Earnings Call Transcript - TXG Q4 2020

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the 10x Genomics Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I would now like to hand the call over to your speaker today Ms. Investor Relations and Strategic Finance. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Company Representative, Investor Relations Representative

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Earlier today 10x Genomics released financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2020. If you have not received this news release, or if you would like to be added to the Company’s distribution list, please send an email to investors@10xgenomics.com. An archived webcast of this call will be available on the Investors tab and the Company’s website 10xgenomics.com for at least 45 days following this call.

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Good afternoon and thank you for joining our call to review our fourth quarter and 2020 results. During today's call, I will provide a brief summary of our fourth quarter and full year results. Next, I will discuss the opportunities that lie ahead and how we're focusing our efforts across our three technology platforms to build great products that deliver amazing insights for our customers. I would like to start by thanking our employees for their hard work and dedication through a particularly difficult year. 2020 brought significant challenges, change, and sacrifice, but I continue to be impressed by and grateful for our team's resilience and commitment to our customers and to each other. Despite all the challenges, we made important progress across our business in 2020. To start, total revenue grew 22% over the prior year to $299 million. In the fourth quarter, revenue grew 49% over the prior year as our business continued to recover from the impacts of COVID. We grew our installed base by 45%, selling 746 additional instruments. We continue to expand our customer reach, and our products have now been adopted by all the top 100 research institutions and top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Our customers published more than 1,500 peer-reviewed papers, bringing the total to over 2,200, more than doubling the number of total publications over the course of the year. And we continued to invest in developing and defending our patent portfolio, adding more than 300 new patents and patent applications, expanding our coverage of enabling technologies. We now have more than 1,000 patents and patent applications.

