Please note, this conference is being recorded. Now we'll turn the call over to Erik Abdo with Investor Relations. Please proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me on the call from MaxCyte, we have Maher Masoud, President and Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Swirsky, Chief Financial Officer, and Sean Menarguez, Senior Director of Business Development. Earlier today, MaxCyte released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statements or comments made during this call may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results, or performance are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail in our SEC filings.
Except as required by applicable law, the company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. With that, I will turn the call over to Maher.
Thank you, Erik. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining MaxCyte's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. 2025 presented a challenging operating environment, but it was also a year of meaningful progress for MaxCyte. We continued to sign new strategic platform licenses, SPLs, as we call them, and support customers in advancing drugs through the clinic. We acquired SeQure Dx and successfully integrated the business into MaxCyte. We made meaningful changes to right-size spending and strategically improve our operations. Most recently, we launched a new product into ExPERT DTx that will allow us to work with developers earlier in research and development discovery. Let me start by reviewing our financial results.
Consistent with the preliminary financials we announced in January, MaxCyte reported $33 million of total revenue for the full year, which included $29.6 million of core revenue and $3.4 million of strategic platform license program-related revenue. We grew our instrument install base to 857, up from 760 at the end of 2024. Doug will discuss fourth quarter and full year performance in greater detail, but MaxCyte's results were within the range of expectations that we had updated you with in August. As previously discussed, the business was impacted by program consolidation and rationalization across some of our SPL customers, which included a 15% decline in purchases and leases from our largest customer, reorganizing manufacturing and managing inventory.
Now, let me give you a little more detail on the launch of our new ExPERT DTx, which I mentioned earlier, and I'm very excited to discuss. Even as we faced headwinds in 2025, our focus remained on innovation and leading the market with groundbreaking platforms. In February, we announced the launch of the ExPERT DTx, a modular 96-well electroporation platform designed for research and drug discovery applications. We are very excited about what this product represents for MaxCyte. The DTx enables labs to transfect primary cells and cell lines across up to 96 samples in a single 3-minute run with consistent well-to-well performance that effectively eliminates transfection as an experimental variable.
It is one of the most cost-effective 96-well electroporation solutions on the market with detachable 8-well strips that can be processed with unique parameters, giving researchers the flexibility to test different cell and cargo combinations in parallel while reducing waste. This software is also differentiated. DTx Designer allows users to design experiments remotely and upload workflows when the system is available, maximizing instrument pipeline. That is a real practical advantage for labs running multiple back-to-back experiments. What makes the DTx strategically important is its full compatibility with the rest of the ExPERT platform. A researcher can optimize a process on the DTx in discovery and transfer it directly to MaxCyte's larger- scale to electroporation instruments, the FCX or GTx, for scale-up into cGMP- compliant manufacturing without re-optimization.
That is a powerful value proposition, which allows us to engage with customers at the very earliest stage of their workflow and provide a seamless path from discovery through to the clinic and commercialization, all on a single platform, which is an epitome of a therapeutic platform. We built this product around our customers' needs, and we believe it will be added to both instrument and processing assembly, PAs, revenue in 2026 and beyond, as well as allow us to grow our SPL customers. We have built years of electroporation know-how and expertise into the DTx, and I am confident we launched a product that will allow researchers to seamlessly progress from discovery to the clinic onto our GMP ExPERT platform. Turning to our guidance.
As we enter 2026, the challenges that impacted growth in 2025 will have an impact on the first half of 2026. For our 2026 guidance, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $30 million-$32 million, consisting of $25 million-$27 million of core revenue and $5 million of SPL program-related revenue. Given the timing of purchases and leases, we expect Q1 to be our lightest quarter for core revenue with a back- half- weighted year. Including our guidance is the impact of a recent notice received from an SPL customer terminating their license for reasons unrelated to our platform's performance, along with approximately $4 million in core revenue headwind from select SPL customers, which began to impact our revenue in the second half of 2025, which I will provide further detail on.
