BioLife Solutions, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the BioLife Solutions Q2 2024 Shareholder and Analyst Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Troy Wichterman, Chief Financial Officer of BioLife Solutions. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the BioLife Solutions 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. On today's call, we will cover business highlights and financial performance for the quarter and provide an update on our full-year 2024 revenue guidance. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results and operational highlights for the second quarter of 2024, which is available at biolifesolutions.com. As a reminder, during this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that can be found in our SEC filings. These statements speak only as of the date given, and we undertake no obligation to update them. We will also 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. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Rod DeGrief, Chairman and CEO of BioLife. Rod DeGrief Thanks, Troy.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for BioLife's second quarter 2024 earnings call. Today, I'm joined by Troy Wichterman, our CFO, as well as Gary Richardson, our Chief Revenue Officer, who will offer a deeper look into our Q2 revenue results and our strategy to grow BioLife's market-leading biopreservation franchise. To begin, I'm pleased to report another quarter of sequential revenue growth in our core cell processing business. Now, halfway through the year, these results underscore our belief that we are seeing an improvement in the macro environment, specifically the bioproduction subsector we operate in. With the strategic shift away from our legacy freezer products largely behind us, our revenue is primarily driven by our high-margin cell processing platform and our biostorage and services platform. Turning to highlights from the quarter, We posted an 11% sequential increase in our self-processing revenue and a 6% sequential increase in total revenue. On a macro level, the industry-wide headwinds that began to ease late last year continued in Q2 of this year. For BioLife, this meant less inventory destocking pressure from our larger direct customers and continued strength in our distributor revenue, which we view as a proxy for the earlier stage research-focused market segment. Our first half results, combined with our outlook for the second half of 2024, has resulted in a modest increase in our self-processing revenue guidance, which Troy will speak to later in the call. On the strategic side, with our continued efforts to streamline the business, we will be increasingly better positioned to benefit from the strength of our recurring and consumable product offerings. You will recall that we announced the divestiture of our GCI, or Sterling Freezer Unit, in April. The positive financial impact of the GCI divestiture is clearly reflected in our Q2 financial results, with an adjusted gross margin of 52 percent, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.8 million, or 17 percent of revenue. We realize the job is not done, and we're committed to exiting the remaining freezer business as quickly and efficiently as possible. Although CBS generated positive adjusted EBITDA for the quarter and represents less than 12 percent of sales, It was a drag on margins, and we expect to see further margin expansion once that transition is completed. We will provide updates as events warrant. Turning back to cell processing, the fundamental drivers of revenue growth for that segment, specifically our biopreservation media revenue, include our market-leading share of commercially sponsored clinical trials and the overall regulatory environment for CGT. We believe that we have a market share in excess of 70% of the relevant commercially-sponsored clinical trials in the U.S., with approximately 45 Phase II and Phase III trials utilizing CryoStor. In Q2, the CGT regulatory environment continued the forward momentum that started last year, with two new indications and three earlier lines of treatment approved for biolife-supported therapies. Our bioproduction media was embedded in 15 commercial therapies at the end of the quarter, and we see an additional nine similar approval opportunities over the next 12 months. We're excited by our growing exposure to commercial therapies, and over the years, we have developed deep and direct relationships with these customers, allowing us to provide better support to our partners. As these direct customers continue to progress and evolve, we expect to realize higher revenue and enhance margins. We're encouraged by this evolution, albeit early, which we believe will become more pronounced as this modality continues to mature. Our market share clearly confirms that biolife is the industry standard in biopreservation media, and we have established ourselves as a leading pure play provider of premium bioproduction tools and services, the critical picks and shovels which support the fast-growing CGT industry. As we continue to take the steps necessary to optimize our business to focus on our cell processing platform, I'm convinced more than ever that BioLife is extremely well positioned to benefit as industry headwinds continue to ease and the space continues to mature. Now I'll turn the call over to Gary, who will provide some additional insight on Q2 revenue and our sales strategy.