MaxCyte, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXCT) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

MaxCyte, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXCT) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript May 12, 2026

MaxCyte, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.04, expectations were $-0.1.

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MaxCyte First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all To ask a question during the session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today’s conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, Eric Abdel of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Eric Abdel: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today’s conference call. Joining me on the call for MaxCyte, we have Maher Massoud, President and Chief Executive Officer; Parmeet Ahuja, chief financial officer, and Sean Menargas, senior director of business development. Earlier today, MaxCyte released financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. Copy of the press release is available on the company’s website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statements or comments made during this call may be forward looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statement contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results or performance are forward looking statements.

Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by any forward looking statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail in our SEC filings. Except as required by applicable law, the company has no obligation to publicly update any forward looking statements whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. And with that, I will turn the call over to Maher.

Maher Masoud: Thank you, Erik. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining MaxCyte’s first quarter 2026 earnings call. I would like to start by providing a brief overview of our financial performance in the first quarter. MaxCyte reported $9.7 million of total revenue, including $6.2 million of core revenue and $3.4 million of STL program related revenue. Which consists of milestones and royalties. These revenue results met our expectations. As discussed on last quarter’s call, 2026 is a difficult year over year comparison given 2 factors. Discontinued SBL programs resulted in GTX clinical leases, that did not renew, and inventory management by our largest customer. Elevated SPL program turnover was generally a part of a broader rationalization in ex-vivo cell gene therapy.

Which has largely normalized as we exited 2025, with SPL partners increasingly focused on their lead programs. While the cell and gene therapy ecosystem remains challenged for earlier stage clinical programs. The environment is not worsening from what was a challenging funding backdrop in 2020. Within the ex-vivo market, the number of companies financed remains stable. And we continue to see pockets of capital directed towards high quality later stage programs, including VIAL, Allogene, and Vitoria. Building on activity from Beam, Adicet, Wugen, and Anocca last year. Against this backdrop, we are placing instruments across all stages of development life cycle, and increasing our pipeline of future SPL partners. Given our qualified instrument funnel, easier comps, and contribution from our new ExPERT DTX product, we expect core revenue growth in 2026.

MaxCyte reported $3.4 million from SPL milestones and royalties in 2026. This included $3 million of milestones driven by a clinical customer who began dosing patients in a registrational study in the first quarter. We are encouraged by the progress of this program. As well as the 4 additional programs that are expected to enter registrational trials in the next 18 months. We also recognized $400 thousand in royalty revenue during the first quarter. Vertex reported approximately $43 million in CASGEVY revenue for the 2026. On their earnings call, Vertex noted that more than 500 patients have initiated the CASGEVY treatment journey with hundreds globally having completed cell collection. Highlighting strong patient flow across The US, Europe, and The Middle East.

Patients continue to advance from referral to cell collection and ultimately infusion. Reinforcing the therapy’s multibillion dollar commercial potential. Vertex also highlighted recent regulatory progress, including the submission of a supplemental BLA for CASGEVY in patients aged 5 to 11 with sickle cell disease or beta thalassemia. This filing has been granted a commissioner’s national priority voucher by the FDA. Underscoring the significance of expanding access to the younger patient populations. Overall, we remain encouraged by the continued growth in patient cell collections, and infusions as Vertex scales CASGEVY commercially. With Vertex noting secured reimbursements continued ATC network expansion, and a growing number of patients progressing through each stage of the treatment journey.

We remain confident in CASGEVY’s long term trajectory, and transformative potential for patients around the globe. Following these first quarter results, we are reiterating our core revenue and ASPL milestone and royalty revenue guidance for the full year 2026. Which Parveen will elaborate on. Turning to our SPL portfolio. We updated slide 3 in the SPL deck on the IR website. Which now reflects 29 SPL partners. We do not see any changes in the number of SPL partners or the number of clinical programs supported since our last update in March. However, we did remove Catamaran Bio and Walking Fish Therapeutics from our list of SBL partners as both companies previously ceased operations. Among these 29 SPL partners, 30-plus programs are both in clinical and preclinical development, supporting diversified revenue streams across the medium and long term.

