MaxCyte, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to MaxSight's fourth quarter earnings 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'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 1-1 again. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Eric Abdaal, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me on the call from Maxite, we have Meher Masood, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Swirsky, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, Maxite released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2024. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statements or comments made during 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 statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail in our SEC filings. Except as required by applicable law, the company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Mehar.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining MaxSight's fourth quarter and full-year 2024 earnings call. 2024 has been a strong year for MaxLight, highlighted by our return to core revenue growth, strategic improvements to our team and operations, and the support of Cash Chevy's launch, the first approved non-viral cell therapy with our premier electroporation platform. Throughout the year, our team has worked diligently to assess ways in which the company can continually improve. We evaluated and implemented new strategic initiatives and process improvements. which streamlined our organization by increasing capital and operational efficiency. We invested prudently within organic areas of the company that we believe promise the best return and will contribute to long-term growth while reducing spend in redundant or non-core areas. We also announced the acquisition of SecureDX early this year, which I am incredibly excited about and will touch upon in a moment. Overall, I believe that the thoughtful and strategic changes at MaxSight throughout 2024 enabled us to grow core revenue in a difficult environment and position us well for 2025. Now we'll start by discussing our recent acquisition of SecureDx. When we look at the evolving cell and gene therapy field, safety is becoming increasingly paramount to therapies, which is exactly where SecureDx fits. SecureDx is a services platform that provides a safety assessment of cell and gene therapy development early in the discovery process. With SecureDx now integrated to MaxSight, We can offer customers a comprehensive suite of assays that provide on- and off-target gene editing assessments that are applicable across a variety of viral and non-viral gene editing modalities. Our three assays, screening, nomination, and confirmation, are each utilized at different stages in development for both ex vivo and in vivo therapies, beginning in the discovery stage and through preclinical development and IND-enabling studies. Not only does off-target editing profiling of programs improve the safety profile of therapies, but it also decreases time to clinic, unexpected costs, and potential delays, ultimately increasing likelihood of program success. We see significant opportunities with SecureDx in our portfolio, as MaxSight can now support both ex-Vivo and in-Vivo cell and gene therapy developers. The acquisition has immediate cross-selling opportunities, with MaxSight now able to work with customers earlier in discovery and able to offer SecureDX services to MaxSight's existing customers as well. We are already seeing the benefits of adding SecureDX to our product portfolio and have had great success integrating their team into MaxSight. We believe this acquisition is an important step forward in positioning MaxSight to become a premier end-to-end cell and gene engineering platform with the ability to provide a range of offerings and services throughout the entirety of development. Turning to our results, MagSci reported $38.6 million of total revenue for full year 2024, which included core business revenue of $32.5 million at the high end of our preannounced range provided in January. We were pleased with our team's commercial execution over the course of the year through a stable but challenging environment. We grew our instrument install base to 760 compared to an install base of 683 at the end of 2023. Instrument revenue for the year was $7.1 million, which was impacted by a continuation of customer caution on capital expenditure. Though the operating environment remains challenging for our customers, we saw stability through 2024 and have seen some areas of improvement, including PA sales, which we reported very healthy revenue growth of 36% compared to 2023. As we head into 2025, we remain cautiously optimistic that the funding environment for our customers will improve in 2025. Overall, we continue to be impressed by the evolution of cell therapy towards new editing technologies and new indications, and believe MagSight is extremely well positioned within the industry. Customers continue to see the value in MagSight's offering, leading to an expansion of our SPL portfolio at a record rate in 2024, with six new SPLs signed throughout the year. As of the end of 2024, we had a total of 28 active SPL customers. which includes 18 active clinical programs and one commercial program. Previously, we have discussed the total pre-commercial milestone potential across our SPL agreements as being greater than $2 billion. As this metric includes both existing SPL programs currently in clinical development and future SPL programs that are encompassed in our SPL agreements, we thought it would be very helpful to provide a new metric on the potential value creation from the existing active SPL programs currently in clinical development under our SPL agreements. Of the 18 active clinical programs under