All right, great. Let's get started. I'm Puneet Souda. I cover life science tools and diagnostics, and it's my pleasure to be hosting Team Twist Bioscience. Adam Laponis joining us as CFO, and Patrick Finn, COO. Great to have you guys here.
Thank you. Great to be here.
Thank you. OK. So maybe to just kick off, you know those are release out some this morning. Maybe just let's touch on that briefly, and then a number of questions here I'm sure that you were expecting in terms of NIH, China, and a couple of other areas. But let's talk about the release this morning briefly. What does that entail? What does that mean for dynamic pricing?
Sure. Happy to chat through it. So this morning we announced that all academic customers temporarily will be offering our Express Genes timelines with zero premium dollars on a temporary basis. It really stems from you know us seeing this as an opportunity to take share in the marketplace. And I hit on the fact that Twist, with thousands of customers and hundreds of SKUs, we have a unique moment in time here where our ability to engage with those customers in a time of need and be there for them, we think is an opportunity long term for us to drive some pretty meaningful share growth, similar to what we saw when biotech funding over the last three years has been under a lot of pressure. We use that as an opportunity to gain significant amounts of share in those customers as well.
It's good for the customers too, in times of uncertainty. It just removes doubt, takes any hesitation out of their decision making. Quite frankly, we optimize for volume. Volume matters for us. And I think also, isn't it wonderful to get onto the Twist platform as soon as reasonably possible and leverage our scale? So I think it's a very nice introductory offer. Should it be well received?
So just following up on that, I mean, obviously you had a solid Q1 print. You had across NGS and SynBio. And and and you raised the guide as well. But a lot has happened since you reported on February 3. I think February 7 has been IDC cuts came out, a lot of turbulence in the market. You're taking steps to address some of that from as much as you can from your end. Maybe just help us give us a sense of what you're seeing in terms of customer behavior in the field, in terms of both the consumables and the way folks order oligos and probes.
Yeah. I mean, it's business as usual for us. I think we're a tremendously diverse product offering, a diverse customer base. We're not a one-stop shop. And quite frankly, until we have 100.0% market share, then we should always be able to execute into a market opportunity. So that' s the expectation of the sales team. Obviously, I study that every week. Quite frankly, I study it daily. And then right now, it's to me, it's business as usual. We continue to execute forward. As times are tough, our value proposition resonates even stronger. Quite frankly, we've played through some tough markets over the last few years. A simple value of your constrained budget setting, then more shots on goal, better value for your budget is a very, very strong value proposition. So we will steam into the opportunity as usual.
I think the turbulence, or the perception of turbulence, is good for us. But a faster responding team, our knowledge of customer base, need product starts at the top, goes all the way right down into the field. And you know we see opportunity in that.
Adam, do you want to add to that?
No, I think you said it well. I just quantitatively, we've been talking about it. You know the opportunity, the academic business for Twist, we say it's about 19% of our overall business. The U.S. is a little less than half of it. And really, what we've been seeing is stability in that U.S. academic order trends. So we have not seen it. We've seen it be robust and stable. And I think, as Patty mentioned it, the nimbleness of the team, it truly does. The folks on the ground, they do see this. And I see it as well as an opportunity to take share and be there for our customers.
Got it. And just given you know the rest of the turbulence in the market in terms of policies around clean energy and whatnot, just wondering if you're seeing any impact on the SynBio side of the business, which might not necessarily be academic.
Yeah. If you look at the mix, health care is a big segment for us. Quite frankly, our value proposition, again, into discovery is incredibly strong. So we're not really feeling any effect of that. I think health care is a major driver. Quite frankly, I expect to see continued growth there.
Got it. OK. So when we look at you know another factor here is tariffs. There is you have a competitor that is serving from China. Are you starting to see any share shift there in the market as a result?