Justin McAnear, CFO

Thank you, Serge. Total revenue for the three months ended December 31, 2020 was $112.2 million compared to $75.3 million for the prior year period, representing a 49% increase. Similar to prior years, our revenue in 2020 was more heavily weighted to the back half of the year, particularly Q4, due to the typical budgetary cycles of our customer base. In addition, there was a concentration of orders during the month of December as more labs opened up and customers resumed experiments. Consumables revenue was $96.5 million, which increased 49% over the prior year period. Instrument revenue was $14 million, which increased 49% over the prior year period. Service revenue was $1.7 million, which increased 48% over the prior year period. North America revenue for the fourth quarter was $57 million, representing a 34% growth over the prior year period. EMEA revenue for the fourth quarter was $32.9 million, representing a 54% growth over the prior year period. APAC revenue for the fourth quarter was $22.3 million, representing a 95% growth over the prior year period. Gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $93.3 million compared to a gross profit of $58.7 million for the prior year period. Gross margin for the fourth quarter was 83% compared to 78% for the fourth quarter of 2019. The gross margin increase was driven primarily by favorable product mix due to the Next GEM transition, which did not carry the same level of royalty accruals as legacy GEM products. As the transition to Next GEM products is now substantially complete, we see this level of gross margin as a high point and expect that future quarters will have a slightly lower gross margin as our newly introduced products expand and become a larger percentage of our overall revenue. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $502.9 million compared to $66.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. Our fourth quarter operating expenses included $406.9 million of in-process R&D expense due to the acquisition of ReadCoor. R&D expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $39.7 million compared to $27.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2019, excluding in-process R&D expenses related to acquisitions. The increase was primarily attributable to increased personnel-related costs. SG&A expenses for the fourth quarter were $56 million compared to $38.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. The increase was primarily due to increased personnel-related costs. Operating loss for the fourth quarter was $409.6 million compared to a loss of $8.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. This includes $14.3 million of stock-based compensation for the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to $5.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. Net loss for the period was $415.6 million compared to a net loss of $7.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. Now turning to our full-year results. Total revenue for the full year ended December 31, 2020 was $298.8 million compared to $245.9 million for 2019, representing a 22% increase. Consumables revenue was $252.7 million, an increase of 22% over the prior year. Instrument revenue was $40.1 million, an increase of 15% over the prior year. Service revenue was $6 million, an increase of 48% over the prior year. As of year-end, we have sold a cumulative total of 2,412 Chromium instruments, up 746 instruments from 1,666 instruments at the end of 2019, which represents a 45% increase in the ending installed base. Our customers have historically averaged approximately $150,000 a year in consumable orders per instrument, outside of the impacts of the pandemic. Q4 was above that rate on an annualized basis, but due to COVID impacts earlier in the year, our 2020 pull-through averaged $124,000 per instrument for the full year. North America revenue for the full year was $159.3 million, representing 14% growth over the prior year. EMEA revenue for the full year was $73.3 million, representing 26% growth over the prior year. APAC revenue for the full year was $66.2 million, representing 38% growth over the prior year. Gross profit for 2020 was $240.4 million compared to a gross profit of $184.9 million for 2019. Gross margin for 2020 was 80% compared to 75% for 2019. The increase in gross margin was driven primarily by lower accrued royalties related to ongoing litigation, partially offset by higher costs from newly introduced products. Total operating expenses for 2020 were $774.5 million compared to $215.4 million for 2019, inclusive of $447.5 million of in-process R&D expenses related to the acquisitions of CartaNA and ReadCoor. R&D expenses for 2020 were $123.4 million compared to $83.1 million for 2019, excluding $447.5 million of in-process R&D expenses related to the acquisitions of CartaNA and ReadCoor. The increase was primarily attributable to increased personnel and stock-based compensation expenses. SG&A expenses for 2020 were $202.3 million compared to $130.8 million for the prior year. The increase was primarily due to increased personnel and stock-based compensation expenses and increased litigation expenses. Operating loss for 2020 was $534.1 million compared to a loss of $30.6 million for 2019. Net loss for 2020 was $542.7 million compared to a net loss of $31.3 million for 2019. We ended 2020 with $664 million in cash and cash equivalents. Now, turning to our outlook for 2021. We expect full-year revenue for 2021 to be in the range of $480 million to $500 million, representing growth of 61% to 67% over full-year 2020. As in prior years, we expect revenue to be heavily weighted towards the back half of 2021, particularly in the fourth quarter. We ended Q4 with about 90% of customer labs operational at varying degrees of capacity and are still seeing a wide range of efficiencies within the COVID operating environment. Going forward, we expect this capacity to fluctuate in the near term, and we view the percentage of labs open as a less important metric compared to the available capacity per lab. We don't expect much improvement in lab capacity in Q1. Q1 will also lack the seasonal benefit of Q4. As a result, we expect our Q1 revenues will be sequentially down from Q4. While the most visible impact of COVID-19 on our business has been customer lab closures and reduced capacity, we are also managing supply chain and logistics risks. These have not caused significant disruptions to date, but our customers are subject to similar risks, which could limit our customers' ability to perform experiments. It's an ever-evolving situation that we are tracking closely. As we enable the Century of Biology, we will continue to aggressively scale the Company. In 2021, we are focusing our investments on R&D to continue our rapid pace of product development and innovation, intellectual property to protect our products and scientific advancements, our commercial organization to continue to build our sales and support teams and adequately address the interest we are seeing from the biopharma and translational markets, and finally, on our operational capabilities to ensure we have a solid foundation to enable our future growth. At this point, I'll turn it back to Serge.

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Thanks, Justin. I'm so proud of our team and of our achievements in what turned out to be an incredibly challenging 2020. While the pandemic is not over, we anticipate that it will be brought under an increasing measure of control as we progress through the year. Next week, we're hosting an inaugural virtual event called Xperience, where we will share details about the work of our customers and upcoming products. I look forward to seeing you all there. Overall, there are many reasons to be optimistic as we look to the coming years and beyond. The pandemic has highlighted the need to accelerate the mastery of biology and the importance of our mission. Advances in life sciences are poised to transform the world in significant ways. We anticipate vast long-term opportunities ahead of us and intend to continue scaling the Company and investing aggressively to capitalize on them. With that, we will now open it up for questions.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Doug Schenkel from Cowen.

Doug Schenkel, Analyst

Hey. Good afternoon, guys. I'm actually in the office but on my cell phone, hopefully, the reception is okay. 10x has always been a company that's done a fantastic job balancing high gross margins, which is, of course, attractive to investors with innovation that makes new technologies accessible via ease of use, quality and oftentimes, reduced price per unit for the customers. I'm recognizing that you noted in your prepared remarks that you're close to a high watermark with gross margin. As you roll out newer products with often lower price points and add new products organically and inorganically, how do you think about the longer-term outlook for maintaining gross margin at levels seen over the past few quarters, meaning, at least in the mid-70s or so, even as we factor in what you said about this being kind of a high watermark quarter?

