Welcome to the MaxCyte First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Erik Abdow, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's call. From MaxCyte, we have Maher Masoud, President and Chief Executive, and Douglas Swirsky, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, MaxCyte results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2024. A copy of the press release on the company's website. To begin, I need to read the following. Statements or comments on this call may be statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results, or performance are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail on our SEC filings. The company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, future events or otherwise. With that, I will turn this to Maher. Thank you, Erik. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining MaxCyte's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. For $11.3 million of total revenue in the first quarter, including $8.2 million of SPL program-related revenue. Our results in our core business, which with our plan along with SPL program-related revenue, above our expectations. We're also thrilled with our progress in signing new SPLs, with four in 2024, including Be Biopharma, most recently. Following the first quarter, we remain on track for the year and are confident in the trajectory of the overall business. The operating environment has remained largely unchanged from our last earnings call. Environment has improved as evidenced by the capital markets activity first quarter. Prospective SPL partners raised capital in recent months. Over the past couple of years, we saw cell therapy programs and deprioritized other programs, resulting in variable levels of demand for our instruments and PAs in 2023. Though there are fewer new cell therapy programs throughout the industry today due to deprioritization, we believe this has resulted in an industry focus on assets that are further along, or have a higher probability of making it to the clinic. Additionally, MaxCyte's late-stage preclinical and early-stage clinical customers who have their programs over the past continue to utilize our platform for their lead. We are becoming increasingly optimistic on the market outlook for cell therapy developers and continue to assess industry demand levels based on direct conversations with our existing and... The time frame from when a customer secures funding to when they make research and clinical spending decisions can take time, and our business is not direct funding in any given quarter. General trends in the non-viral cell therapy market continue to bode well for the use of our ExPERT platform. More complex cell therapies across a variety of different indications with multiple engineering steps, which MaxCyte's electroporation technology is well equipped to deliver. Looking specifically at the quarter, the core business performed as expected across cell therapy and drug discovery. We saw a return to growth in our cell therapy business compared to last, and we're relatively flat in drug discovery revenue compared to last year. Doug will cover that in more detail, but I will point out that our installed base of instruments expanded to 708 as of March first. We expanded our pipeline instrument opportunities in the first quarter and are positioned for the remainder of the year. On PAs, revenue is up from the comparable prior year period, and especially from the fourth quarter of 2023. Growth that we expect broad-based demand across the customer base, and we were very encouraged in our PA revenue compared to 2023. Depending upon the activity level of customers, stage of development programs, and desired inventory levels, customers, all of which can result in demand that can be lumpy from one quarter to-- Turning to our SPL, recognized $3.2 million of SPL in the first quarter of 2024. This included a milestone that we did not originally forecast for 2024. Guidance for this milestone, which Doug will address in more detail. Non-forecasted regulatory pivotal milestone underlies the strength of our business model. As our therapeutic development customers move further into the position to receive revenue on occasion, sooner than anticipated. So far in 2024, we have signed, including Be Biopharma, Wugen, Imugene, and Lion TCR. Our most recently signed SPL that we announced in April, Be Biopharma, is developing a proprietary class of engineered B-cell medicines, BeCMs, specific to a certain disease. MaxCyte's platform will support the development programs to address unmet needs of patients with genetic diseases. The addition of Be Biopharma, the total number of SPLs in our portfolio to 27, which further showcases our position as a partner of choice with technology capability across multiple cell types to cell engineering. We remain excited about the commercial. CASGEVY has been approved for certain indications in the United States, Great Britain, European Union, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, with a new drug submission that has been accepted for priority review by Health Canada. As stated on our last earnings call, MaxCyte will only recognize revenue once a patient has been infused, which can take a number of months from the time a patient enrolls in the therapy program. We do not have sufficient visibility into the timing of patient dosing, and therefore, continue to exclude any CASGEVY-related commercial milestone revenue in our updated outlook for SPL-related revenue. We will provide updates on CASGEVY as they come from Vertex. Our current and prospective client relationships we have fostered are truly unique and reflective of our platform's value proposition. At MaxCyte, we pride ourselves not only on our proven electroporation technology, but the support that we provide. We are a presence in our customers' programs once they begin utilizing our platform. Our support system includes scientific customer service, our 36 trained field sales and application scientists who provide customer research