MXCT

Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, Eric Abdill of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me on the call from MaxCyte, we have Maher Masoud, President and Chief Executive Officer, Parmeet Ahuja, Chief Financial Officer, and Sean Menarguez, Senior Director of Business Development. Earlier today, MaxCyte released financial results for the first quarter and on March 31st, 2026. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statements or comments made during this call may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statement 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 in our SEC filings.

Except as required by applicable law, the company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. With that, I will turn the call over to Maher.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining MaxCyte's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'd like to start by providing a brief overview of our financial performance in the first quarter. MaxCyte reported $9.7 million of total revenue, including $6.2 million of core revenue and $3.4 million of SPL program-related revenue, which consists of milestones and royalties. These revenue results met our expectations. As discussed on the last quarter's call, the first half of 2026 is a difficult year-over-year comparison, given two factors. Discontinued SPL programs, which resulted in GTx clinical leases that did not renew, and inventory management by our largest customer.

Elevated SPL program turnover was generally a part of a broader rationalization in ex vivo cell gene therapy, which has largely normalized as we exited 2025, with SPL partners increasingly focused on their lead programs. While the cell gene therapy ecosystem remains challenged for earlier-stage clinical programs, the environment is not worsening from what was a challenging funding backdrop in 2025. Within the ex vivo market, the number of companies financed remains stable, and we continue to see pockets of capital directed towards high-quality later-stage programs, including by Lyell, Allogene, and Vittoria, building on activity from Beam, Adicet, Wugen, and Inoka last year. Against this backdrop, we are placing instruments across all stages of development lifecycle and increasing our pipeline of future SPL partners.

Given our qualified instrument funnel, easier comps, and contribution from our new GTx product, we expect core revenue growth in the second half of 2026. MaxCyte reported $3.4 million from SPL milestones and royalties in the first quarter of 2026. This included $3 million of milestones driven by a clinical customer who began dosing patients in a registrational study in the first quarter. We are encouraged by the progress of this program, as well as the four additional programs that are expected to enter registrational trials in the next 18 months. We also recognized $0.4 million in royalty revenue during the first quarter. Vertex reported approximately $43 million in CASGEVY revenue for the first quarter of 2026.

On their earnings call, Vertex noted that more than 500 patients have initiated the CASGEVY treatment journey, with hundreds globally having completed cell collection, highlighting strong patient flow across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. Patients continue to advance from referral to cell collection and ultimately infusion, reinforcing the therapy's multi-billion-dollar commercial potential. Vertex also highlighted recent regulatory progress, including the submission of a supplemental BLA for CASGEVY in patients aged five to 11 with sickle cell disease or beta thalassemia. This filing has been granted a Commissioner's National Priority Voucher by the FDA, underscoring the significance of expanding access to younger patient populations. We remain encouraged by the continued growth in patient cell collections and infusions as Vertex scales CASGEVY commercially, with Vertex noting secured reimbursements, continued ATC network expansion, and a growing number of patients progressing through each stage of the treatment journey.

We remain confident in CASGEVY's long-term trajectory and transformative potential for patients around the globe. Following these first quarter results, we are reiterating our core revenue and SPL milestone and royalty revenue guidance for the full year 2026, which Parmeet will elaborate on. Turning to our SPL portfolio, we updated slide three in the SPL deck on the IR website, which now reflects 29 SPL partners. We did not see any changes in the number of SPL partners or the number of clinical programs supported since our last update in March. However, we did remove Catamaran Bio and Walking Fish Therapeutics from our list of SPL partners because both companies previously ceased operations. Among these 29 SPL partners, 30 programs are both in clinical and preclinical development, supporting diversified revenue streams across the medium and long term.

Of these, there are five clinical programs with the potential for commercial launches in 2027 and 2028, including four that could begin registrational studies over the next 18 months and one that dosed patients in a registrational study in the first quarter. These five include zugo-cel from CRISPR Therapeutics for B-cell malignancies, WU-CART-007 from Wugen for hematologic malignancies, azer-cel from Imugene for hematological diseases, and two programs from undisclosed SPL partners. Across our 12 SPL programs currently in the clinic, the total future pre-commercial loss opportunity is approximately $100 million. While any individual program carries clinical commercial risk, the multiple shots on goal we have across the same indications and across many different indications gives us a high probability of generating meaningful core revenue, regulatory milestones, and commercial royalties over time.

Speaking of MaxCyte's leadership in the gene editing field, the first CRISPR-Cas9 approved therapy was on the MaxCyte platform, and we believe the first base editing and prime editing approved therapies will be on the MaxCyte platform as well. On the product side, the commercial launch of ExPERT DTx is progressing well. Early traction has been encouraging, with adoption and discovery and early optimization workflows across ex vivo and in vivo CGT, as well as protein screening for biologics development. We are seeing initial pipeline build with leading academic centers, biotech, and large pharma. The DTx is fully compatible with the rest of our ExPERT platform. As customers adopt the instrument and discovery, they will have a seamless path to scale up on our STx and GTx instruments, pre cGMP manufacturing, and ultimately into an SPL agreement.

We expect DTx adoption to build through the balance of 2026, with increased adoption the second half of the year and into next year. Moving to SeQure, we are seeing steady progress as we build out the commercial engine of the business. We added new assay service agreements during the first quarter with customer engagement across both ex vivo and in vivo developers, including several programs approaching IND-enabling stages where off-target characterization is most critical. We continue to believe that SeQure assays will become part of the industry standard for off-target risk assessment in gene editing, and early 2026 customer feedback has reinforced that. In mid-April, the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, or CBER, issued a draft guidance titled Safety Assessment of Genome Editing in Human Gene Therapy Products Using next-generation sequencing.

The guidance focused specifically on the use of next-generation sequencing-based methods to evaluate off-target editing risks and provides ex vivo and in vivo developers with recommendations on sequencing strategies, sample selection, analysis parameters, and reporting, all of which are intended to support non-clinical data packages submitted with IND and BLA applications. We view this as a structural positive for SeQure, as sponsors are now expected to quantify editing outcomes with high sensitivity and utilize multiple complementary approaches. The guidance makes it clear that understanding editing outcomes is foundational to development. Overall, we believe the investments we are making across portfolio, such as the DTx and SeQure, have substantial commercial potential over time and are diversifying MaxCyte's revenue streams. To close, we entered 2026 with a fundamentally different spending profile than in prior years.

The full benefit of the 2025 restructuring cost efficiency actions is now flowing through our P&L, and the year-over-year reduction in operating expenses is clearly visible in our results. We do not expect a meaningful growth operating expenses from here, and we see a clear path to reducing cash burn further as revenue growth returns. Before wrapping up, today we announced the board's authorization of a $10 million share repurchase program. The decision to authorize a share repurchase underscores the board and management's confidence in MaxCyte's long-term value, strategic investments, and the business prospects, as well as the strength of our balance sheet. I want to take a step back and highlight the reason for this repurchase program at this time.