Justin McAnear, CFO

Hey Doug, this is Justin. I'll take that one. Our high consumables gross margin is a core strength of our business model, and it helps enable the deep investments that we're making to develop new products. In our product development process, we typically target gross margins of about 80%. Some of our newer products have lower gross margins than our previously existing products, but they're mostly in that range. So, I think, 80% is a good number to think about for the near to midterm. What you propose, I don't think is unreasonable to consider in the longer term.

Doug Schenkel, Analyst

And I think this is another one for you. I believe you talked about $150,000 in consumables per box on an annualized basis as the assumption that you baked into guidance; on the surface, that seems a little low to me. I mean, back in Q4 of '19, you generated $165,000 in annualized consumable pull-through. I think that the full-year number was a little bit lower than that, but still above $150,000. I point to those numbers because, obviously, 2019 was pre-pandemic. And I recognize, on one hand, Q4 is seasonally a strong consumable quarter as we look back to Q4 of that year. But, on the other hand, you have a higher mix of higher pull-through Chromium connects out there. And you also have more Visium users out there, which, of course, because we don't have a great way of modeling it, those consumable revenues typically get baked into that number. So, it's just not clear that your 2021 revenue guidance embeds an assumption that is kind of consistent with what we've seen trend-wise absent COVID and what we've seen in terms of increased Visium adoption. Can you just kind of walk us through what I might be missing here as I think about it; that number looks a little bit low?

Justin McAnear, CFO

Yes, it's a good question, Doug. I think, starting at the beginning around Q4 and seasonality. So, Q4 is seasonally quite a bit stronger in total than the other three quarters. And you're right that the Q4 '19 pull-through was a large quarter-over-quarter increase from the previous quarters. In fact, Q3 '19 was well below the $150,000 per year. So, that's why we focus on annual pull-through and not quarterly pull-through. For our 2021 guidance, we contemplate existing customers continuing to increase their usage, while we're adding a large number of new customers at the same time, and those new customers take some time to ramp. We've previously said that around $150,000 or slightly above that is a good pull-through number to use as we balance the increasing utilization of existing customers against this ramp-up of the new placements. As far as the Connect goes, that is having some impact on the ASP when we look at the ASP between the Chromium Controller and the Chromium Connect. But that's a niche product, and it's very early on. So, that isn't making a material difference in our average pull-through as of yet.

Operator, Operator

Next one on the queue is Tycho Peterson from JP Morgan.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. This is Julia on for Tycho. Thanks for taking the question. So, staying on the pull-through question, I know you know that at a conference that some of your oldest customer, that $1 million annual pull-through and you also have Visium FFPE and cytosis coming to unlock sample volumes. But at the same time, as you add new customers, it also weighs on throughput, at least initially. So, I know you said $150,000 as a good number for 2021. But as we look longer term, what do you say is the pull-through potential of Chromium in the out years? Are you still thinking about $200,000 by 2023, which is, I believe, a data point you previously provided, or do you now think there is significant upside to that?

Justin McAnear, CFO

This is Justin. I'll take that one as well. It's a great question. There are a number of factors that are going to contribute to that. As we're adding an ever-increasing number of new customers each year and introducing new products, like Visium, the new capabilities on Visium, the Chromium Connect, and the Chromium X, it's going to take some time for those products to ramp up and for us to see how they materialize in reference to our expectations. The remarkable thing is that our pull-through has maintained itself in that high-140 to 150 range, even as we've, like this year, increased the installed base by over 40%. So, I think it's yet to be seen how that pull-through metric will materialize. For now, $150,000 is the best estimate for the near to medium term. But, at some point, the focus is going to be on overall consumable application spend within the three platforms that we've defined.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

Got it. And then separately, regarding the sales force expansion, you mentioned you're hiring at least 100 more salespeople throughout this year. How should we think about the pace of that hiring and the cadence of revenue ramp this year? And then, what's the relative resource allocation between single cell versus spatial or between academic versus biopharma customers, if that's a better way to think about it? And then, are there any geographic focuses? You previously noted that China is a big opportunity, and now in manufacturing, how significant will China be as a relative mix of the total revenue?

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

This is Brad, why don't I start on at least the sales force side, and then Justin can take the rest. In general, we're trying to hire those people as prudently and quickly as possible. Typically, in a sales organization, you want to sort of frontload it, growing so much, and we're adding some of these people. We're also making up for the fact that we've had a little bit of a pause as we were trying to understand the course of the pandemic and what its ultimate impact on our business would be. In general, we will add at least 100 people this year, expanding pretty much across the organization, but you called out China as a real opportunity for us. There, we continue to add commercial partners as well as our own team members so that we have a very good view of what's going on in China. Overall, China is going to be a major growth area for us. You've already seen it in fourth quarter numbers, and it has been this way for the last couple of years and will continue to be a major growth area.

