Welcome to Twist Bioscience Fiscal 2021 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jim Thorburn, Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today for Twist Bioscience conference call to review our fiscal Earlier this afternoon, which is available at our website at www.twistbioscience.com. With me on today's call is Doctor. Emily La Prost, CEO and Co Founder of Twist.
Emily We'll begin with a review of our recent progress in Twist Businesses. I will report on our financial and operational performance, And Emily will discuss our upcoming milestones and direction. We will then open the call for questions. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. The audio portion will be archived in the Investors section of our website and will be available for 2 weeks.
During today's presentation, we will make forward looking statements within the meaning of the U. S. Federal securities laws. Forward looking statements generally relate to future events or future financial or operating performance. Our expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize and actual results and financial periods are subject to risks uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.
These risks include those set forth In the press release we issued earlier today as well as those more fully described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, The forward looking statements in this presentation are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, And we cannot at this time predict the full extent of the impact of the COVID pandemic and any resulting business or economic impact. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward looking statements, except as required by law. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer and Co Founder, Doctor. Emily Leprost.
Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. During the Q2 of fiscal 2021, we reported strong revenue and a robust order growth We've progressed across all four areas of our business: Syn Bio, NGS, Biopharma and Data Storage. While we remain in the middle of the pandemic and the landscape is evolving, we see customers returning to the lab after receiving vaccinations An incredible excitement around new applications of synbio and genomic technologies, including drug discovery, gene editing, liquid biopsy And minimal residual disease or MRV. We grew revenue to $31,200,000 for the quarter, An increase of 62% over the Q2 of 2020, with trends coming from both Syn Bio and NGS across multiple industries. Of note, no single customer accounted for a significant percentage of our revenue, indicating broad and diversified strength.
In addition, we reported $41,700,000 in order, an increase of 59% over the Q2 of fiscal 2020, a strong signal for the remainder of fiscal 2021. Now I'd like to dive into the details of our 4 business segments. Beginning with CenticBIOLG, we reported $12,900,000 in revenue, results coming in very strong at over $20,000,000 for the quarter As we continue to expand our footprint in the market across the Symbal business, we are diversifying our customer base and product mix. As well as happy customer for early access IgGs. We booked revenue of $2,400,000 For Ginkgo in the Q2, returning to a more rigorous cadence for their business.
Ginkgo continues to be an important customer for Twist And we have 1 year remaining on our contract. As we continue to grow and diversify our business, we expect that we account for less than 10% of our revenues At some point in the near future, not because they are ordering less, but simply because our revenue from a broad base of customers Continues to increase quickly. In fact, year to date, the onion accounts for about 6% of our revenue. To support our growth, we are ramping our efforts to make our Factory of the Future in Portland, Oregon, operationally in 2022. As the fact that the future comes online next year, we believe it would allow us to tap into customers who need their sensitive DNA products very quickly, An important next avenue to convert DNA makers into DNA buyers.
In addition, to further support our rapid growth, We exercise our right of first refusal to approximately double the Portland facility, need to plan for space approximately 18 to 24 months in advance and this additional square footage provide us with optionality to build out manufacturing For product lines, including DNA data storage or other emerging applications of our Synthetic DNA technology platform. Looking at the competitive landscape, these are trying to success in driving synthesis at scale. We are seeing other potential entrants. Some of you have asked about enzymatic synthesis companies specifically. And while enzymatic synthesis holds much promise For less expensive and longer teams, there is still a long way to go to make this technology commercially scalable.
That said, We do believe that it is a matter of if not when. So let me address what I believe an enzymatic company needs in order to be successful In our market segments of GeneSanthes and NGS. For GeneSanthes and NGS, the method must be high quality Unable to make long pieces of DNA beginning with low cost building blocks and error rates that are significantly lower than for Sanofi chemistry. There needs to be a high speed of incorporation of bases and no sequence specific error modes. To be truly green, There should be no organic solvents in the production of building blocks or their assemblies.
It is critical that the method incorporates Quality control and even more importantly, bio security screening of all sequences. Indeed, The customer should be able to get a final DNA needed without needing to do the onerous QC themselves. This is a tall order. That's because gene synthesis requires delivering perfect DNA and so high cost, low quality DNA just won't get it. For the near term, we believe that classic phosphorylide chemistry remains a strong method of scalability in synthesis for the applications that we serve.
