MaxCyte, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to MaxSight's fourth quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To participate, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, simply press star 1-1 again. Please note, this conference is being recorded. Now we'll turn the call over to Eric Apto with Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me on the call from MacSite, we have Meher Masood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Doug Sworsky, Chief Financial Officer, and Sean Menardez, Senior Director of Business Development. Earlier today, MaxSight released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2025. 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 will turn the call over to Mehar.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining MaxSight's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. 2025 presented a challenging operating environment, but it was also a year of meaningful progress for MaxSight. We continued to sign new strategic platform licenses, SPLs as we call them, and support customers in advancing drugs through the clinic. We acquired SecureDX and successfully integrated the business into MaxSight. We made meaningful changes to right-side spending and strategically improved our operations. And most recently, we launched a new product into ExpertDTX. that will allow us to work with developers earlier in research and development discovery. Let me start by reviewing our financial results. Consistent with the preliminary financials we announced in January, MagSci reported $33 million of total revenue for the full year, which included $29.6 million of core revenue and $3.4 million of strategic platform license program-related revenue. We grew our instrument install base to 857, up from 760 at the end of 2024. Doug will discuss fourth quarter and full year performance in greater detail. The MaxSite's results were within the range of expectations that we had updated you with in August. As previously discussed, the business was impacted by program consolidation and rationalization across some of our SKL customers, which included a 15% decline in purchases and leases from our largest customer, reorganizing manufacturing, and managing inventory. Now let me give you a little more detail on the launch of our new Expert DTX, which I mentioned earlier and I'm very excited to discuss. Even as we faced headwinds in 2025, our focus remained on innovation and leading the market with groundbreaking platforms. In February, we announced the launch of the Axford DTX, a modular 96-well electroporation platform designed for research and drug discovery applications. We are very excited about what this product represents for MaxSight. The DTX enables labs to transfect primary cells and cell lines across up to 96 samples in a single three-minute run. with consistent well-to-well performance that effectively eliminates transfection as an experimental variable. It is one of the most cost-effective 9-6-well electropression solutions on the market, with detachable 8-well strips that can be processed with unique parameters, giving researchers the flexibility to test different cell and cargo combinations in parallel while reducing waste. This software is also differentiated. DTF Designer allows users to design experiments remotely and upload workflows when the system is available, maximizing the instrument pipeline. That is a real practical advantage for labs running multiple back-to-back experiments. What makes the DTX strategically important is its full compatibility with the rest of the expert platform. A researcher can optimize a process on the DTX in discovery and transfer it directly to MaxSight's larger-scale electroporation instruments, the SCX or GTX, for scale-up into CGMP-compliant manufacturing without re-optimization. That is a powerful value proposition which allows us to engage with customers at the very earliest stage of their workflow and provide a seamless path from discovery through to the clinic and commercialization, all on a single platform, which is an epitome of a therapeutic platform. We built this product around our customers' needs, and we believe it will be added to both instrument and processing assembly, PAs, revenue in 2026 and beyond, as well as allow us to grow our SPL customers. We have built years of electric creation know-how and expertise into DTX, and I am confident we launched a product that will allow researchers to seamlessly progress from discovery to the clinic onto our GMP expert platform. Turning to our guidance, as we enter 2026, the challenges that impacted growth in 2025 will have an impact on the first half of 2026. For our 2026 guidance, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $30 to $32 million, consisting of $25 to $27 million of core revenue and $5 million of SGL program-related revenue. Given the timing of purchases and leases, we expect Q1 to be our lightest quarter for core revenue with a back half-weighted year. Included in our guidance is the impact of a recent notice received from an SPL customer terminating their license for reasons unrelated to our platform's performance, along with approximately $4 million in core revenue headwinds from select SPL customers, which began to impact for revenue in the second half of 2025, which I will provide further detail on. We continue to believe that the headwinds facing our business are a result of the conservation of capital by buying techs in the cell therapy space, rationalization of customer programs in ex-people cell therapy, and inventory management in our largest customer, which we expect to stabilize in the second half of 2026 and grow from that new base. There has been no fundamental change in the demand for our technology and the differentiation of our technology competitively. While these short-term headwinds influenced our revenues last year and the first half of this year, We are more excited than ever of our SPL programs and the business model, which is seeing multiple programs progressing deep into the clinic and much closer potential commercialization. As I mentioned, embedded within the core revenue guidance, we expect revenue from SPL customers, including our largest customer, to be a $4 million headwind relative to 2025. This is about half from processing assemblies and half from leases and a result of two factors. First, our largest customer reorganized our supply