Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rapid Microbio Systems fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer to the session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advised when your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please advise that today's conference has been recorded. I would like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mike Boyer of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Rapid Microbiosystems fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Joining me on the call are Rob Spignessi, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sean Wurches, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. A copy of the release is available on the company's website at rapidmicrobio.com under Investors in the News and Events section. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that many statements made during this call may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results, or performance are forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, statements relating to Rapid Micro's financial condition, assumptions regarding future financial performance, anticipated future cash usage, statements relating to the company's term loan facility, Guidance for 2026, including revenue, expenses, gross margins, system placements, and validation activities. Expectations for and plan activities related to RapidMicro's business development and growth, including the expected benefits from our distribution and collaboration agreement with Millipore Sigma. Customer interest and adoption of the Growth Direct system and the impact of the Growth Direct system on their businesses and operations. and statements regarding the potential impact of general macroeconomic conditions on our business and that of our customers. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including our ability to meet publicly announced guidance, the impact of our existing and any future indebtedness on our ability to operate our business, our ability to access any future tranches under our debt facility and to comply with all of its obligations thereunder, our ability to deliver products to customers and recognize revenue, and market and macroeconomic conditions. For a more detailed list and description of the risks and uncertainties associated with RapidMicro's business, please refer to the Risk Factor section of our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as updated from time to time in our subsequent filings with the SEC. We urge you to consider these factors, and you should be aware that these statements should be considered estimates only and are not a guarantee of future performance. Please note that today's remarks include certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for or superior to financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. They are provided as supplemental information to enhance investors' understanding of our operating performance and may differ from similarly titled measures used by other companies. Reconciliations between these non-GAAP measures and the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release issued this morning. We encourage you to review these reconciliations carefully. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, March 12, 2026. Rapid Micro disclaims any intention or obligation except as required by law to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Rob.

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone. I will begin with a brief overview of our fourth quarter performance and recent commercial wins, as well as an update on our key priorities. I'll then share a few comments on our 2026 outlook before turning the call over to Sean for a detailed review of our q4 financial results in 2026 expectations before reviewing our fourth quarter results i'd like to highlight the first press release we issued this morning announcing that samsung biologics is expanding its deployment of the growth direct platform through a new multi-system order received in the first quarter of 2026 this follow-on order builds on our existing strong partnership, and we are proud to support Samsung's next-generation manufacturing strategy. This expansion, yet again, highlights the impact the Growth Direct delivers to the world's leading pharmaceutical manufacturers as they seek to automate and modernize their critical quality and manufacturing workflows. Now, turning to our performance this morning, we reported total fourth-quarter revenue of $11.3 million, representing 37% year-over-year growth and a quarterly record. These results exceeded the increased guidance we provided in November and mark our 13th consecutive quarter of meeting or exceeding expectations. We placed 16 growth direct systems in the quarter and ended the year with 190 systems placed globally, of which 155 are fully validated. A highlight of the quarter was a record multi-system order from Amgen, reflecting their continued investment in the global rollout of the GrowthDirect platform. Amgen is deploying systems across multiple sites in North America, Europe, and Asia, and fully leveraging all applications to include environmental monitoring, bio-burden, and water testing. Additionally, Amgen will sponsor our first-ever North American Growth Direct Day in the second quarter. Product revenue increased 78% in the fourth quarter, with outperformance driven by strong system placements. For the full year, consumable revenue increased 17%, reflecting continued strong utilization across our installed base. Consumable growth remains one of the clearest indicators that customers are actively using their systems and realizing meaningful ROI. Importantly, consumable strength underpins recurring revenue, which increased 15% for the full year and accounted for 53% of total revenue, highlighting the durability and visibility of our business model. Turning to gross margin, fourth quarter gross margin was impacted by inventory-related charges that Sean will discuss shortly. This does not diminish the significant progress we made throughout 2025 in reducing product costs, improving manufacturing efficiencies, and increasing service productivity. As I look back at our performance over the last three years, total gross margin has improved by over 50 percentage points, a trajectory we are confident we can sustain. Now, turning to the Millipore Sigma collaboration, our partnership is entering its second year, and we are pleased with the progress to date. In support of their commercial growth strategy, we have completed specialist training, and Millipore Sigma has established customer demo labs across Europe and Asia. These labs will serve as an important part of the sales process to give customers hands-on experience with the GrowthRx system. As a reminder, Rapid Micro operates demo labs in North America, Europe, and Asia as well. We continue to work closely with the Millipore Sigma team as they expand their funnel and drive sales, which we expect will meaningfully contribute to our 2026 system placements. Turning to our supply chain, we are advancing opportunities to reduce product costs and leverage Millipore Sigma's broader logistics network and other capabilities. Combined with our internal efforts, we have already secured meaningful, consumable cost reduction benefits that will positively impact product margins starting in the first half and accelerating in the second half of 2026. Now, I'd like to briefly review our priorities in 2026 outlook. We are off to a strong start of the year, and our priorities remain consistent. Accelerating system placements, expanding gross margins, continuing to innovate new products, and prudently managing our cash, all while maintaining disciplined and consistent execution. On the commercial front, we remain focused on expanding and converting our sales funnel. The multi-system global rollout at Amgen and today's announcement that Samsung Biologics is meaningfully expanding its deployment of the Growth Direct platform underscore the substantial opportunity we see across the global pharmaceutical market. In addition, our partnership with Millipore Sigma continues to complement our direct sales efforts by broadening our global reach in our core pharmaceutical segments and providing access to attractive adjacent customer segments. As we work to expand the sales funnel, our annual Growth Direct Day remains one of the most effective customer-focused forums. This year, we are expanding the impact by adding events in North America and Asia, in addition to our premier recurring event in Europe. As a reminder, these sessions bring current and prospective customers together to showcase how automation and improved data management delivered by the Drug Direct can drive meaningful operational improvements and compliance within manufacturing and quality control. We are especially pleased Amgen will sponsor the North American event in Q2, reflecting their confidence in and commitment to the GrowthDirect platform.

