CryoPort, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to CryoPort fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will start in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Todd Frommer from KCSA Strategic Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Before I get started with this, I just want to correct the record. This is the crowd for first quarter during this conference call. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call contains certain forward-looking statements. All statements that address our operating performance, events, or developments that we expect or anticipate occurring in the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and not on information currently available to our management team. Our management team believes that these forward-looking statements are reasonable as and when made. However, you should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements because such statements speak only as of the date when made. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future results or otherwise, except as required by law. In addition, forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, events, and developments to differ materially from our historical experience and our present expectations or projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those described in Item 1A, Risk Factors, and elsewhere in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and those described from time to time in other reports which we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Gerald Shelton, Chief Executive Officer of CryoCorp. Jerry, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Todd. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call today. With us this afternoon is our Chief Financial Officer, Robert Stefanovich, our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Mark Zawicki, and our Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Thomas Heinzen. As a reminder, we have uploaded our first quarter 2024 in review document to our website. It can be found under investor relations in the news and events section. This document provides a review of our financial and operational performance and a general business outlook. If you've not had a chance to read it, I would encourage you to go to our website and download it. I will provide you with a brief update on our business and then we will take your questions. For the first quarter of 2024, we continue to experience a difficult environment globally. Our quarterly results were disappointing across the board, particularly our life science products. However, as we stated when we initially provided our annual guidance, we anticipate our total revenue will progressively improve throughout the year, and we maintain our full year revenue guidance of $242 to $252 million. I am sure some of you are asking what makes us confident. Well, there are several things. For example, despite the near-term challenges, we're still quite positive based on the momentum we're seeing from our cell and gene therapy clients and from the growth of our biostorage bioservices revenue. If you look at our results, you'll see that our first quarter, commercial therapies rose 9%, while biostorage bioservices revenue also rose by the same amount. Both these services areas should continue to be growth drivers for crowd port in 2024 and beyond. We're also encouraged by new clients slated in the biopharma market and some positive signs recently in the cryogenic systems market. As I indicated, our life science services revenue growth for the first quarter was softer than anticipated, increasing 3% year over year. There is, however, a bright spot as the cell and gene therapy market seems to be gaining some momentum again. To date, this year, three new therapies have been approved. Three existing commercial therapies were approved to move to an earlier line of treatment, and two therapies were approved to expand their label or geographic territory. By combining the expected revenue ramps of existing and new commercial therapies, we believe we should see revenue acceleration from our cell and gene therapy clients over the remainder of the year. Currently, we think an additional 16 global regulatory filings will be completed before year-end. As of March 31st of this year, Proudport supported a total of 675 global clinical trials, a net increase of 23 clinical trials over the same time last year. As of the quarter end, 77 of these trials were in phase three, along with 312 of them in phase two. As we have said before, our clinical trial portfolio represents a substantial long-term revenue growth opportunity for Crowdport as more therapies advance through the clinical trials toward commercialization. Our outlook for the rest of the year with commercial therapies looks strong, with potentially five additional new therapy approvals and three additional label or geographic extensions. Turning to our life science products. Similar to last quarter, this business revenue was lower than in prior years. This was due to decreased demand for MVE Biological Solutions cryogenic systems. This in turn was attributable to a continued slowdown in capital equipment investment that began last year. Although global in nature, as we have reported previously, the most severe pullback in demand continues to be in China. While we expect MBE's cryogenic systems sales to be challenged throughout the remainder of this year as biotech funding, government budgets, and academic budgets are constrained, we expect to see gradual improvement in demand in the ensuing quarters. MVE is a well-managed business, and we want to remind investors that even in this difficult time, it continues to produce free cash flow for our company. MVE is the leading manufacturer of cryogenic systems worldwide, and we're confident in the long-term prospects of our product's business. And when demand normalizes, and we believe it will, we will benefit from our position as the global leader in this space. In summary, and to put it plainly, there is simply no other company with the extensive resources Crowdport has in providing a full array of innovative, reliable end-to-end supply chain solutions to the life sciences. With advanced services, products, and information systems focused on reducing risk and located in 50 locations in 17 countries, Crowdport is well prepared to support the expansion of the life sciences and especially the growing cell and gene therapy market. Based on our client's forecast and fueled by industry indicators for cell and gene therapies and the life sciences, we continue to build out services, products, and infrastructure to prepare ourselves to provide comprehensive and dependable supply chain support for these lifesaving treatments. However, considering the current macroeconomic challenges and their impact on our financial results, we are implementing a number of initiatives to drive toward positive adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in the near term. These include improved alignment of our global organization, reduction in our workforce, leveraging lower cost shared services, refining and reprioritizing planned initiatives, and delays in capital spending as a result of reprioritization, all of which should possibly impact the second half of 2024. We're mindful of our need to maintain a strong balance sheet to support our future growth. And we ended the quarter with $448,500,000 cash balance. This concludes my prepared remarks. Now we're going to be happy to take questions from you. Operator, please open the lines for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star on your telephone keypad. And if you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. Your first question comes from Teje Savan from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, guys. This is Edmund. Thank you for the time. First question, could you guys provide some more color on how things played out at MDE? Where do customers stand today in terms of their need to expand their freezer capacity? And what do order books look like heading into the second half?

