Couillard. I cover the Life Science Tools sector here at the firm. Very happy to have Standard BioTools with us at the conference for the first time this year. Here to introduce us to the story, CEO Michael Egholm. Also have CFO Jeff Black in the audience, and then we'll start some Q&A. So I'll kick it over to you, Michael.
Thanks, Brandon. I'm excited to have an opportunity here to present the Standard BioTools story on how we're gonna unleash tools to accelerate breakthroughs in human health. I'm gonna be making forward-looking statements, and now that you all read it, let me dive into the story. So the problem that we are taking on to solve is that in the tool space, there are a few large company that dominates with many mature technologies, and then there's a plethora of smaller companies that are all subscale, many great technologies. Most of them struggle to scale great technology that pharma wants to use, that can really be used in breakthrough discoveries in human health.
But most of these companies struggle with building out a commercial organization, manufacturing and quality, getting burn in line with growth and actually growing consistently, and that's the problem we set out to solve. We've been on a journey, and I'll talk a bit about it. Our solution is that technologies shouldn't automatically turn into companies, and so what we're looking for are great technologies, but put them on a platform of a company with multiple technologies and use the shared SG&A sales force et cetera, to do that. We furthermore subscribe to that we should have seasoned operators. Scientists don't make always the greatest CEOs.
A little bit of irony here is that I'm a recovered scientist, but all the team I've hired, and I'll go through that in a minute, are all at least 20+ year operating experience in big and small companies. We believe in lean methodology, as in the Toyota Production System. Our version is called SBS, Standard BioTools Business System, and it permeates everything we do. We started out with good access to capital from Casdin and Viking, and we are on a journey to doing strategic M&A and building what we believe is gonna be the next generation life science tools company. To that end, we put together a very strong management team. As Brandon mentioned, Jeff Black, our newest member, is here in the audience. Most of my team had some length of tenure at Danaher, including myself.
A great place to go and learn to become a disciplined operator and also learn about, like, how effective lean can be. But as I said, every single one of the team members here, at least 20 years experience in actually in operating roles, most of them in big companies. So big company discipline in a small company environment. We did our first deal April last year. It was announced in January, and then in April last year, we did a $250 million pipe into what was Fluidigm. They had a legacy of very innovative products, but never really made it as a company. Stalled growth, astronomical SG&A, and losing market share and margin.
We lost the global infrastructure footprint that there was, and then they had a couple of highly differentiated technologies I'll talk a little bit about. But anyway, we did this in April, and I came in as CEO, came in, and then did a top grading of the management team, and we did a name change to Standard BioTools. So we've been on this journey here now in my seventh quarter. And just a month ago, we announced the next big transaction. We're doing a merger of equals between SomaLogic and Standard BioTools. They will assume the Standard BioTools name and the LAB stock ticker, and we'll now get to scale combined revenue of $185 million-$190 million, and $500 million in cash post-closing.
I'll talk a little bit about more how all the pieces fit together. We expect to close in Q1, and we just filed the S4, the preliminary S4, on Monday night, so some good reading available for anyone here. About 300 pages with a lot of details behind this deal here. I wanna talk a little bit about the products, and then I'll come back to our financial performance. We believe that SomaLogic technology, the Serum Profiling, fits really well with our ability to do immune cell profiling, which we do with our 50-color flow cytometry solution, and also our imaging solution is very much the same customer set, even though we have a different bias, and we also have a legacy genomics business I'll talk a little bit about. I wanna just talk.
Spend three slides on talking about our Flow Cytometry and Spatial Biology , our Mass Cytometry Solution, what it is, and why we're actually excited about it. And then I'll get to the numbers, which should be even more exciting. We solve a fundamental problem in bioanalysis today. Most of our colleagues out there study DNA and RNA, mostly because it's easy. A, Cs, and Gs, and Ts are relatively easy to read, which is why you see so much money spent on genomics. Proteomics is really hard. Many more proteins, 20 different amino acids, and it's really hard, and there's no sort of one for one as there is with A, Cs, Gs, and Ts. The fundamental issue is that almost all platforms use fluorescence as a readout. You cannot just resolve more than a few handful of fluorescent dyes.
They will overlap and cross talk, to keep it very simple. We do this using mass tags instead, so we measure pure isotope that are labeled to antibodies, and we basically get 50 color detection. It has some really interesting ramifications in the use case. Our leading instrument here, CyTOF XT , has basically a physics advantage in that we can do as many markers as we want on the surface, called lineage markers, what cells are there. But through this advantage, where we can see any number on any cell at any time, we can also do intracellular markers. That is, which cells are there and what are they actually doing? In that upper right-hand corner lies amazing biological insight, and this is really what we are selling.
We have a version that does imaging, and we just launched this instrument here a quarter ago, called the Hyperion XTi . We do, depending on which mode you're using it, between 10 and 40 slides per day. Our image quality is unparalleled to anything out there because we don't have autofluorescence. So think of like the black color on an OLED TV. Our background is like that, black. There's no inherent background, very high signal-to-noise. And to do translational research, where we are entirely focused, you really need high data quality and a high throughput, at least 10 slides a day. We, the only thing we are competing with is low plex immunofluorescence,5-plex , 6- plex is what you can do. There are ways around it, something called cyclic immunofluorescence, where you cycle the colors through, and then in a week, you can get several slides done.