and development support. As part of our SPL relationships, clients have our FDA Drug Master File, which can help with regulatory understanding of the manufacturing process required for approval and help de-risk one process for our SPL customers. The ExPERT platform and service that we offer to our clients is truly an all-encompassing solution. We believe our value proposition has resonated well with existing customers and will drive substantial opportunity for MaxCyte over the long. The course of 2024, we continue to deliberately evaluate and improve our business. We are focusing on our business to drive growth and to best support the programs of our clients. Notably, we have invested in additional customer support clients towards ensuring we are working with customers early in their development and providing them with the best know-how application in the process. In summary, we are very pleased with our first quarter results and believe that we remain in a strong position for our 2024 plan. As the cell therapy industry can move towards non-viral cell engineering approaches, I am very optimistic about the opportunity for MaxCyte, both in the near term and long term cell engineering platform. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Doug to discuss our financial results. Doug? Thanks, Maher. Total revenue in the first quarter of 2024 $0.6 million in the first quarter of 2023, representing an increase of 32%. We reported core revenue of $8.2 million in the comparable prior year quarter, representing an increase of 5%. This includes revenue from cell therapy customers of $6.4 million, which increased year-over-year, and revenue from drug discovery customers of $1.8 million, relatively flat year-over-year. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $1.9 million compared to $2.2 million in the first quarter of 2023. Lease revenue was $2.6 million compared to $2.8 million in the first quarter of 2023, and processing assembly, or PA revenue, was $3.4 million compared to $2.6 million in the first quarter of 2023. We are pleased with the strong performance of PAs, which was a little better than planned, which we will continue to monitor as we move through the course of the year. Please note, we have added an appendix slide to our corporate presentation with the new quarterly historical disclosure for these new metrics. We recognized $3.2 million of SPL program-related revenue in the first quarter of 2024, compared to $0.8 million of SPL program-related revenue in the first quarter of 2023. We exceeded our initial milestone expectations for the first quarter, driven by a regulatory pivotal milestone that we had not forecasted or anticipated in 2024 due to a positive timing development at one of our SPL customers. Moving down the P&L, gross margin was 88% in the first quarter of 2024, which was comparable to 88% in the first quarter of the prior year. Our margins came in lower than our historical levels over the past year when excluding SPL program-related revenue due to fixed overhead cost absorption. We believe that as we move closer towards previous revenue levels, margins should improve. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2024 were compared to $20.8 million in the first quarter of 2023. Overall increase in operating expenses primarily driven by growth in sales and marketing expenses, as well as R&D expenses, with specific investments in product development and application. Going forward, the company continues discipline, making moderated and targeted investments, including an innovative product development, and field emphasis and additional technological capabilities. The first quarter with combined total assets of $202.5 million and no debt. Moving to our full year 2024 guidance, maintaining our core revenue and raising our initial SPL program-related revenue guidance. Core revenue is expected to be flat to 5% growth 2023. As Maher discussed, our guidance assumes an operating environment for our customers that is unchanged from our prior earnings call. We now expect SPL program approximately $5 million in 2024. The increase in our SPL program-related outlook is a result of the unexpected Revocor pivotal milestone we achieved in the first quarter, which was previously not incorporated in 2024 guidance. As revenue from CASGEVY. Finally, MaxCyte has maintained a strong financial position and continues to expect to end 2024 with at least $175 million in cash, cash and investments, and no debt on our balance sheet. I would like to close by reiterating that we remain well on our 2024 and remain laser-focused on plan and balance sheet to deliver. Very excited by our progress so far in 2024. We look forward to supporting our customers in their development stages as they progress through the clinic, and remain committed to further expanding our SPL portfolio. We believe that we continue to be an enabler of non-viral cell therapies, and would like to thank our MaxCyte team for their continued hard work. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A. Operator? Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one, and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question of Dan Arias with Stifel, your line is now open. Good afternoon, guys. Or maybe just to talk about some of the components of the revenue, the revenue bullish for the quarter, PA revenues up to point. And so when we think about the rest of the year, and I hear you on your comments about there being lumpiness there, seems like what you record there on the PA side is largely a function of activity and just project intensity, which I think you alluded to. And so it feels like the funding environment. Is there a reason why PA revenue continue to just here across the year now that you're out of what is the choppiest quarter of the four? Yeah, absolutely, Dan. So, you know, obviously, thank you for the question. You know, obviously, we're still holding steady in terms of our guidance for the year. We're, you know, we're still cautiously optimistic in terms of the rest of