Yeah. We have a couple of competitors that ship from China. Ultimately, I'll borrow Emily's phrase, we're going to win by winning. What she's meaning there is you just have to have the best product to serve your customer effectively and build that long-term relationship. I think the noise and discussion around tariffs, it's that's a tailwind for us in our business. I think you know turbulence, yeah, maybe we can see a little effect. I think the most pronounced thing that we're seeing, though, is the supply chain and the procurement discussions. You know I think a few months ago, we saw the strategic thinking shift. And I think we're starting to see some of that really starting to radiate out to the business. It's definitely front of mind to our customers, for sure.
In and in terms of, obviously, when you said the guide, the news, again, coming back to just briefly about NIH, the question that I'm still getting is, you know what happens in 2Q, 3Q? Again I don't think it's very hard to lay off, terminate graduate students and postdocs. But obviously you know, some university has taken action in terms of not hiring them. So just wondering you know if if things, again, we're hoping that they don't because they would impact the research leading research position that the U.S. has. But if it was to sort of maybe just help us understand if some of that, is there some prudence in the guide to account for an impact this year?
No, happy to talk to it. Obviously, when we put the guidance out on February 5, we did have some of the announcements in the administration already coming. So there was some thoughtfulness into it. Obviously, there's a lot of news coming out every day. And filtering the signals and the noise is never trivial. We are watching it carefully. I think in terms of the forecasting of the business and the guidance, we feel very confident in the guidance we gave. And I'm not going to reiterate guidance, but I'll remind it. So you know we did see sequential step up in Q2. We expect that to continue throughout the balance of the year. In terms of the tailwinds and headwinds, I think that what we're seeing is we're seeing more opportunity.
And I think from what the early phasing of this is, in a turbulent market, you know folks making economic decisions may not buy cars, but they still buy groceries. A $250,000 box is a lot different than a $100 gene in that regards. The science is continuing. And we are going to continue to support it.
Also, I think just to comment, for example, with students, if you go to a situation where there is budget constraint, again, what a wonderful opportunity to outsource. If there are fewer people to do or execute on cloning workflows at your lab experiment, that belongs in a Twist facility. We will deliver fast with the right economics, with a good yield. So again you know the opportunity that we see is actually quite favorable and then fits the wheelhouse of what we are very strong at, and obviously the channel to reach that customer base. So again we do see opportunity.
Shifting gears just on the you know pricing model that emerged out of Express Genes. Obviously, there's been a lot of discussion on it. What are some learnings from it? And sort of how are you thinking about looking at the rest of the portfolio with those learnings?
So just take the product portfolio to start. Maybe, Adam, you can talk about our learnings on pricing. We're definitely seeing changes in behavior. Being fast in four to six, four to seven days for a clonally perfect piece of DNA is absolutely best in class, in particular at scale. And so that' s been going well. It has been well received. We're well over a year now through launching that product. And It 's still exactly what it says on the label. You know we really do deliver on that commitment to the customer.
And we're seeing changes in behavior. I am a prior customer that would buy a non-clonal gene is buying a clonal gene. Someone who was buying a clonal gene will take it further along the workflow through to a prep. Perhaps for the antibody folks, we'll make the IgG all very, very quickly and at scale.
No one else can do it. So the fundamental unit of speed, if I can frame it that way, for us has been very, very enabling. And so you know the maker-to-buyer transition, it's tough to enumerate. You can definitely see the behaviors changing. From a pricing model standpoint.
No, I think it's not just about the genes. It's about the whole portfolio. And I think what we're seeing is a number of learnings along the way. And it's all been extremely helpful in how we navigate the business. But it's the, we early on, saw the bifurcation that, yes, there's a demand for speed both in academic and in industry customers. Yes, there's a difference in price sensitivity. And we're always going to be optimizing for gross profit dollars. We know we have some of the lowest, if not the lowest, variable cost of anybody in the market. And we see the opportunity to take volume. We will.