our SPL agreements, the total pre-commercial milestone potential is greater than $220 million, including about $10 million of milestone revenue that has already been received. These 18 programs have cleared IMD or equivalents and range from phase one trials to programs entering pivotal trials this year. We see tremendous value potential for these programs over time. To further highlight the tremendous potential of our SPL portfolio, at the time of our IPO in late 2021, we were enabling 12 active clinical programs. And now with 18 active clinical programs, this represents a 50% growth in the number of active clinical programs we enable, while the overall market for non-viral clinical programs has grown 25% during the same time period. We are continuing to strengthen our SPL portfolio. We recently signed our first SPL 2025, TG Therapeutics, in February, who entered into an agreement with Precision Biosciences to acquire a license to age yourself. Following the addition of TG, we now have 29 active SPL customers. TG Therapeutics is a commercial biopharmaceutical company focused on novel treatments for B cell diseases, and it's currently advancing towards a phase one clinical trial for ASA cell and progressive forms of MS. Our SPL pipeline is very healthy as we enter 2025, and we believe we will continue to sign new SPLs at our historical rate of three to five new agreements this year. The opportunity in the cell and gene therapy industry continues to grow. which supports MaxSight's opportunity to expand its SPL portfolio. We believe there are approximately 201 cell and gene therapy biotechnology companies as of the end of 2024, of which there exists approximately 83 non-viral cell and gene therapy biotechs that MaxSight's potential to sign an SPL with. This SPL opportunity has grown over 50% since the time of our IPO and signifies the tremendous potential for non-viral cell therapies to help patients. We have capitalized on the growing SPL opportunity since the time of our IPO by more than doubling our SPL portfolio over this period. We finished the year with approximately $6.1 million in SPL program-related revenue ahead of our initial guidance provided a year ago. Several programs supported by MaxSight's platform progressed through the clinic in 2024 and achieved new milestones. A small amount of SPL program-related revenue in 2024 was from commercial royalty revenue related to cash Jevi following completion of patient doses. We remain excited about the opportunity of Cash Chevy and strongly believe in its potential to benefit patients around the world. During Vertex's fourth quarter earnings call in February, the company reported that there are now approximately 50 patients who have completed cell collection, up from approximately 30 patients noted on their third quarter earnings call. We are pleased by the continued momentum in Cash Chevy and expansion of access globally. To highlight, Vertex secured regulatory approvals in Bahrain, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. and indicated that they also secured a reimbursement agreement with NHS England, resulting in access to cash chevy in England for eligible sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia patients. Additionally, the cell and gene therapy access model was highlighted by Vertex as a mechanism for states to voluntary participate in CMS negotiated agreements for Medicaid patients. We believe that this model has potential to expand patient access to cell and gene therapies over time, which we view as a positive for patients, cash chevy, and future therapies enabled by Maxline. Our teams work diligently to provide regulatory, scientific, and technical support to our customers as they progress through the clinic. And we have become increasingly excited by the potential for multiple therapies to come to market beginning next year and beyond. In 2027 and 2028, we see an opportunity for eight potential approved programs for lymphoma, leukemia, sickle cell disease, and genetic disease indications. As we approach 2029 to 2031, we believe there's potential for an additional 12 approved programs with indication expansion to solid tumors, multiple myeloma, and autoimmune diseases. In our fourth wave of potential approvals in 2030 and beyond, we see potential for approvals within neurodegenerative disease indications as well. The opportunity for approved therapies within our current SPL portfolio is vast and growing as we continue to add new SPL customers. In summary, We are pleased with our 2024 results, driven by the execution of our global sales team, our differentiated technology and customer support, and our process improvements across the organization. We increased our operational focus while making strategic investments in areas of high growth, resulting in a year-end cash position that exceeded our initial guidance. We look forward to continuing this momentum in 2025 and truly believe that our value proposition remains highly differentiated into durable relationships with current and prospective clients. Our investment strategy remains unchanged in that we continue to focus on organic and inorganic investments that offer the best outcomes for our customers and for MaxSight, while preserving our healthy balance sheet. We are investing in the development of additional capabilities and products that our customers will need in the future, while simultaneously and carefully evaluating inorganic opportunities that we believe would benefit MaxSight. We are committed to being diligent and disciplined in our approach to make decisions that position MaxSight become the premier comprehensive enabler of cell and gene therapies within the industry. With that, I will now turn the call over to Doug to discuss our financial results. Doug? Thank you, Martin.