MBE? Yes. MBE. Okay.

So, just repeat that question again, please. Just one second.

Sorry, Jerry. This is Edmund. But the question was, could you provide some more color on how things played out at MBE this quarter? Where do customers stand today in terms of their need to expand their freezer capacity, and what do order books look like heading into the second half of 24?

Okay, that's a good question. Look, MBE tracks its orders and talks with its distributors and its direct customers on a regular basis. there's simply been some pullback in funding in government and institutions and businesses. And that seems to be breaking. We seem to be, and we do know that in the last half or the second half of this quarter, this year, we will have, it looks like we have orders lined up for large pharma and for mid-sized biorepositories. And we think that there's some government spending that will be on the last half. So we think we'll have a progressive improvement in the MVE in the second half of the year. You know, the fallback in MVE. The whole back end will be China, and China continues to be in recession, and we do not expect China to improve for the remainder of this year and probably into the next year. There's been a reduction in biotech funding, and there's been some breeder programs instituted by the government. and all of that's affected our business. However, we do have initiatives to compete within China on a very effective basis. I want to remind you, though, China only accounts for about 5% of our total revenue at this point.

Got it. That's very helpful. And then a higher-level question. Some of the traditional logistics companies, such as UPS, have recently expressed an interest in expanding to the healthcare vertical. Now, are there any opportunities for a company like Cryoport to work with those providers or do they represent more of a medium-term competitive threat to the business model?

You know, over the recent time, UPS has become more of a competitor, or tried to at least, but we work with the integrators on a regular basis, and we have for 12 years since I took over the company. We've had strategic relationships with them, which we've talked about on a frequent basis. In some cases, we work more closely than in others. UPS has been the most aggressive through their purchase of Markham, but they don't really pose a tremendous threat to us. We still use them as an integrator in many of our services.

They also use our equipment sets on a regular basis in conjunction with programs that they're supporting through their healthcare vertical.

That's an important point. That's MBE equipment.

Got it. And then one housekeeping question for the model. What percentage of the product revenue is from MBE and what percentage from legacy power port systems?

It's really, you know, if you look at the product revenue, it's really the vast majority. So in excess of 95% of the revenue is related to MBE cryogenic systems.

Got it. Super helpful. Thank you for the time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Matt Stanton from Jefferies. Your line is now open.

All right, thanks. Appreciate the color on focus near term on EBITDA and cash flow. Sounds like you have a number of initiatives in motion around that. Just help us quantify what the impact could start to look like to OPEX as we move into the back half of the year, just trying to get a better understanding of what, you know, total cost savings or improvements we could start to bake into the P&L here. Thanks.

