5/12/2025

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Quantarix Corporation first quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again, press the star one. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joshua Young, head of investor relation. You may begin.

speaker
Joshua Young
Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, and good afternoon. With me on today's call are Masood Tulu, Quantarix president and CEO, and Vandana Sriram, Quantarix chief financial officer. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay of the call will be available on the investors section of our website. During the course of today's presentation, we will make forward looking statements within the meaning of the US private securities litigation reform act. These forward looking statements are based on management's beliefs and assumptions as of today, May 12, 2025. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in our forward looking statements. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. To supplement our financial statements presented on a GAAP basis, we have provided certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are used to evaluate our operating performance in a manner that allows for meaningful period comparison and analysis of trends in our business and our competitors. We believe that such measures are important in comparing current results with other periods results and assessing our operating performance within our industry. Non-GAAP financial information presented herein should be considered in conjunction with, not as a substitute for, the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures set forth in the presentation posted to our website and in the earnings release issued today. Finally, any percentage changes we discuss will be on a -over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Massoud Toulou.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Thank you, Joshua, and good afternoon.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

First quarter results exceeded our expectations, highlighting the resilience of our instruments and consumables business and strengthening our confidence in the long-term growth potential. While the quarter was stable, we have revised our guidance more conservatively to account for the broader macro-funding environment rather than any company specific factors. I want to spend some time discussing our position in the market. Let's begin with a key fundamental. Demand for human health is not going away, and we're optimistic about delivering solutions to meet this demand. First, Quantarix's ultra-sensitive protein detection platform is unmatched, empowering early disease detection, accelerating the development of new therapies through clinical trials, and enabling precise monitoring of neurobiomarkers in long-term studies. Second, we believe proteomics will be a cornerstone of non-invasive liquid biopsy solutions, offering real-time insight into human health and providing a dynamic view that complements genetic and methylation data. Third, we are building our leadership in neurology, applying the scientific and business expertise we've gained to expand our addressable market into immunology and oncology, areas where we are poised to lead in early biomarker detection. And finally, as long as people seek longer and healthier lives, the demand for high sensitivity detection tools will remain, and Quantarix is at the forefront with our customers, advancing the science to meet this enduring

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

need. On to the quarter. In the first quarter, we reported revenue

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

of 30.3 million. While this represents a decline of 5%, we recorded our highest consumables quarter and expect consumables performance to remain strong. Our adjusted gross margin was approximately 50%, and our adjusted cash usage was 9 million in the quarter, representing a greater than 50% improvement versus last year. Vandana will describe this in more detail. However, I want to emphasize we are committed to achieving positive cash flow in 2026 with a balance sheet well north of 100 million. Turning now to our pending merger with Akoya Biosciences. Nearly two weeks ago, we announced an amendment to our proposed transaction. I want to highlight some of the key financial details of this amended transaction. First, the equity value of the transaction is being reduced by 67% from 201 million to 66 million. The number of shares being issued is reduced by over 9 million shares, increasing Quantarix's shareholder ownership of the Kamein Company from 70 to 84%. And we expect Akoya will contribute 37% to top line and 40% to Quantarix's gross profit dollars at 16% pro forma ownership. At the core of our strategic rationale for this transaction is the tremendous synergy for tracking protein biomarkers from tissue to blood. Diseases like cancer start in tissue and ultimately leak into blood, causing morbidity. Enabling our customers to track cancer biomarkers such as ORF1P, which plays a critical role in both blood and tissue, will open new opportunities for Quantarix to expand its impact and accelerate our growth beyond what would be possible as a standalone entity. Customers and industry KOLs are excited about the potential of bringing technologies from Quantarix and Akoya together, and we have already begun considering matched tissue blood biomarker detection solutions.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Now, an update on our strategic initiatives.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Our first Grow menu is already delivering results. In Q1, we launched four new immunology assays, building on the 20 new assays we introduced last year, which enabled us to achieve our highest consumables revenue quarter. Our continued investment in this powerful product development engine is paying off. We are expanding our assay portfolio to reinforce our leadership in neurology, adding inflammation biomarkers, and initiating development in oncology applications. With more than 1,000 instruments installed worldwide, each with significant throughput potential, we are committed to maximizing their value through the introduction of novel biomarker assays. Our second strategic focus is expanding into adjacencies, starting with the launch of Simowa One, an instrument and reagent platform on track for release by year end. We expect this next gen platform will break current sensitivity barriers, delivering up to 10x the sensitivity of our existing systems, with expanded multiplexing up to 10 plex, and improved specificity through code matched barcoding, all with an intuitive workflow. Simowa One will extend our category leadership and set a new standard for