chain in 2025, impacting inventory management of PAs. Additionally, in 2025, due to manufacturing site reorganization, there was a reduction in leases mid-year, so the full-year lease revenue for this customer has a difficult comparison to last year. Following in-depth conversations with this customer, we expect both PAs and leases will stabilize during the first half of 2026. Second, other SPL customers rationalized programs in 2025. On a net basis, we lost six SPL clinical programs during the year. The annualized revenue from the discontinued programs, including leases and PAs, will not recur in 2026, reflecting the headwind mentioned earlier. The 12 clinical programs we currently support are across 11 SPL partners, highlighting continued investment on the lead asset. This rationalization is part of our business model, as we expect a certain number of biotech programs to discontinue, but we are consistently signing new SPLs and supporting later-stage clinical programs, which will eventually be commercialized utilizing our platform. In the last 24 months, we signed 10 new SPLs and are now supporting more later stage programs than ever. Also embedded within our core revenue guidance, we expect revenue growth from non-SPL customers, which is inclusive of growth from SecureDS. With regards to SPL program-related revenue, as I shared, we are guiding to $5 million in 2026. Note, we received a seven-figure milestone payment from a clinical customer that began dosing patients in a pivotal study in the first quarter. The balance of DSPAL program-related revenue guidance includes approximately $2 million of expected royalty revenue from a commercial-stage customer as the therapy ramps throughout the year. Despite these near-term headwinds, we are very encouraged by the medium-term opportunity for five clinical programs to enter pivotal studies over the next 18 months and potentially receive commercial approval in 2027 or 2028. As I mentioned, one of these five programs began dosing patients in its pivotal study in the first quarter of 2026 triggering the muscle attainment I referenced earlier. These programs include ZugoCell from CRISPR Therapeutics for B-cell malignancies, WooCAR-T007 from Woojin for hematologic malignancies, AsiaCell from Imogene for hematologic malignancies, and two programs from undisclosed SPL partners. I believe up to four of these programs will be pivotal by the end of the year. Outside the wave two programs I just covered, There are another seven active clinical programs in earlier stages of development that continue to pursue FTA approval beyond 2028 and can represent meaningful core revenue and SPL program-related revenue for MaxSight over time. Across these programs, the total milestone opportunity exceeds $110 million. To date, we have received over $30 million in total milestone payments from our SPL customers, highlighting the strength of our portfolio-based, program-driven business model. We have 31 SPL agreements, including four new SPLs, in 2025. 11 Estelle customers we work with have current clinical or commercial programs, while another eight are active on pre-clinical development, most of which we believe will become clinical Estelle customers. However, 12 of the Estelle agreements are with biotechs that are no longer active, having exited ex vivo or ceased operations. The 12 that are no longer active is part of our business model, as we don't expect every Estelle we sign to result in a commercial program. There is meaningful revenue opportunity from newer SPL customers advancing toward and entering the clinic. As I mentioned earlier, despite significant consolidation in 2025, SPL customers continue to advance assets on our platform, including up to six programs in late-stage pre-clinical development expected to enter the clinic within the next six to 18 months. This reflects continued expansion of our SPL portfolio beyond our current later-stage programs. Today, we support one commercial therapy, cash jetting, and we remain very encouraged by the opportunity for the drug to continue to scale, with both Vertex and CRISPR recently reiterating Cashervy's multi-billion dollar potential. During Vertex's most recent earnings call, they reported $116 million in Cashervy revenue for 2025, including $54 million in the fourth quarter. Vertex noted that 147 patients with sickle cell disease or transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia globally had their first cell collections in 2025, and 64 patients received cash chevy infusions, with very those occurring in the fourth quarter. The momentum in patient collections is notable, and Vertex has indicated that they expect a meaningful cash chevy ramp into 2026 versus 2025. Despite the possibility of short-term quarter-to-quarter variability as the drug scales, we are optimistic about where this therapy is headed and truly believe in its transformative potential for patients around the world. To wrap up on the ESCO portfolio, While any individual program carries risk, the multiple shots on goal we have across the same indications and across many different indications gives us a high probability of generating meaningful core revenue, regulatory milestones, and commercial revenues over time. We are now seeing the growth in commercial royalties starting to materialize in our revenue line. This reflects the strength of our innovative business model, and we expect this trend to continue in the coming years as additional therapies are commercialized by our SDL customers. That conviction is what drives the decisions we make about how to operate this business. Moving to SecureDX, I believe 2026 is the year where the secure opportunity starts to become more visible. We spent 2025 integrating the business, building the commercial pipeline, and working with early customers. The regulatory environment continues to evolve in our favor. Off-target risk assessment is becoming increasingly important to the FDA and other global regulatory agencies when reviewing gene-edited therapy. Our three assays, screening, nomination, and confirmation, serve both ex vivo and in vivo developers, which means Secure's addressable market extends well beyond our legacy of exploration customer base. We acquired a relatively new startup with an emerging and leading technology. Despite 2025 coming in lower than expectations, we expect year-over-year growth for Secure assay services and licenses in 2026.

