousness that you're baking in? What would those cautiousness be? You know, why can't clinical sustain 20%? I'm just curious on the guide assumptions.
Vijay Kumar, this is Jacob Thaysen, and thank you very much. We agree we are off to a great start here in 2026 with a strong performance in Q1. As you mentioned, we continue to see very strong momentum in the clinical business. In fact, we do believe that that will continue, not only in the rest of the year, but also into the coming years. Very excited about that continued momentum. As mentioned also, we had a strong Q4 in instrument placements, and we continued that strength here into Q1, and have a strong pipeline for the coming quarters. We feel really good about where we're sitting. We know when we're placing instruments, they will start to generate revenue also, or consumables revenue, approximately 6 months after they are installed.
There's definitely a lot of optimism on how we can see the second half of the year also. Overall, we are pleased about that. Now, we are only one quarter into to the year, I think actually it's that we are leaning in by raising both the top line and the bottom line early, very early in the quarter, I think we're signaling all the right things here. Ankur?
Thanks, Jacob. Vijay, what I would add is we are raising the revenue guidance. It is going up by $20 million, which is roughly about half a point. My comment that we're now clearly looking towards the higher end of the range rather than midpoint reflects that. Still within the range that we talked about. It's a decimal points move, hence the % is what it is. There's nothing else more than that.
Your next question will come from Puneet Souda with Leerink.
Yeah, hi, guys. Jacob, Ankur, thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the momentum here in instrumentation. That was pretty impressive. Just trying to understand, you know, could you talk about within that mix, how much of it this is coming from clinical versus research, what you're seeing in the momentum in research among these customers, and what does it mean when as they incorporate these instruments, there will be a transition, there will be an initial impact from NovaSeq 6000 pricing to NovaSeq X pricing for consumables within those labs. How are you thinking about, you know, about that impact, and is that incorporated into the guide? Maybe just give us, you know, more on this instrumentation strength you're seeing and how to think about the instrumentation for 2Q and the full year. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Puneet. I think that was one question with many sub-questions here, so let me try to address a few of them. Overall, as you mentioned, we are very pleased with the placements we did here in Q1, also in Q4. We continue to see that momentum. It speaks to that our customers see that when they buy an X, we will continue to drive innovation. They know that Illumina will be behind them and ensuring that they continue to drive new insights from those instruments, both in the clinical space and in the research space. We will continue to do that. I think we showed up very well at AGBT to prove what we are doing with innovations on the X platform.
Our customers clearly are purchasing the X platforms to drive more business on it. Now we're seeing a lot of these placements. We're growing both the research and the clinical placements. If you look into the clinical, which is more than 60% of the placements. It's much more additional incremental placement than necessarily conversion of the 6K. I think you will start to see also that drive immediately growth on the top line. From a research position, we do see that this is, we continue to see large projects being run on that.
We continue to see a lot of single cell projects run on that, but we're not seeing any substantial change in mix of where research is going right now. We are excited by some of the new innovations we're coming out with over the next period of time. Spatial is one of the ones that will drive additional upside in the end of this year and into 2027. As we also remind ourself is that we are now have converted most of our X's in the research business. When this market comes back, we're not seeing the price hit as we did before, thereby we will see, we can see growth coming that way.
Thank you, Jacob. Puneet, the only thing I would add from a pricing transition perspective, no change in assumptions. As we've talked, we expect clinical transition to continue, all of those price assumptions are already built into the guide.
Your next question will come from Tycho Peterson with Jefferies. Tycho, you may now unmute and ask your question.
Sorry about that. Ankur, sticking with instruments, can you quantify the backlog? You said you're supply constrained. I know we'll get it in the 10-Q, but are you able to just say how much you couldn't ship? I guess as we think about the roadmap, Jacob, you know, the question of freezing the market comes up. Can you maybe just talk about how we get comfortable that, you know, over the next 18 months there isn't an issue with the roadmap you've laid out?
