Thanks, everyone, for joining us. My name is Mason Carrico. I'm the Diagnostics and Genomics Analyst at Stephens. Today, we have Justin McAnear and Cassie Corneau of 10x Genomics with us. If at any point, anyone from the audience has questions, feel free to jump in and ask away. But we'll start with the quarter. You beat and raised in a challenging environment. What are some of the key takeaways for investors to keep top of mind from the call?
Great. Well, hey, first off, thanks for inviting us today. Very happy, very happy to be here today. You know, in thinking about Q3, you're right. It was, it was a solid quarter. We're proud of what the team accomplished this past quarter. As far as key takeaways, here's, here's three things that we'd like to convey. The first is that we saw an acceleration of Xenium this quarter. Our approach in prioritizing sensitivity, specificity, and throughput with fixed and customizable panels is really resonating with customers. We're seeing the first head-to-head studies come out, where customers are generating their own data on commercially available instruments in their own labs, and they're comparing that across platforms, and Xenium is doing extremely well in those, in those studies.
And, as far as commercially, we've put the whole of company effort behind ramping Xenium this quarter, and it was our number one priority, and the team delivered. Operationally, we've been able to increase our manufacturing capability both on the supply chain side, and in contract and internal manufacturing. And then, you know, so overall, definitely a shift in the competitive landscape in Xenium, and a shift in our own capabilities to deliver against that command. Second key takeaway is we shared our philosophy on our three-platform view, where it's not about any one particular platform, but it's the sum of the parts. And we are well on our way to becoming a multi-platform company, basically fueling the next revolution in biology.
And then last, just talking about Chromium. Chromium still remains largely a regional story, with the impacts that we saw in APAC, driven by China. But AMR and EMEA weren't where we wanted them to be this quarter. And that's not surprising, given the focus that we put on Xenium and making that the top priority. But we'd like to find more balance in the future, and the team is going to do that. Yeah, and so those are the three key takeaways that we'd like to leave with you.
Perfect. So yeah, let's move to Xenium here. Demand has obviously been really strong. You're manufacturing constrained, you're working to scale that up. You've also talked about real-world use and word of mouth driving incremental demand. But with any, you know, new product, there's pent-up demand that drives strong initial placements after the launch, and at some point, placements do end up stepping down. So taking all of that into account, how should we be thinking about the Xenium ramp going forward? Do you anticipate placements moderating at some point next year?
Yeah, well, I think going back to the beginning of the question, yeah, you're right. You know, we've, we've been able to scale really well this quarter. But just keep in mind, too, that don't take anything for granted. We certainly don't take anything for granted. There's always challenges that come up, you know, every day, every week, the team has been dealing with either on the supply chain side, you know, getting, you know, parts that don't meet the quality that they were spec'd out to and having to wait for a new batch, or something at the contract manufacturer, or something internal. And so, you know, those risks have always been there, and those risks remain.
You know, production is not yet stable, you know, but the team has been performing well, and they've been doing a great job on these challenges when these challenges come up. As far as looking forward, I think what you said is generally how launches go. There is some kind of bolus of demand. There's a spike at the beginning, and then supply and demand come more in, more into line with one another, and then you have a better idea of the growth rate going forward. You know, overall, like, we've been operationally constrained, but it's not just what you can manufacture, it's what you can install, it's what you can support.
We said from the very beginning that our approach here was a measured approach, where we're prioritizing early customer success. And so it doesn't do us any good to just blow out a larger number of instruments, but then not be able to support them and have unhappy customers. And so we're looking to scale all those different parts of the Xenium support infrastructure in a way that enables the customers to be successful. As far as what we think about for next year, we'll talk more about 2024 on our earnings call, but we're very bullish on the opportunity here. We think that there's huge potential. We think that this could be one of the biggest products in life sciences ever.
Yeah, we're super, we're super excited about what we've been able to accomplish to date, and we're super excited about what lies ahead.