We continue to believe that the headwinds facing our business are a result of the conservation of capital by biotechs in the cell therapy space, rationalization of customer programs in ex- vivo cell therapy, and inventory management at our largest customer, which we expect to stabilize in the second half of 2026 and grow from that new base. There has been no fundamental change in the demand for our technology and the differentiation of our technology competitively. While these short-term headwinds influenced our revenues last year and the first half of this year, we are more excited than ever of our SPL programs and the business model, which is seeing multiple programs progressing deep into the clinic and much closer potential commercialization.
As I mentioned, embedded within the core revenue guidance, we expect revenue from SPL customers, including our largest customer, to be a $4 million headwind relative to 2025. This is about half from processing assemblies and half from leases and a result of two factors. First, our largest customer reorganized their supply chain in 2025, impacting inventory management of PAs. Additionally, in 2025, due to manufacturing site reorganization, there was a reduction in leases mid-year. The full-year lease revenue for this customer has a difficult comparison to last year. Following in-depth conversations with this customer, we expect both PAs and leases will stabilize during the first half of 2026. Second, other SPL customers rationalized programs in 2025. On a net basis, we lost six SPL clinical programs during the year.
The annualized revenue from the discontinued programs, including leases and PAs, will not recur in 2026, reflecting the headwind mentioned earlier. The 12 clinical programs we currently support are across 11 SPL partners, highlighting continued investment on the lead asset. This rationalization is part of our business model, as we expect a certain number of biotech programs to discontinue. We are consistently signing new SPLs and supporting later-stage clinical programs, which will eventually be commercialized utilizing our platform. In the last 24 months, we signed 10 new SPLs and are now supporting more later-stage programs than ever. Also embedded within our core revenue guidance, we expect revenue growth from non-SPL customers, which is inclusive of growth from SeQure Dx. With regards to SPL program-related revenue, as I shared, we are guided to $5 million in 2026.
Note, we received a seven-figure milestone payment from a clinical customer that began dosing patients in a pivotal study in the first quarter. The balance of the SPL program-related revenue guidance includes approximately $2 million of expected royalty revenue from our commercial stage customer as the therapy ramps throughout the year. Despite these near-term headwinds, we are very encouraged by the medium-term opportunity for 5 clinical programs to enter pivotal studies over the next 18 months and potentially receive commercial approval in 2027 or 2028. As I mentioned, one of these 5 programs began dosing patients in its pivotal study in the first quarter of 2026, triggering the milestone payment I referenced earlier.
These programs include CTX112 from CRISPR Therapeutics for B-cell malignancies, WU-CART-007 from Wugen for hematologic malignancies, azer-cel from Imugene for hematologic malignancies, and two programs from undisclosed SPL partners. I believe up to four of these programs will be pivotal by the end of the year. Outside the wave two programs I just covered, there are another seven active clinical programs in earlier stages of development that continue to pursue FDA approval beyond 2028 and can represent meaningful core revenue and SPL program-related revenue for MaxCyte over time. Across these programs, the total milestone opportunity exceeds $110 million. To date, we have received over $30 million in total milestone payments from our SPL customers, highlighting the strength of our portfolio-based, program-driven business model. We have 31 SPL agreements, including four new SPLs in 2025.
11 SPL customers we work with have current clinical or commercial programs, while another eight are active in preclinical development, most of which we believe will become clinical SPL customers. However, 12 of the SPL agreements are with biotechs that are no longer active, having exited ex- vivo or ceased operations. The 12 that are no longer active is part of our business model, as we don't expect every SPL we sign to result in a commercial program. There is meaningful revenue opportunity from newer SPL customers advancing forward and entering the clinic. As I mentioned earlier, despite significant consolidation in 2025, SPL customers continued to advance assets on our platform, including up to six programs in late-stage preclinical development expected to enter the clinic within the next 6 to 18 months. This reflects continued expansion of our SPL portfolio beyond our current later-stage programs.
Today, we support one commercial therapy, Casgevy, and we remain very encouraged by the opportunity for the drug to continue to scale, with both Vertex and CRISPR recently reiterating Casgevy's multi-billion- dollar potential. During Vertex's most recent earnings call, they reported $116 million in Casgevy revenue for 2025, including $54 million in the fourth quarter. Vertex noted that 147 patients with sickle cell disease or transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia globally had their first cell collections in 2025, and 64 patients received Casgevy infusions, with 30 of those occurring in the fourth quarter. The momentum in patient collections is notable, and Vertex has indicated they expect a meaningful Casgevy ramp into 2026 versus 2025.
