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Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 908 Devices 3rd Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Kelly Gura, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Kelly Gura
Thank you. This morning, 908 Devices released financial results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2021. If you've not received this news release, or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to ir at 908devices.com. Joining me today from 908 is Kevin Knopp, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, and Joe Griffith, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release 908 issue today. For a more complete list and description, please see the Risk Factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and in its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, 908 disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast, November 4, 2021. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Kevin.
Kevin Knopp
Thanks, Kelly. Good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2021 earnings call. We are continuing to make excellent progress, broadening our global presence, strengthening our relationships, and expanding our offering to deliver even more value to our customers. We ended the third quarter with $12.5 million in total revenue, up 52% from the second quarter of 2021, and up 107% year over year. I'm pleased with our performance, which was in line with our expectations that our revenue would step up in the back half of the year as we continue to ramp our commercial efforts and benefit from seasonal year-end budget cycles. We placed more than 180 devices during the quarter, bringing our installed base to over 1,700 devices across our three products. We have made meaningful progress scaling our commercial team, demonstrating traction within our growing customer base, and highlighting the needs for our technology within our core forensics, research, and biopharma applications. As we think about our growth, we remain focused on expanding the install base, driving utilization, and investing in our technology platform. Starting with our sales channels and commercial organization, we ended the third quarter with 57 employees across sales, marketing, and product management. I'm excited by the talent we continue to bring to the 908 team, and we are well on our way to reaching our goal of 60 commercial employees by the end of Q1 2022. We are ramping our efforts in engaging existing, new, and prospective customers on the value of our technologies. To that end, in September, we hosted our first integrated user meeting, Critical Mass 2021, which covered the full breadth of our product platforms and their applications. This event brought more than 150 attendees together, both virtually and in person, to hear our customers share their success using our handheld and desktop devices to democratize access to mass spectrometry. These customers' talks span the breadth of our customer base, from pharma with Amgen, Merck, AstraZeneca, and Sartorius, to top research institutions with Johns Hopkins University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to government agencies with the USDA, Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Quincy Police Department. Tony Zuck, the Executive Director of Product Integrity at Merck, was a keynote speaker for the event and discussed the critical role forensic testing plays in criminal enforcement against counterfeit drugs. It was inspiring to hear the impact our technology is having across a range of topics, from bioprocess monitoring to identification of counterfeit pharmaceuticals to high-throughput drug discovery. And perhaps even most importantly, the event gave our customers the opportunity to engage in discussions together not only to share their experiences, but also to increase awareness and educate each other on the value of our technology across these different applications areas. As we ramp our commercial efforts, we are seeing growing customer traction. Across our product portfolio, we focus on leveraging our customer success in testing, trials, and pilots into enterprise-wide standardization for both devices and consumables. With our handhelds, we continue to gain traction with leading government enterprise accounts for using MX908 for trace detection and identification of narcotics and other chemical hazards. For example, the Department of Homeland Security purchased additional MX908 devices to combat the flow of illicit drugs, including opioids, from entering our borders. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also added MX908 devices for their clandestine drug lab enforcement teams. In addition to growing our existing enterprise accounts, we are continuing to build a pipeline of pilot programs that have the potential to evolve into valuable enterprise accounts. In October, Ohio Attorney General David Yost announced a pilot program for police departments in three cities where law enforcement officers will use our MX-908 handheld devices for rapid mobile drug testing. In the press conference, A.G. Yost noted that the MX-908 is literally a crime lab in your hands. We currently have over 20 MX-908s in use in the state of Ohio, and the Ohio Attorney General has expressed desire for every police department in the state to eventually have an MX-908 device. We are proud of the value that MX-908 is bringing these law enforcement programs and the communities they serve and are committed to bringing similar value to additional agencies across the United States. Unfortunately, overdose deaths involving lethal drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine are on the rise. At the end of September, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a public safety alert warning Americans of the sharp increase in fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine. This was the first advisory the DEA has issued in six years. According to the advisory, the number of DEA-seized counterfeit pills with fentanyl has jumped a staggering amount by nearly 430% since 2019. Today, two out of every five pills with fentanyl contain a potential lethal dose. And according to a recent study by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, overdose deaths in the U.S. involving methamphetamine nearly tripled from 2015 to 2019 among people aged 18 to 64. Even a small amount of these drugs can be lethal. Our MX908 handheld device detects trace levels of a full panel of drugs in seconds, minimizing exposure for first responders and enabling personnel to immediately act. Our handhelds are a game changer for the opioid crisis with the ability to detect and identify trace amounts of drugs. I would like to take a minute to share a few examples of recent customer successes using our handheld devices that underscore the growing need for this technology. At Mexico International's airport, customs personnel recently used the MX-908 to detect pounds of hidden cocaine wrapped in two vests, enabling officials to immediately seize the drugs. Lab tests later confirmed the accuracy of the MX-908 analysis. In another instance, during an examination of a stolen vehicle, technicians from the Canadian Decontamination Solutions observed a white powder in the glove compartment box, suspecting an airborne hazard The team used the newly released Aero module for the MX-908 to confirm the presence of airborne fentanyl, which is highly toxic. The MX provided critical information to keep technicians safe over the course of the vehicle inspection. Our handheld devices provide analysis for applications across chemical and narcotic detection. We are demonstrating solid traction with customers who rely on our technology to combat critical-to-life problems with easily interpretable, actionable results in seconds. Turning now to our desktops, today we are focused on placing our devices with top pharma companies where there's ample room to increase adoption within a single customer account. We saw strong traction during the quarter with new placements increasing by more than 40% compared to the same period last year. This growth was primarily driven by traction in our core biopharma segment with new desktop customers including Gilead Sciences, Boinger Ingelheim, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. We have placed devices with 19 of the top 20 pharma companies. Our Rebel product offers critical value to customers, providing process insights and a new lens into the bioprocess workflow that allows for real-time process optimization. Recently, at the Bioprocessing Summit in Boston, an Alexion pharmaceutical scientist presented results where our desktop device was used to mitigate amino acid misincorporation and optimize feeding strategies for a production bioreactor to rapidly achieve the desired critical quality attributes, also known as CQAs. We've previously shared our plan to create a bioanalytic platform that leverages our versatile technologies from biotherapeutic development through production. The need for such a platform is validated by FDA's widely publicized Quality by Design Initiative, which stresses the importance of understanding, monitoring, and controlling of process parameters to ensure finished biopharmaceuticals products meet proper CQAs. The pharmaceutical industry also broadly recognized that enhanced process understanding and control leads to improved yield and predictability, particularly important with newer therapeutic modalities. Our devices are directly positioned to serve these needs. And finally, moving to innovation related to our products and technology platform, We are working to expand the capabilities of our existing products as well as expand the reach of our technology platform. For our handhelds, we released a software update to our field base of MX908s that adds nine new analyte targets for a total of 19 new targets added so far this year. These new analyte targets are mainly synthetic drug compounds such as cannabinoids, cathinones, and opioids. This builds on the already significant capability of the MX908, ensuring the latest technologies in the hands of safety and health responders across the globe. For our ZIP chip, we recently launched an oligonucleotide analysis kit. Oligos represent a distinct class of therapeutics that include RNA, DNA, and their structural analogs, and are effective against a wide range of disease conditions. Traditional workflows for oligoanalysis are lengthy, often requiring the use of extensive liquid chromatography method development, along with harsh ion-pairing reagents. Our ZipChip device, coupled with the mass spectrometer, provides an easy method for simple and fast analysis of oligos with minimal sample prep and no need for iron-pairing reagents. At the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Meeting, or ASMS, we presented a talk in conjunction with Amgen that demonstrated the use of our ZipChip kit on proprietary Amgen oligos, resulting in decreased analysis time and sample requirements without the use of iron-pairing reagents. We are excited to provide our users with a simple, rapid, and cost-effective solution for oligo analysis, enabling them to accelerate their drug development workflow. We are continuing to unlock our platform's capabilities to increase the areas of use for our customers and open up our addressable markets. For our desktops, we are also continuing our effort to expand downstream into late-stage development and finished product quality domains. In May of this year, we announced a joint collaboration with Biotechni to develop an extended CQA workflow solution for protein characterization. The pairing of Biotechni CIEF systems and Zipchip allows for in-depth characterization of biotherapeutics on an intact and near-native level with a vastly simplified and time-saving workflow. As an update, in September, we presented with Biotechni at the CAS Mass Spec Conference to demonstrate this workflow solution. This need for rapid high-resolution identification and speciation of