Well, I would, I would start by saying that I think our placements of instruments shows that there's no freezing of any market that we are participating in at this point. We feel really good about that. We also feel good about our funnel of instruments over the next period of time. I think our roadmap as we, as we presented at AGBT, where we both innovating on the X, coming out with, of course, new flow cells, but also, as I mentioned, spatial on TruPath, and our 5-Base Solution is starting to take momentum. We feel really good about both the clinical opportunity, but also what we can offer into the research space when that is coming back.
We don't see any substantial change in the competitive environment as we sit here right now. We know there's a lot of noise out there. We are looking forward to compete when they finally get to the market.
Yeah, Tycho on the instrumentation specifics, very strong demand. You'll see on the 10-Q our performance obligations are up more than 20% year over year. A lot of that is both in instruments and in consumables. I am expecting our Q2 placements could be close to the levels that we've seen in Q1, the pipeline for the remainder of the year looks robust as well. As we mentioned, we're scaling up. The demand looks quite robust. I would also say, as Jacob said, quite a bit of this demand is coming from new trials and new tests.
Our next question will come from Doug Schenkel with Wolfe Research.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. This is Madeline on for Doug. Just a quick one on the operating margin. I think Q2 operating margin came in a little bit lower than the street. You called out some specific headwinds, including investment to scale the supply, which should continue into Q3. How should we think about the margin progression throughout the year, and what does the ramp between that Q2 margin and the year-end exit rate look like?
Madeline, thank you. Let me start here as Jacob and just take a step back and look what Illumina have been able to achieve over the last few years. We have had a tremendous improvement in our margins. As you probably recall, in 2024, we laid out our strategy of building back to high single-digit growth in 2027. I think you can see now we're stepping into that with flattest growth last year, and now we're starting to have mid-single-ish growth, and we will now enter into high single growth for next year. We are on a great trajectory in the top line to get to that. On the operating margin, we're also showing great progress on those elements.
There's some puts and takes in each quarter. As we mentioned, as Ankur was mentioning, there are some inflationary pressure in the rest of the year here, which we're gonna offset. That's what you see actually reflected in our short term and also a little longer term guidance. Ankur, you wanna chime in here?
Yeah. So Q2 specifically has a, has a few items. The relative to year-over-year, we have a much higher instrument mix. We do have inflationary pressure from things like the component cost and the freight, et cetera. As well as, we will have the full quarter of SomaLogic into our financials. Now, having said that, we have a series of mitigating actions that have started taking place here in Q2, but we anticipate that the effects will become visible from Q3 and into Q4. Hence the, we feel good about the ramp in the operating margin here in the second half versus first half.
Your next question will come from Dan Brennan with TD Cowen.
Great. Thank you. I know in the past you've shared some color regarding the ex-customers that had already converted versus those that were in the middle of converting in the slide deck, and I know, Jacob, you talked about that a little bit given where we stand today in the conversion. Can you maybe unpack a little bit the guide this year, particularly on the clinical side and, you know, how we think about kind of the
You know, the context of those two and, you know, maybe, you know, could there be some acceleration as you see, you know, that conversion, get later in the cycle? Thank you.
Yeah, Dan, I think there's still a distribution of different types of customers. As we have, I think we have mentioned this also previously is that there are customers that have decided to stay on the 6K platform for a longer period of time. Those are probably the clinical customers that have the regulated assay sitting on those and FDA-approved assay that either feel that they are well-served by the 6K platform or that it takes much longer time to transitioning it over. That is some of the, I would call it, laggards on the transition. For many others, they are in the progress of or already have transitioned.
There will always be a number of customers, a number of assays that will be sitting on the former platform, at least for a while. Therefore, we're also saying that as Ankur was mentioning in the prepared remarks, that we, by end of this year, we feel like we are fundamentally transitioned the business that will transition. There will be a long tail of transition going forward. Overall, we see the clinical business as an opportunity for growth. We don't see any deacceleration in that business for the time being.