Of these, there are 5 clinical programs with the potential for commercial launches in 2027 and 2020 including 4 that could begin registrational studies over the next 18 months. And 1 that dosed patients in a registrational study in the first quarter. These 5 include zerin-cel from CRISPR Therapeutics, for B cell malignancies, Wu-CAR-T-007 from Wugen for hematologic malignancies, aza-cel from Imugene for hematologic malignancies, and 2 programs from undisclosed SPL partners. Across our 12 SPL programs currently in the clinic, the total future pre commercial milestone opportunity is approximately $100 million While any individual program carries clinical commercial risk, the multiple shots on goal we have across the same indications and across many different indications gives us a high probability of generating meaningful core revenue regulatory milestones, and commercial royalties over time.

Speaking of MaxSite’s leadership in the gene-editing field, the first CRISPR-Cas9 approved therapy was on the MaxCyte platform. And we believe the first base editing and prime editing approved therapies would be on the MaxSite platform as well. On the product side, the commercial launch of ExPERT DTX is progressing well. Early traction is very encouraging. With adoption and discovery and early optimization workflows across ex vivo and in-vivo CGT. As well as protein screening for biologics development. We are seeing initial pipeline build with leading academic centers biotech and large pharma. The DTX is fully compatible with the rest of our ExPERT platform. So as customers adopt the instrument in discovery, they will have a seamless path to scale up on our STX and GTX instruments for cGMP manufacturing, and ultimately into an SPL agreement.

We expect ExPERT DTX adoption to build through the balance of 2026. With increased adoption in the second half of the year and into next year. Moving to SeQure. We are seeing steady progress as we build out the commercial engine of the business. We added new assay service agreements during the first quarter, with customer engagement across both ex-vivo and in-vivo developers. Including several programs approaching IND enabling stages where off target characterization is most critical. Continue to believe that SeQure’s assays will become part of the industry standard for off target risk assessment and gene editing. And early 2020 success rate feedback has reinforced that. In mid April, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, or CBER, issued a draft guidance titled Safety Assessment of Genome Editing in Human Gene Therapy Products Using Next Generation Sequencing.

The guide is focused specifically on the use of next generation sequencing based methods to evaluate off target editing risks and provides ex vivo and in-vivo developers with recommendations on sequencing strategies sample selection, analysis parameters, and reporting. All of which are intended to support nonclinical data packages submitted with IND and BLA applications. We view this as a structural positive for SeQure, as sponsors are now expected to quantify editing outcomes with high sensitivity and utilize multiple complementary approaches. The guidance makes it clear that understanding editing outcomes is foundational to development. Overall, we believe the investments we are making across the portfolio such as the DTX and SeQure, have substantial commercial potential over time and diversifying MAC sites revenue streams.

To close, we entered 2026 with a fundamentally different spending profile than in prior years. The full benefit of the 2025 restructuring cost efficiency actions is now flowing through our P&L. And the year over year reduction in operating expenses is clearly visible in our results. We do not expect the mill to grow operating expenses from here, and we see a clear path to reducing cash burn further as revenue growth returns. Before wrapping up, today we announced the Board’s authorization of a $10 million share repurchase program. The decision to authorize a share repurchase underscores the Board and management’s confidence in MaxCyte’s long term value. Strategic investments, and the business prospects as well as the strength of our balance sheet.

I want to take a step back and highlight the reason for this repurchase program at this time. Over the last 2 years, we have taken steps to dramatically strengthen our financial position. Acquire and build new products, and are now supporting multiple clinical programs that could be approved in the next 18 to 24 months. We have never been better positioned to grow with our end market. While we continue to invest in the execution of our business and expand our product portfolio, such execution will always be done with financial and commercial discipline. As such, we believe our shares represent a compelling investment opportunity and we intend to execute the majority of our share repurchase program before the year end. I will now turn the call over to Parmeet, who joins us today for his first earnings call as MaxCyte’s Chief Financial Officer.

Parmeet?

Parmeet Ahuja: Thank you, Maher. I am pleased to be joining you today for my first earnings call as MaxCyte’s Chief financial officer. Total revenue in the 2026 was $9.7 million. Compared to $10.4 million in 2025. Representing a 7% decrease. The decrease in total revenue was driven by a decline in core revenue, partially offset by growth in SPL program related revenue. We reported core revenue of $6.2 million compared to $8.2 million in the comparable prior year quarter. Representing a 25% decrease. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $1.3 million compared to $1.4 million in the 2025, License revenue was $2.1 million compared to $2.5 million and processing assembly or PA revenue was $2.3 million compared to $3.9 million.