Over the last two years, we have taken steps to dramatically strengthen our financial position, acquire and build new products, and are now supporting multiple clinical programs that could be approved in the next 18-24 months. We have never been better positioned to grow with our end market. While we continue to invest in the execution of our business and expand our product portfolio, such execution will always be done with financial and commercial discipline. As such, we believe our shares will present a compelling investment opportunity, and we intend to execute the majority of our share repurchase program before the year-end. I will now turn the call over to Parmeet, who joins us today for his first earnings call as MaxCyte's Chief Financial Officer. Parmeet?

Thank you, Maher. I'm pleased to be joining you today for my first earnings call as MaxCyte's Chief Financial Officer. Total revenue in the first quarter of 2026 was $9.7 million, compared to $10.4 million in the first quarter of 2025, representing a 7% decrease. The decrease in total revenue was driven by a decline in core revenue, partially offset by growth in SPL program-related revenue. We reported core revenue of $6.2 million compared to $8.2 million in the comparable prior year quarter, representing a 25% decrease. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $1.3 million compared to $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2025.

License revenue was $2.1 million compared to $2.5 million, and processing assembly, or PA revenue, was $2.3 million compared to $3.9 million. As we expected in our guidance, core revenue was adversely impacted by inventory management at our largest SPL customer, as well as discontinued SPL programs. For the first quarter, 44% of core revenue was generated from SPL partners compared to 57% in the first quarter of 2025, which is reflective of the headwinds we experienced in the quarter related to SPL core revenue.

As Maher discussed, we are positive on the momentum and continued growth we are seeing in SeQure, with total revenue of $0.6 million in the first quarter, which includes both license and services revenue. SPL program related revenue in the first quarter was $3.4 million, including a regulatory milestone tied to a clinical customer that began dosing patients in a registrational study during the quarter, which Maher referenced. This compares to $2.1 million of SPL program related revenue in the first quarter of 2025. Moving down the P&L, gross margin was 84% in the first quarter of 2026, compared to 86% in the first quarter of 2025.

Excluding inventory provisions and SPL program related revenue, non-GAAP adjusted gross margin was 78% in the first quarter of 2026, compared to non-GAAP adjusted gross margin of 83% in the first quarter of 2025. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2026 were $14.3 million compared to $21.2 million in the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of approximately $7 million. This reduction reflects the restructuring and cost efficiency actions we took in 2025, which are now being realized across the P&L. We're entering 2026 with a fundamentally different cost structure than in prior years, and we do not expect to meaningfully grow operating expenses from this level. We ended the first quarter with combined total cash equivalents and investments of $147.7 million and no debt.

Our strong balance sheet positions us well moving forward, providing flexibility to continue to invest strategically for our business, our customers and our shareholders. Today, we disclose that MaxCyte's Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase program of up to $10 million. Under the program, the company may repurchase shares through open market purchases, privately negotiated transactions, block trades, or other means, subject to applicable securities laws. Continuing to our 2026 guidance, we are reiterating our 2026 outlook and expect total revenue to be in the range of $30 million-$32 million, consisting of $25 million-$27 million of core revenue and $5 million of SPL milestones and royalties. As Maher highlighted on last quarter's call, we expect core revenue, which excludes milestones and royalties, to be weighted towards the second half of the year.

For the second quarter, we expect core revenue to be approximately in line with the first quarter, reflecting the mix and timing of the business. In our guidance related to SPL milestones and royalties, we indicated that we expect $3 million of revenue from milestones and $2 million of royalty revenues. Given $3 million milestone revenue in Q1, we are not forecasting any additional milestones in 2026, and the balance of the guidance is from commercial royalties. Lastly, we continue to anticipate to end 2026 with at least $136 million in cash equivalents, and investments, excluding capital deployed towards our repurchase program. Now, I'll turn the call back over to Maher.

Thank you, Parmeet. I'd like to thank everyone at MaxCyte for their dedication to our mission and execution in the first quarter. I look forward to updating you all on our next quarter call. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question at this time, you will need to press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. In the consideration of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Now, first question coming from the line of Julie Simmonds with Panmure Liberum.

Hi. Thank you very much, and congratulations on a much stronger quarter than expected. Couple of questions. I suppose firstly on the SPL revenue guidance. Clearly, you're not looking for any more milestones, or you're not guiding to any more milestones for the remainder of the year. Given the number of active programs that are ongoing, plus where your sort of later stage programs are, it feels unlikely that you're gonna get no milestones at all in Q2. Are you just being particularly cautious with this at this timeframe and maybe changing your risking of how milestones come in?

Yeah, good question, Julie. So good to hear from you, as always. On that question, let me take this one and then if Parmeet wants to add anything or Sean as well, he's here with us as head of business development. That's more an indication of the way the agreements are structured, the way milestones are, you know, contractually structured, is that it's based on dosing timing in pivotal trials, not necessarily on the initiation of pivotal trial. While it's possible we could get another milestone here, the way these agreements are structured, you know, there's a good chance it's more in, you know, the first part of next year. It all depends on the dosing regimen for the trial itself, not necessarily initiation of a pivotal or registrational trial. Does that make sense, Julie?

That does indeed. Thank you. Yes. Then just on the license, the sort of cadence of that during the year. Because again, I think obviously down on where it was last year.

I'm trying to get a feel for whether you're expecting sort of license fees to remain fairly similar through the year or because of where your SPLs are and the potential of signing new SPLs where a fairly flat sort of look for the year is again being quite conservative here with your expectations. 'Cause you're implying your pipeline is still quite strong for SPL. What we should be thinking?

Yeah.

About in terms of cadence of license fees.

Yeah, absolutely. This is in terms of cadence of new licensees, right?

New partners, Julie, just to.

Yeah.

You know, as I said, mentioned last time, we feel comfortable guiding three-five. Some years we'll have maybe more than five, some years it could be less than five. Want to take a step back. In the past few years, we've signed 15 SPL partners. We still feel very good we'll sign at least three this year as well. Obviously, they haven't happened just yet, that's just the nature of the negotiations and the work with these customers who then become partners, right? Oftentimes working with them 18 months, sometimes 24 months before they actually sign an agreement. We currently are working with those in the funnel and the pipelines, as you would call it, and we feel good that we're going to sign at least three this year.

The cadence of when the negotiations, when the work is happening, when the process of work is happening with them, they still are not there yet where they haven't signed in the first half so far, but I feel good with at least three this year, Julie.

Lovely. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you, Julie.

Thank you. Now our next question coming from the line of Brendan Smith with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. Wanted to actually follow up a little bit more on any incremental color on SeQure Dx as it stands. I guess based on any initial feedback to date, how much contribution to that revenue growth over the next, say, kind of 12 to 24 months are you expecting to come from that? And then just sorry, as a follow-up, sorry if I missed it, but I know you mentioned for the buybacks, most of it will kind of come through in calendar 2026, but I guess anything to call out in the cadence between Q2 to Q4, fairly steady between those three quarters or just anything, any considerations there for our models? Thanks, guys.

On the cadence of the buyback. Parmeet, did you wanna take that one?

