Alpha Teknova Inc Aktie

Hello, and welcome to Teknova's Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Henry, Senior Vice President of Marketing. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Teknova's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call are Stephen Gunstream, Teknova's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matt Lowell, Teknova's Chief Financial Officer, who will make prepared remarks and then take your questions.

As a reminder, the forward-looking statements that we make during this call, including those regarding business goals and expectations for the financial performance of the company, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ. Additional information concerning these risk factors is included in the press release the company issued earlier today, and they are more fully described in the company's various filings with the SEC. Today's comments reflect the company's current views, which could change as a result of new information, future events or other factors, and the company does not obligate or commit itself to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

The company's management believes that in addition to GAAP results, non-GAAP financial measures can provide meaningful insight when evaluating the company's financial performance and the effectiveness of its business strategies. We will therefore use non-GAAP financial measures of certain of our results during this call. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release that we issued this afternoon, which is posted to Teknova's website and at www.sec.gov/edgar. Non-GAAP financial measures should always be considered only as a supplement to and not as a substitute for or as superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation may differ from similarly named non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies.

Please also be advised that the company has posted a supplemental slide deck to accompany today's prepared remarks. It can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Teknova's website and on today's webcast.

And now, I will turn the call over to Stephen.

Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our third quarter 2026 earnings call. As you saw in the press release, we delivered our second consecutive quarter of record revenue with 22% top line growth compared to the same period last year. In addition to exceeding 20% growth for the first time in over 4 years, we are particularly encouraged that the growth came from sales of custom products to life science tools and diagnostics customers and notably, to biopharma customers. We believe the recent acceleration of revenue growth from sales to biopharma customers is an early indication that we're benefiting from the increase in biotech funding that we've observed over the previous 4 quarters. Given this backdrop, we feel confident as we head into 2027.

I'd like to start by providing more color about our revenue growth. First, as I mentioned, our above-market revenue growth is from sales of custom products. Catalog products, which were about 60% of revenue in 2025, have grown in the mid-single digits year-to-date. While sales to large pharma have grown in the mid-teens, total catalog growth was offset by headwinds from products sold into other biopharma end markets like cell and gene therapy and contract manufacturing. We attribute that to the limited share of recent financings going toward early-stage programs and discovery work, but we expect that to change eventually if funding continues to increase.

That said, this quarter, we saw a significant uptick in custom product purchases from biopharma customers, much of which were for programs already in clinical trials. The growth was broad-based across multiple accounts and therapeutic modalities. Combined with our direct conversations with customers regarding planned purchases in 2027, the data lead us to believe that this revenue growth is tied to the recent increase in biotech funding, which, multiple sources report, is up approximately 70% on a trailing 12-month basis. We also saw continued robust revenue growth from sales of custom products to tools and diagnostics customers like in the first half of 2026 with notable demand from liquid biopsy and sequencing-related applications such as spatial biology.

Internally, the organization is performing well. Year-to-date, the number of custom order line items increased by approximately 30%, and we've expanded our customer base by nearly 10%. Even with that growth, we've demonstrated our ability to scale without a significant increase in expenses. Apart from the planned $2 million annual increase in sales and marketing spend, operating expenses are flat year-to-date, and our gross margins expanded by about 400 basis points. We believe our costs will only increase modestly as the business continues to scale, which reflects the value of our previous investments in facilities, IT systems and manufacturing infrastructure.

We're also encouraged by the early traction of our 2 new launches: Build-Tek, our AI-powered custom configurator; and Fill-Tek, our new dispensing system. Since we introduced the new version of Build-Tek in June, customers from more than 100 organizations have submitted more than 140 quote requests, covering nearly 180 custom products. We're also seeing repeat use with more than 40% of October requests coming from returning customers. Just as important is the quality of that demand. Nearly every request is a unique formulation, and about 1/3 are for RUO+ or GMP-grade products, the higher quality tiers customers typically need as programs move toward clinical and commercial manufacturing. Therefore, we believe Build-Tek is helping us capture custom demand earlier and positions us to grow with programs as they scale.

On the manufacturing side, we introduced our Fill-Tek dispensing system in September to meet the evolving needs of bioprocessing for emerging therapies. This unique system allows us to tailor our production of single-use bags to fit our customers' bioprocessing environments, including by combining a variety of bag sizes and aseptic connectors into a single lot and reducing the minimum order requirements, all with the same industry-leading turnaround times. Furthermore, by integrating more deeply into our customers' workflows, we believe they will be incentivized to remain a customer as they advance their therapies towards commercialization. This new capability is hitting the mark. We have already received many orders quoted through Fill-Tek with more than 60% of them for GMP-grade products, reinforcing Fill-Tek's fit for scale-up into clinical and commercial manufacturing.

I also want to touch on M&A. We remain focused on tuck-in acquisition opportunities that would allow us to leverage our facilities, systems and manufacturing infrastructure. Alongside those characteristics, we're also looking for opportunities through which we could expand into manufacturing additional reagents such as proteins. Any attractive target would need to help us grow our addressable market and further differentiate our business, while leveraging the commercial channel we have built. At the same time, we're confident in our organic strategy and are in a good position to be disciplined when considering valuations and integration risks.

In closing, as we look towards the end of 2026, I'm proud of the progress we made on our growth strategy. Our customer pipeline is strong. The investments we made to scale are in place and working, and we are delivering operationally.

I will now hand the call to Matt to walk through the financials.

Thanks, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone. As Stephen explained, total revenue was up 22% for the third quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter prior year. This was, again, the highest quarterly revenue the company has achieved in its history. We are very pleased with our progress on key profitability measures and cash usage as well. Overall, we delivered excellent financial results for the third quarter 2026.

By way of a reminder, we target our Lab Essentials products at the research use only, or RUO, market, and they include both catalog and custom products. Lab Essentials revenue was $9 million in the third quarter 2026, up 9% compared to $8.3 million in the third quarter of 2025. The increase in Lab Essentials revenue was attributable to an increased number of customers and, to a slightly lesser extent, higher average revenue per customer.

We make our Clinical Solutions products according to Good Manufacturing Practices, or GMP, quality standards, and our customers use them primarily as components or inputs in the development and manufacture of diagnostic and therapeutic products. Clinical Solutions revenue was $3.2 million in the third quarter 2026, an 86% increase from $1.7 million in the third quarter 2025. The increase in Clinical Solutions revenue was attributable to a higher average revenue per customer and, to a lesser extent, an increased number of customers.

We expect revenue per customer to increase over time as a subset of these customers ramp up their purchase volumes as they move through clinical trial phases and ultimately, to commercialization. However, this metric can be affected by the addition of newer Clinical Solutions or GMP catalog customers, who typically order less. Just as a reminder, due to the larger average order size in Clinical Solutions compared to Lab Essentials, there can be more quarter-to-quarter revenue lumpiness in this category.

Gross profit for the third quarter 2026 was $4.8 million compared to $3.2 million in the third quarter 2025. Gross margin was 38.0% in the third quarter 2026, up from 30.7% in the third quarter 2025. The increase in gross profit percentage was primarily driven by higher revenue and, to a lesser extent, lower fixed cost absorption into cost of goods sold from changes in finished goods inventory levels, partially offset by higher variable manufacturing costs.

Operating expenses for the third quarter 2026 were $8.0 million compared to $7.2 million in the third quarter 2025. The increase in 2026 was primarily driven by investments in our sales and marketing capabilities, including higher headcount, coupled with slightly increased general and administrative expenses, partially offset by lower stock-based compensation expense. At the end of the third quarter 2026, we had 163 total associates compared to 161 a year earlier.

Net loss for the third quarter 2026 was $3.5 million, or negative $0.06 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $4.3 million, or negative $0.08 per diluted share, for the third quarter 2025. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was negative $1.0 million for the third quarter 2026 compared to negative $1.6 million for the third quarter 2025.

On to cash flow and balance sheet highlights. Capital expenditures were $0.1 million in the third quarter 2026 compared to $0.4 million in the third quarter 2025. Free cash outflow, a non-GAAP measure that we define as cash used in operating activities, less purchases of property, plant and equipment, was $1.4 million for the third quarter 2026 compared to $2.4 million in the third quarter 2025. This decrease compared to prior year was primarily due to lower cash used in operating activities.

Turning to the balance sheet. As of September 30, 2026, we had $16.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $13.2 million in total borrowings. In mid-October, the company completed an equity capital raise of $46 million with net proceeds of approximately $43 million. As we made clear during that process, we believe that we did not need additional capital to become cash flow positive. The reason we pursued this capital raise was to give the company balance sheet flexibility, including a healthier net cash balance, a stronger negotiating position for potential tuck-in acquisitions and a larger float of the company's stock to attract a deeper shareholder base of institutional investors. This transaction was successful in meeting those objectives, and we intend to continue to execute on our growth strategy.

Our 2026 outlook. Turning to our guidance, we are increasing our 2026 total revenue guidance to $46 million to $48 million. At the midpoint, this implies approximately 16% revenue growth compared to 2025. As our underlying end markets continue to recover, we have seen ongoing strength in orders for our custom products from life science tools and diagnostics customers, driven by our exposure to the liquid biopsy, spatial biology and genetic sequencing markets, among others. And more recently, in the third quarter, we saw an uptick in biopharma custom product revenue, including from cell and gene therapy customers.

Biotech funding was strong again in the third quarter, marking 4 straight quarters of significant year-over-year increases. We believe we began to see the positive impact of this trend in the third quarter in the form of higher sales of custom products to biopharma customers. Revenue from the sale of catalog products continued to grow in the third quarter and sits at a healthy mid-single-digit growth rate year-to-date, driven by large pharma customers, but still below our long-term targets. We will be providing revenue guidance for 2027 when we report full year 2026 results as we have always done.

As we have indicated before, due to the high percentage of fixed costs associated with our operations, we estimate that each additional dollar of revenue drops through at a marginal cash rate of approximately 70% with some variability quarter-to-quarter in reported results due to fixed cost absorption as finished goods inventory levels change.

Gross margin improved significantly in the third quarter of 2026 year-over-year and was in line with our expectations. We continue to expect gross margin to land in the mid-to-upper 30s percentage range for the full year 2026.

The company posted operating expenses of $8.0 million in the third quarter 2026, reflecting our scaled investment in sales and marketing, which we expect to be approximately $2 million for the full year 2026. Our belief is that these investments will pay off as soon as the end of 2026, but more likely in 2027. We forecast that operating expenses will be at least $8 million in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Taking account of this spending level, we expect to become adjusted EBITDA positive in the range of $52 million to $57 million in annualized revenue. If our end markets are stronger in 2027 and our stepped-up commercial investments bear fruit as anticipated, then we should report a positive adjusted EBITDA quarter before the end of 2027.

As I noted earlier, the company achieved a significant reduction in free cash outflow during the third quarter 2026 compared to the same quarter in the prior year, and we expect that figure to be similar in the fourth quarter. We continue to anticipate free cash outflow of less than $8 million for the full year 2026.

And with that, I will turn the call back to Stephen.

Thanks, Matt. Overall, we were very pleased with the third quarter 2026 and the progress we made against our strategic priorities. We believe the outlook for our end markets remains positive, and we are committed to executing on our strategy to help our customers accelerate the introduction of novel therapies, diagnostics and other products that improve human health.

We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair.

This is Jacob on for Matt. So first, I just wanted to probe more into the comments around the business seeing uplift from the improving funding trends in the quarter. Can you quantify or maybe just expand on how broad that was across customers, indications and order sizes and how you distinguish funding-driven demand from normal quarterly timing? And like what early indications give you confidence this is now a durable trend for the business?

Yes. First, I would say, Jacob, that it is early, right? We called it an early indicator. It is very encouraging, though, because it is broad-based across all the modalities we serve, not just cell and gene therapy, but also some of the others, monoclonal antibodies and oligo therapeutics, across the board. So excited about that. And we've also seen the related specialty CDMOs pick up as well. So those are all very encouraging signs.

What we haven't seen is the early stage come back, which is, I think, why you heard me talk a little bit about the catalog business. So the later-stage stuff, it seems to be the revenue flowing through now. And that's not that surprising because we've had a lot of conversations with our later-stage therapeutic companies. And they -- many of them actually did receive funding earlier this year, and now they're putting it to work. So we're encouraged. It's still a little early. We'd like to see another couple of quarters, but it's pretty broad-based, and we're excited about where we sit now.

Okay. Good to hear. And maybe jumping off that, Clinical Solutions revenue here was up 86% in the quarter, which I appreciate is off a small base and also that this business is inherently lumpy. But sales have increased sequentially in each quarter this year, and 4Q is typically a nice quarter for this business, and you're seeing improvements in kind of the later-stage environment. But just beyond 4Q, just wondering how we should think about growth contributions from this business into 2027 and beyond, particularly as you expect to be supporting at least 1 commercial therapy by the end of next year.

I'll go ahead and take that one. And I think you're right, those observations, Jacob, about the lumpiness and the sequential increases throughout this year. As we think about Q4, I do think we're going to continue to see strength in GMP because of these trends that we're now seeing and the Lab Essentials not at that level of growth. But it does create a nice setup for 2027. As you mentioned, one of the things is, some of our customers moving through phases in clinical trials, and that is something that we're expecting to see more of in 2027, along with this continued, we hope, impact of the biotech funding increases.

I would just say, longer term, as we've said, we do expect Clinical Solutions to be a bigger growth driver of this business, just given those trends that we just mentioned. The Lab Essentials is a nice business and certainly has a strong foundation and growing very nicely in its own right. But to get to the 20% to 25% sustainable level that we've been talking about on a longer-term basis, we would expect the Clinical Solutions to be more of that growth engine. So things are playing out more or less as we expected. And as Stephen said, we're encouraged by the uptick, particularly on the biopharma side here in this last quarter.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum.

Congratulations on the strong quarter. Maybe just kind of tagging on to the Clinical Solutions, it was a nice quarter. It sounds like you're going to see that continue here into the fourth quarter. How much -- and I don't know if you have the ability to break this out, but how much of that is larger pharma versus smaller pharma? Do you kind of dial into it further? Like I guess, what I'm trying to get at is, do you anticipate maybe another bump in that segment once the earlier-stage pharma and biotech companies' funding really starts to flow next year?

