Good afternoon, and welcome to our 2023 interim results presentation. I'll provide a short summary of our financial and key business highlights for the first half of 2023. Tim will then walk you through our financials in more detail. We are seeing strong momentum across the business. We are delivering on revenue and margin. We continue to innovate on our platform. We continue to simplify end-to-end workflows, as well as launch new applications. We've doubled our commercial headcount since the IPO to meet the growth and commercial targets that we set out at IPO. We continued to make progress in applied market opportunities and partnerships. Moving on and getting into a little more detail on the numbers. We saw continued momentum in our business in the first half of 2023. Our revenue for the period was GBP 86 million, which is 46% underlying growth on a constant currency basis, and this is excluding EGP and COVID sequencing. The growth was driven by new customer acquisitions and increased utilization across all of our consumable and existing accounts. Our margin increased by 280 basis points to 57.6%. This was driven by automation and our continued improvements programs in our consumable manufacturing processes. We have a strong balance sheet with cash or cash equivalents of GBP 485 million, supporting our investment in innovation and commercial expansion. So just to remind you all, 75% of our revenues come from our consumable kits and flow cells. Our flow cells have the electronic sensing circuit embedded in the consumable. This enables in-field, regular hardware, software, and chemistry upgrades. These innovation upgrades are central to driving our commercial growth. As I've said, in the first half of 2023, we saw strong growth across all of our customer groups, from the S1 Genomic Explorers, primarily MinION and Flongle users, up 36%, to the S2 Public Health, primarily GridION and P24 users, up 61%, and to our S3 Genomic Enterprise customers with large-scale programs and/or service labs, up 53%. Indirect sales were also up through local distributors, 61%. Our key drivers for customer growth are innovation, customer experience, and operations. In innovation, the PromethION Fleet has been significantly upgraded with hardware, software, and NVIDIA A- Series compute upgrades. There is broad adoption of our Q20+ chemistries. On the customer front, we have doubled the commercial groups in the last 18 months. We are seeing strong starter pack growth, and the P2 Solo rollout and developer launch of P2i have commenced. In operations, scale-up and automation of manufacturing are developing apace. We have improved logistics with new partners in USA, Singapore, and Australia. I want to focus a little bit today on transforming the PromethION platform. The PromethION Fleet upgrade to the A- Series delivers 4.5-fold increase in base calling speed. This includes Dorado, our methylation base caller, which is integrated into our MinKNOW operating system. This enables scalable human genomes from $345 upwards, with a technology roadmap to further reduce the cost to $200. One P 24 can deliver up to 2,500 genomes per annum. The PromethION Fleet upgrade, in particular the A100 compute upgrade, has meant higher spend, and Tim will provide more details on the impact of these upgrades. It is interesting to note that initial demand for our P2 Solo is across all of our customer groups, S1, S2, and S3. We have a very strong order book for P2 Solo, as well as placing hundreds of P2s in field in over 45 countries already. We've also released P2i, the P2 with integrated compute for developers. In parallel, we are transforming performance with our Q20+ chemistry. We continue to roll out the Q20+ chemistry, which has the following key features: high precision variant detection, duplex accuracy of Q30, and a capability with this release of chemistry to complete T2T assemblies, fully assembled genomes. Over 90% of new flow cell orders from me for PromethION are for our Q20+ chemistry, and over 50% of our MinION customers have switched to Q20 chemistry, with the remainder switching in the next six months. Scaling our manufacturing operations. Our automation program is driving both product consistency and margin improvements. We have established a new facility in Harwell, next to our MinION factory, to meet increasing demand for our library prep kits. Our continuous improvement programs are targeting 20%-50% increase in flow cell outputs across all of our platforms. Last, not least, accelerating our commercial execution. In 2022, we restructured our commercial teams to three regional hubs. Each region has now doubled the sales, technical services, and field application support teams. We have transitioned to UPS as our global partner, and established distribution hubs in each region, AMR, Asia- PAC, and in Australia. We have established customer excellence centers in Houston, Dubai, and Singapore, and we are investing in both commercial headcount and the underlying digital platforms to match growth and enhance our customer experience. With that, I'm going to hand back over to Tim, and we will take a deeper dive into the first half year 2023 numbers. Thank you, Gordon. Good afternoon, everyone. During the first half of 2023, we have continued to deliver a strong financial performance while investing in driving future growth and profitability. Firstly, we delivered strong revenue and margin growth in our core Life Sciences Research Tools business. I shall refer to this as LSRT. LSRT revenue for the first half was GBP 86 million, up 22% on a reported basis and 46% on an underlying basis at constant currency. All underlying growth rates referred to in this presentation exclude COVID sequencing and the Emirati Genome Project, or EGP. LSRT gross margin increased by approximately 280 basis points to 57.6%. This was despite a challenging environment, particularly in relation to the increased cost of computer processors and other core components due to supply chain constraints. Total revenue was GBP 86 million, which was entirely LSRT revenue. As a reminder, legacy COVID testing