All right, we're going to get started. Joining me is Illumina's brand new CEO, and most important question here: Do we call you Jacob or Jacob? Well, normally, what I would say is that my mother would call me Jacob, when we speak English, Danish, and when I speak English, I'm obviously Jacob, so you should feel free to use, use both, but please stay with Jacob if you already started doing that. All right. So we'll just start off at a high level, what intrigued you about Illumina, and what qualities were Illumina's board looking for when they picked you? All right. So first of all, thank you very much for inviting me, and I'm very excited to be here in front of all of you. I've been following Illumina for a long time, and I've always been very excited to see every time Illumina come up with something, I've been very excited because I think it's been making a huge impact, both on the industry, but probably more importantly, on human health. And so when the opportunity came up to join Illumina, it was definitely something that I felt very passionate about. I have a very strong passion for oncology and genomics, and I think Illumina is the one that has been pioneering this space over the last decades, and everything I see is that we're going to pioneer that also in the future. What I was excited about joining the company is really the talent mass and the excitement that I'm seeing when I'm in the San Diego headquarters. You know, when I go down and get my food in the cafeteria, I see people coming up to me and want to talk to me, want to share what they are seeing and what they're working on. I have people coming up and show me different things from R&D on where they are and what they're working on. So there's this big excitement in the company that really drives my fuel, also my passion, coming back from the R&D background that I also have, is that I see a lot of that energy in the organization. So, you know, in the end, on the question about what the board was looking for, well, in the end, that's a question for the board, but let me at least try to answer that a little bit. I think they were looking for somebody that came from within the industry, that had global experience, that also had a good background in understanding innovation and how to commercialize innovation, and running a company or a business of a similar size of Illumina. And if you look into my profile, I pretty much live up to all these dimensions. Perfect. So what is the most underrated part of the Illumina portfolio? So when you came in, what product or feature did you go, "Wow, I wish I didn't know about this until I got here? Yeah. No, I think there's a lot of things that right now is underrated in Illumina. I think we can look at many dimensions. First of all, let's just look at... I was just excited coming in and learn about the roadmap and the pipeline, what the product roadmap looks like for the next coming years, both within sequencing itself, how we can support our customers being more successful in their laboratories by automating different parts. The informatics element that I think is highly undervalued in the company, and from what all of us understand is that most of the time, if you think about sequencing and it's really spent on analyzing data. And with the informatics investment that Illumina have done over the past years, and especially also with the DRAGEN on board on the X, it simplifies a lot. It processes the data much faster. You can compress the data a factor of five, so it's much cheaper to store the data. And we have built all these automated pipelines into the informatics, so many customers or users can use that much more simple and much faster than anything else out on the market space. I think the undervalued thing is really our global presence and our ability to go out there and serve all our customers. There's not a lot of fun buying a new tool if you can't get it up and running, and if you have issues, questions that you can't get somebody to be there within 24 hours to help you. Illumina is the only company that can really do that for our customers out there. Yeah. Well, there's been a lot of talk on, on Illumina's brain drain, and it's been going on for quite a while. Any thoughts on making Illumina a cool place to work again, if it- Well, I actually think it's a pretty cool place. That's why I joined. I think there's very few companies in, I would claim, in the industry or maybe in the world, where you can go out there and really being a part of a big change in how you think about human health from a tools perspective. I think Illumina has pioneered that, and we will continue to pioneer that, with the investment we're doing to that in both, as I mentioned, in DNA sequencing, but beyond that, in multi-omics, DNA, RNA, single- cell, potentials in proteomics, and especially going forward. I think there's so many things that this company and Illumina is providing both that you can be a part of something bigger, but also going out there, and you can tell your family and friends that you are part of a company that actually is here to do something better for human health, human society. I mean, I enjoy talking to my friends and when they ask me what I'm doing, and then, you know, talking about Illumina and what we are doing for human health and, you know, the planet we all live on here. I feel a great passion, and I know many of our other colleagues in the company feel the same. So I think there's a lot of coolness around that. Associated with the brain drain, I don't know about that. I think that overall, I see a lot of smart people in the company. I see that there's a lot of passion, but also a lot of smart people there. So I don't really believe that brain drain comment there. Okay. So in terms of balancing the tech startup, fast-paced innovation culture of Illumina with the reality that, you know, you're $4 billion in revenue- Yeah. And something like that, with a mature P&L and, so what's the balance there? Yeah, no, I think first of all, I don't think we are