Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Quantum EI Q2 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Risa Lindsay. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier today, Quantum SI released financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2025. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Joining me today are Jeff Hawkins, our President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Jeff Kyes, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements of our Press Relief. For a more complete list and description of risk factors, please see the company's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the live broadcast date today, August 5, 2025. Except as required by law, the company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will also be referring to certain financial measures that are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the press release filed earlier today. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff Hawkins.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. On today's call, we will provide a business update and review our operating results for the second quarter of 2025. After that, we will open the call for questions. I will begin with a reminder of our three corporate priorities, to accelerate commercial adoption, to deliver on our innovation roadmap, and to preserve financial strength. Thanks. Our first corporate priority is to accelerate commercial adoption. The second quarter of 2025 marked the first full quarter of activity with the NIH funding and indirect cost cap uncertainties in full effect. During the quarter, we observed a near halt in capital purchases by U.S. academic labs. As a result, revenue for the second quarter was $591,000. This result was below our expectations, driven entirely by capital sales of new instruments. On the positive side, consumable purchases in the quarter were slightly ahead of our expectations, with customers across all market segments performing well. As communicated on our last earnings call, we believe that pharma and biotech represent a good opportunity for continued growth in terms of both new instrument sales and ongoing consumable sales. During the second quarter, our commercial team executed on specific initiatives to increase our funnel of opportunities in these market segments. I am pleased to report that we more than doubled our funnel of opportunities in pharma and biotech during the quarter, from approximately 30 at the end of the first quarter to more than 60 at the end of the second quarter. While we are pleased with these results, we are fully aware of the longer sales cycle associated with this market segment. We also know that not every one of these opportunities will result in a sale, but for those that do, our experience with customers in this market segment is that they are consistent buyers of consumables once operational with our technology. During the quarter, we also spoke with several customers who have budget to spend on consumables but simply can't purchase an instrument at this time. Strategically, our goal is to create a large installed base of customers who consistently purchase consumables and apply our technology in their day-to-day research. We expect that the results of their research projects will also generate scientific publications further validating the utility of our technology. Based on this customer feedback, we believe that in the current environment, having a single instrument acquisition model via capital sales is constraining the number of users of our technology as well as the capture of consumable revenue. To address the capital sales headwinds and given our favorable cost to produce the Platinum Pro instrument, we have recently launched an expanded set of instrument acquisition options that allow customers to have our instrument in their lab, purchase and run consumables without having to find the capital dollars to acquire the instrument up front. While we are still in the early days of offering these new instrument acquisition options, we have already secured our first few customers using this approach, and they have purchased consumables to begin using our technology in their research. In summary, we view growing our installed base not just as a revenue driver, but as a strategic moat. With every new lab that implements Platinum Pro, we expect to see increasing consumable sales, scientific validation, and customer advocacy. The cumulative impact of this cycle is key to long-term value creation. While the capital headwinds in the market are going to impact short-term commercial results, we are optimistic about the opportunity to continue to grow our customer base using a mix of instrument acquisition options, which in turn will drive more consumable revenue and generate more published evidence demonstrating the value of our technology. Strategically, a large installed base of active users is the key to long-term success, and we will take advantage of our favorable cost to produce Platinum Pro and our strong balance sheet to continue to execute on that installed base growth despite the capital market headwinds. Furthermore, we remain confident in the long-term market opportunity in proteomics and the technology roadmap we are executing against to capitalize on that opportunity. Our second priority is to deliver on our Innovation Roadmap. We continue to make solid progress across all of our development programs. Our Version 4 sequencing kit is currently undergoing validation studies, and we expect to launch the kit during the current quarter. This kit will further increase proteome coverage via increased amino acid detection and the addition of a new enzyme that is engineered specifically to provide high-efficiency cutting of the amino acid directly preceding a proline. In addition, as part of this version 4 sequencing kit launch, we also expect to release an expanded set of 24 barcodes that will allow customers to increase the multiplexing level of their experiments while maintaining the same level of analytical performance they experienced with the original set of 8 barcodes. Turning now to library preparation, our version 3 library preparation kit remains on track for launch by the end of 2025. The program continues to progress well and the data supporting lowering the sample input quantity continues to show great promise. At this stage in the program, we believe that we will be able to lower the sample input quantity by at least 100-fold as compared to