MaxCyte, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MaxSight first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Eric Abdao, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's call. From the MAC site, we have Meher Masood, President and Chief Executive of the MAC, and Douglas Zwirsky, Chief Financial Director. Earlier today, MAC's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2024. A copy of the press release is available on the MAC's website. Before we begin, I need to read the following comments. Statements or comments on this call may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results, or performance are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement due to a variety of factors which are discussed in detail on our SSC filings. The company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking future events, or otherwise. With that, I will turn the call to my hair.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining MaxSight's first quarter 2024 earnings call. We reported $11.3 million of total revenue in the first quarter, including $8.2 million and $3.3 million of SPL program-related revenue. We were able to see the results in our core business, which is in line with our plan, along with SPL program-related revenue, and above our expectations. We're also thrilled with our progress in signing new SPLs, with four in 2024, including B-Buy Pharma most recently. Following the first quarter, we remain on track for the year and are confident in the trajectory of the overall business. The operating environment for SPL partners remain largely unchanged from our last earnings call. We believe the operating environment has improved as evidenced by the Capital Markets Act in the first quarter. The operating and prospective SPL partners raised capital in recent months. Over the past couple of years, we saw cell therapy programs and deprioritized other programs, resulting in variable levels of demand for instruments and PAs in 2023. Though there are fewer new cell therapy programs throughout the industry today due to deprioritization, we believe this has resulted in an industry focus on assets that are further along or have a higher probability of making it to the clinic. Additionally, MaxLight's late-stage preclinical and early-stage clinical customers who have their programs or the past, continue to utilize our platform for their lead. We are becoming increasingly optimistic on the market outlook for self-help developers and continue to assess industry demand levels based on direct conversations with our existing. The timeframe for when a customer secures funding to when they make research and clinical spending decisions can take time. And our business is not direct funding in any given quarter. General trends in the non-viral cell therapy market continue to bode well for the use of our expert platform. More complex cell therapies across a variety of different indications with multiple engineering steps, which MaxSight's electropression technology is well-equipped to deliver. Looking specifically at the quarter, the core business performed as expected across cell therapy and drug discovery. We saw a return to growth in our cell therapy business compared to last year, and were relatively flat in drug discovery revenue compared to last year. Doug will cover that in more detail, but I will point out that our installed base of instruments expands to 708 as of March 1, 2014. We experienced our pipeline of instrument opportunities in the first quarter, and our position has been the same for the remainder of the year.