Despite the possibility of short-term quarter-to-quarter variability as the drug scales, we are optimistic about where this therapy is headed and truly believe in its transformative potential for patients around the world. To wrap up on the SPL portfolio, while any individual program carries risk, the multiple shots on goal we have across the same indications and across many different indications gives us a high probability of generating meaningful core revenue, regulatory milestones, and commercial revenues over time. We are now seeing the growth in commercial royalties starting to materialize in our revenue line. This reflects the strength of our innovative business model, and we expect this trend to continue in the coming years as additional therapies are commercialized by our SPL customers.
That conviction is what drives the decisions we make about how to operate this business. Moving to SeQure Dx, I believe 2026 is the year where SeQure opportunity starts to become more visible. We spent 2025 integrating the business, building the commercial pipeline, and working with early customers. The regulatory environment continues to evolve in our favor. Off-target risk assessment is becoming increasingly important to the FDA and other global regulatory agencies when reviewing gene-edited therapies. Our three assays, screening, nomination, and confirmation, serve both ex- vivo and in vivo developers, which means SeQure's addressable market extends well beyond our legacy electroporation customer base. We acquired a relatively new startup with an emerging and leading technology.
Despite 2025 coming in lower than expectations, we expect year-over-year growth for SeQure assay services and licenses in 2026. I remain very optimistic about SeQure's commercial potential and expect it to be a growing contributor to revenue in the years ahead. I want to underscore that we are entering 2026 with a fundamentally different cost structure than in prior years. While we are still investing at a rate that allows us to launch new products like ExPERT DTx, we have reduced annual cash burn by over $16 million and have put MaxCyte on a dramatically different spending trajectory than was planned in the prior operating model. This is the direct result of the restructuring and cost efficiencies actions we took in 2025.
We do not expect to meaningfully grow our operating expenses from here, and we see a clear path to reducing cash burn further as revenue grows, growth returns. We have a strong and healthy balance sheet, which allows us flexibility in capital allocation and investment decisions. Finally, as Priti announced, Parmeet Ahuja will be joining MaxCyte as Chief Financial Officer, succeeding Doug Swirsky, effective March 30. Parmeet brings more than two decades of finance leadership experience at Agilent Technologies, a global Life-S ciences tools company. Over his career there, he held a number of senior roles, spanning financial planning and analysis, operational finance, internal audit, and enterprise financial services. In particular, he led FP&A for Agilent's global operations and supply chain organization, and earlier, headed internal audit and SOX, working directly with the board's audit committee on risk and controls.
Parmeet also most recently led Agilent's investor relations function, giving him direct experience communicating with the investment community. We are excited about the breadth of his operational finance and governance experience as we continue to scale the company and strengthen our financial infrastructure. I want to thank Doug for his contributions to MaxCyte, and will now turn the call over to Doug to discuss our financial results. Doug?
Thank you, Maher. Total revenue for the full year was $33 million compared to $38.6 million in 2024, representing a 15% decline. Total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $7.3 million compared to $8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, representing a 16% decline. The decline in total revenue was driven by decreases in both core revenue and SPL program-related revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we reported core revenue of $6.8 million compared to $8.6 million in the comparable prior year quarter, representing a decrease of 22%. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $1.8 million compared to $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.
License revenue was $2 million compared to $2.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, and PA revenue was $2.3 million compared to $4.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year of 2025, we reported core revenue of $29.6 million compared to $32.5 million in 2024, representing a decrease of 9%. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $6.8 million compared to $7.1 million in 2024. License revenue was $8.9 million compared to $10.3 million in 2024, and PA revenue was $11.9 million compared to $14 million in 2024.
These declines were partially offset by $0.8 million of assay service revenue from the acquisition of SeQure Dx and a modest increase in other service revenue. Total revenue for SeQure Dx was $1.1 million in 2025, including assay services and licenses. Of note, 47% of our core business revenue was derived from SPL customers in 2025, which compares to 55% in 2024. The year-over-year decrease reflects the impact of program exits and reduced purchasing activity from our large commercial stage partner. SPL program-related revenue was $0.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $0.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.