Yeah, no, thanks for the question. Look, at the current time, we obviously just provide, you know, guidance related to our annual revenue. But with that said, you know, I can provide a little bit of information overall. You know, we have been and are taking, you know, continuously actions and review of our initiatives. of our CAPEX spending, pushing out some of the CAPEX spending that is not driving kind of near-term revenue or is not critical to our near-term initiatives. If you look at the overall operating expense, a couple of things. Yeah, we've been building out our infrastructure over the last couple of years, as you know, and we're looking to see leverage of that infrastructure and capabilities that we built out. We expect to have that substantial feat in 2026. As revenue grows, we're going to see, you know, better operating leverage of the overall infrastructure that we set up. In terms of, you know, the specific question, you know, and you know modeling out the second half of the year you know I would expect you know a drop in in operating expenses I can't tell you exactly you know the percentage will provide some more clarity there but certainly we do expect to see an impact in the second half you know on the on the operating expenses okay thanks that's helpful and then maybe back over to

To MVE, you talked about how sales kind of remain challenging there and a gradual improvement through the year. I think prior you guys had baked in kind of flattish growth in MVE for the year. Just given kind of the slower start, should we still expect MVE to be flattish in 24 or is it down for the year? And I guess if it is now down in 24, what other areas are potentially offsetting that to reiterate the guide for the full year?

No, Matt, I think you can expect MBE to be flattish for 2024. And so you'll see that improvement in the last half, which will create that. And then I think we'll have some progression in 2025. Look, we ran into a situation where, uh, you know, the market pulled back in the second half of 2023, uh, severely. And, uh, that probably had to do with some, you know, extra capacity buildup from, uh, from COVID plus the economics, you know, economic situation, which calls people to pull back on budgeted and governments pulling back and so forth. But some of that's freeing up at some points you have to have more capacity. So, um, So we do think it'll be flattish in 2024 and improving in 2025.

And the driver really for the revenue, especially in the second half of the year, is related to our services offering and revenue.

Okay, great. And maybe just one last quick one. The phase three trials dropped to 77. You know, I know you expect some normal kind of fallout in there. Any more color you can provide on just the gross and net numbers for phase three in the quarter? And did it have, you know, any impact on 1Q revenue given those programs are generally, you know, a bit more meaningful than some of the earlier phase programs? Thank you.

Yeah, we're still seeing a lot of churn as it relates to clinical trial activity. So, if you drill into the flat sequential quarter, we actually saw 42 trial terminations 20 of which were completed and 22 terminated. Those that were terminated in many cases were due to cash. Of those, obviously you saw a drawdown of some of the phase three trials. We also added back 42 programs. Obviously there's a lag period associated with those as they get up and running, but we did see an impact on a couple of terminations in phase three that did show some, obviously that had an impact on where we thought we were going to see some accretive activity there that was relatively flat. But the good thing is that the new programs that are starting are really diversified and will start to contribute in the coming months.

Thanks. That's helpful. Appreciate it. Your next question comes from Puneet Sudha from Learing Partners.

Your line is now open.

Hi, this is Philip on for Puneet. Thank you for taking my question. Maybe just the high level kind of question. It's coming off a softer first quarter. You got an implied ramp in the second half. It's a bit steeper. Can you just maybe give a bit more color on sort of the levers that give you confidence to reiterate your guidance kind of if you expect MVE to improve sequentially in the second quarter, or if that still hasn't bottomed out, or just kind of what are the different levers that will take us to low end versus kind of like the high end of the guidance? Thank you.

Sure. I'll start the answer, and then Robert and Mark may want to chime in with some other thoughts. But You know, our outlook is based on the trends that we're currently seeing industry-wide, as well as what we specifically are seeing from our cell and gene therapy clients. So we're taking those factors into consideration, and, you know, we're confident, as one can be, given the current economic and the geopolitical landscape. There are a number of clients with commercial therapies that are forecasting a strong second, you know, half-ramp. And we also are seeing a number of new therapies approved recently, and their ramp should contribute to our revenue growth later this year. And then there's the biotech funding increasing dramatically in quarter one, and we should see some impact from that later this year. And we're having new products and services launched throughout the year, which bring in new revenue. So, all in all, we believe that each of our businesses will grow in 2024. As highlighted in the press release, our service business should lead the way, and I think Robert mentioned that a little bit earlier. So, Robert, would you like to add anything?