revenue ended in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA, an alternative performance measure, was a loss of GBP 39.4 million, compared to a loss of GBP 34.6 million in the first half of 2022. As Gordon has explained, we have continued to strengthen our core commercial teams around the world, whilst also investing in innovation to provide the foundation for future growth and profitability. Finally, we finished the period with cash, cash equivalents, and liquid investments of GBP 485 million. Let's look more closely at LSRT revenue. There are a number of figures on this slide, but the key message I'd like to leave you with is that underlying revenue growth in the first half of the year was 46% on a constant currency basis. This growth is driven primarily by new customer acquisition through direct sales and our expanding distributor network, as well as growth within existing customer accounts. Including the EGP and COVID sequencing, LSRT revenue growth was 22% on a reported basis and 16% on a constant currency basis. This includes a significant headwind from COVID sequencing, down GBP 9.9 million compared to the first half of 2022, as well as a small reduction in revenue from the EGP of GBP 0.9 million compared to the first half of the previous year. As the company's revenue grows, we are pleased with the increasing diversity of our overall revenues, with the less contribution from one single program. Let's look at LSRT revenue by category. In previous years, we have broken down our revenue into starter packs, consumables, and other revenue. To better communicate the components of our revenues, from now on, we are providing a more traditional breakdown, split into consumable sales and devices and services. Consumables revenues, shown on this graph, now include the consumable portion of starter pack revenue, and we have grouped the remaining device portion within devices and services. Total revenue for the six months ended June 30th, 2023, consists of GBP 64.3 million of consumable sales and GBP 21.7 million of devices and services. Importantly, 75% of our revenue is made up of consumable revenue. This proportion is largely consistent with prior years. Growth in consumable spend of 18% was strong, considering the GBP 9.9 million COVID sequencing headwind, which was predominantly consumable spend, and the slight decline in EGP consumables year-on-year. The next slide explains the breakdown of underlying year-on-year growth across the customer groups. A full breakdown of S1, S2, and S3 sales, as well as the average revenues per group and customer numbers, is shown in the appendix for you to refer to. As previously discussed, revenues for the first half of 2023 were affected by the expected slowdown in COVID sales of GBP 9.9 million, and revenues from the EGP showed a small decline. But once this impact is stripped out, we showed strong underlying growth across all customer groups, as shown on this graph. S1 revenues, excluding COVID sequencing, was up 36% year-on-year, driven by new customer acquisition. Sales in the S1 group are predominantly driven by digital marketing and through our unique e-commerce platform. To better communicate our distributor revenues, the Avantor indirect sales channel, which had been included previously in S1, has been moved into the indirect group with the other distributors. This has been reflected in both the 2022 and 2023 numbers on this graph. S2 revenues, excluding COVID sequencing, have seen the highest level of growth at 61% year-on-year. We continue to grow the number of customers in this group, which we believe is uniquely open to Oxford Nanopore. We have added an additional 130 customers in this group on a rolling 12-month basis, while maintaining average spend per customer. We now have almost 1,100 customers spending on average $66,000 per annum. S3 revenues is excluding both COVID sequencing and EGP, have grown by GBP 6.8 million or 53%. This is the group most affected by the COVID headwind. However, when you exclude COVID sequencing and EGP, underlying growth was driven by new customer acquisition and increases in spend per customer. These customers are mainly focused on human genetics and cancer research, which are developing our future growth opportunities and driving profitability. Finally, we are increasingly investing in improving the level of service for our customers. We rely on an expanding network of regionalized distributors to help us. Revenue for these indirect customers increased by 61% year-on-year, which was largely due to strong performance from Avantor and post-COVID sequencing in China. Moving to regional results for LSRT revenue. We delivered strong year-on-year growth across all regions, led by the Americas. Revenue across the Americas was up 72% on an underlying basis. This reflects increased investment in commercial resources and growing demand for our unique technology platform. Revenue growth in this region is principally driven by research in human disease in the U.S. and Canada, including projects looking at cancer and neurological diseases. We see the commercial opportunities in the North America region as one of the key drivers of future growth. Revenue in APAC was up 23% on an underlying basis. Revenue in APAC is weighted to China, which is now beginning to pick up after COVID, although conditions remain challenging. In addition, we are seeing growing contribution from Southeast Asia on the back of our investments in Singapore. EMEA revenue was up 57% on an underlying basis. Growth in this region was driven by a pickup in sales across Europe, again, reflecting the increased demand for long reads and our increased commercial presence in the region. Now let's move to gross margin. We have invested in our supply chain and making operational improvements, particularly in the optimization of flow cell production. As a result, we have continued improving margins. Overall, LSRT gross margin has increased 280 basis points year-on-year. Almost all of the growth in gross margin came from flow cell improvements. Improvements to manufacturing efficiency continue