our current library prep kit. This lower input concentration requirement is expected to allow our customers to be able to process a broader range of biological samples and study biologically relevant proteins that are at a much lower concentration than our current library prep kit can accommodate. When combined with the v4 sequencing kit, we believe customers will experience a meaningful level of improvement in overall system performance and be able to pursue some of the more complex biological sample work that to date has been difficult to do with the existing kits. Next, I would like to provide an update on the Proteus development program. As a reminder, Proteus incorporates a new instrument and consumable architecture that will offer significantly more reads per sample, more samples per run, and greater workflow automation than our current platforms. To be clear, Proteus is not just an incremental improvement over Platinum Pro. It is expected to be a huge leap in capabilities, and we believe it will be a multi-year growth driver for the company. We are pleased to report that we remain on track to successfully perform protein sequencing on a prototype Proteus system by the end of 2025. Hitting this milestone in 2025 sets us up well to deliver on the launch of Proteus in the second half of 2026. In terms of interim milestones of the Proteus Development Program, we are pleased to share two important milestones since our last call. First, during our first quarter 2025 earnings call, we communicated that we had completed the development of a set of fluorescent dyes capable of supporting the transfer of our current sequencing chemistry onto the Proteus platform. Since our last call, we have been able to demonstrate an additional dye, and more importantly, when we look at this expanded dye set in the context of the overall optical performance we are observing with this new system, We are confident that there is room to add even more dyes as we seek to scale our recognizer set from its current level to our end-state goal of covering all 20 amino acids. Second, we completed feasibility of wafer-scale surface chemistry processing and have made that our standard process to produce consumables to support the Proteus development program. This is an important milestone as we look to the future commercialization of Proteus and scale-up of chip production. Wafer-scale processes are more scalable and cost-effective for high-volume production but are often not achieved until much later in the development cycle or even post-launch given the complexity of developing such a process. Demonstrating feasibility for wafer-scale processing so early in the program is a significant accomplishment by our surface chemistry team and sets us up well for the remainder of the development program and for our future commercial production needs. Finally, I would like to spend a few minutes updating you on two other exciting initiatives within our R&D organization. The first is about our Amino Acid Recognizer Development Program. As part of our Recognizer Development Program, we have designed and screened millions of candidates. As part of that process, we have amassed what we believe may be the richest set of data in the industry about how mutations inserted into engineered proteins affect their binding to N-terminal amino acids, the kinetic properties of those binding interactions, binder specificity, stability, and many other features. This proprietary dataset presents a significant opportunity to leverage state-of-the-art AI tools trained on this proprietary database to design new amino acid recognizers and accelerate the path to full proteome coverage. We recently used this approach to complete our first AI-based recognizer design, achieving a binder that meets specifications within one design cycle. By using AI to design initial clones, we eliminate combinatorial screening and move directly to downstream assays, thus significantly shortening our timeline to produce candidate binders for testing and sequencing. We look forward to sharing more about this approach and the impact we believe it can have on the timing to achieve full proteome coverage at our Analyst Day later this year. Our second initiative is around post-translational modifications, or PTM detection. At our November 2024 Investor and Analyst Day, our Head of Research, Dr. Brian Reed, shared data about various applications of our single-molecule kinetic detection technology. One of those applications was combining a pre-sequencing detection-only cycle with a standard protein sequencing run to provide site-specific, peptide-linked PTM detection, regardless of the location of the PTM. We believe that the advantage of this approach is that it will allow Platinum Pro users to detect, quantify, and identify the sequence position of a given PTM, providing data and insights far beyond those provided by current technologies. In addition, this combined approach can detect a PTM that may be very deep into a peptide and would not otherwise be detected via a sequencing-only approach today. We are pleased to report that this combined method for PTM detection has met our internal technology feasibility thresholds and has been successfully transferred to our product development team to begin developing commercial kits. Our initial discussions with customers about this approach have made it clear just how difficult this type of PTM analysis is using current technologies and how beneficial it would be to their research to have these kits and associated automated software tools available on a low-cost platform like Platinum Pro. We are excited about the potential to make PTM discovery accessible to all researchers and expect to provide more updates on the timing of commercial release at our upcoming investor day. Our third priority is to preserve our financial strength. While the capital headwinds in the market are going to impact short-term commercial results, we are optimistic about the opportunity to continue to grow our customer base using a mix of instrument acquisition options. We firmly believe that a large installed base of active users is a strategic advantage that will create long-term value for our shareholders. And we are uniquely positioned to grow that installed base now, despite the market headwinds, because of our strong balance sheet and the steps we have taken over the past two years to be in this position financially. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff to review our financial results.

