BioLife Solutions, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q3 2020 BioLife Solutions, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. I would now like to turn the call over to Roderick de Greef. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Sadie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the BioLife Solutions conference call to review the operating and financial results for the third quarter of 2020. Earlier this afternoon, we issued a press release which summarizes our financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30th. As a reminder, during this call, we may make certain projections and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that affect the company's business and that qualify as forward-looking statements, I refer you to our periodic and other public filings filed with the SEC. Company projections and forward-looking statements are based on factors that are subject to change, and therefore these statements speak only as of the date they are given. The company assumes no obligation to update any projections or forward-looking statements except as required by law. During this call, we will speak to non-GAAP or adjusted results. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP or adjusted financial metrics are included in the press release we issued this afternoon. These non-GAAP or adjusted financial metrics should not be viewed as an alternative to GAAP. However, in light of our M&A activity, We believe the use of non-GAAP or adjusted metrics provides investors with a clearer view of our current financial results when compared to prior periods. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mike Rice, President and CEO of BioLife.

Thanks, Rod, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. Q3 was another quarter of solid execution and growth, despite the challenges all of us are facing due to COVID-19. We grew top-line revenue over 70%, gained 56 new customers, and at the end of Q3, we put some of the capital we raised in our $86 million offering to work with the acquisition of SciSafe, a dynamic and growing biologic storage services company. Across the company, we made progress in engineering, manufacturing operations, and quality management. We successfully passed several key customer audits and broadened our customer base with continued leverage opportunities to cross-sell the various offerings in our portfolio to the cell and gene therapy market. Our team has shown remarkable resilience and durability to sustain a high performance level despite the continued impact of COVID-19. We remain focused on smart execution to reach our interim revenue goal of $100 million over the next few years. Now I'll provide some highlights for each product line. Starting with biopreservation media in Q3, revenue was up 22% year-over-year and up 25% year-over-year for the first nine months of 2020. We gained 21 new media customers in Q3, including Goal Therapeutics, Marker Therapeutics, NanoGhost, Nutracega Therapeutics, Nurex Therapeutics, Sanna Biotechnology, Stability Biologics, and Synvivia Biotechnology. Also in the quarter, we processed 22 new U.S. FDA Master Fire Requests to support the use of our fire preservation media products in new cell and gene therapy clinical trials. Some of these new master file requests were submitted by Amnio Technology, Aveda Biomedical, Kiatis Pharma, Kite Pharma, Legend Biotech, Mustang Bio, Nonquest, Talaris Therapeutics, and Triumvirate Immunologics. We now estimate that our media products have been used in more than 450 customer clinical applications. We're following potential approvals for several customer therapies over the next few quarters, and we'll update you on future calls about potential revenue contributions from approved cell and gene therapies that our media products are incorporated in. Overall, our media franchise is very strong and we continue to take share from the homebrew paradigm as it relates to human clinical applications. For the first nine months of 2020, some key customers that drove our 25% year-over-year media revenue growth included Allogene, Bluebird Bio, Celgene, Janssen, Juno, Kite Pharma, NoncWest, and Squeeze Biotechnologies. Automated thaw revenue and EVO, cold chain management subscription revenue, were in line with our reduced expectations due to COVID-19 impact on in-person sales meetings. We gained seven new ThawStar customers and five new EVO customers. Our EVO cold chain management platform is now used in more than 100 clinical trials. It's important to note that these are all early phase trials, so the shipment volume is low and hence the revenue is still relatively small. Regarding the commercial cell therapy company that has been validating our EVO platform, I'm very pleased to report that this work has been successfully completed and we're working to gain approval to disclose the company name and other details. Turning to our CBS freezer franchise, I'll remind you that COVID-19 has impacted us in two ways, in travel and onsite visitor restrictions at customer and prospect sites, and also a delay in approvals for large capital equipment purchases. Despite this environment, we gained 23 new customers that purchased freezers or related accessories in the third quarter. Key CVS customers in Q3 include AskBio, Enliven Therapeutics, Novavax, and NuvaGen. Other key customers that bought CVS products in 2020 include Athersys, Blue Rock Therapeutics, Celgene, Fate Therapeutics, Kite Pharma, Lonza, and VWR. Product development on two new freezer platforms is continuing and we anticipate launches in Q1. We're also making good progress to vertically integrate and use our talented design and engineering teams at CBS to manufacture the EVO dry vapor shippers for our cold chain management platform. We expect to introduce CBS-made doers in the first half of next year. Now I'll talk a bit about SciSafe. As you know, we closed the acquisition of SciSafe on October 1st. CySafe serves the biopharma and cell and gene therapy industries by providing outsourced or off-site controlled and monitored storage of customers' temperature-sensitive biologic materials. This division of BioLife is led by a dynamic leader, Gary Richardson, who has built a remarkable company anchored by quality service and high-trust relationships with customers. I spent quite a bit of time getting to know Gary and the business, and I can relay that I see tremendous potential for this new BioLife service offering. A few weeks ago, we issued a press release about SciSafe landing a nearly $3 million contract with a large pharma company for COVID-19 vaccine storage. This company also uses our biopreservation media. I'm glad to update you with news that this contract value has already increased and we can scale the service offering fairly quickly to support additional companies with storage needs related to COVID-19 vaccines. We're currently investing in SciSafe to support additional storage capacity in several new locations near strategic centers of cell and gene therapy development and or global logistics hubs to support commercialization of new therapies. I'll conclude my remarks with some comments on our ongoing M&A activity. Continue to pursue additional opportunities to outright acquire or invest in novel, potentially disruptive technologies that fit very well in our portfolio and that would expand our offering and increase our value proposition for cell and gene therapy developers and the broader bioproduction tools market. We expect to announce additional transactions in the next few months. Now I'll pass the call back to Rod to present our financials for Q3. Rod?