in a mature market right now. I think there is still a lot of opportunity to grow in the DNA sequencing or the sequencing arena. We're just scratching the surface of the opportunities. So I think that in itself creates us to continue to be a fast-paced, innovative company, to really continue to pioneer that. So I'm really focusing on continuing to have that culture and mentality in the company. But what is unique here in the opportunity is that we also have an opportunity to run on the rest of the P&L, so to say, or how we organize ourselves to allow for that innovation, but at the same time, allow for operational excellence. And have a little more rigor, have a little more discipline in how we execute on all elements there. And I think actually that's where I think there's a great opportunity to combine that. Not many companies in the industry have that opportunity to fast growth and then being at a level that we are, and then drive the organization towards that. And I think that's a huge opportunity. So, I don't want to consider us mature. I will do a lot to keep us agile, but at the same time, drive everything else to go back to be a very high profitable company. Got it. You know, when I think of Illumina, and I think about the conversation it sets, it definitely sets the conversation around lowest cost per G. Yeah. And, you know, can you talk about the different value that Illumina provides beyond the cost per G? Put another way, I mean, you are seeing, you know, companies like Element, companies like Ultima, companies like BGI, they're kind of matching you on a cost per G basis. So, you know, how do you get the conversation to shift in terms of value per project versus cost per G? You know- -you pioneered? Yeah, absolutely. It's right, you know, we pioneered going out there and talk about the cost per G. I will say, first and foremost, our main focus have been, and will continue to be our customers. We want to make sure that the customers are the heroes here. It's what drives the thinking in the company, what drives our innovation. Obviously, we live in an environment with competition. Illumina have always done that, but we will continue to be very focused on our customers. As you mentioned also, there's all this, there continues to be a lot of conversation about the cost per G, which we invented. But remember, it's a proxy for, in reality, what it costs to run whole sequencing or what it runs actually, the whole workflow. But when you have the cost of the sequencing being majority or the significant part of that, obviously, that's where you simplify the conversation into where we're getting into a regime now that we want to continue to drive down costs on what it takes to run a sequencing laboratory. And thereby, it also becomes important to look at what it costs on, on the front end, the sample prep, what it costs on the, as I mentioned before, the informatics, and how you combine everything in also with the right applications. So it'll be more conversation going forward, will of course, be with the customers, to how do we make them successful and how do we drive down that cost for those workflows to enable them to run the applications? And also from a commercialization perspective, really make sure they understand that what it takes to service these workflows, because this is still highly sophisticated technologies, and it's not a lot of fun to buy a sequencer and realize that the workflows are super complicated or there's downtime because it takes you a week or two weeks because you have a service technician get there. Where Illumina can really provide the strength of having services and support out there very fast. And that's where I see also maybe many customers are very excited to continue to work with us, is that they know that we will keep them up and running and continue to be keep them successful. Right. Okay. Can you talk about some of the mistakes you think Illumina might have made in the last couple of years? What mistakes do you think are immediately fixable, and what mistakes are the ones that take a little bit more time to fix? Well, you know, even though I'm originally from Denmark, I will try to use an American sports term here, that I don't want to be the Monday morning quarterback here or the coach. So, I think it's of course, everyone and all the time, you make decisions that you would like to done differently. So I think you can all, we can all look at that. But in reality, what I want to look at is that, how do we move this company going forward? And I think there's a lot of opportunities, and where I'm really honing in is that ensure we hone in on the right strategic priorities in the company. What is it that drives both the top line, our customer success, and of course, also the full P&L? I'm working with my team now to really hone in on that. I think the company is always already doing a lot of good stuff, but I think there is this clarity and focus that we can actually provide. On top of that, there's this rigor and operational excellence that I think in the end is not only going to drive, of course, a better P&L, but in reality, is unleashing the opportunity that we have. Meaning that I think that simplifying some decision-making processes, some organizational processes, will allow for quicker decision-making, and thereby unleash innovation and our ability to serve our customers even better. When you grow up and you become a larger company, sometimes you start to have more complex processes and so on, that not always serve the customers. Simplifying-... helps operational excellence, but it also helps us in the way to how we serve our customers going forward. So those are the priorities, and this is something that I will work with, with the team are already working on to execute on that. All right. Got you. When, you know, some of the conversations I had with investors, you know, they said they looked at your resume and they go, "Okay, Dako, Agilent, this is an operations guy, maybe not an innovator. Yeah. So when you look