No, I think you mentioned most of it. We do expect, again, progressive improvement, and you're absolutely right, especially in the second half. And if you look at some of the core revenue drivers, commercial revenue, biostorage, bioservices revenue, and even maybe clarification on commercial revenue, you look at the commercial revenue growing 9% year over year. But we also take a look at the trailing 12 months revenue because you have some lumpiness there in terms of timing. So you look at 12 months over 12 months for Q1 over the trailing 12 months last year, it grew about 27%. So if you look at that, plus the additional BLA filings, MAA filings, and expected accruals that we see this year, you'll see a continuous momentum that will keep driving the services revenue to meet or beat our revenue guidance for the year.

Yeah, let me just add to that. Obviously, a lot of our commercial folks have come out with earlier line approvals. Obviously, BMS and J&J, Sarepta might have a significant expansion coming out after the end of the second quarter, all of which should contribute to increasing activities that relates to commercial And then obviously the recent approvals for Iovance, CRISPR, Virtex, Bluebird, Immunity Bio, and Atara are also going to start to contribute in a more meaningful way.

Got it. That makes sense. Thank you. And then maybe just one follow-up housekeeping question. I guess I know you guys don't have too much exposure to China, but have you thought about kind of How much risk there is with the Biosecure Act and any retaliation to that for your business? Any potential disruption there?

Yeah, we have. We thought quite a bit about it, and we study China quite a bit. Look, China is the... second most powerful country in the world and has more trading partners than the United States, an extremely important country, and it's not going away. And we have an investment in China. We have a plant in China, and that plant is staffed by some very capable people. And we have an initiative, you know, to compete better in China, given President Xi's buy in China what's made in China. And so we'll be manufacturing freezers there in the future for that Chinese market. But the Chinese market is, there are some risks, but you have to pay attention to the rules of the game and play there. We're not going to go back to the 30s and 40s with China. China is here to stay, and we have to learn you know, how to work with that economy and assess the risk and move forward. We only have about 5% of our revenue exposed right now, but we think the potential there is substantial over time. It's an economic recession right now, but it'll get out of that over, you know, over some period of time.

Got it. Thank you so much. I'll hop back into the queue. Your next question comes from Lucas Bernofsky from UBS.

Your line is now open.

Hi, this is Lucas on for Dan Leonard at UBS. I guess to start things off, you know, there's definitely been an increase in oil prices since the start of the year. You know, given that increase in costs, are you finding that you're able to pass that on to customers and Should we expect any kind of a margin impact there over the near term? Thanks.

On extraordinary situations, we do have surcharges where we pass on extra costs. So I don't think you should expect margin impact from the petroleum increase.

Okay, thanks. And then just one more here. I guess going back to the China theme, you touched on it a bit, the initiative you have to begin manufacturing locally a little more over there. Are there any updates you can provide on how that's progressing and when that new capacity could come online?

Well, of course it's a small initiative given the entire entirety of our company. And, and we are, we're not in any hurry to make that investment right at this particular time, although that motion is still, still, still active. So, um, You would see probably mid-next year, you'd probably see made in China product coming out of the Chinese factory. In addition to doors, it would be freezers as well.

Okay, thanks. That's all I had. Thank you.

Your next question comes from David Larson from BTIG. Your line is now open.

Hi. Can you talk a little bit more about these cost reduction efforts? And I know that you've been very reluctant to reduce labor across your firm. That's certainly very admirable. But just any more color there would be helpful. Do you expect to become EBITDA positive by, say, 4Q of 24 or any sense for the number of positions that might be reduced or anything like that would be very helpful? Thank you.

I just want to make a couple of broad comments and then turn to Robert for more specific comments, David. First of all, we're not reluctant to adjust our business in any way given circumstances after we have assessed them. We take great pride in being responsible in the way we manage our business and the assets that belong to the shareholders of this company. So it's our fiduciary responsibility to be responsible, and we take that very seriously. So we're not, you know, when things, business ebbs and flows, and when it's appropriate, we adjust. We adjust just as I said in the opening comments with those initiatives that I mentioned there. Now, to give you a little bit more color on your specifics, I'll turn it to Robinson.