As we expected in our guidance, core revenue was adversely impacted by inventory management at our largest SPL customer as well as discontinued SPL programs. For the first quarter, 44% of core revenue was generated from SPL partners compared to 57% in 2025. Which is reflective of the headwinds we experienced in the quarter related to SPL core revenue. As Maher discussed, we are positive on the momentum and continued growth we are seeing in SeQure with total revenue of $600 thousand in the first quarter. Which includes both license and services revenue. SPL program related revenue in the first quarter was $3.4 million including a regulatory milestone tied to a clinical customer that began dosing patients in a registrational study during the quarter which Maher referenced.

This compares to $2.1 million of SPL program related revenue in the 2025. Moving down the P&L. Gross margin was 84% in 2026, compared to 86% in 2025. Excluding inventory provisions and SPL program related revenue, non GAAP adjusted gross margin was 78% in 2026, compared to non GAAP adjusted gross margin of 83% in 2025. Total operating expenses for the 2026 were $14.3 million compared to $21.2 million in the 2025. A decrease of approximately $7 million This reduction reflects the restructuring and cost efficiency we took in 2025. Which are now being realized across the P&L. We are entering 2026 a fundamentally different cost structure than in prior years. And we do not expect to meaningfully grow operating expenses from this level. We ended the first quarter with combined total cash equivalents and investments of $147.7 million and no debt.

Our strong balance sheet positions us well moving forward. Providing flexibility to continue to invest strategically for our business our customers, and our shareholders. Today, we disclosed that MaxSite’s Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase program of up to $10 million Under the program, the company may repurchase shares through open market purchases privately negotiated transactions, block trades, or other means. Subject to applicable securities laws. Continuing to our 2026 guidance. We are reiterating our 2026 outlook and expect total revenue to be in the range of $30 million to $32 million consisting of $25 million to $27 million of core revenue, and $5 million of SPL milestones and royalties. As Maher highlighted on last quarter’s call, we expect core revenue, which excludes milestones and royalties, to be weighted towards the second half of the year.

For the second quarter, we expect core revenue to be in line with the first quarter. Reflecting the mix and timing of the business. In our guidance related to SPL milestones and royalties, we indicated that we expect $3 million of revenue from milestones and $2 million of royalty revenues. Given a $3 million milestone revenue in Q1, we are not forecasting any additional milestones in 2026. And the balance of the guidance is from commercial royalty. Lastly, we continue to anticipate to end 2026. With at least $136 million in cash equivalents, and investments. Excluding capital deployed towards our repurchase program. Now I will turn the call back over to Maher.

Maher Masoud: Thank you, Parmeet. I would like to thank everyone at MaxCyte for their dedication to our mission, and execution in the first quarter. And I look forward to updating you all on our next quarter call. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator for the Q and A. Operator?

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. And wait for your name to be announced. In the consideration of time, please limit yourself to 1 question and 1 follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. First question coming from the line of Julie Simmonds with Denmark.

Analyst (Julie Simmonds): Hi. Thank you very much and congratulations on much stronger quarter than expected. Couple of questions. Firstly, on the FPL revenue guidance, Clearly, you are not looking for any more milestones or you are not guiding to any more milestones for the remainder of the year. Given the number of active programs that are ongoing, plus where you are sort of later stage programs are, it feels unlikely that you are gonna get no milestones at all in Q2 to Q4. Are you just being particularly cautious with this at this time frame and maybe changing your risk risking of how milestones come in?

Maher Masoud: Yeah. Good questions, Julie. So good to hear from you as always. On that question, let me take this 1, and then inform me what is add anything, or Sean as well. he is here with us as head of business development. that is more an indication of the way the agreements are structured, the way milestones are, you know, contractually structured is that is based on dosing timing in pivotal trials, not necessarily on the initiation of a pivotal trial. So while it is possible we could get another milestone here, the way the way these agreements are structured, you know, there is a good chance it is more in, you know, the first part of next year all depends on the dosing regimen for the trial itself, not necessarily initiation. Of a pivotal or registrational trial. Does that make sense, Julie?