at Illumina, you think about innovation. So, how do you tell them they're wrong? Well, first of all, look at my full resume. So I have a Ph.D. in physics, and my startup, I started out of, after my Ph.D., I started a company. I was founder of a high-tech company, actually, in MEMS. Semicon was really the innovator. A lot of patents, IP was out driving that. When I came to Dako, I was running R&D. But at that point of time, I really shifted over, saying, "I don't think that I necessarily is the necessarily the sharpest person in the room to make them the best innovations." I don't have any aspiration of doing that anymore. What I can do is I can nurture a culture of innovation, making sure that I help making decision, I help make sure that the people have the right organizational structures, the right forums to make decisions, and have an environment where they want to work together and collaborate to do those innovations. Because innovations doesn't come out of one individual, it comes out when you really collaborate. And I think my resume speaks the language also, that if you look into what I've been helping doing, is not only driving the top bottom line, but particularly, you see the business I've been in, that I've been able to drive the top line, and that's been driven by innovation. But I think innovation goes beyond just product innovation. There's a lot of also business innovation that you tend to forget about if you only look at the product itself. So what you see me bring to the table is both creating environment where you can really drive product innovation also, but also have a much high emphasis on process and business innovations that I think is... There's a lot of opportunities there. Gotcha. You talked about the importance of winning the EU case, I think it's a jurisdiction case- Yeah In order to keep future M&A on the table. What does Illumina need to buy? Are there hardware companies or services that are in the future discussions at Illumina? Well, I think first of all, I think that Illumina right now have everything we need to be successful in the market space. I think we are also have a substantial investment into R&D because we truly believe that we can continue to pioneer this environment, not only in, as I mentioned, in DNA sequencing itself, but using the sequencing platform as a readout and ecosystem for multi-omics, which I'm pretty excited about and how we can see that revolution going on over the next period of time here. But, of course, we will continue to look at bolt-ons opportunities out there. I think there is opportunities in the informatics space that I would like to continue to look at. For sure, we're not looking at any larger acquisition at this point. We have a lot on our plates, and we will focus on execute on that. Gotcha. Now, I know you just got in, but, you know, you mentioned you have a science background. So how much scale does Illumina's SBS chemistry have? Are we near the limits of SBS? Anyway. Yeah. No, I think, I mean, so first of all, remember, we just came out with the XLEAP chemistry, so really reinvented the SBS chemistry, and the team did a lot of work on looking at, other kind of chemistries and other things we could do to really accelerate, sequencing going forward, but came back to this, reinvented SBS chemistry as really still a very, very, the best chemistry out there, and something that continued to move performance forward. Recently, we came out with... There were some, papers coming out, also showing that more than, 80% of the reads now are at, Q40 level. So I think that you're seeing this, this quantum leap also in, performance of the chemistry and the quality of the chemistry. But we just, with this new chemistry, we have a lot of opportunities to move things forward. I think there is, and I can see in the market space, there is still a tremendous opportunity for, for short reads. And I think that this chemistry is allowing for that. Most of solid tumors, liquid biopsies, and so on, are based on short reads, so that would be the prime focus, going forward, and we can continue to drive down the cost of sequencing also with this chemistry. So I'm pretty excited, and if you really go out there and talk to the customers and the ones that have started to use, right now, the NovaSeq X, is that they are excited what they see. In fact, when I was out there, the customers, they were raving about what this technology and XLEAP can do, and also because it's familiar with them, so they don't have to start all over again. So remember that a lot of customers out there have built their whole ecosystem based on the Illumina platforms, ecosystems and our chemistry and so on. To have something they're familiar with means a lot also. You don't want to shift ecosystem all the time. It's simply too costly for customers out there. Gotcha. I mean, do you, do you have scale in, in terms of analysis, file compression, user-friendliness? Is this kind of some of the angles you might be looking at in terms of improvement? Yeah, I think there is informatics. I think there's still a lot of things. If you think about the data analysis that is required right now for sequencing, we come up with the 25 B, it's massive. When you move into single cell, when you move into other things, that data and that analysis is gonna be even more important. And the investments we've done into with the DRAGEN and the whole informatics is gonna be a huge amplifier on that. That I think we're just scratching the surface with right now. And I think it's underappreciated of how important data analysis, but also the ability to do that on the platform, and that we have that under control, is gonna mean for the next decade here in this industry. So I think that is-... that you will see us put a lot of efforts in going forward. Now, remember also that the data analysis is one thing, but visualization of the data is the other thing that I think we can do a lot more to really simplify and help, especially when we get into multi-omics, and you combine