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

performance in the field. Our third area of focus is

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Alzheimer's Diagnostics,

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

where

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

we're making rapid progress. Last year we signed agreements with regional labs and hospital networks, generating six million in revenue. This quarter we expanded our footprint through a new collaboration with ARUP Laboratories, our premier national lab. ARUP will now offer the PTAO-217 blood test for Alzheimer's disease using our platform and assay kit, leveraging antibody technology licensed from Eli Lilly and validated on samples from Lilly's phase three trailblazer L2 trial. This is a critical step toward building a global infrastructure for noninvasive Alzheimer's testing, a priority that will continue to advance throughout 2025. We also anticipate introducing pricing for a lucent AD complete test later this summer, a multi-marker algorithm driven Alzheimer's risk assessment tool. This test is currently progressing through four clinical trials, with enrollment expected to complete by Q4 of this year. Now, a few final words on our current market environment and the three actions we are taking to succeed in it. First, as I said earlier, despite market headwinds around academic funding and biopharma spending, demand for human health in the near or long term is not going away. And today, we're pleased to announce for the first time a new footing for Quarantarix to deliver Samoa sensitivity at scale. In response to capital and resource constraints among academic and biopharma customers, we will democratize access to our technology. Starting in 2026, through an early access program, customers will be able to use unlocked Samoa One assay kits on over 20,000 existing flow cytometers worldwide, eliminating the need for a high capital instrument purchase. This is made possible by breakthrough reagent innovation. Digital, ultra-sensitive Samoa signal detection is now embedded in kinetic dye-encoded beads, enabling compatibility with a far broader install base, one that is at least 20 times greater than our own. This is a massive advance

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

that

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

we will make available after

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

our Samoa One platform launch expected at the end of the year. Second, we are scaling the success