to drive our reduction in cost per flow cell. At the same time, increased output and improved accuracy is reducing the effective cost of Nanopore sequencing to customers without impacting our margin. Over 85% of our gross profit is generated by consumable sales. Devices and services generate much smaller margins. The increased cost of compute and the additional costs of generic components has reduced gross margin on devices and services. And so, despite a 36% increase in device and services revenue, gross profit has remained largely unchanged in the year. As Gordon has mentioned, we are investing in transforming the PromethION platform, which has impacted our margins year-on-year, but we believe this will drive future growth in revenues and profitability through consumable sales. We have increased investment in innovation and expanded our commercial infrastructure to drive future growth. Adjusted R&D expenses of GBP 49 million reflect the increased headcount and related material costs of increased innovation. This currently represents 57% of revenues, and the proportion is expected to decline over the next few years. Adjusted SG&A costs were GBP 61.9 million, compared to GBP 46.5 million in the first half of 2022. This increase is principally due to a 47% increase in the commercial team. As Gordon has explained, we have continued to strengthen our core commercial teams around the world in line with the opportunities that we see. Adjusted SG&A is currently 72% of revenue and is expected to decline as a proportion of revenue going forward. You can find a reconciliation of adjusted R&D and SG&A expenses in the appendix. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of GBP 39.3 million, compared to GBP 34.6 million in the first half of 2022. This includes adjustments for the settlement of the DHSC contract last year, and share-based payments related costs, as you can see on the slide. Now, turning to our balance sheet. We ended the first half with GBP 484.6 million in cash, cash equivalents, and liquid investments, compared with GBP 558 million at the end of 2022. Cash burn was higher than normal due to two short-term factors. Firstly, inventory levels were up GBP 15.2 million in the first half, which reflects the shortening of lead times on core components, leading to early deliveries of these items. And secondly, capital expenditure increased, particularly on the A- Series PromethION compute boxes held at customer sites. Both of these are expected to return to normal levels in 2024. Moving now to 2023 guidance. As you will have seen in the press release, we have narrowed our guidance range. We expect full year 2023 LSRT revenue growth of between 18% and 25% on a constant currency basis. This is within the range we previously guided to and in line with consensus. This range includes an anticipated headwind of approximately GBP 18 million from COVID sequencing, slightly lower than previously expected. Based on the first half, we now expect EGP revenue for the financial year 2023 to be lower than last year. As a reminder, in 2022, EGP revenue was GBP 13.2 million. Underlying LSRT revenue growth is expected to be more than 40% on a constant currency basis for the financial year 2023. We now expect gross margin to be more than 57% for the full year 2023, which reflects the one-off impact of upgrading the computer towers on our PromethION devices. As Gordon mentioned, this is an important investment to drive higher utilization and customer acquisition over the longer term. Our progress in gross margins continues, and we continue to target gross margin of more than 65% for the full year 2026, consistent with our IPO guidance. All medium-term guidance is unchanged. Before I turn back to Gordon, I would like to quickly summarize the four key takeaways. First, we delivered strong underlying growth across our diversified customer base, driven by consumable sales. Second, we delivered very strong gross margin progress despite supply chain challenges and significant inflationary pressures. The operational improvements we have made will continue to drive margin expansion towards our 65% medium-term target. Third, we have a strong balance sheet with GBP 485 million of cash, cash equivalents, and liquid investments, despite significant increases in inventory levels. And finally, we are very excited by the progress we are making in new market applications. This will be a key driver of long-term growth. Over to you, Gordon. Thanks, Tim. Over the last three years, we have delivered a compound annual growth rate of 41%. We are expanding our commercial and tech support teams and upgrading our customer technology portal to meet the continued growth we anticipate into 2024 and beyond. Our continuous improvements in manufacturing and automation will deliver short-term and medium-term improvements in both product performance and margin. Our long-term innovation pipeline will drive growth, and longer-term opportunities will come through partnerships. Before I wrap up here, I would like to just highlight a few of our national genomics programs that we're working on. I've talked previously about the U.S. NIH CARD study, looking at structural variation in Alzheimer's patients. Our initial data shows accurate structural variations at lower cost and higher throughput compared to traditional sequencing methods. In the U.K., we have multiple programs integrating Nanopore sequencing into the NHS. In Germany, we have set up a collaboration to look at advanced rare disease research using long reads. There's growing momentum in using nanopore sequencing in national genomic programs and translation towards clinical care. These research and translational programs, and our partnerships in these programs, catalyze the longer-term applied market opportunities. On the applied market front, we will be talking in more detail at our Capital Markets Day on October 19th, about the market opportunities. I have spoken previously about our 4bases collaboration on distributed breast cancer screening and about Asuragen and our collaboration on carrier screening, our collaboration