Thanks, Jeff. Now I'll review the details of our operating results for the second quarter of 2025. Revenue in Q2 2025 was $591,000, which consisted of revenue from our platinum line of instruments, consumable kits, and related services. Gross profit was $351,000, and gross margin was 59%. As I've said in the past, our gross margin percentage will be somewhat variable for the foreseeable future as we work through our continued commercialization efforts and may be impacted by the timing and mix of instruments versus consumable fails. Our margin has also been impacted and may continue to be impacted by the acquisition costs and any accounting adjustments to underlining inventory, some of which predates the commercial launch of the platinum line of instruments. To this end, our gross margin for Q2 2025 includes approximately a 13% benefit for inventory utilized during the quarter that was carried at low or no value. For the six months into June 30, 2025, revenue was $1.4 million, gross profit was $837,000, and gross margin was 58%. As Jeff mentioned earlier, our year-over-year revenue was impacted in the second quarter by continued capital market headwinds driven by uncertainty in the NIH funding affecting the macro market. We were impacted partially in the first quarter by this concept, but in the second quarter we felt the full impact. Turning to operating expenses, GAAP total operating expenses for the second quarter of 2025 were $30.5 million, compared to $26.8 million in the second quarter of 2024, while adjusted operating expenses were $23.8 million for the second quarter of 2025, compared to $24.4 million for the second quarter of 2024. For the six months ended June 30th, 2025, the total operating expenses were $56.1 million compared to $50.4 million in the same period in 2024 and adjusted operating expenses were $46.6 million compared to $46.3 million for the same period in 2024. The flat overall adjusted operating expense year over year continues to highlight our very tight cost controls we have for the organization while still funding innovation and significant development progress of our Proteus platform and other programs that did not exist in the same period of 2024. Keeping our overall spend flat would not have been possible without continued cost control measures and allocating our capital to fund and accelerate the highest return projects for our shareholders of note in our gap total operating expenses for the quarter is an expense of approximately 3.4 million that represents our net estimated expense in cash outlay after receipt of insurance proceeds in relation to a preliminary settlement of the delaware stockholder litigation that we initially disclosed in may 2024. the final settlement associated with this case is subject to various approvals so we anticipate these to be completed in either q4 of this year or q1 of 2026. next our dividend and interest income in the second quarter of 2025 was 2.3 million compared to 2.9 million in the second quarter of 2024. 4.9 million for the six months into june 30th 2025 compared to 6.5 million in the same period in 2024. for. Overall, this change is reflecting lower interest rates year-over-year as well as relative lower invested balances. As of June 30th, 2025, we had $214.2 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments in marketable securities that we continue to earn a great safe return on. As an update, we continue to track the changing landscape of tariffs on our business and potential customer purchases from an acquisition cost of our inventory standpoint we have seen some minor impacts but continue to believe that we will see no material impact on our inventory acquisition costs in the near term based on current information much of our materials and inventory on hand now up to and through one year of consumption was acquired prior to any tariff impacts limiting our near-term exposure we continue to monitor the situation and are working on realistic mitigation strategies to limit our overall exposure long term regarding import tariffs related to other countries we sell into to date we have not seen any impact and continue to believe we will not have any impact based on scientific and medical devices being historically exempted from import tariffs as jeff mentioned earlier in evidence in this quarter's results the nih funding impact on the overall capital market continues to create uncertainty for us and many other capital device manufacturers to this end we have deployed several capital acquisition models that gets our platinum pro units in the hands of customers that don't have budget for capital spin but do have budgets for consumable purchases though these new models are in their early stages we are optimistic on their impact and ability to drive consumable volume having said that until we get more momentum on these new models and have more clarity on the NIH funding environment, providing any details around top-line financial patents will be challenging. As our new models get momentum and we get more clarity around final NIH funding, we hope to provide more clarity in future quarters. Next, as we announced in early July, we priced a $50 million registered direct offering that closed on July 8th. This capital raise will be used for forward development and commercialization activities and further strengthen our capital resources to execute on our long-term plans. We have stated in the past that we're going to be realistic and opportunistic in our capital approach, especially in the challenging markets that we and many of our peers have seen over the last several years. For this offering, we saw an opportunity to bring more capital into the company at a reasonable price, and we took advantage of it. Going forward, we'll continue to ensure the company is well-positioned to take advantage of any appropriate capital opportunity regarding 2025 guidance we're revising our annual estimate for adjusted operating expenses from 103 million or less to 98 million or less and for total cash use we're still expecting to utilize 95 million or less which now is inclusive in any cash payment in relation to the case i mentioned earlier that was not previously included in our annual estimate. Overall, these net improvements are based on more efficient and effective use of the funds that we have and overall efficiencies in our development projects while still maintaining our development delivery timelines. And finally, as I mentioned earlier, we ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents and market book securities of $214.2 million. We now anticipate that this balance, along with the $50 million from the Registered Direct Ocarine that we completed in July, will provide runway into the second quarter of 2028. Now, we'll turn the call over to the operator to open the line for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question is from Scott Henry with AJP. Your line is open.

