This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Q1 2022 Fulton Genetics Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Nicole Borja. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Nicole Borja
Great, thanks. Good afternoon and welcome to the Fulton Genetics First Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. On the call today are Ming Hsieh, Chief Executive Officer, Paul Kim, Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Larry Weiss, Chief Medical Officer, and Brandon Perthews, Chief Commercial Officer. The company's press release discussing its financial results is available in the investor relations section of the company's website, bulgentgenetics.com. An audio replay of this call will be available shortly after the call concludes. Please visit the investor relations section of the company's website to access the audio replay. Management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions on today's call will contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent management's estimates based on current views and assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. As a result, matters discussed in any forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ from those described in the forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements it may make today to reflect actual results or changes in expectations. Listeners should not rely on any forward-looking statements as predictions of future events and should listen to management's remarks today with the understanding that actual events, including the company's actual future results, may be materially different than what is described in or implied by these forward-looking statements. Please review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements, including discussions of some of the risk factors that may cause results to differ from those described in these four looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the previously filed 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2021, which is available on the company's IR website. Management's prepared remarks, including discussions of earnings and earnings per share, contain financial measures not prepared in accordance with accounting policies generally accepted in the United States or GAAP. Management has presented these non-GAAP financial measures because it believes they may be useful to investors for various reasons, but they should not be viewed as a substitute for or superior to the company's financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Please see the company's press release discussing its financial results for the first quarter of 2022 for more information, including the description of how the company calculates non-GAAP income and income per share and a reconciliation of these financial measures income and income per share the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Meng.
Ming Hsieh
Thank you very much, Nicole. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call today to discuss our first quarter 2022 results. We had a very good start to the year in terms of financial results, as well as some exciting strategic announcements. I will cover some highlights from the quarter before taking the call over to our Chief Commercial Officer, Brandon Perthes, to discuss products and go-to-market updates. Then Dr. Larry Weiss will provide an update on our CSI expansion strategy. Finally, Paul will cover our financial results and outlook in detail. Taking a look at our first quarter results, which again exceeded our guidance for both core and COVID revenue. Revenue totaled at $320 million, down 11%, worth $359 million in the first quarter last year, and up 27% compared to fourth quarter of 2021. We delivered approximately 3.2 million tests in the quarter, up about 31% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, though down from 3.8 million in the fourth quarter of last year. The volatility we have seen in total revenue is a direct result of the fluctuating demand environment for COVID testing. which was again strong in the first quarter, but seems cold meaningfully in the second quarter. Paul will cover the breakdown between our core and the COVID business in more detail. But on a highlight level, our core business grow 59% year over year to 25 million. We continue to drive a strong profitability and generated $4.93 per share in GAAP EPS and $188.4 million in operating cash flows in the quarter. We had a strong start to the year with the first quarter results that exceeded our expectations. At the same time, we are most excited about the strategic update we announced most recently. This includes acquisition of informed diagnostics, which closed just last week, and the opening of our new oncology lab in Southern California, which we announced today. As the demand environment for COVID-19 continues to cool off, our team is much busier than ever working on a growing number of initiatives that will drive long-term sustainable growth for our core genetic testing business. Brandon will cover our strategy around informed diagnostic in more detail, but this acquisition is our largest today. and create a meaningful expansion opportunity for full-gen while adding our top line on day one. There are multiple compelling strategy benefits of this acquisition, including commercial infrastructure they have built to support a nationwide footprint, which give us a seamless entry point to sell full suite of full-gen testing services, including newly launched liver cancer liquid biopsy tests. We see this acquisition as highly complementary to our existing test menu and Salesforce and believe the investment can drive meaningful return for our core business over the long term. The second initiative I would like to highlight is opening our new oncology folks lab in Southern California. This new lab give us an opportunity to bring lab and oncology testing capabilities that we acquired with CSI to our clients on the West Coast. We look forward to scaling our capabilities across cancer testing to our West Coast customer base. Dr. Weiss, who has been overseeing the integration of CSI into 4GIN, will also oversee the operation of this lab. This announcement marked notable steps forward in our strategy to drive long-term sustainable growth in our core genetic testing business. A key element of success of this strategy is a team of experienced leaders within Fortune who are executing on this vision every day. We help build a relatively lean but extremely knowledgeable group of executives and vice presidents who have become instrumental to our success for execution. While the team has continued to grow in recent quarters, It remains a cohesive and highly effective group of leaders who are able to accomplish what they set out to do. Our rapid scaling of COVID testing during the pandemic is a prime example of the determination of our team. The acquisition and the integration of CSI Labs is another notable proof point of our ability to execute successfully on our merchant acquisition strategy. I have a high level of confidence that our team were able to effectively execute on the integration of informed diagnosis to drive outside growth in our core business in the years ahead. We'll continue to look and additional M&A opportunities in science, technology that could contribute to our long-term growth. We recognize that the valuation across the healthcare landscape have become even more attractive in the recent market volatility and remain extremely well-capitalized to take advantage of these opportunities as they arise. The future looks very bright for 4G. I am very excited about the growing number of opportunities we have to capitalize on in the near future. I now turn over the call over to Brandon Perthes, our Chief Commercial Officer. Brandon?
