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Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the NeoGenomics second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, CEO Mark Mallon. Sir, the floor is yours.
Mark Mallon
Thanks, Kate, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you all to NeoGenomics 2021 second quarter conference call. Joining me for this call from our Fort Myers headquarters are Catherine McKenzie, our Chief Financial Officer, George Cardoza, President and Chief Operating Officer of our Lab Operations, Bill Bonello, President of our Informatics Division, and Doug Brown, our Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer. Joining on the call via phone from California is Dr. Gina Waller, President of our Pharma Services Division, and via phone from the United Kingdom is President of Innovata, Dr. Clive Morris. Before we begin our prepared remarks, Doug will read the standard language about forward-looking statements. Doug?
Kate
Good morning. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements, which represent our current expectations and beliefs about our operations, performance, financial condition, and growth opportunities. Any statements made on this call that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. These statements, by their nature, involve substantial risk and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond our control. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes and results could differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update any such statements to reflect events or circumstances after today. Before turning the call back to Mark, I want to let everyone know that we will be making a copy of our prepared remarks for this morning's call available on the investor relations section of our website shortly after the call is completed. We also want to let everyone know that we are going to limit the number of questions to one per person in order to give more people a chance to ask questions within the one hour that has been allotted for this call.
Mark Mallon
Thanks, Ed. So we are really pleased to announce strong quarter two results highlighted by 40% annual revenue growth to $122 million for the quarter. All three of our divisions grew significantly over a depressed Q2 from a year ago. And importantly, we grew our core revenue 7% sequentially over Q1 of this year. I'm especially pleased to note that our strategic growth areas of pharma services, informatics, and NGS testing and clinical services were strong contributors in the quarter. And these growth areas now account for greater than one-third of our total company revenue. Clinical revenues of $101 million represented 37% year-over-year growth. In our clinical business experience, a noticeable recovery versus quarter one, and this number included no contribution from COVID-19 PCR testing revenue. On a sequential basis, our core clinical cancer volume increased 8%, with a record 281,000 clinical tests performed in the quarter. While the quarter two recovery in volume is encouraging and strong volumes have continued into Q3, we are monitoring a few market-related factors that may impact continued volume uptake in the back half of the year. We have anticipated that our sales team would have full access to their customers by quarter three, but that remains to be seen in certain territories. We believe that much of this can be attributed to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant. Additionally, market data shows that many patients are still not going in for critical screening appointments, and key cancers continue to be underdiagnosed. We believe our strong sequential volume growth in quarter two is evidence that our clinical business will benefit as reopening of offices continues, even if at a slower rate in some parts of the country. Our pharma services business continued to shine during the quarter, putting up record revenues of over $20 million with year-over-year growth of 55%. Demand was also robust during the quarter as more than $40 million in new bookings drove signed contract backlog to a record $238 million exiting the quarter. This backlog gives us confidence that as we exit 2021, our farmer segment will be approaching $100 million in revenue at a runway basis, up from just $20 million annually a few years ago. It's also worth noting that our farmer services business continues to migrate up the value chain of our biopharma customers, as we are winning a larger percentage of Phase II and Phase III opportunities. These larger contract awards demonstrate the strong confidence our customers have in NEO, awarding some of their most important drug development projects to our pharma services team. Our informatics capabilities, which improve the ability of biopharma companies to identify patients for clinical trials and provide these clients with commercial analytics to support product launches, continue to be in high demand. Informatics is the fastest growing of our three operating divisions, and the team continues to make strong progress. While still relatively small, this business posted record revenues again in quarter two, and you'll hear more from Informatics Division President Bill Bonello later in our prepared remarks. During the quarter, our team also successfully closed on two important acquisitions. We are excited about the addition of Trapello Health and Innovata into Neogenomics. And while still very early days, we can already see multiple opportunities to drive growth and support our overall strategy of bringing innovation to the community oncology market. Trapello Health closed in April, and the acquisition is now fully integrated as a subsidiary of our informatics division. You'll hear more about Trapello in the informatics update later in the call. In Nevada closed in June, and our integration activities are well underway. We plan to leverage the advantage of neogenomics strategic position in commercializing our residual disease and recurrence assay, or RADAR, with a multi-pronged strategy for success. As we've discussed, our first priority is ensuring rapid submission of RADAR to MOL-DS. I've reviewed the plans and progress of the team, and we remain on track for a submission around the turn of the new year, assuming a typical review period will be able to launch into the clinical market in the middle of next year. Since we have acquired Innovata, we've accelerated the acquisition and retrospective testing of multiple cohorts of samples in multiple tumor types to support the initial Moldy X submission and launch in future areas. Another priority is to gain biopharma support for Radar. Our pharma services team is now fully engaged in supporting Innovata in pulling through a large and growing portfolio of pharma opportunities. there's been a clear recognition by biopharma teams of the companies of the leading sensitivity and specificity of the radar assay. We expect to leverage our strong relationships with nearly 200 biopharma companies to generate revenue and aid in