Analyst (Julie Simmonds): That does indeed. Thank you. Yes. And then just on the license, the sort of cadence of that during the year, Because, again, I think, obviously, down on where it was last year and but probably I am trying to get a feel for whether you are expecting sort of license fees to remain fairly similar through the year or because of where your FPLs are and the potential of signing new SPLs where they are fairly flat sort of look for the year is again being quite conservative here with your expectations. Because you are implying your pipeline is still quite strong for SPL. So what we should be thinking about in terms of cadence of license fees?

Maher Masoud: Yeah. Absolutely. So this is in terms of cadence of new license licensees. Right? New partners. Julie, just to obviously Yeah. You know, as I said mentioned last time, we feel comfortable guiding 3 to 5. Some years will have maybe more than 5. Some years, it could be less than 5. When I take a step back, in the past few years, we have signed 15 SPL partners We still feel very good we will sign at least 3 this year as well. Obviously, they have not happened just yet. that is the nature of the negotiation and the work with these with these customers. We then become partners. Right? Oftentimes, working with them 18 months, sometimes 24 months before they actually sign an agreement. So we currently are working with those in the funnel and the pipeline as you would call it.

And we feel good that we are going to sign at least 3 this year. It just the cadence of when the negotiations, when the work is happening, when the prostaglandin work is happening with them, They still are not there yet where they have not signed in the first half so far. But I feel good about at least 3 this year, Julie. Lovely. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Julie.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Brendan with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Analyst (Brendan Smith): Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. I wanted to follow-up a little bit more on any incremental color on SeQure as it stands. I guess based on any initial feedback to date, how much contribution to that revenue growth over the next say, kind of 12 to 24 months are you expecting to come from that And then just sorry. As a follow-up, sorry if I missed it, but I know you mentioned the for the buybacks, most of it will kind of come through in calendar 2026 But I guess anything to call out on the cadence between Q2 to Q4 fairly steady between those 3 quarters or just anything any considerations there? For our models? Thanks, guys.

Maher Masoud: On the cadence of the buyback?

Parmeet Ahuja: Parmeet, did you wanna take that 1? Yeah. Why do not I take that? Good to hear from you, Brendan. And, you know, really pleased with the authorization from the board. You know, we certainly believe and aligned with the board is the disconnect on value and believe buying our shares provides a very compelling investment opportunity. You know? So as we said in the prepared remarks, we are looking to move fairly quickly on this, looking to execute a majority of the share program by year end. And, you know, working with an external adviser to put us in the best position to succeed here. it is gonna include a mix of open market purchases and systematic. So pleased to get this authorization from the board.

Maher Masoud: Yeah. And now the first question think you are talking about contribution from SeQure. Is this if I if I correct if I remember your question correctly, Brendan? Yep. Yep. Yep. So let me give you a little clarity there. Couple of years. Yeah. Absolutely. So, obviously, Parmeet alluded to it earlier. Revenues for SeQure were $600 thousand in the in the first quarter, and we are we are very pleased with I mean, you look at where we expected to grow a substantial year over year growth compared to 22 thousand 25, You know, the 0.6 sequentially was up about 11% from 2025. it is 3x what it was in Q1 of last year as well. We spent the first really, the late part last year and throughout the year and the first part of this year building up the commercial pipeline working with customers to, you know, to grow the pipeline as well.

We are starting to see that now in the first quarter. We are hopeful that progresses throughout the year as long as it continues throughout the year. The draft FDA guidance that came out very recently that I alluded to earlier is exactly what why we acquired SeQure and why we believe it is it is it is that gold star for cell and gene therapy developers, whether you are doing ex-vivo or in-vivo, development. You really need to characterize your off target assays. I mean, your off target gene editing with these assays. Even if you have to characterize the on target effects of your gene editing as well. So we feel good where it is. It took us some time to integrate them throughout last year, and we are seeing some of the traction now in this first quarter, and we are hopeful it continues throughout the year.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Dan Arias with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Analyst (Dan Arias): Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. Maher, can you just maybe talk about the backdrop at the industry level? But then also pair that with your own sales funnel. I think your comment was that you do not expect things to get worse this year. that is that is good. But do you think new business and new activity can accelerate for you guys just given what you are seeing out there?

Maher Masoud: Thanks. Sure. Absolutely, Dan. Good to hear from you. I will take that. So, obviously, you know, we saw elevated SPL program to over last year for rationalization. It hurt us hard last year, especially in the first half. That turnover in 2025, we think has largely normalized. In fact, many of our partners are, you know, increasingly prioritizing and concentrating on those lead programs, and we are seeing that as well. With the you know, while financing for earlier stage cell therapy is still challenging, that is that is seen across the industry, especially ex vivo as well. What we are seeing more, I would say, nondeterioration or stability in what we consider that late stage or later stage clinical programs. That we are seeing.