Nicole
Thanks, Ming. We have a lot of great things to talk about today. While we saw another wave of COVID-19 in the first quarter, which drove further cash generation, we remain diligent in our efforts to build upon our core business and we're pleased to recently announce the opening of our new cancer lab and the acquisition of Informed Diagnostics. Starting with the exciting news of our acquisition of Informed Diagnostics. Informed Diagnostics was founded in 1996. and has grown to be one of the largest national outpatient pathology laboratories in the United States, in large part thanks to the rigor of their quality, the comprehensiveness of their solution offerings, and the experience, expertise, and dedication of their professional staff. InformDx brings us expertise in hematopathology, anatomic pathology, and neuropathology. key service areas that complement our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for a wide range of healthcare specialties. Looking at the anatomic pathology business, we offer products in dermatology, GI, urology, and breast. Each of these areas have seasoned, sub-specialty trained pathologists on staff, which is a key differentiator and selling feature. The anatomical pathology sales team has approximately 20 sales managers spread throughout the United States, and no individual state contributes more than 10% to overall anatomical pathology sales. We see an immediate opportunity to expand this team to further penetrate the market. In addition, one of the more exciting areas for us is the ability to cross-sell. For example, InformDx has over 600 active GI clients, which are a focal call point for our new liver cancer liquid biopsy test. While we have built a specialized sales team to call on hepatologists and GIs, which I will speak to momentarily, the informed DX sales managers have these existing relationships and can walk us through the front door. In addition, the CSI division has existing client relationships that also send out anatomical pathology services, which could be cross-sold and economically included in existing daily pickups with other heme and surgical work. Other synergistic sales opportunities to inform DX clients include hereditary cancer to their breast clients and molecular testing for UTI to their GU clients. These are just some examples, and with the speed at which Fulgent can launch new products and services, we will be looking at other tests our accounts utilize, and if it makes sense, we'll be launching those tests to increase our revenue per customer as well as better serve our clients. On the Heme side, This acquisition is a perfect fit for our oncology strategy. InformDx currently has four heme sales reps and we've already started expanding this with the addition of three new hires on the West Coast with the intention of hiring more. We believe our current menu and turnaround time is very competitive and we will continue to launch new heme-onc services such as MRD and other heme panels. An additional area of synergy is around managed care contracting. InformDx has done an impressive job obtaining contracts that collectively represent over 300 million covered lives. These contracts, layered on top of CSIs, strengthen our in-network coverage in most states. In addition, we believe the combined entity of Fulgent plus CSI plus Informed Diagnostics creates a unique multi-state laboratory offering and subspecialties that provide an excellent value proposition to managed care. We hope to be able to use this to build stronger relationships with existing payers and obtain additional contracts and relationships moving forward. Switching to our new liquid biopsy test for liver cancer. Since launching the test late last year, we have made significant progress with our go-to-market strategy. This includes building out the sales team, a map release to drive consumer awareness, launching a redesigned website, publication of the encore data, continued progress in the CLIMB clinical trial, and onboarding over 50 new accounts. 