building evidence and evidence base for treating minimal residual disease with radar. MRD testing will play an important role in the development of therapies, particularly in places like the knee adjuvant setting and as, of course, in recurrent monitoring. Studies in the adjuvant setting are one example of how MRD, radar specifically, can be used to transform drug development and could be an opportunity for quick successes. Today, approximately 70% of patients with early stage cancer are cured by their initial treatment. However, it's difficult to know which patients, and as a consequence, patient enrollment into adjuvant clinical studies includes large numbers who do not have residual cancer. By utilizing a test like RADAR to facilitate more effective trial enrollment, pharma sponsors can help healthy patients avoid unnecessary treatment, reduce trial enrollment sizes, improve the quality of readouts from the trial, and reduce costs along the way. We believe biopharma adoption will be an important part of success in the clinical market. And we will utilize the relationships and oncology expertise of our base clinical sales team, who have been calling on our key clients for an average of six years or more. We have recently built out an additional precision medicine manager's team to focus on driving the next generation sequencing and liquid biopsy adoption. This team will be in place well ahead of our planned radar launch and will be tasked with helping drive uptake. Also, earlier this year, we struck an important commercial arrangement with leading breast cancer oncology testing company, Igendia, to co-commercialize radar with breast cancer-focused physicians upon launch. We view the partnership with Agenia and their growing U.S. sales force of over 40 breast cancer specialists as a focused way to gain more feet on the street selling radar at a reasonable cost. We've already received multiple inquiries from other companies who have sales teams of a similar size and reach that are focused on various other cancer sites, and we're actively evaluating these opportunities. We believe that radar's best-in-class published analytic sensitivity of 97% at 20 parts per million of circulating tumor DNA is or 0.002% variant allele frequency is a true differentiator. This elite level of sensitivity at such low concentration allows RADAR to make calls other assays fundamentally may not be sensitive enough to make. We believe these other potential partners are recognizing the assay's differentiation as well. Finally, we believe that Trapello's clinical decision support software can be a technological multiplier for our sales efforts as the platform is adopted and additional clinical evidence is published for minimal residual diseases testing and treatment. Fast reimbursement, comprehensive evidence generation, success with biopharma customers, targeted disease opportunities where quick wins are possible, and a multi-channel approach to selling will be the success factors to make Radar our leader in the MRD market, and we are rapidly working on each. Overall, I'm proud of our team's quarter two performance in my first quarter as CEO of Neogenomics, and excited about the early progress from our two recent acquisitions. From the big picture perspective, I've been very impressed by several strengths of Neo in my first 100 days on the job. First, it's just how comprehensive our oncology platform at Neo Genomics truly is. As I have dug in, I see how our broad portfolio of services provides a value proposition to all the constituents of the oncology ecosystem, providers, farmers, payers, and of course, patients. Our portfolio of multimodality solutions is comprised of hundreds of assays that provide time-sensitive biomarker-specific answers for oncologists, pathologists, research scientists, and pharma trial teams. Our customized targeted panels allow us to provide the right information at the right time for providers and patients at the right price for our direct bill and third-party payers. And that broad-based menu that differentiates in clinical is also of great value to our biopharma customers. and is the real driver of growth for us. As we test nearly half a million patients per year, the value of the data and related informatic capabilities we are gathering only continues to snowball every day. Critically, these strengths have translated into leadership in three key franchises. We have the clear leader in diagnosis of hematologic cancers with an especially strong position and have strong franchises in both breast and lung segments where we run more than 100,000 tests annually in each. These are real platforms for growth today and in the future. I must say that I've been equally impressed by our culture, as I've now had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of my fellow teammates at Neogenomics. And it is truly a feeling of patient-first mentality at all levels of the organization. As I have visited many of our facilities, it's obvious that our lab employees are dedicated to patient service. This consistent dedication has translated into industry-leading turnaround times in many of our test modalities, and is also reflected in both our strong net promoter scores and the extremely high customer retention rate. And I know we can do much more. We believe that the commercialization of the radar assay can help transform the cancer care paradigm for millions of patients in need of cancer recurrence monitoring. We see opportunities to drive broad adoption of a leading clinical decision software for our oncology customers to help them navigate appropriate testing for the patients from both a technology and cost-benefit perspective. And while we are the leader in the U.S. oncology market, I see so much more opportunity outside the U.S. as we look to further globalize our offerings. We have multiple facilities around the world that have ample capacity to scale, and we have ongoing discussions with various biopharma companies regarding our ability to further support them globally. Along with these organic growth opportunities right in front of us, we also have corporate development and inorganic growth opportunities that we have no intention of slowing down on. We are strategically well-positioned and are well-capitalized for further deal-making as we look to keep pace with the constantly changing and highly competitive marketplace in oncology. When I put it all together, I see a very well-positioned, very well-diversified player in one of the most attractive end markets in the world. And I believe all the opportunity in front of us puts us in a position to accelerate our historical mid-teens top-line growth rate over time. which will enhance our margins as well as we fill up our laboratories and continue to implement efficiencies. As you can tell, I am very excited to be part of NeoGenomics, and I could not be more optimistic of the future of our company. I'll now turn the call over to Catherine McKenzie to discuss some of the other details of our quarter two financial results.