And I think what we're seeing is this speed is an important element for folks, not just on a product, but also in moving up the value chain in terms of, as Patty mentioned, not just doing a gene, but now I'm doing a prep or an IgG. That shift is really playing out. That former maker of an IgG who was a buyer of a gene is now a buyer of an IgG. We're seeing that play out in the marketplace. It's an opportunity for us. But it really is coming because of the speed.
OK. Got it. Since you talked about gross profit, just maybe on the gross margin side, I mean, came in healthy at, I think it was 48% for the for the quarter. And you're guiding to projecting for exiting the year at about 50% plus or 50%? Correct me if I'm wrong.
No, that's correct.
Yeah. So you know maybe maybe just how much of the margin ramp, how should we think about that? How much of that is sort of the pricing lift versus you know sort of the operating leverage and the cost control measures that you have?
No, it's a great question. I'll start. And then Patty can talk to some of the really exciting initiatives that we're driving into it. If you go back in time a year ago, we're in Q1 of fiscal 2024, we were at about 40% gross margin. It's about eight margin points of improvement in the last year. The vast majority of that is on the leverage of the volume growth in the business. We have seen tailwinds from both some of the pricing dynamics, and I'll talk to that, as well as we've also seen improvements from the continuous process improvements that our engineering team has been putting in place, which is really exciting to see that. In terms of the various factors here and how each one of them play out into it, again, it's that the volume growth is almost the entirety of it.
But it is also we're also seeing that that that constant process improvement just play out. And I think we're still in the early stages of that. So as I look to the guide and I look to the continuous improvement, we won't be happy as it starts with the four. I won't be happy when it starts with the five either. And so we'll keep on marching.
I'll pledge for his lack of happiness, too. He's quite a tough taskmaster on that one. Some just nice execution from the team. If you think about the evolution of our business, going back in time, we landed a technology. And the methods that we had surrounding the technology were kind of gold-plated. Just do not take any risk around supply chain. Get the method right. As we have scaled, got product right, started to you know obviously go through the whole, make stuff, sell stuff, ship stuff, support the customer, you know that that has proceeded well. That was given us a chance to look at these methods and processes and go back and really turn the dials on them, really trying to optimize the cost of each process. So plastic tips was a good example.
And the last quarter that we talked about, we talked about improvements to writer chemistry that expands capacity, brings some of the costs down. That's been well executed now as we're growing into a more slightly more mature company. And I think the third part that's very understated, it's a culture shift. You know if you think about, again, that the technology, or landing the technology is a very, very different collection of skills and culture versus driving margin into your business. And just just simple little measurements, the number of yellow, green, black belts we've got in the organization now that we celebrate and work hard on raising awareness when we do get a CPI that works and drive margin. Now there's 1,000 twisters. And each of the operators that are thinking about, OK, what are we doing? How are we doing it? How does it drive top line?
But also how are we doing that in a fiscally sensible manner? It's it's been a super cultural shift to watch. But that will continue just in the same way we grew top line in the past, we'll continue to execute on those CPIs internally.
Got it. You know before I get into the NGS part, there's a number of questions there. But at a high level, if you could, when you look at this market, obviously, you have remarkable growth in 2024. You took share in the market. It appears that way you know when we look at your peers, how they were performing. Can you talk a bit about, you know if I look at the turnaround time, which improved with the Wilsonville facility and other efforts that you put in, you put in you have dynamic pricing that you introduced in terms of quality metrics, the feedback that we're getting, quality has improved over the years.
When you look at the top three or four drivers of this market, maybe just talk to us about like which ones where you had the most impact that helped drive the share. And sort of how sustainable is that sort of going forward?
Because your competitors are also trying to introduce fast products now.
So first things first, you can't be in the clonal gene business if you don't ship a clonally perfect piece of nucleic acid. So I'd like to just make it clear that the product is wrong, you know the customer doesn't come back. So to me, the quality thing is table stakes. We've always shipped a clonally perfect piece of DNA. That product has always been right. That's NGS QC'd . Customers don't come back if you get it wrong. I think what's really helped is speed. So first of all, if I split the market into two, and I think about an enterprise account, more turns is good for everybody. Our customers are dependent upon us to deliver in a timely manner.