Our next question will come from Patrick Donnelly with Citi.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. Maybe one on the research and applied markets. I think you're still talking about that down mid to high single for the year. The consumables look like they were down 12% in the quarter against a pretty easy comp. Can you just talk about what you're hearing from customers there? Is there an expectation for some improvement in that market as you go through the year, budgets get set, how you're feeling about that market? Then just a quick housekeeping for Ankur. Where is the SomaLogic revenue showing up? Is it instruments, consumables? Just wanna make sure I'm tracking that. Thank you, guys.
Thank you, Patrick. Let me start on the research space. I think what we are really pleased to see is that there seems to be alignment from D.C. around the commitment to NIH funding. We do believe that while funding have been slow in the beginning of the year, it will pick up during the year. That's a great headline. I think there's many more details into that we also talked about last quarter and why we are more conservative on the research business year in 2026. That is that one thing is to have released grants, but is the other thing is to have it all translated into spending the money on actually tools and consumables.
There are definitely some cautiousness with our customers. Before they truly understand how those grants, who are getting the grants and how many grants you're getting, there will be some cautiousness in that space for a little while. We do believe that we should see somewhat improvement in environment during the year. That said, we haven't built much of that into our into our guide right now, so I consider that more on an upside.
Patrick, one thing I would add on that market is, remember, we transitioned more than 90% of the volume for that end market. Our pricing compare should keep getting better for that market throughout the year as well. That said, on SomaLogic, it's, you know, from a report perspective, it's in microarrays. Mostly in the microarrays.
Your next question will come from Subbu Nambi with Guggenheim.
Hey, guys. Sorry, this is a continuation of a question that was asked, so thank you for taking this question. Given you have seen 20% of clinical growth for two consecutive quarters now, would it be fair to assume continued momentum throughout the year? Any reason for us to believe that the guide that you're assuming on the lower end, where academia is down mid-single digit, but clinical is in the low double digit, on the higher end, you're assuming academia is down low single digit, but clinical in the teens? Can that actually change way beyond the higher end of your guide?
Yeah, Subbu, I think, as you mentioned, we're very pleased with the momentum we've seen in clinical, clearly over the last two quarters, but actually also through 2025. Since we are, of course, transitioning more and more of the revenue onto the consumables business over to the X platform, the price headwind is getting behind us, and we continue to see that strong growth. At this point, we still feel like actually a mid-teens growth is a strong growth performance for the clinical market. Should it be even higher than that could be upside to our guide.
Yeah
forecast.
Based on the business, Subbu, and the momentum, at this point, we don't, we're not seeing any signs of potential deceleration per se in that market. There's good momentum there.
Super helpful, guys. Thank you.
Your next question will come from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord Genuity.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. Nice quarter. Just as a follow-up to the seemingly modest kind of 26 revenue guidance increase here, did you update the guidance range to reflect competition launching this summer now that we have pricing from them, the $150 per genome and the attractive pricing for oncology applications? Are you expecting more of a headwind and you gave yourself some cushion perhaps on this new range?
Well, I'm actually quite pleased with the guide increase we did. After one quarter, we go out and raise our guide. I think that is that's something to be proud of and shows again our commitment to the year and what we believe, where the belief is going. As we also said last quarter, we are very confident in our position from a competitive perspective. What we're seeing in the first half competitive-wise, I don't think that dynamic's changing a lot in second half. We feel good about where we are. We have built in how we think the business is gonna develop, and that's what you see reflected in our guide. Mm-hmm.
Your next question will come from Dan Arias with Stifel.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions here. Jacob, maybe just a follow-up to that point you were making. The 35B flow cell that's coming, obviously that's relevant to this competitive conversation that's being had here. I imagine you have customers that are asking what an apples to apples cost comparison would be to that $150 price point. What is the cost per GB or the cost per genome that you guys are gonna quote to these folks who are, you know, assessing run economics and trying to understand how things are gonna shake out going forward?