Thanks, Matt. Yes, I would say, first of all, the Clinical Solutions, you got to remember, it's not all biotech or pharma. It is -- there's a piece in there that is diagnostics as well. So we expect that to continue, and that's been a really nice growth driver, as you mentioned, for the course of 2026, and we expect that to continue into 2027. What I mentioned here, the biotech funding, most of the stuff that we're talking about coming back is sort of this small, midsized biotech company and less so the large pharma. The large pharma is doing quite well in the catalog business, whereas the small, midsized biotech space is not on the catalog. We attribute the catalog to more discovery-type R&D work. So if the funding continues, I do believe that, that will migrate back, and we'll see some of the discovery catalog business pick up for small, midsized biotech companies.

Got it. And then, since you noted it in your prepared remarks regarding M&A, and it sounds like you're going to be pretty diligent in what you're looking for and price that you pay, but do you have kind of a target list? I'm just trying to think if this is something a little more near term? Or is this as an opportunity presents itself?

Yes. I mean, we've had a target list for a long time. So it's a question of whether or not they fit and the valuations make sense and we can execute on them. And to your point, we're very disciplined around this. We work really hard to put ourselves in a position here where we think we have a lot of strength. We're going to reach profitability in a relatively short period. And we've really built an infrastructure that can absorb quite a bit and scale really well. And so, looking at it from that lens, I think there's a number of targets that fit in there. But of course, many of these are smaller organizations and will take some time to build the right relationships with and make sure the valuation makes sense. And so, we're working on that, but it really has to be the right fit for us.

Our next question comes from the line of Anna Snopkowski with KeyBanc.

This is Anna on for Paul Knight. Kind of jumping off of Matt's question on the M&A strategy and maybe what you're going to do with the $40 million of cash proceeds, do you think you could just expand upon other adjacent areas in your business you'd be interested in pursuing? I think you mentioned proteins in your prepared remarks. So maybe you could expand upon that. And then, I have one follow-up.

Yes. So again, important to say that, obviously, we're confident in our organic business. I think, you look at the sort of way we migrate out from here, the lower-risk things are businesses similar to ourselves that we could bring on. We can apply the processes, the systems we put on, maybe even use -- bring them in-house and run it through our manufacturing. As you know, we drop a lot of profitability to the bottom line. The next step out is really these other modalities or things we'd like to manufacture.

I do think proteins is one, and that is a broad category, I know. Whether it's enzymes, which could be very useful on the tools diagnostics side or antibodies or cytokines or growth factors, all those are [ things we'd like ] to consider. We're a great manufacturing company. We set up the processes here that can do a lot of different things, and we have the space to bring on a lot of new capabilities. So those are all in play. I think one of the pieces here that we're not going to do is we're not going to acquire a business that needs a lot of cash to run it and keep it going. And so, this is really around driving some cost synergies and some leverage of all the infrastructure we put in place.

Great. And then, just as a follow-up on the biotech funding side, it's great you're seeing some of those benefits hit the custom side and within your biopharma customers. Are there any areas remaining where spending is still soft? I think you mentioned catalog products for small and midsized customers, but maybe any other areas or what would need to turn for those customers to return to spend?

Yes. I think you hit it already, which is, on the discovery side, some of these cell and gene therapy companies are not doing much there or actually going down. If they have later-stage therapies, they seem to be able to raise capital and deploy it. And I think there are a number that are in a position right now where they're waiting for approvals or waiting for their next phase that then they can go raise money. I think to really change that, it's probably more sustained biotech funding and opening up of capital markets to some more risky upfront investments in new targets. And so, that we just haven't seen yet to date. And like I said, the large pharma side on that discovery side is doing quite well, but the small, midsized biotechs are not.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Stanton with Jefferies.

Just go back to the diagnostic customer demand, I think you [ spiked ] out sequencing, spatial, liquid biopsy. I'd love just a little more flavor there. How much of that is new customers versus existing customers ramping? And then, how do we think about the durability for that demand into '27 and any potential for that to also accelerate as we look out to next year?

Thanks, Matt. Yes, on new versus existing on the diagnostic side, it's really tools and diagnostics side, I should say. The majority of these are -- that are having a material impact are existing. They've been with us for quite some time, and we do see them scaling up. Now, some of this may be for some of the AI data generation stuff, but there's a portion of this which is true sort of that liquid biopsy side where, if their products are successful in the market, we'd expect a significant scale-up there over the coming years. And so, yes, we're excited about it. I don't think it's not like we're -- these new logos are coming in and they're driving significant growth right away. Our business really works like these are sort of 2-year, 3-year things that have been in process for some time. And so, we're excited to see them kind of come to fruition right now.

And then, maybe just on Fill-Tek and Build-Tek, you had a bunch of helpful stats there. All sounds really encouraging, considering early days. Maybe just talk about how much those are kind of additional channels in helping that way versus kind of true incremental revenue drivers as we think about '27 as well for both Fill-Tek and Build-Tek.

Yes. We'll put them in 2 separate categories here. The Build-Tek side really streamlines this upfront custom order design specifications we need to collect, very interactive agent chat that we have online that gets us exactly what we need, but also really streamlines the questions for the customer. And we see this really as a funnel increase, right? So we're going to close within 24 to 48 hours of these requests, and we're seeing a pretty high volume of those going through. So those are translating to revenue. And typically a quarter or 2 after, we get those. So I think we're going to start migrating most of our customers that have new quote requests or new custom product requests to go through that channel. They've really enjoyed it, and it really helps us get them into the system quickly. So from a material perspective, it's -- there would obviously be some replacement from before. But I think what we're seeing is actually a lot of newer customers that we hadn't been quoting custom for. So we're seeing a nice build there that will obviously go over time and drive additional sales.

Build-Tek is a little bit different in that this is something that our customers have been asking us for, for the last 2 or 3 years. And in many cases, actually some of our later-stage therapeutic customers are saying, please put this in place. Can you come up with a way to do this, which is getting things down to a single lot where they can combine different batch sizes and different connectors, so it fits seamlessly within their manufacturing system. And from one side, right, we're able to get in earlier with lower minimum orders. But also, it's super sticky because then we're matched directly to the manufacturing scale. For these later-stage customers, obviously, it lets us expand more within them. And so, from a revenue standpoint there, I mean, there could be additional drive that we would get -- additional revenue that we'll get, but it's probably going to be a couple of years out as these earlier ones get onto the Build-Tek system and then scale through clinical trials.

Our next question comes from the line of Mac Etoch with Stephens.

Maybe just a follow-up on some of those earlier questions on the new capital raise. Does the addition to your balance sheet really change your investment plan anytime in the near future? You guided to at least $8 million of OpEx per quarter. You've been pretty diligent about reinvesting for growth. So I just was curious if we should expect a step-up in commercial spend as we head into 2027. And if so, does that impact your timing around achieving the first positive adjusted EBITDA quarter?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Mac. Obviously, we're very happy to have this additional capital and the strengthening of the balance sheet. I would say, it doesn't, in and of itself, really change the way that we think about the business and where to invest. We're going to do that. We do that anyway, and we've had some flexibility to do that before this capital raise. That said, the commercial investment is an important one for us, and we are really happy, again, with what we've been seeing so far this year, not necessarily seeing a direct impact of that, but the metrics that we track in support of that effort are looking good.

And what we're right about now is, when we're starting to have these discussions about do we want to change that investment and to leave it or to increase it, and if so, where, what's working, what's not, those kind of things. So -- and even if we do make a decision to increase, which we'll certainly report out on the next call, it wouldn't be of a huge magnitude, greater than what we've already done. It would be more incremental. But nevertheless, having the additional capital on the balance sheet is really a great thing for the business, for other new things that might come up that are larger. Obviously, M&A activity will be one of those things, but any other organic investment opportunity that we think can make sense will be something we think about. But in the moment, we're just continuing to run the business the same way as before the capital raise, and this puts us in a stronger position now as we face other kinds of investment decisions down the road.

I appreciate that. And then, maybe just touching on gross margins, obviously, pretty strong in the quarter. 2Q also, you saw some pretty strong gross margin performance as well. I just -- given the relative outsized improvement there, what factor -- I think you highlighted this in your prepared remarks a little bit, but could you just expand on what factors are driving this? And if so, could you also provide an update to the FY '26 outlook for gross margins?

Yes. Sure. I'll just start with the last part there since I did mention that it's -- so we're still targeting mid-to-high 30s percentage for gross margin for the full year of 2026, and we came in a little bit high on that in this particular quarter. In other words, Q4 should look similar in the mid-to-high, again, 30s for the quarter as well, I imagine. And the drivers are -- there's a lot of things going on, but I think the main things are the growth, right, and leveraging the fixed cost. That 70% is still very much in play here.

The other thing that we have that affects our gross margin and what we report is a change in our finished goods inventory levels. And I mentioned this in the remarks as well, and we started talking a little bit more about this because of the way that labor and overhead costs are absorbed or, I guess, moved between the balance sheet and the income statement, depending on how finished goods are moving quarter-to-quarter or quarter-over-quarter, that can also influence the margin. And in this case, in Q3, we had a little bit of benefit because we did have some increase in fixed -- sorry, finished goods inventory in Q3 compared to Q2. So it did absorb or pull out some of the costs from the P&L and put it on the balance sheet. That can change quarter-to-quarter, and it's sometimes difficult to predict where year -- sorry, quarter-end inventories are going to land each time, but that is another factor. And in the case of this last Q3, it was a positive.

And then, there are other things, too, on the margins -- sorry, I shouldn't use that term, It's a little bit loaded there -- on the edges that are -- that influence the margin because there are some timing issues around other costs in the manufacturing, and we may be ordering some supplies this month that were not -- or this quarter that were not the next quarter. We're buying a 6-month supply. These kind of things, as well as mix, depending on the customers that we're selling to in that quarter or the types of products, those can also have -- can kind of deviate off of this general average of 70%. So that's a little bit of the breakdown of the gross margin story. But over longer periods, these things do tend to smooth out, and we should expect pretty nice increases in the gross margin over time here as we're already seeing.

Our next question comes from the line of Max Masucci with ROTH Capital Partners.

Congrats on a nice stretch here. So first one, Lab Essentials, the growth has been around 10% in the first 9 months this year. It's a touch above the high-single-digit run rate. So just it would be great to hear what's driving the recent strength there, anything that is under the hood that has been contributing.

Yes, Max, I mean, I think it's a lot of stuff we've been talking about, and we have a piece of the catalog, which is the majority of that Lab Essentials business, is mid-single digit year-to-date. We said that in the remarks, which tells you the custom side is up quite a bit because it's a much smaller percentage of the overall Lab Essentials business. And so, on the custom side, it is some of these more genomic-related applications that are driving that growth, some OEM work that we're doing for those, and then just general growth in the tools space where we do a lot of custom products for that segment of customers. There may be a little bit in this quarter that is from the biopharma side that are custom that do not need GMP yet. But I'd say, largely, this is tools, diagnostics, custom products.

Okay. Got it. Is it fair -- just trying to understand, can we directly link Build-Tek to the Q3 custom ordering growth acceleration? Or is that more of a smaller growth contributor at this point?

Yes, I wouldn't directly link those 2. Build-Tek is driving funnel generation that's probably going to pay off in the next couple of quarters and it's building over time. This we do see as these later-stage small, midsized biotech companies moving forward with the products that they have in clinical trials. And like I said, it's not one therapy. It's not one modality. It is pretty broad across that segment.

Our next question comes from the line of Brendan Smith with TD Cowen.

Congrats on the quarter here. I appreciate all the color here on the biotech funding and spending environment. I think you flagged 70% year-over-year improvement. It's pretty staggering. I know you've spoken in previous quarters about that kind of 4-quarter lag from funding to spending. And I know we've talked a lot about this in Q&A here. But I guess, how should we think about how much of that recovery that you guys are expecting ultimately is now baked into kind of Q4 and updated FY '26 assumptions? And maybe how much more could we see as we take a look at that exit ramp in the year and into our FY '27 numbers? Because I'm just trying to understand if there's anything else you guys are watching for kind of across your end markets that would be needed to sustain that kind of beyond Q4, maybe some of that early-stage spending you mentioned? Or just anything else to flag there would be great.

I think that we're -- yes, thanks, Brendan. I think that we're expecting to see a continuation of this in Q4, addressing that part of your question, with the biotech -- impact of the biotech funding on the custom products to biopharma customers, as we've talked about how that's moving, and in general, Q4 looking good at this point. I would say, as we head into 2027, of course, we're certainly encouraged by what we've seen here. It is early in this recovery phase. We are expecting it to continue, again, based upon the continued uptick in biotech funding that we've seen, and that should provide a nice opportunity for us in 2027.

The other aspect that could come into play for 2027 that is also largely biotech-related but also diagnostic are these, again, late-stage clinical customers that are moving through phases. And we expect, as we've noted before, at least one of those customers to become commercial phase by next year, and there are others that are -- won't necessarily be commercial phase but are yet still moving forward, which also has an impact in custom products and GMP products specifically. So yes, I guess, the short answer is, yes, there's -- we're very encouraged by what we're seeing here in the biotech funding and how it's showing up in our results, expecting that to continue here in the fourth quarter and also as we look ahead to '27, along with some other factors that are helping us.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tech Nova Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions]

Please be advised that today's conference will be recorded I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jennifer Henry, Senior Vice President of Marketing. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Teknova's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. With me on today's call are Stephen Gunstream, Teknova's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matt Lowell, Teknova's Chief Financial Officer, who will make prepared remarks and then take your questions.

As a reminder, the forward-looking statements that we make during this call, including those regarding business goals and expectations for the financial performance of the company are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ. Additional information concerning these risk factors is included in the press release the company issued earlier today and they are more fully described in the company's various filings with the SEC.

Today's comments reflect the company's current views, which could change as a result of new information, future events or other factors, and the company does not obligate or commit itself to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law. The company's management believes that in addition to GAAP results, non-GAAP financial measures can provide meaningful insight when evaluating the company's financial performance and the effectiveness of its business strategy.