If you've got 20 scientists waiting for your product to fit into your pipeline, then you really that's really helpful in terms of you know how quickly they can turn their project around. We've heard where we've had large pharma customers essentially bifurcate supply chain, where we may have seen historically half of their business because we were a little bit slower. But then to the express offering is tight and consistent, then it opens up the serviceable market from an enterprise standpoint. That's been good, successful, and also allows us to move down chain or along the value chain for the customer. But the second part is, by being fast with the maintenance of quality, that's allowing us to tap into the tail of the market. And that, to me, is a very, very exciting opportunity for us in another axis.
If you look at some of the larger organizations, more mature life sciences organizations are 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 customers. We're a few thousand. So we've got approximately 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 customers to add. And we can effectively serve that customer base now that we have the speed at a point that really helps them out. And that is speed at scale. So that is one gene, 10 genes, 1,000 genes at a time. So I think we can actually grow on both axes, if we can think of it that way. If it comes to our competitors, they can't compete with our scale. And so we've got a couple, I think one that's renamed their fast gene a couple of times. It continues to struggle to take share. We don't really see it or feel it in the market.
We have another company that was very, very well known for non-clonal genes, well distributed all across the globe. They made an investment in a sort of cute 25,000 sq ft manufacturing facility to deal with their gallons and gallons of reagents and to take the competency in chemistry and come into our cage looking at making clonal DNA. So executing on a clonal workflow, coming in to take Twist, who's shipping hundreds of thousands of clonal genes per year, that is a very, very bold decision. And we welcome that competition into this landscape where we are strong. That' s that's a very good matchup for us. And quite frankly, we are not seeing it in the market. So wrong fight, wrong time, I think.
That's a good perspective there. So maybe switching gears to NGS and I would love to understand there in terms of the diagnostic customers, the liquid biopsy customers that you have. You know it's been an important driver for you. How much of that opportunity is you know share taking where you get into an account and you're able to, maybe they were using some other probes, you can now they can use Twist. Or is it more simply a greenfield opportunity as the companies are trying to design their test and and you're getting spec'd into some of those? Maybe just talk to us about that. Yeah.
So I'd say it's a bit of both. And so y ou see is there's significant switching costs for the diagnostic companies to revalidate a test. So what we've seen historically where you know we were not first to marketplace, and we've come in, and we've been in the new diagnostic. And then there's good examples. I think publicly, GeneDx has said, hey, we've switched to the Twist genome, and it's been very successful for them, both financially as well as in a growth perspective. I think we have a number of other examples of customers where as they've focused on the Twist chemistry, they've seen improvements in their margin, and they've seen improvements in their performance, and that's allowed them to succeed.
So it's not so much as a replacement, but more of an augmentation in the marketplace. We're also working with customers who are developing new technologies as well.
And as they come to market, we see that that that that white space, I'll call it, of growth. So it's not one or the other. It's both, I'd say, is the way I'd articulate it.
OK. And just following up on that, in terms of you know same store sales or the orders that you're getting from some of these diagnostic customers, at least you know few quarters back, we were still seeing a bit of lumpiness from these orders, depending on how their workflows were, how they were you know much they wanted to stock and whatnot. What's the latest on that? What are you, I mean, should we continue to expect to see some lumpiness here just because of the nature of these customers?
I'm going to steal from my counterpart here. The best way to handle lumpy business, add more lumps. So as our continued to now at you know pushing 600 NGS customers, over 160 have adopted our products commercially. We're seeing the top 10 customer concentration rotation of those accounts every quarter. So part of what we're seeing now is we're oftentimes seen as the adult in the room when it comes to a supply chain perspective. And what I mean by that is those customer ramps are uncertain. We are ultimately only as successful as our customers. But we're able to be there for them with you know an end-to-end solution from everything from sample to sequencer with one throat to choke if something goes wrong. And what we find is as a forecast, it's always wrong. The question is how much and which direction.