Ed
Thank you, Mark. Second quarter clinical division revenue grew 37% year over year, driven by a strong bounce back in clinical volume compared to the depressed volumes during the initial wave of the pandemic during the second quarter from one year ago. As a reminder, we made the decision to wind down our COVID-19 PCR testing capabilities in quarter one, and we had no contribution from COVID-19 testing in quarter two compared to 2 million in the same period last year. Clinical division revenue for tests was $360 in quarter two compared to $362 for the full year of 2020 and $351 in quarter two of 2019. Pharma services revenue grew 55% year over year, continuing its rapid growth trajectory. Demand continues to be very strong, and we signed over $40 million in new bookings, exiting the quarter with a record $238 million in backlogs. Our total gross margins of 43.5% in quarter two included amortization of intangible assets related to developed technology acquired through the Innovata acquisition. Excluding the amortization of these acquired intangible assets, our gross margins improved to 44.1% in quarter two, driven by efficiencies on increased volume in clinical and higher revenue in our pharma services division. More consistent sample volumes allowed for more predictable staffing levels and we were able to see more normalized leverage on our largely fixed-cost COGS infrastructure. Gross profit increased $11 million sequentially on only $6 million of revenue growth. Compared with a year ago, gross profit increased $25 million on a $35 million revenue increase. These levels of incremental gross profit provide confidence that gross margins can improve as we continue to grow, and we believe that over a series of quarters, we should be back to previously achieved gross margins approaching 50%. However, we continue to see the same temporary labor and supply chain constraints that the rest of the country is experiencing, and these capacity constraint challenges combined with high demand are continuing to affect service levels and cost per test. Operating expenses increased $28 million year-over-year to $75 million, primarily driven by one-time acquisition-related costs, expense contributions from the recent acquisitions of Innovata and Trapello, increased commercial costs on higher revenues, and additional investments to support growth. Concurrent with the completion of the Innovata acquisition, we recorded a gain of $97 million within other income related to our prior minority investment in Innovata. This gain represents the amount by which the fair value of the company's minority investment in Innovata immediately prior to the acquisition exceeded the carrying value of its previous held equity interest and purchase options. Adjusted EBITDA of $4.6 million in Q2 reflects improvement in our core cancer business, offset by expense contributions from the recent acquisitions of Innovata and Trapello, and higher payroll, increased commercial costs, and other certain personnel-related expenses. Turning to the balance sheet, we exited quarter two with $572 million in cash and marketable securities, which excludes an additional $4 million in restricted cash designated for construction of our new state-of-the-art laboratory and global headquarters in Fort Myers, Florida. During the quarter, we utilized $390 million in cash to exercise our purchase option to acquire the remaining unowned equity in Nevada and raised gross proceeds of $200 million in a related strategic private equity transaction. We also utilized $36 million in cash for the acquisition of Tratello Health, which was announced in March and closed in April. We are maintaining our previously provided annual revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance based on strong second quarter. I will now turn the call back over to Mark.
Mark Mallon
Thanks, Catherine. As we've done in previous quarters, we'd like to dedicate some time on this call to providing our investors with a progress update on one of the most exciting areas of our business. For this quarter's call, I've asked the president of our informatics division, Bill Bonello, to discuss the exciting projects he and his team have been working on. I'll turn the call over to Bill now.
Catherine
Bill? Thanks, Mark. It's great to be able to speak about our informatics initiatives. The informatics division is building data and technology solutions to improve patient care and drive growth. In two short years, we've grown from a standing start to a team of nearly 60 people and are progressing nicely towards our longer-term goal of establishing a $100 million business. In our core informatics business, we provide products and services to life science companies to support clinical and commercial analytics, clinical trials, and digital pathology. Over the past two years, we have engaged in over 59 contracted projects with 26 different companies, and we have nearly 100 unique projects in our pipeline. We are engaged with many of the largest global pharmaceutical companies, often for multiple as well as several leading contract research organizations. I'd like to highlight just a few of our current projects to give you a better sense of the type of work that we're doing. In one case, we helped support the commercial launch of a non-small cell lung cancer therapy by analyzing biomarker testing patterns among both oncologists and pathologists. We used this information to identify potential sites for a Phase II clinical trial as well as to identify gaps in testing. We also constructed patient cohorts to identify individuals that might benefit from the therapy or need follow-up biomarker testing and shared this information with treating physicians within 48 hours of FDA approval. Finally, we implemented a sponsored testing program to alleviate patient financial burdens. We have several other projects where we're identifying patients that might be candidates for a specific clinical trial, proactively following up with the treating physicians and facilitating enrollment. We also have several other projects where we have identified gaps in biomarker testing to support commercial initiatives. Another area where we have engagements is around digital pathology and image analysis. We are engaged with several companies to provide annotated digital images in some instances supported by our own proprietary machine learning algorithms. We're also very excited about Trapello Health, which we acquired in March of this year. Trapello Health is a precision oncology company focused on clinical decision support for both test and therapy selection, as well as streamlined prior authorization for both testing and treatment. This comprehensive order-to-result perspective differentiates Trapello from any other clinical decision support tool on the market. As we all know, for precision medicine to work, patients must be tested for the appropriate biomarkers in order to even know that they're a candidate for a therapy or clinical trial. On the front end, Trapello identifies which biomarkers should be ordered for a specific patient and which specific lab tests include those biomarkers. The product is designed to be lab agnostic, enabling providers and payers to designate their own preferred laboratory networks. Real-world data underscores just how important this biomarker guidance is. We know that up to 35% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer have actionable genetic mutations, and up to 55% of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer patients excuse me, have clinically relevant mutations. Nevertheless, less than 25% of non-small cell lung cancer patients receive testing for all four of the most common biomarkers, and just 7% of patients receive testing for all seven genes that are included in clinical guidelines. And that's just one example. On the back end, Trapello identifies which therapies in clinical trials may be appropriate for an individual patient based on the test results and other clinical information. This guidance is also critical in ensuring the highest quality patient care. About 80% of treatment occurs in the community, and most of those oncologists are seeing a very broad range of cancers, making it next to impossible to keep up with most current science and the guidelines. Also, guidelines alone can change at a pretty rapid clip. Sometimes a guideline for a specific cancer can change as many as six times over the course of a year. All of the recommendations for both testing and treatment are supported by scientific evidence, which has been collected and curated into a proprietary knowledge base, which is supported by our own team of PhD curation specialists. While it's still early days, client response has been overwhelmingly positive. and we are in active discussions with a large number of provider organizations, payers, and electronic medical record companies. We will also be integrating the testing portion of clinical decision support into our Neogenomics online order process and hope to have that product available to select clients in the fourth quarter of this year. Now, I will turn the call back over to Mark for some closing remarks. Thanks, Bill.
Mark Mallon
So, in summary, I believe our Q2 results have confirmed that our strategy is working and will ensure value creation for shareholders and patients. We achieved 40% growth driven by record test volumes in our clinical services division and grew gross profit ahead of revenue. Fully one-third of our business now comes from our growth drivers of pharma services, informatics, and NGS testing. We are positioned to drive more growth to the launch of two potentially transformative innovations to cancer testing with the acquisitions of Trapello and Innovata with the Radar MRG test. We remain laser focused on transforming the lives of cancer patients by being a leading cancer testing and information company. Doug, do you want to take us to Q&A?