We will, therefore, use non-GAAP financial measures of certain of our results during this call. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release that we issued this afternoon, which is posted to Teknova's website and at www.sec.gov/edgar. Non-GAAP financial measures should always be considered only as a supplement to and not as a substitute for or as superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation may differ from similarly named non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies.

Please also be advised that the company has posted a supplemental slide deck to accompany today's prepared remarks. It can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Teknova's website and on today's webcast.

And now I will turn the call over to Stephen.

Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our second quarter 2026 earnings call. We were very pleased with our performance in the second quarter. Revenue grew 18%, compared to the second quarter 2025, exceeding $12 million for the quarter, the highest quarterly revenue in Teknova's 30-year history. This growth contributed to our lowest free cash outflow since before our IPO in June 2021.

Considering our performance this year-to-date and our confidence about the back half of the year, we have increased our revenue guidance, which at the minimal point raises expected revenue growth from 6% to 14% for the year.

I will start by providing a little more color on the second quarter growth drivers. We are particularly encouraged because once again, revenue growth was not driven by a single order for a single customer. Rather, it was broad-based with our largest direct customer representing less than 7% of total revenue in the quarter. In addition, we achieved growth in sales of our products across all of our major target segments -- target markets, with the exception of cell and gene therapy related accounts, which were down in part due to order timing. Excluding cell and gene therapy, biopharma generally, including biotech, large pharma and CDMOs grew significantly, led by sales of our custom products.

We are also encouraged by our continued strength in supporting our customers in the liquid biopsy market, and we drove catalog sales through improved engagement with our distributors. All in all, it was a great quarter, and it puts us in a strong position as we enter the second half of 2026.

As we look to 2027, we believe there are a number of potential tailwinds that will further support our growth. First, our products are used to manufacture more than 70 therapies or diagnostics currently in clinical trials, at least one of which we expect will be commercial by the end of next year. As a reminder, we believe that once a therapy reaches commercialization, the dollar value of a customer's purchases from us increases approximately tenfold compared to when the therapy is in Phase III clinical trials and approximately 30-fold compared to Phase I clinical trials.

Second, there has been an increase in total biotech funding over the past three quarters compared to the same period in the prior year. Given that we have historically seen an approximately four-quarter lag from funding changes to revenue recognition, we believe there may be a positive revenue impact from this additional funding at the end of this year or in early 2027.

Third, the leading indicators show that the investments we began to make in our commercial organization in January are producing results on or ahead of plan. The new lead generation resources and systems we've put in place together with the additions to our field sales organization are enabling us to reach high profile accounts and create opportunities that would have been much harder to come by a year ago. We expect these opportunities to start translating to revenue by early 2027.

Taken together, the progression through clinical trials of therapies supported by our products, the increasingly favorable biotech funding environment and our recent commercial investments, provide us with the confidence that we will continue to deliver sustainable above-market growth. Lastly, I want to shift and talk about how we are leveraging AI to enable our customers to quickly and efficiently design and order custom products.

Today, we efficiently launched Build-Tek our new AI-powered custom order configurator, which is an evolution of the buffer configurator we introduced back in 2024, designed to build custom product quote requests this interactive personal AI reagent assistant engages with customers so that they can create complex custom products in minutes, leveraging standard formulations published literature or specifications that they supply.

Before Build-Tek, designing a complex custom product required multiple rounds of back and forth between our manufacturing science and technology team and the customer, which could take weeks in the error-prone. With our new Build-Tek custom configurator, a customer simply engages with the assistant and starts with as much or as little information as they have, and the assistant provides guidance on product type, formulation, container format, manufacturing grade, QC testing and more.

Build-Tek, which is trained on 30 years of Teknowva's manufacturing experience and know-how define and finalizes the product specifications and allows the customer to submit a request for quote. It also supports the ability to upload existing files, formulations or literature for reference and to design multiple custom products in one session. Our customers can now complete the entire process in a few business days rather than weeks.

We soft launched the Build-Tek service last quarter, and we're already receiving full requests from customers who have previously only ordered catalog products. And this is only the beginning. We will continue to build out new features such as the ability to customize existing catalog products to save customer product request to an online account to get instant quotes and more. We're excited to see how this tool evolves over time.

In summary, we had a great quarter. We feel good about where we are today, and we're excited about what we think is yet to come.

I will now hand the call over to Matt to talk through the financials.

Thanks, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone. As Stephen explained, total revenue was up 18% for the second quarter 2026, compared to the same quarter prior year. This was also the highest quarterly revenue the company has achieved in its history. We're also very pleased with our progress on key profitability measures and cash usage. Overall, we delivered excellent financial results for the second quarter of 2026.

By way of reminder, we target our lab essentials products at the research use-only or RUO market, and they include both catalog and custom products. Lab essentials revenue was $9.2 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 18% compared to $7.8 million in the second quarter of 2025. The increase in Lab Essentials revenue was attributable to higher average revenue per customer and to a slightly lesser extent an increased number of customers. We make our clinical solutions products according to good manufacturing processes or GMP quality standards, and our customers use them primarily as components or inputs in the development and manufacture of diagnostic and therapeutic products.

Clinical Solutions revenue was $2.4 million in the second quarter of 2026, an 18% increase from $2.1 million in the second quarter of 2025. The increase in Clinical Solutions revenue was attributable to an increased number of customers, partially offset by lower average revenue per customer. We expect revenue per customer to increase over time and a subset of these customers ramp up their clinical purchase volumes, their purchase is, as they move through clinical trial phases and ultimately to commercialization.

However, this metric can be affected by the addition of newer clinical solutions or GMP catalog customers who typically order less. Just as a reminder, due to the larger average order size in Clinical Solutions compared to Lab Essentials, there can be more quarter-to-quarter revenue lumpiness in this category to the income statement. Gross profit for the second quarter 2026 was $4.9 million compared to $4.0 million in the second quarter of 2025. Gross margin was 40.1% in the second quarter 2026, up from 38.7% in the second quarter 2025. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by higher revenue, partially offset by higher fixed cost absorption into cost of goods sold from faster finished goods inventory terms.

Operating expenses for the second quarter 2026 were $7.8 million compared to $7.4 million in the second quarter of 2025. The increase in 2026 was primarily driven by investments in our sales and marketing capabilities, resulting in higher head count and increased marketing expenses partially offset by lower general and administrative expenses attributable to lower stock-based compensation expense.

At the end of the second quarter 2026, we had 156 total associates compared to 171 a year earlier. Net loss for the second quarter 2026 was $3.2 million or negative $0.06 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $3.6 million or negative $0.07 per diluted share for the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure was negative $0.7 million for the second quarter of 2026 compared to negative $0.8 million for the second quarter 2025.

Now cash flow and balance sheet highlights. Capital expenditures were $0.1 million in the second quarter of 2026, compared to $0.2 million in the second quarter of 2025. Free cash outflow, a non-GAAP measure that we define as cash used in operating activities, less purchases of property, plant and equipment was $0.6 million for the second quarter of 2026, compared to $2.3 million for the second quarter of 2025. This decrease compared to prior year was due to lower cash used in operating activities.

Turning to the balance sheet. As of June 30, 2026, we had $17.4 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $13.2 million in total borrowings.

Onto 2026 outlook. Based on the strength of our revenue in the first half of 2026 and our confidence about the second half of 2026, we are increasing our 2026 total revenue guidance to between $45 million and $47 million, up from $42 million to $44 million previously. At the midpoint, this implies approximately 14% revenue growth compared to 2025.

As our underlying end markets continue to recover, we have seen improvement in orders for our custom products, in particular, from life science tools and diagnostics customers driven by our exposure to the liquid biopsy, spatial biology and genetic sequencing markets, among others. However, biopharma revenue has been muted so far this year due to softness in orders from cell and gene therapy customers. And while biotech funding has been strong for the last 3 quarters, as Steven mentioned earlier, our experience is that there's an approximately 4-quarter lag before that funding begins to flow through to revenue for Teknova.

Nevertheless, revenue from our catalog products across all end markets grew in the low double digits rate compared to the quarter a year ago. Despite raising our revenue guidance for 2026, our outlook for 2027 remains unchanged, and we continue to target revenue in the range of the low $50 million. As we have indicated before, due to the high percentage of fixed costs associated with our operations, we estimate that each additional dollar of revenue drops through at a marginal cash rate of approximately 70% with some variability quarter-to-quarter and reported results due to GAAP accounting.

While gross margin improved in the second quarter of 2026 year-over-year, we remind investors that the second quarter 2025 included unusually favorable manufacturing efficiencies, making for a difficult comparison. We now expect gross margin to land in the mid- to upper 30s percentage range for the full year 2026. The company posted operating expenses of $7.8 million in the second quarter of 2026, reflecting our scale investment in sales and marketing, which we expect to be approximately $2 million for the full year 2026. Our belief is that these investments will pay off as soon as the end of 2026, but more likely in 2027.

We forecast that operating expenses will be at least $8 million per quarter through the end of 2026. Taking account of the spending level, we expect to become adjusted EBITDA positive in the range of $52 million to $57 million in annualized revenue. If our end markets are stronger in 2027 and our stepped-up commercial investments bear fruit as anticipated, then we should report a positive adjusted EBITDA quarter before the end of 2020.

As I noted earlier, the company achieved a significant reduction in free cash outflow during the second quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter in the prior year, although we don't expect that figure to be as low in the next two quarters. We now anticipate free cash outflow of less than $8 million for the full year 2026 even with the increased investment in our commercial capabilities and potentially higher capital expenditures in the second half of 2026.

With that, I will turn the call back to Stephen.

Thanks, Matt. Overall, we were very pleased with the second quarter 2026 and the progress we've made against our strategic priorities. We believe the outlook for our end markets remains positive, and we are committed to executing on our strategy to help our customers accelerate the introduction of novel therapies, diagnostics and other products that improve human health.

We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Brendan Smith of TD Cowen.

Congrats on a strong quarter. I appreciate all the color on the growth drivers, in particular here. So I guess maybe first, can you speak a bit more to just whatever visibility you have kind of on the order funnel in Q3 and Q4, especially in that biotech pharma CDMO bucket you spoke about that 3- to 4-quarter lag between funding and revenue, but just wondering if you -- it's fair to say this is they're becoming a bit early there or just anything to note on the dynamics specifically in second half? And what kind of growth assumptions underpin the new guidance there?

Great. Thanks, Brendan. So our funnel looks strong. It is not due to what we believe the biotech funding flowing through yet, right? So we have not yet seen that happen. We have seen some nice growth in some of the large pharma CDMOs and this general biotech, but cell and gene therapy has been muted. We did have an order push out from Q2 to Q3. But outside of that, it's still pretty muted. We do expect to see this increase. We're getting some nice engagement from customers and the funnel filling really nicely. But at this point in time, we're not factoring any of that into the back half from a -- I'm sorry, we're not factoring in the biotech funding roll through into the back half of the year.

Got it. Okay. Okay, understood. And then maybe just quickly on the Build-Tek launch, I guess, is this something you're kind of able to monetize in the sense that customers to use it upfront as kind of part of the order? Or is the value that largely to your kind of product team on consultation and time savings. Just kind of wondering how we should think about potential impact there on either revenue or OpEx.

Yes, I wouldn't expect that you see -- first of all, we're not going to charge people to use it. This is about building our capability around custom manufacturing and enabling our customers to get those custom products faster. The configurator is really built upon training data for 30 years of manufacturing, how do we do it to get all the right specifications upfront. The users are putting those in electronically. The format for us is can quickly quote. And as you heard me say, we're going to get to, so that this quote is done online at some point in the future.

So there's very much about increasing the brand strength, but then bringing more of these customers into custom products and Teknova and enabling them to do that than it is around charging for the use of the tool.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Larew of William Blair.

This is Jacob Krahenbuhl on for Matt. So maybe first, you mentioned a lot of tailwinds, the customer therapy moving to commercialization next year, improving biotech funding benefits from the commercial investments starting to flow through. But just as we kind of think to 2027, is growth still on the table for next year? I know I think you mentioned like low $50 million revenue expectation for next year. But just kind of wondering how you're viewing your expectations next year and maybe what elements do you see needing to continue improving the most as you work towards that level of growth?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Jacob. That's right. We did highlight the 2027 target at the low $50s million. And that's because -- that is basically the level that we indicated when we had our initial guidance and the 20% growth on top of that. So we've left that essentially unchanged from a dollar perspective. primarily because at this point, it's still middle of 2026, and we don't have visibility on the enough time is passed to see that this biotech funding and the impact of our commercial investments, as you mentioned, as well as the customer moving into commercial, how those things will impact us in 2027.

So at this point, we're just being prudent about about next year and setting that up. But if these things that I just mentioned, do come to fruition, and we start seeing those impacting our results, then there could be upside from there. But right now, that's what we're seeing.

Okay. That makes sense. And then I wanted to touch on just intra-quarter demand trends. Obviously, very strong growth in the quarter. But I'm just wondering how things were trending month-over-month and kind of exiting the quarter in the third quarter. I understand that the back half, you guys are being pretty prudent not embedding any of the improved biotech funding or anything like that. But sounds like cell and gene therapy yet an order push out into the third quarter. So I guess what's your level of confidence of that coming in the third quarter? Is there any risk can be pushed out? And is there maybe anything else kind of embedded in the back half guide that we should be aware of in terms of just a timing dynamic?

Yes, I'll just mention on that order. I mean it's still a relatively small part of our revenue that selling therapy. I think were 24% in 2025. And so when we talk in a quarter new perspective, that's a relatively small number. So these are not millions of dollars type of order, that slitters happening in Q3. There's no risk there, what's ever -- but then from the guidance, maybe, Matt, you want to comment on how we thought the back half?

Yes. I'll just maybe make this more generally about 2026 guidance, Jacob. So the midpoint of the range being at $46 million, the way we thought about that was essentially mirroring the revenue that we've seen here in the first half of the year. So essentially, all things being the same in the environment and what we're seeing in our business. That's all obviously based on what we're seeing from the orders book and funnel and things like that.