Looking at the broader market landscape, there are strong tailwinds augmenting our consistent commercial execution.

These include increased adoption of full automation, a greater focus on data integrity by industry and regulators, advanced manufacturing modalities driving the need to modernize, and growing investment in the onshoring of pharmaceutical manufacturing in the U.S. We believe these tailwinds will remain strong and durable, which will contribute to position us well for sustained long-term growth. In addition to staying highly focused on our priorities of accelerating growth direct placements and expanding gross margins, we continue to innovate to provide new value-add solutions to our customers. To this end, we expect to release our next-generation cloud-native software platform in the second half of 2026, which will redefine the Growth Direct experience for our customers. Our AI engineers have spent 15 years developing and refining the industry-leading algorithm for microbial growth detection, and this new platform will leverage that experience to deliver significant additional value through AI-driven analytics and insights across our customers' global data. As a growth-direct installed fleet expands globally and generates increasing volumes of digital data, this new software and data platform will provide meaningful value to our customers by enabling deeper insights and faster decision-making power for global quality and manufacturing operations. Against this backdrop, we are initiating full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $37 to $41 million, including 30 to 38 system placements. We expect meaningful gross margin expansion and expect to achieve approximately 20% gross margin for the full year, with performance accelerating in the second half. We believe this guidance is both prudent and achievable and reflects our track record of consistent execution. Sean will provide some additional details around the assumptions included in our Outlook, as well as potential upside opportunities, and we look forward to updating you as the year progresses. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Sean to discuss our fourth quarter performance and 2026 Outlook in more detail.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin my comments this morning with a review of our fourth quarter 2025 results and then discuss our first quarter and full year outlook for 2026. We'll then open the call up for questions. Fourth quarter revenue increased 37% to a record $11.3 million, compared to $8.2 million in Q4 2024. During the fourth quarter, we placed 16 Growth Direct Systems, which was also a record, compared to six systems in the fourth quarter last year. We also completed three validations in the quarter, compared to four in Q4 last year. Product revenue, which is comprised of systems and consumable revenue, increased 78% to $9.3 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $5.2 million in Q4 2024. This was primarily driven by the increase in system placements. Consumable revenue grew 11% in the fourth quarter compared to Q4 last year. Service revenue was $2 million in the fourth quarter, which was in line with the guidance we provided in November, compared to $3 million in Q4 2024. As a reminder, the timing of validations tends to be the largest driver of quarter-to-quarter variability in service revenue, and the validation revenue we generated in Q4 2024 remains a company record. Fourth quarter recurring revenue, which consists of consumables and service contracts, increased 10% to $4.6 million compared to $4.2 million in Q4 2024. Non-recurring revenue, which is comprised mainly of systems and validation revenue, increased 65% to $6.7 million. dollars. Turning to margin, product margin was negative 8% in Q4. This includes a $1.1 million or 12 percentage point impact related to the write-off of unusable consumable inventory in the period. Our manufacturing team has addressed the underlying situation, and we do not expect any further charges related to this in 2026. Excluding the impact of this write-off, Q4 product margin was positive 4%, which was consistent with our guidance. Service margins were 22% in the fourth quarter, compared to a record 47% in Q4 last year. The lower service margins in Q4 this year were due to the lower service revenue in the period, which more than offset the positive impact of service productivity improvements and cost reductions made during 2025. On a combined basis, fourth quarter gross margin was negative $0.3 million, or negative 3%, compared to positive $1 million, or 12%, in Q4 last year. Excluding the impact of the inventory-related charges we recorded in the period, total Q4 gross margin was positive 7%. This was in line with our guidance and slightly lower than the Q4 last year due to the impact of lower service revenue on service margins. Moving down the P&L, total operating expenses were $11.9 million in the fourth quarter compared to $11.2 million in Q4 2024. Within OpEx, R&D expenses were $3.2 million, sales