And in fact, you look at right now, we have, I think, 11 SPL partners with 12 clinical programs. These are all the lead assets And you see where it is from a finance perspective, you are seeing companies like VIALE, like Allogene and Vitoria and others you know, still garnering, you know, investor interest and investor demand and raising the funds they need. For those later stage assets. So long story short, early stage companies, I think, you are it is still a tough backdrop there. But for later stage clinical programs, the financing is there, and we are working with many more of those companies. In fact, we work with more late stage companies now than ever before. So it is it is a challenging backdrop. But at the same time, pockets of green shoots for later stage programs.

Analyst (Dan Arias): Okay. Helpful. And then, Parmeet, I know you are you are still getting settled there, but it would be get good to get your flush first blush perspective just on what you think exists as, you know, having the most room for increased forecast and clarity and then whatever you see as the priorities going forward when it comes to just sort of quarterly cadence and visibility on the business? Thanks a ton.

Parmeet Ahuja: Yeah, Dan. Great to hear from you. I have been here just about 6 weeks, and I have to say the team has been super supportive as I have transitioned into the role. You know, clearly, MaxCyte is a market leading product with great service leadership and field application scientists. So certainly, last few weeks, I have been reviewing the company’s forecast methodology. Spending quite a bit of time with our commercial team, the leaders, looking at the funnel believe the company provided a prudent outlook for 2026. You know, to your point, of course, we will continue to evolve the financial analytics forecasting of our business. For me, particularly, for the team, the finance team, you know, providing support for our commercial and product development initiatives is going to be a priority.

While certainly maintaining the discipline cost structure that I have to give credit to Maher and team that they have established, with the tough changes that were made last year. Thank you.

Operator: And our next question coming from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig Hallum Capital Group.

Analyst (Matt Hewitt): Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just to go back to the SeQure ramp. Obviously, Maher, you noted some nice growth both sequentially and year over year. Should we anticipate that kind of growth continuing for the remainder of this year, or do you anticipate maybe a little bit of a pause as you kind of digest the, you know, the customers that you are working with already and then another step up maybe in the second half of the this year into next year.

Maher Masoud: Yeah. Good question, Matt. I mean, I would say the growth that we are expecting is year over year, significant growth year over year. In terms of the cadence of that versus Q2 versus second half, I would say I want to be a bit patient here and see how that transpires throughout the year. But overall, in terms of a services business. it is not a CapEx business. When we deliver you know, these services a bit different timing wise than it is for the MaxCyte electroporation business. But I would say as a whole, overall, we feel very good about significant growth year over year. The cadence of it, I think we wanna see how it transpires throughout the year before we get ahead of ourselves, Understood.

Analyst (Matt Hewitt): And then as far as the gross margins are concerned, a little bit of a step back. Obviously, you have had some inventory adjustments happening. Do you expect that to kind of recover as the year progresses as well? Especially given your anticipated ramp in revenues? Thank you.

Parmeet Ahuja: Yeah. I mean, I think I think 1 of the challenges certainly with gross margin this quarter was you know, the challenges with our SPL customer that we have talked about. Certainly played a part here, had an impact. You know, as we look through the year, Matt, you know, we expect gross margins to kind of trend in the mid-70s from here on. Certainly, the first quarter, we certainly benefited from that minus 1 payment, which flows right to the bottom line. But looking ahead, mid-70s is the way to think about it.

Operator: Thank you. The next question coming from the line of Matt Lohr with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Analyst (Matthew Larew): Good afternoon. I wanted to follow-up, Maher, on your comment on the DTX. When you announced that launch last quarter, you had some good early traction, I think, some sales in the first quarter. Gave nice comments on it today here as well. Just curious sort of what reasonable expectations are, over the next 12 to 18 months and, you know, what the mix of the funnel looks like if it is getting you into new customers or there is lot of existing customers. I think last call, you would referenced interest sort of globally, both in The U. S. And in APAC. So just a little bit more color on how that launch is going would be great.