Yeah, why don't I take that? Good to hear from you, Brendan, and, you know, really pleased with the authorization from the board. You know, we certainly believe and are aligned with the board there's a disconnect on value and believe buying our shares provides a very compelling investment opportunity. You know, as we said in the prepared remarks, we're looking to move fairly quickly on this, looking to execute a majority of the share repo program by year-end and, you know, working with an external advisor to put us in the best position to succeed here. It's gonna include a mix of open market purchases and systematic. Pleased to get this authorization from the board.

Yeah. Now the first question, I think you're talking about contribution of SeQure is, if I remember your question correctly, Brendan.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. Let me give you a little clarity there.

A couple years.

Yes. Absolutely. Obviously, Parmeet alluded to it earlier, revenues for SeQure were $0.6 million in the first quarter, and we're very pleased with that. I mean, you look at where we expected to grow, it's substantial year-over-year growth compared to 2025. You know, the $0.6 sequentially was up about 11% from Q4 of 2025. It's 3x what it was in Q1 of last year as well. We spent the first, really the late part of last year and throughout the year and the first part of this year building up the commercial pipeline, working with customers to, you know, to grow the pipeline as well. We're starting to see that now in the first quarter. We're hopeful that progresses throughout the year as well and just continues throughout the year.

The draft FDA guidance that came out very recently that I alluded to earlier is exactly why we acquired SeQure and why we believe it is It's that gold star for cell and gene therapy developers, whether you're doing ex vivo or in vivo development, you really need to characterize your off-target assays, your off-target gene editing with these assays, even you have to characterize the on-target effects of your gene editing as well. We feel good where it is. It took us some time to integrate them throughout last year and we're seeing some of the traction now in this first quarter, and we're hopeful it continues throughout the year.

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Dan Arias with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Yeah, guys, thanks for the questions. Maher, can you just maybe talk about the backdrop at the industry level, then also pair that with your own sales funnel? I think your comment was that you don't expect things to get worse this year, which that's good. Do you think new business and new activity can accelerate for you guys, just given what you're seeing out there? Thanks.

Sure. Absolutely, Dan. Good to hear from you. I'll take that. Obviously, you know, we saw elevated SPL program turnover last year from rationalization. It hurt us hard last year, especially in the first half. That turnover in 2025 we think has largely normalized. In fact, many SPL partners are, you know, increasingly prioritizing and concentrating on those lead clinical programs, and we're seeing that as well. With the, you know, while financing for earlier-stage cell therapy is still challenging, that's seen across industry, especially ex vivo as well. What we're seeing more, I'd say non-deterioration or stability in what we consider that late stage or later stage clinical programs. That we're seeing.

In fact, you look at right now, we have, I think, 11 SPL partners with 12 clinical programs. These are all the lead assets. You see where it is from a finance perspective. You're seeing companies like Lyell, like Allogene and Vittoria and others, you know, still garnering, you know, investor interest and investor demand and raising the funds they need for those later stage assets. Long story short, early stage companies, I think it's still a tough backdrop there. For later stage clinical programs, the financing is there, and we're working with many more of those companies. In fact, we're working with more later stage companies now than ever before. It's a challenging backdrop, but at the same time, pockets of green shoots for later stage programs.

Okay. Helpful. Then, Parmeet, I know you're still getting settled there, but it would be good to get your first blush perspective just on what you think exists as, you know, having the most room for increased forecasting clarity and then whatever you see as the priorities going forward when it comes to just sort of quarterly cadence and visibility on the business. Thanks a ton.

Yeah, Dan, great to hear from you know, been here just about six weeks, and I have to say, the team has been super supportive as I transition into the role. You know, clearly, MaxCyte is a market-leading product with great service leadership and field application scientists. Certainly, last few weeks, I've been reviewing the company's forecasting methodology, spending quite a bit of time with our commercial team, the leaders looking at the funnel, and believe the company provided a proven outlook for 2026. You know, to your point, of course, we will continue to evolve the financial analytics forecasting of our business.

For me, particularly for the team, the finance team, you know, providing support for our commercial and product development initiatives is gonna be a priority, while certainly maintaining the disciplined cost structure that I have to give credit to Maher and team that I've established, you know, with the tough changes that were made last year.

Thank you. Next question coming from the line of Matthew Hewitt with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just to go back to the SeQure ramp. Obviously, Maher, you noted some nice growth, both sequentially and year-over-year. Should we anticipate that kind of growth continuing for the remainder of this year? Do you anticipate maybe a little bit of a pause as you kind of digest the, you know, the customers that you're working with already and then another step up maybe in the second half of this year into next year?

Yeah, good question, Matt. I mean, I would say the growth that we're expecting is year-over-year, significant growth year-over-year. In terms of the cadence of that versus Q2 versus second half, I'd say I wanna be a bit patient here and see how that transpires throughout the year. Overall, in terms of it's a services business, it's not a CapEx business. When we deliver, you know, these services a bit different timing-wise than it is for the MaxCyte electroporation business. I'd say as a whole, overall, we feel very good about significant growth year-over-year. The cadence of it, I think we wanna see how it transpires throughout the year before we get ahead of ourselves, Matt.

Understood. As far as the gross margins are concerned, a little bit of a step back. Obviously, you've had some inventory, adjustments happening. Do you expect that to kind of recover as the year progresses as well, especially given your anticipated ramp in revenues? Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the challenges certainly with gross margin this quarter was, you know, the challenges with our SPL customer that we have talked about, certainly played a part here, had an impact. You know, as we look through the year, Matt, you know, we expect gross margins to kind of trend in the mid-70s from here on. Certainly, the first quarter, we certainly benefited from that milestone payment, which flows right to the bottom line. Looking ahead, mid-70s is the way to think about it.

Thank you. Now, next question coming from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon. I wanted to follow up, Maher, on your comment on DTx. When you announced that launch last quarter, you know, you'd had some good early traction, I think some sales in the first quarter. You had nice comments on it today here as well. Just curious sort of what reasonable expectations are, you know, over the next 12-18 months. You know, what the mix of the funnel looks like, if it's getting you into new customers or there's a lot of existing customers. I think last call you referenced interest, you know, sort of globally, both in the U.S. and in APAC. Yeah, just a little bit more color on how that launch is going would be great.

Yeah, great question, Matt. Let me take that one. Let me give you a bit on the color of where maybe the interest that we're getting and what we're seeing. Obviously, it's meeting our expectations to what we thought we could do, right? In the cell therapy space, we can get in there. We can work with customers ex vivo and in vivo while they're doing their screening for cell therapy development. We're seeing that, right? The funnel itself is building very well. We still anticipate that the sales will begin to increase in the second half of the year. That's the norm for any launch. You have to build up the campaign behind it. You have to get into the customers, and you begin to see the traction there. The pipeline's becoming very healthy.

What we're also seeing is traction in areas, for example, in the academic accounts that we never really had before that we can get into with the DTx system. We're also seeing it in protein screening for biologics, and we're seeing that from big pharma as well. We're having Some of the funnel in the pipeline, we're seeing that we're gaining traction with big pharma that we never had before. That's not necessarily a surprise for us. We realized that the way we're building it, we can allow us to really get into the protein screening market as well for biologics. This pleasant surprise has been the early traction from, you know, having a customer interest from big pharma as well, which I think bodes well for the future of DTx.

