BioLife Solutions, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2021 BioLife Solutions 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 at this time, you will need to press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. Now, I would like to turn it over to Mr. Roderick de Greef. BioLife CFO. You may begin the conference, sir.

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the BioLife Solutions conference call to review the operating and financial results for the first quarter of 2021. Earlier this afternoon, we issued a press release which summarizes our financial results for the three months ended March 31st. 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 qualifies 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 the 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 continued M&A activity, we believe that the use of non-GAAP or adjusted metrics provides investors with a clearer view of our current financial results. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mike Rice, BioLife's CEO.

Thanks, Rod, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. Joining Rod and me today is Dusty Tenney, President and Chief Operating Officer. We're off to a strong start to 2021, so I'll get right to it. In Q1, we booked a record revenue of nearly $17 million. of 40% increase over Q1 last year. We gained 80 new customers compared with the full year of 2020 strong count of 213 new customers. The team executed to drive product adoption across the portfolio and to set the stage for a stellar 2021. We're making an initial increase to our revenue guidance for the full year of 2021, which Rod will speak to in a few minutes. We also expanded our leadership team with the promotions of Marcus Schultz, the Chief Revenue Officer, and Sarah Ebersold as VP, Global Human Resources. Lastly, we strengthened our board with the addition of new directors, Amy DeRoss and Rachel Ellingson. Now I'll make some comments about our three revenue platforms, starting with media. In Q1, we booked record media revenue of nearly $9 million, which was up 3% over the same period in 2020, a tough comp. when we booked about 1.5 million in COVID-19-related safety stock orders for our biopreservation media. We gained 16 new media customers, including Celsius Therapeutics, Galvanize Therapeutics, Hybracell, Neobiosis, and Xilix. We also received confirmation that our media products will be used in an additional 13 clinical trials for new cellogene therapies from customers including Allogene, Janssen, Mustang Bio, Encarta, Takeda, and Tim Unity. We estimate that our biopreservation media products have been incorporated into nearly 500 customer clinical applications. Of these, our media is used in five approved therapies, Yaskarta and Tocardus from KITE, Brianzi and Abecma from Celgene, and Zenteglo from Bluebird. CryoSor is also used in four new therapies that could get approved in the next few quarters. These include Idacel from Celgene, Omidubacel from Gametacel, Citlacel from Janssen, and Illysell from Bluebird. We continue to believe that our media franchise of sticky, marquee customers is the engine that we can leverage to market our bioproduction tools and services portfolio to. Our freezer and thaw platform performed well in Q1. We booked nearly $5 million in revenue, a 60% increase over the same period in 2020. We gained 39 new freezer and thaw customers and completed the development of our new high-capacity, controlled-rate freezer family. the first of which was shipped mid-April to a current Thostar customer. In our final three revenue platforms, BioStorage, which includes Evo Cold Chain and SciSafe Storage Services, we booked revenue of 3.1 million, increase of 2.6 million over Q1 2020. We gained 25 new customers in the platform, including 16 new Evo Cold Chain users. Demand for SciSafe Storage Services continues to increase. Regarding M&A, We continue to be active and believe our strategy can accelerate growth and further solidify our position as a leading supplier of class-defining bioproduction tools and services. I would like to give an update on our acquisition of Sterling Ultra Cold, so I'll ask Dusty to provide some comments on how we are continuing to integrate all the companies we acquired by focusing on revenue and cost synergies, system upgrades, and organizational efficiencies. Dusty?