Good morning, and welcome to today's Standard BioTools and SomaLogic merger announcement conference call. Before market open today, Standard BioTools and SomaLogic announced an agreement to combine in an all-stock merger. This call is being shared live on the Internet, and there is a presentation available for viewing and download from the website of each company. During the call, we may make forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including plans and projections for our business, our outlook for 2023 and future financial results, and market trends and opportunities. These statements are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ materially from current expectations. The forward-looking statements in this call are based on information currently available to us, and we disclaim any obligation to update these statements except as may be required by law. During the call, we may present some financial information on a non-GAAP, pro forma, or adjusted basis. Reconciliations of these measures to U.S. GAAP, which identify and quantify all excluded items and provide management's view of why this information is useful to investors, can be found in our SEC filings and financial press releases. The company will host a Q&A session following prepared remarks during today's conference call. I will now turn the call over to Michael Egholm, Chief Executive Officer and President of Standard BioTools. Michael? Thank you, Chelsea, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on the call today. We are incredibly excited to share the news of this combination, which will create a diversified leader in the life science tools industry. Joining me today are executives from both of our companies. From Standard BioTools, Jeffrey Black, our Chief Financial Officer, and Adam Taich, Interim Chief Executive Officer for SomaLogic, and who will assume the role of Chief Strategy Officer post-merger. To begin, we believe this combination will create a true leadership position in our space, with over $1 billion in equity value, not just with a leading technology portfolio, but with over $500 million in cash to support continued growth. This merger will position the combined company with a financial profile that enables an accelerated path to scale and profitability. We expect to deliver $80 million in cost synergies and expedite our path to cash flow generation. This is truly a one plus one equals three scenario. Allow me to provide an overview of the transaction we announced earlier this morning. SomaLogic shareholders will receive approximately 1.11 shares of Standard BioTools stock for each share of SomaLogic they own. This represents a pro forma ownership, 50% for SomaLogic shareholders and 43% for Standard BioTools shareholders. This structure will allow both sets of shareholders to participate in the compelling upside of the combinations. The combined company will operate under the Standard BioTools name, with facilities across our respective footprints in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Canada, and Singapore. The combined company will have a seven-member board of directors that will comprise three directors of Standard BioTools, including myself, Fenel Eloi, and Frank Witney, and three current directors of SomaLogic, including Tom Carey, who will serve as chairman, Troy Cox, and Kathy Hibbs. Finally, Eli Casdin will also continue to serve as a director of the combined company board. We expect the transaction to close in the Q1 of 2024, subject to approval by both company shareholders and customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. We also signed voting agreements with shareholders representing about 16% of Standard BioTools and about 1% of SomaLogic. Moving on to slide four. As we have people on the call that are new to the Standard BioTools story, I would like to start with some background and explain how today's announcement activates a strategy to create a scalable platform of life science research tool. This was central to our inception in 2021, when Standard BioTools was formed. Since then, we have assembled the building blocks to build a diversified tools powerhouse. We have a new executive team in place with deep operational life science tools and integration experience in two key roles. The new management team immediately went to work, applying our leadership's rigorous operating discipline to establish a culture centered on what we now call SBS, or Standard BioTools Business System. The core continuous improvement and lean operating principles of SBS are now deeply ingrained throughout our organization and processes in just six short quarters. We showed capital to launch a disciplined M&A strategy and support our bold initiatives, and are proud to boast a platform of differentiated life science tools with broad multi-omic reach, including instruments, consumables, software, and services. We have the highest placed, highest data quality tools for flow cytometry and spatial biology. The last six quarters have been transformative. We returned the business to growth, driving revenue growth of 17% year-over-year in the first half. Through the first half of 2023, the application of SBS operating discipline growth and over 1,000 basis point increase in our non-GAAP gross margin at 26%.... improvement in non-GAAP OpEx and an over 6% improvement in operating cash use. We've also made great strides accelerating new product development to position the business for sustained long-term growth. Included in today's news was our updated revenue guidance for the full year. We now expect to deliver $100 million-$105 million in revenue for the full year 2023. We ended Q2 with over $140 million in cash on the balance sheet, and are proud to activate our M&A strategy to achieve scale as a next-generation leader in life science tools and solution. SomaLogic