Perfect. And when it does come to competitive wins for Xenium, what are some of the more common call-outs or reasons why customers choose Xenium over a competing platform?
Yeah. So I'll tell you, you know, what we've been hearing from the field is, you know, performance. Xenium is leading in performance because of the high performance, sensitivity, specificity, spatiality. Just the robustness of the data the customers are getting from it, that's, that's been key. It's got high throughput. Customers are, you know, actually able to get from, you know, running the experiment to getting to insights, relatively, relatively quickly. They've talked about our support infrastructure, so the 10x support teams are, are top-notch, very responsive to customers. And, you know, just overall, just a very nicely integrated solution with a good amount of trust from customers, customers out in the field.
But performance, data quality, reliability of the runs, those are the key things that we're hearing that researchers are starting to share, among each other, and we're seeing come through in these head-to-head studies as well.
When we think about the mix of Xenium placements, you know, year to date, since launch, what's the mix of new versus existing 10x customers?
Yes, I'll take that one. So as we would expect, you know, most of the Xenium placements are going to existing 10x customers. It's pretty hard to imagine someone jumping into this technology that hasn't used single-cell previously. But we also are seeing, you know, new customers adopt Xenium or these placements being the first 10x instrument that they're adopting. So we see it as a really great opportunity to expand the applications within our customer base, but also, you know, to expand to new segments of customers.
And then going to that side-by-side comparison study of Xenium and CosMx, maybe for those who are unfamiliar, could you just provide some key highlights and what you view as the most important takeaway from that study?
Yeah. So for those that are unfamiliar, this was a pretty recent study that came out. It's really the first head-to-head study as we're talking about, the first bake-off. So what that means is it was, you know, done on samples from the same lab, on commercially available instruments, and, you know, the data was generated by customers. So I think that's, you know, one of the first big highlights of it. Really, the performance, as Justin was alluding to as well, the sensitivity, the specificity, Xenium was more sensitive, more specific, and, yeah, really showed a greater dynamic range, and that, you know, really stood out in the study. Also, operationally, showing just the ease of use and the workflow.
There was a really large difference in terms of the workflow that, the head-to-head study showed.
Within that study, the throughput was something that really stood out, but there were a difference in panel sizes. So I think it was a 1,000 gene panel for CosMx, 375 for Xenium. How do you think that. Do you think that Xenium's throughput would still be superior if you would have compared the platform with similar panel sizes?
Yeah, absolutely. We do believe it'd still be superior. You know, the gene panel size is one aspect of throughput, and it you know impacts throughput, but it's not a linear relationship. And there are other factors. Really, the throughput on Xenium is the best-in-class throughput. It's an interplay between the innovative chemistry and our optimized instrument design. So yeah, we expect that our best-in-class throughput will continue as we scale in Flex as well.
Okay, and then one more on the study here, where if I'm a researcher, I'm debating buying a Xenium or a CosMx, which point do you think that analysis is the most material in swaying their decision?
Again, you know, the specificity, the sensitivity, but on top of that, really, you know, when someone's buying Xenium, they, you know, are backed by a best-in-class team that 10x brings.
Okay. So the pull-through opportunity of Xenium, it's something everyone, you know, tends to focus on. I know we're early, some may not be familiar. So first, could you just walk through the economics of, of Xenium's pull-through price per slide, per run? Just kind of walking through this, those points.
Yeah, sure. You know, I'll start looking at it theoretically. And so Xenium can do Xenium can do a run in, you know, right around two days, two slides per run. A slide is $3,000. And so if you extrapolate that out and you say, you know, three runs, three runs per week, three slides per run, $3,000 per slide, you can get to over $900,000 annually as a, you know, theoretical limit. But if you look at doing one run per month, and so that would be two slides, if you were to do, you know, one, one run per month, that would annualize to about just over $70,000 a year.