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

we've established in neurology into adjacent fields, immunology and oncology, through our Grow Menu initiative and the acquisition of Akoya Biosciences. Day one of the acquisition, our install base increases by 1,300 instruments, and our addressable market expands from one to $5 billion. Liquid biopsy is expected to eventually surpass the market size of all other diagnostic testing combined, and it has become abundantly clear, proteins are the next frontier. Our ability to measure biomarkers across the -to-blood continuum will accelerate the pace of novel diagnostic tests. With this expanded footprint, we are executing a strategy grounded in scale and speed, unlike other technologies that are still reliant on capital equipment sales in a risk-averse market. Third, we are operating with discipline and purpose. We are committed to achieving positive cashflow by 2026, supported by a balance sheet, exceeding $100 million. Today, we are announcing a $30 million core operating cost reduction, scaling to 55 million annualized savings by 2026. These savings are driven by operational efficiencies and are expected synergies from the Akoya acquisition, aligned with our standalone revenue forecast of 120 to 130 million for 2025.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Now, I'll turn the call over to Vandana.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Masood, and good afternoon. I will now go over our performance for the first quarter and provide an update for the full year 2025. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2025 was 30.3 million, a decrease of 5% compared to the prior year. Commumables revenue was 18.1 million, up 6% versus the previous year, driven by strong performance from products launched in the past 12 months. Instrument revenue was 2.6 million, up 3% year over year as we continue to see pressure on capital equipment. We placed 17 instruments in the quarter as compared to 16 instruments in the first quarter of 2024. Accelerator lab revenue was 5.6 million, a decrease of 36% driven by a decline in large multimillion dollar projects from pharma customers. In terms of revenue stratification, our customer mix for Q1 was approximately 50-50 between pharma and academia. Sales to our diagnostics partners totaled 1.6 million for the quarter. From a geographic perspective, our revenue growth was led by North America, which grew 3%. Europe declined 30% primarily due to lower accelerator revenue and the Asia-Pacific region was up 14%. Shifting to the rest of the P&L for the quarter, gap growth profit and margin were 16.4 million and .1% respectively. Non-gap growth profit was 15.1 million and non-gap growth margin was 49.7%. The decrease of 150 basis points versus last year was primarily driven by a non-cash charge to inventory results. Gap operating expenses for the quarter were 42.8 million, up 9.1 million, and non-gap operating expenses were 33.8 million, up 2.3 million over last year. Included in gap operating expenses are approximately 7 million of costs related to acquisition and integration expenses and shipping and handling costs. As we stated last quarter, we are making an update to the non-gap financial measures that we report on a quarterly basis. As we add acquisitions to our portfolio, we are adding adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted cash burn as new metrics. Please refer to our earnings release and the accompanying presentation for the definition of these metrics and accompanying reconciliation. Our adjusted EBITDA was a loss of 11.3 million in the first quarter of 2025, as compared to a loss of 8.1 million in the first quarter of the prior year. This EBITDA number includes investments in SIMOA-1 and Alzheimer's Diagnostics. We ended the first quarter of 2025 with 269.5 million of cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities, and restricted cash, down 22.2 million from last year. During the quarter, 13.2 million of cash was applied towards one-time items. We paid 9 million for the first tranche of the emission acquisition, and 4.2 million towards one-time expenses, primarily related to the ACOIA deal. Excluding these payments, adjusted cash burn during the quarter was 9 million, compared to adjusted cash burn of 19.4 million in the prior year, a reduction of over 50% in our cash burn. I will now turn to our updated guidance for the full year 2025. We currently expect to report revenues in a range of 120 to 130 million, which represents a revenue decline of 5 to 13%, and excludes revenue from Lucent Diagnostics testing. As compared to our prior guide of 4% at the midpoint, we now expect a reduction of 9% at the midpoint. This includes approximately 600 basis points of incremental pressure from the current academic funding and tariff environment. As mentioned before, approximately 22% of our revenues are indexed to US academic customers, and we factored in a 10% or 250 basis point reduction earlier. We now estimate an additional 20% reduction in NIH funding levels, implying approximately 500 basis points of additional pressure. We have assumed 100 basis points of revenue pressure from tariffs. We have also factored in a total of 900 basis points of pressure from pharma versus 200 basis points in our prior guide, primarily in our accelerator lab. Last year, accelerator grew 36% year on year. This year, while we see a healthy pipeline and better project diversity within that pipeline, we see some conservatism among our biopharma and biotech customers with some push out of projects and smaller ticket sizes. We continue to see accelerator as a key differentiator in our business model and believe that it's a matter of time before pharma uncertainty settles, and this eventually returns as a driver of our growth. The second and third upside scenarios in our guide include strong growth in our consumables business, driven by menu additions we saw last year and loosened diagnostics testing, which is currently not embedded in the guide. Moving on to growth margin for the year, we expect gap growth margin to be in the range of 55 to 59% and non-gap growth margin in the range of 50 to 54%, a reduction of 300 basis points from our prior guide. We expect that the impact of tariffs on incoming materials is limited to approximately 50 to 100 basis points of margin after factoring in countermeasures that we have already put in place. The remaining impact on growth margin is driven by the reduction in revenue, specifically in our high margin accelerator business and takes into account the cost actions that Masoods referenced. These cost actions of 15 million in 2025 fully offset the impact of lower revenue and margin in the year. Conducts of standalone cash usage for the year, therefore, it's still expected to be between 35 to 45 million from operations and 20 million for payments for emissions. As Masood mentioned, we expect to close the Acoya transaction in the second quarter. At the end of the second quarter and after settling deal related expenses and Acoya's debt, we now expect our cash balance to be approximately 160 million versus 155 million previously. We now expect the second emission payment of 10 million to push into the second half of the year. This is partially offset by an additional 5 million of working capital spent in the second quarter, primarily related to bringing in second half inventory earlier than expected. Factoring in cash burn for the combined company in the second half, as well as our recent cost reductions, we expect our cash balance will be approximately 120 million at the end of 2025. Finally, I provide some color on expected cash balances for 2026. We expect that the cost actions announced today will increase our total cost savings from 40 million to 55 million in 2026. After factoring in a lower revenue run rate from 2025 into 2026, we expect to achieve cash flow break even as a combined company in 2026. And we expect to have north of 100 million of cash on the balance sheet with no debt as we exit 2026. I will now turn it back over to Masood.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Thanks, Wander. Quantirix

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

is committed to driving advancements in high sensitivity protein detection and expanding into the critical therapeutic areas of neurology, oncology, and immunology. With our strategic initiatives, including the upcoming launch of our CIMOA-1 platform and the Equia Biosciences merger, we are well positioned to lead the future of protein-based biomarker testing. Our focus on operational discipline and cost efficiencies will ensure sustainable growth with a clear path to positive cash flow by 2026. Operator, please assemble the Q&A roster.