Still only three or four slides a day, but it takes a week before the data actually comes out. Does not work in translational research, and I said the data quality is literally like night and and day here. Much excitement about transcript profiling, doing RNA, so NanoString 10x Visium, the three big ones. It's exciting to do 500, maybe even 1,000 genes. Again, we study RNA because it's easy, like it's a lot of power in it, but ultimately, biology is actually lives in the proteins and really the ability to image proteins. And so with this platform here and our legacy version, we have an amazing publication record. A look at all the papers out there with more than 20 protein markers at once, a staggering 96% is done with mass cytometry.
Even though there are many other technologies out there, but most of them never resolve in papers. It just does not work as robustly as this does. So this is exciting. This is what we had to work with. We're now turning it into a business, which is, like, ultimately the purpose here. And so I want to turn a little bit to the financial results. We've been on quite a journey here the last six quarters. But year to date, we have 13%, excluding COVID revenue year to date between the entire portfolio. 1,000 bps , 10% increase in non-GAAP gross margin, 21% OpEx reduction, and more importantly, 58% improvement in operating cash use. And of course, we, as we just talked about, announced the SomaLogic merger recently.
Our growth right now is driven by instruments. 47% year-to-date growth in instrument. When we came in, we had a declining installed base. Now we're back growing it. So fantastic to see that strong adoption and increase in sales. We are in a CapEx-constrained environment, a challenged environment, so a little bit of a challenge here. But to the extent we're not selling instrument, we're building funnel, and these will all have a significant revenue stream in both consumables and in service. We have some year-over-year unfavorable comparison, but net-net of that one OEM supplier, all the businesses are growing in consumables too. Proteomics makes up 40% of the business, growing 22%, and our Genomics business is flat.
In proteomics, we're driven by the instrument I just talked about, the XTi, the strong sale here. We are focusing on very clear messaging. Some of which just saw, what problem are we solving? Why is it important? And then we are supporting our customers. We really bet a lot on quality and improving that. 22% year to date and healthy funnels. The genomics business is a little bit of a different story. We are flat, like 1% net of COVID year-over-year, but we went from last year, first nine months, we burned $24 million. Now, it's accretive with a small profit. Quite a turnaround. We did a really hard pivot. We took five instruments platform, went to one.
We repositioned, repriced, obviously cut OpEx very significantly and basically rehired most of a smaller and more focused sales team. Longer term, we expect growth from this through our—we have one large OEM partner now, Olink, where we make their instruments and the consumables for their low-plex Q100 Signature platform. And we're working on, in a very deliberate way, on additional relationships. So we think this is actually gonna be a nice accretive business here with time. So, really, a really good story here. On cash use, we ended with $130 million in cash.
So we went year-to-date last year, spent $71 million, $30 million year to date, 2023, and we had $130 million in cash on the balance sheet as of 30, September. So healthy position, and you can easily extrapolate and in line with our public disclosures, we are on a path to profitability or on a standalone basis here, with plenty of cash to support that. We updated our guidance here with the recent SomaLogic announcement October forward, and then again, at doing earnings to $100 million-$105 million this year and a 60% gross margin, for the year.
Line of sight to a significant step-up next year as we work through some of the legacy issues. So I want to end on just coming back to the SomaLogic deal, why it makes a lot of sense. So it's an $82 million-$85 million business this year. We are $100 million-$105 million, so healthy business approaching $200 million. So now we'll actually get to scale. Highly complementary technologies that we have in our toolbox here, and obviously a lot of infrastructure that we can leverage and consolidate. So really believe this is a compelling combination. Highly differentiated technology, very much like the mass cytometry and microfluidics are. Nobody can do what any one of these technologies can do.
Does not mean it's a good business, but it's a really good start when you're the only one that have a technology that can do this. We are in lucrative end markets. Proteomics is hard, so is spatial biology, and so there's good tailwinds in the underlying markets. Highly complementary customer mix. SomaLogic is selling into pharma mostly, and we have—we sell into pharma, but we sell to technicians, not clinicians. SomaLogic have solved that, and we actually believe a lot of synergy between the two. Obviously, get scale. We have announced $80 million in run rate synergies to be taken out between the two companies, and we will end with a little more than $500 million in cash.
So not bad at this time here, where all the companies in this space are really scrambling. Really sound combination, and we're running a proven model. We're not relying on any one technology or not a single trick pony here. We have multiple tricks, and we have a good diverse platform and a leadership team that's ready to execute. And with that, I will thank you for your attention and look forward to the questions.
Michael, maybe just kick things off with the SomaLogic deal. I had five minutes to glance at the proxy, but I think you looked at maybe a dozen different assets.
Mm-hmm.
Just talk about how you landed on SomaLogic. It's a service model. I mean, they're pivoting to being a more distributed product, but it's, it's just a different business mix. Why'd you land on that one as opposed to, you know, more of a traditional, you know, product company?