and marketing expenses were $3.3 million, and G&A expenses were $5.3 million. For the full year, total operating expenses decreased by 3% while revenue increased by 20%. Interest income was $0.5 million, and interest expense was $0.8 million in the fourth quarter. Q4 net loss was $12.5 million. This compares to a net loss of $9.7 million in Q4 last year. The larger net loss in Q4 this year was primarily attributable to the inventory charges we recorded, as well as the lower service margin and higher interest expense in the period. Net loss per share was $0.28 in Q4 compared to net loss per share of $0.22 in the prior year quarter. With respect to non-cash expenses and capital expenditures, depreciation and amortization expenses were $0.8 million, stock compensation expense was $0.6 million, and capital expenditures were $0.1 million in the fourth quarter. We ended the year with $39 million in cash and investments, which was in line with our guidance, as well as $25 million of unused capacity under our debt facility with Trinity Capital. Our net cash burn was $3 million in Q4. As a reminder, Q4 is typically our lowest burn quarter, while Q1 is typically our highest burn quarter each year. Now, I'll turn to our 2026 outlook. For the full year 2026, we expect total revenue to be in a range of $37 to $41 million, dollars, which assumes we place between 30 and 38 systems. This system placement range reflects a few key variables. First, our guidance continues to account for some ongoing uncertainty around the timing and scale of customer purchase decisions, particularly with respect to larger multi-system opportunities, which often involve more complex purchasing considerations. Second, the low end of our guidance range assumes we do not place any new large multi-system orders in 2026 other than the Samsung order announced this morning. And third, we continue to expect Millipore Sigma to contribute meaningfully to system placements in 2026. However, the low end of our guidance range does not assume they satisfy their full year two system commitment since some of those systems may be placed in Q1 2027. For Q1, we expect revenue of at least $7.5 million, including at least five system placements. Consistent with historical trends, we expect at least 30% of our system placements to be made in the first half of the year, with the remainder in the second half. We also expect revenue and placements to peak in Q4 in line with typical seasonality. Turning to consumables, we expect revenue in Q1 and Q2 2026 to be slightly higher than Q4 2025, and then increase gradually over the remaining quarters with variability driven by the timing of customer orders and shipments. Looking at service, we expect revenue between $2.3 and $2.6 million in Q1. We then expect service revenue to step down slightly in Q2, followed by meaningful increases in Q3 and again in Q4, based on our current expectations with respect to the timing of installation and validation activities. We expect to complete at least 25 validations in 2026, with at least three in the first quarter. Turning to margins, we expect our Q1 gross margin as a percentage of revenue to be in the mid-single digits, with product margin of negative single digits and service margin above 30%. Thereafter, we expect to reach and maintain positive product gross margin in each of the remaining quarters of 2026, led by improving consumable gross margin, which we expect to turn positive in the second half of the year as we fully realize the benefit of meaningful material cost reductions we recently locked in, as well as benefits from other cost reduction in manufacturing and efficiency initiatives. For the full year, we expect total gross margin of approximately 20% with a Q4 exit rate in the mid-20% range or better, product margin in the high single digits to low teens, and service margin above 40%. Consistent with prior years, we expect quarter-to-quarter variability in gross margin to be driven by progress on our product cost reduction and service productivity initiatives, overall revenue volumes, and the revenue mix between systems, consumables, and service in each period. We expect operating expenses to be between $47 and $51 million for the full year. We expect $10 million in non-cash expenses, including depreciation and amortization expense of $3 million and stock compensation expense of $7 million. dollars. We also expect CapEx of $2 million, interest income of $1 million, and interest expense of $2 million. Looking further ahead, our strategic priorities of accelerating system placements, improving gross margin, innovating new products, and prudently managing our cash remain unchanged. We continue to build momentum in our business, including our partnership with Millipore Sigma, which we expect will further accelerate progress on these strategic priorities over the coming years, including the meaningful contribution to system placements we've incorporated into our guidance for this year. That concludes my comments, so at this point, we'll open the