Yeah, look, in general, we certainly are working towards getting back to positive EBITDA. And you're absolutely right, this is driven by some of the initiatives that we're taking related to cost reduction, related to picking up on the top line revenue. So these are things that we always do, but to give you maybe a few data points, just you look at Q1, we had a little bit over $8 million in cash burn. Of that, a little bit over $4 million was related to CAPEX expenditures. So we are moving out some of the CAPEX, as I mentioned earlier on the call, just related to initiatives that are not high priority. Certainly, we're still making the investment in some of the key initiatives, such as IntegraCell, the cryoprocessing platform, and other key offerings that we've been working on and that have partially already been introduced into the market space. As you would expect with any company, especially with a company that has done a number of acquisitions, we are looking to leverage our current capabilities and current resources. So can we leverage shared services? Absolutely, yes, we can do that. Can we fine-tune the resources that we have and streamline it? Absolutely. And those are things that we have been working on over the last few months that we've already started rolling out and that we expect to have an impact in Q2 2021. towards moving us into positive EBITDA. We're certainly very focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet, maintaining a strong cash balance, and that all feeds into that equation in terms of how we look at our operational capabilities and investments.

Okay, that's helpful. And then can you maybe talk a little bit about the revenue that's being generated from biostorage, bioservices? and also IntegraCell, and any update on storing allogeneic therapies? I know obviously a third of your trials are allogeneic in nature, but in terms of storing that actual cell tissue, has that started yet? Any revenue coming from that yet?

Mark and Robert both may have some additional comments here. They will have some additional comments, David. But IntegraCell is not a subject right now for revenue because it won't be coming online until the last half of the year. And that will be the beginning of a ramp up. And after that, you will see over time, you will see IntegraCell producing significant revenues for the company. It's a service that's needed. The partnerships are coming along well. The factories are coming along well. And we have great anticipation of IntegraCell. In terms of a couple of the other things, on bioservices in particular, Mark can better comment on bioservices and how that's coming along.

Yeah, I want to focus on your specific question around allogeneic therapy as it relates to the need for storage and fulfillment-related capabilities. So we have obviously, as part of the infrastructure build over the last year and a half, built out competencies for secondary labeling and packaging requirements, which are all a base need for allogeneic therapy distribution. Those are currently being used by both clinical and commercial clients, both in the US as well as in Europe. So we've been very successful in transitioning that investment into into direct support of the cell and gene space itself. Allo, obviously there's really, the only real Allo product on the market right now is Atara, which is a low volume medication right now, so there's not gonna be a significant financial impact on that in the short term, but there's also a contribution into bioservices over time for autologous therapies where they're supporting, where we're supporting backup doses, as well as other support elements, which also has the competencies over time to support additional revenues.

Lastly, maybe just to add there, you were looking for a dollar amount. The bioservices revenue grew 9% year over year to 3.5 million in the first quarter.

Okay, and I think that there were two large facilities that are fairly new that came online recently, one in Texas, one in New Jersey. Are those profitable now?

Look, we're still in the early stages of our biosurge initiatives. Both of those were introduced, and so we're really working towards filling up and bringing up the revenue in biosurge by services. We're in the early stages. When Mark was talking about utilizing them for the commercial therapies, for example, this is all just now commencing. So we're obviously not fully utilized at this point in time.

David, remember, once we open those facilities, and those facilities were opened in, I think it was June a year ago. So it takes six to 18 months for clients to come in. They have to do their audits, and they have to do their trial runs, and then they have to rearrange the traffic of what they're doing. So it's just now ramping up. It does, you know, bioservices, we always anticipated an exponential development. So I think, you know, we're still down there right around that point of inflection, and I think you'll see it picking up over time.

Yeah, I just want to comment on that. So we have, you know, over the last 12 months in those facilities, we've actually onboarded 27 clients. Wow.

Okay. And then just one more quick one. I think on last quarter's call, you talked about nine new therapies for 2024 and 17 filings in 2024. Does that mean nine new commercial therapies that you're supporting coming online in 2024? Is that what that means? And how is that number as of today? Is it still nine and 17?

We have had so far this year three new therapies get approved. That's Casgevi of the CRISPR Vertex product, Ampegvi from Iovance, and most recently Anktiva from Immunity Bio. In our reporting today, we're saying we can see five more new therapies approved this year, so that would give you eight. So it has one, I'll call it pushed out. It hasn't gone away. It's probably going to be a 2025. And right now we're seeing 16 more filings in 2024.

Okay, thanks very much. I'll hop back in the queue. Your next question comes from Paul Knight from KeyBank.