For the full year, SPL program-related revenue was $3.4 million as compared to $6.1 million in 2024. As it relates to SPL program-related revenue for 2025, $2.3 million was from milestone payments and $1.2 million was from royalties. Moving down the P&L, gross margin was 78% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 74% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Excluding inventory provisions and SPL program-related revenue, non-GAAP adjusted gross margin was 78% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to non-GAAP adjusted gross margin of 84% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $16.9 million compared to $19.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Part of these savings is attributable to the cost initiatives we took in 2025, which began to materialize in Q4 of 2025. Excluding a non-cash goodwill impairment of $3.6 million in the fourth quarter, operating expenses decreased more substantially from the prior year quarter. The overall decrease in operating expenses was primarily driven by the restructuring and cost efficiency actions we took in 2025. We ended 2025 with combined total cash and cash equivalents and investments of $155.6 million and no debt.
Our very strong balance sheet positions us well moving forward, providing us with flexibility to continue to invest strategically for our business, customers and shareholders. Finally, we anticipate at least $136 million in cash equivalents and investments at the end of 2026. This represents a significant reduction in cash burn from prior years as a result of the restructuring and cost efficiency actions we took in 2025. Let me close my remarks by saying it has been a privilege to serve as MaxCyte CFO, and I know that the company is in good hands with Maher and the rest of the team, including Parmeet. Now I'll turn the call back over to Maher.
Thank you, Doug. It's been a privilege to have you as our CFO as well. I want to thank everyone in MaxCyte for their hard work and dedication in 2025. I look forward to executing on our plan in 2026. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A. Operator?
Thank you so much. As a reminder to ask a question, simply press star one one to get in the queue and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw yourself, press star one one again. One moment for our first question. Comes from the line of Dan Arias with Stifel. Please proceed.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. Maher, I got to say, I really don't understand the trajectory of the business right now. Pretty much all the commentary coming out of the Life-S ciences companies points to biopharma getting better this year, not worse. Our data points and others seem to suggest the same. When you look at the industry data that's out there on the emerging modality space, cell therapy trial activity seems to be increasing pretty significantly. Trial totals are way up. You know, I appreciate the idea that there's some hangover from a tough 2025, but why is the core business expected to decline more this year than it did last year? Are you losing share somewhere? Because if not, then it really kind of suggests that there's something else going on that we don't really fully understand.
Ultimately the question becomes: How do you grow this business again?
Yeah, I mean, thanks for that, Dan. Look, I appreciate the question and kind of the head scratcher. Really the headwinds we're facing is $4 million, and it comes down to it's not a deterioration of our business in any way. It's not a change in the fundamentals of our business in any way. We have about $4 million headwind that we face from the customers that we lost last year that's affecting our revenues this year and most of it in the first half of the year. That comes, as I mentioned, it comes pretty much half-half, half from the leases that we lost from those SPL customers that will not recur this year.
The other half really is from processing assemblies, a lot of it being from our largest customer that went through, you know, an inventory management of their current PAs that they have on stock, where they're drawing down from those PAs. The other half is just from, you know, midyear, we lost some licenses for that largest customer where they re-optimized their manufacturing footprint to go from a few manufacturing sites to a little bit less than that. That's affected our revenues for 2026. This is not a case of capital spending in the market that's affecting us. I think we saw that more so in early 2025. That's not the case here. I really believe that this is just, you know, short-term headwinds.
In terms of where we see the rest of the year and going to 2027 and 2028 then, look, if you take a step back, I believe we're gonna be supporting roughly four, you know, pivotal stage programs this year and then five in the next 12 months. We have, you know, another another behind it as well coming in right now that potentially can become pivotal as a second wave there. That bodes extremely well for 2027 and 2028. We also have the launch of the ExPERT DTx, as I mentioned. We're seeing a lot of good traction. We launched it less than a month ago. We're seeing a lot of good traction with customers and potential customers. We believe it'll be a growth driver for us in the second half and in future years.