50 new accounts in this short amount of time is significant. We believe this shows enthusiasm for the test and represents execution by our new sales leaders and their team. The enthusiasm is understandable, considering the test has the potential to transform how we screen and diagnose patients for liver cancer leading to improved patient outcomes. Changing the way medicine is practiced takes time, but we are excited to see the early momentum we have with our tests. Another area of focus moving forward will be to continue to grow our organic core business, specifically in pediatric testing. Fulton has built one of the largest, most comprehensive menus for pediatric genetic testing, now offering testing for over 5,700 conditions and phenotypes with over 19,000 tests. And for many of these tests, we are one of, if not the only provider in the United States. This has allowed us to build a large national customer base, though we believe there is still work to be done to increase awareness across this customer base. Over the recent months, we have built an inside sales team who will be deployed to help grow these accounts by focusing on the higher volume tests, such as exome sequencing, genome sequencing, and neurological panels. We believe we have the test menu, TAT, and quality to drive additional volume for pediatric and rare disease testing. Over the next several months, we'll be connecting with this customer base and educating them on the full breadth of our services. And as we bring CSI and informed diagnostics together, we can better serve these clients over time within network managed care contracts. On the sales team front, we have expanded in a big way, which we said we would do on previous calls. We now have a team of over 50 individuals segmented into five subspecialties, pediatric and reproductive health, anatomical pathology, oncology, hepatology, and biopharma. These teams are currently functioning independently to ramp our recent investments in informed diagnostics and CSIs, but there are clear synergies across the organization, and we are beginning to take steps to cross-train and integrate the teams across common platforms to maximize In just a few quarters, we've been able to transform our business in a big way. Fulgent is now one of the largest providers of genetic testing and anatomical pathology services in the United States. We believe our investments have come at the right time and at the right price and have set up Fulgent to see significant growth over the coming years. That said, we're still only at the very beginning of our story. as we continue to leverage our AI technology and execute on our post-COVID-19 strategy that will include additional investment in organic growth, M&A, and other strategic initiatives. We look forward to keeping our investors updated on our progress, and we appreciate their support. I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Larry Weiss.
Ming
Larry? Thanks, Brandon. As you know, oncology diagnostic testing is a major strategic area for Fulgen as we focus our efforts on driving long-term, sustainable growth in our core business. We executed on this strategy in a meaningful way in August of last year with the purchase of CSI Laboratories in Alpharetta, Georgia. CSI is a strong regional laboratory offering diagnostic services to a pathologist client base for both hematopathology and surgical pathology using immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, cytogenetics, FISH, and single-gene molecular testing. Using CSI's resources as a model and a source of validation assessments, our goal was to build a state-of-the-art laboratory on the West Coast to offer diagnostic services to an oncologist's client base, as well as to supplement CSI's test menu with next-generation sequencing somatic tumor offerings. Starting from literally empty walls, I am very pleased to announce that we have already been able to build a state-of-the-art laboratory in Almonte, California, which has been CLIA approved. The two labs will be complementary and not strictly duplicative to each other, as while our Georgia lab has a pathologist client base, our new lab in Almonte will have a hematologist-oncologist customer orientation. The new laboratory includes about 25,000 square feet of wet lab space, including large R&D areas, as well as additional dry lab space for analysis and pathologist activities. Currently able to offer immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, cytogenetics, FISH, and single gene testing, we are actively validating and submitting a suite of next generation sequencing tests for reimbursement approval. including tissue and liquid biopsy tests for both hematology and solid tumor specimens for assessment of tumors as well as detection of minimal residual disease. The new somatic NGS testing, in addition to Fulgen's current capabilities in germline NGS testing, will also supplement both CSIs and InformedX's test menu. As an aside, germline testing is already important in breast cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, pediatric cancer, and many others, and is included in many consensus guidelines for cancer patients. Our goal is to serve cancer patients and their families at all stages of their disease, early as well as late, and to become a meaningful contributor to revenue by the end of the year. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Paul Kim. Paul?