Turning to Genomics and targeted MDS. We reported $17,000,000 in revenue and $18,600,000 in order for the quarter. We continue to work with an increasing number of customers, adapting our technology into their products with several key customer wins. We announced 3 new customers specific to APAC. A geography we believe holds untapped potential for our NGS solutions.
We launched our NGS methylation detection system in February to detect varied methylation patterns that plays a key role in many biological This product offers customers a complete workflow solution that can be quickly customized for their specific needs. It includes New England Biolabs sample preparation together with our target management system for a robust end to end workflow. And already, We are hearing positive results from customers. We are committed to developing the most robust, flexible solutions for our customers To ensure that they can run samples they want with the greatest uniformity. In addition to our partnerships with NAB For Methylation Systems, we announced a collaboration with Watchmaker Genomics, an innovative company applying advanced enzyme engineering to new applications By adding different partners for laboratory preparation, we can create tailor made solutions for our customers For a wide array of applications, while at the same time mitigating supply chain dependencies.
Thank you, Werner. Together with Bioshock, we received emergency use authorization from the FDA for our FARS CoV-two next generation sequencing assay. Our assay has the ability to analyze the entire RNA viral sequence of SARS CoV-two to determine the presence or absence of the virus, As well as the researchers only report that analyzes the sequence to detect genetic variants and lineages of SARS CoV-two. While we are shifting months into the pandemic, we believe SARS-twenty two will remain with us for some time. As new variants continues to accumulate, We believe that it would be very important to enable our customers to routinely sequence clinical samples and track science as they emerge.
Importantly, Twist as an organization learned a great deal by applying for and receiving the authorization, validating our creative management system And building relationships with the FDA that will guide product development across our businesses. We also launched several new synthetic RNA controls, 4 new variants of COVID first identified in Brazil and South Africa. Revenue from controls, while not material, Has been consistent and some new customers coming to Twist to buy controls return to buy additional products, often Our MGS customer panel, so this is a great source of new customer source. For biopharma, we reported 2.6 $1,000,000 in order and $1,300,000 in revenue. Revenue only includes a portion of the upfront or license fees associated with our partnership As we recognize revenue over the course of each project, we announced partnerships with Stanford Innovative Medicines Accelerator As well as Kiowa, Kirin and Pure Biologics.
And we now have 21 partners, many of whom have multiple programs ongoing at risk. Currently, we are advancing 25 active programs, 17 of which has milestones and or royalties associated with them. An additional 9 programs are complete and now in the hands of our customers. We published our 1st peer reviewed paper on Twist Generative And we identified our compound from our GPCI library and this was the 1st internal target we advanced to demonstrate proof of concept The publication details our positive preclinical results
for a
panel of 13 high affinity GLP-1R targeting antagonist antibodies generated from our GPT-three hundred millimeters array as well as an agonist antibody TB59-two. These data demonstrate the power of our antibody libraries to generate potent antibodies In a wide range of clinical indications. For EDORA 2A, our top leads have been tested in a humanized tumor model. We found that our antibodies increased T cell proliferation in the tumor and as a result, tumor volume decreased. We are eager to see a Twist compound in each clinical trial and are pursuing many path forward.
We're working with multiple partners in multiple programs as well as selecting our own antibodies to advance through a preclinical early stage for out licensing. We have many shots ongoing. During the quarter, we exercised our options to purchase all rights to our GPCR library And with antibody optimization software, both developed in collaboration with Distributed Bio. We began working with Distributed Biopak in 2016 before 2Discovery existed. We now make To benefit both our partners and our internal antibody discovery efforts.
Moving to data storage. We continue to make solid progress on our engineering roadmap, driving towards $100 per terabyte. We shared last quarter that we had the 1 Micron chip in hand. This quarter, our team was able to synthesize and further derisk our approach to DNA data storage. While there is still more work to do on the 1 Micron chip, This is truly an exciting attempt and we remain encouraged and engaged in the continued drive for increased density.