I remain very optimistic about Secure's commercial potential and expect to see a growing contributor to revenue in the years ahead,

I want to underscore that we are entering 2026 with a fundamentally different cost structure than in prior years. While we are still investing in a rate that allows us to launch new products like ExpertDTX, we have reduced annual cash flow by over $16 million and have put MaxSci on a dramatically different spending trajectory than was planned in the prior operating model. This is the direct result of the restructuring and cost efficiency actions we took in 2025. We do not expect to meaningfully grow our operating expenses from here. and we see a clear path to reducing cash burn further as revenue growth returns. We have a strong and healthy balance sheet, which allows us flexibility in capital allocation and investment decisions. Finally, as previously announced, Parmeet Ahuja will be joining MaxSight as Chief Financial Officer, succeeding Doug Swirsky, effective March 30th. Parmeet brings more than two decades of finance leadership experience at Agilent Technologies, a global life sciences pool stop. Over his career there, he held a number of senior roles, spanning financial planning and analysis, operational finance, internal audit, and enterprise financial services. In particular, he led FP&A for Agilent's global operations and supply chain organization. And earlier, he headed internal audit and SOX, working directly with the board's audit committee on risk and controls. Parmeet also most recently led Agilent's investor relations function, giving him direct experience communicating with the investment community. We are excited about the Brathwaite's operational finance and governance experience as we continue to scale the company and strengthen our financial infrastructure. I want to thank Doug for his contributions to MaxSight, and will now turn the call to Doug to discuss our financial results. Doug?