Justin McAnear, CFO

I think that covered it, Brad. Was there any more to that?

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

The resource allocation between academic and biopharma customers?

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

Well, maybe I'll just touch on that. We are building out a focused strategic account sales force to deal with pharma and biotech, mostly pharma on their validation side of the house. In other words, outside of the discovery realm, which we certainly can handle. So, in that sense, we're building a lot more capacity and even internal capabilities to understand and really provide the right kinds of products and documentation that's needed to say that it translates into the drug discovery validation process.

Operator, Operator

Next question comes from Tejas Savant from Morgan Stanley.

Tejas Savant, Analyst

I'll start with one on Chromium for you perhaps, Serge. You've got the Connect launch underway, and the Chromium X, I believe, comes with a $100,000 ASP launching in the back half of the year. So, how do you think about the upside to that $50,000 to $55,000 range instrument ASP? Should we be thinking closer to sort of $60,000 come year-end? In terms of distinguishing the value proposition, you've spoken about walk-away automation as being the defining feature on the Connect, and you have the high throughput POP-seq users as a target for Chromium X. How are you thinking about reinforcing that messaging with your customers? Have you had any early discussions with your POP-seq potential user base just yet following the launch announcement in January?

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Thanks, Tejas. I'll start with the questions focused on the X. We certainly have been talking to customers. I would emphasize that it's not just the POP-seq application that X is aimed at, in fact, probably mostly at other things. There are plenty of applications, like immune profiling, scaling up atlasing efforts, looking at more cells, combinatorial drug screens, combinatorial CRISPR screens. This is where some of the most intense demand is coming from. We have been growing more excited about the potential and what we're hearing from customers. In terms of Connect, I mean, it's the same story. Justin alluded to this before, but walk-away automation has been the rationale for the Connect, specifically for biopharma customers. During COVID, there has been an expanded use because people are constrained about when they can actually be in the lab, when they can run things. So, the Chromium Connect has advantages that are particularly relevant now. That's how these instruments are evolving.

Justin McAnear, CFO

Yes. So, for the Chromium X, the pricing isn't final yet. As far as the ASP range goes, $50,000 to $55,000 is what we've talked about in the past for Chromium. The average ASP, including Chromium and Chromium Connect for 2020 is still in that $50,000 to $55,000 range. I would say, in light of what we expect to sell in Q4 of this year with the legacy instruments, I wouldn't recommend making any adjustments to that until we get closer.

Tejas Savant, Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And then, Serge, any color to share on new versus repeat customers in the quarter for Visium? I know in the last quarter, you highlighted repeat orders as the key customer constituency where you saw strong performance.

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Yes, a good question. I think that trend has continued. Our focus internally and what we're seeing from customers really emphasizes the reorder rate of getting customers through their workflows to the answers. Again, you see that reflected in an increasing number of publications and preprints coming out. Overall, I think it is trending positively, and that is the important area of focus for us now that we've established a solid initial user base.

Tejas Savant, Analyst

Got it. Perfect. And then, one final one for Justin here. In light of your comments, Justin, with this 50% increase in headcount, should we be extrapolating from that to a $120 million per quarter operating expense run rate with a 40-60 R&D versus SG&A split? Is the math right at a high level on that, or could it be similar but more front-end loaded or back-end loaded through the year? How are you thinking about that?

Justin McAnear, CFO

Yes. So good question. We are planning to grow headcount by 50% this year. Most of the hires are going to be in R&D, followed by commercial, and then G&A or operations after that. I would more heavily weight it towards the front half of the year and more heavily weight it towards R&D.

Operator, Operator

Next one on the line is Derik De Bruin from Bank of America.

Derik De Bruin, Analyst

So, a couple of questions. Can we talk about the new multiplex application? I mean you say it sort of saves customers 60% in cost. How is that 60%? Is that 60% sequencing cost? Is that 60% to you? Basically, the question is are you expecting just the higher volume experiments to make up any potential price erosion on your end?

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Yes. It's a good question and an important question that we thought a lot about. This is an average estimate for what we expect customers who are using it to save, inclusive of overall on their experiments. It is definitely the case where they will end up spending less per sample with our expectation, and it's borne out by what we have seen from customers using homebrew solutions previously. This will lead to more usage overall and more dollars flowing into the single-cell experiments in total.