The DNA Data Storage Alliance is now 29 members strong and soon we'll be releasing a white paper on the state of DNA Data Storage as well as opportunities ahead. As we talk to potential users of data storage, several factors are clear. 1st, There's a growing appreciation for alternative methods of storage. 2nd, initially V and A will be Use as a supplemental data storage system to augment current storage capabilities. Working through the alliance, we will ensure that all IT leaders, Not just the visionary ones are ready to conduct pilot studies when the solution is available.
And third, We found that cultural preservation, including TV and movie production archives and industrial data storage required For regulatory reasons, we'll be the first applications of DNA data storage. This is a very large market and many other opportunities quickly will be followed. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Jim to review our financial results for the quarter.
All right. Thank you, Emily. As Emily noted, we continue to prove out the Power of our platform And had another very robust quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $31,200,000 up sequentially 11% And year over year, 62%. Orders were $41,700,000 up sequentially by 24% And year over year 69%, gross margin for the 2nd quarter was 39%, And we shipped to approximately 1700 customers in the quarter and 2,100 customers year to date.
And we concluded the quarter with cash and short term investments of approximately $555,000,000 Now, I'll provide more details on orders for the 2nd quarter. NGS orders for the 2nd quarter were 18 point 1,000,000 as compared to $16,700,000 in our quarter ended December 31, 2020, With a 90% year on year growth, which reflects the increased adoption and increasing number of NGS applications. During the quarter, we also received orders from approximately 700 NGS customers and customers with the top 10 accounts Placed orders of approximately $8,000,000 as we continue to expand the breadth of our customer footprint. Our pipeline for larger opportunities continues to scale and we're now tracking 170 accounts, up from 160 accounts we noted Quarter. Now turning to synbio.
Our synbio orders, which includes Ginkgo, genes, DNA preps, IgG, libraries and oligo pools increased to $20,400,000 in the 2nd quarter And that's up from $14,100,000 in March 2020 quarter. Our Syn Bio non Gingko business continues Scale and orders rose to $16,300,000 and that's representing sequential growth of approximately 34% And 46% year over year growth, which highlights we continue to make progress in penetrating the market and expanding our portfolio. Our jeans business continues to be strong as total jeans orders grew to approximately $15,700,000 From $12,200,000 in the previous quarter, non ginkgo jeans orders for the quarter were 11,500,000 And that's up from $8,700,000 in the quarter 1, with key segments contributing to our growth, including Pharma, Academic And Industrial segments, all of good pools rose again in the quarter to $2,400,000 with strong Order demand largely coming from a pickup in the academic segment and gene therapy applications. Biopharma orders in the quarter were $2,600,000 for our antibody discovery activities. And as noted earlier, we have 21 partners With 25 active programs, with 17 of which have milestones and or royalties.
In summary, we provide orders not to directly translate into revenue, but to provide a trend line for each Product Group. We anticipate both NGS and GECO orders will fluctuate quarter to quarter. Now let me cover revenue for the quarter. Revenue was $31,200,000 and that's a growth of 62% year over year A sequential increase to 11%. NGS product revenue climbed to $17,000,000 for the quarter as compared to $7,700,000 for the same quarter in Year over year growth is approximately 120%, with sequential growth of 10%.
Our Syn Bio product revenue for the quarter was $12,900,000 and that's up sequentially from $11,500,000 last quarter, An increase from $11,000,000 in Q2 FY 2020. Ginkgo revenue in the quarter was 2 point $4,000,000 and our outlook for Ginkgo revenue remains the same as our previous guidance of $11,000,000 to $12,000,000 for the fiscal year. Q2 genes revenue was $9,200,000 essentially flat with Q1 and also flat with Q2 FY 2020. During the quarter, we shipped approximately 90,000 genes as compared to 84,000 in the previous quarter, With the growth in genes reflecting the success of our clonal ready gene fragments, which were launched in December 2020. Gene's revenue excluding Ginkgo was $6,800,000 in the quarter as compared to $5,100,000 in the same quarter last year.