So with $23 million plus in the first half and now $23 million in the second half, we would expect it to play out as we had in the past couple of years where Q3 is a stronger quarter than Q4. Q4 is seasonally light for us typically because of the fewer business days in that year, and that's played out the last few years. So that is how we're seeing the rest of the year.

Now again, if some of these things like the commercial investment or things in biotech funding do start to come into play, and that's something we'll revisit later. But right now, we're not seeing that yet.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Hewitt of Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Congratulations on the strong quarter. Maybe first up, just a clarification. Did you say that it was low double-digit growth for all modalities in the second quarter? Would that include cell and gene therapy?

No, no. The specific reference that I made to low double-digits growth was about our catalog business, Matt. So that catalog business does encompass all the modalities, but it only represents 60% approximately of our business, right? That's the rough amount of catalog. So there are some nuances, different nuances on the custom side, but overall, the catalog sorry, in the low double digits.

Got it. All right. And then -- and I don't know if you have visibility into this, but as you look at the clinical progress, I think you noted you've got trials for biotherapeutics as well as diagnostics. But as you look at those, what kind of progression are you seeing from Phase 1 to 2 and 2 to 3? I mean, are you seeing some nice ramp there as you look towards particularly the later stage, especially given some of the improvement that we've seen in funding?

Yes, I would just say that the later-stage customers that we're engaged with we talk to regularly, they're planning these things out. This is happening, right, assuming that they get approval. So the activity there is very structured. We're going to need this by this time, and here's all the orders coming through. So those are kind of sort of timed out over the next, say, 6, 12 months, we have those conversations. The earlier stage 1, there's still progression there and engagement. It's -- I don't think it's related to the biotech funding as much as that preclinical side is very much where we started to see some of the stuff perk up and with biotech funding. And that, we have not seen much of just yet. We're seeing higher engagement. We're seeing -- when we do a quote, it's not about okay, we just wanted to get the budget and then plan it. It's much more around, "Hey, we want to quote and we're going to order. So that's a very positive sign for us. But we have not seen the Biotech Fund enroll into revenue yet.

Understood. And maybe just a follow on to that. And I don't know if you're able to disclose this, but how many Phase III customers are you currently working with?

Yes, I think we said at the end of 2025, we had 5 in Phase II or Phase III, and some of these are the accelerated pathway. That's why they put them together.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Massaro of BTIG.

Congrats on the strong beat in race. So I wanted to start in the life sciences diagnostic tools space. Stephen, you called out a bunch of areas, notably liquid biopsy. I guess, if you could, could you kind of double-click in there? I mean, how much of this could is from early detection or screening versus MRD or recurrence monitoring versus prenatal or rare disease or germline testing. I just wonder if you could just give us a flavor of where you're seeing the biggest signs of growth.

Yes. I'll give you a flavor. I don't want to go into all that detail, Mark, but the reality is we do sell to almost all of the companies that are doing some sort of formal lithopoxy. Now the amount they buy from us does vary by customers sometimes buy the application. As you know, and then sometimes by what we provide for them. So for some of them, we provide reagents and buffers and both for DNA purification or extensions in library prep, where they hook those up to their robots and go. And others, we actually do the full outsourced GMP manufacturing, where we make the product that with everything needed in it or sample preparation for sequencing.

The latter, of course, is a larger account form or smaller, but we're seeing growth across the board, and we do play in each one of those segments, right, that you mentioned.

Okay. That's great. And then in the lab essentials business, you've talked about an increase in average revenue per customer. If you could try to rank order what you think is driving that? Is it just expanding some of the clinical trials work? Maybe could you just double-click in there, please?

Sure. So like I've said, as you know, is our research use-only product. So this is all in the research is only side. Some of those are purchased for preclinical work, but a lot of that is also in the tool of diagnostic space where we're making products for discovery and for OEM. In this case, Matt mentioned that our catalog business grew low double digits, overall revenue growth for Lab Essentials is 18%. So what that tells you is that the custom side grew significantly more than that. So the average revenue per customer is likely a lot more driven by the fact that these orders are larger and more of the business is based on the custom side.

And we are seeing that in a little bit of recon, but I would say much more on the tools tool side where we're seeing some spatial and some of the liquid biopsy companies buy research use only products because they run in LVPs and things like that.

Okay. Fantastic. Last one for me. Just looking at your balance sheet, you guys have a little over $17 million of cash. I'm just curious if you continue to look at the potential for inorganic growth? And if so, what are the types of things that you're looking for? I think in the past, you've talked about geographic distribution or perhaps technology, but would be curious what your latest thinking.

I'll take that one, Mark. So you're right about the cash there. And as we've said for now for quite some time, we do believe that we have the liquidity between the cash and the access we have on our revolver to be able to fund the business to cash flow positive based on our organic strategy, everything that we've just been talking about here.

Now we are looking at M&A opportunities with opportunities to expand, as you pointed out, both geographically and also potentially our product portfolio. So there are a couple of areas that we've highlighted there, other complementary reagents, including those in the area of proteins and some other related categories. So we -- the part of -- that part of the strategy is obviously subject to a lot more wins of what's happening out there with individual companies and their expectations, but we are active in looking and evaluating these opportunities. And and hopeful that we can find something that makes sense at the right price.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Parisi of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

This is Matt Parisi on for Paul Knight at KeyBanc Capital Markets. Last year, you saw an increase of 25% in your GMP customer count. And I was wondering if you could provide any color on the G&P customer count in the first half of '26?

Yes. Matt provides a little bit in the script around the number, not the actual number, but whether or not we see an increase or decrease in the number of customers in this case was an increase. We continue to engage with these customers. It's we're obviously front loading, so some of them are small to see the average revenue per customer come down. But we still see traction there. We're still onboarding some have either done acquired or gone out of business. So you have to go over that as a hurdle when we start to talk about year-on-year, but still feel good about that.

And I think what we're also very excited about is actually the progression of those customers' therapies through the clinical trials, right, which is what we've really been building tours over time.

I appreciate the insight. And then just one last one around you guys signed a collaboration agreement with Touristic in the first quarter of 2025. I was wondering if there'd be any update on that and if you still expect some revenue impact in the back half of' 26?

Yes. On that, this is a space where Biolife has been a preeminent player for a very long time, and they have a very strong position particularly on the therapeutic side when they're commercial, right? And we're not in that zone yet, put it that way because it takes a long time to take a therapy from one side from research all the way through right now, the strategy is getting early with these customers, have them drive the product and then migrate over the next 5 years. So I wouldn't expect anything material or significant as a growth driver in the near term.

Our next question comes from the line of Mac Etoch of Stevens Inc.

This is Hannah on for Mac. Congrats on the quarter. It's good to see -- it looks like the only pockets of weakness that you guys are still calling out is on the cell and gene therapy side. Is that right? I think maybe there was some like preclinical research pockets of weakness in Lab Essentials, you called out last quarter? Have we kind of moved past that? Or would there be anything else to call out there? And then on the CGT weakness, -- are there any differences in earlier-stage customers versus late stage or any other nuances you would call out there?

Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Anna. Yes, as I said before, first of all, of all the market -- the end markets we serve. I think teletherapy was the only 1 that was not growing pretty significantly this quarter. So part of that was due to timing that order. But then another piece is just really in the early stages in the R&D side, discovery, Cypress and there as well. So that has not come back for biotech on. The second part of your question, so around the stage, obviously, these later-stage therapies that we're talking about that are in that Phase II or in Phase I, Phase II, Phase III area, those continue to move forward, right?

And so we expect that to be a revenue growth driver going forward. And of course, we're loading the front end up as much as we can at the moment. So those right now are continuing to order more teaming related to.

Great. And then on the margin side, by our math, it looks like incremental margins might have trended a little bit lower than typical. I know you normally expect 70% contribution margins. Was there anything that impacted the quarter there? Or anything you would call out in terms of near-term gross margin trends?

Thanks, Hanna. I would just say, first of all, we did highlight some of this as a comparison issue for last year in Q2. We had a very strong kind of out of the ordinary gross margin for reason due to manufacturing efficiencies. So that -- it's a part of it is just the comparison. We actually saw quite nice improvements when you exclude that impact, basically. So there is always going to be some fluctuation. I'd just say the 70% is not a strict formula, there's because there's lots of other things that happen in the income statement, there's going to be quarters where it could be 50 or 80 or whatever. So I would say, generally, what we -- what happened is what we expected and it's more of a comparison to the prior quarter, which I think is masking some of the real improvement there.

Our next question comes from the line of Max Masucci of ROTH Capital Partners.

Build-Tek, so I appreciate the detail in the release this morning -- just curious how the quote volume has trended since the June beta launch through early August here. And understanding that you're not charging for build tech, but I would assume it could more quickly shift some customers from catalog to customs. So just curious if that could become a light growth tailwind into 2027.

Yes. We're obviously very excited about Build-Tek. It's really fun. I encourage you all to go try it out, right? You can obviously say, hey, I want this particular formulation and then the last year, which type of container and not acid if you want to soon you want to limit all the pieces that go into how we manufacture the product. But you can also just say, I want the most cited license buffer in the space in the recent publication and then it will spit out some of the different options for you to pick from. And so like in that example, we're really helping customers figure out what they need and then getting into our system quickly.

And so I do think it would be a tailwind. I think it's a big differentiator for us in the space. it's much better than trying to sort of use these drop-downs and build your product online like a lot of other historical configurators in the space. So we're excited about that. We have seen some increase in usage. And I think we were really excited when we put it out there and people were finding it and their customer that had not been typically ordering custom products from us or not had much engagement. So I think we're going to get a wider audience with something like this.

Okay. And so you hired some field reps with existing relationships across tools, Dx pharma. Just curious how things are going there and more broadly on the heels of your commercial investments. Are you expecting to see the benefit kind of show up more in new account wins, funnel conversion or deal size?

Yes. So we're very excited. I think executing really well. If you remember, there are two pieces. Well, obviously, you mentioned the field sales team, and they're on board and they're executing. And the other piece is around lead generation. And so that's also going really well. That support from people but also new tools for lead generation, including MAIstuff that we've been using. Those are all generating improvements in the funnel, more medians with the right customers.

We targeted this investment towards sort of the biggest opportunities, but some of the more complex accounts. That will take some time to play through. So we'd expect to see that impact probably in the Q1 2027 time frame. And it looks like we're on track with the opportunities after the funnel when those would close and it's probably around that time, and we'd start to see the benefit of that.

Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Hillary of Ruby Capital.

A lot of great questions already asked, so I'll just ask a different one. Can you just remind us where you are with your utilization in your facilities? And how you think about that as you move through this year and into next year?

Thanks, Chris. So from a capacity utilization, I think we know we have a lot of room still -- so we use revenue as an estimate of how capacity, right, we'd say $200 million of revenue. Just to put it in perspective, we're operating between 4 and 5 days on 1 shift right now. So obviously, we can add multiple shifts. We can go weekend. But even in sort of some of these facilities, we're not at full utilization even in those shares. We're adding just a handful more people, we could ramp up work orders significantly. Then you combine that with some of the efficiencies that we're doing from our lean manufacturing, everything else, I think were well within the $200 million and are excited that we don't have to do another facility build or anything like that.

So at this point in time, the projects for manufacturing are a lot more around driving efficiency, how do we give more work orders with the same number of people, but also new capability around either automation or vessel types and things like that, that can enable us to go after different opportunities that we find in the market. So I feel very good right now, and we're ways away from needing to do another capital expenditure in that area.

And then following up on an earlier question of sorts, with the commercial investments, the sales force investments you made this year with the progress you're seeing, does it start to inform you about how you might think about that for next year?

Yes, we'll be looking probably early Q4, late Q3 to see that it doesn't make sense to make additional investments, right? What's the ROI and what we've made? These things take a little bit of time to play out. So we just want to make sure we don't get too far ahead of our skis or if we don't need it yet. But obviously, we think we can drive additional growth with more investment, we'll weigh that and make that decision.

But at this point in time, we have yet to see the first $2 million investment roll through in terms of ROI, and we're seeing some really nice growth protein. So we're excited about where we sit, but certainly, this is one of those things we evaluate quite a bit. And what for the next moment, we'll probably be at the end of Q3.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.

Hello, and welcome to Teknova First Quarter 2026 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Jennifer Henry, Senior Vice President of Marketing. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Teknova's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

With me on today's call are Stephen Gunstream, Teknova's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matt Lowell, Teknova's Chief Financial Officer, who will make prepared remarks and then take your questions.

As a reminder, the forward-looking statements that we make during this call, including those regarding business goals and expectations for the financial performance of the company, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ. Additional information concerning these risk factors is included in the press release the company issued earlier today, and they are more fully described in the company's various filings with the SEC.

Today's comments reflect the company's current views, which could change as a result of new information, future events or other factors, and the company does not obligate or commit itself to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

The company's management believes that in addition to GAAP results, non-GAAP financial measures can provide meaningful insight when evaluating the company's financial performance and the effectiveness of its business strategies. We will, therefore, use non-GAAP financial measures of certain of our results during this call. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release that we issued this afternoon, which is posted to Teknova's website and at www.sec.gov/edgar.

Non-GAAP financial measures should always be considered only as a supplement to and not as a substitute for or as superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation may differ from similarly named non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies.

Please also be advised that the company has posted a supplemental slide deck to accompany today's prepared remarks. They can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Teknova's website and on today's webcast.

And now I will turn the call over to Stephen.

Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call.

It was a relatively straightforward quarter for us across the board with revenue and operating expenses delivering in line with or better than our expectations. Revenue grew 13% compared to the same period last year, led by 85% growth in Clinical Solutions. Gross margin, operating expenses and free cash outflow were in line with our expectations, including the planned incremental spend in sales and marketing.

From a macro environment perspective, we continue to see stabilization across our end markets. And as we learn more about how our customers are planning for late-stage clinical trials and commercial production, we are growing increasingly confident in our ability to deliver long-term sustainable above-market growth.