Larry
Thanks, Larry. Revenue in the first quarter totaled $320 million compared to $359 million in the first quarter of 2021, while exceeding our original guidance of approximately $245 million. Billable tests in the quarter totaled $3.2 million compared to $3.8 million in Q1 of last year. The year-over-year decline was again due to COVID testing dynamics, the Omicron wave, and the beginning of The first quarter created tremendous demand for COVID testing early in the quarter, though this tapered off through the end of March and has since returned to much more normalized levels. Breaking down the revenue a bit further, roughly $295 million came from COVID-19 testing in Q1, which exceeded our expectations. The revenue from our core business totaled $25 million, which also exceeded our guidance of $22 million and grew 59% year over year. As a reminder, our core revenue includes our NGS business contributions from our China JV, contribution from CSI, and it excludes NGS COVID testing from the CDC. As demand for COVID testing remains volatile and unpredictable, we continue to take a conservative stance on expected revenue from COVID testing. We remain focused on executing on our post-COVID growth opportunities which include the integration of informed diagnostics, expanding the reach of CSI's capabilities, executing on additional investment and partnership opportunities, ongoing work on joint commercialization opportunities, and growing the footprint of our international operations. Our ASP in the first quarter was $99, slightly lower than the 103 we saw in the fourth quarter of last year. Our ASP has remained relatively stable in the last few quarters, fluctuating higher and lower as COVID testing ebbs and spikes. Cost per test for the quarter was $24, slightly lower than the $25 in the fourth quarter of last year, due to showing up reserves and the write-off of some excess inventory at year end. Gross margin was 75.7%, down 370 basis points year over year, and up 40 basis points sequentially. Turning now to operating expenses, total GAAP operating expenses were $40.6 million in the first quarter, up from $38.7 million in the fourth quarter of last year. Non-GAAP operating expenses totaled $35.5 million, up from $34 million last year. Our operating expenses increased primarily due to ongoing investments in strategic headcount across our organization, fees and services associated with our heightened M&A activity, Additional credit losses for provision and the accounts receivable due to the high revenues in the first quarter. Our non-GAAP operating margin increased 280 basis points sequentially to 65.1%. Our expense structure remains very lean, enabling us to drive significant profitability from revenue outperformance. That being said, our investments in people and business in the near term. Ultimately, we believe these investments will drive outsized future growth on our core business, and we remain pleased with the consistent operating leverage we were able to demonstrate even through M&A. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $213.5 million compared to $271.9 million in the first quarter of 2021. On a non-GAAP basis and excluding equity-based compensation expense and intangible asset amortization, income for the quarter was $158.7 million, or $5.08 per diluted share on 31.2 million weighted average diluted shares outstanding. Turning over to the balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with approximately $1.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. We generated $188.4 million of cash from operations during the quarter, further adding to our cash balance. Now moving on to our outlook. Starting with COVID revenues, as demand for COVID testing continues to taper off, we expect to see ongoing declines in our revenue from COVID testing. Our expectations for COVID revenue for the full year remain unchanged. We expect at least $480 million in COVID revenues for the year, inclusive of the $295 million we did in the first quarter. This breaks out into roughly $85 million in Q2 and $50 million each Q3 and Q4. Clearly, revenue from COVID testing has been hard to predict amid volatile spikes and outbreaks, so we remain prudent with our expectations for COVID revenue contribution. Moving on to our core revenue guidance, which will include contributions from informed diagnostics as the transaction closed on April 26th. We have continued to see strong growth across our organic business, while CSI and informed diagnostics will drive incremental growth. We expect core revenues will be approximately $180 million in 2022, representing growth of 94% year-over-year, which is slightly better than the guidance we provided during the announcement of the acquisition of informed diagnostics only a little over a week ago. With $480 million in COVID revenue and $180 million in core revenues, we expect total revenues will be approximately $660 million for the year. We expect there will be continued volatility with COVID testing and remain focused on executing our strategy to drive momentum in our core business. From a profitability standpoint, we remain focused on investing in our business to drive sustainable long-term growth. That being said, we expect to see meaningful pressure on operating margins in the quarters ahead as we integrate and further invest resources of our recent acquisitions. In addition, our conservative assumption of a dramatic decline in COVID testing demand will result in lower growth in operating margins relative to the record high margins we experienced during the COVID crisis. Long-term, our foundational technology platform supports a strong margin profile, and we will continue to manage our spending with discretion to drive operating leverage. For the full year of 2022, utilizing a 28% tax rate and share count of $32.4 million, we now expect non-GAAP income to be approximately $6 per share. for shareholders excluding stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets versus our previous guidance of $7 per share. While acquisition of informed diagnostics is accretive from an adjusted EBITDA standpoint and on a standalone basis, we're also anticipating heightened operating expenses due to integration costs associated with the transaction, aggressive investments in our organic business, such as the build-out and sales ramp of our West Coast Oncology Lab as well as lower gross margins as the mix of COVID testing decreases in the coming quarters. For the second quarter, 2022 specifically, we expect total revenues of $125 million. This breaks down into core revenues of at least $40 million, representing growth of 78% year-over-year. And as I mentioned, we expect approximately $85 million in COVID testing. Our updated guidance is posted in our slides on our investor relations website, which shows the detailed breakout I just discussed. Thank you for joining our call today. Operator, now you can open it up for questions.