Your line is now open.

Hi, Mark. I have a question for you for starters, and that is the phase three trial customer count was up the most in that press release, meaning up 5.6%. Is this a significant indication that biotech's getting some money and getting back into the trial business early stage?

Well, we are seeing a lot of new money starting to come back into the space. We still see a lot of volatility in turn, as we had mentioned. We had a net add of 42 trials in the quarter with a net removal of 42 trials. Our whole focus is around playing the portfolio, which means the collective average, so that we'll have winners and losers as it relates to those. But as long as we're supporting the vast majority of those trials in the space, then we're on the upside. And we remain confident in that. And with the funding position seeming to stabilize and improving in Q1, obviously we need to see if that's sustainable. That's a positive indicator.

And then I think the conference in Philadelphia was 8,000 employees. I mean, that's obviously a record. And not employees, but attendees. And I think it was the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, right? Are you seeing an uptick in... potential customer interest? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of new startups.

And so a significant percentage of those 42 new programs came from new clients, which is a very good sign.

And then, I mean, we talk about a $7.7 million EBITDA loss. What do you really want to run the business at, Jerry? And a few years out. Is this a 30% EBITDA margin business or is it 25?

You know, Paul, our goals have not changed. I mean, you know, our goals are 55 to 60% gross margin and 30% adjusted EBITDA. Our goals are not changed and we do examine them often. So that's the metrics that you should be looking for from us.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Yuanshi from B. Riley.

Your line is now open.

Thank you for taking our questions. So can you help us better understand the weakness in biologic services in 1Q? Was it because of lower volume? And how about the visibility and confidence in 2Q and beyond? And I have a follow-up.

Mark's going to answer your question, but this has to do with the report that you put out just recently, I assume.

No, he's talking about bioservices. I'm sorry, can you repeat the question, guys?

Because I think I was a little garbled over here. I thought you said biologics. I did, too.

No, I thought you said biologics. He thought bioservices. Repeat the question.

Yeah. So can you help us better understand the weakness in biologistics services? Was it because of lower volume and how about the visibility and confidence in 2Q and beyond?

Yeah. Good. Okay. Mark. I got it now. Yeah. So biologistics revenue was softer than anticipated because we saw those 42 trial terminations and many of those were established programs with active volume that was ongoing. Those were replaced by 42 new starts, but those 42 new starts take time to ramp. And so just because we onboard them in the quarter, it usually is one to two quarters later before we start seeing a contribution as it relates to financial contribution. So, you know, we'll see progressive improvement on that as those new programs come online.

Got it. And then on NVE, it seems that it's dropping from the last quarter. And I'm just curious, was it because canceling of order or was it because the customer are just not there yet?

It was demand softness, continued demand softness. And again, mostly out of China, it was not cancellation of orders.

Got it. And one last one from us. For the goals to reduce some capital costs or reducing some cost in second half, I'm curious, will that impact the revenue part? Because if you are cutting workforce in sales, it could have a certain degree of impact. Thank you.

No, if you look at, you know, the actions that we're looking at, you know, related to, as I mentioned, some of the CAPEX, you know, that we're moving out, these are not initiatives that, you know, will have, you know, an impact on our near-term revenue. They're not the high-priority initiatives that we're working on, and same with Some of the headcount review, this is not something that we expect to have any impact on our revenue as well as on our client relationships. Again, this is more seen more as reviewing the organization, taking a closer look, especially after the number of acquisitions that we've completed, and then kind of refining the organizational structure.

Got it. Thanks for the actual helpful comment. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from David Jackson from NEDAM.

Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks and good afternoon. I've been in between calls, so I apologize if I am repeating any questions. But Jerry, maybe I'll start with you. So on the fourth quarter earnings call back in mid-March, you did seem to confirm expectations for sequential growth from the fourth quarter into the first quarter. So over the two weeks before quarter end, were there any orders that got pushed out into the second quarter? Or what were the factors that drove the shortfall of sequential growth?