call up for questions. Operator? Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand buy or compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from the line of Thomas Sion of Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning. I appreciate you taking

the questions. And thanks, Sean, for all the detail on the guide. The gap between placed and validated systems has widened since 2023. What are you guys doing to, or are you doing anything to shrink that gap over time? Is that just more engineers to complete the validation? Can you

help us think about that a little bit. Yeah, Thomas, I'll take a shot at that. I think part of that, a lot of that has to do with timing, actually, in terms of, you know, there can be variation between when we deliver a system and when that validation process gets started, depending on the customer's plans and resourcing that goes along with that. So, you know, I think we'd expect to see that come down. I think, you know, we talked about Amgen And this time, I think as we look at that, you know, some of the color we gave in the call, prepared remarks, it really ties into how we expect that to roll out, which I think the majority of that work is right now, our plan working with them would be that a lot of that would happen at the end of this year. So I think if you look at a deal like that, the expectation would be, you know, you'll see that placed in Q4 last year. We'll get most, if not all, that work done with them by the end of this year. So, you know, that gives you some indication of how these things can typically go. So there is a natural lag in there. I think you'll see that variance come back in a bit as we work through that and a few other customer situations. So it's nothing we're concerned about. It is something we keep our eyes on, and it's something that we will continue to work to keep tight as much as we can. So Rob, if you have any comments.

No, it's clearly a robust validation year as well. So you can see that backlog being worked. And some of this is, to Sean's point, driven by order timing, size and timing of orders and just the sequencing of our team and our customers' teams and working through the validations.

That's great. I appreciate that color. And then just with the Samsung announcement this morning, could you just comment on the percentage of your play systems that are within CDMOs and how you see that space evolving over time relative to the drug originators themselves?

Yeah, so it's interesting. I don't know the exact percentage, so I don't want to put that out. But it's sizable. We've previously announced Lonza is a customer, Samsung. We've obviously had other CDMOs as well. We have a very strong value proposition for CDMOs as well as probably called principal manufacturers. We're growing. Clearly, today's a good example of both Amgen and Samsung. So you've got both a principal manufacturer and a CDMO. But CDMOs in particular benefit from our ability to turn their lines faster, release product faster, and also, to a certain extent, in some cases, market the use of advanced technologies in their quality control and manufacturing operations. So, yeah, quite strong in CDMOs, and we plan to stay that way and grow with the CDMO space. We also have, we don't talk about it significantly on these calls, we also have small and mid-CDOs globally as well. So generally it's a very strong segment for us as well as the principal manufacturers. I can't say is one stronger than the other. They're both strong right now, and we tend to be in both segments, as we've said, generally more in the advanced modalities, primarily biologics and also in the cell and gene categories within CDMOs and also principal manufacturers.

That's great. I appreciate that. Thanks, guys.

Sure. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Dan Arias of Steve Fowler. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks. Sean, on gross margins, where is the confidence in the 20% number for 2026? Kind of felt like a good 4Q number would be the jumping off point for what you're going to do this year. I understand it was due to an inventory charge, but the number is sort of the number. So what are the key moving pieces and risks when it comes to your own process? And then as we think about product gross margins being back to negative and 2Q, how do we get comfortable with the idea that as we start to feel better about placement momentum, which has been good, we can also feel good about gross margins, that there doesn't have to be an offset there?