Operator
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, press star 1 to ask a question. And we'll take our first question from the line of Kevin Degliter. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Kevin Degliter
Hey, great, guys. Thanks for the comprehensive update. You know, maybe just can you talk about, you know, the continued, you know, Salesforce build out? I appreciate the update in terms of, you know, 50 reps. Just kind of really two questions. You know, as we look towards the end of the year, you know, how should we think about, you know, targets? either headcount number, just sort of infrastructure build, and then with regard to kind of integration of the commercial team, is that, should we think about that process as substantially maturing through the balance of 2022, or really being a 2023 and beyond priority?
Nicole
Yeah, thanks, Kevin. It's Brandon. The integration is ongoing and a top priority right now. The acquisitions of CSI and informed diagnostics brought us meaningful increases in headcount across our sales organization. So, you know, priority one, integrate them into the Fulgent system, get them on common platforms, get them into the Fulgent culture, and we're doing that in a very rapid fashion. That said, while the sales team has grown in a big way, we now have much larger TAM than we've ever had before. The sheer number of call points for some of these new markets we've been able to enter, both through organic expansion as well as M&A, is tremendous. I don't think we have a right-side sales team, so to speak. I think there's tremendous opportunity for us to continue to increase that, but in typical Fulgian fashion. We'll do it the smart way, use the methodology we've always had of growing responsibly. Like I said, the TAM that we now have, it's a big one. You know, we're looking forward to optimizing productivity out of the existing sales team, leveraging those cross-selling opportunities, the teams coming together to work together to, you know, serve these clients. But long-term, it's going to continue to grow, Kevin.
Ming Hsieh
Yeah, adding Brandon's comments, as the Fortune current financial and products and service capabilities we're attracting a lot of new sales talents to our organization. We receive a lot of inbound calls for this new talent to join us, and we will make the announcement as we continue to recruit the talents during the quarters.
Kevin Degliter
Great, thanks for that. And I appreciate the update on Helio, Liv, RV. I guess my question there, though, is really, what is the most meaningful near-term metric that you think predicts the ultimate commercial traction? I think you called out around 50 new accounts, but what sort of the recurring metric we should look for the company disclosing to be able to track progress there?
Nicole
That's a good question, Kevin. As I mentioned on the call, we're trying to change the way clinicians practice medicine. And especially in the hepatology space for liver cancer, there's been no change in the way medicine's been practiced in a very long time. So they have their protocols and the procedures. Now we know the test that we have is a big improvement over the standard of care. That doesn't make it that much easier to change their thought process, so they have to hear it a lot. So we're proud of the fact that we've onboarded 50 new accounts, and that's kind of what we're tracking right now. I think near term, meaning sort of the next few quarters, I'd like to see us begin to sort of track volume and utility. And maybe more importantly than volume would be the positivity rate, right? We know in early data so far, we have detected liver cancer that was going missed, undiagnosed by standard of care. So I think going forward, we want to track volume and we want to track the utility of the test by tracking the positivity rate where ultrasound missed an early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma?
Ming Hsieh
Kevin, adding on to Brandon's comments, these oncology centers, the physicians, they do recognize that this is a good test. They do recognize that we are in the leading position to provide the better diagnosis and the cancer screenings. Even though we got attraction from these physicians in terms of the liquid biopsy test, but they also were interested. The full suite of Fulgine's products and service offerings, it gave us a very, very good entry point for these physicians to explore our products and services, and it will provide the one-stop not shopping for their test selections.
Kevin Degliter
That's great. Thank you, Ming. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin.
Operator
We'll take our next question from the line of David Westenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
David Westenberg
Hi. Thanks for the questions. And congrats on some good numbers here. And there's a lot of earnings going on, so sorry if I missed this, but it looks like on the guide you added $5 million just in the last two weeks, which is pretty impressive on the core business. Can you walk us through the difference? Did you find maybe Inform is doing more revenue than you anticipated, or is it maybe heating up of business trends that just you saw in the last two weeks?