with bioMérieux on infectious disease, and we will also be talking more about pharma, biotech, and emerging customer segment, which we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of. With that, I will now hand over to the operators for questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question again from the queue, please press star two. That is star one for your questions today. Our first question comes from Odysseas Manesiotis from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hi, Gordon. Hi, team. Thanks for taking my questions. On U.S. sales, firstly, impressive underlying growth there. Could you give us a sense of how much of your additional underlying sales here came from new customers? And where have you seen more success with new customer acquisition and market share gains in the region? I'll do the customer types first, i f that's okay. Yeah. Well, we've seen strong growth across all our customers. In terms of real needle-moving customers, Avantor, our distributor, is really doing well in Americas. On the certified service provider sides, there is continued strong growth. We talked at full year results in March about plasmid sequencing. We can completely close out plasmids and give whole complete plasmid sequences, and that continues to grow with 2-3 major certified service providers doing plasmid sequencing. And we are continually strong with human sequencing. And again, that's derived from the Q20+ chemistry, the upgrade to the 4.5x base calling, and the overall PromethION fleet upgrade, which is driving those. Do you wanna do- Yeah. So just a reminder, if you look at our S2 customer group, we've added a significant number of customers. We've now got 1,100 S2 customers. This is globally, who are spending on average over $60,000 per annum. That growth is we are acquiring a lot of customers in that range. But also within North America, there is an emphasis on human genetics and cancer in particular, and we've acquired a number. They may not be completely new customers, but they're new to the larger customers, to the S3 customer base. All very clear. And one on the H1 to H2 dynamics around the cost line below gross profit. Looking at R&D and SG&A, from a percentage of sales perspective, does it make sense to expect both R&D and SG&A a touch higher in H2, given the increase in headcount throughout the quarter? To some extent, there will be an annualizing of the recent headcounts that we have added. So, yes, there will be a controlled increase in both adjusted SG&A and adjusted R&D. I believe these are still in line with what is expected for the full year. So, we're still expecting that to remain in line. Over time, we have invested, as we said we would at the IPO, in doubling our commercial teams, in increasing our innovation, and getting ourselves set up to be a PLC. This will continue in a targeted and controlled way into the future, but as a percentage of sales, the percentage of adjusted SG&A and the percentage of R&D will decrease as a proportion of revenues. All clear, t hank you. Thank you. And we move on to with our next question to Charles Weston of RBC. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking the question. My first is on the competitive landscape. Appreciating you have a differentiated proposition with the NovaSeq X, Revio, and the other launches by competitors. Has this changed the dynamic in terms of labs, budget allocations, and mind share with those labs? And perhaps if you can split the answer between S2 and S3 customers. Please. What's the question, Charles? You're asking about mind share? Yeah, it's the competitive landscape. There's a lot of noise by all these other competitors, big product launches, and labs have certain budgets. And obviously, your competitors are gonna be making a big push. So I appreciate your technology is differentiated, but there just might be some budgetary constraints in the near term. Understood. So I mean, firstly, the OpEx model is actually significant, and I think there's no better stat than we grew 20% last year, while the competition was static or zero or negative growth. The S3 customer base, those large centralized core facilities and high-throughput service providers, I think that's where there is a limited amount of cash, primarily dominated by Illumina. We still are seeing good growth, you know, particularly with core service providers with plasmid sequencing. So there are application-specific drivers that have enabled us to grow significantly in the S3 category. With regard to do people purchase platform A, B, or C, these large central core facilities and service providers tend to have all platforms. So I don't think we're seeing it as holding us back. If anything, the Q20+ chemistry, the recent upgrade on the compute, and the much faster base calling and methylation are driving customers to purchase in that S3 group. And remember, we've got S2 and S1, which are open space for us, where the other players do not operate. I'd just like to add to that. Just to remind you of our diversified customer base. So we have a, we have a small number of large customers. We highlight the EGP as one of them. But actually, we have a huge range of customers, and we have a good mix between academic customers, commercial customers, pharma, biotech customers, government, and the core service providers. So we are in many, many different places. So that is why we believe we're the only sequencing platform that has consistently delivered strong revenue growth and margin growth over the last few years. Thank you. My second question is on the applied market partnerships. Appreciate you're gonna be talking about this in more detail at the Capital Markets Day, but just thinking about 4bases and Asuragen and bioMérieux, what's the application that's nearest term to market? I think, they're all... It's not a foot race here. I think it will be driven by two gating items, definitely. We are developing our regulated platform, and that's on target for the next 6-9 months. On the other side of that, it will be a confluence of multiple factors. For example, Asuragen