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you're called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset to ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Again, press star one to join the queue. And our first question comes from the line of Kyle Mixon with Kanekor Genuity. Your line is open.

speaker
Kyle Mixon
Analyst, Kanekor Genuity

Hey guys, thanks for the questions. Just first on the financial, so accelerator and consumables, I wanted to talk about that. I know accelerator kind of stopped this quarter. You expected that to have a slow start this year given the projects kind of lower in the first half of the year or so, but how did that compare to your expectations, the accelerator revenue number for the quarter? And then maybe just talk about the ramp, especially in the second half of the year, how should we think about that going forward? Really just want to understand if it's a key swing factor for the year. Secondly, on consumables, that was, you said that was a record. Just was curious what assays drove that in particular, if any legacy products are still representing a material portion of the revenue,

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

thanks. Hey Kyle, I'll take the second part of that question and then Vandana can answer the accelerator question. You know, from a consumable business, we're thrilled with the record quarter on consumables. We continue to lead in neurology and the markers that we are delivering to our customers are markers that our customers have not been able to access before. So we work with the leading innovators in the field. These super interesting markers come to us. We develop assays in our product development engine and we deliver them to customers. And so I would say it was the top neurology assays and we've been starting to see some good traction in the inflammation and cytokine-based assays that give us good confidence in continued growth of that business.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, hey Kyle. On accelerator, I think Q1 was very much aligned with our expectations. We have good visibility into accelerator going into the quarter. We knew that we wouldn't have the Lilly revenue, that's a million and a half of headwind in accelerator that we had planned for. So Q1 was very much aligned with our expectations. But as we looked forward to the pipeline, we saw that the pipeline was taking longer to develop. We've always described accelerator as having about 50% pure recurring revenue and the rest of it coming from large projects. The recurring revenue piece of it is strong and is growing. On the project side, we're seeing a lot of good interest. We're seeing a lot of new customers coming and a lot of new areas such as immunology with our new cytokine offering. Having said that, we're not seeing the large ticket items that we had seen earlier in the last year when accelerator grew about 36%. So again, with the visibility we have right now and with what we can see in the pipeline right now, we're forecasting to that.

speaker
Kyle Mixon
Analyst, Kanekor Genuity

Great, thanks guys. And then on the CIMOA1 news, the update here, the kits will be compatible on flow cytometers kind of early on here. Just curious about what that really means for this year going forward, especially synergies. So again, maybe immunology focus, but could this help you expand to maybe MRD applications in the hemonk world, given that's where flow is kind of being used today in some cases? And also, any synergies with the ACOIA transaction, given there's definitely overlaps in ACOIA's customer race and the flow users as well.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Thanks for the question, Kyle. Absolutely. When we look at the platforms in the market, you look at a broad base, the ubiquitous platform like PCR, and then you think of all of the reagents that various companies make for the PCR platform and also sequencing, you look at flow cytometry and you say, hey, this is an existing massive base in a wide diversity of labs, to your point, in immunology, in oncology, and by utilizing that base, we'll be able to accelerate our menu development into these customers' hands. So in an environment where there are capital constraints, we're meeting the customers where they are and delivering the solution, and we think it's gonna be super effective. It's gonna have high synergy impact in our combination with ACOIA Biosciences, where we'll have a footprint in oncology there. We're gonna have the immunology markers coming in, flowing through the flow cytometer, no pun intended, and we're excited about that possibility.

speaker
Kyle Mixon
Analyst, Kanekor Genuity

Thanks, and quickly just on loose-native pricing, if you get that in 3Q, just wondering when the testing, like revenue wouldn't fluctuate, that's gonna happen maybe before mid-next year, mid-26th if possible, and just remind us the level of pricing you expect to receive and which test that before, multi-marker, et cetera.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Thanks. Yeah, the pricing we're expected to receive on the PLA would be multi-marker. Obviously, we want high triple digits on reimbursement, and reimbursement would begin in the early

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

part of 2026.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

Okay, I'll leave it there. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Let's go.