Dan, I think there is still a lot of opportunity in the space that we are in. If you look into the clinical space, if you think about the rare disease business going from exome into genome, that will require a 15 times more sequencing intensity. When we have conversations with our customers that where they run a lot of exome, and they wanna translate into genome, we have no problem having a great conversation about elasticity and how we can drive profitable growth both for us and, of course, continue to lower their cost per gigabase for them. The both of us have a strong win-win situation. That is just 1 example, but that's a conversation we have with our customers to make sure that there is opportunities here.
That for us, that conversation is based on an elasticity game, where if we go in and provide a very aggressive pricing, we also see a very aggressive volume growth. That's a conversation we continue to have. We see a lot about that. On the 35 B pricing, we are not ready at this point to go out and talk about the pricing. We'll do that when we are closer to the actual launch.
Your next question will come from Catherine Schulte with Baird.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Really encouraging numbers on X placements. Congrats on the strong start to the year. Could you just spend some time talking about what you're seeing on the low and mid throughput side of the portfolio from a placement standpoint?
Yes, Catherine. That, if we start with the low throughput, and as just a reminder, we did launch our MiSeq i100 a little more than a year ago, end of 2024, I think, or beginning of 2025. We saw very strong placements in 2025. I think more than 1,000 placements we have announced on that. We continue to see that momentum into 2026. A lot of good progress, a lot of momentum in the MiSeq i100 business and the placements.
In the mid-throughput, that has been for longer term a little more challenging due to the macro environment that where we're seeing both the, of course, the MiSeq i100 is taking a part of the low end of that business, and we also see customers transitioning up to the high throughput part of that business. In the middle layer, we're also seeing that these are the customers that are more sensitive to the macro environment that is maybe stalling some investments and waiting for different type of environment. Many of them are not in production mode of sequencing, and thereby they are looking for more flexibility.
While we see good performance in that market, we do believe that when the market turns, especially in the resource segment, that market will start to grow even better for us.
Your next question will come from Casey Woodring with J.P. Morgan.
Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two quick follow-ups to some of the earlier ones. Did you quantify the headwind from inflationary pressure on things like memory chips and freight that you're planning to offset this year? On the NovaSeq X placements, so you placed 80 in the quarter. Sounds like you expect a similar level in 2Q, just if I heard that right. How should we think about X placements in the back half? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me, let me start here just on the highest level on how we have dealt with some of the curve balls, I would say, that has been thrown towards Illumina specifically, but the market also, generally speaking, over the last few years. I think if you followed our performance and how we have dealt with different types of cost challenges that the Illumina team have done a great job on finding ways to compensate that. We continue to drive very, very strong focus on operational discipline, and this is the engine running here. You can see that when we get this headwind in front of us, we find ways to get through this. I think the team is quite excited about that.
There's a lot of energy going into this saying that we can deliver on our commitment. I'm very pleased with the performance from the team. Ankur, you wanna talk a little bit about the-
Yep. Thanks, Jacob. Yes, that's within the range that we can, we can action and take a lot of action towards mitigating this as well. On the X's, yes, you're right. Mentioned about similar to Q1 levels in Q2 as well. As it looks like right now, pipeline for the back half also looks fairly robust. Which means all in all for the full year, we do expect to come in reasonably above the range that we had provided at the start of the year.
Your next question will come from Jack Meehan with Nephron Research.
Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. I wanted to keep asking about the NovaSeq X demand, just sounds like it's been robust. Is there more color you can share in the profile of the clinical customers, where you're seeing demand is the strongest? Just curious if you could elaborate on things like multi-cancer, MRD, therapy selection, women's health, anything that stands out?
Yeah, Jack, thanks for the question. I would it's almost like saying all of the above.
Yeah.
meaning that we see a broad interest in the NovaSeq X. Obviously we have also large customers, centralized labs here in U.S. that sees, and you can see that on their own numbers, they see a lot of momentum in the oncology space. We are seeing a lot of commitment to continue growing in that space. I would say both from oncology, rare disease, into of course also NIPT and across the regions. Really great performance in the clinical, and I think it really speaks to the strength and the opportunity in that space going forward.
Yeah.
Your next question will come from Michael Ryskin with Bank of America.