Larry
Yeah, so thank you for taking notice that we raised our guidance even within the course of a week. The reason why we guided higher is in the strength of our overall core business. It has nothing to do with informed diagnostics because the outperformance that we had was for the first quarter. We anticipated that we would do about $22 million of revenues during the quarter. Even with Omicron and everything that was going on, the actual numbers came in a little bit north of 25 million. If you combine the momentum that we're seeing within our core business, in addition to the contribution from InformDX, we feel very comfortable with achieving at least $180 million of core revenues in this year.
David Westenberg
Got it. Appreciate it. And, Paul, I got another one for you. You mentioned some commentary around ASPs going down with a decrease in COVID testing relative to your prior guidance. Can you walk us through maybe quantitatively what we're looking at in terms of the gross margins in the subsequent quarters? I mean, Q2s and Q3s, I mean, I do think of this being maybe COVID-light, so I wouldn't think any impact there. But just can you walk us through on kind of the – new implied gross margin impacts?
Larry
Sure. So I'll talk about gross as well as operating margins. So we made a very conservative assumption about COVID testing demand because, quite frankly, nobody can predict what the virus is going to do. So we're anticipating in Q2, Q3, and Q4 a drastic drop-off in terms of COVID testing demand. We're also making assumptions about a greater mix coming from our core part of our business. And the other thing that we're also doing is we're investing heavily into our operations or facility. We announced the opening of the oncology lab. That is just one example. So when you combine the conservative assumptions and the mixed changes, we're anticipating the gross margins to be at our historical levels of between 50 and 60%, depending on which quarter you're looking at. And if we have higher COVID revenues, Because of the scale, our gross margins, everything being equal, will slightly be higher. That's the gross margins. And then as far as the operating margins, I talked about the heavy investments that we're making in our facilities. We're also making capital investments. We're making investments in people across all departments of the company. Because of the foundation technology that we have now within operating expenses, we anticipate an increase in R&D spending, but proportionally less because the foundation technology that we have has so much efficiency and leverage behind it. Where we do believe we're going to be having the highest amount of operating expenses is in sales and marketing. Brandon talked about the size of the sales organization. They made some commentaries. In sales and marketing, you're going to see heavy investments that we're going to be making by hiring just a wide set of people Because based on the acquisitions and our enhanced capabilities, we can address a much wider market. We believe that we're in a position with the foundational technology, which really gives us the leverage and the performance of making these aggressive investments, doing M&A, also having a stock buyback program. All these things we believe will enhance shareholder value.
David Westenberg
Got it. No, thank you very much. And actually, that's a good segue to my last question here on M&A. Can you talk about maybe some of the timing in terms of M&A? Do you anticipate doing it this year? And, you know, you mentioned the stock buyback program. I mean, is there kind of an expiration date on making an acquisition where, you know, you maybe move to stock buybacks? I mean, how do we think about capital deployment from here on out, recognizing that you know, informed diagnostics really only was $170 million and you're, you know, near billion dollars in cash.
Larry
I'll make a few commentaries and I'll turn it over to Ming who can talk about, you know, the philosophy of enhancing shareholder value. We believe that all these options that we have open for us gives us a unique opportunity to address the market, to set the pacing of for the marketplace as to how we want to be able to penetrate certain spaces. It gives us the flexibility to hire people and invest in our business. And oh, by the way, if you take a look at the M&A landscape, the valuations of the assets that we have been paying attention to, they're all coming in aligning themselves to business prospects and what we're willing to pay. So from an approach standpoint, we think that we're going to be busier than ever. And the success that we're seeing and the synergies is actually getting the team more excited about engaging some of these targets. But I'll turn it over to Ming, who can talk about the usage of our cash, the philosophy behind M&A and our investments organically.
Ming Hsieh
All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, David, for the question. I think in my paragraph during the discussion, I focus on the science and technology. I do believe 4G has tremendous benefit in this market with our existing team for the AI technology. We want to be the leader in this area that becomes the forefront of the digital pathology using the AI technology we have accumulated by our existing teams. But in addition, we're also focused on the other adjacent areas in the science and technology will give us much, much bigger differentiator for us using our platform, the insurance payers infrastructure, national sales team, to penetrate even further. And it distinguishes us from the current competitors we're competing, elevating us to a new level. And the print generates better attractive growth margins. and for our shareholders.
David Westenberg
Thank you, Ming. Thank you, Paul. Have a great job on the quarter.
Kevin Degliter
Thank you, Dave.
Dave
Thank you, David.
Operator
Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1. At this time, there are no further questions. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer