908 Devices Inc.

Hello and welcome to today's 908 Devices second quarter 2023 financial results conference call. My name is Jordan and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you'd like to register an audio question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'm now going to hand over to Kelly Gurra, Investor Relations, to begin. Kelly, please go ahead.

Thank you. This morning, 908 Devices released financial results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2023. 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 meeting 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 Nine-Way Devices Issued Today. For a more complete listing description, please see the risk factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and it has other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Nine-Way Devices declines 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 August 8, 2023. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Kevin.

Thanks, Kelly. Good morning, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings call. I'd like to start off by thanking our team for their continued dedication and commitment to serving our customers and for bringing our second quarter to a successful close. At 908, we have a broad technology platform with applications across diverse end markets. Our handheld devices are serving critical forensics market applications, including the devastating rise of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and our growing portfolio of desktop products is serving life science and biopharma applications, including the emergence of multi-omics research and the ascent of Bioprocess 4.0. We view our end market diversity as a key advantage, particularly in the current macro environment, and this was reflected in our financial results. Our second quarter revenue increased 9% year-over-year to $12.1 million. We placed 122 devices, bringing our installed base to more than 2,500 devices globally. Once again, we saw continued strength in recurring revenue. which represented 39% growth over the prior year period and comprised one-third of our total revenue. This growth demonstrates that our customers, whether they be in law enforcement, the military, research institutions, or in biopharma, value points of need analysis. Overall, I'm really encouraged by these results. We continue to capture opportunities for handheld chemical detection, both in the U.S. and increasingly more internationally. As BioProcess 4.0 begins to take hold with advanced modalities of therapeutics, there is a demonstrative need for robust analytics to monitor and control critical process parameters. We are building a solid foundation to take advantage of these developing opportunities. At the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, or ASMS, conference in June, the need for technology was abundantly clear. Key mass spec vendors launched large-frame instruments with significantly faster processing speeds targeted for proteomics and other omics applications. Our prototype microfluidic chips are well-suited to meet this need for warp speed processing. We have had a record presence at ASMS this year with 19 posters, the majority with collaborators and a key oral presentation on multiomics. I'll share highlights later in this call. Now I'd like to provide a brief update on the progress we have made across our three focus areas for 2023. Starting with our first objective, penetrate and radiate across key accounts. Our focus is to penetrate new accounts to create a foothold and then radiate across these accounts to drive broader enterprise adoption. In May, the CDC released preliminary data noting that 2022 was the second consecutive year with more than 100,000 Americans dying from drug overdose. Nearly seven out of 10 overdoses were attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Another recent CDC report found that xylazine was detected in nearly 11% of fentanyl-involved deaths. And in July, the Biden administration released a six-point plan to calm out the problem of fentanyl being laced with xylosine that includes determining where the xylosine is coming from and disrupting the supply. Our MX-908 handheld device provides trace chemical detection of fentanyl and its analogs, xylosine, and many other illicit drugs. Customs agencies use our device to prevent illegal narcotics from entering their borders. In June, Our work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Protection Agency was highlighted in the Catch a Smuggler series on the National Geographic channel. The episode showed one of our application specialists training agents on how to use the MX-908 to support them with their investigations at a major metropolitan airport. We are proud of the work that our employees do every day in helping our customers stem the flow of counterfeit drugs from entering our country and into our communities. Previously, I have noted the successful MX-908 pilot program in Ohio, in which 260 law enforcement officers in 60 counties have now been trained to use our device. As a result, the state central lab has seen a notable reduction in evidence backlogs. Our goal is to replicate this program's success in other states, and I'm excited that we have begun a pilot program with several Tennessee law enforcement agencies and drug task forces to enhance the speed and efficiency of the state's drug identification process. This pilot program, with an initial seed of eight devices, will introduce the MX-908 to law enforcement agencies across Tennessee with the primary objective of decreasing the quantity of illicit drug samples sent to the central lab for testing, which will also lessen delays in the judicial process. In addition, law enforcement agencies using the MX-908 device can now make faster and more informed decisions at the point of need, ultimately leading to safer communities and improved public health outcomes. This is the same playbook we used with success in Ohio. Turning to our desktops, approximately 70% of desktop revenue came from existing customers, including three customers that are in the top 20 list of pharmaceutical companies. Also of note, we renewed our OEM agreement with Sartorius, providing them with our online sampler and sensors for bioreactor monitoring and control. This is a longstanding OEM relationship between Sartorius and the former Trace Analytics, and we are pleased to foster this key partnership. Further, to maximize the potential of each key account, we've developed a support strategy focused on our top pharma customers to drive routine workflows and use. Turning to our second objective, advancing and broadening our product portfolio, Our core focus is to develop devices that are simple to use and connected for improved process understanding in order to provide customers with robust answers at the point of need. In line with this focus, last week we introduced the MX908 Beacon for remote and continuous air monitoring of toxic aerosol and vapor hazards. Beacon leverages our MX908 device and aero module and adds a cloud-based solution that enables first responders to gather intelligence remotely and continuously while ensuring public safety at large events and at key infrastructure. The MX-908 beacon can be used individually or seamlessly integrated with other beacons for widespread area coverage. The systems can be easily set up and monitored in real time through the MX-908 beacon portal, which can be accessed through any smartphone, laptop, or mobile device. With over 2,000 MX908 devices in the field, we have a large installed base to offer this additional capability, which is one of the only systems that can remotely and continuously detect and identify aerosol and vapor hazards. For our desktops, we continue to partner with key organizations focused on developing innovative technologies that advance biopharmaceutical manufacturing. One such organization that we have formed an alliance with is the National Institute of Bioprocessing Research and Training, or NIBRT, based in Ireland. For the past 12 years, NIBRT's research focus is to make transformative discoveries that revolutionize the manufacturing of recombinant proteins, vaccines, and cell and gene therapies. At ASMS, we held a well-attended breakfast seminar that featured Drs. Jonathan Bones and Josh Smith from NIBRT. Dr. Bones highlighted the use of our ZipChip device for multi-characterization of proteins in different applications, such as native intact charge-variant profiling, amino acid analysis of cell culture fluid, and a new peptide mapping workflow. He noted that ZipChip, coupled to a mass spectrometer, offers a versatile platform method for these applications that's ready to go out of the box. Dr. Smith highlighted the successful use of ZipChip for rapid analysis of various serotypes of the adeno-associated virus, or AAVs, which are critical for gene therapy manufacturing. Both speakers touted Zipchip's high sensitivity, short analysis times compared to traditional LC-MS, and the lack of method development. The results of these presentations were also highlighted in three posters at ASMS. In addition, in a recent article published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, Scientists from Nybert and Lanza Biologics use our ZipChip CEMS device to characterize a monoclonal antibody for treatment of colorectal cancer. The authors noted that our technology enables fast and highly sensitive intact mass analysis while requiring minimal sample preparation, thus making it a powerful tool for reliable product characterization early in the bioprocessing pipeline. We continue to gain exposure and marketing momentum through speaking opportunities and poster presentations at conferences focused on bioprocessing. After a nearly five-year absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the invitation-only Cell Culture Engineering Conference was finally held in person in April. In this forum, leaders and experts from academic, regulatory, and industrial backgrounds convened to discuss cell culture and related advancements that impact the growing spectrum of modalities including recombinant biologics, cell and gene therapies, and viral vaccines. Three of our application scientists were invited to participate, and each presented a poster on research using our rebel cell culture analyzer. We gained valuable insights and learnings from the conference presentations, along with the opportunity to network with key opinion leaders. Lastly, our team is preparing for the launch of our new desktop device next month at the Bioprocess International Conference in Boston. just up the street from our headquarters. We believe this device will further transform the monitoring of key process parameters, and it is an exciting addition to our suite of BioCross products that includes our Rebel and Maven devices. And finally, turning to our third objective, laying an omics foundation, we see a clear and emerging need for accelerating mass spec-based workflows to address proteomics and metabolomics opportunities. This was evident at this year's ASMS conference, where we had a strong technical showing with one oral presentation and 19 posters, the majority with collaborators from academic and research institutions, as well as industry partners. Dr. Will Thompson, principal scientist at 908 Devices, gave an oral presentation on his collaboration with Professor Mark Foster from Duke University on unifying the multiomics world with microchip capillary electrophoresis. Dr. Thompson described the workflow using our prototype microfluidic chips in our zip chip device, which allowed independent metabolomics, peptidomics, top-down and bottom-up proteomics from a single sample containing 20 microliters of dried blood. Speed was a definitive theme at ASMS. Scientists conducting proteomics, metabolomics, and other multiomics research want to process a significantly large number of sample sets and are demanding mass spec instruments and tools for faster workflows. believe our zip chip device along with our prototype chips can meet this need for speed this was exemplified by one of our poster collaborators yingyi professor of cell and regenerative biology and chemistry at the university of wisconsin-madison professor ghi's poster highlighted multi-omics analysis specifically metabolomics and top-down and bottom-up proteomics of human heart protein extract she noted that traditional lcms has long separation times, but Zipchip can provide separation to minutes, so speed is a significant advantage along with the device's ease of use. At ASMS, we also hosted a meeting of our Proteomic Scientific Advisory Board, where key opinion leaders provided enthusiastic support of our growing presence at this conference for customer and R&D-related content, as well as feedback on emerging R&D efforts in multiomics. Our scientific advisory board members were particularly interested in the capability of ZipChip for multiomic studies under unified analysis conditions, including using the developmental on-chip peptide pre-concentration approach for analysis of very large native peptides from biofluids. We are fortunate to have this remarkable group of thought leaders share their insights as we advance our development efforts in this area. Overall, I'm really pleased with the progress we made during the second quarter on our stated objectives. I look forward to an exciting product launch next month. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Joe for more details on our financials.