Kate
Thanks, everybody. At this point, we would like to open the call for questions. If you are listening to this conference call via webcast only and would like to submit a question, please feel free to email us at doug.browneogenomics.com during the Q&A session, and we will address your questions at the end if the subject matter hasn't already been addressed by our call-in listeners. As mentioned at the beginning of the call, we would like to ask each person to limit their questions to one so that we may hear from everyone and still keep within the hour allotted for this call. Operator, you may now open up the call for questions.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star 1 on your phone at this time. We do ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star followed by 1 on your phone at this time. Please hold a moment while we poll for questions. And our first question today is coming from David Westenberg at Guggenheim. Your line is live. Hi, David.
David Westenberg
Thank you for taking the... Hi, yeah. Hello, and happy Friday. Everyone can hear me okay, right? I had a mute issue earlier. Okay, perfect. Okay. So, good quarter, and nobody's raising guidance because nobody knows what's going on with patient volumes in, I guess, the Delta variant, but You know, when we ask about July, people say, you know, they're coming in, we just can't detail the sales force. So I don't mean to be overly pointed here, but how genuine is this concern in the back half of the year in terms of patient volumes? And how should we model cadence of volumes for the rest of the year, given this kind of dynamic? And, you know, if you can walk through kind of, you know, the genuine Delta case The genuine I can't detail, the Salesforce can't detail kind of case and the puts and takes with that. And since my question is complicated, I'll just stop with that one question and get to the next question.
Mark Mallon
Thanks, David. Yeah, so, you know, unfortunately, the evidence of an impact on sort of access to access offices is, is real. We've been getting examples from pretty much across the country of hospitals that had been open to sales representative closing. And what I think certainly is causing us to take it seriously is that a number of these are in places that hadn't closed before. So particularly, we're seeing reduced access in places like Florida and Texas. where I think you know that we're actually, these places have set records above even the previous records for COVID cases. So, you know, on the positive side, you know, our sales team has been working both, you know, with customers directly, face-to-face, but also virtually. So, we've built up a lot of capability in this area, and they are super passionate about continuing to make a difference for cancer patients. So, we're going to be working hard to keep driving the volume. We have good momentum coming out of the second quarter. But I think it's really too early to say what's going to happen. And we know the spike is occurring, and it is causing changes in practices in multiple institutions around the country. The question is, how long will this last? And I don't think we can really give you any more guidance than that.
David Westenberg
Did I answer your question? I did want to get the cadence. Should we model them down Q3 and then maybe move up Q4? Just a clarification there. Go ahead, Catherine.
Ed
Yeah, so I definitely, based on what we're seeing with the spike in COVID cases and the access, that would be a good assumption on how I would expect it to come through. Again, it's unknown as to what the impact will be in Q4 at this point, but I would expect a softer Q3 compared to Q4 as we get our handle on this.
Brian Weinstein
Thanks, Catherine. Thanks, David. Next question?
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Brian Weinstein at William Blair. Your line is live.
Brian Weinstein
Hi, Brian.
Brian
Talk a little bit about the pharma services side. You talked about kind of moving into phase two, phase three trials here. I'm just curious about what that means in terms of size of deal that that brings on and the opportunity there. And then If you think about the broader pharma services side, you highlighted ways that you're winning, but could you be a little bit more specific on when you win, why you win, and where there are maybe some gaps where competitively you continue to need to fill things out in order to be even more effective there? Thank you so much.
Mark Mallon
So I'll say a word or two about the shift upstream with pharma companies, and then I'm going to ask Gina to talk about, you know, what are the reasons why we win when we win? And you can expand on the first part of the question as well. So, you know, moving into the phase two, phase three work, first of all, I think is logical for two reasons. One, we've had tremendous success in some of the earlier phase work over the last couple of years, and we've built really strong relationships with multiple companies. And so it was only natural as projects progressed into later states that they want to continue to work with a company that they're having great success on. I think the other thing that supports moving in the later stages, you know, we really have significant capacity and capabilities, right? As these studies, the bigger studies, they want to work with organizations they know can deliver, and I think we've shown the way to do that. It's very exciting for us because once you line, you know, have acquired the business for a phase two or phase three program, they can be quite large, and that can secure test revenue for a good number of quarters. Now, of course, the time to set those studies up can take a little bit longer. So we're going to continue to watch and see how our pull-through goes. But overall, we're super excited about this because it really represents incremental business in some of the most important work that our customers are doing. Gina, you want to talk about why we're waiting?
Gina
Sure. Thanks, Mark. In terms of the shift from... research slash phase one, phase two trials to phase three. One of the large contributing factors to that is our global capabilities. With the opening of our site in Europe and Singapore and now China, this provides a global solution to our pharma companies' needs. And so, therefore, we are at the table for those phase three discussions. And when it comes to providing full services in oncology, I think we win across the board in terms of that global solution. Key areas that we have identified include being able to provide companion diagnostic services ex-U.S. We provide a holistic and terrific service within the U.S., and we seek to bring that ex-U.S. because that is what our clients are looking for. I think, did that address your question?
Brian Weinstein
Yeah, it does. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Next question?
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Alex Nowak at Craig Hellam Capital Group. Your line is live.
Alex Nowak
Hi, Alex. Good morning, everyone. Hey, good morning. Alex. The company last quarter spoke to a number of investments the team is making on the radar assay to get it ready for prime time. But I'd say at the same time, the two main competitors out there, they're spending very large amounts of money getting their respective assays ready. Can you maybe expand on the competitive environment now, now that you've had some more time within Nevada under the hood? And then what additional investments NEO is really going to need to make to get the test ready for a clinical launch next year? Sure.