Yeah, no, great, great questions. I'll come back and answer a question, but just sort of note that the, the fact that it's a service, business, sort of the, the two assets, two sides to that, we actually think from an integration point of view, it's easier than with what we took over from Fluidigm, with 1,000 instruments in the field and poorly supported and, and a bunch of fires we had to put out. Here, this is more contained. The customer base is relatively small, a few tens of pharma companies, so it's... although it's been broadened out, so integration is easier. Service businesses don't scale as well, so that's the, the mix.
We went through a very thorough process in doing this, and while there certainly were other deals we were exploring and doing, this was certainly my number one pick, because the technology is so differentiated and so advantaged, and it's highly complementary to our immune profiling business. So you can imagine it profiling all the same proteins and all the immune cells at the same time. This should really be hand in hand. So leverage there, and then, of course, access to cash. Any other deal, we would have to get financing also. So the combination really made a lot of sense.
What are you anticipating in terms of, SomaLogic future revenue growth, profile? And, you know, the synergy number is a big number, right? I mean, the combined OpEx of the two companies is somewhere around $250 million. You're targeting to take out $80 million of that. Any more detail in terms of how folks can get comfortable that, that you're not cutting into bone or that that number is even doable?
Yeah. No, for sure. In the case we laid out, there is an imputed combined 18% growth to get to the 2026 pro forma company of $300 million from where we are today. It's a combination of all the pieces. To the $80 million, yes, it's a big number. Standard BioTools OpEx is approximately the same as revenue, about $100 million-ish, just to sort around. SomaLogic's baseline OpEx is about twice revenue. They have just with-- But if you look at the news results, they've actually already taken that burn down by, or the combined entity, by $20 million. So $60 million to go. Redundant public company costs, obviously SG&A, back office, sales leadership, infrastructure, bring us like well underway to being halfway through that target.
And then we obviously are gonna look at some cost resets and, and optimize what we're doing. I would just point you to that I actually cut R&D in the Fluidigm story, and R&D is delivering more than have ever delivered. So there's, it's not, it's not linear. It's the same way what we invest in other functions. So we're, we're very comfortable with the $80 million number, and obviously, we'll be, do our best not to cut into the bone, for sure. Yeah.
Are there revenue synergy opportunities, given the differences in customer base? Like you said, they're mostly pharma, more academic. Or is it just wait and see, you know, once the deal closes on, you know, what that opportunity level?
No. Clearly, we have a commercial global footprint. We do business in 50 countries. So there's immediate cost synergies and also sales synergies in merging the two sales forces there. And as I briefly mentioned, SomaLogic have done, like, over the last couple of years, tremendous progress in selling into pharma and selling to clinicians as opposed to technicians. So the guys that look guys and gals that are looking at design of clinical trial, mechanism of action, proving whether a drug works or not, SomaLogic technology is highly advantaged there. We believe immune profiling and our spatial solution also is a sale to clinicians, so this accelerates certainly what we're doing here.
I don't expect it to come overnight, so not wait and see, but very deliberate from day one. We will articulate sort of a joint way of selling into pharma because we really believe ultimately those are the strong drivers of growth.
You talked a lot about your spatial biology business and the Hyperion-
Mm-hmm.
System. First, what are the growth drivers, you know, big picture of, of the spatial market, you know, right now? And why are higher parameters more interesting and, and more interesting now, as opposed to some time in the past?
Yeah, so like, so spatial biology is exciting many investors compared to the next next-gen sequencing, because biology needs to be viewed in a context. It's not as simple as A, C, Gs, and Ts. It doesn't scale as easily, but nonetheless exciting. So you... But I would say that the drivers are, A, that we can now actually do these things and begin to look at many cells. You wanna look at many cell, different cell types and markers at the same time, because you need to inventory all the immune cells, you need the tumor, stromal tissue markers, and you need a few other markers.
So you can't really do biology or really learn biology with five or ten markers. You need 30 or 40 markers. Protein's much, much better to look at, and a super interesting, super interesting science. Believe it's gonna generate more for the protein folks to see. And then certainly the whole investment in immune oncology is also driving this. That when you are eliciting the immune system, and you can actually see on a slide which immune cells are elicited, and you can see what the tumor cells do to throw off the tumor. So expect a strong growth here for a while. We can target areas that nobody else can target.
For example, in neurology, like, human brain is notoriously highly autofluorescent, and it's a massive amount of tissues waiting out there to be analyzed, and we can't wait to get started.
Just on the genomics business, you tried to reposition, you know, that part of the company-
Mm.
A lot to improve profitability, de-emphasizing some parts. Just talk about, you know, I guess short-term headwinds anticipated from those actions, and what's your exposure directly to Olink, and how should we think about the Olink-Thermo combination?
Yep. So I think we navigated through a lot of the headwinds already. The remaining headwind is people moving from real-time PCR to NGS. That's a constant headwind, but we are finding new areas where we are advantaged. We love the Thermo Olink deal. It's validation of the market we are in. It's validation of the kind of multiple you'll get once you have a good business. If you check with Olink, I think they will tell you that we are very good partner for them, and we expect acceleration in that platform more than anything else once integrated into Thermo.