Biopharma, our revenue in the quarter is $1,300,000 and that reflects upfront services on our antibody discovery project activities, including piling, screening and high throughput IgG purification. Now quickly touching the regions. Americas revenue was $18,600,000 as compared to $12,100,000 for the same period last year. EMEA continues to grow strongly with quarter 2 revenue of $10,000,000 versus $6,200,000 in the same period last year, and EMEA now accounts for Approximately 32% of our worldwide business. APAC revenue was 2,700,000 versus $900,000 and we're seeing a strong rebound in Asia this year.
In terms of Segments, healthcare is now our largest segment and accounts for 53% of our business with revenue of $16,600,000 in quarter 2 and that's compared to $5,800,000 in Q2 last year. Industrial Chemicals was $8,700,000 in Q2 versus $7,500,000 in Q2 FY 2020. Academic revenue in fiscal Q2 was $5,600,000 versus $5,500,000 And as we noted earlier, Saw strong order pickup in the academic sector this quarter. Now moving down to P and L. Gross margin Was $12,200,000 or 39 percent of revenue as compared to 30% in quarter 2 last year.
This increase in margin reflects the impact of scaling our revenue, leveraging our fixed costs and the benefit of higher mix of NGS products. Our operating expenses, excluding the cost of revenues for the 2nd quarter increased to approximately 50,200,000 R and D for the quarter was $15,800,000 compared to $10,600,000 in the Q2 of FY 2020 And $14,000,000 in quarter 1 of FY 2021. Just a reminder, in quarter 1 of this year, We had $1,100,000 of spend offset for IARPA and the confidential program. Major contributors to the year over year growth in R and D were $1,400,000 investment in data storage, dollars 1,400,000 investment in biopharma And our core R and D increased by $1,100,000 SG and A increased to $34,400,000 From $28,800,000 in quarter 1, and that's primarily due to higher stock based comp and increased investment in our commercial organization. Our loss from operations for the quarter was $38,000,000 an increase from $32,800,000 in the 1st quarter, And that's primarily due to the growth in stock based compensation.
Note the loss from operations in Q2 It includes stock based comp $11,700,000 $2,400,000 depreciation. CapEx was approximately $8,600,000 in the quarter, which brings total year to date CapEx of approximately $12,000,000 We ended the quarter with cash and short term investments of approximately 5 55,000,000 I'll briefly provide an update to our financial guidance for fiscal 2021. We had a very robust start to the fiscal year and at the same time there remains uncertainty associated with the pandemic. Although we have successfully navigated many challenges throughout the pandemic, we are experiencing headwinds from a key supplier for one of our products. We're working actively to mitigate this, although it does remain a concern.
We've seen strong orders in the quarter and we're increasing our guidance from the prior guidance of 110 to 118 221,000,000 to 129,000,000 for fiscal year 2021. Ginkgo revenue is estimated to be approximately 11,000,000 to 12,000,000 Non gainful Syn Bio $43,000,000 to $46,000,000 NGS revenue estimated to be $62,000,000 to 66,000,000 And biopharma estimates to be approximately $5,000,000 Our gross margin range for the year is now expected to be 36% to 38 as compared to 32% to 34% in our last guidance. Operating expense, which includes R and D And SG and A is expected to be approximately $192,000,000 for the year as compared to $182,000,000 in our prior guidance, which reflects higher stock based comp charges and investment in our R and D and sales and marketing organizations to support growth in FY 2022. Our R and D guidance for the year is approximately $66,000,000 up from $60,000,000 in our last guidance And that's due to additional investment in data storage and biopharma investments. Our net loss The year is expected to be in the range of $144,000,000 to $150,000,000 And stock based comp, which Included is approximately $33,000,000 and depreciation is $10,000,000 CapEx for the year is $40,000,000 And that's up from $30,000,000 which includes $16,000,000 in CapEx for our Portland expansion.
Due to equipment lead times being extended, We're placing orders ahead of original plan. In summary, we had a solid first half to fiscal 2021. We increased our guidance for the year. We're enjoying broad demand from our customer base. Our new products are being well received, And we're investing in our platform as we continue to tap into new revenue streams.
And with that, I'll now turn the call back to Emily.