Thank you and good afternoon. Certainly challenging times. uh when we look think about the 600 000 for for 2q you know how much of that is overseas how much or in pharma biotech i'm just trying to get an understanding of the size of the the base foundation uh of revenues before we go into into the nih impacted markets Yeah.

So, Scott, we don't break out the distribution by pharma, biotech or sort of a specific segment, but we have historically said that sort of given guidance around what our install base looks like. The install base of the company sits right now at about 65% of it is outside the U.S., and about 35% of that install base is here in the U.S., and within any given region, it encompasses sort of all the types of customers, academics, other industrial, pharma, biotech, government research labs.

So that's sort of the breakdown. okay and i guess just to you know get at the question in another way i mean do you think we're kind of you know is 500 to 600 000 is that sort of the bottom and we should start to grow out of that particularly with the different model or you know how should we think about the rest of 2025 given uh these dynamics yeah it's a good question i the way i think about it Scott is two things.

One is obviously driving the top line, you know, requires us to, you know, sell some number of machines, you know, outright capital sales. That's obviously a much faster way to grow the top line than purely through the reagent. So I think the alternate models available to customers will help us capture the consumable revenue and get that base up. And obviously, over time, that consumable run rate is a very powerful sort of component of revenue and is where the high margin opportunity resides. But in the short term, you know, it doesn't sort of build on the revenue growth rate as fast as the capital sales. I think, you know, we're optimistic that this is, you know, the bottom and we're able to start building out of this. I just don't think it's going to be an instant improvement in Q3 simply because, you know, it takes a good number of instruments out there producing consumable revenue to really get the to get the lift. So, you know, maybe a little, you know, a little lighter going into Q3 sort of in terms of growth over Q2 and then, you know, hoping to see a better acceleration into Q4 between just that larger install base and pull through. But also, you know, perhaps we'll see some pickup in capital in Q4 that's more cyclical in nature that we've seen sort of every year in the fourth quarter.

Okay, just the final follow-up, and then I'll jump back into the queue. Could you just give us an example of what a typical placement would look like under the new model? Are there minimums? Is it a lease-type model? What does that look like as far as consumables and what we should expect from them? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Scott. So we're offering several models. So obviously, a capital purchase is one opportunity. A customer can do a more classic reagent rental where they sign up for a longer term contract that has minimums on the consumables and captures sort of the instrument revenue over a period of time. We've made third party leasing available as well to customers. And then the last one is what you were mentioning, which is in select situations where we believe the consumable opportunity is attractive and the type of data and such that would get published from that work, we could choose to place the machine. We would do that on a shorter term basis. So we have the ability to, you know, rotate those machines to other accounts if we don't see the consumable revenue we want. But if we do see it, you know, you know, I think the strategy is if the instrument is there and the people are, you know, customers are running it and using it and getting value out of it. And for the ones that we place, we should be able to convert some of those to capital sales. Some of those may move into rentals or other models over time. But if we do place a machine, we have that ability. If we don't see the type of utilization we want to be able to move those machines to another sort of site or customer lab where we believe that opportunity is in place.