Yep, yep. I'll take that one, Dan. Thinking about it, there's a couple key drivers to focus on from my perspective. One is we talked to or I talked to my comments about the fact that we have recently locked in some meaningful product cost reductions with some vendors that will benefit us beginning in Q2 without accelerating Q3 and Q4. So that is a substantial reduction from what we're paying for some of the key materials in our product, and that's consumables specifically. So that's number one. Number two, I'd say is I talked a minute ago about how we expect the year to roll out from a validation and service revenue standpoint. You kind of see in recent quarters what lower service revenues can do from a leverage standpoint in our service margins. We expect to see that go back the other way as we work our way through this year. So to get to 20%, I think two of the largest drivers, if not the largest drivers, are those cost reductions kind of kicking in full bore in the second half and us getting our service revenues back up to levels where they can generate meaningful margins beyond where we've been over the past quarter or two. Volume is also a big part of it. So as we progress through the year, we're manufacturing more. We expect to sell more. I talked about peaking in placements in Q4. Those things also contribute. So I think it's important to note the comment that we expect Q4 exit to be mid-20s or above. So that trend should be growing as we work our way through the year overall for total margins, and those are the key factors that give us confidence in being able to achieve those kinds of numbers for the year and exiting the year.

Yeah, and Dan, just to put maybe an exclamation point on one thing Sean said on the product cost in particular, Or with regard to execution risk, we have contractual agreements in place with the supply base, which is meaningful with regard to how we get comfortable and confident in that cost out, in addition to the other elements that Sean mentioned.

And then maybe on the systems to Samsung and Amgen, how do you see utilization ramping And then just on overall utilization, can you maybe just talk to consumers? consumables pull through per system, you know, consumables growth has been pretty good here. We all presumably have this placement and pull through driven model. So, Sean, we've talked a little bit about this. Can you just maybe set a baseline for where 2025 pull through came in and then to what extent that number might be higher in 2026? Yep. Yeah. So, I guess on the first

question, Dan. I think in terms of what will happen with Amgen and Samsung in terms of pull through, I think, you know, I talked about Amgen a little bit ago, you know, latter part of the year, likely when we get those fully validated. Samsung, I don't know that we have a fixed timetable for that yet, but I'm sure it kind of follows that similar timeline would be my best guess. So in terms of where we get with them, I think validations are definitely in play for 2026, our expectation, frankly, in terms of when they start to contribute to recurring revenue, I'd expect that to be more a 2027 factor. In terms of pull-through, I think we've continued recently, I'd say, to be kind of in that single-digit year-over-year improvement range that we've talked about historically, so I'd expect that that will be similar. I think with big orders and kind of a bolus of validations like we're talking about with these larger orders, I think there is an opportunity for us to see more meaningful step-ups in that as we bring those systems online kind of in short periods of time. So for now, I'd say think about it as single digits in 2026. I think as we look at 27, that we would potentially have opportunity to see a bigger step-up than that in 27. Okay. Very good. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Anna Snokowski of KeyBank. Your line is now open. Hi, thanks for taking my question and congrats

on the quarter and the exciting announcement with Samsung. Maybe to start, do you think you could share more insight on the Samsung multi-system order? Maybe would you say it's fair that this is in the double-digit range, and should we expect this to roll out over the course of 2026 or just Q1? And then just also on this, more on the strategy, is this one site, is this part of the global rollout, or maybe a therapeutic area? And then I have one follow-up.

Yeah, generally on Samsung, we don't get into the specific quantum of it, but it's a next phase of rollout. I think many of you may remember we had the initial launch with Samsung a couple years ago. This is a second wave, which is actually a larger order size. And it's focused primarily on their principal area in South Korea, although some of you may know that Samsung is also acquiring around the world, so those are also in scope. And as I mentioned a couple years ago, we expect to grow a Samsung in the quarters and years ahead, and I'll say it again, we expect to grow a Samsung in the quarters and years Interestingly, which we didn't talk about in the prepared remarks, but we're also discussing other collaboration opportunities with Samsung, which we're quite excited about. So more to follow on that. And Part B, Anna?

Okay, perfect. And then my second question, just more in general on repeat orders versus new customers. Do you expect these customers, repeat customers like Samsung to move through your pipeline quicker? And then just in terms of validation, is that usually a quarter lag or what should we expect, both from Samsung and just repeat customers in general?