the year. You know, we were not pleasantly surprised. It's what we expected coming out of last year. This is the end of last year, we saw some stabilization. We're seeing it continue through the year, and it's a mix. It's broad-based, right? It's not just, you know, related to necessarily one particular customer we see that increase. It's across the customer base we're seeing it, but we're not ready just yet to, you know, to in any way increase revenues throughout the year. We're still, you know, seeing how the year, you know, plays out, but we're cautiously optimistic. Anything else to add there? No, I mean, we're, you know, I think our PAs were this quarter, but I think it's too soon to tell whether some of that's timing or whether we're gonna have, you know, significantly higher than we were expecting, what we projected in our guidance, consensus, or at the levels we provided on the March call for core revenue. Makes perfect sense. And then maybe just higher level, talk to the tone from customers that you're hearing right now. I mean, it does feel a bit of a sigh of relief there, just activities have gone in the last couple of months. So to your point on project prioritizations, are you starting to see things open up a little bit that worked on, a couple of months or 6-12 months ago? And confidence industry is seeing what it needs in order to keep heading in this direction, in terms of increased activity pretty quickly. I think you hit it on the head there, is that we are seeing the activity start to come back, the come back. I think that's evident. You know, we signed four SPLs to start the year, but also markets. A few of our partners have raised a significant amount of money in the capital markets in Q1, and we're seeing that confidence come back in the market. You know, it's, you know, we think it's the early stages of that. You know, we're gonna keep our eye on it to make sure that it's not just a small little bump. But what I think, you know, working with our customers, even though they're still rationalizing what programs are taking into the clinic and how many programs they take into the clinic, we feel fairly confident that, you know, we're cautiously optimistic, as we keep saying, but it's, you know, the quarter is kind of, you know, a prognosticator of where we are and where the market, you know, is right now and how it seems to be coming back slowly. Okay. If I could just sneak one more nuance on to that last point. When you obviously, well, maybe not obviously, but I assume you're looking at who's raising money and who's not raising money. Is it fair to say that those that have maybe not had a public raise are showing signs of improvement as well, or does the line really get drawn, down, you know, down the middle, where you have some that have financed and therefore in a better position? Those are the companies that are starting to open up the spigot a little bit. Those that haven't done that, haven't really changed. Is that the dynamic? Thank you a bunch. I mean, yeah. No, I think, you know, first off, you know, on PAs, I think, you know, you don't need to see the, you know, things snap back to, you know, to strong levels for folks to start making investments and moving their programs forward. I think where the timing of capital raise, you know, is gonna impact things maybe on when an instrument purchase takes place. So I think those, you know, capital acquisitions are gonna be more tied to the fundraising than certainly the PA utilization is gonna be. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair. Your line is now open. Good afternoon. Just maybe following up on that, on that last point, you know, acknowledging that it takes some time for flow through from perhaps a successful capital raise to release of that into a budget. On the instrument side, you know, what are you starting to hear about from customers on a budget perspective? What does the, perhaps the instrument pipeline look like relative to maybe the end of last year? Just because obviously, while PAs were strong, instruments still a little bit softer in the quarter. Yeah. Matt, let me answer that, and then I'll let Doug also weigh in. So what we're seeing in terms of the instrument side really is the prognosticator for that, which is what we're seeing on the PA side, right? That's usually where you start to see the recoveries normally in PAs, because the CapEx spend is far less than you would do for the instrument side, for an instrument purchase. So we're hopeful and, you know, we're optimistic that what we're seeing on the PAs will lead later in the year to potentially, you know, where now customers are willing to, you know, make purchases that maybe last year they were not willing to make. But, you know, again, it's just that leading indicators is the PAs, but I'm not so sure we wanna, you know, at this point, you know, indicate that it's gonna lead to, you know, future instrument sales just because the PAs have increased. Doug, anything else to add there? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, and I think it's a good opportunity to remind everybody what makes up core revenue, right? There's the leases, which I think we've got good visibility in. It's very stable. We saw some growth there. And then there's the PAs, which are a lot tougher to project, and then instrument sales. Instrument sales really is a, you know, we build up our forecast based on, you know, very detailed, you know, information that comes from the commercial team on each opportunity, that they're looking at. And so when we think about the year, you know, certainly instrument revenue wasn't as strong as PAs was this quarter, but we still feel very good about the guidance we provided when we're looking specifically at the book of business that they're working through now on the instrument sales side. Okay, understood. Here you referenced in the prepared remarks, I think, adding additional SPL support for clients and, you know, starting to work with them earlier. I'm curious if this is sort of a