Again, to temper, let's see how the rest of the year plays out in terms of DTx sales and revenues from it. We expect significant growth going into second half and into 2027 and beyond.

Okay. I guess this is a bit of a higher level one. You know, the ExPERT portfolio has evolved, you know, quite a bit back that time as a public company in terms of cross-disease categories. You know, solid tumor is now a big part of the preclinical pipeline. You reference in the, in your ExPERT deck a few partners leaving the ex vivo space, but also reference, you know, confidence in hitting three more this year. There's this sort of natural ebb and flow.

Maher, I guess we're just curious for sort of your state of the union, both from what you're seeing from an SPL interest perspective, also what your team is observing in terms of clinical development, and sort of how that translates to continued confidence in the platform and future growth for SPL partners.

Yeah. No, great question. I mean, part of the reason why we have confidence in the current partners and the programs they have, and also the future SPLs that we're signing in. While we had rationalization last year that hurt us, what we're seeing now is these later stage clinical programs progressing through the clinic, and we're seeing that. The one molecule we received this year from one of our partners was for a clinical program that has, you know, good results. It's confidential, we can't disclose it, but so far, we're seeing what they published were good results from their current clinical program. We're seeing that with some of the other ones here. I mean, if you look at our depth, you have Wugen with their WU-CART-007 progressing very nicely.

You have CRISPR, you have Imugene, you're seeing this. These are companies that are going to pivotal and registrational studies, and it speaks to, you know, what I was speaking to earlier, which is interest in later stage programs is still there even from a financing perspective because the science is there, and you're seeing the progress there. These are some of which are autologous and allogeneic programs. We're also seeing interest still in allogeneic programs because it reduces the, you know, the patient journey in terms of patient administration, and we're still seeing that. Even across our SPL funnel and the pipeline that we're building for future SPLs, we're still seeing that research there for those lead assets still going about, still being funded.

Obviously, you know, is it what it was in 2021, 2022? No, I'd say it's even healthier in a sense, where even though you might have less of a pipeline build of these SPLs, but the ones that are going and coming SPLs, They're working on their lead assets, and that's who we wanna work with, and that's what we're seeing now. That's why we still feel confident we can sign at least three this year. For the foreseeable future as well, we can keep signing three-five. Nothing has really changed other than the fact we're seeing the science itself mature, so to speak. I hope that kind of answers your question though.

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Mark Massaro with BTIG. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. The first one is for Parmeet. It looks like, you know, the G&A expense came in, you know, $4 million down sequentially and over $2 million below our forecast, which looks like some pretty good cost discipline and management. Is that $6 million or so a reasonable run rate for G&A going forward? Can you just speak to any changes in the headcount? You know, obviously there's some impacts, cost containment matters that were done last year, but how are you thinking about spending this year in flowing throughout the rest of the year?

Yeah. Good to hear from you, Mark. Certainly, I'd speak to sort of broadly OpEx. You know, the reduction in OpEx, G&A being part of that is starting to materialize, right? You're seeing that in our P&L. The tough decisions that were made last year are now being reflected fully in our P&L. You know, looking at where we ended up with OpEx in Q1, I think it's a fair run rate outside of, I would say, low single-digit sequential growth in the coming quarters that we expect for investments in things like commercial expansion in APAC that we're looking at, some additional DTx launch activities. Kind of that's how I would look at it.

You know, keeping this in mind, I would say, for the year, we expect OpEx to be around $60 million. Back to your point, just for context, this is still a significant reduction over where we were last year. Last year, OpEx was around $79 million-$80 million. Speaks to the body of work, the tough work that the team has done.

That's really helpful. Thank you for all the clarity there. Back to the DTx, you know, Maher, you did make some positive comments about, you know, the beta launch. As we think about this rolling into like the second half of the year, should we expect to see some revenue pull through in the form of capital purchases or leases of the system? Or what I'm really trying to get at is, are some of these just sorts of placed just to see how things are going, and then there may or may not be revenue in the back? I'm just trying to figure out how much we should expect in the back half this year.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough question there in the sense of we're not guiding as to what it's gonna be in the second half of the year for this one here. Just to be made clear, Mark, we don't license these. This is a pure sale, pure CapEx sale here. This really is we're seeing the health of the build-out in the funnel so far. We see meaningful contribution in the second half, even more meaningful going to 2027. As we keep learning from the launch itself, it'll give us even more of an initiative, what Parmeet alluded to, us be able to even spend more, a little bit more on the marketing of the DTx and on the commercial launch of DTx.

Where I stand right now, I feel very good what happened in Q1 in terms of initial sales there. What's happening here in Q2, I think can help us continue to see the future SPLs as well, 'cause we can get in earlier with customers. Then it can also get us into that bioprocessing protein screening market, that can really start to contribute to revenue in the 2027, 2028 and so forth time period. It gives us a chance to also learn that market more and see what other products we can also launch into that other market, into bioprocessing market as well. That's kind of how I'm looking at DTx.

I feel very good where it is, but there's still a lot of learnings, there's still a lot of commercial execution we have to focus on to make that second half have meaningful contribution.

Thank you. Our next question in the queue coming from the line of Hannah Hefley with Stephens. Your line is now open.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Just following up one more on DTx. You mentioned that there's still kind of a learning curve here. How much visibility do you have into the 2H pickup, and is that included in guidance or anything there? Would that be kind of upside?

Let me take that. I can hand it over to Parmeet as well. That's included in the guidance, right? This was where, you know, what I said earlier on our previous call. This is part of our guidance where we see that second half pickup helping us in terms of where we got it for the year in terms of the core revenue. Again, you know, I'm taking a careful look at this because when I say learning, we launched this knowing exactly what we're gonna launch into. Now it's about commercial execution. Ahead of ourselves, let's just ensure that we can execute exactly what we launched, where we knew we're gonna get into the cell therapy space earlier in the research process, earlier in discovery, and really begin to have those learnings even in the bioprocessing space as well.

It's part of the guidance that we gave for the year. As we get further traction, we'll obviously update on future calls as well. Until that time, we're taking a, you know, a wait and see approach.

Okay, thanks. That's helpful. After the recent portfolio pruning that you've seen, now that that's kind of played out, can you just talk about what the landscape looks like now? Do you think the customers you're serving are kind of more geared to certain modalities or cell types or indications? Is there just anything you'd call out there?

Yeah, you know, I'm going to turn this one to Sean, the SPL. Sean, have we seen any trends that you believe in terms of where we're going in terms of clinical programs from the SPL funnel that we're looking at?

No, thanks, Hannah. It's great to hear from you. From an autologous allogeneic standpoint, still remains around a 50/50 split across different variety of cell types. Obviously, you know, the market is predominantly T-cells, which is reflected in the portfolio. We are seeing the advancement of allogeneic CAR T, which now is in a potential registrational trial. It could be the first allogeneic CAR T approved. We are also seeing different novel gene editing platforms continue to advance with the FDA support. That's the overall kind of state of the union for the SPL portfolio.