Thank you, Mahir. Total revenue for the full year was $33 million compared to $38.6 million in 2024, representing a 15% decline. Total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $7.3 million, compared to $8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, representing a 16% decline. The decline in total revenue was driven by decreases in both core revenue and SPL program-related revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we reported core revenue of $6.8 million, compared to $8.6 million in the comparable prior year quarter, representing a decrease of 22%. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $1.8 million compared to $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. License revenue was $2 million compared to $2.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. And PA revenue was $2.3 million compared to $4.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year of 2025, we reported core revenue of $29.6 million compared to $32.5 million in 2024. representing a decrease of 9%. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $6.8 million compared to $7.1 million in 2024, license revenue was $8.9 million compared to $10.3 million in 2024, and PA revenue was $11.9 million compared to $14 million in 2024. These declines were partially offset by 0.8 million of assay service revenue from the acquisition of SecureDx and a modest increase in other service revenue. Total revenue for Secure was 1.1 million in 2025, including assay services and licenses. Of note, 47% of our core business revenue was derived from SPL customers in 2025, which compares to 55% in 2024. The year-over-year decrease reflects the impact of program exits and reduced purchasing activity from our large commercial stage partner. SPL program-related revenue was $0.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $0.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year, SPL program-related revenue was $3.4 million as compared to $6.1 million in 2024. As it relates to SPL program-related revenue for 2025, 2.3 million was from milestone payments and 1.2 million was from royalties. Moving down the P&L, gross margin was 78% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 74% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Excluding inventory provisions and SPL program-related revenue, non-GAAP adjusted gross margin was 78% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to non-GAAP adjusted gross margin of 84% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $16.9 million compared to $19.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Part of these savings is attributable to the cost initiatives we took in 2025, which began to materialize in Q4 of 2025. Excluding a non-cash goodwill impairment of $3.6 million in the fourth quarter, operating expenses decreased more substantially from the prior year quarter. The overall decrease in operating expenses was primarily driven by the restructuring and cost efficiency actions we took in 2025. We ended 2025 with combined total cash and cash equivalents and investments of $155.6 million and no debt. Our very strong balance sheet positions us well moving forward, providing us with flexibility to continue to invest strategically for our business, customers, and shareholders. Finally, we anticipate at least $136 million in cash equivalents and investments at the end of 2026. This represents a significant reduction in cash burn from prior years as a result of the restructuring and cost efficiency actions we took in 2025. Let me close my remarks by saying it has been a privilege to serve as MaxSight's CFO, and I know that the company is in good hands with Maher and the rest of the team, including Parmeet. Now I'll turn the call back over to Maher. Thank you, Doug.

It's been a privilege to have you as our CFO as well. I want to thank everyone at MaxSight for their hard work and dedication in 2025. I look forward to executing on our plan in 2026. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A. Operator?

Thank you so much. And as a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star one one to get in the queue and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw yourself, press star one one again. One moment for our first question. Comes from the line of Dan Arias with Stifel. Please proceed.

Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. I got to say, I really don't understand the trajectory of the business right now. Pretty much all the commentary coming out of life sciences companies points to biopharma getting better this year and not worse. Our data points and others seem to suggest the same. When you look at the industry data that's out there on the emerging modality space, cell therapy trial activity seems to be increasing pretty significantly. Trial totals are way up. And so, you know, I appreciate the idea that there's some hangover from a tough 25, but why is the core business expected to decline more this year than it did last year? Are you losing share somewhere? Because if not, then it really kind of suggests that there's something else going on that we don't really fully understand. And then ultimately the question becomes, how do you grow this business again?

Yeah, I mean, thanks for that, Dan. Look, I appreciate the the question and kind of the head scratch would be really, the headwinds we're facing is $4 million and it comes down to, it's not a deterioration of our business in any way. It's not a change in the fundamentals of our business in any way. We have about $4 million headwind that we faced from the customers that we lost last year that's affecting our revenues this year and most have been in the first half of the year. So that comes, as I mentioned, it comes pretty much half-half. Half from the leases that we lost from those SPL customers that will not recur this year and the other half really is from processing assemblies a lot of it being from our largest customer that went through an inventory management of their current PAs that they have on stock, where they're drawn down from those PAs. And the other half is just from mid-year, we lost some licenses for that largest customer where they re-optimized their manufacturing footprint to go from a few manufacturing sites to a little bit less than that. And that's affected our revenues for 2026. This is not a case of capital spending in the market that's affecting us I think we saw that more so in early 25. That's not the case here. I really believe that this is just, you know, short-term headwinds. And in terms of where we see the rest of the year and going to 27, 28 then, look, if you take a step back, we believe, I believe we're going to be supporting roughly four, you know, pivotal stage programs this year, and then five in the next 12 months. We have, you know, another seven behind it as well. coming in right now that potentially can become pivotal as a second wave there. That bodes extremely well for 2027 and 2028. We also have the launch of the Expert DTX, as I mentioned. We're seeing a lot of good traction. We launched it less than a month ago. We're seeing a lot of good traction with customers and potential customers. We believe it will be a growth driver for us in the second half and in future years. In addition to that, we're seeing the ramp of Cash Chevy. I mean, as I mentioned, we expect to ramp throughout the year. That is the only commercial product we're supporting now, but we expect to support many others, especially because right now, as I mentioned, we are supporting more later stage programs than ever before, Dan. So this bodes very well for us going into the end of the year and in 27 and 28. We're continuing to sign new SPLs. We feel confident we continue to sign new SPLs. I feel very good about this, Dan.

Does the industry, does the outlook for core revenues assume that the industry demand dynamic improves over the course of the year, or would that be upside to what you have baked in today? In other words, is your 4Q outlook at the industry level similar to what you have today, axing out the individual customer dynamics that you referenced there?

No, I think, you know, so that would be upside to what we have right now. So this is not a case where we're waiting for industry dynamics to come back for us to meet our core revenue guidance. That will all be outside from here, Dan. I mean, I feel very good where we are to meet the current guidance with the current situation we're in right now. If there's further industry demand, that's outside from where we're guiding to this year.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Please proceed.

Good afternoon and Doug, it's been a pleasure working with you and best of luck in your future endeavors. Maybe first up, could you talk, I realize you just launched it last month, but given that this was built, the DTX that is, was built with the customer in mind, I assume that you had been working with them or at least they had maybe trialed it or kicked the tires a little bit. What does that pipeline look like and how quickly do you think you could see that start to trickle into the revenues?

Yeah, I mean, so we see it trickling into revenues in the second half. Anytime you launch a new product, you need about a quarter or two quarters to really build up the pipeline for that product. That's any product you launch. But it's already in the hands of multiple beta users. It has been in the hands of multiple beta users. When we launched this product, we did it the right way. We actually listened to our customer needs. We went through the typical MPDI process where we understand the user criteria, the customer criteria, the allocation criteria, and we built it with that in mind. So we see this trickling starting in the second half, but we all start seeing right now some VTXs being sold right now in the first quarter before it's even over. So it's obviously starting to make traction there as well, Matt. But we see significant traction happening in the second half and then in future years as well. I feel very good where it is. I mean, it really is a platform that allows us to go from no one has this. You can actually go from Discovery all the way to CGMP with the same protocols. That is a true therapeutic platform that none of our competition has.

Got it. And then maybe just a reminder, given that you've got four partners that could be going into pivotal studies this year, how do you account for or how do you factor that into your guidance? What kind of a haircut do you take on the potential for those milestones? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Ben. So obviously, we already received one milestone, a seven-figure milestone in Q1 this year. You can haircut it by saying There might be at least one more, but we anticipate four more. One other customer is currently in pivotal, about two, you know, those patients that will result in another milestone as well. So at the very least, looking at two of those four. It's more of a timing issue, right? If the remaining two don't come in this year, that's just because those milestones happen in the first quarter or, you know, very early part of next year. But that's how you would haircut it. At the very least, it will be two of those four, but potential for four this year.

Got it. Understood. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Matt.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. That comes from Matt LaRue with William Blair. Please proceed.

Hi, this is Jacob on for Matt. Thanks for taking the questions here. I just want to touch on the SPL cadence. I don't know if you mentioned on the call or I didn't hear if you did, but typically you guide to three to five per year and you typically have signed or at least announced one by the end of the first quarter. I think the last signing was in, you know, October of 2025 and biotech funding trends and, you know, kind of like the whole market environment has really been improving since then, been pretty good. So just curious on your visibility, confidence into, you know, the cadence of SPL signings throughout 2026 and maybe what you're expecting for this year and in perpetuity.