is the perfect partner to accelerate that journey. I'll now turn the call over to Adam to provide his perspective on the merger and introduce SomaLogic. Adam? Thank you, Michael. I echo Michael's enthusiasm about this transaction and the excitement for the value we can unlock together. SomaLogic is known throughout the life science tool space for having the most comprehensive, highest data quality protein measurement detection tool. Our flagship technology, SomaScan, profiles 7,000 proteins in a variety of sample types, and aids clinical researchers in areas such as mechanism of action and biomarker development. An updated version of SomaScan, capable of measuring 10,000 analytes, twice the capacity of any other platform, is on track to launch this year. Most of SomaLogic's revenue today is driven by its services business, its elite customer relationships with over 185 customers, including 9 of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies. Recently, the company's been executing on our authorized site program and expect to have at least 16 sites up and running by year-end, driving high-margin consumables revenue. More than 700 peer-reviewed publications demonstrating the power of the SomaScan platform have been published, with over 450,000 samples tested since 2010. The technology is protected by over 600 patents. Last year, SomaLogic announced the first major genomics, proteomics commercial collaboration in a partnership with Illumina. It will combine SomaLogic's technologies with Illumina's in a co-branded NGS-based solution that is expected full commercial release in 2025. Today, SomaLogic reaffirms our guidance of $80 million-$84 million in revenue, with strong growth profile and $475 million in cash on the balance sheet. As we started this discussion on this merger, the complementary nature of our platforms and technologies is one of the most exciting aspects of the potential new company. We came away highly impressed by the Standard BioTools team, operating model, and innovative approach. We're even more excited about the upside potential as our two companies come together to create a leading multi-omic platform to drive further returns for our shareholders. I also want to take this opportunity to thank our excellent team at SomaLogic that brought us to where we are today. Michael, I'll now turn it back to you to review the transaction benefits. Thank you, Adam. Let me spend a moment on our strategic thesis. We have the opportunity to create value in a vast $100 billion market with healthy economics. Our space is highly fragmented and currently underserved, with mature technologies and dominance established by a few large players. There are countless great emerging life science tools, technologies that can advance research and help patients, on which numerous companies have been founded. Unfortunately, very few of those turn into sustainable companies because of challenges relating to building, manufacturing at scale and cost, supporting customers, and creating a commercial organization. These challenges limit infrastructure leverage and create a perpetual need for more capital. Our opportunity as tenured, disciplined operators is to create a standardized platform, a scalable, profitable suite of differentiated life science tools, underpinned by a strong culture and capital that can support growth. We can enable leading life science technologies to accelerate breakthroughs in healthcare. Our combination with SomaLogic activates the platform-building thesis that Standard Bio was founded on, with technology that we can't wait to champion. We have a shared mission to meaningfully advance life science research and emerge as a dominant player in the field. The combination will unlock a true technology leadership in a large, high-growth end market. It will open the door to substantial reciprocal cross-selling opportunities with a portfolio of complementary products and technologies. The combination will also expedite scale as we secure a leadership position in emerging multi-omic life science tool, and will do so in part by leveraging Standard Bio's SBS principles, plus expect the synergies to accelerate profitability. United, our balance sheets will have over $500 million in cash, positioning us with an industry-leading capital structure to self-fund growth and continue to execute our strategy. The joining of Standard BioTools and SomaLogic will not only create an unmatched technology platform, but will leverage complementary capabilities with minimal customer overlap, expanding our collective reach in both academia and biopharma research, with a robust revenue model that will boast a mix of instruments and recurring consumables and services revenue stream. Our combined platform of proteomics and genomics tools will lead the industry in terms of throughput and data quality to span serum profiling, whole cell profiling, and tissue profiling, and genomics. The three highly differentiated proteomics technology will offer tremendous value and research insights to clinical researchers. I will now turn the call over to Jeff to cover the financial profile of the combined company. Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining the call. I too, like Adam and Michael, remain extremely excited and energized about the future of this combination, particularly among the lines of the long-term financial profile. And that profile created by this combination, it sets both companies up on an accelerated path to scale, to profitability, and we believe we're significantly better positioned than the sum of each of our parts. The combined starting point here for 2023, in terms of a revenue profile, combined revenue in the range of $180 million-$189 million, consistent with the guidance that we released today. On a combined basis, the combined gross margins for the first half of 2023 is 53% on a non-GAAP basis. Again, as Michael mentioned, with SBS stronghold in academic research, SomaLogic's stronghold in biopharmaceutical research, our customer bases overlap minimally. We think that paves the path toward lucrative, new, and expanded relationships for both of us, and these benefits will fuel expected double-digit revenue growth profile over the next three years at least. While this combination will also afford us the opportunity to thoughtfully continue to invest in our combined R&D pipeline and expand commercial reach, we also think there's a tremendous opportunity to leverage a common operating infrastructure to realize very significant synergies. We expect the merger will deliver $80 million in annual cost synergies by 2026, compared to our current combined operating expense run rate. As Michael mentioned earlier, we'll have a strong combined post-merger balance sheet, which will include over $500 million in cash at close. We'll be well positioned to self-fund our strategic objectives without the need for incremental dilutive financing. In terms of a longer-term profile, we believe by the end of 2026, this combined business will be a $300 million revenue business with gross margins in the mid-60s%, positive EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and, again, a cash position capable of supporting our continued growth, investments, and pursuit of our strategy to become a diversified leader in this space. And Michael, I'll turn it back over to you to review the combined leadership of the company. Hey, thank you, Jeff. Before I wrap up, I want to acknowledge that I could not be more honored to share this journey with a combined group of senior leaders that I believe to be best in class. I look forward to driving our strategy forward with the team of individuals here with me today and the expanded leadership team. I want to emphasize the significance of the SBS foundation that is the very backbone of Standard BioTools. A lot of companies talk about culture, but Standard BioTools' continuous improvement principles are a proven, acquired skill set that, in addition to life science tools, is our collective field of expertise. Kaizen culture and lean operations are embedded throughout our organization and processes, and we continually collaborate and train to ensure that we are consistently leveling up. The aim of SBS is to deliver profound value to our customer, as and we onboard the SomaLogic team and technology, will certainly create incremental value for the research organizations that our platform supports. In closing, we are bringing together two companies to create the most compelling suite of multi-omics technology for life science research, the complementary portfolio of highest plex, highest data quality technologies that will target attractive end markets and coupled with ample cross-selling opportunities to accelerate growth, both immediately at close and well into the future. The merger positions Standard BioTools with an increasingly scalable platform that will be bolstered by our organization's unique operating principle, operating disciplines to fulfill our merger commitments. We are teaming up to pursue a shared mission to accelerate breakthroughs in human health and couldn't be more excited about the value creation that lies ahead. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now open the lines for questions. Chelsea? Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one keys on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question will come from Brandon Couillard with Jefferies. Your line is open. Hey, good morning. Michael, I'm curious just how you approached evaluating the competitive landscape in proteomics before deciding on SomaLogic, and how important is the Illumina partnership to the value of the franchise with you? T hanks, thanks, Brandon. We are incredibly excited about the overall opportunity. One big theme in the company we are building is proteomics. As we have two pieces of the puzzle with our newly launched spatial biology platform and our high-parameter 50-color flow cytometry platform. Serum profiling is the perfect complement to that, selling to many of the same resources inside biopharma research. The good news is that SomaLogic have very strongly entrenched into biopharma, and I actually think it can help propel some of our legacy technologies. We really like the unique position of the SomaLogic technology with the highest most comprehensive coverage of the proteome and the lowest CV. So they're very, very good at creating strong signatures here. So, very excited about the opportunity ahead. As for the Illumina relationship, we've already been announced that that's expected to launch next year, and we're hoping for a very fruitful and strong relationship with Illumina on the other side. Great. And then maybe a question for Jeff. The $80 million of cost synergies, can you just break that out in terms of the source of those in the PNL, between public company costs during commercial overlap, any detail on the buckets? Yeah, Brandon, I think it's still very early stage, and we'll continue to update you as we are comfortable with more visibility. What we can tell you is we're extremely confident there. There's a real opportunity here to realize tremendous synergies. And just to level set, that $80 million, when you take a look at the non-GAAP operating run rate primarily the cash-based recurring type of expenses, on an annualized basis, first half of 2023 represented about $250 million in annual costs. W e think the opportunity to significantly reduce that cost just through synergies, right, common operating platforms, things like ERP, common public company costs, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. W e'll continue to update you and provide more guidance when we close the deal. Like