Justin McAnear, CFO

Derik, this is Justin. In the past couple of quarters, I think in the midst of COVID, without guidance in place, we were trying our best to give color on what we were seeing in real-time. But now that we've reinstated guidance and we've given some color around the weighting, we won't be giving any kind of mid-quarter update at least at this time.

Derik De Bruin, Analyst

And finally, one last question. Can you talk a little bit about how much of your current guidance embeds the recent new product launches in 2021? Just some sort of a sense of what's additive; is there any sort of cannibalization that could happen? Just some general thoughts on how you're thinking about new products contributing to the top line.

Justin McAnear, CFO

Yes. The guidance, the $480 to $500 million range incorporates all of the new product launches. It's our best view taking into account those different factors that you mentioned, like cannibalization, and how we expect those products and what we expect the adoption curve to look like based on what we've learned from past launches. It's all incorporated in that range we've provided.

Operator, Operator

Next one on the queue is David Westenberg from Guggenheim Securities.

David Westenberg, Analyst

So, in terms of the new product launch in the low throughput area, how should we think about the transition speed of your customers in terms of dabbling their toes into single cell to full believers in single cell? And how should we think about the impact of that low throughput kit on that transition speed, just based on your early customer experiences?

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

Hey David, this is Brad. As we've not launched the kit right now, we really don't know. But we think we have a very good view of the reasons that this kit is important. One, as you've already pointed out, is it gives people an opportunity that are new to 10x to try and do sort of pilot studies, and those usually can be used to help gain grants in funding and in some cases, even a budget allocation within the laboratory. The other side of it for us is giving experienced customers a test bed, experimental workflow, working out sample prep procedures, and all the time courses of the way they harvest samples, all can be workout in a much lower cost environment to measure the likelihood of success of an experiment. Those are really the two things that will drive that. I mean, and your question is how quickly if we take that first group of people, we're hoping we can run people through that adoption cycle certainly within a year.

David Westenberg, Analyst

Got it. That was very helpful. And then, are you providing any kind of percentage regarding your Chromium customers who are beginning to use Visium? Are you noticing an increase in Chromium usage when customers adopt Visium? How much do you believe this is due to Visium as opposed to these customers being heavy users of genomics platforms in general? That's my last question.

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Well, you have to appreciate that Chromium has a fairly large established user base. The number of customers is larger than just a number of instruments because of the halo users around each instrument. Looking at the math, the number of Visium customers is a very large fraction of existing Chromium users as well. The fraction of Chromium users who are using Visium is not trivial, but it's also not very large, right? That's how the math works out. I would say, as far as being a driver, probably on the margin, there might be some additional Chromium usage that occurs, but I don't think that's the cross reinforcement being material at this stage.

Operator, Operator

Next one on the queue is Dan Arias from Stifel.

Dan Arias, Analyst

Serge, maybe just on a few of the new products and thinking about the range of capabilities that you're kind of looking to enable here with the X instrument, and also the lower throughput kits. Are you able to give us sort of a rough cut on the customer base just in terms of how many or what percentage you want to look at 10,000 cells at a time versus 100,000 versus 1 million? I know that's probably hard, but it would just be helpful to understand the buckets a bit when we think about who these products are targeting at this point and how many of them will really be helped once they have access to them.

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Yes. That's a good question. It's a hard number to pin down, and in fact, it's a moving target. If you went back just a few years ago, the number of people interested in 1 million cells in experiments would have been very rare. It certainly has increased now, as I referenced the applications I mentioned earlier, immune profiling, combinatorial screens, especially with the rise of CRISPR screening applications. The number of people who are at the cutting edge and would be interested in many hundreds of thousands or millions certainly exists, but it's not huge. We expect that looking at the pattern of single-cell usage and the scaling up over the last five years, people will keep moving up that scale, and we certainly will help them along as well.

David Westenberg, Analyst

Okay. And then, maybe just on the fixed RNA profiling kit that's coming later this year. Is the idea to launch targeted and whole transcriptome at the same time, or will one be in the market before the other? Relatedly, will they both be launched at some point this year?

Serge Saxonov, CEO

So, the question specifically for the RNA profiling kit? Yes, please. So, we haven't talked about the details on that cadence. It's a good question, but we haven't discussed those details yet.

Operator, Operator

Next on our queue is Patrick Donnelly from Citi.