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Sykes with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

speaker
Jake
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Hi, this is Jake on from Matt. Thank you for taking my question. One thing I wanted to dig a little bit more into is on exactly what you're seeing throughout the US academic and market, and is weakness kind of isolated to strictly instrument purchases on a go-forward basis, given the strength we saw in consumables this quarter? And then my follow-up, I'll just ask both up front. One, can you update us on your FDA submission timeline, particularly like how long from submission to approval, and should a competitor receive FDA approval in 2025? How can you counteract the potential first mover advantage there? Great, thank you.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Thanks, Jake. I'm gonna take your question on Alzheimer's testing, and then I'll let Vandana talk a little bit about, give some color on academia and the market. So on the Alzheimer's diagnostic front, we're super excited about our test. It's the multi-marker algorithmic test. This is a market differentiating test. We continue to invest in both identifying big partners to give them access to the test, partners with large distribution networks, and then building the infrastructure from our own lab. So we intend to complete enrollment of the clinical trials in the back half of the year. And as we complete those trials, we'll be submitting our FDA application. When I look at the sort of near-term and long-term for Alzheimer's-based testing, I think a big part of this market is laboratory-developed testing. And in a algorithmic approach, there's probably going to be some level of laboratory-developed tests that are in the market. And an FDA-approved test is obviously gonna help, but I don't think it's going to be one FDA test, and that's it, or LDT test, and that's it. I think there's gonna be some sort of combination of offerings in the market, and we're working hard to make sure that our FDA test comes through. And then at a very high level on the academia before, but I'm gonna provide some color. You mentioned the consumables business, absolutely. We have a over ,000-instrument fleet of platforms in the market. And if you look at each of the HDX platforms in our own accelerator lab, they generate approximately a million dollars each. And that's a high-throughput instrument. So when we look at our strategic initiatives, the one core thing that we do day and night is build and expand that menu for our customers. And that menu tends to be, as I mentioned on Kyle's question, the latest in neurology. It's gonna have the latest in immunology and very exciting markers as we see synergies between Equia and Quantarix related to oncology.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and just to build on that, to your question, we're definitely seeing pressure on instruments, but that's where our consumables have grown to be incredibly resilient and really have kind of been balancing out the model with the recurring revenue as well as with the new assets that we've launched. With that said, we're hearing the same concerns that everybody else is around the funding environment and the ability to get additional funding and grants approved. As we looked at the data for the first quarter, we saw the same data that everybody else did where cumulative award values are down almost 40%, the proposal for a 40% reduction in 2026 is on the table right now. We have used that the 40% scenario does not hold, but we did also acknowledge that just a 10% cut year over year is probably not sufficient either. And that's how we framed our guide as well.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

Our next question

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

comes from the line of Soon-G Nam with Scotiabank.

speaker
Soon-G Nam
Analyst, Scotiabank

Your

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

line is open. Hi,

speaker
Soon-G Nam
Analyst, Scotiabank

thanks for taking the question. Maybe starting out with the SIMOA-1 assays that will be available for other existing flow cytometers. This might be a high-cost problem, but just kind of curious if there will be advantages of using your SIMOA-1 platform versus other flow cytometers with the SIMOA assays.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Yes, and Jay, you got it. You nailed it, yes. The platform that we're going to launch at the end of the year is gonna be a fully integrated, full instrument assay solution. And as you can imagine, in any fully integrated solution, the platform's gonna have the greatest specs and it's gonna up perform sort of other solutions. And as the technology advances, and there are future iterations of the platform, it's gonna become even more sophisticated. SIMOA-1 was an intentional naming, and we expect the fully integrated solution to be a important solution for a lot of customers, both in research and in those that are working in regulatory environments, doing longitudinal projects, et cetera.

speaker
Soon-G Nam
Analyst, Scotiabank

Got it. And then you mentioned that the accelerator lab, the pipeline is taking longer to develop. Just was wondering if I could probe a little further, and if you might be able to comment on kind of what's driving that. Is that, do you think, is it largely kind of the tariffs and the pharma tariffs and even the most favored nation pricing concerns that are going on among your customer base? Or do you think it's just kind of reprioritization of some of the projects maybe in the near term? Kind of what do you think are the key drivers of the pipeline taking longer to develop?