Building on that, I would like to provide a little more detail around our thoughts on the current macro environment. In the first quarter, we saw an increase in the number and total dollar value of orders over $25,000 compared to the same period last year, which we believe indicates that some of our customers are shifting their focus from cash conservation to strategic execution. While there are still accounts focused on conserving capital, we believe this headwind has now been offset by an increase in customers placing orders to move their research and clinical studies forward.

Notably, we are seeing growth in nearly every end market segment we serve, including life science tools, diagnostics and biopharma. Moreover, some of our leading indicators such as customer engagement and funnel health provide us more confidence in a predictable market backdrop going forward. We are, therefore, encouraged that we began ramping our commercial investment at the beginning of 2026.

As a reminder, the roughly $2 million annual increase in commercial spend is split between marketing and sales to increase lead generation activities, build lead qualification infrastructure and onboard sales associates with experience in tools, diagnostics and large pharma.

I'm happy to say that these initiatives are on track and that we should be able to see their impact on revenue by early 2027. We believe these investments, combined with the rebound in biotech funding and the progression of our customers' therapies and diagnostics towards commercialization should position us for approximately 20% revenue growth in 2027.

Operationally, we continue to focus on driving efficiency through process improvements, automation and software implementation. In the first quarter, we increased our high-volume bottle production by tripling our single batch size and implementing an automated aseptic filling line. This project allows us to not only scale production volumes, but also to reduce labor hours per unit.

From a software perspective, we have now migrated 90% of our 3,000-plus paper batch records to digital, providing enhanced data analytics, increased visibility, better documentation quality and improved standardization. We are fortunate to have dedicated engineering and software development teams on staff to lead these initiatives as we look to scale and achieve profitability.

In the meantime, we remain focused on executing our plan by driving growth in Lab Essentials customer wallet share and increasing our active Clinical Solutions customer count. We are excited about the traction we are seeing so far in 2026 and believe the substantial investments we've made over the past three years have positioned the company to scale and generate significant value for our customers and stockholders alike.

I will now hand the call over to Matt to talk through the financials.

Thanks, Stephen. Good afternoon, everyone.

As Stephen explained, revenue was up 13% for the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter prior year. This was also the first Q1 in which we earned over $11 million in revenue in nearly three years. I'm also very pleased with our progress on key profitability measures and cash usage. Overall, we delivered strong financial results for the first quarter 2026.

The revenue, Lab Essentials products are targeted at the research use only or RUO market and include both catalog and custom products. Lab Essentials revenue was $8.4 million in the first quarter 2026, up 3% compared to $8.1 million in the first quarter of 2025. The increase in Lab Essentials' revenue was attributable to higher average revenue per customer, partially offset by a decreased number of customers.

Clinical Solutions products are made according to good manufacturing practices, or GMP, quality standards and are primarily used by our customers as components or inputs in the development and manufacture of diagnostic and therapeutic products. Clinical Solutions revenue was $2.1 million for the first quarter 2026, an 85% increase from $1.2 million in the first quarter of 2025.

The increase in Clinical Solutions revenue was attributable to an increased number of customers and to a slightly lesser extent, higher average revenue per customer. We expect revenue per customer to increase over time as a subset of these customers ramp up their purchase volume as they move through the clinical phases.

However, this metric can be affected by the addition of newer Clinical Solutions or GMP catalog customers who typically order less. Just as a reminder, due to the larger average order size in Clinical Solutions compared to Lab Essentials, there can be more quarter-to-quarter revenue lumpiness in this category.

On to the income statement. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2026 was $3.8 million compared to $3.0 million in the first quarter of 2025. Gross margin was 34.2% in the first quarter of 2026, which is up from 30.7% in the first quarter of 2025. The increase in gross profit was driven primarily by higher revenue.

Operating expenses for the first quarter of 2026 were $8.1 million and for the first quarter 2025 were $8.0 million. The increase in 2026 was primarily driven by higher spending in sales and marketing, resulting from higher headcount and increased marketing expenses. Partially offset by lower general and administrative expenses attributable to lower stock-based compensation expense and professional fees.

Net loss for the first quarter of 2026 was $4.6 million or negative $0.08 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $4.6 million or negative $0.09 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was negative $2.0 million for the first quarter of 2026 compared to negative $2.5 million for the first quarter of 2025.

Capital expenditures for the first quarter 2026 and 2025 were both $0.2 million. Free cash outflow, a non-GAAP measure, which we define as cash provided by or used in operating activities, less purchases of property, plant and equipment was $3.6 million for the first quarter of 2026 compared to $4.3 million for the first quarter of 2025. This decrease compared to prior year was due to lower cash used in operating activities.

Turning to the balance sheet. As of March 31, 2026, we had $17.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $13.2 million in total borrowings.

2026 outlook. Turning to our 2026 guidance and outlook. We are reiterating our 2026 total revenue guidance of $42 million to $44 million. At the midpoint, this implies approximately 6% revenue growth compared to 2025. As our underlying end markets continue to recover, we have seen improvement in orders of custom products from both biopharma and life science tools and diagnostics customers. Customer conversations about future 2026 custom product orders continue to be encouraging, and we have started to see more large orders, those greater than $25,000, but are waiting to see more durability before we consider adjusting our guidance for the year.

As we have indicated before, due to the high percentage of fixed costs associated with our operations, we estimate that each additional dollar of revenue drops through at a marginal cash rate of approximately 70% with some variability quarter-to-quarter in reported results due to GAAP accounting. We continue to expect gross margin in the mid-30s percentage range for the full year 2026.

The company posted operating expenses of $8.1 million in Q1 2026, which reflects our scaled investment in sales and marketing, which we expect to be approximately $2 million for the full year 2026. Our expectation is that these investments will pay off as soon as the end of 2026, but more likely in 2027 in the form of double-digit revenue growth rates.

At this higher spending level, we expect to become adjusted EBITDA positive in the range of $52 million to $57 million in annualized revenue. If customer end markets are stronger in 2027 and our stepped-up commercial activity bears fruit as expected, and we should report a positive adjusted EBITDA quarter by the end of 2027.

The company continues to see a reduction in free cash outflow during the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter in the prior year. While the company saw an increase in free cash outflow compared to the fourth quarter of 2025, this is consistent with the company's expectations for the year and is higher due to certain larger payments typically occurring during the first quarter.

We anticipate lower average quarterly free cash outflow for the remainder of the year. As such, the company continues to expect free cash outflow of less than $10 million for the full year 2026, even with the increased investment in our commercial capabilities.

With that, I will turn the call back to Stephen.

Thanks, Matt.

Overall, we were very pleased with the start to 2026 and the progress we've made against our strategic priorities. We believe the outlook for our end markets remains positive, and we are committed to executing on our strategy to help our customers accelerate the introduction of novel therapies, diagnostics and other products that improve human health.

We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mac Etoch with Stephens.

Great to hear about the updated macro outlook. I've heard some of your peers talk about maybe a little bit of a bifurcation between earlier-stage biotech and later-stage biotech. So, I'd just love to get your sense of what you're hearing at this point from these individual customers or if you're seeing a similar trend in your customer base.

Yes. Thanks, Mac. In some ways, yes, we're seeing some similarities, right? We had some nice large pharma growth in the quarter. But on the clinical side of our business, we did still see some of these earlier stage Phase I, Phase II place some nice orders with us. And a lot of that probably has to do with the work we've been doing with them for some time.

In the very early stage on the research side in the Lab Essentials, there is a little softness there, but we haven't seen it as much. It could just be some of the accounts that we're supporting today, but we're starting to get more customer engagement from these smaller biotechs, and it's looking pretty encouraging right now.

Appreciate that. And then as we think about just your general different end markets that you serve, it sounds like all of them are kind of coming back together as one. Are there any that are leading the pack more so than others?

Yes. Like I just mentioned, we had some nice growth in large pharma in the quarter. We did get some nice growth in the diagnostics side as well in the tools and diagnostics, but particularly on the liquid biopsy, we had some nice orders come in there. So, we're seeing some growth there. I think, like I said, the biopharma as a whole is a little bit slower, but you're starting to see some growth there, and there are certainly pockets where we expect that to increase throughout the year.

Our next question comes from the line of Brendan Smith with TD Cowen.

Congrats on the quarter. Maybe just following up actually on the previous question a little bit more and kind of the commentary regarding customers advancing through clinical development. I think you flagged both within kind of the biopharma and biotech guys.

I guess do you have a sense maybe what kind of proportion -- even like broad strokes, what percent of customers are in that pre-clinical Phase I bucket versus those in Phase III or kind of approaching commercial? I guess I'm just kind of wondering how that funnel is looking at that point at this point, just especially if the funding environment continues to improve.

Yes, Brendan, it's not that different than what we put out in our slides for the 2025 full year. We are supporting approximately 70 therapies. There are five therapies in Phase II or Phase III that are nearing completion at the moment and then 12 in Phase I and then the rest are pre-clinical.

And so, I think that's -- we'd expect the number to increase as we go throughout this year. I mean that's our strategy as you onboard more of these clinical customers. And certainly, if the biotech funding comes back, we expect that to continue. And we've done that really since we started targeting these clinical customers back in 2020.

Got it. Okay. Great. And maybe just kind of a quick follow-up. I think we started to see some increases in maybe wet lab spending activity actually as a result of -- it seems like kind of rolling out some of their own AI capabilities internally and kind of needing to validate those models and the targets that they're starting to get.

It feels like it's still quite early. But I guess, do you have any sense of this materializing in any way kind of within your customers' ordering patterns? And any reason maybe why that wouldn't be kind of a notable tailwind for Teknova over the coming quarters? Just kind of any incremental color on how you guys are thinking about that.

Yes. I think these AI data generation programs are significant, and it's lots of reagents, right? So, they're generating significant amounts of data. We are supporting many of the customers that are supporting the end users here to generate that data or directly.

So, the standard products we offer in our catalog products like the LB broth grow bacteria or the buffers things to purify proteins, I would expect that to be a tailwind for us. And there are customers we're supporting that we are seeing pick up their spend with us for those reasons, but it's not yet significant or material.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair.

Matt, the nice upside in the quarter relative to certainly the Street. The guide was maintained. You referenced wanting to see more durability there before changing the guide. It does seem like more companies than normal have called out benefit from more days in the quarter that reverses later in the year. Just curious if there is any timing impact like that or any orders that got pulled forward into the print or if indeed it's just an effort to be conservative given the broader macro picture.

Right. Good question, Matt. I would say, I mean, we do have some of this phenomenon where we have business days impacts, particularly the catalog portion of our business, which again is about 60% of the total business. I would say that was not really a factor for Q1. It will be and usually is for Q4. But -- so I would say we saw a pretty typical ordering and delivery type of behavior in Q1.

So I don't think anything that's really impacted unusually here. As you noted, and I did as well that I mean there is still macro uncertainty. And while we're off to a good start here, we're certainly optimistic, but not ready to suggest that there could be to increase our guidance range at this time, but it's definitely something that we're evaluating each quarter here, and it's encouraging to have this great start.

Okay. And then you brought up Stephen 2027 in your remarks and to be positioned for 20% revenue growth -- if I look at sort of TTM revenue at this point, certainly has improved over sort of one year ago, particularly on the Clinical Solutions side and Lab Essentials has stabilized at least in the mid-single digits. As you think about kind of where we're at from a TTM perspective today to how you get to 20% in 2027, what elements you see improving the most? Certainly, you called out things like larger orders today and improving funnel. But where do you think the 20% comes from for next year, relative to today?

Yes. So, I think a couple of things come into play. First is an improving backdrop, right? We've seen the biotech funding now two quarters ahead of where it's been. We've shown from past data, and we think it's pretty similar this time that we we'll start seeing an impact from about a four-quarter lag, three- to four-quarter lag in that. So, we're expecting to see that towards the end of each year. And I think that will drive a portion of that growth. So, the baseline kind of picking up a little bit.

On the clinical side, we are supporting more customers and there's more of them moving later into the pipeline, including we'd expect either diagnostic or therapeutic commercial approval by the end of next year. And so that -- even then moving from Phase I to Phase II or Phase II to Phase III or Phase III, obviously, into commercial, those will drive significant growth. That base is relatively small. And that actually is true on the diagnostic side. There's a couple in there on the liquid biopsy side that we may be supporting larger volumes for next year.

And then in addition, this investment we make on the commercial side, both on the marketing and on the people in the field, that will take six to 12 months to ramp up, and that will help us as well. So, the historical Lab Essentials business has grown 11% on average since 2008. And so that mid-single digit, I think we start to see that pick up a little bit. And then combined with these other things should get us into that 20% range.

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

Congratulations on the nice start of the year. Regarding the Clinical Solutions, obviously, a phenomenal Q1, up 85% year-on-year. I'm just curious if there was anything to call out within that. Was there a larger order that kind of drove some of that? Or was it more broad-based? You noted several large orders, but was that really it? And how should we be thinking about cadence for that bucket over the remainder of the year?

Yes, I'll let Matt touch on the cadence in a minute. But just when you look at the customers we supported in Q1, we talk about this a lot about the lumpiness. So I think the question is right to say, is this just a lumpy quarter? Or is this something that is more broad-based. In this case, it is more broad-based.

In fact, we had a fairly large customer last year order that we came over that. And then a number of customers here that we delivered for in Q1. So I would say it's pretty positive on our side that this one is not just a onetime lumpy piece that we're having for a quarter.

But I'll let Matt talk a little bit about the cadence for the rest of the year.

Right. And I think just echo what Stephen said, I think we're feeling pretty good about the diversity in that part of the business in Q1 and also based on the discussions we're having now for the rest of the year. I think that's an area where we should continue to see that at these kind of levels or let's just say, in the $2 million range a quarter or better depending on how things go later in the year. But that's definitely going to be an important component of growth this year. So all to say that, yes, I think that part is looking good, and we should continue to see good results in that part of the business.

That's great. And then shifting gears a little bit. With some of the investments that you've been making, digitizing all the paper, some of the investments in creating larger batch sizes. As I think about your target, 60% to 65% gross margins in a few years, how much of that is going to come from volume leverage versus some of these new strategic decisions that you've been making the past year or two to kind of help with the gross margin lift?