Thank you. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Maher Masoud for any closing comments.

Yeah. Thank you everyone for joining us today. I wanna thank all of our employees as well, our shareholders. Look forward to speaking to everyone again on our next earnings call in a few months.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to MaxCyte, Inc.’s fourth quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To participate, you will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, simply press star 11 again. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Erik Abdo with Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today’s conference call. Joining me on the call from MaxCyte, Inc., we have Maher Masoud, President and Chief Executive Officer; Douglas J. Swirsky, Chief Financial Officer; and Sean Menargas, Senior Director of Business Development. Earlier today, MaxCyte, Inc. released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended 12/31/2025. A copy of the press release is available on the company’s website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statements or comments made during this call may be forward-looking 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 in our SEC filings. Except as required by applicable law, the company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Maher Masoud.

Thank you, Erik. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining MaxCyte, Inc.’s fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. 2025 presented a challenging operating environment. It was also a year of meaningful progress for MaxCyte, Inc. We continue to sign new Strategic Platform Licenses, SPLs as we call them, and support customers in advancing drugs to the clinic. We acquired SecurDx, and successfully integrated the business into MaxCyte, Inc. We made meaningful changes to right-size spending and strategically improved our operations. And most recently, we launched a new product, the ExPERT DTX, that will allow us to work with developers earlier in research and development discovery. Let me start by reviewing our financial results. Consistent with the preliminary financials we announced in January, MaxCyte, Inc. reported $33 million of total revenue for the full year, which included $29.6 million of core revenue and $3.4 million of SPL program-related revenue. We grew our instrument installed base to 857, up from 760 at the end of 2024. Douglas will discuss fourth quarter and full year performance in greater detail. MaxCyte, Inc.’s results were within the range of expectations that we had updated you with in August. As previously discussed, the business was impacted by program consolidation and rationalization across some of our SPL customers, which included a 15% decline in purchases and leases from our largest customer reorganizing manufacturing and managing inventory. Now let me give you a little more detail on the launch of our new ExPERT DTX, which I mentioned earlier, and I am very excited to discuss. Even as we faced headwinds in 2025, our focus remained on innovation and leading the market with groundbreaking platforms. In February, we announced the launch of ExPERT DTX, a modular 96‑well electroporation platform designed for research and drug discovery applications. We are very excited about what this product represents for MaxCyte, Inc. The DTX enables labs to transfect primary cells and cell lines across up to 96 samples in a single three‑minute run, with consistent well‑to‑well performance that effectively eliminates transfection as an experimental variable. It is one of the most cost-effective 96‑well electroporation solutions on the market, with detachable eight‑well strips that can be processed with unique parameters, giving researchers the flexibility to test different cell and cargo combinations in parallel while reducing waste. The software is also differentiated. DTX Designer allows users to design experiments remotely and upload workflows when the system is available, maximizing instrument pipeline. That is a real practical advantage for labs running multiple back-to-back experiments. What makes the DTX strategically important is its full compatibility with the rest of the ExPERT platform. A researcher can optimize a process on the DTX in discovery and transfer it directly to MaxCyte, Inc.’s larger scale electroporation, the ATx, STx, or GTx, for scale-up into cGMP-compliant manufacturing without reoptimization. That is a powerful value proposition, which allows us to engage with customers at the very earliest stage of the workflow and provide a seamless path from discovery through to the clinic and commercialization, all on a single platform, which is the epitome of a therapeutic platform. We built this product around our customers’ needs, and we believe it will be additive to both instrument and Processing Assemblies, PAs, revenue in 2026 and beyond, as well as allow us to grow our SPL customers. We have built years of electroporation know-how and expertise into DTX, and I am confident we launched a product that will allow researchers to seamlessly progress from discovery to the clinic onto our GMP ExPERT platform. Turning to our guidance. As we enter 2026, the challenges that impacted growth in 2025 will have an impact on 2026. For our 2026 guidance, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $30 million to $32 million, consisting of $25 million to $27 million of core revenue, and $5 million of SPL program-related revenue. Given the timing of purchases and leases, we expect Q1 to be our lightest quarter for core revenue with a back half–weighted year. Included in our guidance is the impact of a recent notice received from an SPL customer terminating their license for reasons unrelated to our platform’s performance, along with approximately $4 million in core revenue headwind from select SPL customers, which began to impact our revenue in 2025, which I will provide further detail. We continue to believe that the headwinds facing our business are a result of the conservation of capital by biotechs in the cell therapy space, rationalization of customer programs in ex vivo cell therapy, and inventory management at our largest customer, which we expect to stabilize in 2026 and grow from that new base. There has been no fundamental change in the demand for our technology and the differentiation of our technology competitively. While these short-term headwinds influenced our revenues last year and the first half of this year, we are more excited than ever about our SPL programs and the business model, which is seeing multiple programs progressing deep into the clinic and much closer to potential commercialization. As I mentioned, embedded within the core revenue guidance, we expect revenue from SPL customers, including our largest customer, to be a $4 million headwind relative to 2025. This is about half from processing assemblies, and half from leases, a result of two factors. First, our largest customer reorganized our supply chain in 2025, impacting inventory management of PAs. Additionally, in 2025, due to manufacturing site reorganization, there was a reduction in leases midyear, so the full-year lease revenue for this customer has a difficult comparison to last year. Following in-depth conversations with this customer, we expect both PAs and leases will stabilize during 2026. Second, other SPL customers rationalized programs in 2025. On a net basis, we lost six SPL clinical programs during the year. The annualized revenue from the discontinued programs, including leases and PAs, will not recur in 2026, reflecting the headwind mentioned earlier. Twelve clinical programs we currently support are across 11 SPL partners, highlighting continued investment on the lead asset. This rationalization is part of our business model as we expect a certain number of biotech programs to discontinue. But we are consistently signing new SPLs and supporting later-stage clinical programs, which will eventually be commercialized utilizing our platform. In the last 24 months, we signed 10 new SPLs, and are now supporting more later-stage programs than ever. Also embedded within our core revenue guidance, we expect revenue growth for our non-SPL customers, which is inclusive of growth from SecurDx. With regards to SPL program-related revenue, as I shared, we are guiding to $5 million in 2026. Note, we received a seven-figure milestone payment from a clinical customer that began dosing patients in a pivotal study in the first quarter. The balance of the SPL program-related revenue guidance includes approximately $2 million of expected royalty revenue from our commercial-stage customer as the therapy ramps throughout the year. Despite these near-term headwinds, we are very encouraged by the medium-term opportunity, with five clinical programs to enter pivotal studies over the next 18 months and potentially receive commercial approval in 2027 or 2028. As I mentioned, one of these five programs began dosing patients in its pivotal study in 2026, triggering the milestone payment I referenced earlier. These programs include zuma‑cell from CRISPR Therapeutics, for B‑cell malignancies; Wu‑CAR‑T‑007 from WuXi‑GENE, for hematologic malignancies; Asia‑cell from Imugene for hematologic malignancies; and two programs from undisclosed SPL partners. I believe up to four of these programs will be pivotal by the end of the year. Outside the wave-two programs I just covered, there are another seven active clinical programs in earlier stages of development that continue to pursue FDA approval beyond 2028, and can represent meaningful core revenue and SPL program-related revenue for MaxCyte, Inc. over time. Across these programs, the total milestone opportunity exceeds $110 million. Today, we have received over $30 million in total milestone payments from our SPL customers, highlighting the strength of our portfolio-based, program-driven business model. We have 31 SPL agreements, including four new SPLs in 2025. Eleven SPL customers we work with have current clinical and commercial programs, while another eight are active in preclinical development, most of which we believe will become clinical SPL customers. However, 12 of the SPL agreements are with biotechs that are no longer active, having exited ex vivo or ceased operations. The 12 that are no longer active are part of our business model, as we do not expect every SPL we sign to result in a commercial program. There is meaningful revenue opportunity from newer SPL customers advancing toward entering the clinic. As I mentioned earlier, despite significant consolidation in 2025, SPL customers continue to advance assets on our platform, including up to six programs in late-stage preclinical development expected to enter the clinic within the next six to 18 months. This reflects continued expansion of our SPL portfolio beyond our current later-stage programs. Today, we support one commercial therapy, CASGEVY, and we remain very encouraged by the opportunity for the drug to continue to scale, with both Vertex and CRISPR recently reiterating CASGEVY’s multibillion-dollar potential. During Vertex’s most recent earnings call, it reported $116 million in CASGEVY revenue for 2025, including $54 million in the fourth quarter. Vertex noted that 147 patients with sickle cell disease or transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia globally had their first cell collections in 2025, and 64 patients received CASGEVY infusions, with 30 of those occurring in the fourth quarter. The momentum in patient collections is notable, and Vertex has indicated they expect a meaningful CASGEVY ramp in 2026 versus 2025. Despite the possibility of short-term quarter-to-quarter variability as the drug scales, we are optimistic about where this therapy is headed and truly believe in its transformative potential for patients around the world. To wrap up on the SPL portfolio, while any individual program carries risk, the multiple shots on goal we have across the same indications and across many different indications give us a high probability of generating meaningful core revenue with regulatory milestones and commercial revenues over time. We are now seeing the growth in commercial royalties starting to materialize in our revenue. This reflects the strength of our innovative business model, and we expect this trend to continue in the coming years as additional therapies are commercialized by our SPL customers. That conviction is what drives the decisions we make about how to operate this business. Moving to SecurDx, I believe 2026 is the year where the SecurDx opportunity starts to become more visible. We spent 2025 integrating the business, building the commercial pipeline, and working with early customers. The regulatory environment continues to evolve in our favor. Off-target risk assessment is becoming increasingly important to the FDA and other global regulatory agencies when reviewing gene-edited therapy. Our three assays—screening, nomination, and confirmation—serve both ex vivo and in vivo developers, which means SecurDx’s addressable market extends well beyond our legacy electroporation customer base. We acquired a relatively new start-up with an emerging and leading technology. Despite 2025 coming in lower than expectations, we expect year-over-year growth for SecurDx assay services and licenses in 2026. I remain very optimistic about SecurDx’s commercial potential and expect it to be a growing contributor to revenue in the years ahead. I want to underscore that we are entering 2026 with a fundamentally different cost structure than in prior years. While we are still investing at a rate that allows us to launch new products like ExPERT DTX, we have reduced annual cash burn by over $16 million and have put MaxCyte, Inc. on a dramatically different spending trajectory than what was planned in the prior operating model. This is the direct result of the restructuring and cost-efficiency actions we took in 2025. We do not expect to meaningfully grow our operating expenses from here, and we see a clear path to reducing cash burn further as revenue growth returns. We have a strong and healthy balance sheet, which allows us flexibility in capital allocation and investment decisions. Finally, as previously announced, Parmeet Ahuja will be joining MaxCyte, Inc. as Chief Financial Officer, succeeding Douglas J. Swirsky effective March 30. Parmeet brings more than two decades of finance leadership experience at Agilent Technologies, a global life sciences tools company. Over his career there, he held a number of senior roles spanning financial planning and analysis, operational finance, internal audit, and enterprise financial services. In particular, he led FP&A for Agilent’s global operations and supply chain organization and earlier headed controls, audit, and SOX, working directly with the board’s audit committee on risk and controls. Parmeet also most recently led Agilent’s investor relations function, giving him direct experience communicating with the investment community. We are excited about the breadth of his operational finance and governance experience as we continue to scale the company and strengthen our financial infrastructure. I want to thank Doug for his contributions to MaxCyte, Inc., and will now turn the call over to Doug to discuss our financial results. Doug?