Okay, great. Thank you for taking the question.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Swayam Bakula Ramakank from HWC. Your line is open.

Thank you. This is R.K. from H.C. Wainwright. So, Jeff, with the new acquisition opportunities that you're offering to your current customers or to your potential customers, do you see an increase in terms of leads as compared to going the typical capital sales?

And I'm just trying to ask that question because I want to see if that can help you increase your on your consumables or you're it's too early to to call any sort of trend yeah okay so it's obviously early in in the offering of these i what the way i uh would sort of tell you to think about it and what we're seeing in the initial data is it's not that the number of leads sort of in the top of the funnel is going up i think it's more about the customers who had progressed through the sales cycle with us. They learned about the technology. They had deeper discussions with our sales folks or our application specialists really had an understanding of it. Maybe they even performed an evaluation and had some interactions with our application development team that's a part of our R&D group. And they were ready to move forward and implement, but the capital dollars got frozen or the capital dollars weren't there. So I think what we've seen as we've turned this sort of these options on and let our sales force go and talk about it is the first sort of customer accounts coming into the funnel to pursue these alternate placement models are really people who had gone through that process with us were bought into wanting to apply the tech, but just were stuck in terms of the capital dollars. So I don't think of it really, today, I don't have the data to say it increases leads. And that's probably just because it's early. I think the more salient point and what we can see in the data is for those that had done the homework and were bought into implementing the technology, they're the ones who are showing up first here to get access to equipment and start running. So I think it's more about, you know, maybe a better, you know, sort of win rate coming out the back of the sales process by being able to offer multiple options to customers in the current capital market.

Okay. So another question started to be on the same topic though. Let's say the world was, you know, the world did not change as tough as it has been in the last few months. So if the capital funding was still available, what's the delta you think you missed by losing those opportunities?

You know, I don't want to speculate at what that number is, RK. I can tell you that, you know, our Salesforce still is certainly incentivized when capital dollars are available to sell the machine outright. Right. So we haven't made some sort of wholesale adjustment here where our sales force, you know, can just flip to these alternate sort of models in all scenarios. They still have, you know, their compensation targets and selling instruments for capital, you know, is a big component of that. I think we have the luxury of doing these models for a couple of reasons. I think one is we, you know, we have a fairly low cost to build a Platinum Pro device compared to other devices in our sort of, you know, competitive equipment that's in this market. We have a, you know, sort of a favorable profile. We obviously have a strong balance sheet so we can invest in the building of that equipment to drive this user base. And I think we have a very experienced sales force where we can give them sort of a menu of options and know that when the capital dollars are there, they will, you know, they will go and try to capture those. And when they've exhausted all those options, they'll, you know, resort to one of these other approaches to ensure we get, you know, we at the end of the day, we get the user, we get the consumable revenue and we get the corresponding sort of advocacy from customers, people talking about it, people presenting and publishing data. So that's how I sort of think about it. I think it would be complete speculation by me to try to, you know, say, are we capitating any sales or not? I think we're not right now based on what I just laid out, but it's something we will obviously closely monitor and make sure it's not it's not doing that.

So last question from me. So based on the new plan and the data that you're getting, whether it's scientific publications or data on your consumables or whatnot, do you feel you're getting enough information so that you can improve your product offering such a way that you can actually move your customer base away, you know, from that portion, which is having the capital dollars issue at this point?