If you were to do one run per week, that would annualize to around $290,000 per year. And so again, you know, starting with the $900,000, that's a theoretical, you know, those are benchmarks. Right now, you know, as far as the utilization goes, we're seeing a pretty wide range in utilization. For our first placements, we were prioritizing, you know, key KOLs who had studies ready to go, who, you know, had their samples identified because we wanted to, you know, get these instruments running and get data out there soon, and so, you know, future customers could see the results. You know, we also offer fixed panels.
Customizable panels, you know, there's a time delay in there when the customer designs that customizable part of the, the customized panel. And so, you know, again, pretty wide range, and so I don't think talking about an average right now would be, too useful, but it is good to have some of those benchmarks in mind as this continues to progress.
So is there a long-term potential you see for pull-through? I know, talking about an average right now, it can be skewed by the customer base that you have, but over time, is there, you know, a benchmark, a rule of thumb, anything we can look to for the pull-through potential long term?
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's the potential there for a very strong pull-through on these instruments. When we're going through the ramp, you know, I do think that the average is probably gonna lag, depending upon how the placements are pacing. But when you get up towards, you know, the higher ends, and I'm not talking near the theoretical, but when you're talking, you know, multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, like, I think it's completely reasonable to think that some customers could be at that. And then I also think about, you know, this is a $450,000 instrument. This isn't a, you know, $35,000 Chromium.
You know, where the strategy there was to make these more decentralized, to have them placed in, you know, many labs, so you could go from the, the sample to the, to the instrument, really quickly. This is an instrument that, you know, could be leveraged more at central labs. I think that if somebody gets one in a neighboring lab, there's gonna be people around there. They're gonna wanna try it out, and all those things are gonna point to, you know, higher pull-throughs, I think, on the individual instrument.
Okay, and then on pricing of Xenium, you guys have been accommodating with pricing early on. I think that makes sense, given the market opportunity, ability to lock these customers in. But at some point, I'd assume promotional pricing potentially starts to roll off. ASP could move higher than where it is today. So when do you anticipate we could see ASP start to trend higher? And how should we be thinking about Xenium pricing over the next year compared maybe to this year?
Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right, pointing to the introductory pricing. We launched Xenium with an introductory price of $350,000. We more recently raised the price to $450,000 list. But think about when this instrument launched, at the end of last year. It's a very competitive space. There's been a lot of marketing in this space, but not a lot of data. And in that kind of environment, you wanna make sure that your instrument can, you know, maximize the placements initially, get those experiments going, get the actual data out there in the customer's hands and future customers' hands, to then drive more sales. You heard me talk about the throughput potential as well.
You know, those annual consumable streams, that's where the true, that's where the true value, lies. And so we are really focused on making sure that we, that we maximize placements, you know, at a reasonable, at a reasonable price point. You know, and then adding also, this is a lower, margin instrument. It's considerably lower, than our, than our existing products, but, you know, we see that as an investment that we're making, for those, for those future, for those future streams. And so all that being said, we do work with customers. You know, it is a, We have heard, you know, bits and pieces of, CapEx constraints, in different areas, you know, different parts of the world.
Some customers already bought another instrument, and so that's part of their CapEx constraint from earlier in the year. But you know, if the customer is pairing a large consumable order with the instrument purchase, we've been more willing to go deeper on the discounting. But again, at the end of the day, we're maximizing placements, so we want the instrument to be used.
Okay, so on the product roadmap of Xenium, you've got a handful of announcements, products coming out, you know, near term, a 5,000-plex RNA assay. You've talked about protein capabilities. Which of these incremental offerings or enhancements do you think excites customers the most, is brought up with customers the most, and, and could potentially unlock the most material opportunity or, or drive, you know, those incremental placements of Xenium?
Well, certainly they're all exciting to our customers. You know, as we've done with Chromium and Visium, we have talked about a robust product roadmap. On Xenium, we've talked about this from the beginning. We built the instrument, not only for its capabilities at launch, but for the long term as well. So, you know, when a customer is purchasing a Xenium, they know that there's gonna be continued innovation, continued capabilities that we bring to the platform. And so all those things you mentioned that, you know, we've talked about coming next year, are really exciting.