Yes, that's a good question, Matt. I do believe that the single biggest driver is and will continue to be volume growth. But obviously, we're not just going to sit and rest on our laurels and wait for that to play out.

There's lots of other things we can be doing and are doing. And that's the example you gave there is a good one. And they are meaningful. I don't -- these are not trivial things and there are sometimes -- they can play out as productivity benefits where we see that benefit more as we grow than immediately in terms of the cost reduction. It can just mean we have cost restraint as we grow.

So we have that digitization and a lot of other projects always going on, and there's just a never-ending bucket of opportunities to do that. But I wouldn't want to -- I would still say that the main driver is volume growth and what we're seeing that's happening right now, and we're excited about it.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Parisi with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

This is Matthew Parisi on for Paul Knight. Congrats on the quarter. You mentioned the onboarding of new sales associates during the call. And I was just wondering how long that ramp period takes.

Yes. I think typically, in my experience, this is six to 12 months until you really start to see the impact from that. And so I think I mentioned in here that probably towards the end of this year, we'll be able to see that. We're starting to see some early indicators with more meetings, more engagement with some of the target accounts that we're after. And so it's been great to onboard them, and we're very happy we started in January. So I think all is going to plan.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and welcome to Teknova's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Ms. Jennifer Henry, Senior Vice President of Marketing. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Teknova's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call are Stephen Gunstream, Teknova's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matthew Lowell, Teknova's Chief Financial Officer, who will make prepared remarks and then take your questions.

As a reminder, the forward-looking statements that we make during this call, including those regarding business goals and expectations for the financial performance of the company, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ. Additional information concerning these risk factors is included in the press release the company issued earlier today, and they are more fully described in the company's various filings with the SEC. Today's comments reflect the company's current views, which could change as a result of new information, future events or other factors, and the company does not obligate or commit itself to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

The company's management believes that in addition to GAAP results, non-GAAP financial measures can provide meaningful insight when evaluating the company's financial performance and the effectiveness of its business strategies. We will therefore use non-GAAP financial measures of certain of our results during this call. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release that we issued this afternoon, which is posted to Teknova's website and at www.sec.gov/edgar. Non-GAAP financial measures should always be considered only as a supplement to and not as a substitute for or as superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation may differ from similarly named non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. Please also be advised that the company has posted a supplemental slide deck to accompany today's prepared remarks. It can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Teknova's website and on today's webcast.

And now I will turn the call over to Stephen.

Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. 2025 was another year of strong all-around execution for Teknova. Our top line revenue growth accelerated to 7% compared to 2024 despite a challenging macro environment. Revenue from sales of our catalog products led the way, growing by low double digits compared to 2024. The number of customers actively buying our clinical products increased to 60, 25% more than during 2024. We set new standards for customer service levels, delivering approximately 95% of our products on time in 2025. And we beat both our gross margin and adjusted EBITDA targets while utilizing only $10 million of cash, substantially better than our free cash outflow guidance of $12 million.

Now as we look to 2026, I want to discuss why I believe Teknova has reached an inflection point in the growth strategy we articulated during our initial public offering back in June of 2021. First, we have become a critical supplier of GMP-grade reagents to developers of emerging therapies and diagnostics. Second, we deliver research-grade reagents to a large, diverse, predictable and growing set of customers. And third, with the revenue growth we anticipate, Teknova will offer an attractive financial profile of 60% to 65% gross margins and 25% to 30% adjusted EBITDA margins.

Starting with our GMP-grade reagents. As I noted earlier, we are a critical supplier to 60 clinical customers, 50 of which are biopharma related. We believe we are now supporting at least 70 therapies from these 50 customers. Notably, we are increasing both the total number of therapies and the number of later-stage therapies we support as many of these therapies move closer to commercialization. We believe that at the end of 2025, we supported 5 therapies in Phase II or later and 12 in Phase I, up from 3 and 10, respectively, at the end of 2024. We now believe that we will be supporting at least commercial therapy by the end of 2027.

The remaining 10 of our Clinical Solutions customers are primarily within the life science tools and diagnostics market segment. We supply these customers with everything from private label proprietary reagents for use in bioprocessing workflows to GMP-grade ready-to-use sample isolation and preparation reagents for use in cancer screening applications. We believe that similar to the therapies we support directly, these customers will scale their use of our products significantly as the diagnostics or therapies they're supporting or developing receive FDA approval.

Now shifting to our research-grade reagents. Over the last 30 years, we have built a diverse and predictable business that has grown on average in the low double digits. This growth is attributable to our ability to provide a wide breadth of high-quality critical reagents for the entire life science community, combined with our ability to consistently achieve best-in-class turnaround times. This is why we have attracted over 3,000 customers while maintaining an overall 95% annual customer retention rate and a low customer concentration with only 18% of our total revenue coming from the top 10 Lab Essentials customers in 2025.

As we look forward, we plan to build on these strengths by streamlining order to purchase experiences and expand further into private label manufacturing, particularly in the life science tools and diagnostics market segment. Already, many of our larger customers utilize Teknova to manufacture their proprietary formulations or direct inclusion in their kits or to produce bulk reagents for in-house manufacturing of their kits. We believe this capability will allow us to further penetrate high-growth market segments like sequencing, spatial genomics and cancer screening.

Finally, we will generate significant operating leverage in our P&L as our revenue increases. That's because the investments we've already made in our facilities, IT infrastructure and automated processes and equipment will enable the company to generate more than $200 million in revenue with limited additional operating and capital expenditures. As a result, we believe that incremental revenue will continue to drop to the bottom line at a rate of approximately 70%. Considering our current cost structure and anticipated revenue growth this year and next, we, therefore, expect to become adjusted EBITDA positive by the end of 2027.

Now let's talk about some possible catalysts for our business over the next 12 to 18 months. Given that we have begun to see investments in our growth strategy pay off as well as some market stabilization in life science tools, diagnostics and bioprocessing, we have decided to invest further in our commercial capabilities and activities, focusing on select market segments where we feel we have a differentiated product offering. Albeit relatively modest at approximately $2 million per year, we believe these investments will allow us to accelerate revenue growth towards the end of 2026 and into 2027 by expanding our presence with customers in these attractive market segments.

We are excited to turn our primary focus back to investing in the business and away from cost cutting. In addition, there has been an uptick in reported biotech funding in Q4 2025 and early in Q1 2026. Based on historical data, we see approximately a 4-quarter lag between funding changes and their effects on our revenue. Therefore, if the increases in biotech funding continue, we would expect to see growth in biopharma-related revenue beginning in Q4 2026. Aside from funding, we also believe that some of the therapies and diagnostics we support may receive FDA approval in 2027, which we believe would result in an increase in the frequency and volume of purchases of our products.

Lastly, as we have mentioned previously, we believe there is an opportunity to expand our product portfolio through collaborations and acquisitions. While we have spent recent years investing in infrastructure systems and scalability, numerous other companies have focused on developing novel products and technologies. By acquiring or collaborating closely with these companies, we believe we can expand our product portfolio and geographic footprint. The combination of our operational and commercial scale with our potential collaborators, novel products and technologies creates a great opportunity to drive additional top line growth and margin expansion over the longer term. All things considered, we believe we are well positioned to drive sustainable above-market revenue growth of 20% to 25% over the longer term and deliver long-term value for our shareholders.

I will now hand the call over to Matthew to talk through the financials.

Thanks, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased with our financial performance in 2025. As Stephen mentioned, we finished the year with momentum, delivering 8% and 7% year-over-year revenue growth in the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, respectively. This marks our sixth straight quarter of revenue growth, and we significantly improved free cash outflow from $13.5 million in the full year 2024 to $9.8 million for the full year 2025. Total revenue for the fourth quarter 2025 was $10.0 million, an 8% increase from $9.3 million for the fourth quarter 2024 and $40.5 million for the full year 2025, a 7% increase from $37.7 million for the full year 2024.

Lab Essentials products are targeted at the research use only or RUO market and include both catalog and custom products. In 2025, approximately 75% of Lab Essentials revenue was derived from catalog products and 25% from custom products. Lab Essentials revenue was $6.8 million in the fourth quarter of both 2025 and 2024 as the increase in the number of customers in 2025 was largely offset by lower average revenue per customer. For the full year, Lab Essentials revenue was $31.0 million in 2025, up 7% compared to $28.9 million in 2024. The increase in Lab Essentials revenue for the full year 2025 was attributable to an 11% increase in the number of customers, partially offset by a 3% decrease in average revenue per customer.

Clinical Solutions products are made according to good manufacturing practices, or GMP, quality standards and are primarily used by our customers as components or inputs in the development and manufacture of diagnostic and therapeutic products. In 2025, approximately 90% of Clinical Solutions revenue was derived from custom products and 10% from catalog products. Clinical Solutions revenue was $2.7 million in the fourth quarter 2025, a 47% increase from $1.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase in Clinical Solutions revenue in the fourth quarter 2025 was attributable to an increased number of customers, partially offset by lower average revenue per customer.

For the full year, Clinical Solutions revenue was $7.7 million in 2025, an 8% increase from $7.1 million in 2024. We added Clinical Solutions customers in 2025, growing from 48 customers in 2024 to 60 that spend more than $5,000 annually. Average revenue per customer decreased 14% in 2025 to $128,000. We expect revenue per customer to increase over time when a subset of these customers ramp up their purchase volumes as they move through clinical trial phases. However, this metric can be affected by the addition of newer clinical solutions or GMP catalog customers who typically order less. Just as a reminder, due to larger average order size in Clinical Solutions compared to Lab Essentials, there can be more quarter-to-quarter revenue lumpiness in this category.

On to the income statement. Gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $3.2 million compared to $2.1 million in the fourth quarter 2024 and $13.4 million for the full year 2025 compared to $7.2 million for the full year 2024. Gross margin was 32.5% in the fourth quarter 2025, which is up from 23.0% in the fourth quarter 2024 and 33.2% for the full year 2025, which is up from 19.2% for the full year 2024.

The increase in gross profit percentage in the fourth quarter 2025 was primarily driven by higher Clinical Solutions revenue and manufacturing efficiency gains. The increase in gross profit percentage for the full year 2025 was primarily driven by the $2.8 million nonrecurring and noncash charges in 2024 related to the disposal of expired inventory and write-down of excess inventory. Excluding these nonrecurring and noncash charges, gross profit and gross margin would have been $10.0 million and 26.5%, respectively, in 2024. The improvement in gross margin from 26.5% to 33.2% was driven primarily by higher revenue and manufacturing efficiency gains.

Operating expenses for the fourth quarter 2025 were $7.9 million and for the fourth quarter 2024 were $7.8 million. Excluding the nonrecurring charges of $0.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 related to nonrecurring transaction expenses, operating expenses were down $0.4 million. The decrease was driven by an overall net reduction in general and administrative spending, somewhat offset by increased investment in our sales and marketing efforts. Operating expenses for 2025 were $30.4 million compared to $33.4 million in 2024. Excluding nonrecurring charges of $0.5 million in 2025 and $1.4 million in 2024, operating expenses decreased $2.1 million. The decrease was driven by reduced headcount and spending primarily on facility costs, insurance, freight and professional fees as well as by lower stock-based compensation expense due to onetime costs incurred in connection with the stock option repricing that occurred in 2024.

At the end of the fourth quarter 2025, we had 158 associates compared to 173 a year prior. Net loss for the fourth quarter 2025 was $4.8 million or $0.09 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $5.7 million or $0.11 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2024. Net loss for the full year 2025 was $17.3 million or $0.32 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $26.7 million or $0.57 per diluted share for the full year 2024. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was negative $1.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to negative $3.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2025 was negative $6.7 million compared to negative $14.5 million for the full year 2024. Excluding the $2.8 million inventory charge, adjusted EBITDA would have been negative $11.7 million for the full year 2024.

On to cash flow and balance sheet. Capital expenditures for the fourth quarter 2025 were $0.3 million compared to $0.6 million for the fourth quarter 2024. Capital expenditures for the full year 2025 and 2024 were both $1.1 million. Free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure, which we define as cash provided by or used in operating activities, less purchases of property, plant and equipment, was negative $0.8 million for the fourth quarter 2025 compared to negative $1.5 million for the fourth quarter 2024. Free cash flow for the full year 2025 was negative $9.8 million compared to $13.5 million for the full year 2024. This decrease compared to prior periods for both the quarter and the full year was primarily due to lower cash used in operating activities. As of December 31, 2025, we had $21.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $13.2 million in gross debt.

Turning to our 2026 guidance and outlook. We are providing 2026 total revenue guidance of $42 million to $44 million. At the midpoint, this implies approximately 6% revenue growth compared to 2025. Over the last several quarters, other than in biotech, we saw strength from life science tools, diagnostics and other end markets that we serve. While we saw an uptick in the amount of capital raised in the biotech industry in the fourth quarter 2025, we are looking for evidence that this can be sustained for longer before becoming more bullish on a recovery in this sector.

Customer conversations about 2026 orders are encouraging, but we have yet to see a material change in the number of larger orders from our Clinical Solutions customers, which are critical to faster growth. As we have indicated before, due to the high percentage of fixed costs associated with our operations, we estimate that each additional dollar of revenue drops through at a marginal cash rate of approximately 70% with some variability quarter-to-quarter in reported results due to GAAP accounting. We expect to see gross margin in the mid-30s percentage range in 2026 compared to 33% in 2025 based on the midpoint of our revenue guidance.

The company posted operating expenses, excluding nonrecurring charges, below $8 million for the seventh quarter in a row. After 2 years of significant cost cutting, we have successfully maintained our cost structure since early 2024 and are now in a position again to make prudent investments for growth. Now that we see early signs of a market recovery in biotech specifically, we have decided to increase our investment in sales and marketing by approximately $2 million in 2026. Our expectation is that this investment will pay off as soon as the end of 2026, but more likely in 2027 in the form of double-digit revenue growth rates.