Yeah, so I would say the following. I think there's been a lot of work going on. We've talked about in prior quarters in terms of sort of market development or scientific affairs. I think some of that work in terms of generating more evidence, you know, is getting to the final stages. So I do think there's a nice pipeline of data that has been developed and we'll see released over the course of the next couple quarters. I think customers who are going to access our platform through one of these new acquisition models would then probably bring data to bear late this year or early next year. So I think the pipeline we built delivers second half data. These folks maybe start to help fill in the data beyond that. I think at the end of the day, any customer we're interacting with, whether that's, you know, a capital sale or a rental, we're always learning from those customers. We're, you know, engaged across all the different segments. You know, I think the version four sequencing kit, and even more importantly, the version three library prep kit with the much lower sample input, But I think those improvements are really guided by what we were seeing in the field, guided by what customers put the technology. So I think those will be very well received. And then while we didn't give a lot of information today about what we're doing with post-translational modifications to sort of accelerate the capabilities there, That, too, is directly linked to both existing customers who are using the tech for other purposes, who want to do even more in that area, or new potential customers who have a very challenging, you know, PTM to work on. And, you know, this type of sort of combined kit that we're talking about would really open those up for us. So I think the combination of the different pipeline programs we have open up both customers in the academic market, they continue to help us in pharma biotech and in other segments. So I think it's for me, it's about lifting the improvements and the capability in terms of applications in all segments, not really about trying to move out of one segment or another, because at some point this will improve, you know, in the U.S. academic market. So we're not going to abandon that market over something short term. We'll keep lifting performance to service all customers and just try to prioritize more of our sales activities around the most sort of successful segments based on whatever the macro market is.

Thank you. Thank you, Jeff, for taking all my questions.

Thank you. One moment. Our next question is from Kyle Mixon from Canaccord. Your line is open.

Hey, guys, thanks for the questions. And so this, like the new capital acquisition options that you announced that you're kind of rolling out here, could you maybe just clarify how long you expect those to take place? And I know it's like probably reactionary based on like, you know, the external factors, the macro environment. But the real question is, like, do you expect to launch Proteus next year in this, like, with these options? And then if so, like, what are the implications for just, you know, like, essentially the financial, the economic implications for that type of a decision? Thanks.

Yeah, it's a good question, Kyle. I think in terms of Proteus, I would say we haven't made any decisions about offering Proteus through any model other than a capital acquisition, an outright capital sale. I think we'll monitor the market and we'll look at what the state of funding is and such before we do that. But, you know, right now we haven't sort of altered our go to market thinking in terms of Proteus. And part of why we don't need to necessarily do that is we still have Platinum Pro and it has certain capabilities that will meet the needs of many customers. Maybe not do everything that a Proteus can do, obviously, but do a lot of things. I think in terms of the duration of the program, we are being sort of proactive and, you know, just moving fast with what the markets look like. Obviously, if the capital markets improve, you know, I think we're at least hearing some positive news around what NIH funding might look like. But obviously, that's got to work its way through the process and ultimately get approved and get implemented. I think if those things roll out in a positive way and we see a return to capital, we could slowly start to pull back from some of these options. In terms of duration, you know, reagent rentals and leases tend to be, you know, longer term in nature, meaning, you know, measured in sort of, you know, a couple years, two or three years when you start talking about leases or rentals. I think when we talk about us being opportunistic and placing a device, you know, we're really putting a clock on that so that we place it with a customer, they start purchasing consumables and are using it. And we're really measuring that every month. And we're committing to that customer that if they're using it and getting value out of it, that we'll leave that machine there with them for six months. And at the end of that, they have to make a decision on sort of what they're going to do. Are they going to purchase it outright? Right. Do they want to move into a rental? But again, that we're using the placement sort of selectively, you know, lead with capital, look to use lease or rental wherever we can use placement as, you know, sort of a final stop. And the placement has, you know, a lot more sort of flexibility for us on how long we leave it there. But, you know, trying to keep it in that sort of, you know, six month type of range, you know, assuming that the customer is using the machine at a reasonable rate.

All right. That was helpful, Jeff. And, yeah, on the topic of utilization, could you talk about how that is, you know, trending in this environment given that, you know, the CapEx size is constrained? However, consumables are obviously less of, you know, like an outlay is necessary for that. So how is that going right now? And then also, how do you anticipate that to sort of progress going forward, given you got these, you know, reagent rental potentially? I would imagine that, you know, the pull through on that would be a little different. Can you just talk about what you what you expect to happen there?