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Yeah, you know, I'll take that one. The, our accelerator customers are incredibly sticky and incredibly loyal to the business. We deliver good results and they love those results. So I would say the customer stickiness is there. The customer diversity versus last year is even better. So we're seeing quite a bunch of new customers coming in this year versus last year. And they began with, some of the new customers began with pilot projects that expand to pre-clinical work, to phase one and other programs. So we feel good about that and we think that pipeline is healthy. On the short term, I think there's just some form of spending dynamics in the field. You mentioned a few of them. And folks are mainly pushing out projects that we would expect to have gotten in the early half of the year to second half or beyond. So it's not that the projects are disappearing, but we're seeing some level of push out of larger projects that we didn't have anticipated at the beginning of the first half. But overall, 36% growth. Last year, it was a big pillar of our ability to differentiate in the market. And we think that this comes back to growth and it continues to be a driver for the business.

speaker
Soon-G Nam
Analyst, Scotiabank

Got it. And if I could ask a quick one for Vandana. Thank you so much for breaking out the tariff impact. If you, I was wondering if you might be able to give us a sense of what your supply chain exposure looks like. Where the kind of the biggest drivers of that tariff impact will be coming from and then are you guys also factoring in the announcement today on the China tariffs, China between, the tariffs between US and China today? Thank you.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, thanks for the question, Seungjoo. Let me talk about the cost first and then I'll talk about the revenue impact. So in terms of incoming costs, our exposure is primarily around certain antibodies and as you know, our HDX machine is made in Switzerland. So through this first quarter, early second quarter process, we already took a handful of countermeasures to make sure inventory was in the right spot and where we needed it to be to minimize the impact of the tariffs. With all those moves, we expect that the impact of tariffs on margins is probably limited to 50 to 100 basis points and not more than that. In terms of potential reciprocal tariffs, we had actually factored in the China, you know, we had assumed that China would come back to slightly normal levels. We've based in some pressure on instruments, knowing that, you know, passing on instrument related tariffs is going to be relatively difficult. But we have used that in total, when you take instruments and certain consumables that may be harder than others, the total impact of the reciprocal tariffs should not be more than maybe 100 basis points or so.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

Got it, thank you so much.

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

Next question comes from the line of Punits Suda with Learing Partners, your line is open.

speaker
Punits Suda
Analyst, Learing Partners

Hi guys, thanks for the questions here. So maybe the first one on the guide at the midpoint for the year, can you walk us through your assumptions for instrumentation, the consumables and the accelerator? The accelerator obviously came in soft. Just want to understand sort of how are you, you know, how are you thinking about growth in each of those, you know, I mean, when you look at the end market today, obviously biotech funding is challenged, I mean, large pharma, you've got MFN, you have most, I mean, most favored nation, you've got tariffs still around the corner, pharma, it is hard to spend, you know, aggressively in times like these. So just given all that backdrop and then academics, as you know, already challenges there. So just trying to understand what gives you confidence in this guide and maybe if you can go into the segments.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, sure, I think that's what it's about. So maybe starting at the top, you know, instruments and consumables, instruments, as you mentioned, still a lot of headwinds in the market. So we expect instruments to be largely the same as what we saw in 2024. 2024 was a step down for us and we'd expect instruments to be largely the same. Consumables is really where our recurring revenue comes in. Consumables grew this quarter and our expectation is that we should see some nice stuff, you know, maybe not as much as we wanted, but we'll still see some level of stickiness because of the nature of the recurring revenue. And then on the accelerator side, you know, the portion of accelerator that is a little more run rate recurring will continue to hold and will continue to be steady. But that's really where you will see the most drop on a year over year basis. We had already quantified the impact of the Lilly collaboration coming to an end. That's a fairly significant number. And then in addition to that, the slowness of the pipeline and all the points you made on the pharma spending are the remainder of the difference.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Okay,

speaker
Punits Suda
Analyst, Learing Partners

got it. And then just on 2Q, I didn't hear on the revenue or the margin side, how are you thinking about the second quarter just given you have some read into that as to how that's playing out?

