Cytek Biosciences, Inc.

Thank you, operator. Earlier today, SciTech Biosciences released financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31st, 2024. If you haven't received this news release or would like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to investors at scitechbio.com. A copy of the news release is also available on the investor relations section of SciTech's website at investors.scitechbio.com. Joining me today from SciTech are Wenbin Zhang, CEO, and Bill McComb, CFO. Please note that we will be referencing a slide presentation during the call today that has been posted to the investment section of our corporate website. As a reminder, we will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding CITEC's business plans, strategies, opportunities, and financial projections. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and inherently involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated in these statements. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in our slide presentation in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release CITEC issued today, and in site text filings with the SEC. This call will also include a discussion of certain financial measures that are not calculated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Additional information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, may be found in our slide presentation and in today's press release. While the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Except as required by law, SciTech disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or changes in its expectations. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast, February 27, 2025. Finally, I would like to invite investors and analysts to attend any of the six user group meetings SciTech will be hosting in 2025. These are typically all-day meetings where SciTech scientists and users of SciTech's instruments meet to discuss research initiatives, advances in the field, and use cases for SciTech's products. The full schedule has not yet been established, but the first of these meetings will be in Barcelona on March 12th, followed by the Southern California meeting in La Jolla on May 15th. In addition, To Scitex user group meetings this year, there will be a variety of industry and academic conferences, meetings, and seminars where we will be exhibiting the Scitex products in the U.S. and around the world. While these events are primarily geared to the scientific community, they may offer an opportunity to interact with users of our technologies to learn why Scitex instruments are so highly valued by our customers. We have a limited number of spaces to accommodate members of the financial community, so if you are interested in attending any of these events, please contact me. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Wenbin.