In addition to that, we're seeing the ramp of Casgevy. I mean, as I mentioned, we expect to ramp throughout the year. That's the only commercial product we're supporting now, but we expect to support many others, especially because right now, as I mentioned, we are supporting more later stage programs than ever before then. This bodes very well for us going to the end of the year and in 2027 and 2028. We're continuing to sign new SPLs. We feel confident to continue to sign new SPLs. I feel very good about this, Dan.
Does the outlook for core revenues assume that the industry demand dynamic improves over the course of the year? Or would that be upside to what you have baked in today? In other words, is your 4Q outlook at the industry level similar to what you have today, excluding the individual customer dynamics that you referenced there?
No, I think that would be upside to what we have right now. This is not a case where we're waiting for industry dynamics to come back for us to meet our core revenue guidance. That will all be upside from here then. I mean, I feel very good where we are to meet the current guidance with the current situation we're in right now. If there's further industry demand, that's upside from what we're guiding to this year.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Dan.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed.
Good afternoon, and Doug, it's been a pleasure working with you and best of luck in your future endeavors. Maybe first up, I realize that you just launched it last month, but given that this was built, the DTx that is, was built with the customer in mind, I assume that you had been working with them or at least they had maybe trialed it or, you know, kicked the tires a little bit. What does that pipeline look like, and how quickly do you think you could see that start to trickle into the revenues?
Yeah, I mean, we see a trickling to revenues in the second half. Anytime we launch a new product, we need about a quarter or two quarters to really build up the pipeline for that product. That's any product you launch. But it's already in the hands of multiple beta users. It has been in the hands of multiple beta users. When we launched this product, we did it the right way. We actually listened to our customer needs. We, you know, we went through the typical NPD process where we understand the user criteria, the customer criteria, the allocation criteria, and we built it with that in mind.
We see this trickling starting in the second half, but we all start seeing right now, you know, some DTx is being sold right now in the first quarter before it's even over. It's obviously starting to make traction there as well, Matt, but we see significant traction happening in the second half and then in future years as well. I feel very good where it is. I mean, it really is a platform. No one has this. You can actually go from discovery all the way to cGMP with the same protocols. That is a true therapeutic platform that none of our competition has.
Got it. Maybe just a reminder, given that you've got four partners that could be, you know, going into pivotal studies this year, how do you account for or how do you factor that into your guidance? What kind of a haircut do you take on those, the potential for those milestones? Thank you.
Thanks, Matt. I mean, obviously we already received one milestone, a seven-figure milestone in Q1 this year. You can haircut it by saying there might be at least one more. We anticipate four more. One other customer is currently in pivotal about to, you know, dose patients that will result in another milestone as well. At the very least, looking at two of those four, it's more of a timing issue, right? If the remaining two don't come in this year, that's just because those milestones happen in the first quarter or, you know, very early part of next year. That's how you would haircut it. At the very least, it'll be two of those four, but potential for four this year in terms of-
Got it. Understood. Thank you.
Absolutely. Thank you, Matt.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. That comes from Matt Larew with William Blair. Please proceed.
Hi, this is Jacob on for Matt. Thanks for taking the questions here. I just wanted to touch on the SPL cadence. I don't know if you mentioned on the call or I didn't hear if you did, but typically you guide the 3-5 per year, and you typically have signed or at least announced one by the end of the first quarter. I think the last signing was in, you know, October of 2025. Biotech funding trends and, you know, kind of like the whole market environment has really been improving since then. Been pretty good. Just curious on your visibility, confidence into, you know, the cadence of SPL signings throughout 2026 and maybe what you're expecting for this year and perpetuity.
Yeah. We've guided 3-5 in the past. I mean, that's a number where, on average, that's how many we sign on any given year. We feel good about signing at least that three this year as well, in that three to five range. Three, some years we're gonna have more than that, some years we have less than that. We foresee that we'll sign the first one. I have Sean Menarguez here with me. I'm gonna put pressure on him, probably maybe in the very early second half of the year, possibly even before that. I feel very good where we are. I mean, we're still the only company that can sign these licenses, and there's a good reason for it.