Maher Masoud: Yeah. Great question, Matt. Let me take that 1. So let me give you a bit on the color of where maybe the interest that we are getting and what we are seeing. So obviously, it is meeting our expectations to what we thought we could do, right, in the cell therapy space, we can get there. We can work with customers at ex-vivo and in-vivo. While they are doing their screening for cell therapy development. And we are seeing that. Right? So the funnel itself is building very well. We still anticipate that the sales will begin to increase in the second half of the year. that is the norm for any launch. You have to build up the campaign behind it. You have to get to the customers, and you begin to see the traction there.

But the pipeline’s becoming very healthy. What we are also seeing is traction in areas for example, in the academic accounts that we never really had before. We can get into with the DTX system We are also seeing it in protein screening for biologics, and seeing that from big pharma as well. We are having a few some of the funnel of the pipeline. We are seeing that we are gaining traction with big pharma. That we never had before. So it is that is not necessarily a surprise for us. We realized that we were building it we can allow us to really get into the protein screening market as well for biologics. But this other surprise has been the early traction from you know, happier customer interest from Big Pharma as well. Which I think bodes well for the future of the DTX.

But, again, to temper, let’s see how the rest of the year plays out in terms of DTX sales and revenues from it. But we expect significant growth going into second half and into 2027 and beyond.

Analyst (Matthew Larew): Okay. And then I guess just a bit of a higher level 1, you know, the FPL portfolio has evolved you know, quite a bit. Max had time as a public company. In terms of cross disease categories. You know, solid tumor is now a big part of the preclinical pipeline. You referenced in the in your SPL deck a few partners leaving the ex-vivo space, but also referenced you know, confidence in hitting 3 more this year. So there is this sort of natural ebb and flow, Maher, I guess, just curious for sort of your state of the union both from what you are seeing from an SPL interest perspective, but also what your team is observing in terms of clinical development, sort of how that translates to continued confidence in the platform and in future growth for SPL partners.

Maher Masoud: Yeah. No. Great question. I mean, the so part of the reason why we have confidence in the current partners and the programs they have and then also the future as because the signing it. While we had rationalization, last year that hurt us, what we are seeing now is these later stage clinical programs progressing through the clinic, and we are seeing that. The 1 milestone we received this year from 1 of our partners was for a clinical program that is that has know, good results. it is not it is confidential. We cannot disclose it. But so far, we are seeing what we what they published for good results of their current clinical program we are seeing that with some of the other ones here. We should look at our deck, you have Wugen with Wu-CAR-T-007 progressing very nicely.

You have CRISPR. You have Imugene. And you are seeing this. These are companies that are going to pivotal and registrational studies and it speaks to know, what I was speaking to earlier, which is interest in later stage programs is still there even from a financing perspective, because the science is there, and you are seeing the progress there. And these are some of which are autologous and allogeneic programs. We are also seeing interest in allogeneic programs because it reduces the, you know, the, I would say, patient journey in terms of patient administration, and we are still seeing that. So even across our SPL funnel and the and the pipeline that we are building for future SPLs, we are still seeing that research there for those lead assets still going about, still being funded, Obviously, you know, it is is it what it was in 2021, 2022?

No. I would say it is even healthier in a sense where even though you might have less of a pipeline build of these SPLs, but the ones that are going and becoming SPLs, they are looking they are working on delete assets. So that is who we wanna work with. And that is that is what we are seeing now. So that is why we still feel confident we can sign at least 3 this year For the foreseeable future as well, we can keep signing 3 to 5. The nothing has really changed other than the fact we are seeing that the science itself mature, so to speak. Hope that kind of answers your question, though.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Mark Massaro with BTIG. Your line is open.

Analyst (Mark Massaro): Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. The first 1 is for Parmeet. It looks like, you know, the G&A expense came in you know, $4 million down sequentially, and over $2 million below our forecast. Which looks like some pretty good cost discipline in management. Is that $6 million or so reasonable run rate for G&A going forward? And can you just speak to any changes in headcount? Obviously, there is some impacts cost containment matters that were done last year. But how are you thinking about spending this year and flowing throughout the rest of the year?

Parmeet Ahuja: Yeah. Good to hear from you, Mark, and certainly, I would speak to sort of broadly OpEx. You know, you the reduction in OpEx, G&A being part of that is starting materialize. Right? You are seeing that in our p and l. The tough decisions that were made last year, are now being reflected fully in our P&L. You know, looking at where we ended up, with OpEx in Q1, I think it is a fair run rate. Outside of, I would say, low single digit sequential growth. In the coming quarters. That we expect for investments in things like commercial expansion. In APAC that we are looking at. Some additional GTX launch activities. So kind of that is how I would look at it. You know, keeping this in mind, I would say, for the year, we expect OpEx to be around $60 million.