Thank you, Maher. Total revenue for the full year was $33 million compared to $38.6 million in 2024, representing a 15% decline. Total revenue in Q4 2025 was $7.3 million compared to $8.7 million in Q4 2024, representing a 16% decline. The decline in total revenue was driven by decreases in both core revenue and SPL program-related revenue. In Q4 2025, we reported core revenue of $6.8 million compared to $8.6 million in the comparable prior-year quarter, representing a decrease of 22%. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $1.8 million compared to $1.6 million in Q4 2024. License revenue was $2.0 million compared to $2.6 million in Q4 2024. And PA revenue was $2.3 million compared to $4.2 million in Q4 2024. For the full year 2025, we reported core revenue of $29.6 million compared to $32.5 million in 2024, representing a decrease of 9%. Within core revenue, instrument revenue was $6.8 million compared to $7.1 million in 2024. License revenue was $8.9 million compared to $10.3 million in 2024. And PA revenue was $11.9 million compared to $14.0 million in 2024. These declines were partially offset by $0.8 million of assay service revenue from the acquisition of SecurDx and a modest increase in other service revenue. Total revenue for SecurDx was $1.1 million in 2025, including assay services and licenses. Of note, 47% of our core business revenue was derived from SPL customers in 2025, which compares to 55% in 2024. The year-over-year decrease reflects the impact of program exits and reduced purchasing activity from our large commercial-stage partner. SPL program-related revenue was $0.5 million in Q4 2025 compared to $0.1 million in Q4 2024. For the full year, SPL program-related revenue was $3.4 million as compared to $6.1 million in 2024. As it relates to SPL program-related revenue for 2025, $2.3 million was from milestone payments, and $1.2 million was from royalties. Moving down the P&L, gross margin was 78% in Q4 2025 compared to 74% in Q4 2024. Excluding inventory provisions and SPL program-related revenue, non-GAAP adjusted gross margin was 78% in Q4 2025, compared to non-GAAP adjusted gross margin of 84% in Q4 2024. Total operating expenses for Q4 2025 were $9.0 million compared to $19.3 million in Q4 2024. Part of these savings is attributable to the cost initiatives we took in 2025, which began to materialize in 2025. Excluding a non-cash goodwill impairment of $3.6 million in the fourth quarter, operating expenses decreased more substantially from the prior-year quarter. The overall decrease in operating expenses was primarily driven by the restructuring and cost-efficiency actions we took in 2025. We ended 2025 with combined total cash, cash equivalents, and investments of $155.6 million and no debt. Our very strong balance sheet positions us well moving forward, providing us with flexibility to continue to invest strategically for our business, customers, and shareholders. Finally, we anticipate at least $136 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments at the end of 2026. This represents a significant reduction in cash burn from prior years, a result of the restructuring and cost-efficiency actions we took in 2025. Let me close my remarks by saying it has been a privilege to serve as MaxCyte, Inc.’s CFO. I know that the company is in good hands with Maher and the rest of the team, including Parmeet. I will now turn the call back over to Maher.

Thank you, Doug. It has been a pleasure working with you as our CFO as well. I want to thank everyone at MaxCyte, Inc. for their hard work and dedication in 2025. I look forward to executing on our plan in 2026. With that, I will now turn the call back over to the operator for the Q&A. Operator?

Thank you so much. And as a reminder, to ask a question, simply press 11 to get in the queue and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw yourself, press 11 again. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Dan Arias with Stifel. Please proceed.

Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. Maher, I have to say I really do not like the trajectory of the business right now. Pretty much all the commentary coming out of life sciences companies points to biopharma getting better this year and not worse. Our data points and others seem to suggest the same. When you look at the industry data that is out there on the emerging modality space, cell therapy trial activity seems to be increasing pretty significantly. Trial totals are way up. And so I appreciate the idea that there is some hangover from a tough ’25. But why is the core business expected to decline more this year than it did last year? Are you losing share somewhere? Because if not, then it really suggests that there is something else going on that we do not fully understand. And then ultimately, the question becomes, how do you grow this business again?

Thank you for that, Dan. Look, I appreciate the question and the head-scratcher. The headwinds we are facing are $4 million, and it comes down to it is not a deterioration of our business in any way. It is not changing the fundamentals of our business in any way. We have about a $4 million headwind that we face from the customers that we lost last year. That is affecting our revenues this year, and most of it in the first half of the year. So that comes, as I mentioned, pretty much half and half. Half from the leases that we lost from those SPL customers that will not recur this year, and the other half really is from processing assemblies, a lot of it being from our largest customer that went through management and inventory management of their current PAs that they have in stock, where they are drawing down from those PAs. And on top of that, from midyear, we lost some licenses for that largest customer where they reoptimized their manufacturing footprint to go from a few manufacturing sites to a little bit less than that. And that has affected our revenues for 2026. This is not a case of capital spending in the market that is affecting us. I think we saw that more so in early 2025. That is not the case here. I really believe that this is just short-term headwinds. And in terms of where we see the rest of the year and going into 2027 and 2028, then look, if you take a step back, I believe we are going to be supporting roughly four pivotal-stage programs this year, and then five in the next 12 months. We have another seven behind it as well coming in right now that potentially can become pivotal as a second wave there. That bodes extremely well for 2027 and 2028. We also have the launch of the ExPERT DTX, as I mentioned. We are seeing a lot of good traction. We launched it less than a month ago. We are seeing a lot of good traction with customers and potential customers. We believe it will be a growth driver for us in the second half and in future years. In addition to that, we are seeing the ramp of CASGEVY. As I mentioned, we expect it to ramp throughout the year. That is the only commercial product we are supporting now, but we expect many others, especially because right now, as I mentioned, we are supporting more later-stage programs than ever before, Dan. So this bodes very well for us going to the end of the year, in 2027 and 2028. We are continuing to sign new SPLs. We feel confident we continue to sign new SPLs. I feel very good about this, Dan.

Does the outlook for core revenues assume that the industry demand dynamic improves over the course of the year? Or would that be upside to what you have baked in today? In other words, is your 4Q outlook at the industry level similar to what you have today, excluding the individual customer dynamic that you referenced there?

That would be upside to what we have right now. So this is not a case where we are waiting for industry to come back for us to meet our core revenue guidance. That will all be upside from here, Dan. I feel very good where we are. I mean, the current guidance with the current situation we are in right now, if there is further industry demand, that is upside from where we are guiding to this year.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed.

Good afternoon. And, Doug, it has been a pleasure working with you and best of luck in your future endeavors. Maybe first up, could you talk—I realize you just launched it last month—but given that this was built, the DTX that is, was built with the customer in mind, I assume that you had been working with them or at least they had maybe trialed it or kicked the tires a little bit. What does that pipeline look like, and how quickly do you think you could see that start to trickle into the revenues?

We see it trickling into revenues in the second half. Anytime we launch a new product, we need about a quarter or two quarters to really build up the pipeline for that product. That is true of any product you launch. But it is already in the hands of multiple beta users. It has been in the hands of multiple beta users. When we launched this product, we did it the right way. We actually listened to our customer needs. We went through the typical NPI process where we understand the user criteria, the customer criteria, the application criteria, and we built it with that in mind. So we see the trickling starting in the second half, but we are also seeing right now some DTXs being sold in the first quarter before it is even over. So it is obviously starting to make traction there as well, Matt. But we see significant traction happening in the second half and then in future years as well. I feel very good where it is. It really is a platform that allows us to go from discovery all the way to cGMP with the same protocols. That is a true therapeutic platform that none of our competition has.

Got it. And then maybe just a reminder, given that you have four partners that could be going into pivotal studies this year, how do you account for or how do you factor that into your guidance? What kind of a haircut do you take on the potential for those milestones? Thank you.

We already received one milestone, a seven-figure milestone, in Q1 this year. You can haircut it by saying there might be at least one more, but we anticipate four more. One other customer is currently in pivotal, about to dose patients, that will result in another milestone as well. So at the very least, looking at two of those four, with potential for four this year. It is more of a timing issue. If the remaining two do not come in this year, that is just because those milestones happen in the first quarter or very early part of next year. But that is how you would haircut it. The very least will be two of those four, but potential for four this year.

Got it. Understood. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you, Matt.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. That comes from Matt Larew with William Blair. Please proceed.

Hi. This is Jacob on for Matt. Thanks for taking the questions here. I just want to touch on the SPL cadence. I do not know if you mentioned on the call, but typically, you guide to three to five per year, and you typically have signed or at least announced one by the end of the first quarter. I think the last signing was in October 2025, and biotech funding trends and the whole market environment have really been improving since then. So just curious on your visibility and confidence into the cadence of SPL signings throughout 2026 and maybe what you are expecting for this year and in perpetuity.

We have guided to three to five in the past. That is a number where, on average, that is something we sign in any given year. We feel good about signing at least three this year as well, and that three-to-five frames with some years where we have more than that and some years less than that. We foresee that we will sign the first one—I have Sean Menargas here with me and will put pressure on him—in the very early part of the second half of the year, possibly even before that. But I feel very good where we are. We are still the only company that can assign these licenses, and there is a good reason for it. What we provide is a differentiator. What we provide is really a platform that allows companies to go into clinical and commercial and scale and have a therapeutic that has the best chance of going through clinical development. We have done it with CASGEVY. We have signed 31 of these agreements. We signed four last year. I feel very good this year. We will continue to sign more, and do the same in the foreseeable future. And the DTX also adds to that. As I mentioned earlier, the DTX begins to seed that aspect of future SPL partners and customers for us. So I feel very good where we are. The timing of Q1, having not signed one, is just a matter of timing of when we are working with our customers in the research process, not in any way indicative of a reason why we have not signed one, if that makes sense. I am going to turn it over to Sean. Is there anything that you have to add in terms of where you see the signing? I am putting pressure on you here, but do you feel comfortable with this year as well?

Thanks, Maher, and thanks for the question, Jacob. I do strongly believe it becomes a timing aspect as well. Just to frame your preference, our research customers turn into our SPL customers from there, and these can take 12 to 18 months depending on their development stage, so it becomes a timing aspect as well. But in the last 24 months, we have signed 10 SPL partners. Almost all of them are in the clinic or at least approaching the clinic from there, so looking to continue to add through this year.

Got it. Thanks. And I did just want to quickly go back to the launch of the DTX platform. You have covered it in pretty good detail so far. It sounds like feedback, traction, early contributions have all been really good. But is there any way you could quantify what you are expecting in the back half, or is it more just kind of a slow trickle and really expect material contributions in 2027?

It is too early in the process. It has been a month since we launched it, and it will probably be more than a trickle in the second half. That is where you begin to see meaningful revenues in the second half and a lot more so in 2027. I will update throughout the year. Again, we are seeing very good traction at the beta sites. We are seeing good traction even outside the U.S. We have seen sales in Asia‑Pac as well. It is something that we truly believe differentiates us from any other platform. There are similar 96‑well discovery platforms out there, but none that can optimize the cGMP system like this one can, and none that can do it on a well‑to‑well basis with the same consistency, and really none that can do it where we have built into this our 20‑plus years of electroporation know‑how into this platform to make it streamlined for customers. So I feel very, very good about this, Jacob. Very good.

Great to hear. Thanks, guys.

Absolutely.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Massaro with BTIG. Please proceed.

Yes. This is Vivian on for Mark. Thanks for taking the questions. I just had two clean-ups on the 2026 guide. Just what is baked in as far as SecurDx contribution? And then I also think you have called out royalty contribution for the first time in the guide. So could you speak to your level of visibility and confidence in that, given it is from a partner therapy? Thanks.

On SecurDx, we do not break it out in the guidance, other than the fact we see material growth year over year for SecurDx in 2026 versus 2025. Significant growth there from what we had last year. Obviously, last year’s revenue for SecurDx was a bit disappointing, but it was part of our integration. We bought an early start-up. We are still integrating it, and we are still ensuring that we are building up the processes there, really building up the platform there. So we see meaningful growth this year, and that is part of our guide. In terms of royalties, we finally broke out the royalty revenue. I mentioned earlier, we expect approximately $2 million of revenue from commercial royalty, and that will ramp up throughout the year as that product ramps itself. We feel fairly good about that. That is based on forecasts we have seen with that product from public forecasts as well as what we are seeing so far early this quarter. But we expect that ramp to happen over the year. We will continue from here on out to guide for milestones and royalty on a separate line as well.

Okay. Perfect. And then I just had one follow-up, kind of higher level. I think you have previously mentioned the dynamic that customers are opting for in vivo therapies over ex vivo. So could you discuss how you are seeing an opportunity for more complex edits longer term and maybe over what time frame would you expect that customer appetite to transition to ex vivo edits?

We have been seeing the complexity of editing increase over the years. This is no longer the single‑base CAR‑T therapy. We are now seeing edits of five, six edits. I see what you are getting at regarding in vivo versus ex vivo. We are still a huge believer in the actual cell therapy space. In fact, we are seeing that start to return as well. We have had some headwinds there, but if you look at our programs, we have allogeneic programs, we have autologous programs, all progressing. The SPLs that we are signing right now are cell therapy programs, some of which are even coming back where at one point they were not in the clinic and now they are coming back to the clinic. I am a huge believer in the cell therapy space. I think as these therapies become far more complex, as we are seeing, it lends itself to cell therapy, especially cell therapy electroporation. You can control the safety, you control the dose, and the science is catching up. Our platforms are built for that. That is exactly what it is. So we are seeing that come back. That is what makes me feel very good about going into the second half of the year. It makes me feel even better about 2027 and 2028. That complexity lends itself to our business, and it lends itself to what we have built over the last decade. And we are seeing that traction start to come back to cell therapy.

Okay. Perfect. Thanks for taking the questions.

Excellent.

Thank you. Our next question is from Matt Etoge with Stephens. Please proceed.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe to follow up on Dan and Jacob’s questions. We have seen funding pick up in the space in general. So I just want to get your sense of what you are hearing from customers in terms of the macro environment, what you are seeing in terms of demand. How should we think about the recent funding backdrop flowing through potential demand throughout FY ’26?

Great question. As I mentioned, this is not so much anymore a demand issue or customer funding issue. This is about the headwinds we saw, and that is what affected us in Q1. This is more of a second‑half‑weighted guide that we are giving in that core revenue of $25 million to $27 million. We are sitting here right now about one week away from quarter end. This is not official guidance, but looking at where we are on the core, we see that upticking into Q2 and then being more second‑half weighted. I feel comfortable that $6 million on the core is appropriate for Q1, and none of that is contingent upon an upside in capital spending or customer demand. That is just where we sit right now. I feel extremely good where we are at the guide. I feel good where we are in Q1. This is a case of just building back a new base from the SPL customers that we lost in 2025. We found a new base here. Our largest customer is optimizing the processing assemblies, and they are drawing down from the inventory they have. We found a new base there. I feel very good about the year as it transpires. I appreciate it. I will leave it there for now. Thank you.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you have a question, please press 11 to get in the queue. We have a question from Chad Wiatrowski with TD Cowen. Please proceed.

Congrats, Doug. Look forward to seeing what your plans are going forward. Just one on the DTX. You have mentioned a few orders already flowing through here in the first quarter. When you are thinking about those couple of orders, but also the bolus more in the second half, are those mostly existing customers enjoying the convenience of that? Or is this something that enables more newer customers? And how do you expect that mix to play out through the year?

Great question. The current customers are going to be the easiest ones to convert over because they are going to enjoy the aspects of it. Those are the ones we are approaching. But this is a mix of both. It is not just for current customers; it is also for new customers. Because this is a 96‑well discovery platform that can now allow you to transfect primary cells, this can be used for early discovery for the in vivo space as well. So this is, in essence, a platform we have never had before, which we are targeting for our current customers now, but we are prospecting for future customers as well. We are seeing that in the early placements. Actually, one of those early placements is a new customer. It is not a current customer. So it is a mix of both, but we are being very smart about it and ensuring that we work with our current customers because that is also where you learn about some of the things you may have to make improvements on any time you launch a product. I have said it earlier: innovations are hard. We are going to continue to innovate this product. We are going to continue to launch new products in the coming years. This is one of many to come.

Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session. I will now pass it back to Maher Masoud for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on today’s call. I feel very good about 2026, just as good as, if not better than, the future years and what we are building here. I look forward to talking to all of you in the next three months on our next earnings call.

This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.