I said, early stage, but we've done a fair amount of work already to identify where they're coming from. Okay. Last one, maybe back to, to Michael. Are you, are you dropping the SomaLogic brand name? I t's been around for a long time. I imagine more well-known to researchers than Standard BioTools is. And what degree of customer overlap do you have today, especially bigger accounts, something like Novartis on the SomaLogic side, obviously an important customer for them? Thank you. Yeah. No. So, no, we we'll definitely plan to keep the SomaLogic brand. As you say, it's a long-established play that led this field for many years with great science. What we think we can add to it is, in addition to the operating discipline, it's also really honing the message of where the SomaScan approach is advantaged. I already touched on it a little bit, but it's really the most comprehensive coverage and creating signatures that can predict patient outcomes. I really think it, it's uniquely precision there. And sorry, I forgot the second part of your question. Yeah, it was really around just degree of customer overlap. Yeah, customer overlap. Yeah. Especially, yeah, especially bigger pharma companies like Novartis being, obviously an important customer on the SomaLogic side. Yeah. Yeah, actually, so we actually do, with the existing business, sell into institutions such as Novartis, and happens to be a good customer of ours. I think the more important point is that the SomaLogic technology actually reaches a different audience that are closer to the clinic. And so we typically exist in core labs or in advanced research labs, and what we really want to do is to get into really the routine use inside the translational medicine field here. And I really think that the strong performance and brand building SomaLogic have done here over years will be a huge lever for us going forward. And then, conversely, so the operating discipline and the focused messaging around where we play, I think, will be an advantage to the SomaLogic technology. So together, we are a very strong platform. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question will come from Kyle Bouchet with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Hey, good morning. This is Kyle on for Dan Brennan. Michael, what value do you seek to create for the SomaLogic business on the top line beyond what they can do on their own? No, hey, Kyle. Yeah, thanks for the question. So you can see from the model here, that we're really looking for is to create a combined entity that together will grow double digits. We are obviously looking for opportunities where we can grow much faster. One of the advantages of getting to this scale now here is that we will actually have, because of the leverage we have, we can make targeted investments in R&D and commercial organization where we really see the high growth, both unlimited today in what we can do. So I'm really excited about the growth perspective here. I won't, as Jeff pointed out, it's very early, so I won't get pinned down on exact numbers here, but we're excited about the growth road ahead. And actually, I should add, of course, that proteomics is a huge market. It's, there's a ton of excitement around it, and we see it as a vast market with a lot of growth opportunities. Our challenge is to come in and find where we are differentiated and then really focus there. And that is what the SBS operating discipline is gonna bring to the table here. Got it. And then just one more. Is there any, floor on, the LAB stock price, or regardless of some larger shareholders get 1.111 shares per the share? There's no such provisions in the agreement. Got it. Thank you. I should add, just, I shouldn't leave that hanging there. We think that the combination of the two technology, of the two companies and the set of technologies and the leadership create tremendous value to both sets of investors. All right, thank you. Our next question will come from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord. Your line is open. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the deal, Michael, Adam, and Jeff. Congratulations. So I want to ask about the synergies one more time. I know you're not breaking those out, but it does seem pretty large compared to the $185 million revenue base. I guess, maybe, Michael or Jeff, can you just talk about why you're confident you can kind of hit that? How much of that is kind of deal related and maybe like SBS related, because that's not totally related to the deal at all. Thanks. T hank you, Kyle. We are truly excited about the deal. The way to look at it is that the combined OpEx of the two companies on the current run rate is $250 million. So, yes, the $80 million is a large number, but huge opportunity ahead here. So in the context of the 250, it doesn't seem as daunting. I'll let Jeff pipe in with like one level deeper. W hat I would remind the listeners to is that we've been on this journey over the last six quarters when we started off and did a PIPE in what was Fluidigm, where we had done a lean transformation, greatly reduced OpEx, improved gross margins, and are now back to growth. I really believe it's a recipe we can follow again here with what we've learned, and of course, incorporate all the valuable learnings from the SomaLogic team on how to get into translational research inside pharma. And I now hand it over to Jeff to sort of maybe the next layer of details on the $80 million. Yeah. Look, look, Kyle, it's a great question and certainly something we've thought a lot about throughout this process. I think the perspective here is if you... I think we all know this, right? If you think about the last several years, right, when capital flowed freely and companies in our space and frankly, even outside our space, it was more about making investments at all