We're going to always be there and be ready to help our customers.
That comes back to your earlier question, too, our speed, our turnaround time on scale, whether it's a small tube of reagent or if we need to ship you a keg, and that turnaround time, if you do have a forecasting mishap, and they do happen, then the platform really does scale behind the customer. So you know beautiful scale-up into commercial activities for our partners.
Let me ask briefly on the MRD side. You know given where the different number of MRD competitors, I mean, from our, you know when we talk to diagnostic companies, they're obviously competitors. The number of participants are entering this market. You know maybe just tell us, you know how do you see your share in that market today? And you know sort of how, how do you think that you know what's been the sort of growth rate or any metrics that you can provide to sort of get a sense of how how should we think about Twist being levered to an important market, which is you know $15 billion-$20 billion in size from a diagnostic end?
Great question. So for the testing market today, underpinned by PCR, that's not our play. You know we see multiple workflows coming in this space for whole genome sequencing, if that's going to be like a low-pass sequencing assay. And we have a you know we have our own ligase that really performs well in that environment, super sensitivity, leaves no molecule behind. So we have a nice offering for the whole genome play. If it's a fixed panel, and I think our reputation precedes us there, we know that the economics and the sequencing cost savings from using Twist enrichment on a fixed panel like an Exome or whatever is very, very favorable.
Then you go to the tumor informed application, where it really, truly is rip out a panel designed for the patient, which is a smaller number of probes delivered quickly to high quality, that's where our platform shines.
There is nothing like it from a competitor landscape. So as we look at the next wave and the emerging technologies, methodologies, emerging assays and customers, we you know have cautious optimism that the platform will serve for that customer base very, very well. It' s a bet we place in the future. When we talked about MRD, correctly, that is years ago when we talked about MRD. And so we are just now starting to see you know the customers come on board. It will be a wee while before we see revenue ramp, probably looking into next fiscal year before we start to see that lift. The leading indicators are very favorable.
You also talk about, I mean, there's a shift from Arrays to NGS. But you know when you think about that, that's been going on for a while. And so maybe just tell us what's new there and you know how important is that transition you know contribution?
Yeah, that's an important one. Good question. I mean, we had another conversion that we talked about in our last last call. And value proposition again continues to resonate, the economics, flexibility of the platform. That was actually in the diagnostic space. W e' re very, very pleased with the progress there. These are long sales cycle opportunities. And the technology conversion always takes takes a bit of time. We have a nice, very, very elegant product offering with Flex Prep to allow people to do massively multiplex sequencing. The key to massive multiplexing is getting the cost per assay down. And we're in early stages of testing there. I think that conversion will continue. Just it's lumpy. Get more lumps.
On the R&D side, are you seeing, I know initially you focused that product on the academic side. Again, given the challenges here, just wanted to see what you're seeing for the R&D products.
Yeah, just steady progress. We continue to sample well. It's in the early stages of adoption. It's a long sales cycle in the segments you're describing. You know the the product really does hit spec. And so we will just continue to push that product or that part of the product portfolio forward.
Got it. Maybe just talking about the roadmap a bit. At one point, you talked about you know launching GMP grade. Can you talk a little bit about where you are with that and what's the timing?
Yeah. So, you know our strength today has been in the discovery space. We're seeing more and more market pull to bring us towards a GMP grade of product. It's on our product roadmap. We continue to study. We're good students of the market. We have a few customers in mind that are really helping us define what we're trying to do. And when you know over the coming week while, we'll look to come into that space with an offering that's better on the competition. Timing to be determined.
One question that I get is the utilization of the facilities. I know that was a big question mark when things opened up. But just maybe can you just remind us where that stands?