What we provide is a differentiator. What we provide is really a platform that allows companies to go into clinical and commercial and scale and have a therapeutic that has the best chance of going through, you know, clinical development. We've done it with Casgevy. We've signed 31 of these agreements. We signed four last year. I feel very good this year we'll continue to sign more and do the same in the foreseeable future. The DTx also adds to that. As I mentioned earlier, the DTx begins to see that aspect of future SPL partners and customers for us. So I feel very good where we are. I mean, the timing of the Q1, we haven't signed one.
That's just a matter of timing of when we're working with our customers in the research process, not in any way indicative of, you know, of the reason why we haven't signed one, if that makes sense. I mean, I'm gonna turn it over to Sean. Sean, anything that you have to add in terms of that, where you see the signing? I'm putting pressure on you here, but you feel comfortable getting signed this year as well?
Thanks, Maher, and thanks for the question, Jacob. I do strongly believe it becomes a timing aspect as well. Just for frame of reference, you know, our research customers turn into our SPL customers from there. These can take 12-18 months depending on their development stage. It really becomes a timing aspect as well. In the last 24 months we have signed 10 SPL partners. Almost all of them are in the clinic or at least even approaching clinic from there. We look to continue to add that with at least 3 this year.
Got it. Thanks. I did just wanna quickly go back to the launch of the DTX platform. You've covered it in pretty good detail so far. It sounds like, you know, feedback, traction, early contributions, all been really well. But is there any way you could quantify what you're expecting in the back half or is it more just, you know, kinda a slow trickle and really expect material contributions in 2027?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll update throughout the year. You know, I don't think it's too early in the process. It's been a month since we launched it. It'll probably be more than a trickle in the second half. That's where you begin to see meaningful revenues in the second half and a lot more so in 2027. You know, but I'll update throughout the year. Again, we're seeing very good traction at the beta sites. We're seeing good traction even outside the U.S. You know, we've seen sales in Asia Pac as well from this. It really is something that we truly believe differentiates us from any other platform. There are similar 96-well discovery platforms out there, but none that can optimize their cGMP system like this one can.
None that can do it on a well-to-well basis with the same consistency. Really none that can do it where it's where we've built into this our 20+ years of electroporation know-how into this platform to make it streamlined for customers. I feel very, very good about this, Jacob. Very good.
Great to hear. Thanks, guys.
Absolutely.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Massaro with BTIG. Please proceed.
Yes. This is Vidyun for Mark. Thanks for taking the questions. I just had two cleanups on the 2026 guide. Just what's baked in as far as SeQure contribution? And then I also think you called out royalty contribution for the first time in the guide. Just could you speak to your level of visibility and confidence in that, just given it's from a partnered therapy? Thanks.
Yeah. On SeQure Dx, obviously, you know, we don't break it up in terms of, you know, in the guide itself, other than the fact we see material growth year-over-year for SeQure Dx in 2026 versus 2025. Significant growth there from what we had last year. Obviously, last year's, you know, revenue for SeQure Dx was a bit disappointing, but it was part of our integration of SeQure Dx. We bought an early startup. We're still integrating it. We're still ensuring that we're building out the processes there and really building out the platform there. We see meaningful growth this year, and that's part of our guide. You know, in terms of the, you know, we finally broke out the royalty revenue there.
You know, I mentioned, you know, earlier we expect approximately $2 million of revenue from commercial royalty, and that will ramp up throughout the year as that product ramps itself. We feel fairly good about that. I mean, that's based on, you know, forecasts we've seen for that product from, you know, public forecasts as well as, you know, what we're seeing so far, you know, early this quarter. We expect that $2 million over the ramp of the year to happen. We'll do that continuing from here on out. We'll continue to guide for milestones and royalty on a separate line as well.
Okay, perfect. Yeah. I just had one follow-up kind of higher level. I think you've previously mentioned the dynamic that customers are opting for in vivo therapies over ex- vivo. Could you discuss how you're seeing the opportunity for more complex edits longer term? Maybe over what timeframe would you expect that customer appetite to sort of transition to ex- vivo edits? Thanks.
Explain it a bit more. I mean, obviously we've been mentioning, we've seen this for years now. We're seeing the complexity of editing increase over the years, right? This is along the single base, you know, CAR T therapy. We're now seeing edits on 5, 6 therapies. But I guess, what are you alluding to? I just want to make sure I answer your question correctly.