Thanks, Paul. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for your interest in Scitech. On today's call, I will discuss our results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2024 and highlight our achievements toward our strategic initiatives to drive sustainable growth and profitability. Then, I will turn the call over to Bill for a more detailed look at our financials and our 2025 outlook before we open it up for Q&A. Starting with slide three, two-year revenue in 2024 grew 4% over 2023, reaching $200.5 million. given by strong growth in service revenue and the double-digit growth in international markets outside of the U.S. We did very well in unit volume growth in 2024 with placements of full special profiling or FFP and imaging instruments up by 8.5 percent over 2023. This growth was achieved despite a challenging year for the industry. We were pleased to outpace the unit volume growth of the flow cytometry market as a whole, and importantly, our industry competition. Our outperformance in 2024 can be attributed to the technological leadership SciTech products continue to bring to the cell analysis market, as well as to the excellent user support provided by our customer-facing teams. FICA has always had a commitment to profitability and the cash generation to support our growth and innovation. Furthermore, we have reached an important inflection point where small percentage increases in revenue can translate into larger percentage increases in adjusted EBITDA. While Bill will cover more specifics in a few moments, 2024 provides a good example of this. with revenue up 4%. Our adjusted EBITDA of $22.4 million delivered again of more than 77% above the $12.6 million of adjusted EBITDA from 2023. In parallel with our substantial growth in adjusted EBITDA, our focus on cash generation was clearly reflected with positive cash flow achieved again in 2024. I'm pleased to report that once again, we returned this positive cash flow to shareholders in the form of repurchasing 4 million shares during 2024 under our share repurchase program. At the expiration of this program, we announced a new $50 million repurchase program in late December and have been buying shares in the open market year to date. Turning to slide four and our fourth quarter results. Our revenue was $57.5 million, essentially flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 after adjusting for the strong appreciation of the US dollar in the quarter. We saw year over year growth of 8% in our service revenue in the fourth quarter, mainly due to the growth in the total installed base of our instruments. Geographically, we continue to see a strong demand environment in APEC in the fourth quarter. While we are viewing China with a conservative stance due to the dynamic environment, we started to experience some upsets in others in the fourth quarter related to the China stimulus program. We were also pleased to see strong growth both quarterly and year-over-year in the rest of the world region. which includes Canada and Latin America. Total U.S. revenue was slightly up versus the third quarter and down year over year, driven by a decline in academic and government instrument revenues, partially offset by growth in service. Looking at our customer mix, we continued to experience strong demand from our global pharma and CRO customers, who are focused on harmonizing their instruments across different regions for translational discovery work, which our technology is particularly capable of delivering. Overall, we believe our growth in 2024 demonstrates the strength of our platform, the unique value proposition of our portfolio, and how SciTech solutions are becoming a well-established brand in the industry. I would like to next update you on the strong execution our team has had on our key growth pillars, instruments, applications, bioinformatics, and clinical, to solidify SciFix's position as a market leader in next-gen cell analysis solutions. Turning to slide five, starting with instruments. I want to take a moment to reflect how far we have come as an organization in driving adoption of our core instruments, including our flagship products, the Aurora Analyzer, Aurora Cell Solar, and the Northern Light System. As a reminder, our core instrument platform is underpinned by our FSP technology. This technology is designed to maximize sensitivity, accuracy, and harmonization across instruments through a novel optical and electronic design. Our technology enables us to adjust the inherent limitations of other instruments by providing a higher density of information with greater sensitivity, more flexibility, and increased efficiency, all at a lower cost for performance. From our conversation with pro cytometry users, It is clear that CITES instruments have changed the direction of the entire industry toward full special technology. We believe CITES FFP technology has matured into the industry standard that other technologies are measured against. Our leadership in FFP technology enables us to benefit from an important first mover advantage with our expanding customer base and validated commercial solutions that deliver superior stability, data quality, and ease of use. Since the introduction of our first FSP instrument in 2017, our FSP technology has gained a widespread adoption with nearly 2,000 customers worldwide using our solution today and a broader user base across more than 70 countries. Our technology has additionally been validated by more than 2,300 peer-reviewed publications regarding the use of SciTech products to address critical challenges. In the fourth quarter, we expanded our global footprint with 164 FFP instruments and 49 Amnes and Guava systems sold. This brings SciTech's total installed base to 3,034 units, including 377 Amnix and Aguava instruments shipped since the acquisition of the Luminix business in the first quarter of 2023. Within our portfolio, the Aurora CSL folder and Amnix imaging system showed good growth in the first quarter compared to the same quarter of 2023. Collectively, these instrument placements represent growth across a diverse customer base, offering comprehensive and better solutions tailored to meet their needs. As I mentioned earlier, the number of placements of our FSP instruments increased 8.5% in 2024 over 2023. We were pleased to see 13% year-over-year growth of the Aurora sales order and 12% year-over-year growth of the Northern Lights system. We believe this solid growth in placements, despite a challenging and dynamic macroeconomic environment, demonstrates SISEC's continued leadership in FSP flow cytometry and our strength in these product categories. In 2024, we were excited to announce our Intense Small Particle Detection Module, or ESP, a new technology that can be added to new or retrofitted to existing Aurora, Aurora Cell Solar, and Northern Lights instruments. This new feature allows our already powerful systems to provide the highest sensitivity to identify and analyze a variety of small particles including extracellular vesicles, small bacteria, viruses, and viral particles, and nanoparticles, and further distinguish our cell analysis solution as the preferred choice among researchers and clinicians. Turning to slide six, in early 2023, We strategically expanded our SciTech platform with the Luminex transaction to continue diversification of our instrument portfolio with both competitive and operational advantages. With the addition of Amelix and Guava product lines, we accomplished several objectives. First, we enhanced our technical capabilities with AI-driven high-revolution imaging. We enable the more effective and efficient service and support through an expanded installer base, dramatically increasing our service growth margin. And third, we broaden our customer reach within the entry-level market. Since the acquisition, we achieved significant growth in Amelix imaging revenue and in the entry-level market. Specifically, our imaging revenue increased by 14% in 2024. In addition, growth in the entry-level market is affected by the 12% full-year unit volume growth in our Northern Lights placement, which was one of the goals of the acquisition. Leveraging an expanded installed base, our service business growth margin improved from 15% in 2022 before the acquisition. to 57% in 2024, notably one of the highest in the industry. This major increase in growth margin demonstrates one of the advantages that we obtained from the Luminix transaction. We believe the growing installed base of our instruments, including our core FSP instruments, as well as Omnics and Guava, will continue to serve as a strong foundation to drive adoption of our product and service offerings going forward. To support the rising global demand for site solutions, we recently opened a new manufacturing facility in Singapore. With this facility, we are able to access low-cost manufacturing, increase our capacity, and enhance global supply chain flexibility. Turning to slide seven and bioinformatics. We introduced the SiteTech Cloud two years ago as a digital ecosystem to support full spectral flow cytometry research from panel design to data acquisition and to enable our customers to streamline their workflows through our online software tools. In 2024, we expanded the capabilities of SiteTech Cloud with the addition of the special panel tool, a proprietary intelligent algorithm that designs optimized panels in minutes rather than days or weeks with a manual process, allowing scientists to focus their efforts on their own applications. SiteCloud is becoming a vital resource in the research community. We now have over 16,000 users. growing our base by more than 160% from the start of 2024. This represents an average of more than six users per installed SciTech FSP instrument. We continue to believe that the SciTech Cloud is an important factor in earning the loyalty of our users to the SciTech brand. Turning to the applications and clinical pillars of our strategy, we continue to believe the clinical market represents an attractive business opportunity for SciTech. Several of our products are approved for clinical use in both China and the EU, including our Northern Lights CLC system. In May 2024, we were pleased to receive approval from the China National Medical Administration for Clinical Use of our one-laser and two-laser six-color TBNK reagent cocktails on our northern light systems, specifically in hospitals, laboratories, and clinics across China. As a reminder, this is the first and only one-laser-based six-color assay supported by FSP capability. which offers higher system reliability and data consistency, a competitive advantage against the more expensive two laser systems. This achievement broadened our market presence in both China and Europe while strengthening our competitive advantage. Notably, Northern Lights CLC unit placement grew by 15% in 2024 compared to 2023. achieving the highest replacement growth rate out of all SciTech instruments across our product portfolio. As we continue to push forward new products and applications, we remain deeply committed to providing comprehensive cell analysis solutions to our customers. In sum, we believe we are well positioned to serve a large and growing cell analysis market with our industry leading cell analysis portfolio, global diversification, and the critical first mover advantage with our FSP technology. This combination paired with our incredible team, strong balance sheet, and the focus on execution will drive CITIC further on our strategic initiatives. Looking ahead, As we continue to strengthen CITES market leadership position in sale analysis, the durable foundation we have built provides us with confidence in our expectations and our long-term objective of delivering sustainable growth and profitability. With that, I will now turn the call over to Bill for more details about our financials.

Thanks, Wendy.