Got it. So maybe the last one on Xenium here is: in Q3, orders outpaced placements during the quarter, and maybe circling back to some of your comments on manufacturing and the strategy there, but how long do you think demand can continue to outpace shipments? And it does seem like you're still taking a measured approach to manufacturing and making sure that, you know, you have all the right pieces in place, going forward. So how should we think about that dynamic in terms of backlog building, for lack of a better term?
Yeah, great, great question. You know, we've been very disciplined, you know, about not talking about backlog or orders rate, instead focusing on revenue. You know, there's dangers in focusing on, you know, an order isn't revenue, it can be canceled, all kinds of things, all kinds of things can happen. And so really, like I said, we focused on revenue, shipments, installations, sales. This quarter, though, we did choose to provide some commentary on the backlog because it was important, we felt, to give context on the shift in momentum that we've seen over this quarter.
There was definitely a shift out in the field as far as, you know, which platform was the leading one in the, you know, in the minds of customers, and that was reflected, you know, in the orders that we saw. It was a big quarter for manufacturing. It was a big quarter for shipments. You know, we basically shipped over 80, you know, we recognized revenue on over 80 and, you know, the orders were more than that. And so, you know, we felt it was important to call that out this quarter. As far as, you know, supply and demand, how that can go, you're right. You know, I've talked about the measured approach.
You have to grow those things in sync with one another if you're gonna optimize the customer experience. And again, you know, on the operations side, the team has done really well scaling up to this point, but we've got to stay focused on operations. We've got to stay focused on driving the demand overall. But again, we just can't take anything for granted. There's been a lot of risk to get to this point. Those risks are still there on the operations side, and you know, we're still working to you know, stabilize production overall, and then, you know, after that, then scale to the next level.
I'll pause here to see if there are any questions. All right, so we'll move to Chromium. Again, what you pointed to earlier, it's been a regional story. So I guess, going back to the third quarter, you know, year-to-date, could you talk about how growth has trended across geographies? And then as we look into the fourth quarter, what's implied, you know, maybe at the midpoint of the guide from a, you know, budget flush, geographical perspective, any color there?
Yeah. So, you know, when looking at Chromium overall, it has been a regional story. There's been a big impact in China, which is driving down APAC overall. And so, you know, you look at the year-to-date decrease in China, Chromium, roughly around 30-ish%, year-over-year decrease, which is driving APAC down year-over-year, around 20-ish%. But then you look at AMR and EMEA, and so Chromium overall, AMR and EMEA, year-to-date, has grown in the low teens. When you look at Chromium consumables, that's grown in the mid- to high teens in AMR and EMEA. And so really, there's been a disparity, regionally, in the Chromium growth rates.
When you look at our guidance and what our guidance implies, at the midpoint, you know, there's been a decent amount of talk, just in Q4, if there's gonna be a, you know, if there's gonna be a budget flush or not a budget flush, or if it's gonna be as much or, less, than what we've seen historically. For us, when you look at our customer base, we're about 75%-80% academic, and that's been relatively stable over the last few years. Biopharma, roughly 20%-25%.
I'm not saying that academic market is completely immune to, you know, economic shifts that affect everyone, but we do think that that customer segment is gonna be less impacted by any kind of near-term budget flush dynamics, you know, differing from what we've seen seasonally. So at the midpoint of our guidance range, we're assuming that the budget, you know, that we're gonna see the same seasonality in Q4, which translates to, you know, the budget flush like we've seen in past years. You know, expanding to the other products at the midpoint of our guidance range, we also assume that Xenium would be roughly the same that it was in Q3.
And then regionally, when you look at China, we're expecting China to be worse in Q4 than it was in Q3. And so, you know, we sell through two different levels of customers in China. We sell to distributors who sell to service providers. We have been working more closely with the service providers to get better dialed in to their inventory levels, and that intelligence is also built into our guidance range. And so we're looking at taking another reduction on those inventory levels. So I think actual demand is a little bit higher than we're expecting to see in the revenue because we're targeting that inventory reduction. It's the right thing to do.