Hey. Thanks for taking the question. Hope you guys can hear me.
Yes.
Yes.
Gonna go back to the NovaSeq X again, just 'cause that seems to be the biggest, the placement number is the biggest surprise for us relative to our model. Anything you could say in terms of pricing or just sort of how you're getting those out the door, where the incremental demand is coming from? You know, we look at the last two years, you've been pretty steady at outside of four Q, where you have a nice bolus, you're doing, you know, 50-60 per quarter for the last two years. Now you're jumping to 80 in 1Q, 80 in 2Q. Yet your instrument revenue number in 1Q was $118 million. We would've expected, you know, with 80 placements to do a little bit closer to like $125, $130.
Is there any type of discounting going on here? Just sort of, you know, what's driving that big step up in demand?
Let me start by answering that here. I mean, first of all, let's think about the X placements. I mean, when you place an X, you do that because you have an opportunity to win a customer base or buy an X from us. It's not to have it sitting in a corner, it's really to drive consumables on it. As we also mentioned, we are in at J.P. Morgan, we showed result that we are around above $1.3 million of pull-through on the Xs, and we think that will continue to be at that level, if not above. Our focus is to get as many Xs out there, they can drive that growth in consumables over the next many years.
That is the most important thing for us. Secondly, we do of course, when we have customers, which we do have, and we talked about this before, that other orders 5-10 or even beyond that, of course we are giving them a volume discount on the X placements, and we think that is reasonable. Again, our main focus is to get Xs out there and drive consumables. We're not putting them out there just to sit in a corner.
The only thing I would add there, Mike, is some of the units within 83 are also go through a reagent deal or a lease kind of model as well there are always some units of that kind in there as well, which of course have a different revenue recognition pattern.
Our next question will come from Mason Carrico with Stephens.
Hey. Yeah, guys. A lot's been asked here, but maybe taking into account recent competitive announcements, could you just talk about where you expect Illumina to win in spatial? Is this more of a rising tides lifts all boats, or do you see clear pockets in the market where you think Illumina can stand out?
Yeah, we are excited about the opportunity in spatial and we also showcase the spatial both at ASC but at AGBT with a lot of interest from our customers. We do think there is a lot of value in our spatial solution. Overall, I do think, as you're saying, it's something that raises all the boats right now. I also enjoyed the launch of what 10x put out there. I'm actually quite impressed of what Jacob Thaysen and the team is putting out there. I'm a big fan of those, of that, and I actually think it drives much more interest overall in spatial. That said, this is different technologies.
They're addressing somewhat a different type of customer segment. I think there is plenty of room for more than a few customers in that space. Illumina is here to play. We have developed a lot of our spatial technique together with our customers, so we have a good sense for what they're looking for. We have a good sense where our opportunity is. I'm pretty sure we have a winner when we come here out later in the year with our spatial solution.
Our final question will come from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord Genuity.
Yeah. Thanks, guys, for the questions and the follow-up. Just on the slide in the deck here about the NovaSeq X transition, you got one aspect that has the percentage of path through consumables revenue that's been stable, compared to the 4th quarter at 55%. However, the volume of GB shipped, as a percentage, that the NovaSeq X represents, that's been increasing nicely towards that kind of 80% to 90%. What exactly happened, I guess, in the 1st quarter that it kind of moderated a bit? Is that going to inflect going forward, or should we expect a big jump, 55%, maybe like high 50s to maintain going forward?
Well, there's nothing, I don't think quarter by quarter. I think we mentioned this also in the earlier quarters, is that it's a little bit dangerous to look at this number too precisely. It's a trend direction and the quarter by quarter can vary a little bit up and down, so I wouldn't put too much in it. What you should see is that we continue to transition our clinical customers very nicely. As Ankur was saying, that we believe that we have more than 85% of that transition by end of this year, which we feel is where the transition, where we then feel that we are, the transition is behind us.
Yep.
This concludes the Q&A section of the call. I would now like to turn the call back to Conor McNamara for closing remarks.
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