are still developing assays. On the other hand, 4bases, BRCA1, BRCA2, best breast cancer screening for distributed clinical use is already developed, and then bioMérieux sits somewhere in the middle of that. So there'll be a range of technical hurdles and then regulatory hurdles to go over. And they're all roughly in the same place for now. As the next couple of years unfold, one or two of them will go more quickly, and one or two of them will go to RUO. Others may go directly to full CE-IVD, which puts them two or three years behind the others. So it'll become clear. Right now, they're all valid runners and riders, and about the same sort of place at the start of the race. Thanks. Just a clarification, please. On the point of the regulated platform, is that platform necessary before commercial rollout of those of these programs, or can they start rolling out earlier on RUO? RUO, and SRT customers can use current platforms. With the clinical customers, the strategic partners, they will be moving to Q- Line. And that's important for the long term because ultimately, some or all will move from LDT RUO to CE-IVD, fully regulated. So we wanna have that foundation in place. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, we have Paul Cuddon from Numis. Please go ahead. Hi there. I've got two questions, please. I mean, firstly, you've stripped out COVID-19 sequencing from sort of underlying kind of sales growth, but I'm just wondering to what extent you've been able to retain those customers doing kind of alternative applications, and to what extent they may be able to ramp up COVID-19 sequencing again, with the new variant getting everybody excited. So I think, first of all, the S2 growth, which is where the bulk of COVID sequencing was, was up 61%. So we're very pleased with that. There isn't a direct map that people stop doing COVID and start doing flu. Some do, but it varies. When we look at the type of kits they buy and the public health laboratories that we interact with more heavily than others, they may be looking at TB or HIV or other public health challenges. I think the good news for us is, even with that COVID headwind, we have still managed to make good progress in the S2 category. We don't think there is a large surge, even though there is a new variant of concern. And I'm sure you've noticed, I have. You know, my cleaners didn't turn up yesterday because they've all got COVID. There are more people with COVID, but it seems to be a variant of not big concern because it doesn't seem to be super spreading, and it doesn't seem to be a super killer. So I think that is reflected in the demand for sequencing as well. Everybody said it would always end up being a bit like flu or common cold, and it seems to be the market dynamics heading in that direction. Excellent. Thank you. My second question is just around sort of the S1 customer numbers. It does seem to have changed quite a bit from the end of last year. I'm just wondering whether it's the change of how you're recording those customers, or has there actually been a slowdown in kind of S1 customer additions in H1 2023, and perhaps what does that mean for the kind of likely funding outlook for the rest of 2023? Yeah. Mainly it's just a reclassification of how we're recording the numbers. So, at six months ago, we recorded the Avantor customers within the S1 group, 'cause that is the area that they're targeting. We've now split those out into indirect sales, so that's why the customer number has apparently gone down, but it hasn't gone down on a year-on-year basis. So we continue to-- that continues to be an area of strong underlying growth, and we expect it to continue. It is uniquely open to our platforms, and we expect that to continue. Avantor have had a very strong performance between last year and this year, and they're really picking up now, and we see that as a key part of our future growth. Okay. Thank you. And just to clarify there, so, I mean, if you were adding 800 customers per half in prior years, and you've added 400 in the S1 category, we would probably think that Avantor have added a similar number, but it's now in the distributor category. Avantor's growth has been—was the main contributor to the indirect revenue growth that you see within indirects, which was over 60%, and that comes about from them adding customers. And i t would be reasonable to assume that those customers are spending similar amounts to $5,500 each, if you wanted to work back a number. But I can't. That was, that's how I would think about it. Okay. Thanks very much, Tim. Thank you. We now move on to a question from Veronika Dubajova from Citi. Please go ahead. Hi, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. One, just curious, Gordon, Tim, what you're seeing in China, obviously, given some of the more cautious commentary from Illumina. I think, Tim, you made some statements in your opening remarks, but maybe you can elaborate a little bit on what you're seeing, especially in the second half of the year. Is this a scenario of concern for you as you think through the back half, and is that reflected in the guidance? Then my second question, Gordon, would just love to hear on the P2 Solo traction. It sounds like it's going pretty well, but maybe anything that, you know, is surprising, either to the upside or the downside there, in terms of customer types and the degree of interest that you're seeing. Then my final question is around the EBITDA loss expected for the full year. Tim, earlier, I think on the full year call, you had talked about a broadly comparable EBITDA loss year-on-year. Obviously, given the change in the gross margin guidance, I wonder if you can help us about how much of that drops through, to EBITDA versus what you can compensate, by better OpEx, control and leverage on higher sales. Thanks, guys. I'll do the P2 one first, shall I? Okay. Yeah, please. So, I said several hundred. It's, you know, it's trending up towards 400 or 500, and of that, 20% are new customers. And also, we are seeing strong interest across the S1, S2, and S3 customer base. So it is, you know, really interesting to see how it develops and where... I mean, we expect it to sort of be in the S2 category, but it was interesting when we did the pre-marketing for P2. There was a lot of interest from S1 customers. So it's hard to predict where it will land, but if you look at the computer industry, give people a supercomputer, and they find lots of interesting things to do with it. And this is a low-cost supercomputer. You can do phenomenally challenging genomic experiments with two PromethION flow cells. So it'll be interesting to see how it evolves. 