Yeah, you know, we've valued three to five in the past. I mean, that's a number where, you know, on average, that's how many we sign on any given year. You know, we feel good about, you know, signing least that three this year as well and that three to five frames but you know three some years we're going to have more than that some years have less of that um you know we foresee that we'll sign the first one i have sean menard is here with me i'm going to put pressure on him you know probably you know in the very early first second half of the year possibly even before that but i i feel very good where we are i mean we're still the only company that can sign these licenses and there's a good reason for it what we provide is differentiate what we provide is really a platform that allows companies to go into clinical and commercial and scale and have a therapeutic that has the best chance of going through clinical development. We've done it with Cash JVM. We've signed 31 of these agreements. We signed four last year. I feel very good this year. We'll continue to sign more and do the same in the foreseeable future. And the DTX also adds for that. As I mentioned earlier, the DTX begins to see that for us. So I feel very good where we are. I mean, the timing of the Q1, we have to sign one. That's just a matter of timing of when we're working with our customers in the research process, not in any way indicative of, you know, the reason why we haven't signed one, if that makes sense. I mean, I'm going to turn it over to Sean. Sean, anything that you have to add in terms of that where you see the signing? I'm putting pressure on you here, but you feel comfortable with it this year as well?

Yeah, thanks, Aaron. And thanks for the question, Jacob. And I do strongly believe it becomes a timing aspect as well. So Just for frame of reference, these aspects turn into our research customers, turn into our SPL customers from there. These can take 12, 18 months, depending on their development stage. So it really becomes a timing aspect as well. But we do have, the last 24 months, have signed 10 SPL partners. Almost all of them are in the clinic or at least even approaching clinic from there.

So we're looking to continue to add that with all these three this year.

Got it, thanks. And I did just want to quickly go back to the launch of the DTX platform. You've covered it in pretty good detail so far. It sounds like, you know, feedback, traction, early contributions all did really well. But is there any way you could quantify what you're expecting in the back half? Or is it more just, you know, kind of a slow trickle and really expect material contributions in 2027?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll date throughout the year. You know, I don't think it's too early in the process. It's been a month since we launched it. It'll probably be more than a trickle in the second half. That's where you begin to see meaningful revenues in the second half and a lot more so in 2027. But I'll update throughout the year. Again, we're seeing very good traction at the beta sites. We're seeing good traction even outside the U.S. We've seen sales in Asia-Pac as well from this. It really is something that we truly believe differentiates us from any other platform. There are similar 96 world discovery platforms out there, but none that on a well-to-well basis with the same consistency. And really, Nundeck can do it where it's where we've built into this our 20 plus years of operation know-how into this platform to make a streamline for customers.

So I feel very, very good about this, Jacob. Very good.

Great to hear. Thanks, guys. Absolutely.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Massaro with BTIG. Please proceed.

This is Vivian for Mark. Thanks for taking the questions. I just had two cleanups on the 26th guide. Just what's baked in as far as secure contribution? And then I also think you've called out royalty contribution for the first time in the guide. So just could you speak to your level of visibility and confidence in that, just given it's from a partner therapy? Thanks.

Yeah. So on secure, obviously, you know, we don't break it up in terms of in the guide itself, other than the fact we see material growth year-over-year for Secure in 2026 versus 2025. Significant growth there from what we had last year. Obviously, last year's revenue for Secure was a bit disappointing, but it was part of our integration of Secure. We bought an early startup. We're still integrating it. We're still ensuring that we're building up the processes there, really building up the platform there. So we see meaningful growth this year. That's part of our guide. In terms of the... We finally broke out the royalty... revenue there. I mentioned earlier we expect approximately $10 million of revenue from commercial royalty, and that will ramp up throughout the year as that product ramps itself. And we feel fairly good about that. That's based on forecasts we've seen for that product from public forecasts as well as what we're seeing so far early this quarter. But we expect that $10 million over the ramp of the year to happen. And we'll do that continuing from here on out. We'll continue to guide for our

milestones and royalty on a separate line as well.

Okay, perfect. Yeah, and then I just had one follow-up kind of higher level. I think you've previously mentioned the dynamic that customers are opting for in vivo therapies over ex vivo. So could you discuss how you're seeing the opportunity for more complex edits longer term and Maybe over what timeframe would you expect that customer appetite to sort of transition to ex vivo edits?

So, explain it a bit more. I mean, obviously, we've seen this for years now. We're seeing the complexity of editing increase over the years, right? This is one of the single-based, you know, CAR T therapy. We're now seeing edits of five, six therapies.

But I guess, what are you alluding to? I just want to make sure I answered your question correctly.