Yeah. I just mean that you've talked about it being a headwind in the past that customers are opting for in vivo therapy. Just how do you see, like, the longer-term opportunity for customer appetite in ex- vivo edits?
Yeah. No, yeah, I see what you're getting. Absolutely. I mean, look, we're still a huge believer in the ex- vivo cell therapy space. In fact, we're seeing that start to return as well. You know, it's in vivo obviously has you know, we've had some headwinds there, but we're seeing it. You know, if you look at our programs, we have allogeneic programs and autologous programs all progressing. The SPLs that we're signing right now are cell therapy programs, some of which aren't even coming back, where at one point they were not in the clinic and now they're coming back to the clinic. I am a huge believer in cell therapy space. I think as these therapies become far more complex as we're seeing, it lends itself to cell therapy, especially cell therapy electroporation.
You can control the safety, you can control the dosing, the science is catching up. On top of it, our platforms were built for that. I mean, that's exactly what it is. We're seeing that come back. That's what makes me feel very good about going into the second half of the year. It makes me feel even better about 2027 and 2028. That complexity lends itself to our business and it lends itself to what we've built over the last decade. And we're seeing that traction start to come back to cell therapy.
Okay, perfect. Thanks for taking the questions.
Excellent.
Thank you. Our next question is from Matt Etoch with Stephens. Please proceed.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe to follow up on Dan and Jacob's questions. You know, we have seen funding pick up for the space in general. I just want to get your sense of what you're hearing from customers in terms of macro environment, what you're seeing in terms of demand, how should we think about the recent funding backdrop flowing through potential demand throughout FY 2026?
Yeah. Great question, Matt. You know, obviously, as I mentioned, this is not so much anymore, you know, a demand issue or a customer funding issue. This is about, you know, just from the headwinds we saw in that that affect us in Q1. This is more of a second half weighted guide that we're giving in that core revenue of $25 million-$27 million. I mean, look, we're sitting here right now, we're about one week away from quarter end. You know, this is not official guidance, but, you know, we look where we are on the core. I feel comfortable that, you know, $6 million on the core is appropriate for Q1. We see that upticking into Q2 and then being more second half weighted, and none of that's contingent upon an upside in capital spending or customer demand.
That's just where we sit right now. I feel extremely good where we are on the guide. I feel good where we are in Q1. You know, this is a case of just building back a new base from SPL customers that we lost in 2025. We found a new base here. Our largest customer, we're optimizing, you know, the processing assemblies, and they're drawing down from the inventory they have. We found a new base there. I feel very good about the year as it transpires.
I appreciate it. I'll leave it there for now. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one one to get in the queue. We have a question from Chad Wiatrowski with TD Cowen. Please proceed.
Hey, guys. Congrats, Doug. I look forward to seeing what your plans are going forward. Just one on the DTx. You've mentioned sort of
A few orders already flowing through here in the first quarter. When you're thinking about those couple of orders, but also the bolus more in the second half, are those mostly existing customers, enjoying the convenience of that? Or is this something that enables, more newer customers? How do you expect that mix to play out through the year?
Great question. I mean, obviously, the current customers are the ones that are gonna be the easiest ones to convert over because they're gonna enjoy the aspect of it, and those are the ones we're approaching. That's a great question. This is a mix of both. This is not just for new customers, it's also for current customers. It's not just for current customers, it's also for new customers. Actually, even because this is a non-viral discovery platform that now allows you to transfect primary cells, this can even be used for early discovery for the in vivo space as well. This is in essence a platform we never had before, which we're targeting our current customers now, but you know, we're prospecting for future customers as well. We're seeing that in the early placements.
Actually, one of those early placements is a new customer, it's not a current customer. It's a mix of both, but we're being very smart about it and ensuring that we're working with our current customers because that's also where you learn about some of the things you maybe have to make improvements on as anytime we launch a product. I've said it earlier, innovations are hard. We're gonna continue to innovate this product. We're gonna continue to launch new products in the coming years. This is one of many to come.
Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session, and I will pass it back to Maher Masoud for closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. I feel very good about 2026, just as good if not better about the future years and what we're building here. I look forward to talking to all of you in the next coming months on our next earnings call.
This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.