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, sure. So our expectation for the first half versus second half is somewhat consistent with what our history has been in the past. We've generally done between 45 and 48% of our total year revenue in the first half. Our expectation would be somewhat similar this year as well where 45 to 48% in the first half and then the second half picks up just a little bit.

speaker
Punits Suda
Analyst, Learing Partners

Okay, that's helpful. And then if I could ask on the similar one, would you expect your customers to pause the HDX purchases or other instrument purchases and then ultimately, how should we think about the similar one itself versus flow cytometers that are out there? Do you expect to have higher consumables mix in 2026 just given the install base there and potentially migrating to those as much as you can with your assets?

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Yep, Anita. On the HDXs, HDX continues to be a workhorse for Quinterics and so you gotta imagine HDX blood sample in result out in neurology, it's unmatched from a platform perspective and we expect that business to continue and continue uninterrupted. The Samoa platform on launch is going to be a immunology slash oncology initially marker offering so we don't expect there to be any level of cannibalization on the system. And then to your second point on the expansion into this 20,000 plus install base, we think our margins and consumables are very attractive and in a market constraint environment where folks are unclear how long it'll be capital constraint, we're putting together a solution to this market and we're, as I said in the prior question, meeting researchers where they are and we think this is gonna be well received. You're doing a consumable purchase as opposed to a high capex instrument and similar to what we did last year where we took revenues in a capital constraint environment and we move into accelerator, what we're doing here is pretty big and enabling broad base usage of our ultra sensitive biomarker detection.

speaker
Punits Suda
Analyst, Learing Partners

And then last one, if I could just squeeze one last one in, around Lucent DX and Alzheimer's, what is your expectation this year for contribution from that and I'm wondering if you can start to, are you starting to look at 2026, what could be the contribution there? Because I think the key question here is that some of the startup platforms like the mass spec platforms have gained meaningful adoption, that you have other larger companies that are large caps or mega caps that are in the space, that are investing in the space, so how are you thinking about your position with the assay and where you stand today and your expectations this year, thank you.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Yeah, absolutely, this is gonna be a large market, right? We're talking about a nine to $10 billion blood testing market in the future and the offering that we have is unmatched. Lucent AD Complete, it combines not only just 217 but adds four more markers to it and we have an algorithm where we're able to deliver 90% accuracy while reducing intermediate zone to around 10, 12%. No other test performs with those features. You have intermediate zones that are 20 to 30% in the field and I think when customers look at the ability to reduce follow-on PET, to reduce follow-on expense and testing, that's gonna be favored by patients, payers and physicians and we have a great deal of confidence that Quanterex is gonna be playing a major role in the market of testing. And then on your other question, on the availability of the test -a-vis some other providers, look, I think we're working very hard to build a distribution collaboration. We announced a big one today on the call. We're gonna continue to do that and make sure that our customers and service providers around the world will be able to offer our testing and at the same time, we're gonna be working hard to build that infrastructure in our laboratory with our fleet of systems and instruments and get it out into the field. From a revenue contribution, Puneet,

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

I

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

think we did six million. Vandana mentioned we did about a million and a half this quarter and I think part of it is gated on how fast there's therapy adoption and drug adoption in the market and for as soon as there's demand and need, we have a commercial infrastructure that we're building that's out in the field. We're continuing to invest in Alzheimer's diagnostics. We're not putting our foot off of the gas pedal in the air. We're investing even more for this really sizable opportunity. So I think we got the best test. We got a great infrastructure. We got great partners and we're ready to support the field.

speaker
Punits Suda
Analyst, Learing Partners

And should we run rate that for the rest of the year, one and a half million?