You know, we did speak with confidence, you know, in the fourth quarter. We didn't know exactly, you know, how the first quarter was going to turn out. But we didn't say we were having a strong first quarter. What we did say is we gave revenue guidance and we said we would progressively increase improved throughout the quarters. And then the guidance came out, you know, higher than we expected it to come out, but it did come out that way. And, you know, we recognized the weakness in the marketplace at that time, and that's why we said that we would have, you know, we would see a progressive improvement over the year. And I did confirm our guidance today. So that's what happened. There was nothing specifically that I can say other than the market was slow, and we knew it was slow at the time. And it was a little bit slower than we anticipated, so we were disappointed in the first quarter. But Mark may have something to add to that as well.

Yeah.

Obviously, we don't give guidance right on a quarterly basis. You know, we're really looking at the entirety of the year itself. And, you know, across the board between ourselves and other players in the space, we do strongly anticipate a continuous progression the second half of the year. So you look at uptake and consumables for the life sciences. That's a very strong indicator as it relates to pick up. And that was picked up in Q1, which does indicate development of therapies that will need biologistics and biostorage through the rest of the year. So sequencing itself is sometimes difficult to ascertain because you can't have rollover from one quarter to the next. And the question is, you know, things that come in towards the end of the quarter, even if they have a PO or something else that slips that you don't anticipate, it can have a fairly significant impact on that end of quarter revenue. So we did see some POs and things like that slip out of the first quarter into the second quarter.

Okay. Maybe, Mark, I'll follow up with some of the comments you just made. And I appreciate, you know, the cadence might be kind of difficult to predict. But I thought you said you expect continuous improvement in the second half. So should we think about the second quarter being kind of flattish sequentially and then, you know, we see some sequential growth in the second half to get to the guidance range? And then I'll just ask my second question here. This might be for both Jerry and Robert. On Bluebird Express, I'd love to hear how that integration is going. And then, you know, by my estimate at least, revenue contribution was around $3 million. Is that in the right ballpark? And is that a good base, you know, that we can see growth off of? Thank you.

I'll let Robert come up.

Yeah, maybe you talk about your first question. Just, you know, if you look at what we experienced in Q3, Q4 of last year, we saw actually a slight improvement in Q4. You know, hence, you know, our outlook, you know, was, you know, the way we described it at year end. You know, with that drop-off, as Tom mentioned, particularly in Asia PAC, in Q1, some of that was certainly unexpected. But what we did talk about is to see a progressive improvement throughout the year, and that progressive improvement really weighted towards the second half of the year. I can't give you specifics related to Q2, but I can give you those two data points as they're progressively improving and then weighted towards the second half of the year.

Okay. Yeah, that's super helpful. And then just on Bluebird Express, if you could.

Yeah, Bluebird Express is integrating very well with Cryo PDP. It's a small acquisition, but we have done business with Bluebird Express for a number of years at Cryoport Systems, and it's a known quantity. It's having a very positive impact. It knows the U.S. market, and it's having an impact on the development of of Cryo PDP. We're opening three new logistics centers in the U.S. to build out that network, and I think we'll have a good year at Cryo PDP.

Okay, and so it sounds like $3 million might be the right ballpark for Cryo PDP.

It's probably not the lower end, but I think for modeling purposes, that's fine.

Okay, great.

All right, thanks so much. Thank you, David. There are no further questions at this time. Speakers, please proceed with your closing remarks. Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your questions and our discussions. Our first quarter results echoed a challenging global environment. The market improvements and through market improvements and our actions, we expect our results will progressively improve during the remainder of the year. And based on the recent momentum we've seen with cell and gene therapy approvals, we are encouraged and feel confident in our full year 2024 revenue guidance. Proudport is well positioned to capitalize on the growth of the life sciences and particularly the cell and gene therapy industry. As more therapies receive FDA approval and achieve commercialization and our services and product initiatives take effect. Even with the current economic and geopolitical climate, the market is expected to expand substantially over the next few years. and Cryoport is built to support its rapid growth. In summary, while our start in 2024 was softer than we would have liked, we will remain focused on our strategic priorities, continuing to expand our position in our top accounts, delivering innovation and differentiated new services and products, and remaining diligent on cost controls and productivity improvements to support increases in margins as we move through 2024. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support and interest in our company. We look forward to updating you on our progress again next quarter. We hope you have a good evening. Thank you. Operator?

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.