Yeah, and so that goes into our range, and so lower end of the range, less budget flush, less Xenium. Higher end of the range would be, you know, higher budget flush and more Xenium. But those are the biggest drivers.
Okay, and then going back to your comment and what you talked about on the call of commercially being really focused on Xenium, I think that makes a ton of sense, but now maybe shifting and taking a more balanced approach across Xenium and Chromium going forward. So could you just unpack that a little bit, what that means? What initiatives are being implemented from here to, you know, maybe focus back on Chromium? When could we see those potentially start to bear fruit?
Yeah. Yeah, so our commercial team, like we said, they were, you know, very focused on selling Xenium. It was the number one priority, you know, both at the rep level, and we also have a Xenium specialist overlay function that works with the reps and works with the customers to drive those orders. And so when you look at the sales rep compensation, it was aligned to placing Xenium. And so, you know, the first area of balance would be just to bring the different elements of, you know, the compensation more in line to drive a more balanced approach on the products. But commercially, you know, that was, that was all prioritized in Xenium.
We also, you know, we have, you know, good reporting in place right now that we're able to actually see where the reps are spending, you know, their time by platform. And so we can actually track that week by week. And when the reps log their selling activities, we can see how those shifts go. And I think that's a good, you know, leading indicator, you know, starting with the effort and then linking that to the results. You know, that's on the commercial side. On the R&D side, you know, the team has been focused on all platforms. You know, Xenium was the priority, bringing that to market, but, you know, the team's also been hard at work on the Visium platform, with Visium HD.
And then there's also some really exciting things on the Chromium side that the R&D team has been at work on, and you'll hear more about that next year. But those new products that the R&D team has been working on that will also drive more sales force time and activity towards Chromium as well.
Got it. So maybe to touch on Flex here for a minute. It solved a lot of the hurdles, barriers, whatever we'd like to call them, with single-cell cost, maybe complicated workflow, sample logistics. You guys launched Flex a while back. Like I said, that addresses a lot of those. Could you kind of talk about where Flex's adoption is currently? It's only on the X Series, so maybe starting with what percent of, you know, your Chromium install base comes from those platforms? And for those customers that have them, what portion of consumables are Flex?
Yeah, so maybe I'll start a little bit on the instruments, and then we can talk a little bit about adoption. But, so we've seen, you know, really good adoption of the X Series instruments since we launched it in mid-2021. You know, it's, it's, been a growing portion of our, of our Chromium instruments out there. You know, we've seen the vast majority, almost all the Chromium placements, be the X Series for quite a while now, and so that is part of what led to our decision to discontinue the sales of the controller at the end of last year. So there's a, there's a healthy, you know, number of instruments out there, X Series instruments. As you mentioned, you know, our Gene Expression Flex assay is only available on the X Series.
And, you know, for anyone maybe a little less familiar, the X Series includes both our Chromium X and iX instruments. It's, you know, it's been growing nicely. The Flex assay has been growing nicely. Still a bit relatively small portion of our revenue, but a larger portion of the reactions. So, you know, there's built-in multiplexing with the assay, so we're seeing it contribute to some growth in reactions.
Got it. And for those who have adopted Flex, are you seeing that evidence of elasticity playing out? Are they scaling to larger studies? Has Flex resulted in, you know, these customers running more samples in general?
Yeah, we are seeing evidence of this. It's taken some time. You know, if you think about how this might be adopted, there's, you know, a really, a lot of our customers have very embedded workflows with our, our three-prime and five-prime gene expression assays. But, you know, so it's taken some time, but we are seeing evidence of customers really, You know, we see this pattern where they start kind of with a pilot experiment and then maybe move on to a little bit larger experiment and then, you know, from there, move to a larger study. So yeah, we're definitely seeing some of that play out.