intact proteoforms was also highlighted by Boringer-Ingelheim at the subsequent CAST-CE Pharma Conference, where they spoke to the rapid characterization of a bispecific antibody using our ZipChip device and noted the quality of the separations and ease of setup. We are encouraged by this work and our demonstrations to the community. While we are largely focused on bioanalytics as the primary application for our desktops, there is a breadth of opportunity for our products and technologies beyond bioanalytics, including in proteomics and metabolomics. Just this week at ASNS, there were a number of presentations on the application of our products and technologies. Presentations were from our own scientists, as well as researchers from Amgen, Ligon Pharmaceuticals, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Three of these presentations were in the areas of proteomics and metabolomics. First, we presented clinical metabolomic studies that compared our Zipchip hardware and associated 908 devices' automated metabolite identification algorithms to legacy technology. The Zipchip approach demonstrated tremendous speed advantages with much higher rates of metabolite IDs and few false IDs. And as we have shared, we're developing new microfluidic chips for our platform for proteomic applications. Two presentations at ASMS highlighted the increased sensitivity and speed of these prototype chips. Our own scientists presented a poster that demonstrated a greater than tenfold improvement in sensitivity for proteomics applications when integrating solid-phase extraction, or SPE, onto the chip. Integrated SPE allows us to capture and measure low-abundance proteins. Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute evaluated the use of prototype chips to perform proteomics analysis on ubiquitating enzymes compared with traditional chromatography methods. They found significant time savings when using prototype chips, 20 minutes versus 90 minutes with traditional chromatography methods. This type of time savings can be especially important when working with large sample sets. These presentations highlight the breadth of our technology platform and our commitment to increase our platform's capabilities to broaden the areas of use for our customers and continue to open up our addressable markets. Overall, I'm encouraged by our growing pipeline of customers and the enthusiasm we're seeing across our end markets for 908 technologies. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joe for more details on our financials.
Kelly
Thanks, Kevin. Revenue for the third quarter of 2021 was $12.5 million compared to $8.3 million in the second quarter and $6 million in the prior year period. Product and service revenue for the third quarter of 2021 was $12.3 million compared compared to 5.8 million in the prior year period, representing growth of 111%. The increase was primarily driven by our handheld devices, including initial shipments to the U.S. Army under the multi-year purchase order. Desktop revenue from our Rebel and ZipJet products grew 70% in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the prior year period, and more than 50% of the device placements were with new customers. Recurring revenues consisting of consumables, accessories, and service revenue grew 134% in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the prior year period. Service revenue from our extended warranty and service plans from our installed base and an increase in consumable revenue related to Rebel kits and initial sales of the Arrow module, a new accessory for our handheld, were key growth drivers in the third quarter of 2021. License and contract revenue for the third quarter 2021 was approximately $0.3 million, relatively flat with the prior year period. Currently, we do not expect license and contract revenues to be a significant contributor of revenue on a go-forward basis. Our installed base grew to 1,714 units with 184 devices shipped during the third quarter. We shipped 164 handheld devices and 20 desktop devices within the quarter. Gross profit was $6.8 million for the third quarter of 2021, compared to $3.8 million for the prior year period. The increased gross profit was driven primarily due to the higher MX-908 sales volume, which leveraged our fixed costs related to our manufacturing facility and, to a lesser extent, our desktop devices. Offsetting this increase were investments in operations and service personnel. Gross margin was 54% for the third quarter of 2021, as compared to 63% for the prior year period. Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2021 were 12.1 million compared to 5.1 million in the prior year period. The increase was driven by headcount expansion across our business, primarily focused on our commercial organization, resulting in 4 million of the increase. The increase was also related to marketing activities and travel, which drove 0.8 million of the increase. as well as increased expenses related to operating as a public company. Net loss for the third quarter of 2021 was $5.2 billion, compared to $1.7 million in the prior year period. We ended the third quarter of 2021 with approximately $139 million in cash and cash equivalents. In addition, we had $15 million of debt outstanding. Turning to our outlook for 2021, we expect revenue to be in the range of $41 to $43 million, representing growth of 56% at the midpoint over the prior year period. This compares to our previously expected revenue range of 40 to 43 million. Regarding supply chain and market dynamics, we have taken a proactive stance and increased our inventory levels as quoted lead times have grown. Over the course of the third quarter, this environment has worsened and we continue to stay close to the situation and its potential risks. Importantly, we design and build our products in-house and are able to qualify alternative vendors, providing us a good degree of flexibility and protection. At this point, I would like to turn the call back to Kevin for closing comments.