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

I'd say too soon to say the year as you saw last year. It was a little bit lumpy, but now there is a steady flow.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

Okay,

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

all right, thank you.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

And again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. And we have a question from Dan

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

Brennan with TD Cowan. Your line is open.

speaker
Brennan
Analyst, TD Cowan

Great, thank you. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the quarter. Maybe just on the cashflow side, you talked about the levels this year and next year. Can you just assess some of the puts and takes for next year? Kind of what goes into the assumption, any high level comments there? And then also, what's the latest thinking about Akoi's cash burn for 2026? If you could share that.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so I can start with that. So as we look forward into 2026, we've certainly taken into account the changes that we announced today in terms of our revenue guidance, et cetera. I don't necessarily want to guide for Akoya just yet, but we've taken into account a fairly prudent assumption on Akoya revenue as well. And then when you put the two businesses together, we also then factor in the synergies that we expect to realize. We've talked previously about $40 million of synergies. Against that, with the cost actions that we're taking today, we believe that number will really be more like $55 million. So that's really what moves our cash burn and really gives us the scale that we were looking for with this acquisition. We built ourselves for scale when we did our transformation a couple of years ago. So we have the capacity and we have the bandwidth to be able to take on that volume and realize those synergies. So the way we built our cash bank basically was, in 2025, we expect to complete the deal, pay down the debt, and start to kind of moderate the cash burn immediately. And then in 2026, we see the full value of all of the synergies come through.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Got it, okay. Maybe

speaker
Brennan
Analyst, TD Cowan

just on the lucent AD, let's see, the triple-digit price, what's kind of the visibility on that? Can you just remind us on kind of how you get there? Obviously, the single analyte price was disappointing the way it was priced when it was wondering on the triple-digit price.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Yep, yeah, so the way we think about this, this is a five-marker test, Dan. So five markers, we have a Alzheimer's algorithm that takes each of the five markers, quantitates it through the algorithm, and then provides an Alzheimer's risk score. So when you look at comparable tests in the market, proteomic tests in the market that are four or five markers, you see sort of the price level that I'm referencing. So it's very different than a single-marker test that got priced in the past. And we anticipate this to be a summer pricing, and we'll hopefully, with favorable pricing, be able to offer that at the beginning of 2026.

speaker
Brennan
Analyst, TD Cowan

Great, and then maybe just one more on the accelerator. I know there's a few questions asked already, but just in terms of that, you talked about the percentage of the business that isn't recurring. Maybe it's like lumpier, bigger contracts. What have you baked in in the back half guide for that? I know it was mentioned earlier in a few questions, just given the uncertainty on pharma spending right now. I wonder if you've kind of taken a real conservative stance there.

speaker
Vandana Sriram
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so over there, we've mentioned that on the overall pharma side, we've baked in about 900 basis points of reduction year over year. The large majority of that will hit accelerator. Again, $4.5 million coming straight from nilling. And then the remainder coming from the fact that we don't have visibility right now into those large projects. The pipeline is there. We don't have good line of sight into exactly when that develops and when that really starts to fit.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

Got it, okay. Okay,

speaker
Brennan
Analyst, TD Cowan

final one, Samoa One, just kind of, you know, when that's in the market, kind of what's your feedback now in terms of sales funnel things of that nature? How do you think about the contribution that you could see from that, saying you're wrong?

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Yeah, Samoa One, you know, when we are looking at the platform, there's excitement on the ability to go even higher sensitivity. I think, you know, we have customers that use us on a regular basis, Dan, and say, hey, what about, you know, you gave us early, what about, you know, single molecules that are going from tissue to blood? When can we even detect that earlier? And so, you know, that was like sort of the, conception of Samoa One, our ability to increase multiplexing to a level that is gonna be important for proteomics and testing, which, you know, up to 10 markers, you know, is very relevant from a testing and diagnostics perspective. And then, you know, our ability to just do a very efficient workflow and, you know, what we've already delivered on our platforms and having something that's simple and easy to use was important from our customers. We have been talking to folks in the immunology field who are super excited about this, and, you know, by the end of the year, we'll be able to talk a little bit more about the features and the system, and hopefully have customers that are ready to go. And then, you know, and then as I mentioned, we got a program in 26 where we're gonna do a much broader democratization, and that has implications for something that's much grander, wider, than we've been talking about here from instrument to instrument purchases.

speaker
Masood Tulu
President & CEO

Okay, terrific. All right, well, thank you very much.

speaker
Moderator
Call Moderator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes

speaker
Desiree
Conference Operator

today's conference call. Thank you all for joining and participating today. You may now disconnect.

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