Got it. And then maybe circling back to the growth you guys have seen for Chromium in the Americas and EMEA, could you just kind of unpack or provide a little bit more detail in terms of what is driving growth across those regions? You know, customer types, use cases, study types, things like that.
Yeah. So I'll, I'll start with that. You know, when you look at AMR and EMEA, I mean, just the Chromium market broadly, I mean, the different drivers of the growth rates are, you know, the continuing growth of existing customers, the new labs that we sign up, and then the ramp of those new labs and those, you know, more recently acquired labs, just the trajectory, like that initial trajectory. And then, you know, Cassie talked about Flex. You know, Flex has been growing nicely. Flex has been driving some incremental growth for us, and so that's been, you know, that's been great to see.
You know, when you look at where we wanted growth rates to be in, you know, in Chromium versus where they came in, you know, this past quarter, and you look at where, you know, where roughly the gap has been, it's been more on that trajectory, that kind of onboarding of the new customers that are being signed up. And that does take some handholding, and some, you know, good amount of support at the beginning to, you know, get those customers to ramp up and to get them, you know, using that overall.
And so I think that, you know, when you look at some of the time and attention that's been taken away from that, with our prioritization on Xenium, I do think that a refocus is gonna help with those, gonna help with those as well.
And then with the placements for Chromium over the past handful of quarters, are you seeing, you know, how do we think about the mix of new customers versus maybe an upgrade from the legacy controller? Where are you seeing demand for the platforms come from?
Yeah. So when we're launching, you know, when launching the Chromium X Series, we've seen about roughly, you know, half go to new customers and about roughly half go to, you know, Chromium Controller upgrades. And so with that being said, and a healthy amount of Chromium X Series instruments are out there, there's still a, you know, great amount of upgrades from the legacy Chromium Controller users, and also, you know, just a ton of new labs out there to continue to place instruments on. You know, initially, when we launched the X Series, there was a heavy skew towards the X, between the X and the iX, with customers wanting to be future-proof and also be able to run the high throughput product.
Now we only made Chromium Flex available on the X Series, but it can run on the iX so it can run on both the iX and the X. And so, you know, that adoption of Chromium Flex is continuing to drive iX placements as well. And there is more of a skew right now towards the iX, when there was previously more of a skew towards the X.
Got it. That's helpful. And ultimately, how do we, how do we think about growth in Chromium over the next few years? I know that there are some headwinds this year with China. There were some headwinds last year. Chromium's up, you know, low teens to date in a couple of geographies. What, what's the right way to think about growth in this business going forward?
Yeah. Well, so first off, our, our view of the long-term potential of this platform has not changed. We think about it, we think about it the same way. But, you know, when you think overall, with us having three platforms right now, and different platforms having different rates of adoption and acceleration, depending upon where you are on the overall curve, right now, you know, we have the approach that, you know, it's basically a sum of the parts across all the platforms, where, you know, in some ways, we're agnostic because we believe that we have the breadth of what scientists are gonna want to do in this area covered. Whichever platform they use in the near term is fine with us, and we're pushing the overall growth across all of those platforms.
I also think that there's, you know, these platforms are complementary, and there's been studies that have come out and, you know, shown how they can interact with one another and work with one another. So customers that adopt one could end up, you know, using, you know, another one or all three in the future. And ultimately, I think we're gonna be seeing more and more of that as, as time progresses. So, you know, we can't be, you know, just laser-focused on, you know, one platform for too long. You know, we can switch around and do things like that when we need to, but overall, we've got to continue to drive all three.
Okay, maybe last one here on Chromium. Has the competitive environment changed at all for Chromium with some of the names, you know, parts that have entered the market? Has, whether it's, you know, your win rates or customers, you know, I think you guys have alluded to maybe trying them at some point and coming back to 10x, maybe just an update from a competitive standpoint.