Kevin Knopp
Thanks, Joe. It's been an exciting year for us thus far at 908 Devices as we continue to expand our installed base, deepen our customer relationships, and broaden the capabilities of our platform to deliver more value to our customers. I'm encouraged by our progress and growing enthusiasm we are seeing across our end market. We look forward to updating you on our progress. With that, we will now open it up for questions.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Our first question comes from the line of Puneet Sudha with SVB Lyric, your line's open.
network jack
Yeah, hi, Kevin. Thanks for taking the question. First one, it's really good to see the momentum in MX908, but trying to understand in terms of broad awareness of the platform, it continues to grow. But at what point do you think we'll get to a recognition across the board that most forensics and security departments in the state, and agencies ought to purchase an MX-908, sort of give us a sense of that sort of inflection point. And if you could also clarify the instrumentation of REBEL versus MX-908 placements versus Zipchip. Thank you.
Kevin Knopp
Sure. Yeah. Hi, Puneet. Happy to. Yeah, I think we're happy with the growth that we have been achieving year to date, and it is about getting momentum with those placements, and there is an education effect there, some of which 908 can do, and as you know, we've been building out our sales and marketing team to address that, and particularly on the marketing front, and we've really been amplifying our ability to get the messages out there. But then importantly, we're also seeing more and more customers speaking about the technology and the successes. We shared some in the past with various entities. In this call, we shared with the Ohio Attorney General talking about our technology set and the plethora of talks that we're having across both the forensics and, of course, in the desktop life sciences area. So, you know, it continues to build, and we're happy with that progress, and it's a lot of work, but I think we're showing the value that we're bringing.
Kelly
And, Puneet, maybe on the placement side, you know, the 184 devices shipped within the core breaks down. We had 164 MX908, and then the 20 desktop, that was 13 Rebel and 7 Unzip chip.
network jack
Okay, got it. That's super helpful. And in terms of, you know, commercial priorities, obviously hiring has ramped up. You know, obviously not an easy environment to, you know, hire folks right now. Just if you could provide us, you know, what you're seeing in terms of early traction. It seems that, you know, Rebel is just, you know, coming off of an early start. you know, early base. So I just wanted to get a sense of, you know, how this, you know, the addition of new sales reps and the commercial team, when could we see more meaningful traction on the rebel side with the commercial team in place now and as well as expanding?
Kelly
We have invested, as you highlighted, pretty heavily in the commercial channel, Rebel being a key focus area to expand our reach with folks with feet on the street. We have seen attractive growth within our desktops, Rebel leading the way. It grew 76% year-to-date compared to prior year. Our desktop placements grew greater than 40% within the quarter. you know, 60% year-to-date. So we're starting to see some of that traction, and we think there's momentum across our channels. We expect to accelerate placements in Q4 with the year-end pharma push in budget cycles. So pleased with the progress and expect it to continue to pick up based upon customers, both new and existing, adopting the technology.
network jack
Okay, great. And last one, if I could squeeze in, Kevin, in terms of – Rebel, could you talk about the use case of Rebel and how Rebel is positioning in the PD labs and how that workflow is in the PD lab? Just trying to understand how this instrument fits in versus a more comprehensive and, you know, somewhat closer to a traditional benchtop mass spec in the same setting. asking this because we recently saw one of your larger peers highlight a partnership to use a much larger LC and mass spec in a PD labs with amber bioreactors for process development. So how is that different than what Rebel is doing in those labs? Thank you.
Kevin Knopp
Yeah, sure, absolutely. I mean, first, any competition in this area when we're talking about something new like this, it takes a lot of work to educate a prospective customer on the benefits, and having multiple companies out there doing so It's good. It certainly makes our jobs easier. But second, we're really focused on delivering customers a simple-to-use desktop device that you just plug into a standard wall outlet, network jack, and that's it. It could be on a movable cart. if they like. It really doesn't take special infrastructure requirements. There's no power, compressed gas, plumbing, large bottles of solvent waste, no replacing LC columns. It doesn't even require a computer. It just has a touch screen to operate. So Rebel is really built from the ground up to put bioprocess answers in the hands of the bioprocess development group. And As you know, we're using this really differentiated, innovative approach with electronically driven separations with our microchip and then the microscale mass spec, and importantly, adding on the machine learning algorithms to achieve it. So we really designed it to sit next to other routine analyzers in these labs, and that's more like next to the simple cell vitality or tighter boxes, of which there are many, many in a given PD lab. And certainly, yes, there has been many efforts current and in the past. over years, maybe even decades to simplify traditional LCMS product offering. But they are still largely sitting in core labs and most recent offerings more targeting the late stage development analytical labs. But those are analytical labs which are still attended by people that are trained to cope with that type of instrument, the maintenance sample cleanup, the prep. And to look at the data, right, look at those squiggly lines and make interpretations. Another such product was announced this week, in fact, in late-stage development. And I'm sure they're all great products, but if you really dig into the details, it's a very, very different level of operational complexity that's part of it. So if you look at our price point, device size, even the difference in the tiny, minute amount of sample that's required for a rebel and just the overall end-to-end simplicity, we really think it's a pretty compelling offering there.
network jack
That's great. Super helpful, guys. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from Max Masucci with Cohen Company. Your line's open.
Max Masucci
Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. So the implied Q4 guide came in above expectations. Great to see. Can you just give us a sense for where the upside's coming from? Is it more on the instrument placement side, or is it rising consumables utilization? And then just would love to know if the implied Q4 guide has any assumptions or material assumptions related to placements to the Army.
Kelly
Well, Max, with two months to go, we've maintained our range in our guidance and enabled some upside beyond the midpoint as we potentially have additional devices or step up in recurrent with year end. We feel that that revenue growth of 56% of the midpoint of our guidance is attractive and requires that we're successful related to our initiatives. As far as COVID and expectations around that, we've been pretty resilient. We've seen more second-order effects. So we're really focused on delivering on the opportunity and don't see any specific impacts. But we have maintained a $2 million range to accommodate potentially a piece of that.
Max Masucci
Great. And then great to see the forensic work at the border and the comment about serving as a portable crime lab at the state and city level. How should we think about the opportunity for forensics-related placements and how quickly adoption could ramp just given the word of mouth and network effect marketing you're benefiting from in recent updates?
Kevin Knopp
Yeah, I mean, we are excited about those placements. We're excited when customers are making such comments out there publicly that under their own volition that are just out talking to the communities around the benefits they're providing through the adoption. You're right, it is a word of mouth, getting momentum. It is still a cycle that you have to work with customers, make sure they're budgeting. It is a piece of capital equipment. So we're very much encouraged by it. But it's a step-by-step process.
Kelly
Maybe to add to that, Max, touching on the U.S. Army, which you were asking about, you know, With competitive dynamics and customer sensitivities, we haven't disclosed exactly how much revenue here in 2021, but we did have our first shipments here in Q3 and anticipate additional product shipments in the fourth quarter to the U.S. Army. And at this time, we do expect the majority of the devices to be shipped over the course of 2022 related to that multi-year purchase order.
Max Masucci
Great. If I could sneak in one more for Joe. You're making some investments in manufacturing and service personnel to position yourself for expanding gross margins. Imagine some spending to just position yourself to address any supply chain or manufacturing headwinds that exist in the market. Just curious, if you look at these investments alongside rising consumables, How does that impact your outlook in terms of when you jumpstart that next phase of gross margin expansion?