Thank you, Jim. In conclusion, in the first half of our fiscal year, we reported almost $60,000,000 in revenue with strong momentum Heading into the second half of the year. Looking forward, for synbio, we expect continued growth and diversification of our revenue stream, Continued commercial ramp for clonal ready gene fragments and DNA prep as well as production ramp for IgG. We also expect rollout of our B2B solutions to allow us to capture specific multi sided institutions And an ongoing preparation of the infrastructure and software platform for our factory of the future to enable strong growth in 2022 and beyond. For NGS, we expect continued revenue growth and customer ramping production, the technical addition of BMI and continued conversion of For biopharma, we intend to sign additional partnerships and add programs With the majority generating milestones and royalties.
In addition, we will continue to advance our internal We will continue to drive our engineering roadmap towards further monetization, execute on the IAPA contract and pave the way for market adoption of this new With that, let's open up the call for questions. Operator?
Thank you. And our first question coming from the line of Doug Schenkel with Cowen. Your line is open.
Hi. This is Elmer for Doug. And thanks for taking my question. I have one in competitive landscape and then I will ask a follow-up question. There are a number of companies That seem to be emerging into the market with the concept of taking a more distributed model for oligos and gene synthesis.
What is your view on that? Specifically, are they a competitive, be it complementary or none of the above? And at a higher level, is the distributor model attractive? And how are you positioning for us?
Thank you. That's a great question. Right now, the distributing model It's for markets that are adjacent to ours because the quality is just not there enough To be in the market that we serve of GeneSanthesis and Ensign Bio. So for instance, as a comparison, you can buy an oligo for $0.03 on our website Well, as a distribution model, as oligos at $50 per oligos, so it's kind of A very different product offering. And then the quality that we have, we have extremely high quality and we can make all of those up to So at this point, what we see is that We don't have a demand from our customers we don't hear a demand from our customers to make DNA In the labs, what we hear is people want high quality, they want very low price and they want Steve, and we think we're very well suited to deliver that.
But at the same time, we're a student of the market and our Platform is agnostic to the chemistry and if there was a better chemistry, we'll be very happy to deploy it on our platforms.
That's very helpful. Thank you. And then for my follow-up, I'd like to ask a question on the guidance. The increase And gross margin, is that due to higher share of NGS markets like Q2 or is there something else driving the upside Thank
you. Yes. No, the increase in gross margin guidance is a higher share of NGS, plus We've grown we've increased our overall guidance from $110,000,000 to $118,000,000 up to $120,000,000 1 to 129, so we're leveraging our fixed costs. So it's a combination of increased revenue plus
And our next question coming from the line of Catherine Schulte with Baird. Your line is open.
This is Tom on for Catherine. Thanks for taking the questions. First one, I want to touch on the core academic customer. Seems like from order trends rather that activity levels have improved, but just wanted to get a sense for what you saw in the quarter? And then specifically, if there's any geographic dynamics to call out here, given we've heard U.
S. Has sort of lagged, from a recovery standpoint Here.
So good question. The dynamics in the quarter were interesting. January started off A little bit weaker. I mean, if you go back to January with vaccine rollout, which is starting. As the quarter progressed, We saw increasing orders, so academic sector recover Significantly from previous trends, we had a good quarter in Asia.
Revenue was up about $2,700,000 so almost 3x what we saw last year. Europe was very strong. So we're doing well in all regions. The products are obviously Well received by our customers. So number of customers actually increased to 1700.
So over the last year, customer base has grown. We've seen steady increase in bookings. I mean bookings were over 41,000,000 Which just highlights the strength of the portfolio. Healthcare was up, Industrial Biotech was doing Extremely well. And what's noticeable, we're doing well excluding our Gingko business.
So we continue to broaden out the platform.
Great. Thanks. And as a follow-up, appreciate the color on expectations around some additional Biopharma partnership seems like the funnel is strong. Just want to get a sense for expectations as to Development timelines and budgets, just wondering if those are fairly consistent to any sort of COVID uncertainty at this point, if biopharma is Sort of operating in a new normal and you would expect those budgets to be fairly locked in at this point.
You're asking in terms of our spending budget or budget for our customers?
Yes, the customer spending budgets as well as sort of their development timelines. Yes.