the different omics with each other. Gotcha. Just in terms of it, actually, let's just move on to China. How important of a market is that for you? And how much are you convinced that this market just isn't going away? I think you've said in the last call, it's a very important strategic market. Yeah. You know, it's down significantly, and there is an entrenched competitor in China that has, you know, could be viewed as a substitute. Yeah. So I think, first of all, China is around 10% of our revenue. It will continue to be an important region for Illumina. And in fact, you know, I had a deep dive with the Chinese team here a few weeks ago, where we looked into it, and I think the Chinese team, first and foremost, are still very bullish around what the future is gonna look like. That's clearly that you have to think about how you operate in China, that is, have some uniqueness to it versus rest of the world. You need to think about how you are a local player, and how you are perceived a local player. And I think there is, and I have some experience on how to do that from my previous job. So I think there is ways that we can amplify our position in China. Talking to customers in China, they really love working with Illumina, especially in the clinical. Remember, in the clinical space, you're making real decisions on patients, and the outcome of what we provide is a key driver for the decision you're making. You want to be absolutely sure what the therapeutic decisions you're gonna make on outcome of the genomic data here. So there's a lot of the customers in China, but generally speaking, rest of the world, but particularly in China, that see that as and really wanna continue to work with Illumina because they know when they work with us, they get the highest quality. And that will always be our focus: keep our customers in the... keep them the hero in the laboratories, make sure that they're successful, make sure that they can continue to provide information to their customers and the patients. And I think that's a recipe for success, not only in China, but the rest of the world. Got it. You know, this question we get all the time, and it's probably a question you've been getting a lot already, and that's the elasticity of demand question. Okay. Particularly in the clinical market. I believe that you noted over 50%, is it now? Yeah. Of the revenue is now clinical. So when investors tell you, you know, there's no elasticity in demand in clinical, what's the answer to that? Well, I think just look at the facts out there. I mean, less than 50% of all just the population here in the cancer patients here in the U.S. is getting that DNA sequence if they are diagnosed with cancer, even though there's reimbursement available out there. And if you look in monitoring of cancers, this is down in the low percentage points, at even 1 or 2 percentage points. So just if you look at the clinical space, and then put on top of even the information that is provided to the clinicians today, could be much more enriched. There's much more information that could be enriched by increasing the panels that you provide to the clinicians. So that in itself will drive substantial demand. And thereby, you know, this is just a matter of time. I think what is also maybe underappreciated here is that as we have more than 50% of our customers now being in clinical, and everyone wants to make sure they have the right quality. You have to validate this to a high degree on the new platforms, and thereby it takes time for the clinical customers to move from one platform to the other. So even though everyone can see the cost benefit of moving to the X, they're also taking very seriously that whenever they have moved it over to the X, it has to live up to the highest quality of validation in order to serve their customers. So I respect that, and I think we need to, and we working with the, with the customers to transition this as fast as possible. But these things takes time because we have patients out there that are very dependent on the results that comes out of these, of these sequencing. So, you know, even though we are all frustrated, it takes time, it will come, and it will come strong back. Gotcha. The year is 2028, we're sitting here at the Piper Conference, and I, I want you to talk about what the last five years have looked like, what you're most proud of, overall. Well, thanks, Matt. I hope you're gonna invite me back before then, but, but you know, when we sit back in, in, in 25, I think we will, we will look back and, and five tremendous years where Illumina again have been pioneering the, the move, not only in what we have, what can be achieved by sequencing, as I said, in the clinicians, and, and make sure that everybody have the right information. When we sit down in five years, hopefully it's now 90% of all cancer patients that will get their—at least 90%, that will get all their sequencing profile. I think you will see us been moving the, what they call this revolution in, in now multi-omics forward, that, that Illumina will be a part of that or will be the central part of the ecosystem in the multi-omics space. And I think you will also see us being, as we talked about, this cool company where everyone that has ambition of, of really changing the world, but also, of course, being a part of a company where you can really be satisfied in challenging yourself, in whatever area you look in, but also being a part of a company that really moves the industry forward. Because I think in five years, we'll sit here and talk about all the applications and things that Illumina have been helping catalyze, both in clinical decisions making in, in genomics itself, but even what genomics and multi-omics is providing of insights to the researchers, academic, that is opening up completely new therapeutics and other things that we couldn't even imagine today. So I'm excited of being part of that and look forward to that invitation in 2028. Well, we appreciate having you today. Thank you very much.