Yeah, so a general rule of thumb is repeat customers go faster, generally, both in the sales process and the validation process. It's a general takeaway. Now, certain things like, you know, some of these large orders, you know, Amgen, you know, is an example, and other large customers we haven't specifically mentioned by name, across several sites around the world, you know, the sites have projects going on at any given time. So the timing could be, you know, throttled by a site-based activity. But generally, it's quite faster. Generally, we have what's called a modular validation, which basically leverages the knowledge and work we've done on the initial validation, usually at a starter site. And we can roll that out in an expedited fashion to accelerate the process. And, you know, as you may imagine, our land expand strategy is focused on that. But also to your point, we're also, the team's also out there focused on acquiring new customers as well, which can be a bit longer, both in the sales process and the initial validation.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our last question comes from the line of Brendan Smith of TD Cowering. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. I wanted to actually first ask about the kind of next-gen cloud-native software platform you referenced in the prepared remarks. Can you maybe just give us a bit more color on, you know, how this gets integrated into devices moving forward? Is this something that, you know, all new orders will automatically include some of these analytics capabilities? Is it a software update push you can monetize into existing install bases? Just kind of wondering how we should think about that contributing to growth.

Yeah, so thanks for the question, Brandon. Think of it as a bit of a phased approach. So out of the box, first of all, it's a complete rewrite of our application software for the GrowthDirect. So it's a completely different architecture. So day one, customers benefit from a modern UI, much easier integration into some of their IT infrastructure. And by cloud native, it's been built around a cloud infrastructure. We envision the customer's cloud will run it, but from a future revenue standpoint, we could also provide cloud services. Right now, the system is in a pre-launch phase with a major customer operating in their cloud, running the growth directs, and the feedback has been exceptional. So we're quite excited about that. So out of the box, a couple of benefits. First, you know, a complete rewrite, so customers benefit from easier navigation, easier integration, you know, a more modern UI, the ability to access data from the cloud, from any device versus, you know, through their, you know, IT infrastructure attached to their limbs. Over time, we see the ability to provide services against that cloud data. So imagine a fleet of growth directs generating. And the idea came from we have these growth directs around the world generating all this data. How can we help customers benefit from that? So the growth direct would be effectively an appliance. Other technologies can also plug into this technology and feeds into a cloud infrastructure. And then against that, we could provide services against that, predictive analytics, you know, other types of insights on seasonality, quality failures, you know, potentially speciation and ID, you know, services. And that's really part of the vision. We're not going to get into too much detail on what those are and how we plan to monetize it, but think of this as step one to a couple-step, you know, multi-year process to really advance from the automation side into the, I'll call it the AI sort of higher-powered analytics and cloud-enabled side of our business, which the goal is to continue to drive to high-margin recurring revenue over time. And what we've seen is that customers are, especially in pharma, which can be a little conservative, are open to discussing how AI and cloud in particular can enable their environment. So we're not really pushing against a closed door. It's really, it feels like we're pushing against an open door. And in some cases, customers are asking us for, you know, services in this general category.

Got it. Super helpful. And then maybe just one last one on some of the consumable cost reduction benefits. I think you guys spoke to starting to see now. Can you maybe just expand a bit on what some of the moves you guys have made on your side, even, you know, within the Milliporn Network, I know you referenced, maybe what else you're planning there this year to kind of drive the added reduction in the second half? Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Brennan. It's Sean. Yeah. So, we are still working with Merck Millipur Sigma on several different opportunities. I think some could benefit this year. Some are more longer-term focused in terms of things we could do. And as we've talked about in the past, it's quite a broad palette of things that we're looking at in terms of things that could benefit our margins, not just material cost reduction. I'd say that the locked-in savings that we have at this point that are going to benefit consumables in 2026 are not with Merck Millipore directly, but they are things that are direct inputs with other vendors that we have in place that our procurement team has done a really good job with leveraging our growth, leveraging other relationships to be able to get us what I would say is kind of a step change reduction in cost for a couple of different key inputs into the material that will benefit us this year. So we're excited about that. As I said earlier, it's going to be a key driver of our gross consumable margin expansion and by the association, overall gross margin expansion. And we think it's something that we can use as a template to drive future reductions in other areas in the future and continue to drive

those consumable margins up. Got to make sense. Thanks, guys.

Okay. Thanks, Brandon. Well, thanks, everyone, for your time and attention. We'll wrap the call up at this point. Thanks again and look forward to speaking with many of you shortly.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. If you just conclude the program, you may now disconnect.