At this higher spending level, we expect to become adjusted EBITDA positive in the range of $52 million to $57 million in annualized revenue. If customer end markets are stronger in 2027 and our stepped-up commercial activity bears fruit as expected, then we should report a positive adjusted EBITDA quarter by the end of 2027. The company saw a reduction in free cash outflow during the fourth quarter of 2025, both sequentially and versus prior year. This is the lowest quarterly free cash outflow in nearly 5 years when we began our transformation. Once again, the company is pleased to report that free cash outflow for the full year 2025 of $9.8 million was below our guidance of less than $12 million.

As we turn to 2026, the company expects free cash outflow to be less than $10 million due to the increased investment in our commercial capabilities. In conclusion, we are excited about the future and the company's competitive positioning in a market with attractive fundamentals. We believe our decision to shift our posture towards investment should drive faster growth and in the medium to long term and with it also significant margin expansion.

With that, I will turn the call back to Stephen.

Thanks, Matt. Overall, we were very pleased with our fourth quarter and full year 2025 performance and the progress we made against our strategic priorities. We believe the long-term outlook for our end markets remains positive, and we are committed to executing on our strategy to help our customers accelerate the introduction of novel therapies, diagnostics and other products that improve human health.

We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Brendan Smith with TD Cowen.

I wanted to ask a bit more about some of the emerging segments you mentioned that could be notable growth drivers in the coming quarters like sequencing, spatial genomics, cancer screening. Can you expound just a bit on how some of that $2 million in additional investments into commercial capabilities could realistically index to some of those markets and maybe just your general outreach strategy to really tap into whatever you see as the best entry point for Teknova?

Sure. Thanks, Brendan. Yes, this is part of the reason we're doing the commercial investment. In the last year or so, we've seen some increased sales from those particular customers. And without significant commercial investment, we've been able to expand wallet share. Most of these are already somewhat a customer of ours. So we see this pretty exciting. We -- from a commercial investment, part of the investment goes to bringing in a couple of people in the field that have great relationships with these customers, have worked with them in the past and can give us a little bit more focus on that.

And another part is really around building the branding and awareness towards those customers so that they think of us first. And we're doing quite a bit more private labeling for these customers as well. And so the fact that we're already in a lot of their discovery and development is a natural segue for us to have these conversations about much larger volumes and orders and do some private labeling. So we're pretty excited about it.

Got it. And maybe if I could, just a quick kind of high-level follow-up to your commentary on the 4-quarter lag from biopharma funding changes. I guess, would you expect any particular revenue segments within your business to maybe feel some of that faster than others and potentially pull forward if things continue to look good? I'm just mostly wondering what you think the likely possibilities for potential upside to guidance this year could be.

Yes, absolutely, Brendan. I mean the one segment that's the most affected by the biotech funding is what we call our custom biopharma. It's custom products, whether they're research or clinical solutions products, that are custom-made for the biopharma industry. This has historically represented about 25% of our revenue. When we saw biotech funding go up significantly in the 2020, 2021 time frame, we were able to track that particular segment to be about a 4-quarter lag on the way up, maybe a little bit faster, 3 to 4 quarters on the way down. And so that's the segment that would probably have the most impact.

We might see it a little bit earlier depending on which of the actual accounts that were in with loss of wallet share go up and get funding first. So there's a chance there's something going to be looking at it. And of course, there's been a lot of work over the last couple of years of just preparing for a moment where people can raise money again. And I do think that they're going to be eager to spend it. But at this point in time, as Matt said, it's not built into the plan for 2026. So we're going to keep our eye on it.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair.

This is Jacob Krahenbuhl on for Matt. Kind of want to follow up on those last points you mentioned you were just talking about, but focus on the adjusted EBITDA target you laid out for 2027. So you mentioned targeting positive adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2027. I know previously you said you needed to be in that $50 million to $55 million annualized revenue range. I think it's up to $52 million to $57 million now. That's probably largely just due to the $2 million of incremental OpEx you plan to spend per year, which makes sense. But even still, that assumes just based on the midpoint of guidance this year, high 20% revenue growth in 2027.

So I guess, really just would like to get you to speak more to on what exactly you're kind of seeing in the end markets that's making you more cautious for this year versus 2027 and what you need to see develop kind of in the end markets, maybe aside from just an improvement in -- or pull forward in spending from your biopharma customers to maybe have some of that bullishness come forward into 2026 versus 2027?

Yes. Maybe I can go ahead and take that one, Stephen, and you can add in anything that I missed here. But I think it was good for us to introduce this concept of being EBITDA positive by the end of 2027. That's something that we feel really good about. Otherwise, we wouldn't have said it, obviously. But -- and just to clarify on that point and what it means, it would mean that by the end of next year, we have to be run rating at roughly $13 million to $14 million a quarter in revenue. So that's something that we feel good about.

And we do, as we've already outlined and Stephen in some detail, are excited about these investments. We have a strong conviction that they're going to work based upon what we've been doing in the past. The timing is a little bit uncertain of when we're going to see the benefits of that. And it is in part dependent on the recovery of the industry and just also, obviously, the -- how quickly we're able to penetrate some of these accounts that we haven't as penetrated in the past. So we are, as I said in my remarks, very encouraged by what we saw in Q4 from a biotech fundraising. From what we've seen in the early part of 2026 thus far, it seems to be headed in the right direction.

We are looking for that to be sustained for a longer period of time to see that impact 2026. Otherwise, the way the momentum is building, it certainly looks good for 2027. And I think that's why you're seeing us be even more optimistic about 2027. There is that upside, though, for 2026 that if our efforts are bearing fruit sooner or the market is continuing to see strong capital raise activity that could see us -- those will be the upside levers basically to guidance for 2026. And right now, we think by 2027, the way things are headed as we see it now, that will also be another strong year or even stronger than this year for us to get to that type of goal by the end of 2027.

Stephen, anything I missed there?

Yes. I just -- to put it simply, at the midpoint of our guidance, we're talking roughly $10 million, $11 million of revenue a quarter. As you heard Matt say, $13 million a quarter, there's lots of ways we get there, right? There's these therapies that are getting close to commercialization. There's some diagnostic things that are getting very close to commercialization. There's obviously the biotech funding in the market environment and then there's the commercial investment we've made. So we absolutely believe we're in striking distance. I think the timing is a real challenge for us. And we want to make sure we're actually seeing the revenue flow through before we commit from a guidance perspective.

Great. And then I wanted to ask about your RUO to GMP customer transition. I think you mentioned you have -- you're supporting 60 clinical customers at the end of 2025. So maybe just for our benefit, can you help us or remind us what the average expected revenue step-up is per customer when they make that leap and as they go through each phase of the trial? And I know you mentioned in the prepared remarks, but just confirm again the amount of therapies you said you're supporting in Phase II and later. I might have missed that, but if you could go over that, it would be helpful.

Sure. So we -- yes, we are supporting 50 clinical customers. That's customers that have purchased from us over $5,000 in the last trailing 12 months, in this case, to all of 2025. This is -- obviously, there's been some companies that have not made it. So this is all actual purchase from us in 2025. And from a therapy perspective, yes, 70 overall therapies or more that we're supporting, 5 of which are Phase II or later and 12 of which are in Phase I. So the step-up is essentially from a Phase I customer -- or therapy, I'm sorry, a Phase I therapy through a commercialized therapy is about a 30-fold increase in spend. And the difference between, say, a phase -- late stage Phase II or Phase III to a commercial is about a tenfold. So it's about 1x to 3x to 30x. You can see how much volume of purchases will go up, assuming we're supporting a commercialized therapy.

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum.

And this might kind of tie into that last response, but with the average revenue per customer down this year, but that's a function of adding new customers. When you look back historically, is there an average time frame before you start to see those ramp up? Or is it completely customer dependent and the therapies that they're working on and maybe other things that you really can't tie out and say, boy, it should take about 12 months before we see them go from a low volume to a higher volume?

Yes, Matt, it's a little bit therapy dependent. So a couple of things are driving that average down, right? And again, we're taking the therapies purchased and the average is per customer, right? So some of these customers have many therapies. It's a little bit -- there's a piece there that may be kind of disconnected in some ways. But the reality is, obviously, the more early Stage I, they're buying tens of thousands, let's say, of dollars in that preclinical stage. There -- the more we add there, the lower the average will go, which is we continue to add there. But then as they move down through the therapy clinical pipeline, of course, the spend goes up. And you're talking in the Phase II, hundreds of thousands per therapy type of thing.

So the timing is very therapy dependent, right? This is not a slow strategy. The clinical trials can take 7, 10 years from start to finish. But we're excited to be getting some towards that finish line for us, which is great. And each therapy has different endpoints. So we kind of map those, and that's why you can hear us in the prepared remarks talk about we do think we'll be supporting one by the end of 2027. That may be more as well, right? So it depends on their approvals and the timings of those therapies. So I think we're getting closer to that end. And at the same time, on the front end, we're loading up the entire pipeline. So I think as these things go through commercial, you'll probably start to see that average come up.

That makes sense. And then you kind of -- it's a nice lead in there. So over the past, call it, year, you've had the FDA and other agencies have come out either with draft guidance or more formal guidance. And there -- it really seems like the government is pushing to shorten that drug development time frame from the 10-plus years historically to something much lower, whether it's on the front end with using AI and modeling or on the back end, they recently came out. It sounds like they're going to discontinue the need for Phase III confirmatory studies if you've got the right data.

How does that shortening of the time frame, how does that kind of change your model, if at all? Or is there anything that you can do to make sure that you're getting in on the very early end in what could be ultimately a shorter development process?

Yes. Certainly, Matt, the shorter the time period is the bigger impact they'll have on the business, right? So we know that as they get through commercialization, there's a lot more spend there. So that could be a really nice tailwind for the business generally. There are a number that are scoring that are actually already Phase II, Phase III combined because they're either designated breakthrough or rare disease or both. And so those are always really nice to see.

And we are fortunate in that many of these customers are already using us in the very early stages, right, for -- because of our capability to do these smaller batches quickly of custom formulations. And there's just not a lot of suppliers that can do that and then actually be compliant and scale all the way through commercialization. So we do feel like -- we do feel good that we have a really strong position in that particular space. And certainly, if the FDA does allow for these to be shorter time periods, we would see a benefit there over time.

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Matthew Parisi with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

This is Matthew Parisi on for Paul Knight at KeyBanc. Congrats on the quarter. Just a quick question around cell and gene customers. What was the total number of cell and gene customers for 2025?

Good question, Matthew. I want to make sure I don't misquote this, but this is one we can get to you afterwards, and we'll put it out with a separate deck, I believe, unless Matt, you know at the top of your head.

Yes. I will just say that maybe one other piece of information that would be helpful, which is that our -- of our total revenue, 24% came from cell and gene therapy-related customers in 2025, which is not that different than in 2024, but that was the number for 2025. Maybe that's helpful.

Thank you. That is all the time that we have for question and answers as well as today's conference call. This concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Teknova Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Jennifer Henry. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Teknova's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call are Stephen Gunstream, Teknova's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matt Lowell, Teknova's Chief Financial Officer, who will make prepared remarks and then take your questions.

As a reminder, the forward-looking statements that we make during this call, including those regarding business goals and expectations for the financial performance of the company, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ.

Additional information concerning these risk factors is included in the press release the company issued earlier today, and they are more fully described in the company's various filings with the SEC.

Today's comments reflect the company's current views, which could change as a result of new information, future events or other factors, and the company does not obligate or commit itself to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

The company's management believes that in addition to GAAP results, non-GAAP financial measures can provide meaningful insight when evaluating the company's financial performance and the effectiveness of its business strategies. We will therefore use non-GAAP financial measures of certain of our results during this call.

Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release that we issued this afternoon, which is posted on both Teknova's and the SEC's website. Non-GAAP financial measures should always be considered only as a supplement to and not as a substitute for or as superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation may differ from similarly named non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies.

Please also be advised that the company has posted a supplemental slide deck to accompany today's prepared remarks. It can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Teknova's website.

And now I will turn the call over to Stephen.

Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our third quarter 2025 earnings call. We were encouraged by our third quarter results. Revenue increased by 9% compared to the same period last year, making it the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth.

That growth was driven by strength in sales of our Lab Essentials products, revenue from which grew 16%. We also executed extremely well operationally. I'm pleased with the progress we have made to prepare Teknova for long-term sustainable above-market growth.

Through investments we've made in distributor management, purchasing integration and price optimization, we have succeeded once again in growing revenue double digits in catalog products, which represents the majority of our Lab Essentials revenue compared to the same period last year.

We have also increased and diversified our Clinical Solutions customer base, which we believe will translate to significant revenue growth as these therapies and diagnostics move towards commercialization in the next 2 to 3 years.

Operationally, we continue to execute extremely well. Key projects to drive operating efficiency and reduce costs such as moving to electronic batch records, automating high-throughput dispensing lines and adding larger batch size capabilities are on track and expected to be operational in 2026.

We are already seeing the results from previous investments through improved operational metrics such as on-time delivery, which allow us to further differentiate Teknova from other reagent suppliers in the marketplace.

The progress made operationally over the past couple of years has given us more confidence in our ability to scale Teknova to more than $200 million in annualized revenue without significant additional capital investments.

We also remain active in pursuing potential tuck-in acquisitions and collaborations to bolster our capabilities, reduce our time to profitability and accelerate top line growth.

Now I'd like to turn my attention to the broader market. As a reminder, we do not have material exposure to the geopolitical environment given that our sales are predominantly in the United States. only about $1 million annually of our raw materials we estimate are imported and less than 4% of 2024 revenue was directly attributable to government research institutes and academic institutions.

Nonetheless, we do have exposure to changes in biotech funding levels because approximately 25% of our total revenue is derived from purchases of custom products by biopharma customers, most of which are supporting therapies in preclinical or early-stage clinical trials.

While the value of catalog products purchased by customers in this segment remains steady and growing in 2025, we have seen continued delays in larger purchases of custom products.

Though we observed a sequential uptick in biotech funding in the third quarter, unless we see sustained improvement in the biotech funding environment or advancement through clinical trials of the therapies we already support, we expect only modest improvement in this end market in 2026.

Fortunately, the other 75% of our revenue from sales of catalog products and custom products across all other market segments has grown in the low double digits for the year-to-date period, and we are seeing an uptick in demand for custom reagents in these other segments of the market, such as animal health, life science tools and diagnostics. Taken together, we remain very confident in our strategy and are optimistic for the long term.