Yeah, so, you know, competitors are out there, and it's something that we watch very closely. You know, anecdotally, we have heard of customers trying, you know, various offerings. I think scientists are naturally inquisitive. There's something new, they want to give it a look. They, you know, they'd like to try it out. The feedback that we've gotten and what we hear is, you know, fall short on performance, and just the quality of the data, but also the workflow. Inevitably, we see those customers come back to 10x. But, you know, while a customer is sampling something, you know, at the customer level, that can create somewhat of a drag or delay, while they're trying something else out. But like I said, ultimately, we see them come back.
Got it, and maybe I'll pause here one more time. We've got 10 minutes left. All right, we'll move to Visium here. So, could you talk a bit about the current customer base? How many customers for Visium do you say you have today that you would categorize as, as consistent users of the product? What portion of them do you ultimately expect to buy CytAssist?
Yeah. So we've got, well, thousands of labs have tried Xenium.
Visium.
Sorry, Visium. We're on the video. Yeah, no, thousands of that. Thousands of labs have tried Visium. You know, and if you look at the Visium platform, you know, it's split between, like, the legacy Visium product, which, you know, didn't require an instrument, and then, you know, CytAssist, which helps solve some of the workflow issues that those Visium customers have faced. You know, we have seen a shift where Visium, the CytAssist-based consumables, are now selling more than the legacy Visium consumables. We're also seeing that customers who own a CytAssist are typically using more Visium than customers who don't own a CytAssist.
And then there's been just messaging out to the field and out to the customer base that, you know, CytAssist is the future of the Visium platform, and that future products like Visium HD are going to be launched on CytAssist. So those are the basic dynamics. And so there's a ton of customers out there that have tried Visium, but have not yet bought a CytAssist. So, you know, thousands of those.
Yeah, so on that last point, you know, there are a lot of advantages of using CytAssist, but when you're in discussions with customers who, you know, are considering purchasing the platform, do you get a sense that they're purchasing it in anticipation of HD? Or is that not brought up as much as mainly the workflow advantages, and HD could, you know, maybe potentially end up driving an acceleration of placements once launched?
Yeah, I think it's, it's mainly the workflow advantages right now, but I think the messaging is also helping opportunistic purchases by customers.
Mm-hmm.
And so, you know, they're, they're excited about what HD delivers. They've seen and heard the results from, from peers. But then also that, that the messaging has gone out that, hey, Visium HD is gonna be on a CytAssist. If the customers have an opportunity, to buy one, depending upon, you know, how their budget works out, yeah, it makes sense to get one now and be ready for HD when it comes.
Could you just talk a little bit about the current level of pent-up demand for HD? I mean, how often are customers asking about it? What are your expectations for initial adoption?
Yeah.
Yeah. Customers are definitely asking about it. You know, we've been talking about it, showing more and more data. So definitely the feeling is, you know, a lot of excitement. But yeah, I haven't set timelines yet, but yeah, we think people are getting excited to adopt it.
Yeah, I think. I mean, I think there's a high level of anticipation. Like, it's, it's palpable, and it has been, it has been for some time. I think it's, you know, it's one of our most highly anticipated products, and, like, the team's hard at work on it.
Do you feel like that anticipation is potentially impacting demand for your existing Visium consumables?
Yeah. I think, I think it is to a degree. I mean, you can't say that there's no impact there. I think there's a feeling out there that it's gonna be soon. Like, we haven't talked specific dates, and we said that we'll share more about that, you know, early next year. But yeah, I think to a degree, there has to be some kind of impact there.
Okay, let's finish up here with a few financial questions. Gross margin, Xenium ramp has obviously been weighing on that, maybe lower high-margin revenue from China. Could you just walk through the dynamics at play, how you see gross margin trending near term, and how you're thinking about the timeline until when we could see margin headwinds moderate and potentially flip back to expanding?
Yeah. So the biggest, the biggest driver on gross margin in the near term is going to be, you know, just the percentage of revenue that's driven by Xenium instruments. You know, when you look at what the margin was in, you know, this past Q3, and then you look a year ago to Q3 last year, you know, mostly all of that difference has been driven by the Xenium instrument introduction. And so I would think while, you know, the percentage of revenue remains, you know, around the level that it's at right now, you're gonna see a similar impact to margin in the near term as what we had in Q3. Now, as the consumable usage ramps up, that's gonna be a positive driver on gross margin.
