908 Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:MASS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

There’s a lot of potential for this to be an important driver as you can imagine for our handhelds and we’re excited to be a part of the program.

Matthew Larew: Okay. Great to hear. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Puneet Souda of Leerink Partners. Puneet, please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, guys. You have Michael on for Puneet. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could help bridge for us the change in the guide that you mentioned that the Air Force order was contemplated earlier. So, I just want to know what’s driving the Delta.

Kevin Knopp: Hi, Michael. Yes, thanks for the question. Yes, we narrowed the guidance a bit here in part that we didn’t see the recovery from the desktops in Q3 and we expect that to persist now into Q4. So we’re not really assuming any large capital flush at this time and certainly challenges in that overall bioprocessing space, maybe more pronounced than we anticipated at the outset of the year. However, as we’ve been discussing today, it really have been significantly offset by the strong growth of our handheld devices in the forensics market, which really has buoyed our overall growth. So we feel good on the handheld side, strong pipeline, some enterprise orders, we’ve been talking about some others that we’re working through.

And we really expect it to drive our revenue for Q4 and expect the handheld to continue to contribute meaningfully and really drive that overall growth into the mid to high single digits for the year. So really good booking progress here as well in the first 30 days of the quarter. There’s certainly more left to do, but we’re encouraged. But maybe, Joe, do you want to add some other color?

Joseph Griffith: Yeah, I think just to hit on your point, the narrowing of the guide is mainly from the desktop’s perspective for both Q3 and as we looked at Q4 and the budget flush estimates at the time back in August.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And I wonder if you could get a bit more color on the Terumo deal, if you have any ideas about, I guess, how that can translate to the P&L if it gives you exposure to a new customer set, or if I could offer any color on that.

Kevin Knopp: Yes, happy to. Yes, we’re super excited to be able to talk about now. It’s a great collaboration with Terumo and their Quantum Flex cell expansion system used throughout the whole cell therapy workflow from process development through clinical manufacturing and across a wide range of cell types from stem cells and lentiviral vector and all the way to CAR-T processes. So we talked earlier in the year about a driver for us is to get MAVEN into and connected to some of these integrated cell therapy platforms. And I think this is one example in a non-exclusive array that we’ve got a great collaboration with Terumo and really think about it as us we’re really kind of kidding up our MAVEN and the consumable and the single use perfusion module to mate directly into their system.

And we think there’s a lot of value there for the end customer, because if you look at what we’re able to do, we’re really reducing the risk of manual sampling. So reducing cost of good, taking labor out of it. But importantly, we’re using it to be able to help determine when the end point of the process is, really using it as a surrogate for cell viability. So these are the types and areas and applications that we think MAVEN can contribute in their cell therapy space. And so, I think it’s a great example of how we can kind of work with partners out there to bring complete solutions to this customer space. And this is in that cell therapy area. And you might recall, we have a relationship with Sertorius that we’re continuing to foster to do very similar with the technology that’s in our MAVEN and related products into their ecosystem of bioreactors and customers.