Mark Mallon
Sure. Let me say a couple of words about how I'm thinking about it, but then I would like Clive to talk a little bit more about specifically what we're doing to get ready. So I think the first thing I always am looking at when you're thinking about launching new technology is the profile of the product. And Clive can comment a little bit on this, but as I come in and really seeing the data that's been published and what we're developing internally, I'm very confident that that this assay is as, you know, good or better, and an ability to really detect at very low levels sort of cancers before they're recurring from a visual perspective is outstanding. And that's going to give us a strong base on what I think is going to be the key dimension of competition. In terms of the investments, and companies are making investments both in evidence generation as well as in, you know, having sales forces, You know, those aren't a surprise. These companies are starting from a position where they don't have large customer bases, large initial volume, and a long history in ecology. And conversely, Neo has all of those. You know, we have a customer base of over 4,000 customers. We're doing a million tests a year on a half a million patients. And we've got an experienced sales team now over up to 60 salespeople. We've got a big customer service group. We have over 100 pathologists. We have really an incredible infrastructure and a starting point as we move into this. Now, absolutely, we're going to have to have dedicated additional resources, and we're defining what that's going to be, and we'll have those in place for launch middle of next year. I'll pause there and let Ty maybe say a few words about the profile and remind us about why we're so excited about the profile of the product and how he's thinking about competing in the marketplaces.
Neo
Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mark. And thanks for the question. Yeah, completely obviously endorse everything that Mark's just said. You know, I think the sensitivity and specificity we see of the assay we know is absolutely critical for these early stage cancer patients who've already undergone treatment and then you're detecting microscopic disease effectively. And therefore, the blood traces of DNA are very low. And we believe that the radar assay has a fantastic, compelling profile to win in that space. We're busy working on a range of different aspects. You talked about evidence generation and getting ready for clinical launch. So we have a number of clinical cohorts that we're exploring across a range of tumor types. As Mark mentioned, we're looking for submission for initial reimbursement around the turn of the year. with then leading to launch with a reimbursed test towards the middle of next year. Overall, we see many potential different indications we could approach with an asset like radar, and we're building that evidence using a mix of either ongoing or archival study cohorts where we can access them, but increasingly also seeing prospective studies, which of course may be more practice changing in the long term, but take a while longer to bring through. We'll start that with more observational data, getting into interventional, into prospective. And ultimately, they will obviously drive the long-term outcomes here. And we're seeing those prospective studies with academic collaborators, with cooperative group collaborators, and indeed with biopharma, as Mark mentioned. So we're building that stable. So as I say, overall, we believe the market is right at the beginning of the evolution of this sort of clinical testing market. It'll continue to grow, I think, and we'll see, I expect, you know, sort of additional sort of tests and indications being reimbursed. As I'm sure you're aware today, there is a colorectal cancer coverage for Natera. You know, there is a pan-cancer coverage, more generic LCD from the Moldy X group that, you know, we and others will also look at using. So, you know, I would expect to see sort of increasing indications building over time, and as Mark said, we aim to be partaking within that. Alongside the evidence generation, of course, there's a lot more that needs to go into a successful launch from the key opinion leader development, you know, thinking through physician education, how do you think about, of course, then through into sales and marketing, and we're in the process of planning those out in more detail commensurate with the launch timings Mark mentioned. Hope that answers the question.
Alex Nowak
It does. Very helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Alex.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Mark Massaro at BTIG. Your line is live.
Mark Massaro
Hi, Mark. Hey, guys. Hey, guys. How's it going? Thanks for the questions. I guess if I can ask a two-parter, the first is, you know, curious if you're seeing any increased adoption of the Envision First lung test And then I wanted to ask Bill Bonello, you know, there's been several interesting digital pathology machine learning.
Mark
We're sorry. Because of technical difficulties, we are unable to route your call. Please try your call again. This is a recording. 416-13. En raison de difficultés techniques, la communication n'a pu être établie. Veuillez appeler de nouveau. C'était un message enregistré. 416-13 We're sorry. Because of technical difficulties, we are unable to route your call. Please try your call again. This is a recording. 416-13 En raison de difficultés techniques, la communication n'a pu être établie. Veuillez appeler de nouveau. C'était un message enregistré. 416-13. patient first as our approach in the lung cancer space. Fully 60% of lung cancer patients really
Mark Mallon
are eligible under the current LCD for Envision First Lung, and it's the best choice for these patients, and we're going to be really emphasizing that. These are patients who really, it's medically contraindicated to do a biopsy. You know, the physicians are clear they probably won't be able to get enough of the tissue, and we can go right to Envision First Lung, which is a great profile. So I think with a really stepped-up effort, clearer messaging, further investment in resources, we can take what is a growing... and make it into even a faster-growing test. So we'll be putting a big emphasis on the second half of the year.
Catherine
Bill, do you want to take the second part? Sure. Thanks a lot for the question, Mark. We know most, if not all, of the companies that you're referring to, and in many instances, we're actually working with those companies in various ways. I would say that the kinds of algorithm work that we would be doing in our projects are fairly basic. Things that make the R&D work easier for pharma customers who are using digital images to do their research. So that may be things like slide circling, tumor calculation, histology detection, et cetera. The distinction I would make from some of those other companies and what we're doing, we are not currently working at all on any kind of a clinical assay. That is not within scope of what we're trying to do. It doesn't mean that it couldn't be in scope of what we try and do at some point in the future, but we would need significantly enhanced resources and capabilities to be able to do that. I would say the one thing that we have that differentiates us from many of the other players is we probably process more digital images in a year than anybody else in the marketplace. And we have dozens and dozens of pathologists that can help with training and evaluation and validation of algorithms as they're created, and hence one of the reasons that many of those companies want to work with us, as do many of the pharmaceutical companies. So hopefully that gives you some sense of where we're at. Thanks, Bill. Answer your question, Mark?