Kelly
no there are some of those market factors that you just highlighted um and we're proactively investing in service and supply chain uh challenges you know have tempered you know expectations on gross margins but we'll look you know moving forward uh price increases to help mitigate you know as we turn the corner into 2022 but we're in the mid 50s you know from a gross margin uh today um and expect that to kind of be maintained on a go-forward basis you know year-to-date products are product and service cost margins were 53% to 54% within the quarter. So we are looking to balance, make the right investments so that we can get ahead of any supply chain concern and hopefully mitigate material price increases as we move into the new year.
Max Masucci
Great. Thanks for taking the questions and nice update. Thanks, Max.
Operator
And your next question comes from Dan Arias with Stifel. Your line is open.
Dan Arias
Good morning, guys. Thank you. Kevin, on the 50% of orders that went to new customers, how does that break down broadly in terms of cell and gene therapy makers versus more traditional MAP-focused companies? And then on that split, are you starting to see a difference in terms of the revenue generation that comes out of those two types of projects? I know the thought at one point was that cell and gene – workflow complexity can kind of drive a higher level of pull-through from that piece. I'm just curious whether you still feel like that's a mixed element that's in play here.
Kevin Knopp
Yeah, thanks, Dan. That's a good question. Yeah, I mean, with our play since over the quarter and really year, we have been seeing, of course, placements into the cell and gene, but also a lot in the protein therapy space. So I think we remain excited about both in terms of being able to dissect on which one is creating the largest pull-through at this time. I think it's really an early innings situation that we have because we're really working with customers to get in those initial workflows, prove out the value of the technology and the need for frequent measurement of it. And we're seeing that need on both the more standard MAB therapeutics but all gene therapy area As you know, we had some publications we talked about last quarter from BMS in that area, but then also this quarter, as you mentioned in the script, folks like Alexion really kind of showcasing how they were mitigating amino acid misincorporation by more frequent measurement, and that was of a traditional MAP. So we're seeing value added to both, and I think it's early innings to confirm which segment or subsegment is driving the highest pull-trips.
Dan Arias
Yeah, okay, that makes sense. And then maybe just to your point on the design of the Rebel being something that can kind of sit next to the bioreactor on its own, when it comes to taking the next step and making this an online, inline-capable device in order to push into GMP production, I'm just curious how critical it is to be working with the bioreactor company ahead of time on direct integration. I mean, is that a process that needs some collaborative R&D work along the way, or do you think you can sort of do your thing, present a product, and have it be aligned and optimized fairly quickly once it's done without the tank maker having too much input there?
Kevin Knopp
Yeah, yeah, that's also a good question. I think it is more the latter. Certainly we're friendly with groups like Sartorius. We announced already software and data integration with them. But in a lot of ways, these are pretty standardized, particularly as you think about the single reactors that are very prevalent across these process development labs where they're a standalone reactor and there's rows and rows of them. Yeah, the AMBERs and other integrated are important. But, yeah, I don't think there's too much secret sauce or requirement to be too tightly connected there. But, yeah, we're excited for that. One thing I'd also point out that's sometimes gets overlooked with our technology set, but because we're using this microfluidics compared to traditional LCMS approaches, we use a very minute amount of sample, and it's often about 100x less sample, which is important as you think about the future. It's important as you think about online and increasing the sampling frequency so you're not consuming all the precious sample that's being created.
Dan Arias
Okay. Sorry to just stick a third in, but one last quick one. Do you think in 2022 we start to see evidence of progressing towards that next-gen device?
Kevin Knopp
We're certainly working on it. As we've said in the past, it's probably a two- to three-year effort before we have that. We are looking to see if there are ways to pull that in or have interim solutions on it. But I think there's a lot of runway with our at-line device. Yes, it requires a manual pipetting step to be placed into our device, but I think there's a lot of runway of opportunity there.
Dan Arias
Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you, Kevin.
Operator
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. All right. At this time, there are no further questions on queue. I'll hand the call back to Kevin.
Kevin Knopp
Yes, thank you all. Thank you all for your time this morning. Have a great day.
Operator
All right, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and that concludes today's conference. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
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