Yeah. On the reagent front, you know, as we said in the prepared remarks, our our reagent revenue, consumable revenue in the quarter was a little ahead of our internal expectations. So, you know, it's been going well. We haven't seen any notable variation across market segments, even with the NIH headwinds affecting capital sales in the U.S. academic market. Our existing U.S. academic customers are still purchasing. We're still seeing purchasing in our government accounts, in our pharma biotech accounts. So I think consumable purchasing has been consistent. Obviously, the variations that you see across segments still exist. You know, some some academic labs buy more episodically where, you know, government or pharma and biotech maybe buy a more consistent clip every single month. So the general trends we've talked about still hold. We haven't seen any notable drop off. So we've been pleased with that. And that's another reason why we believe these other sort of instrument acquisition models could make a lot of sense is that that budget to spend on the consumables and perform research is there. It seems to be consistent. It seems to not be going through these stop start cycles that we're seeing with capital.

So this is a way for us to start to capture that and grow that sort of attribute or contribution to our overall revenue. great and on the new like kits and prep launches that you have coming up which end markets are those going to be going to be most suitable to and i'm sure and applications too like i'm sure it's you know the research kind of academic world but it sounds like you're having more success on the biopharma side obviously are these you know are you setting yourself up to you know have this kind of long tail of success and even deeper penetration in that end market given these new products and things yeah so on on that on that front kyle so the the first thing is you know we talked about as part of the v4 sequencing kit launch we're expanding the number of barcodes

available that that are you know sort of designed and highly validated by us obviously customers could choose to design their own barcodes as they do and you know other segments of the market or using perhaps you know as you see in the world of dna barcodes but in our world you know we've really been focused on designing those, validating a very high level of performance, because that's at the end of the day, what's being used in the pharma biotech. So that expansion in the number of barcodes is a direct link to, you know, feedback we've gotten from existing pharma biotech customers, as well as some that are in our funnel that they wanted to get up to that 24 level for the types of studies they were doing or the types of applications they're doing. So I do think that barcode set, you know, helps us continue to penetrate the pharma biotech segment better. As I talked about in the prepared remarks, you know, we have seen that funnel grow as we get more people using it. And we've got those, you know, sort of reference accounts to point to. So we feel good about the funnel there. It's just a longer sales cycle in the drug development world than it is in other segments. I think in terms of the library prep, there's certainly a benefit in pharma biotech, but I think, you know, the benefit of that library prep is probably more broadly applicable to anybody doing, you know, more complex biological sample research. I think we touched on a few of the attributes in the prepared remarks that, you know, the hundredfold lower input quantity, ability to deal with mixtures better.

I think those types of things tend to play across lots of different, you know, sort of biologically relevant systems and work, whether that's basic research or translational so i do think that plays across all the segments um when we get that v3 library prep kit launched got it and the ptm capabilities that you referenced i think it sounded like some new capabilities that that you guys are looking at um are you um are you kind of like meeting the market where the need is right now or is that more of a a longer term um you know thing that's good that you can sort of you're looking at that opportunity now But like, you know, PTMs are not quite where customers are, you know, applying the technology currently.

So what we're doing with those kids, Kyle, is just directly, you know, sort of reacting to and coming forward with a solution out of our R&D department to really hit what customers are saying they want to be able to do. You know, we know what our current tech is capable of. There's been some preprints and posters presented that show sort of customers applying our tech here. But we think there's more we can do by doing the combined detection run with sequencing and the way we're thinking about it. And we're going to sort of really talk about more of the of the plan and the kit rollout at our investor and analyst day in November. I think the way we've set it up, the way we're prioritizing it is really about what do we think customers want to be able to do right now? What are the pain points they have with existing tech? Obviously, the longer term view of this is based upon where we think the market will be in the end state. But I think we're definitely not doing this work thinking, you know, it's not something that customers are going to need for a while. This is very consistent with what they'd like to be doing and where the challenges are with existing tech to do this type of work today in their lab. So that's sort of our strategic approach to what we're doing on the PTM front.

Okay. And if you have, you know, solidly over $250 million in cash and you're having challenges in this kind of core business and it's been like a gradual sort of, you know, rollout over the years, let's say. Do you have any interest in using the capital to, you know, potentially partner or acquire or license some sort of, you know, external technology to either, you know, either help you in an adjacency or kind of, you know, take over for some of the slack? Maybe something that's overlapping with proteomics or some sort of similar end market that would be attractive to you right now, just given you have, again, it's a lot of big cash balance.