Mark Massaro
Yep, that was great. Thank you.
Operator
Thanks, Mark. Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Tejas Sivan at Morgan Stanley. Your line is live.
Mark
Hey guys, good morning. So just a couple of quick follow-ups on Inubara and then I have a separate question for Catherine. So on Inubara, Clive, do you envision different versions off radar for the recurrence detection versus response monitoring indications? And secondly, in your mind, how important is FDA approval for broader adoption of MRD as a modality in general? And then for Catherine, can you just give us an update on when you expect the Fort Myers lab to be fully operational and any color on OPEX cadence here heading into the back half of the year?
Mark Mallon
So Clive, you want to take the first part? And actually, since we've got George Cardoza here, who's responsible for our lab operations, I'm going to have him give you an update on Fort Myers, if that's okay. Sure.
Neo
Yeah, you know, the beauty of an assay like RADAR is it's completely suitable for both the residual disease detection following surgery and then the ongoing monitoring potentially for the recurrence disease. So we create the assay highly sensitive. We're tracking a high number of variants, so we're looking at 48 known variants per patient with great sensitivity, which means even if there are changes in the landscape, the genomic landscape of the patients, the majority, if not all of those, will be conserved, and we then have a very good detection rate. And the early data we've presented in breast and lung cancers show that actually we can detect the recurrence many months earlier than actually using conventional mechanisms. So we can use the same test really for both of them is the short answer to the first question. In terms of FDA, the assay has been built with a view to moving through as an LDT initially and then with a view to then future FDA. As we've already said, we have an FDA breakthrough device designation already, and we're discussing with pharma. And I think certainly early on, I think to working with pharma, I think that FDA approvability and access is key because clearly the drugs that are tested, these become the companion diagnostics for those therapeutics in the future. So we want to make sure we're ready to be performing the regulatory clinical trials with pharma partners under full regulatory scrutiny. an oversight. And then, of course, as those trials read out, hopefully positive, then, of course, we then naturally partnering with the pharma company to run those through as companion diagnostics. Ultimately, of course, then as they are approved, that then further reinforces the clinical use of LDT and guidelines and everything else and eventual testing. So that will continue to drive the uptake of such testing long term. So we see that FDA readiness and eventual FDA Approved approval as a key part for the certainly the short-term biopharma and the long-term clinical adoption. Thanks, bud. George, do you want to take the other?
spk12
Sure. Yeah, no, I drive by the Fort Myers headquarters every day, and it's looking really nice. It comes so far, and it really looks beautiful, and I think the team's very excited. There's two buildings, the admin building, which will be the corporate headquarters. That's obviously the easier one to move, and that move will happen fairly soon. The laboratory, though, is open right now. We have techs in the laboratory doing equipment validations, doing testing validations. Obviously, all of these tests have to be revalidated in the new facility, which does take a bit of time. But the team is certainly working hard, and our expectations right now are in the fourth quarter that we will be open. We will be testing in the new laboratory facility. So the team is very excited. And also, just in terms of the capacity and the ability for us to streamline some of our workflows, our Fort Myers facility is is a bit dated and we are fairly cramped in that facility, so we're very excited to get over into an open concept laboratory, which I think is going to allow some efficiencies and the ability to scale our growth over time. So the team is extremely excited about the new facility.
Brian Weinstein
Got it. And Catherine on OpEx?
Mark Mallon
Go ahead, Catherine. Do you need to repeat the question?
Ed
Yeah. Can you repeat the question on OPEX?
Mark
Just wanted to get your views on OPEX cadence heading into the back half of the year. I mean, anything particularly noteworthy, 3Q versus 4Q?
Ed
No. Consistent with what we said before, we're seeing some pressure and some capacity constraints that could be associated in the third quarter and fourth quarter related to COVID, but there's no significant other impacts between the quarters.
spk12
Perfect. Thank you.
Mark Mallon
Thanks, Catherine. I'm just going to, I want to add, sort of clarify or point out something that maybe is sort of obvious to us, but probably we could do a better job of clarifying. And the thought about it is Catherine was answering about the question of sort of OPEX, which goes to the resources. As we're getting ready for the launch of Radar, we have in place already 60 very experienced salespeople at NEO. We've got the partnership with Agendia, which is going to add 40 very experienced people. So a year before the launch, we've got in place 100 highly experienced people actively selling into these markets, and we have backing them up. very substantial customer service team, very substantial medical team. Actually, with Neo, we're talking over 100 medical doctors and PhDs. And so I think this is a starting point that would be, I put up against any lab that was launching a new test in the last few years as a starting point. Now, we're going to also work on what is the additional dedicated resources that we need to have in place for the launch. But make no mistake about it, we have the resources to compete in this market And what's great is they're already experienced calling in customers and in place today. So I just wanted to kind of highlight that and make sure we're clear. Can I take the next question?
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Mike Mattson at Needham & Company. Your line is live.
Mike Mattson
Hi, Mike. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess just following up on the comment you just made about the number of reps you'll have selling radar, you know, I was wondering, I mean, is it realistic to assume that, you know, this could add a couple points to growth maybe in, you know, the 2023 timeframe, if not 2022? You know, if you're 500 million or something in revenue, I mean, you know, just adding 5, 10, 15 million in pretty short order, is that crazy or?
Mark Mallon
So what we've said, and so no, it's not crazy to be clear, that we can add a material impact in growth in 23. We've said that we see 21 and 22 is the year where we're focused on getting reimbursement and getting resources and all the activities in place and focused on driving pharma sales and making sure we're building the evidence. But as we get into 23, we definitely expect to see sales starting to come in on radar in a material way, and especially in 24. So I think you're thinking about it just the right way.