20% new customers, also very interesting stuff as well. Okay. Look, looking at China, so China revenues half year and half year were pretty much unchanged. So, so there was no change overall, but t here was a lot of COVID sequencing in the first half of 2022, and a much smaller amount for reasons we've already discussed in the first half of 2022. So, so we see a sort of, we've seen a growth rate in China of, you know, approaching 20%, but we remain pretty cautious about China in that the environment is undoubtedly a challenging one, and we're not placing too much reliance on that market, but we continue to look at it. And so, sorry, can you just remind me of your other question, Veronika? Just on the, yeah, the expected EBITDA loss for the year. Oh, yeah. What you had said at full year versus where we are tracking to now, given the revenue and also the lower gross margin. Yeah, we have made, so just to talk this through again, we made a strategic decision to upgrade our compute on PromethION. We strongly believe this will drive consumable revenues, and consumable revenues are generating 85% of our gross profit at the moment. So there will be a one-off hit from that. We're indicating up to 300 basis points from where we were expecting. So that hit, I think, is reasonable to add to the EBITDA compared to what your model showed before. That's helpful. Thanks, guys. Thank you. We're now taking a question from James Gordon of JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Hello, James Gordon, JPMorgan. Thanks for taking the questions. A couple, please. One on top line guidelines, which has two parts. So you narrowed the range today and slightly lowered the midpoint, but the range is still quite wide, seven percentage points wide, with two-thirds of the year already in the bag. So what is the big remaining flex for 2023? Where is the main uncertainty? Could it be a bit like last year, where there's a few big orders that could slip from one year to the next, or is competition the key uncertainty? And the other part of the question was just if I think if we take out COVID and EGP, the midpoint of the guidance is about 50% growth. Is that somewhat exceptional because it's benefiting from orders that could have made it into 2022, but actually spilled into 2023, and that's why you would then expect to return into the low 30s or into the 30s growth next year? Or is this 50% a bit of a step up because actually, your product offering has strengthened, your promotional intensity has gone up, particularly in the U.S., and we could really extrapolate this 50% growth forward? That, that's the first question, please. The second one was just clarification on gross margin. So how many bps or percentage points is the gross margin headwind this year that's one-off? So from the combination of COVID write-down and the compute upgrades, what would be your underlying gross margin guidance for this year, and that we should then build on going forward, and how quickly should we build on that going forward? How quickly do you get to the over 65%? Are you also, as well as those one-off factors, seeing some inflationary headwinds on things like higher chip prices or other factors, so it's a sort of slow and steady build? Or is it actually that the underlying gross margin is still at least 60% this year, and you think you're gonna quite quickly go up from that next year? Okay. So, just on... So, let me deal with margins first. So, on the margins, we have taken a one-off hit. The end of COVID meant we took a write-off on COVID sequencing. The decision to upgrade the compute is going to hit us by up to 200 basis points, and that's why we're indicating our margin will be greater than 50%, 57%. That is still ahead of last year's margins, and it's still showing the consistent margin growth that we have shown over the last few years since IPO. In terms of where we will be, we've said greater than 57%, so I can't say where we would have been because we haven't completed the year yet. But we continue to add, f or instance, in this period, we've added 280 basis points since the same period last year. That is what we've consistently done, and that's what we expect to consistently do going forward. So that's 800 basis points to add between now and 2026, approximately, up to 800 basis. And we expect to achieve that. It will not be linear. These things do not come out in a linear fashion. I'd like you to focus on the 65, greater than 65% that we will get to, and we will get to that as soon as we can. In terms of... Sorry, I just need you to remind me exactly what your first question was on revenues. Sure. It, it was two parts. It was first— It was about the 2023 guidance. So, firstly, it was about the, that we're, we're 2/3 through the year, but it's still quite a wide range. And just say, what are the key uncertainties? Is it like big order timing or competition, or is it other— what's the big flex? Sure. And then the other bit was, extrapolating the 50% or not. Okay. There are a number of factors there. We've highlighted the EGP as something we are assuming will come in lower than last year. Last year was GBP 13.2 million. We've highlighted that. That is, performance in the first half was GBP 4.9 million. So that is a difficult number to predict. As and when samples come in and the customer requires more flow cells, we will deliver more flow cells there. And they are capable of, with their capacity, of huge ramp-ups in how many flow cells they are using. So that is an unpredictable number. I think, when