So in biopharma, We made a big push in that area over the last few quarters, both with the biopharma team, but discovering Antibody and optimizing them for partners. You can see that the number of partners is growing, the number of Program is going, so that's going well. And then we also made a push on synbio By launching our IgG product, so Alsaida, we're doing really well in pharma. COVID It has been useful to us, even though it's been pretty bad for society, it's been useful because We did our own discovery program against COVID and we were able to show that not only we can discover And so it is against hard to drug targets, but so we can do it very fast. And so Basically, the portfolio that we have now for biopharma is really strong and Very much in line with what they need.
And so we can say that the Funnel is very strong and Yes. Our response to COVID actually has provided more of a headwind than a headwind.
Question coming from the line of Tycho Peterson with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. This is Casey on for Tycho. Can you elaborate a little bit on the academic markets rebound given Illumina's commentary? And then maybe how that can serve as upside to NGS numbers? I know you guys raised Your NGS guidance for during the full year guidance, but is there any upside there from academic recovery?
Yes. The academic Sector was up by, I would say, roughly 20% in terms of orders, Which is good in terms of positioning us well for a second half. The not significant in terms of impact on NGS. Most of the academic pickup relates to, although we don't break it out, is synbio. The good news is it did pick up.
We didn't see a significant drop off in academic over the last year, but it's a good early Indicator recovery there. And in terms of NGS, with very strong First half in NGS. And we've upped our guidance even though we have one supplier that we're working with Who's constrained in terms of providing us a product in the short term, but we feel good in terms of where we're at, Strong orders, broad customer base adoption. And we believe that the product I mean, The increasing number of large accounts working with us increased again. And we continue to be very optimistic and bullish in terms of where we can take the business, we are as you probably saw, we increased our investment in Portland And that's in anticipation of positioning us for strong growth in 2022, 2023.
Got you. And then maybe just, you've talked previously about how COVID isn't really material to the business. I'm just wondering if Anything has changed there regarding the new variants, research into variant spread and so forth?
Hello, Silas. Thank you. So we have students of The variance, as you may remember, we now a year ago in March, we launched our first COVID test through NGS in order to enable scientists to Read the entire virus sequence in order to detect variants and to understand lineages. So we had, I was anticipating a year ago that that science would be important. As science has emerged, We have launched new positive control against and I think now we have more than 15 I have my hands available on our website.
And then on the antibody side, we've tested the potency of our We can different volumes. So definitely, volumes is top of mind, and We're offering the tools to our customers to help in the Detection and study of those lines.
Got you. Thank you.
And our next question coming from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore. Line is open.
Hey, guys. Congrats on a good front here and thanks for taking my question. I had 3 questions. Jim, that supply headwind that you mentioned, is that baked into the guidance? I guess, Asking the question the other way, without the supply headwind, would the revenue guide been higher?
Vijay, I'd love your questions. Yes, the supply headwind is baked into the guidance. We're working with the supplier. We have a really good relationship with the supplier. We're working this week to week And we'll give an update on our next earnings call.
And we had a very strong first half. So I mean, when we're growing as rapidly As we are we've been anticipating supply issues. We did inventory over the last year. It's just we've seen significant increase in demand and we'll work it out. And we did Include bake it into the guidance.
And as we work on resolving it, we'll give an update on the next earnings call. Any
I guess, any way to quantify, Jim? I'm looking at your NGS guidance. You guys did about 120% growth for first half. The annual guide at the high end, I think it's baking in a 50% growth. So Perhaps, is that where it's hitting you guys on the NGS side?
Any way to quantify it?
Yes. I mean, on the NGS side, it is impacting us on NGS side. And although we did increase guidance, It's we wanted to note that we do have a headwind there. We will give an update on the next earnings call. We are obviously working And we'll keep you posted.
Got you.
And then Emily, one for I missed the part. I think you made some comments on data storage having reached an important milestone. Maybe if you could just simplify it in terms of where we are towards the end goal. I think You guys had to get to certain cost metrics. So where we are in the journey and what was this update?
If you could flush it out, that will be helpful.
Yes, happy to do it, Vijay. So as you remember, the goal is To get to a price point of $100 per terabyte. And so to do that, we need to be able to make DNA And so we started our platform at 50 microns. Last year, we proved that we were able to shrink Down to 10 microns. And right now, we are Working on the 1 Micron chip.