Mike Mattson
Okay, great. And then I wanted to ask one on M&A. You know, you've done a couple deals here recently. It sounds like, you know, you called that out in the prepared remarks as, you know, you're still looking at other things. So, you know, the deals you've done seem to be more kind of, you know, technology-oriented, I guess, if you will. you know, one in IT and one in terms of a specific test. But, you know, so is that the main thing, your type of deal you're looking for? Would you do deals for, you know, scale or breadth or just an overview of kind of the approach here in terms of M&A? Thanks.
Mark Mallon
That's a great question. I'm going to have Doug answer that first.
Kate
Yeah, thanks, Mike, for the question. You're right. I mean, I think there's been an evolution how we've gone to market with M&A, right? The first couple of deals were about scale, and the last three we have done are about technology. or adding a test. When we think about more scale transactions, frankly, it's on the pharma side, and it would be probably from a global perspective. As we think about clinical, it might be about adding more technology into the channel. And then with informatics, we could also look for scale there as well. But we have a lot of opportunities that we're evaluating, and as Mark echoed, it continues to be a major driver of growth here.
Mike Mattson
Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Matt Sykes at Goldman Sachs. Your line is live.
Matt Sykes
Great. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Just two for me. Just the first one, I apologize if you guys have outlined this in previous calls, but any additional color on the economics for the commercialization agreement with Agendia on radar? And then what percentage of volume do you think you expect to run through Agendia versus your own in-house sales team? I know you mentioned sort of a 60 in-house salespeople versus 40 at Agendia, but are there any expectations for how the volume might look in terms of how radar is going through into the market?
Mark Mallon
So, we haven't communicated, I don't believe, the economics or the details of the agreement with Agendia. We see that as confidential information, and I think that's the first thing. And, Clive, if I miss anything, jump in. The second point in terms of volume, again, I think it would be premature try to estimate volume going through Agendia. What I would say is clearly Agendia is a very successful and experienced organization in the breast cancer market. They're driving significant growth of their products with MammaPrint and Blueprint, and they have tremendous capabilities, particularly in evidence generation. So they're, I think, a super exciting partner. And then you add that together with NEO, which has, if not the leading, one of the leading positions in breast cancer testing. As I mentioned, I think, earlier in my remarks, we do over 100,000 tests a year, which I think is fantastic. And these patients are patients that potentially could be early disease patients or have been treated curatively that are going to need an MRD test to confirm that there's been a cure. And they're going to be great candidates to transition to recurrence monitoring. So we're super excited in the breast cancer area. I think the profile that Radar brings with its sensitivity and festivity is outstanding. And so I think it's going to be a great opportunity. And Clive, do you want to add anything?
Neo
Yeah, no, I'd support that. The only two additional bits I'd say is further clarifications. Of course, at Jundia, we're focused exclusively on breast cancer, whereas, of course, a test like Radar has utility across other tumor types, you know, in lung and colorectal and in other circles. Again, you know, Agendia will be driving the breast cancer part of this alongside efforts at Neogenomics. And the other part is the agreement we have with Agendia also covers the EU, not just the US. So again, in terms of bringing that breast cancer channel and commercialization to the European Union as well. So just two things to think about it, say. Yeah, they're complementary in many ways. So, you know, we'll help to drive that breast cancer alongside the in-house efforts. And there may be additional partnerships we see in the future as well in different areas and different geographies. So, something we're currently looking at around how do we get the test, which is, you know, we believe a great test to as many patients who need it as possible, as quickly as possible.
Matt Sykes
Thanks. Great. Does that answer your question? That's really helpful. Yes. No, that's very helpful. And then just lastly, a more bigger picture. When you were talking about pharma services, it sounds like there's an opportunity for XUS. You mentioned companion diagnostics. I'm sure there are other things. Do you have sort of a plan in mind in terms of expanding that business, XUS, and growing it?
Mark Mallon
Gina, do you want to take that?
Gina
Sure. We are evaluating several ways to do just that. As you know, companion diagnostic offerings, include a multitude of factors, including reagents, quality, compliance. So we're looking at building it versus buying it and assessing what we have and what we might need. So I know that's vague, but there's a lot of different ways that we could go about that expansion, including doing it ourselves, or looking at M&A. Got it.
Matt Sykes
Thank you very much.
Mark Mallon
Yeah, I would just add maybe two points on this, and it's also just overall what I've seen in the pharma services business that has excited me. So one is this team is extremely effective at partnering. You know, we work with other labs. We work with other, like, we work with certainly CROs, And we work with some of the device test kit manufacturers very closely. We have announced a couple of exciting partnerships already in China that will be collaborating to run studies locally. And I think one thing that's true with lab business is that to be successful globally, you certainly have to have the position around the world, and we do that. But you've got to be able to partner, because diagnostic testing is so locally driven. that if you can't sort of collaborate and partner, and I think this is something that Neo does exceptionally well. And the other thing that is really excellent, not just in the driving global or ex-US opportunities, but it's been core to the successes, the customer focus that they are renowned for here in the US in the clinical lab services is what they're bringing to pharma accounts. We focus on pharma fully front and center, We are really responsive. We're able to customize tests. We have fantastic service levels and a mindset of really customer first. And I think that has been a core to the success with farmer companies because they want a company that, like, the only thing they're thinking about is how do we deliver on the study in front of us, and nobody does that better than Neo, I believe.
Brian Weinstein
Does that answer your question?
Matt Sykes
Yeah, that's great. Appreciate it. Thank you, guys.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Derek DeBruin at Bank of America. Your line is live.
David Westenberg
Hi, Derek. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Most of mine have been answered, but I just want to clarify a couple of things. Can you talk a little bit more about the R&D investment and how that's going to ramp? I mean, obviously, with the end of the audit coming in, that's going to pick up significantly. And then I have a follow-up. Catherine, you want to talk about...
Mark Mallon
R&D and the ramp of expenses overall?