And then and back to your point, just for context, this is still a significant reduction over where we were last year. Last year, OpEx was around $79 million, $80 million. So speaks to the body of work, the tough work that the team has done.

Analyst (Mark Massaro): that is really helpful. Thank you for all the clarity there. Back to the DTX, you know, Maher, you did make some positive comments about, you know, the beta launch. As we think about this rolling into, like, the second half of the year, should we expect to see some revenue pull through in the form of capital purchases or leases of the system. Or what I am really trying to get at is are some of these just sort of placed just to see how things are going, and then there may or may not be revenue in the back? I am just trying to figure out how much we should expect in the back half this year.

Maher Masoud: Yeah. I mean, it is tough question there in the sense of we were so we are not guiding as to what it is gonna be in the second half of the year for this 1 here. And just to be made clear, Mark, we do not license these. This is a pure sales pure CapEx sale here. This really is we are we are seeing the health of the build out of the funnel so far we see meaningful contribution in the second half. Even more meaningful going into 2027. And as we keep learning from the launch itself, it will give us even more of an initiative what Parmeet alluded to us be able to even spend more, a little bit more on the marketing of the DTX and on the commercial launch of the DTX. But where I stand right now, feel very good what happened in Q1 in terms of initial sales there.

I think, can help us continue to see the future SPLs as well because what is happening here in Q2, we can get in earlier with customers. And then it can also get us into that bioprocessing protein screening market that can really start to contribute to revenue in the 2027-2028, so forth time period. And it gives us a chance also to learn that market more and see what other products we can also launch into that other market in the bioprocessing market as well. So that is kind of how I am looking at the DTX. I feel very good where it is. But there is still a lot of learnings. there is still a lot of commercial execution we have to focus on. To make that second half have meaningful contribution.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question in the queue coming from the line of Hannah Hefley with Stephens Inc. Your line is now open.

Analyst: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Just following up 1 more on DTX. You mentioned that there is still kind of a learning curve here How much visibility do you have into the H2 pickup? And is that included in guidance or anything there? Would that be kind of upside?

Maher Masoud: Yeah. Let me take that, and I can hand it over for me as well. that is included in the guidance. Right? So this was where, you know, what I said earlier on our previous call. This is part of our guidance where we see that second half pickup helping us in terms of where we guided for the year in terms of the core revenue. Again, you know, it is I am taking a careful look at this. Because when I say learning, we launch just knowing exactly what we are gonna launch into, but now it is about partial execution. So ahead of ourselves, let’s just make sure that we can execute exactly what we launched where we knew we are gonna get into the cell therapy space earlier in the research process, earlier in discovery, and really begin to have those learnings even in the bioprocessing space as well.

So it is part of the guidance that we gave for the year. And as we get further traction, we will obviously update on future calls as well. But until that time, we are taking a, you know, a, you know, a wait and see approach. Okay. Thanks. that is helpful. And then after the recent portfolio pruning that you have seen now that is kind of played out, can you just talk about what the landscape looks like now? Do you think the customers you are serving are kind of more geared to certain modalities or cell types or indications? Is there just anything you would call out there? Yeah. I am going to turn this 1 to Sean to answer for SPL. Sean, have we seen any trends that you believe in terms of where we are going in terms of clinical programs? On the SQL funnel that we are looking at?

Sean Menargas: Yeah. Thanks, Hannah. it is good to hear from you. From the from an autologous– allogeneic standpoint, still remains around a 50/50 split across different cell types. Obviously, you know, the market is predominantly T cells. Which is reflected in the portfolio. We are seeing the advancement of allogeneic CAR-T which now is in a potential registrational trial It could be the first allogeneic CAR T approved. We are also seeing different novel gene editing platforms continue to advance with the FDA’s support. So that is the overall kind of state of the union for the SPL portfolio.

Operator: Thank you. And I will now turn the call back over to Mister Maher Masoud for any closing comments.

Maher Masoud: Yes. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I want to thank all of our employees as well, our shareholders. Look forward to speaking to everyone again on our next earnings call in a few months.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.