And let me rephrase just one thing I misspoke. The goal is to get to 150 nanometer. So we want to go to 150 nanometer. So right now, we've gone from 50 micron To 10 micron, we have the 1 micron chip in hand. And the milestone that we achieved This quarter is that we were able to synthesize 200 base pair oligos on that chip.
And so maybe a Few words on what that chip looks like. The features are 1 micron away from each other. The pitch is 1 micron and the dimension of the features is 300 nanometers. So we're and so it was quite an achievement to get there. We believe that it's the longest DNA made on the smallest feature of silicon ever.
So it's We are not finished with the 1 Micron chip. There's a few more experiments that we have to do and a Few more milestone we need to reach around speed of synthesis, quality and cost, But definitely a huge step for us to be able to make 200 base pair oligos and they are mixed base. Once we are done with the 1 micron chip, next would be to design and build the next chip They're going to get us to 150 micron. So we are not I have the goal yet for $100 per terabyte, but it's definitely a very another very strong step
Our next question coming from the line of Puneet Souda with SVB Leerink. Your line is open.
Yes. Hi, Emily, Jim. First question, maybe this was covered briefly a little bit. In terms of the guidance raise, Can you just provide contribution that was is that NGS largely driven and anything you can provide there on The customer despite the headwind that you have here, just trying to get a sense of is that in liquid biopsy or In other NGS application?
So just trying to summarize the question there. So in terms of compared to guidance, Last quarter's guidance, we've increased 110 so let me frame it 110 to 118 up to 121 to 129. We've increased NGS From approximately 54% to 58% up to 63% to 67%. So in terms of the Headwind we are seeing or experiencing, we're working through that. We've included that In the guidance, recognizing that we have been impacted, we're working on resolving that.
And It's a week to week issue we're working on with our partner. And we'll give an update on the next earnings call. But we've had very strong growth. We don't break it out into liquid biopsy, but I would just highlight the number of large customers We're dealing with Puneet. It has increased again and we're now 170 With 65 having adopted, so seeing really good strong trends in terms of NGS.
In fact, we're seeing strong trends across all our businesses. It's nice to see the academic segment rebound, which is up roughly about 20% in orders. And We believe we're really well positioned for the second half of this year. In addition to that, probably saw we increased our CapEx For the year, that's in anticipation of ramping up Portland next year. And we did increase our footprint Portland, we saw that as a very cost effective option for expansion in the future.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks for summarizing that. In terms of the Assays that are in use in liquid biopsy, just wanted to get in terms of getting specked into those assays, Any early indications as to sort of where you think those initial trials are headed? How confident are you that you will get be getting specked into these assays as they reach into larger trials and potentially commercialized.
And then if I could ask also on the biopharma front. Obviously, generally, the outsourcing trend is increasing here in discovery. What's your expectation here sort of longer term in order to get involved in larger number of trials? And also if there is any in the near term, do you expect any trial enrolled Getting into a Phase I trial, any updates there that would be super helpful. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Puneet. So maybe starting by the last question around biopharma. Yes, our funnel is very strong around biopharma. There is efficiently It's clear that there is a big interest in what we offer on discovery and optimization because Our antibodies are fully demand and demand derived on day 1.
As far as when will the first Twist antibody go into clinic, We don't have a clear timing on that because our partners are striving to do that. We mentioned on the call that we have 9 programs that are out of our hands, meaning that another partner is in charge of the timing. And so it's just a question of time until A3 antibody is in the clinic. But to be clear, Our partners will be doing the work. In terms of the liquid biopsy question, We are definitely in a number of Using Twist exclusively, we can't discuss other customers that have not mentioned Twist.
But we are in the past, we have won more than our Fair share of bake offs and we can see in the revenues That keeps coming quarter over quarter after quarter that those liquid biopsy companies are burning cells, burning DNA To do their work of validating Product validating their assay in anticipation of a commercial launch. So that's why we are Quite bullish on the long term prospect of the NGS pipeline because as those products go commercial, that should
I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to I'll turn the call back over to Emilie Lipris for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, operator. So we've had a very strong fiscal year with momentum moving into the remainder of the year. We see that our products resonate with our customers, our addressable market continue We look forward to sharing with you our progress in the months ahead. And I'd like to thank you very much for your time today.