Ed
Yep. So the addition of Trapello and Innovata is definitely increasing our future R&D expenses. As we've mentioned before, Innovata is burning around $3 million a month in cash, and a lot of that is focused in R&D. We do expect in the back half of the year that you're going to see increase R&D related to Nevada in particular as we do prepare for the moldy exhibition around the turn of the year. We've said before that could be with Trapello Nevada about 13 to $15 million a quarter. And then again, as Mark mentioned, we are looking going forward as we are preparing for future years at what that investment will look like to support the further development and commercialization of radar.
David Westenberg
Great, thanks. That's what I was looking for. And just on a bigger question on the MRD market, I mean, you know, the data from looking at the literature and then just from some of the other stuff coming out of some of the other companies, I mean, it looks like there, particularly for cancer recurrence, there does seem to be, you know, good indications that you need or that certainly the data is enhanced by adding epigenetic component to it. in the analysis versus the personalized approach. I'm just sort of your thoughts on the, you know, the need to maybe expand the assay to look at epigenetic markers and just your thoughts on when can we expect to see, I guess, some data on studies sort of like comparing the two approaches. Not from you perhaps, but just from the overall market. Are you aware of anything that's out there? Yeah. Sure. Clive, do you want to take that?
Neo
Yeah, certainly. So, no, thanks for the question. I'm cognizant of time. I'll try and be very brief. But, you know, essentially people are really searching for sensitivity. The levels of DNA, cancer DNA, in these early stage cancer patients who have undergone therapy are very low. So traditional sequencing with fixed panels tend not to be sensitive enough. So the two avenues people have pursued is one is to try and personalize. So you're tracking a known number of variants. Signatera from Natera, the Archer PCM, our own radar test have gone down that route. The other one is to move into epigenetics to try and look at other things that may be more abundant, such as those epigenetic changes, and that you've seen, for example, with the GARDEN test. We believe that actually both of those can improve sensitivity, but actually based on what we're seeing on our sensitivity that we see with radar between the technology advantages and the tracking the high variance, We're very pleased with the levels of sensitivity that we see. That's not to say they couldn't be further improved by adding other markers to be determined what they are. But for what we're seeing today, we believe that we'll have an incredibly sensitive test there that will be very competitive. So we may look at these things in the future, but there's no imminent plans to add these. And based on things like recurrence monitoring, as you say, the early preliminary data we've got is very reliable detection of recurrence and actually many months. In fact, you know, the studies we showed, you know, we're out at a year ahead of clinical relapse. We were detecting ctDNA relapse. So we can already do that, I think, with a high degree of precision and accuracy. So, you know, it's something to look at. In terms of comparative studies, these are notoriously difficult. And in time, we'll see that as more tests come through, you know, today, we're still validating the independent tests. At some point, they will come. And of course, in the meantime, you will get sort of more you know, cross-trial comparisons where there are equivalent patient populations or studies that it'll enable some of those comparisons to be made. But I think we're probably some time off before we get, you know, fully completed head-to-head studies. And part of the reason is in this setting, you know, these studies as a prospective study are very long duration, so they take a long time to do. So even starting today would be a number of years before they read out. Okay.
Mark Mallon
Thanks for that question, Derek and Clive. Hopefully that answered it. Yes, thank you. Okay. Well, thanks for all the great questions. We'll take one more question. I apologize for running a little bit over, but we'll take one more question and then wrap up.
Operator
Thank you. Our final question today will be coming from Andrew Cooper at Raymond James. Your line is live.
Andrew Cooper
Hi, Andrew. Hey, everyone. Thanks for sneaking me here at the end. A lot's been asked, but maybe just one, you know, we've talked about it a little bit before, but when we think about the pathway for Radar, you know, partnering with the agenda breast certainly seems to be be a focus, but I guess as we think about where you focus your efforts from Prospective data generation and things like that. And especially as we think about pharma layering and as well. You know, what are some of the indications that that you feel like should bump to the top of the priority stack and how do we think about Again, just kind of comparing where some of the others have started. Do you want to be a fast follower there with a good assay, or would you rather carve out a niche in some cancers that maybe there's less data from the competitors first? Just thinking about sort of the ordering and stacking of indications. Bud?
Neo
Yeah, I'm not sure I can answer that in a very short, succinct way other than think, you know, all of those things you allude to are possible. So, you know, clearly there are some assays already in the market, you know, notarian colorectal cancer, for example. So clearly we would not be first if we entered that, but we believe we could be a fast follower. And based on the profile we see, we think we could still be compelling. And that market is still very nascent. So we're still developing and we think there is good opportunity as a fast follower to We also believe that the, you know, leading in certain indications is also possible, and we are exploring a number of indications where that may well be the case. You know, and we think certainly the high levels of sensitivity that we see may open up some indications that may be more difficult for others. And the last part I would say is, you know, the nature of a personalized assay versus a, if you like, an epigenetic-based assay, that's the last question. means we can be somewhat tumor agnostic. So clearly, we need to develop the data. We clearly need to look at the utility and the value proposition in any indication. But we're able to take the same assay into different tumor types, and that's certainly the strategy we're pursuing. So expect to see a mix of FAST follower in some and some where we may be leading.
Andrew Cooper
Great. Well, I'll stop there. Appreciate the question.
Mark Mallon
So thanks again to everybody for the great questions. I'd like to end actually probably with the most important thing I need to say, which is thank you, and to recognize the incredible work that our 1,900 neogenomic team members around the world are doing on behalf of cancer patients. As I've been through the labs and met with two people on video calls and around our sites, As I said earlier, I'm just so impressed with their commitment. Every NEO employee really carries cancer patients in their heart, and the passion that they bring and the commitment is really taking my breath away. So thanks to all of my colleagues. It's really appreciated. Thank you, everybody.
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
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