step function change or new for you, or if there are particular services or capabilities that you're adding, in terms of how you interact with clients that are different from before, and, you know, whether this is something that's sort of been an ask from clients or more of a push from you, you know, either from a competitive or servicing standpoint. Yeah, absolutely. Great question. Actually, it's more of a push from internal rather than being asked from clients, you know, per se. We've always. If you look at what we do, we do a complete end-to-end solution, right? We, we provide support to our customers, from the time they first work with us all the way through the clinic. We wanna make sure, I think I said on the last call as well, that we're doubling down that support. So we're staying ahead of the competition, and we're providing support now with better communication, both electronic communication as well as face-to-face communication. So we're building out systems to ensure that the support that we provide to our SPL partners, whether it's regulatory or quality or any potential issues that they have while they're in a clinical development, even potential commercial development, we stay ahead of it, and the turnaround time is even faster than before. So we're ensuring that what we've done in the past, we're doing even more so of it, and really coming of age with where the industry is going, where we wanna make sure, you know, as these therapies need to make it to the clinic faster and make it to patients faster, that we de-risk that step where they're working with us. We're investing extra resources and really, you know, capabilities in that area to make sure we stay ahead of the competition and keep up and align our interests with our partners. All right. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jacob Johnson with Stephens. Your line is now open. Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, congrats on the quarter. You guys called out kind of a pivotal trial surprise in the quarter. I'm just curious if this relates to a new or an existing therapy. I think program revenues don't include CASGEVY, so I'm curious if it's a new customer. And maybe I'll dovetail that into, you know, looking at your chart on potential commercial approvals, it looks like you're not really expecting anything until 2026. I'm just curious if this kind of surprise pivotal changes your thinking about that. Thank you. Yeah, Jacob, thanks. I'll take that. It doesn't quite change our thinking on that. Obviously, you know, we can't comment in terms of what customer it is or, you know, why it happened sooner than it should be, you know, for confidentiality reasons with our partners. However, you know, as you know, as I mentioned, it does speak to our business model in the sense of there are going to be times where some of our current partners that have signed licenses with us are gonna reach milestones sooner than they even anticipated or that we anticipated, and we'll get the benefit of that. And that's what happened here. I wouldn't change the 2026 or 2027 timeline for next generating events for us. We're still, you know, that's where you see, you know, we're confident with that. But this is a positive. This speaks to exactly why we have these licenses, why we provide the support, and what I've mentioned in the past, which is these are not like antibody therapies. There's a higher potential that you're gonna have potential clinical efficacy earlier than anticipated by our partners, which will benefit us, and benefit patients and our partners as well. Does that answer your question, Jacob? Yeah, yeah, that, that, that's helpful. Thanks, Maher. And maybe, Dan asked you about, you know, customers spending money who received funding versus maybe those who hadn't. I'm just curious, maybe looking at dicing it a different way, just curious if there's any difference in PA demand, if it's maybe more skewed to customers in the clinic or if you did have some maybe preclinical or earlier-- demand from preclinical or earlier-stage customers as well. Yeah. I'll answer that, and if Doug wants to weigh in. It's, I think it's spread across. It's not just clinical, it's clinical and preclinical demand, as well as research. We're seeing that across the board, which is, you know, what we wanna see. We wanna see the healthy business both for the SPLs and the non-SPL customers, and that's what we saw sequentially from this quarter to last quarter. So it's a healthy demand across the board, Jacob. Got it. Thanks for taking the question, guys. Okay. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now open. Hi, guys. This is Jack on for Matt. Congrats on a good readout. We just have one question: So after, like, a flurry of new SPL agreements at the start of the year, could you just give us an update on that pipeline and whether you expect additional agreements this year? Thanks. Thanks, Jack. I can speak to that, and then, Doug, feel free to speak to that as well. Obviously, very healthy start to the year. We're still, you know, what we've mentioned in the past, we're comfortable with the three-five, you know, per year. The funnel and the pipeline itself for future SPLs is healthy. You know, we're confident that we can continue to have those three-five. I won't comment on whether we're gonna sign another one this year just yet. You know, obviously, for obvious reasons, as I mentioned last time, sometimes you see a bolus of SPLs signed at any one particular time. The reason being is we're oftentimes working in research, working with these customers, really in the benches with them, supporting them, and then from there, it ends up being a negotiation a little bit thereafter, where now we're negotiating, you know, licenses where they're about to enter into the clinic. So sometimes you might have it, where you have three or four around the same time we've been working with in the past 12 months, 18 months, that are about to sign licenses. You know, so that's why you see a bolus. But, you know, we're completely confident at three to five moving forward. Won't speculate as to whether we'll sign another one, and then the funnel itself is healthy, and that's why we're confident at three to five moving forward as well. Jack, did that answer your question? Yeah, it was helpful. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vivian with BTIG. Your line is now open. Hey, guys, this is Vivian on for Mark. Thanks for taking the question. So just a quick one on VLX adoption. It sounds like that might be more of a lagging indicator relative to PAs, but just any new appetite or early feedback to report there? Thanks. Yeah, thanks for the question. On the VLX, in terms of, as I mentioned last time, we're still working with early adopters. We're taking a step back to ensure that we do this where we understand the true application needs for the VLX. I won't, you know, mention, for confidential reasons, the name of those early adopters, but it's just to ensure that we understand the space that we're entering into, where it's different than cell therapy. We're really trying to disrupt the industry here, and not just with from the VLX, but just in terms of, you know, production of proteins in a transient manner that has never at a scale that's never been done before. You know, so in terms of the PA usage for that, we haven't disclosed that. In terms of instrument sales, we haven't disclosed that. But we're still working with early adopters to truly understand the space, and then, you know, launch in a manner that allows us to have true market adoption for the VLX and the applications around the VLX as well. But we have not disclosed anything specifically there. Perfect. Understood. And then just one follow-up. You guys have a pretty healthy balance sheet. Just any tuck-in acquisitions or tech that you might look to evaluate, particularly for upstream or downstream steps, you know, kind of like cell enrichment or harvesting? Just any conversations going on there? Thanks. We have an active corporate development effort. Clearly, you know, we're not in a position to talk about specific targets we're looking at. I think, you know, the types of things you mentioned are sort of in the realm of opportunities we would look at. But we've got, you know, healthy effort just to balance out our initiatives to target both, you know, inorganic and organic growth opportunities. So this is one of the use of proceeds when we went public, so we're mindful that that's part of the reason why we have the healthy balance sheet that we do. And our goal is to, you know, look closely at things, but be very prudent, you know, and I think it's healthy that we're evaluating things. It's also very good that we've been very disciplined and not pulling the trigger on things that either, you know, we didn't think, you know, were valued correctly or just weren't the right fit. Awesome. Thanks for taking the question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jacqueline Kisa with TD Cowen. Your line is now open. Hi, this is Jacqueline Kisa, on for Steven Mah. Thanks so much for taking the questions. Just to start off, with regards to your new and ongoing BD discussions for new SPLs, are you seeing these discussions weighted more towards emerging biotechs or large pharma? Is there like a noticeable mix or anything? Yeah. Hi, Jacqueline. Thank you for the question. I'll take that. It's more towards--i t's not large pharma, it's more towards, I'd say, you know, smaller to mid-size biotechs. And it's a mix of what we're seeing there. Obviously, as the industry keeps changing and evolving and as, you know, cell therapies have greater adoption, we could see that mix begin to change as well, whether it's from early to mid-size to larger biotechs. It's a good mix. I mean, it's a good question. I think you're seeing it across the board. When I say large pharma, we don't have, you know, that's not our focus right now. It's more on the support that's needed for that smaller to mid to even larger-sized biotechs. Right. Great. Thank you. And then if you look across the clinical programs you're supporting, can you speak to the diversity of the cell types and molecules that your partners are using, to, you know, create their cell-based therapies? And, has this trended over the past 12 months? And if you're willing to call out any emerging trends, with regards to that, that would be really cool, too. Yeah. Absolutely, Jacqueline. So actually, that's the beauty of our support and what we do truly best, is it's emerging across cell therapies, whether it's T-cells or NK cells, whether it's TILs or TCRs, you know, we're working with all of them. And obviously, for the indications, it's increasing where you went from blood cancers to solid tumors, which is where we're, you know, having a presence in. And then you're seeing the space really get more complex, with the companies we're working with, and truly begin to go into other indications. You're seeing, you know, autoimmune diseases begin to really take shape here, and that's where it seems the space is lending itself. And we're working with a few of our partners on autoimmune disorders, you know, cell therapies, you know, for autoimmune diseases, rare diseases. So it's an entire breadth, and that's what we anticipate. We anticipate the field continuing to evolve, continuing to mature, and really get more complex. And that's what we've built the last, you know, 15, 20 years, to ensure that we're ahead of the competition and working with everyone, regardless of the cell type, regardless of the modality and indication. So I hope that answers your question, Jacqueline. No, that's great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm currently showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to Maher Masoud for closing remarks. Yeah. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining today's call. I look forward, and we look forward to speaking with all of you again on our next earnings call in a few months. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.