Patrick Donnelly, Analyst

Justin, could you discuss the assumptions underlying your full year guidance regarding the end market recovery? You certainly ended Q4 on a strong note. When do you anticipate returning to a normal state? Brad, following that, you mentioned experiencing a significant budget flush at the end of Q4. Have you noticed any slowdown in January? As the spending unfolded, did everyone take a pause in January, or has the momentum continued into this year?

Justin McAnear, CFO

Good question. When we thought about guidance for this year, we really looked at the first half and the back half. For the first half, as we shared in detail for Q1, we don't expect much improvement in lab capacities. I think that holds true for Q2 as well. I'm optimistic about the back half of the year, and that's why we talked about the weighting more in the second half, particularly Q4. This assumes that things will start to turn around in Q3, but won't really be felt until Q4.

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

Yes. And Patrick, as far as the start of the year, typically, January is slow. This year, it was a little larger because the news in December was dire, and we saw some headwinds as case counts were spiking. We have seen that improve in the last three or four weeks. Ultimately, there will be some aspect of pull-in, and that's contemplated in our guidance.

Patrick Donnelly, Analyst

That's helpful. And then, just maybe on the FFPE launch, I mean that's nearing. Can you talk through the potential customer conversations there? Has it been a part of the market kind of holding off on adoption until this was available? I'm just curious what the conversations meant ahead of the launch.

Serge Saxonov, CEO

On FFPE, I think it is a product that we've been pretty excited about for some time. The feedback from customers and what it is able to do has been very positive, and we're very excited to launch it to a broad set later in the first half of this year. Everything looks good, and we are excited about it.

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

Yes. I'll just add that the world didn't get a good sense of how good this product is going to be until maybe in the last six weeks. That's sparked a lot of interest.

Patrick Donnelly, Analyst

That's helpful. And maybe last one just on the in situ side. Obviously, a big investment year, more than the revenue side, obviously. But what has feedback been from customers since the deal, just in terms of interest in using it, complementary with Visium? Is there anything we can look out for as you progress through the year in terms of milestones, or is it kind of going to be behind the curtain, and we'll see it in a couple of years?

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Well, the interest has only been there, just like you have been asking a lot of questions. Customers are certainly very intrigued by what we're going to be able to do, and I think partially this speaks to our reputation. We built great products before, and people are expecting big things from us. We're focused right now on developing a platform. There's a lot to do. This is a very challenging technology area to build products in, and we are investing to build great products for our customers. That's our focus right now. As for when we talk about it, we're further along, and we'll discuss it when the time comes.

Operator, Operator

Next along the line is Matt Sykes from Goldman Sachs.

Matt Sykes, Analyst

Just a more high-level question. I know we've talked a lot about the headcount increase you guys planned this year. I'm just curious more on the qualitative side, how competitive is that market, both on commercial and R&D? Has it gotten tighter over the course of the last year? And do you expect it to get tighter over the course of this year?

Serge Saxonov, CEO

Yes, it's a good question. I'll answer it broadly; the Company, and Brad might be able to add more color on the commercial side. Talent has been a focus for us from the very beginning, and that's the foundation of the Company. It's always a top-of-mind concern, and we are always trying to get the very best people. As far as we're concerned, it's always in some sense a tight market, regardless of what happens. It varies by area; back in the early days, it was particularly challenging to hire software developers and people from the tech industry, which has gotten relatively easier. In general, I think we're doing quite well, and we're very happy with the level of talent that is coming to the Company.

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

I'll just add a little bit on the commercial side. There's generally been somewhat easier hiring overall, because people know who we are. In a commercial role, there's always that competitive aspect, and people like to be part of a winning team. We try to ensure that 10x is a winning team, so overall, it has improved, but we also have a very high standard. So, the yield is not very high in giving people through the interview process.

Matt Sykes, Analyst

Just one last one I know you guys have talked about lab capacity. I'm just wondering, as you look out regionally, where you are, are there any differences in the cadence of capacity within labs across different regions, or is it pretty much the same cadence you expect as we get towards the back half of the year, the capacity to go up?

Brad Crutchfield, CRO

Yes. There's a complete range. In places like China, it's kind of back to what I would consider normal. Even generally across Asia, we've seen that stabilize quickly. In Europe, except for the UK, it has continued to open up and function at an increasingly improved capacity. In the AMR, we see it kind of all over the board. Early in the quarter, we saw issues in Southern California as there was a spike there. Overall, we have reached a point where there is some level of improvement, but as I think Justin pointed out, we need to see the impact of the vaccine before we see any material change going forward.

Operator, Operator

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.