You know, over time, that consumable revenue, I would expect, would become, you know, a much larger portion than it is now. And so when you look, you know, across the platform level, Xenium as a platform, that's a strong gross margin platform. But right now, while it's primarily instruments, it's gonna be low, and it's gonna impact the overall company margin.
And then your new facility's built out. You've made the majority of payments towards it, towards it. I think you said you expect $20 million-$25 million in CapEx over the next 12 months. Is that range a good way to think about normalized CapEx annually from here?
Yeah, I think in the near term, yes, you know, $20 million-$25 million over the next 12 months. And, you know, you're right, we have completed the construction of our operations facility in Pleasanton. And, you know, just even going back to our Investor Day at the end of last year, when we laid out the key drivers of, you know, setting ourselves up for cash flow, free cash flow positive, you know, we expected, you know, this facility to be done mid-year and then to have a pretty steep CapEx requirement drop-off, once that's been done. You know, we've seen that. That facility is now done. We're, you know, we're making Xenium instruments, and it's awesome to have that online right now.
But also we've, you know, we've built some capacity ahead of future needs, and so we've got room to grow into. We feel good about how we're sitting capacity-wise over the next few years. We aren't even yet running double shifts, and we've got space to move into. And so we shouldn't require, you know, CapEx investments at the level that we've recently seen, you know, for quite some time for now. So feeling good about that overall.
Lastly, on free cash flow, initial target was Q4 of this year. You've been pretty clear about balancing generating cash versus, you know, driving adoption of Xenium and some of the costs that are associated with that.
Yeah.
Maybe you'll hit it in Q4, maybe you won't. But is it fair, is it fair to assume that next year, generating positive free cash flow on an annualized basis, full year 2024 is, is realistic and maybe even going forward from there?
Yeah, so that's a great question. Driving free cash flow positive has been a super important goal for us. And going back to mid-last year, when we laid that out and, you know, put it out there publicly, that we were driving for the end of this year. Having that goal has been instrumental. And basically getting the company focused on, you know, we've basically held headcount flat, you know, year-over-year, from where we were, you know, roughly Q3 last year. And we've driven a lot of efficiencies throughout the org. And it's been tough. You know, it's been tough on people, it's been tough on the company. It takes a lot of focus and discipline to do that.
But we've shown that we can do it. And so there's still a path to hitting that in Q4. We're still pushing to hit that in Q4. But at the same time, we have loosened the constraints on some of the spending in order to support the Xenium ramp, and it's been important to do that. Like, we can't be so, you know, dogmatic, you know, focused on one goal that we, you know, hurt ourselves more longer term. So there's investments that we need to make, and we're going to go ahead and make those. But we're still going to carry that same discipline forward into next year. And as far as what you said, you know, there's seasonality when you go from Q4 to Q1, you know, on a revenue, on a revenue basis.
And so, you know, I wouldn't-- I think that hitting it in Q1 is a little bit harder than hitting it in Q4, just due to that seasonality. But when you look at the full year, yeah, I mean, that's not completely unreasonable with the setup that we have. But the most important thing to focus on right now is that we have a great setup heading into 2024, with the reduced CapEx requirements, with the efficiencies that we found, with our focus on, you know, cost discipline, while still knowing where to make the targeted investments to continue to fuel this growth in the near term. And so, like I said, cash flow, super important to us.
And, you know, once we hit free cash flow positive, you know, the next step is going to be, you know, full profitability, EBITDA positive. But I think we have a little bit more flexibility there as far as how we, how we toggle between spend and growth, but hitting the free cash flow positive in the near term, very important and excited to do it.
All right, we've covered a lot. Last chance for questions. All right, Justin, Cassie, thank you, guys. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mason.
Yeah, thank you.