Yeah so if you recall, last year, we did a little over just around $313 million in revenue. And what we've been saying is when we launched the Factory of the Future, we felt like in the facility in Portland, Oregon, we felt we had a visibility to have a $500 million of revenue capacity. And through some of the continuous process improvements, even the ones Patty just hit on, are great examples. The changing of the writer chemistry is a great example that we've already seen our path to $700 million of capacity with some very minor adjustments and enhancements to our processes and flows and maybe a little bit automation. The question that I am asking and the challenge that I am giving the team is, where can we go from here? And how much farther can we push that capacity?
We have not yet tapped into some underdeveloped space in our in our Oregon facility, which we've got the opportunity to lean into. But we' ve also got space or capacity within our existing space. So I think we've got a lot of headroom. And I think what we'll also see is it won't necessarily be the way it was previously. I expect to have modest capital investments over time. And will manage that accordingly so it does not have the same dynamics on margin.
Got it. I know the biopharma doesn't get much attention. But just in terms of the feedback, in terms of the you know partners, biotech funding situation, what is the latest on that side of the market? And and what's your expectation there?
Thanks. A cting manager for that group right now. It's getting quite a lot of attention. Yes. For you know the value proposition again continues to resonate. We continue to optimize the sales team and making sure that the wrong message with the right skills, competency, and support to sell well into that segment. But quite frankly, we're seeing green shoots. We're seeing signs of life in the portfolio. Obsessed. You know revenue is is is bumpy. I'm obsessed with the leading indicators of success, you know really trying to build the sales funnel, the order book. And I can of cautious optimism as we look forward. The team's executing at a high level. And I'll always demand more. And so we you know do see opportunity.
And so look, as you lead the business, I always had this question of one is data, the other is biopharma, how core it is to what Twist does.
Yeah, good one. Biopharma, it's a very relevant product offering. It bookends, really, the SynBio portfolio. Health care is our biggest growing segment. It's as simple as if you want to buy a gene from us, if you want to you know do antibody workflows, shipping your IgGs all the way through, do you want us to do a full discovery program and supply you data? And there' s a whole continuum that serves our high-growth customer base. So strategically, it's a very, very strong fit. It's just a very different sales cycle to the gene gene business, if you like.
I see. Just in terms of profitability, you're making excellent progress on the gross margin side. Maybe just talk to us. I mean, your existing peers that have you know been in the market for a long time, I mean, they're near 30% operating margins. You know so the gap is significant. Is that how, just maybe help us understand as to what your objectives are on the on the cash flow, I mean, on the operating margin line. Is that something you want to continue to drive towards? How are you thinking about targeting cash flow profitability?
No, thanks, Puneet. It's a great question. It's one we spend a lot of time talking about as a leadership team. We are very close. So close, we can practically taste it. What I will say is it's about a balancing act of continuing to be high growth and continuing to progress on that path to profitability. What we've seen over the last seven or eight quarters since launching the factory in Oregon is every quarter, we've had sequential revenue growth. And every quarter, we're seeing that sequential revenue growth, $0.75-$0.80 on the dollar of revenue growth dropping to gross margin line. And so that Incremental Gross Margin is really a reflection of that continued revenue growth. And that will continue. I think that's the starting point for how we'll get to the path of profit.
The other one is we've had a lot of discipline on the OpEx line. If you go back and look, excluding some non-cash items, you go back and look over time, it's been relatively flat for about three years. And you know we've seen significant revenue growth while being able to be very prudent with our investments in OpEx. And as a leadership team, we'll continue to do that. And we'll continue to make those prudent investment decisions to make sure with A, we can continue to drive an accelerated rate of growth, and B, we can march on that path to profitability. But I I, that 50% exiting this year, that's not the end. And from the Gross Margin, I think we can continue to expand from there as well.
OK. All right. Hopeful. That's all the time we have. Thanks, guys. Thanks for being here.
Thanks, Puneet.
Thank you.