Yeah, I just mean that you've talked about it being a headwind in the past that customers are opting for in vivo therapy. So just how do you see the longer term opportunity for customer appetite in ex vivo edits?

Yeah, I see what you're getting. So actually, I mean, look, we're still a huge believer in the ex vivo cell therapy space. In fact, we're seeing that start to return as well. You know, in vivo, obviously, as you know, we've had some headwinds there. But we're seeing it, you know, if you look at our programs, we have alginate programs and autologous programs all progressing. The STLs that we're signing right now are cell therapy programs, some of which are even coming back. At one point, they were not in the clinic, and now they're coming back to the clinic. I am a huge believer in cell therapy space. I think as these therapies become far more complex, as you were saying, it lends itself to cell therapy, especially cell therapy electroporation. You can control the safety. You can control the dosing. The science is catching up. On top of it, our platforms were built for that. That's exactly what it is. So we're seeing that come back. That's what makes me feel very good about going into the second half of the year. It makes me feel even better about 27 and 2028. That complexity lends itself to our business, and it lends itself to what we've built over the last decade.

And we're seeing that traction start to come back to sell there.

Okay, perfect. Thanks for taking the questions. Absolutely.

Thank you. Our next question is from . Please proceed.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe to follow up on Dan and Jacob's questions, you know, we have seen funding pick up the space in general. So I just want to get your sense of what you're hearing from customers in terms of macro environment, what you're seeing in terms of demand, and how should we think about the recent funding backdrop flowing through potential demand throughout FY26?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question, Matt. So, you know, obviously, as I mentioned, this is not so much anymore, you know, a demand issue or a customer funding issue. This is about, you know, from the headwinds we saw in that, that are affecting Q1, this is more of a second-half weighted guide that we're giving in that core revenue of 25 to 27. I mean, look, we're sitting here right now, we're about one week away from quarter end. You know, this is not official guidance, but, you know, we look where we are on the core. I feel comfortable that, you know, $6 million on the core is appropriate for Q1. We see that upticking into Q2 and then being more second half weighted. And none of that's contingent upon an upside in capital spending or customer demand. That's just where we sit right now. So I feel extremely good where we are on the guide. I feel good where we are on Q1. This is a case of just building back a new base from what we, death scale customers that we lost in 25. We found a new base here. Our largest customer, we're optimizing the processing assemblies and they're drawn down from the inventory they have. We found a new base there.

I feel very good about the year as it transpires. I appreciate it. I'll leave it there for now. Thank you.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1-1 to get in the queue. We have a question from Chad Watroski with C.D. Cowan. Please proceed.

Hey, guys. Congrats, Doug. Look forward to seeing what your plans are going forward. Just one on the DTX. You've mentioned sort of a few orders already flowing through here in the first quarter. When you're thinking about those couple of orders, but also the bolus more in the second half, are those mostly existing customers enjoying the convenience of that, or is this something that enables more newer customers, and how do you expect that mix to play out through the year?

Great question. I mean, obviously, the current customers are the ones that are going to be the easiest ones to convert over because they're going to enjoy the aspect of it. And those are the ones we're approaching. So that's a great that's great question. But this is a mix of both. This is not just for new customers. Also, it's not just for current customers, also for new customers. Actually, even even because this is a 96 wall discovery platform that allows you to try and set primary cells, this can be used for early discovery for the individual space as well. So this is, in essence, a platform we've never had before. which we're targeting our current customers now, but we're prospecting for future customers as well. And we're seeing that in the early placements. Actually, one of those early placements is a new customer. It's not a current customer. So it's a mix of both, but we're being very smart about it and ensuring that we're working with our current customers because that's also where you learn about some of the things maybe you have to make improvements on any time you launch a product. So I've said it earlier. Innovations are hard. We're going to continue to innovate this product. We're going to continue to launch new products in the

in the coming years, so that this is one of many to come.

Thank you, and this concludes our Q&A session, and I will pass it back to Mahir Masood for closing remarks.

Yeah, thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's call. I feel very good about 2026, just as good if I'm better about the future years and what we're building here.

And I look forward to talking to all of you in the next 20 months on our next earnings call.

This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.