costs or investing growth at all costs, right? And so I think the thesis has changed significantly, and there's a real opportunity here to be very disciplined in an approach that creates scale out of a combined organization. And frankly, we wouldn't have been able to do on a standalone basis, either one of our companies. So there, there's a real opportunity here for scale. And like I said, I don't want to be cagey here. It's very early, but when you think about the $80 million relative to a starting point of $250 million, definitely achievable, particularly given some of the commonalities, right? The core operating infrastructure, like I said, the public company type of infrastructure, and then just beginning to take a much more disciplined, selective approach with the incremental investments we're making across the company. So yeah, it seems like a big number, but it, it's achievable just relative to the starting point and relative to the thesis that, we're trying to build here a scaled, profitable company. In 2026, if we're at a $300 million revenue run rate and still running at $250 million, we haven't achieved that objective. Okay, that was great. Thanks so much, guys. And then maybe one, just thinking about the business, kind of combined going forward. For Michael, could you talk about what this means for the Olink agreements as an OEM vendor for that signature PCR platform? And then for Adam, just given that, Standard has this genomic side, could you possibly move some of the scan from the Agilent microarray to the Standard Biomark X9 in addition to the Illumina NGS? ... Yes, and that's a very high level of details here. I, as I started out by saying, we believe SomaScan is really uniquely positioned in the comprehensive proteomics, like the very high plex, with its advantage of creating signatures that predict outcome. And as I said, we have talked to many customers that use both Olink and SomaLogic. The Olink has a low and mid-plex solution for which we are an OEM supplier. And we certainly hope nothing changes that agreement. We have a very strong relationship with the Olink team. I definitely believe the Olink team are very happy with the partnership and how we have improved the quality and predictability of delivery here. So we see it really as two very different ends. And I won't comment on any long-term R&D plans yet. Still too early to speculate. Okay, that was it. If I could just ask one more before I hop off. O bviously, one proprietary aspect of SomaLogic is the aptamers that's quite different from the antibodies that others offer. There's sort of like synergies on, in areas where antibodies could be used. How are you thinking about using those possibly for, like, spatial or other areas of the standard business? And then, like, Michael, what are your thoughts on diagnostics and some of the SomaScan tests that were once kind of, I guess, emphasized, maybe tossed aside a little bit in 2023, under diagnostics and clinical wasn't really part of Standard's plans, like in the near to medium term. But how does this combined company outlook impact or influence that new kind of perspective on diagnostics? Yeah. So, like, I think for all of our technologies, it's still way too early to talk about agnostic. We're really focused on translational research, help pharma find and develop new drugs faster. That is truly the prize that we are looking at. I think there's a really, really interesting parallel between our mass cytometry technology and the SomaLogic technology. So in mass cytometry, we solved the fundamental problem of how to do multiplex fluorescence. With fluorescent dyes, you can only use a few at a time, and then, or everything begins to blend together as a mush, and you get low quality. We solved that with mass by using mass tags. It has scared people because it's different, but it basically gives you 50 digital colors. We have made great strides in explaining that value prop, that because it's different doesn't mean it's harder. In fact, it's easier. For antibodies versus SOMAmers, again, I view the world as an expanding pie here. There are certain things antibodies are really good for, and there are certain things that SOMAmers are really good for, and that's where we're gonna focus all our emphasis. And again, this comprehensive coverage, the most comprehensive coverage of the protein space with very low CVs to create signatures, is really unique, in particular, for creating signatures that can be used as biomarkers for patient stratification. And we're gonna have a lot of focus on that area going forward. So really see both antibodies and SomaScan as like toolboxes, different tools in the toolbox in life sciences, and really believe that both are gonna coexist. Obviously, we will, we, we'll try to make the SOMAmers work in our spatial biology and flow cytometry platform. But we're not counting on that at all. But clearly, we're gonna go take a really hard look at that. All right. That was perfect. Thanks so much, guys. I appreciate the time. As a reminder, that is star one to ask a question. All right, and at this time, there are no further questions in the queue. I got a note here that then Brandon was in the queue, but, No, Kyle. Okay. No, I think we're good. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Okay, so I would like to turn the call back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks. No, I'll just close by saying, thank you all for attending today's call. We look forward to following up all with you later today and over the next couple of days to dive into this story. We are incredibly excited for the opportunity ahead here for the combined company, and thank you for your attendance and questions today. The conference has now concluded. Thank you very much for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your line at this time.