Yeah, Kyle, we're certainly recognized. We're fortunate to have the balance sheet strength that we have and to have a runway out into the second quarter of 28. Obviously, our number one priority is executing on our core technology and our core business. You know, we didn't spend a lot of time on it in the call, but obviously we've been very diligent over the last two years, really optimizing our operating expenses getting the organization at the right size getting the right programs funded we've leveraged partnerships to augment our work you know ones we've talked about in the past nvidia and idex health and sciences as sort of a couple that are you know obviously deeply involved with r&d related activities you know we have the commercial partnerships and the channel partnership that's allowed us to really keep a pretty you know, tight control over our sales and marketing spend. So I think our general plan is continue to operate the company with that level of fiscal discipline and stay focused on our business. That said, we are people who are always out in the market and we're always interacting with folks. We're always willing to learn about technologies that could get, you know, that could be integrated with ours, could fit into the full workflow of the customer, or even products that are directly adjacent that might bring more revenue per territory. We're certainly not opposed to the types of things you described. It's not necessarily our top priority, but we're always active. We're always listening. And if we saw the right thing, we wouldn't hesitate to do it. But we're going to be very picky, have a very high bar, because at the end of the day, you know investors have given us money to invest in our core tech and our core business and that's the first thing we have to do um so we have to have a high bar there but we're you know eyes wide open always willing to learn and if we see the right thing you know we're not afraid to be opportunistic all right and finally if the top line you know remains a little bit soft and it's you know it's challenging to generate like a lot of revenue kind of going forward and you need to maybe look at some cuts internally, would that be more on the R&D side?

Or do you think that the sales force just isn't matching this kind of revenue level? You're over-indexed to that commercial team, and that would be where things kind of happen.

Yeah, Kyle, I don't think we're over-indexed on commercials, the first thing I would say. If you look at sort of our sales, marketing, field-based service and support, I mean, we've talked about this in the past. I mean, we're talking about approximately 30 individuals across all those functions to support a channel network of 24 partners and then our direct sales activities. So I think there's probably plenty of examples in the industry where those numbers are much, much larger, driving a much higher expense. I think what we are doing in that area is not really expanding it in any way. We're sort of keep staying more flat, being very targeted if we do any additions. On the R&D front, I think the proof for me is in sort of the results. We've worked the R&D organization down in size and focus over the course of 2023 and 24. It's a very productive team. I mean, this team, you know, continues to deliver on time and on specification. Sometimes that second point gets lost in the market. People sort of derate their product to get out on time. That's not something we do. We set requirements and this team is hitting it. You know, it's a productive team. We still have two more launches and we're funding a very large platform program that wasn't even in our 24 numbers. And our 25 numbers are essentially flat to that. So I think we've got the right size group over there. We've got the right talent densities and all of the key functions that you need to do a novel technology like this. And I think what we're really focused on is more what I would call fine tune. If we see something that we can fine tune, we will. If we see a program that's not progressing the way we want, say in research, we'll stop that program. But I would view it more as being very targeted. And I think the other lever we have control over and we've been very mindful of is, you know, we've remained, you know, nearly flat with headcount, sort of plus or minus a couple of people since we did the big R&D realignment last fall. So I think we're, you know, we're we're taking advantage of, you know, being just very targeted and having that talent density and just being mindful of that. Don't add to it. Keep it sort of get the productivity we can out of the people we have and just have the right priorities and the right focus every day. So I think that's how we're we're approaching it right now. Obviously, if some major events occurred that, you know, impacted that thinking, we would we would be, you know, sort of mindful of it and analyze it and make the right decisions. But I think the way we're planning for it is we've got what we need. We'll stay very tight and not really grow that envelope and just really focus on executing the business at hand.

Perfect. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. This does conclude our question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Jeff Hawkins for closing remarks.

Thank you for joining our call today. We look forward to providing more updates on our business during the next quarterly earnings call and at our upcoming Investor and Analyst Day in November. Thank you for attending.

This does conclude our program. You may now disconnect.