Good day. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the NanoString Q3 2021 operating results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Doug Farrell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Joining me on the call today is Brad Gray, our President and CEO, and Tom Bailey, our CFO. Earlier today, we released our financial results for the Q3 of 2021. During this call, we may make statements that are forward-looking, including statements about financial projections, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, future business growth, trends and related factors, prospects for expanding and penetrating our addressable markets, our strategic focus and objectives, and the development status and anticipated success of recent and planned product launches. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, including the risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our SEC filings. Our results may differ materially from those projected, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Later in the call, Tom will be discussing our financial results and 2021 guidance that we've prepared as a supplement to GAAP financial measures, selected non-GAAP adjusted measures, the calculation of which are described in detail in our press release. Throughout this call, all financial measures will be GAAP unless otherwise noted. You can find reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures as well as the description, limitations and rationale for using such measures in NanoString's press releases. To aid analysts and investors in building their models, we have posted exhibits under the Financial Information tab of our Investor Relations homepage that include a presentation of our non-GAAP or adjusted measures and selected other financial data for the Q3 of 2021, as well as for each quarter of the full year 2020. I'd like to remind everyone that we'll be participating in the JPMorgan virtual healthcare conference next week. We look forward to having the opportunity to speak with many of you there. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Brad. Thanks, Doug. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Spatial biology is having a banner year, and NanoString continues to extend its lead in this exciting market. During the Q3, we posted record genomics revenue as our whole transcriptome assays using next generation sequencing readout appealed to customers across both discovery and translational research. Earlier today, we unveiled our new CosMx Spatial Molecular Imager by publicly releasing a data set and manuscript that describe the power of this platform to image the expression of almost a thousand genes in biobank samples stored as formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue. Meanwhile, our nCounter franchise posted strong instrument placements while consumable revenue continued to be impacted by residual effects of the pandemic. Let me now review progress towards our 2021 strategic objectives before handing over the call to Tom Bailey to review our results and outlook. Our first strategic objective for 2021 is to extend our lead in spatial biology through the broad adoption of the GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler. Three quarters through the year, our spatial biology business is right on track, with the GeoMx franchise performance trending towards the top end of our guidance range for both instrument orders and overall GeoMx revenue. During the Q3, GeoMx instrument orders grew 40% and now are on track for the full year GeoMx instrument order growth of about 50% compared to 2020. Customer interest in using next generation sequencing as a readout for GeoMx experiments is a key growth catalyst, and about 75% of GeoMx instruments ordered during the Q3 were purchased for use with NGS readout. GeoMx consumables pull-through remains strong at an annualized rate of about $95,000 per system. Our GeoMx Whole Transcriptome Atlas, or WTA assays, which were introduced during the H1 of the year, leverage NGS readouts and are the first system-wide products that we've ever offered. In Q3, our assays for NGS readout accounted for about 75% of genomics consumable orders, as revenue from our GeoMx Human Whole Transcriptome Atlas increased 70% sequentially from the Q2. Repeat orders were strong, with about half of our WTA customers already placing follow-up orders. NanoString has a strong history of serving translational researchers who are focused on disease research, and our whole transcriptome assay is really no exception. In fact, about half of the translational researchers who originally adopted genomics to use with protein assays using nCounter readout are now also using Whole Transcriptome Atlas assays with NGS readout. The WTA assays are also getting traction in the large market for basic discovery research, helping us to expand beyond the translational research market that has historically represented our core focus. Mice are the most important model system for discovery research, and researchers with interests as diverse as immunology, neuroscience, infectious disease, and developmental biology have embraced our mouse Whole Transcriptome Assay. In the Q3, about 20% of our genomics instrument orders came from customers who adopted DSP specifically for mouse whole transcriptome research. We're also seeing strong leading indicators of demand from discovery researchers via our Technology Access Program, which delivered results from a record number of projects completed in the Q3 as we continue to work through a large backlog of projects that were committed earlier in the year. A full 90% of new projects were for NGS-based products, and mouse whole transcriptome assays accounted for about 25% of new projects. In October, we unveiled the first Spatial Organ Atlas, which includes whole transcriptome images of key functional tissue structures for five human organs, including the human brain, kidney, colon, pancreas, and lymph nodes, as well as the mouse brain. Much like the Cancer Genome Atlas and the Human Cell Atlas efforts, we expect our organ atlas to become a reference database for spatial gene expression by organ, including both healthy and diseased tissue. We introduced the Spatial Organ Atlas during the American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG meeting last month, and have been taking it on a roadshow ever since. These data sets can be found on the Spatial Organ Atlas page of the GeoMx DSP section of our website, and interest has already driven a meaningful bump in website traffic and lead generation, as well as commitments from several external groups to extend the atlas to additional organ types. Overall, GeoMx continues to drive rapid growth of our leading spatial biology franchise, and we're excited by how quickly this opportunity is unfolding. Our second strategic objective for 2021 is to expand our spatial biology franchise with higher resolution offerings by advancing development of our Spatial Molecular Imager and seeding the market for the commercial launch that's planned for next year. Molecular imaging is shaping up to be an important new category in spatial biology. Imaging platforms measure expression of a targeted number of RNAs or proteins at the single-cell or sub-cell resolution. Our spatial molecular imager provides the perfect complement to whole transcriptome analysis using GeoMx DSP, a perspective held by numerous GeoMx customers who've already expressed interest in acquiring an SMI and further collaborated and corroborated by several recent customer surveys published by sell-side analysts. We are in an exciting period as we are beginning to reveal more details about our spatial molecular imager. Let me focus on three key developments outlined in our press release that we issued this morning. First, we've unveiled a brand name for our imager, which is CosMx SMI, chosen to provide a celestial complement to our GeoMx DSP brand. The CosMx brand is aspirational, captures the imagination, and invokes our mission to map the universe of biology. Second, we publicly released a high-resolution data set generated using the CosMx SMI, highlighting the unique performance characteristics that set CosMx apart from competing imagers and allow researchers to see for themselves the power of this new platform. This focused data set includes RNA expression, mapped at single and sub-cellular resolution within eight non-small cell lung cancer specimens. Two key attributes of this data set contrast with data released by others in the past. First, the CosMx SMI data set maps RNA from almost 1,000 genes, approximately twice the number of genes covered by competing platforms. Second, this was generated using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded, or FFPE, tissue samples. The compatibility of CosMx SMI with challenging FFPE samples sets it apart from competing imagers, allowing researchers to unlock value in archival samples, as well as to apply the platform to clinical samples. The CosMx SMI data set can be accessed through NanoString's website and analyzed by the research community. The complete data set, consisting of over 800,000 single cells, 260 million transcripts, and a spatially resolved cell type map of non-small cell lung cancer tissue across 150 sq mm. The data can be explored through an interactive viewer and downloaded for analysis using open-source or third-party informatics packages. We had a sneak peek at early feedback from luminaries in the field, as the data prior to release has been overwhelmingly positive, and we look forward to discussing it with the broader research community in the months ahead. Our third major revelation regarding CosMx SMI is the release of a manuscript providing details of the chemistry that powers the platform and the performance that it achieves. This manuscript, which can now be viewed in the online journal bioRxiv, will serve as a reference for customers considering a CosMx SMI purchase. It describes the performance of CosMx in FFPE tissue, including resolution, sensitivity, and reproducibility, as well as key applications of the platform, such as identifying cell types and measuring cell-to-cell interactions. In addition to providing details on the RNA expression capabilities of SMI, the preprint paper provides a teaser of CosMx protein capabilities, showing 81+ protein expression data in FFPE, further differentiating CosMx from competing molecular imagers powered by genomic chemistry, fluorescence, or mass spec. Together, the CosMx SMI and GeoMx DSP represent a compelling product suite that will span the continuum of applications in spatial biology. The next major event to highlight this portfolio will be our fourth annual Spatial Summit, which we will host on Monday, February 28th at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting in Orlando, Florida. This half-day session will provide more details on CosMx SMI and will showcase early work from outside groups coming out of our SMI technology access program. This session will be open to the investment community, and you do not need to be registered for AGBT to attend. We hope to see many of you there. Our third strategic objective is to return our nCounter business to the growth dynamics seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the Q3 our nCounter performance was mixed, with strong instrument sales offset by a slower than expected recovery in consumable sales. Our strong nCounter instrument sales demonstrate the continued demand for nCounter's unique combination of simplicity, power, and robustness. The sales of nCounter instruments during the quarter exceeded consensus estimates for instrument sales by 25% at roughly $6 million. Year-to-date, our instrument revenue is similar to the first three quarters of 2019, indicating that we are returning to pre-pandemic levels on the instrument side of our business. We continue to diversify our nCounter into new areas beyond oncology, as about half of our nCounter systems were sold for non-oncology applications in the Q3 i ncluding immunology and infectious disease. Meanwhile, the pace which our customers are publishing papers using nCounter has never been higher. Over the past 12 months, our customers have published more than 1,000 new nCounter papers, bringing the total publications enabled by our technologies to over 5,000 papers to date. Our nCounter franchise remains healthy and our customer base vibrant. That being said, slower than expected nCounter consumable sales during Q3 illustrate the lingering impact of COVID-19 on one particular segment of our nCounter customers. That is biopharma companies focused on oncology biomarker studies. An estimated 70% of nCounter users pursue oncology research, while about 25% of nCounters are owned by biopharma companies and CROs. These customers typically analyze samples that have been collected during clinical trials. As the COVID-19 pandemic began, oncology clinical trial enrollments slowed. The downstream consequence of this slowdown was lower volumes for biomarker discovery studies today, which translates into slower sales of nCounter oncology panels. Let me illustrate how this phenomenon impacted nCounter consumables in the Q3. During the Q3, sales to academic researchers returned to more than 90% of pre-pandemic levels in North America and to approximately 80% in both EMEA and APAC. In contrast, consumable utilization by biopharma companies remained deeply suppressed at about 60% of pre-pandemic levels. The specific nCounter consumables that were most impacted were our immuno-oncology panels that are used extensively in supporting clinical trials. Pharma pull-through has not improved thus far in Q4, and it's difficult to project when pharma biomarker studies will resume at full pace. On this basis, we expect the nCounter pull-through will remain below pre-pandemic averages in Q4, recovering further in 2022. To summarize, we continue to see healthy demand in spatial biology with solid momentum in translational research and increased penetration of the discovery market. Our CosMx SMI is on track to begin shipping in the H2 of 2022 and has demonstrated best-in-class RNA flex capability and unique compatibility with FFPE samples. Lastly, our nCounter business continues to generate strong instrument sales offset by slower recovery than we had previously anticipated on the consumable side of the business. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Tom to review the details of our operating results. Thanks, Brad, and thanks, all, for joining us today. For the Q3 of 2021, product and service revenue was $36.9 million at the middle of our Q3 guidance range, representing a year-over-year growth of 23%. Q3 genomics revenue was $13 million, up 47% as compared to Q3 2020 and at the high end of the guidance we provided in August. $8.5 million was from approximately 35 instrument ships, and $4.5 million was from consumable sales. Annualized genomics consumables pull-through was about $95,000 per installed system in Q3. nCounter delivered a solid quarter for instrument sales, with $6 million posted in Q3, 11% year-over-year growth and the second highest Q3 total ever for nCounter instrument sales. In contrast, nCounter consumables continued to be impacted by residual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Q3 nCounter consumables revenue was lower than expected, at $13.5 million for year-over-year growth of 10%, with nCounter utilization during the quarter impacted most materially in our pharmaceutical industry customers. Annualized consumables pull-through was about $53,000 in Q3. Service revenue was about $4.4 million for the quarter, representing 24% year-over-year growth, and was driven by GeoMx DSP TAP and increased service contract revenue from our growing instrument installed base. Turning to margins and expenses, I'll provide results on a non-GAAP or adjusted basis, which removes the impact of stock-based compensation, depreciation, and certain one-time items. Please refer to our press release as well as the exhibits we have posted to our investor relations webpage for detailed information on how our non-GAAP or adjusted measures are prepared. Q3 adjusted gross margin was 56%, consistent with our annual guidance range and about a 100 basis point improvement compared to Q3 of last year. The improvement was driven primarily by growth in genomics DSP revenue and was partially offset by additional investments made in our manufacturing capacity and increased costs associated with providing our TAP service. Adjusted R&D expense was $16.6 million, an increase of 31% year-over-year. R&D was higher compared to the prior year period, due primarily to increased personnel and product development costs related to our CosMx SMI development program. We expect R&D expense will increase through the balance of the year as CosMx SMI development continues. Adjusted SG&A expense was $23.8 million, an increase of 43% year-over-year. The Q3 SG&A expense increase was due primarily to investments made in our spatial biology-related commercial initiatives, including investments to expand our sales force and our service and customer support groups, as well as costs related to licensing and implementation of new information technology solutions to support our commercial operations and finance functions. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $19.7 million, and we exited the quarter with approximately $370 million of cash equivalents and short-term investments. Turning to guidance, three quarters through 2021, the full year outlooks for our genomics and nCounter franchises have trended in different directions. Our spatial biology franchise continues to be our major growth driver, with genomics system orders and revenue trending towards the top end of our guidance range. We now expect full year 2021 genomics revenue will be in the range $49 million-$50 million, driven by instrument order growth of approximately 50% for the full year at the upper end of our annual guidance range. Our updated annual nCounter revenue guidance range of $91 million-$94 million is based on a continued expectation of instrument sales at approximately pre-pandemic levels and an updated 2021 full year consumables pull-through expectation of approximately $55,000 per installed system. Our updated nCounter pull-through guidance range reflects the potential impact of residual pandemic-related issues on consumables utilization, similar to what was observed in Q3. At this time, we believe these residual issues could continue to impact nCounter consumables pull-through into 2022. We will offer further updates when we report fourth quarter results and provide our 2022 outlook in March. For Q4, we expect product and service revenue to be in the range of $38 million-$42 million, representing year-over-year growth of 6%-18%. This range includes $15 million-$16 million of genomics revenue, driven by what we expect will be about 40 new genomics instrument orders in Q4. Our guidance range also includes $23 million-$26 million of nCounter revenue, with annualized nCounter consumables pull-through in Q4 expected to be approximately $55,000-$60,000 per installed system. Now I'll turn the call back over to Brad for our closing comments. Thanks, Tom. In closing, our spatial biology franchise is having a banner year as we continue to extend our lead in this dynamic market and fulfill our mission to map the universe of biology. GeoMx DSP instrument orders are growing 50% year-on-year, and we're successfully expanding beyond our core strength in translational research and into basic discovery. As we reveal more details about our CosMx Spatial Molecular Imager, its market-leading flex and unique FFPE sample compatibility are capturing the attention of the research community. Together, GeoMx and CosMx create the most compelling product suite in spatial biology and promise to drive strong top line growth for years to come. With that, we'd like to open up the line for your questions. Thank you. At this time, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Again, that is star one to ask a question. To withdraw the question, just press the pound key. Your first question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson from JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Hi, good afternoon. This is Julia on for Tycho. Maybe starting with nCounter. I know you're not expecting any meaningful recovery in your Q4 guidance, but like so far into Q4, what have you observed in terms of trial activities, just to give us a sense? Just to confirm that the entire weakness in Q4 is due to pandemic impact, meaning there is no incremental impact from the NGS read out for genomics. Thank you. Thank you, Julia, for the question. You were coming through a little garbled, so I'm just gonna repeat back what I heard. I think you asked about whether we have seen any recovery so far in Q4 for our nCounter consumable demand and clinical trial activities from biopharma, and whether, how we're confident that this is a pandemic-related impact rather than something competitive. First, you know, clinical trial activity truly did slow down during the pandemic. I know one research study that we saw talked about 1,000 trials plus being slowed or paused in enrollment during the pandemic. The downstream effect of that, of course, is fewer biopsy samples collected and fewer biomarker studies being run now in 2021. We have not seen a change to the actual number of biomarker studies that are being run in Q4 so far, but we do expect clinical activity to start picking up. Remember, biomarker work is kind of a downstream lagging indicator of clinical trial activity. You know, people who haven't followed the company too long may not appreciate the extent to which our biopharma customers are an important driver of consumable pull-through. There have been many quarters over time where that 25% of our customer base from nCounter has accounted for about 40% of our pull-through. It's not to say that our biopharma customers are not doing a lot of business still with us. In fact, their pull-through on average during the Q3 was $70,000 per system higher than our overall average. Given that in a typical pre-pandemic quarter, they may have done $100,000-$115,000 of average consumable pull-through, even that $70,000 per system annualized in the Q3 represents, you know, not quite a full recovery to their pre-pandemic levels. That really was, we believe, the primary driver of the pull-through drop in Q3. Now, how do we know it's not a competitive issue? Well, for one, you know, we continue to place a large number of nCounter systems. In fact, the Q3 of 2021 was the second highest Q3 instrument demand for nCounter ever. Two is, you know, there hasn't been any meaningful change in RNA-seq pricing or offerings out there in recent timeframes. We do not believe anything about the competitive dynamic has changed, that it really is, we believe, related to clinical trial activity. Got it. That's super helpful. On SMI, could you guys give more color on the current TAP program order book? You know, how many projects you're working on and what the funnel looks like? With you know, the release of the first public data set and you know, the manu scripts, are you expecting to see any significant uptick going forward? Have you got any customer feedback so far that may suggest a you know, to influence maybe for a full launch or even in Q2 of next year, for launch in the H2 of next year? Thank you for the question, Julia. Again, you were a bit garbled, but I think you were asking overall about SMI TAP order book and some of the path from now until full commercial launch. As we've said in past calls, the demand for SMI, CosMx SMI now, TAP projects has exceeded our capacity to manage those projects. You know, we've so far signed up between 10 and 20 projects. We expect to end the year with more than 20 projects in motion, and that really is the entire capacity that we have. Now some of those projects are beginning to yield results. We have a few posters being presented this week at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer meeting. We had some on the books for the AMP meeting that was scheduled for next week. Of course, we'll have a lot to show at the AGBT meeting in February. We're really excited to get more information out there. In terms of what's left for us to do between now and the commercial shipments in the H2, it's really taking the chemistry that we've described now in the paper and wrapping a bulletproof instrument and automation system around that chemistry, as well as the software tools that are required to process and visualize and get insights from the tremendously large data sets that this instrument can produce. Really it's instrumentation and software. We look forward to, you know, having a beta program, where we place some instruments at customer sites in the H1 of next year and then beginning shipping full commercial systems in the H2. Great. Thanks for the color. I'll let others jump in. Do we have our next question, operator? Yes, your next question comes from the line of Dan Brennan from Cowen. Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. Just on genomics, Brad, starting there, you know, you raised the order out to 50%. Orders were a bit stronger than we expected here. I know you gave some color in the prepared remarks, maybe just a little color on who's ordering. T hen, B, as we look at our model for 2022, you know, we've got 20% increase in placements in genomics. I'm just wondering, with the strength of this order book, any way to think through, like, how the early look is for 2022 in terms of a placement opportunity. You know, related to that, like, are you guided in terms of the placement, like, rate that you could achieve? I know early on you guys wanted to delight customers, you were limited. Maybe a multi-part question. You know, who's ordering and kind of any early color on 2022. Thank you. Thanks for the question, Dan. Genomics, as you said, the genomics order book has been strong. We, you know, hovered at about 30 instruments per quarter for a few quarters, and we broke through in Q3 to 35, and we expect to deliver about 40 in the Q4 This, you know, wave of new orders is really driven by the Whole Transcriptome Atlas and the NGS readout capability, which together are driving, you know, 75% of new instrument placements. You know, academic customers who span translational biology and now discovery biology represent the largest group, the vast majority of new instrument orders. The Mouse Whole Transcriptome Atlas, you know, motivated about 20% or 25% of new orders in the Q3, that is truly a pure discovery set of customers. We're delighted with the growing demand for the instruments. You know, in terms of 2022 expectations, you know, this year we will have grown 50% in terms of total instrument orders. Of course, we'll enter the year with a much stronger base. You know, we're comfortable with where the three models are now at 20%. You know, there is potential upside to that. You know, we would encourage you to, you know, kind of keep the models in place for now. Of course, we'll be providing guidance in the February timeframe. In terms of whether there's anything that's gating our ability to fill orders, the answer right now is no. I mean, we have the inventory to ship instruments. We have had no supply chain challenges. That being said, we are with the ongoing pandemic precautions that are being taken at many customer sites. We are a little slow to bring some sites up. It does take a while for us to get those instruments installed and trained, sometimes as much as a couple or three months, to get through all of that work while still, you know, respecting the protocols that many of our customers have in place for having, you know, NanoString employees on site. There's really nothing in terms of our own human capital or our supply chain that's limiting our ability to fulfill genomics demand at this time. Great. Thank you. Maybe the follow-up, kind of a two-parter. One related to the competitive landscape. Obviously, it looks like you guys are, you know, achieving some really strong growth. Just wondering kind of what you're seeing on the front line there in terms of competition. B, you mentioned, you know, supply chain, that's been a concern. You guys are kind of towards the tail end of the reporting season, but was there any impact at all that you had on supply chain issues, either in the quarter or it's kind of baked into your guidance? Thanks. Thanks, Dan. The second question first, no issues from a supply chain perspective that impacted us during the quarter. We do not foresee any limitations on our ability to fulfill demand based on the supply chain. The competitive landscape, you know, I think we feel increasingly confident in our competitive position in spatial biology. You know, within translational research, we remain, I think, the leader in with genomics, with it not only its FFPE compatibility, but its automation, its ability to process large numbers of samples in short periods of time, the ability to focus the power of the system on regions of the tissue that translational researchers are focused on, like the tissue microenvironment, and of course, our distinctive protein capability, which many translational researchers appreciate. Despite the fact that there is increasing competition out there who have FFPE compatible products, we really haven't seen any slowdown or competitive impact from that at this stage. On the imager side, I really think the announcements today position CosMx as the imager to beat. I think we have market-leading 1000-plex RNA capability. We've shown that we'll have 100-plex protein capability. We've shown that we're compatible with the most important tissue type, which is FFPE. I feel really good about our positioning relative to some of the other players who will be bringing imagers to market around the same time. Great. Guys, thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Dan Arias from Stifel. Your line is now open. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks. Brad, just to go back to the question on nCounter performance, I understand the point on business not looking like it's going to competitive platforms, but what about just work that's staying inside NanoString, but it's going to, you know, genomics discovery work that just happens to have an NGS back end? Is that something that could be in the mix? I think your question really, Dan, is asking are we cannibalizing nCounter consumable sales with genomics consumable sales? Is that your question, Dan? More or less, yes. Yeah. No, I don't think there's any reason to believe that's the case. You know, because I think we can see that because we know what our genomics pull-through is within our biopharma accounts. Biopharma accounts have been relatively slower adopters of the whole transcriptome atlas assay compared to academic researchers. You know, we have not. If we were seeing cannibalization, we'd be seeing that directly in terms of who was buying the whole transcriptome atlas. That's really not what we're seeing. In fact, you know, if you looked at genomics consumable pull-through within biopharma customers, right now it's less than we're seeing on the average academic account, which kind of corroborates the fact that biomarker research is a little slower than you'd expect it to be, and I think it disproves the hypothesis that we're seeing a cannibalization effect. Okay. Then maybe on the CosMx system and the data that you released today, I imagine you're hoping that that sort of steps up interest in the platform. I know commercialization is the H2 of 2022 thing, but when do you expect to start taking orders there as we sort of look ahead to getting the instrument in the market? Are there any production constraints that we should sort of think about when you get to the back half of the year? Not necessarily supply constraints, more just manufacturing. Sure. You know, we're following the genomics playbook in the launch of the CosMx. As you may recall, we had a really successful priority site took pre-orders ahead of the actual commercial shipments. That is something that we'll begin to initiate in the H1 of next year. You know, the data that we released, I expect will start to build the interest in that program, which, you know, we'll be unveiling probably around the AGBT timeframe next year. Certainly by the time we get to the H2 of next year and we're shipping our first wave of instruments, I do expect that there will be a very careful rollout of those instruments, just as we did with genomics, where, you know, we're of course gonna be having the first instruments rolling off a new manufacturing line. We'll be going through our first training procedures. We'll be going through our first, you know, customer experiences with the instruments in their hand at scale s o we will have a controlled release of the actual system. You know, and as a result, to the extent you're updating your 2022 models, I would not build much in the way of CosMx revenue into the H2 of 2022. You know, the pace at which we'll actually be placing instruments and revenue recognizing them will be controlled, and we'll have more to say about that in the February timeframe when we issue guidance. Okay, thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Catherine Schulte from Baird. Line's now open. Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. I guess first, maybe just sticking on CosMx, you know, what additional development or optimization is there left to do from a platform perspective before next year's launch? At the spatial summit at AGBT, should we expect to get pricing and pull-through estimates there? The work that we have left to do, Catherine, is really focused on the instrumentation and making it an overall bulletproof experience for customers. That means making it simple to use so that it works every time, and that the data that comes out has the software and informatics back in to allow you to draw insights out of the data you're generating. That's a good bit of engineering work, and it's a good bit of software work for us still to do b ut none of it is high risk in the sense that we have to do anything inventive. You know, it's just good, solid engineering work. In terms of what to expect at the spatial summit in the February timeframe at AGBT, yeah, I think we'll be focused primarily on continuing to educate the research customer community about the capabilities of the system. Expect to see some of our early technology access program customers present their data and their experience. Expect to learn a little bit more about the detailed specifications of the system. I don't know that we'll be focused on providing much in the way of economic or financial guidance to Wall Street at that time in terms of pricing or pull-through estimates. If you really wanna understand what the system can do and why we think it'll be the market leader in what will undoubtedly be a competitive imager marketplace, then I think you'll get a chance to really see that there. Okay, great. I think you added about 100 people to your commercial team this year, and I believe most of those are focused on genomics for now. Have you started to see the impact from that added headcount? You know, how do you think that expanded team sets you up for genomics growth in 2022? We have our hiring for our commercial expansion has gone well. The overall team today is about a third larger than it was at the beginning of the year, and we still have some positions still to fulfill. I think we've filled about 85% of our open commercial positions at this time. It takes time for new sales reps and to come up the curve and begin to contribute, so I would not say that the Q3 reflects any impact, any material impact from that sales force expansion yet. Most of the hiring was done in the Q2, and people really were kind of finding their sea legs during the Q3. I hope that the Q4 will provide an opportunity for some of those new professionals to and here at NanoString to show us what they can do and what they can deliver, and I think we've built, you know, some of that into the guidance that you heard Tom outline. Okay, great. Thank you. Again, as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes to the line of Tejas Savant from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. This is Edmund on for Tejas Savant. First on your WTA, the traction seems to be really strong for the human and both human and mouse WTA. Are you seeing customers transitioning from an initial pilot study phase to larger scale experiments? Given that there's been a couple of months with this product on the market, are you better able to quantify what you expect the utilization rates would be at a steady state? Thanks for the question, Edmund. You know, most customers are getting their first experience with the Whole Transcriptome Atlas right now as we speak. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, I think about half of our WTA customers have done their first experiment and now ordered their second batch of Whole Transcriptome Atlas assays. We are beginning to see a repeat utilization, but it's still pretty early in the adoption cycle. I know we have at least one example of a study planned at substantial scale on WTA, but I think there's a lot more of that still to come. I think there'll be more of that as time goes on. In terms of utilization rates, you know, we did raise, during our August call, our overall consumable guidance on the strength of the early demand for Whole Transcriptome Atlas assays. You know, our guidance right now is from $95,000-$100,000 per system per year in consumable utilization. That is, you know, up materially, both from where it was, this time last year and where it was in our initial guidance, that we initiated with, earlier this year. I would continue to use that number for now. I think that's a good number to model off of. Great. Thank you. In terms of your COVID recovery trends that you're seeing, I know you previously called out slower recovery in EU and APAC regions, particularly since you rely on distributors. Can you talk about some of the trends you're seeing from a geographic perspective? In terms of the sample collection and slower biomarker biopharma utilization of nCounter, is there a geographic discrepancy that you're seeing? Yeah. Our biopharma customers really operate as global entities, right? Swiss biopharma companies have huge U.S. operations, and U.S. biopharma companies have big European operations. We don't really see geographic trends within our biopharma customer segment. They tend to behave kind of as a global segment. Academics, though, do vary from region to region. I'd say the strongest performance amongst our academic researchers and the strongest recovery has been here in North America. Both Europe and Asia have improved since our August call. You know, we did see improvement in the academic markets ex-U.S. from Q2 to Q3, but really it was that biopharma group who has helped keep us from fully realizing a pre-pandemic recovery. Got it. On your academic end market, in light of the robust academic funding environment, are you expecting any sort of abnormal Q4 budget flush or seasonality of any sort? Well, we do see seasonality every Q4, as you know, people tend to use budget that they may have left over before the year-end deadline. We do not guide for a major budget flush in the Q4. You know, I'd say that our Q4 guidance assumes just a typical pattern of seasonality in the Q4, but nothing extraordinary. Got it. Great. Thank you very much. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Doug Farrell. Excellent. Thank you very much for joining us today. If you did miss any portion of the call, there will be a replay available in the next hour or two. To access that, please dial 800-585-8367. International callers, please use 416-621-4642. The conference ID number for both is the same, 2826727. Thank you again for your time, and have a great day. Goodbye. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.