we looked at last year, it was a disappointing December. There is usually in the other years that I have been at this company a much bigger push in December, and that can add or subtract from the December numbers. We've seen some very big movements between December and January that do make an effect on annual results that are really exactly the same thing. Whether we deliver on December 14th or January 14th is the same underlying business growth that we're looking at. So the exact cutoff can sometimes be a surprise. Thanks. And the other part of that was just whether 50% is actually like a new normal for your growth, particularly as the progress you made with your devices and also the strength and promotional intensity, whether we need to be a bit cautious extrapolating that? Yeah, we've achieved 46% underlying growth in the first half. I think moving forward at that sort of rate is our intention. It has always been to do greater than 30%, but that doesn't mean we're aiming for 31%. That means we're aiming for the highest level of growth that we can achieve. And the improvements that we've made in our platform over the last 12 months are really driving that growth. So, we will continue to work on increasing that. Our medium-term guidance is greater than 30%. It remains at greater than 30%, but we will be aiming for the highest level of growth that we can achieve. Thank you. Thank you. We're now moving on to Blanka Porkolab from Barclays with our next question. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. I guess, you know, one of them is a clarification just around one of the previous questions. So could you walk us through the rationale for the narrowing of the guidance range on the top line, given the COVID headwind is now expected to be lower? My other question is also clarification around the narrowing of the gross margin guidance. So am I correct in thinking that 100 basis points of that relates to the COVID write-off and 200 basis points on the decision to upgrade compute on PromethION? Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, so the biggest factor in-- we've narrowed the guidance within our range and within consensus. The biggest factor in there is the EGP, which we had previously guided to being GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million. That is the largest impact, but there are the-- within the range, there are not really any other significant factors in there. You know, that is just how the numbers look like they're going to come out, and that is a wide range, but it-- we can see us coming out anywhere within that range. Sorry, and then in terms of margins, just to clarify, yes, it will be getting on towards 1% on the COVID sequencing kits, and it will be approaching 2% or 200 basis points on the write-off of the towers in relation to the upgrade of compute. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And up next, we have David Westenberg of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Hi, this is John on for Dave. Thanks for taking the question. So first off, can you talk about the relationship with bioMérieux? How should we think about the contribution to revenue growth, both near and longer term? And how should we think about infectious disease clinical sequencing generally? Thank you. bioMérieux, the relationship, they have been a Life Sciences Research Tools customer for the last couple of years, and they've been looking at using GridION in their workflows in a variety of infectious disease clinical applications. We've picked a couple of project areas to collaborate with them on. We've moved from, you know, for them to prove out the real-time streaming and ability to look at drug resistance in infectious disease, to wanting to now insert the GridION in some of their existing clinical workflows. The partnership is a collaboration to develop that integrated end-to-end workflow with bioMérieux. The infectious disease area, generally, we also have an ongoing proof of concept clinical trial going on with guys in St. Thomas's, who are looking at antimicrobial resistance in ICU patients. So you're returning results in 3-4 hours rather than 3-4 days. And of the 350 patients we've done so far, half of them were on the wrong antibiotic for respiratory metagenomic scanning. So we're very excited about that. And, and the bioMérieux group are also interested in reducing the time to result and getting a broader picture of the antimicrobial resistance in the bacterial pathogens, which you can get with NGS versus traditional PCR. So it's a very hot area for us, and we're very excited about partnering with, you know, what is one of the global leaders in infectious disease monitoring in clinical settings. Got it. Thank you. And now that we're further into the launch, are the P2 customers jumping into S2, or are they starting at S1 like we've seen with the MinION customers? It's a bit of everything. We have some high utilization and some, you know, occasional and, you know, sort of some with a good beat rate. So we have sprinters, marathon, and middle-distance runners all in the same P2s. And it's not surprising to us because I think there's just some interesting things you can do with a 100 gig flow cell, occasionally, often, and very often at a low-cost entry point. A lot of these customers are already customers in. But we have seen about 20% of new customers come in, as far as we can see, they're new customers that have taken the P2. So they will, they will probably be working their way towards the S2 range over the year. But they haven't had the P2s. They've only had the P2s for like, for a whole year yet. But the other customers would be in the category they were already in, so it'll be across the whole range. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. We're now taking a question from Shubhangi Gupta of HSBC. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my question. I have two, please. So you mentioned 75% of your revenues are from consumables and flow cells. So could you please indicate how much time after a device is bought do these revenues start coming in? And second, following up the question on China. So China is pretty much unchanged, so could you get some color on what are your customer base in China? Is it predominantly diagnostic labs, or you have some pharma biotech customers as well, and also your market share in China? Thank you. Okay. So I mean, Tim's talked about, and he can elaborate further if needed, the COVID headwind in China. Underlying, there was still growth in China. 20%. 20%. China's interesting in that there is the distributor model works really well. So we have a series of distributors, and some of them sell directly into Life Sciences Research Tools. But China also has a large concentration of service providers as well, so they are doing a whole host of service provision. And then the third category, these distributors are interested in the diagnostic markets, going from RUO to LDT and ultimately CE-IVD. And so all of those categories exist in China, and even with that COVID headwind, the underlying growth was 20%. Now, we are cautious, cautiously optimistic because there is traction in China at beyond COVID. The last couple of years, everything's been shrouded by sort of COVID sequencing. But as that fog clears, you know, we're clearly seeing growth in service providers and distributors in pushing towards diagnostics. So, but at the same time, there is an economic slowdown. There are the macroeconomic geopolitical considerations, so we're cautiously optimistic about China. Your other question, which is interesting, is how quickly do people start using consumables after they've received the device? So, we've obviously got a large range of devices, but if you think about the MinION customer, we consider the MinION to almost be a consumable. It's not counted in consumables, but basically it will arrive, you set it up, and you can be sequencing the same day. And that's the same with most of our products. It's very, very quick to get there. We take a bit more time over the PromethION installations, but basically, you're ready to go once you've got the device installed. They sit on a benchtop. The right opening step for the S2, S3 customers who are doing large programs tends to be the setting up of the program, the accumulation of samples, the LIMS, the integration of the platform into already existing workflows. In principle, you can plug and play same day. Thank you. Thank you. Our last question for today comes from Miles Dixon of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. If I could ask more generally on the evolution of the platform and technology. I mean, the speed at which you're improving both the quality of those. I was wondering if, particularly with reference to S1 customers, is there a risk that you're potentially moving that technology forward too fast, and might risk making some of the S1 customers and their products legacy before you've recouped costs? Thank you. So, people do sometimes think we move too quickly, we launch too often, but there is a segment of the market that want the latest and the greatest, and we will continue to innovate and launch very regularly. Remember, an S1 customer, a MinION user, will get that upgrade in the flow cell. So they don't, people who are using a MinION from 2015, because it's just got a fan and a data pre-processing pathway through what is called an FPGA workflow, will be able to get today's Q20+ chemistry from their kit and software and f low cell upgrades. With regard to certain customers that we now have who are starting to develop, screening tests or particular assays, they need stability, and our move towards Q- Line will give them a platform that still changes, but not very often. It changes less often, and therefore, and in a controlled manner, I should say. So those customers, we're now starting to, and the whole premise behind Q-Line is not just a step for diagnostics, it's for those customers who need stability, and they will get less regular updates. So we are seeing the market, the customer base broadening, and therefore we will do that. But I want to add, this innovation piece tends to make the platform more accurate and cheaper without any downside, because it's an invisible upgrade. That's why I really wanted to highlight in the presentation today that some of the sequencing is in the consumable, and that really allows us to do these upgrades seamlessly. You don't have to buy a new box on a CapEx cycle every three or four years, and that's why we're really excited about the PromethION upgrades that we're pushing through, and, and we think that will be significant in driving growth going forward. Got it. Thank you. Could I just ask one follow on then, particularly in relation to the PromethION compute upgrade? Given that these are seamless from the customer perspective, where do you sit on the kind of development of the platform more generally? Particularly, might we expect more one-offs, such as the PromethION compute in future to get you to where you want to be for the broader platform tech? Sure. I think we've in the main baked in upgrades like the motherboard and other things. This NVIDIA GPU heat in the market, and the 20% increase in prices was only announced in July, I think, and also minimum orders have been jacked up. All these things we believe are a one-off. If this continues, I mean, NVIDIA are responding. They're you know a big company, and they are manufacturing at fast speed. We are one of their preferred vendors, but we did have to buy a minimum amount in order to secure the stock. So we very much believe it's a one-off. If it continues and the compute prices go to a different point, then we will consider how we absorb that to ensure that we are on track to hit EBITDA profitability 2026. Thanks for taking the questions, Gordon. There are no further questions in the queue, so I'd like to hand the call back over to you, Gordon, for any additional or closing remarks. I'd just like to say thank you for your time today, and we are in London for the rest of the week, and then New York, so looking forward to meeting some of you face to face. Thanks very much, everybody.