First, we have a foundational business that is predictable and growing that can support the company until the biopharma market returns to historical growth rates. Second, we have demonstrated our ability to execute operationally and commercially.

And finally, we continue to attract and onboard new Clinical Solutions customers, which we believe, in combination with our Lab Essentials products will allow us to achieve a sustainable 20% to 25% top line growth as therapies and diagnostics migrate from research to commercialization.

I will now hand the call over to Matt to talk through the financials.

Thanks, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone. Overall, we delivered great financial results for the third quarter of 2025. As Stephen noted, revenue was $10.5 million, a 9% increase from $9.6 million in the third quarter of 2024. Once again, strong sales from the catalog portion of our Lab Essentials products drove our revenue growth in the quarter.

Lab Essentials products are targeted at the research use only or RUO market and include both catalog and custom products. Lab Essentials revenue was $8.3 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 16% increase from $7.2 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase in Lab Essentials revenue was attributable to higher average revenue per customer and to a lesser extent, a larger number of customers.

Clinical Solutions products are made according to -- Good Manufacturing Practices, or GMP, quality standards and are primarily used by our customers as components or inputs in the development and manufacture of diagnostic and therapeutic products.

Clinical Solutions revenue was $1.7 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 13% decrease from $2.0 million in the third quarter of 2024. The decrease in Clinical Solutions revenue was attributable to lower average revenue per customer, partially offset by an increased number of customers.

We expect revenue per customer to increase over time as a subset of these customers ramp up their purchase volumes as they move through the phases of clinical trials. However, this metric can be affected by the addition of newer clinical solutions or GMP catalog customers who typically order less. Just as a reminder, due to the larger average order size in Clinical Solutions compared to Lab Essentials, there can be more quarter-to-quarter revenue lumpiness in this category.

On to income statement highlights. Gross profit for the third quarter of 2025 was $3.2 million compared to $0.1 million in the third quarter of 2024. Gross margin for the third quarter of 2025 was 30.7%, which is up from 0.9% in the third quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily driven by $2.8 million of nonrecurring and noncash charges during the third quarter of 2024 related to the disposal of expired inventory and write-down of excess inventory.

Excluding those nonrecurring and noncash charges, the gross profit would have been $2.9 million and gross margin would have been 29.8%, respectively, in the third quarter of 2024. The improvement in gross margin from 29.8% to 30.7% was driven primarily by higher revenue.

Operating expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $7.2 million compared to $7.5 million for the third quarter of 2024. The decrease was driven by an overall net reduction in general and administrative spending.

At the end of the third quarter of 2025, we had 161 total associates compared to 165 a year earlier.

Net loss for the third quarter of 2025 was $4.3 million or negative $0.08 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $7.6 million or negative $0.15 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2024.

Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was negative $1.6 million for the third quarter of 2025 compared to negative $2.2 million for the third quarter of 2024, excluding the impact of the $2.8 million charge related to inventory.

Now for cash flow and balance sheet highlights. Capital expenditures for the third quarter of 2025 were $0.4 million compared to $0.3 million in the third quarter of 2024.

Free cash outflow, a non-GAAP measure, which we report as cash used in operating activities plus purchases of property, plant and equipment was $2.4 million for the third quarter of 2025, which was the same as the third quarter of 2024.

Turning to the balance sheet. As of September 30, 2025, we had $22.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $13.2 million in total borrowings.

Now for our outlook. We are reiterating 2025 total revenue guidance of $39 million to $42 million. Based on persistent softness in demand for our Clinical Solutions products from biopharma customers, in particular, we now expect to finish slightly below the midpoint of that range.

Revenue from sales of our catalog products, which represents the majority of our Lab Essentials and a small portion of Clinical Solutions revenue was up at a mid-teens growth rate in the third quarter of 2025 as spending on discovery work continues to be robust in certain pockets of the market.

On the other hand, growth was minimal from custom products, which represents a modest portion of Lab Essentials and the large majority of Clinical Solutions revenue as the macro environment remains favorable for early-stage small to midsized biopharma customers and for their clinical work in particular.

As we look ahead to next year, we expect modest growth in custom biopharma products, representing about 25% of our total revenue and low double-digit growth in the remaining 75% of total revenue, which is not as impacted by the weak biotech funding environment.

Gross margin was up over the prior year quarter and down sequentially. As we explained at the time, during the second quarter, several cost categories that normally fluctuate skewed favorably, whereas this quarter, the effect was more balanced. Our gross margins are very sensitive to the effect of these fluctuations due to the size of our business.

We still believe that over longer periods of time, approximately 70% of incremental revenue will flow through to gross profit. Our gross margin target for fiscal year 2025 remains in the low 30s.

Although we ended the third quarter below target spending levels, partly due to timing considerations, we continue to expect operating expenses of at least $8 million in the fourth quarter, allowing us to moderately increase our investment in sales and marketing compared to last year, positioning ourselves for the market's broader recovery. At these spending levels, we continue to believe we will become adjusted EBITDA positive in the range of $50 million to $55 million in annualized revenue.

The company continues to expect free cash outflow of less than $12 million for the full year 2025. As we have communicated previously, based on reasonable assumptions about future growth and spending plus current liquidity, we believe that we do not need to raise additional capital to execute on our organic growth strategy.

With that, I will turn the call back to Stephen.

Thanks, Matt. We believe the long-term outlook for our end markets remains positive, and we are committed to helping our customers accelerate the introduction of novel therapies, diagnostics and other products that improve human health.

We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of [ Mac Etoch ] of Stephens Inc.

Maybe just to start, just given the recent rhetoric around MFN pharma tariffs and just the subsequent announcements around onshoring capacity and pharma production, how have customer conversations trended thus far into the second half of this year?

Yes. Thanks, Mac. So I would say we like the idea of these leading indicators, whether it's biotech funding or the MFN results, but we're not yet seeing the impact from the customers. So I think there's optimism across the board, but the actual actions of maybe purchasing more ramping up purchases, we have not yet seen, which is why we've been here before, and we want to make sure that we're cautious and seeing that when these things start to happen, if they're sustained for an extended period of time, we believe it will impact the sort of the emerging therapy side.

At this point in time, I would say we're seeing some nice growth in the large pharma. We're actually seeing some nice growth in some of the emerging therapeutic companies that have been purchased by larger companies, but those that are still constrained by capital are operating in a way that they're rationalizing the pipeline or slowing things down at the moment. So at this point in time, Mac, there's been pretty limited conversations about ramp-up there.

Okay. Fair enough. I'd also like to get a little bit of an update on the RUO+ initiative. It's been, call it, a little over a year since that's been put into place. Is there any update on how the efforts are trending there?

Yes. It's an important part of our portfolio, and it filled a really nice gap for us and that we put a lot of effort and investment into this new facility. We have a lot of customers that want to use the new facility but are not quite ready for GMP, and it's a great landing spot for them, where they can get their products made in the facility. They get a lot more flexibility in their formulations. They get sort of improved quality that is very similar to GMP, but not quite all the way to GMP at a price that's not the exact same as GMP, right?

So for us, it allows us to get a little bit of a price premium for using that facility, but not actually committing them to some more controls around the changes they want to make and get their products to them sooner. So this is a really nice landing spot.

We're seeing customers come in there. Those will sit in that Lab Essentials business because it's part of their research use only. And the goal there is obviously to migrate them to GMP, and we see a lot of customers actually sitting in that pathway right now.

Our next call comes from the line of Brendan Smith of TD Cowen.

I appreciate all the color on actually the funding environment impact or potential impact into next year. Actually, just wondering if you could maybe give really any more color there on actually the expected product mix that could kind of come in some of these different scenarios that might help drive that compensation you're talking about the possibility of a more protracted biotech slowdown. I guess really just wondering if there are any specific products within that custom portfolio that you're seeing particular interest in and what maybe your expectations are for those into next year?

Yes. So Brendan, if you're asking about like what type of product mix we typically sell into the custom biopharma, is that correct? And how we see that changing over time?

Yes, more specifically like into next year, if you're confident that the rev mix that you're seeing now could kind of compensate for any potentially protracted biotech funding slowdown, just kind of wondering if there are specific products within there that you're kind of seeing special interest into next year that could help drive that.

Yes. Maybe I'll -- I think what you're after is sort of, obviously, there could be -- and we expect some continued conservation of capital in the biotech environment, particularly around emerging markets over the next, I don't know, say, 6 to 12 months. We're very fortunate that 75% of our business is growing double digits. And we're actually seeing it almost entirely across the board, across every market segment and actually all 3 of our primary product lines of agar plates, cell culture media and buffers.

So we're pretty excited about actually that side of the business and how well we're performing there. We do see an increase in interest on actually the tools and diagnostics side, where we supply a number of products, both for the discovery, but also in that custom into clinical trials. And so, the combination of having this sort of increased number of clinical customers right now as we go through this period with this predictable baseline growth that is in the double digits.

And I will say that -- that is very similar to the business that was here before we made a lot of these investments that grew between 2009 and 2019, 12%. We're back to that level, if not higher at times. So we feel like we're in a really good spot to let the rest of our strategy play out on the therapeutic side, and we're working on bringing on more of these customers in these other market segments.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Larew with William Blair.

Matt, your comments on 2026, if you've got 75% of revenue growing low double digits and modest growth of 25%, that seems to suggest something around 10% as a starting point. So I guess, is that math right?

And then on the Clinical Solutions side, you've called out a couple of times this year the growth in the number of customers. I know that's a metric you update annually, but maybe just if you can help us how that is tracking new customer acquisition relative to perhaps years past and your own expectations this year.

Yes. Thanks, Matt. Yes, obviously, it's a little bit early to be really commenting with precision on 2026, and we'll certainly do that in our next call when we report year-end earnings. But I thought it might be useful to provide some high-level thoughts about where we see things today. And you're right, kind of in the -- we've kind of focused on these 2 components of the business, the 25% we've been talking about in custom biopharma and the 75% of the rest basically.

And as Stephen outlined in his comments, we have -- the market environment has been relatively stable the last couple of quarters in that custom biopharma or also known as bioprocessing in our business. And we are not seeing any strong indicators yet that, that's going to be changing in the near term, but we'll be, of course, updating that view every quarter, and we will have some more data points here by the time of our next call, obviously.

But on the other hand, we -- as Stephen just highlighted, the rest of the business is performing really well. And then similarly, don't see that changing in the near term. And that's a great thing to have the diversity in the portfolio to have these 2 pieces even though they're working in different directions at the moment. But yes, I think in general, that's kind of the math that we see at the moment.

And in terms of the overall development of the Clinical Solutions business, we have been adding customers there, and we will be reporting at the end of the year kind of where those numbers land for the year once we're done.

We continue to see increases of the larger-sized customers, although the mix can sometimes change between the end markets, as Stephen was pointing out, could be some differences in life sciences and tools and DX, of course, versus biopharma, for example.

But in either case, we're happy to onboard those customers and have them as customers with significant revenue potential going forward. So yes, it's looking good and the makeup of it is maybe changing a little bit, but we'll see how we finish the year.

Yes. I'd just add, Matt, that on that particular thing, when we talk about increasing, I think it's particularly a positive statement that we're increasing despite companies that we supported last year are really no longer in existence in many ways, right?

So we have to overcome that barrier and then add new ones. So I feel like the team is executing really well there. Of course, there's always more we can do. And at the end of the year, we'll give you guys a better update on that.

Within kind of the new modality world, cell and gene therapy, there's been, I'd call like a, kind of a grab bag of clinical updates throughout the year, some quite positive, particularly in some recent gene therapy indications, some perhaps more negative. And obviously, we're now a bit a year or so into some of the fast-track efforts, whether it's Fast Track or RMAT, whatever it might be. Just within your customer group, what's your exposure like to those various type subgroups? And do you have customers that have an opportunity to participate in these programs? And how has that affected either their demand or how they're working with you?

Yes. I think it's also fair to say it's been a grab bag for us where we have some that have done quite well and have participated in some of those programs and some that are really constrained recently.

I know at the end of 2024, we did talk about the number of clinical customers we have was 48, of which 39 were biopharma related. Of those 39 that were biopharma, 23 were cell and gene therapy, right? So that kind of gives you the idea of the exposure that we had at the end of 2024.

I don't think it's changed drastically, Matt, but I think there are some there that are later stage that are actually executing to plan. There are some that have been acquired and the new party is actually running those and executing those.

And there are some there that I would say they are more sensitive that are more in mRNA or some of the sort of sensitive gene therapy areas that have been both positive and good -- positive and negative over the past year.

So we're kind of -- as a company, because our specialty is making these custom small batches of reagents that are not specifically tied to a therapeutic, we're kind of participating in all sides of the market, if that makes sense.

Just the last one for me. Gross margins year-to-date are up about 600 basis points, and that's despite Clinical Solutions being flattish, slightly down year-to-date, so largely scale driven. You referenced, Matt, a number of, I guess, both completed in process and planned projects to continue to improve efficiency. I know scale is a big piece. Is that kind of the right gross margin improvement trajectory to think about? Or are some of the projects you referenced more or less impactful in terms of go forward?

Yes. I think -- thank you for highlighting those initiatives, Matt. We are working on a lot of things we already completed and things we're still working on for next year. I would say the key driver for margin performance over multiple quarters, not just in a single quarter, is this high fixed cost, low variable cost mix in our cost profile that we have, where again, we've talked about this 70% of incremental revenue flowing through. The projects will change that a little bit. But I would say, overall, that is going to be still thematically the strongest piece.

So as you can see, though, from quarter-to-quarter, there is variation against that 70%. I would say that the 70% is most realizable in the -- when we talk about cash, 70% of cash dropping through, sometimes due to other types of accounting for inventory and production, we can see some of the variations that we've seen this quarter and the last quarter as 2 examples in each way.

But I think overall, we still have a very high fixed cost makeup, and that is going to allow us to continue driving strong performance into next year, commensurate with the growth that we're expecting.

Our next call comes from the line of Tollef Kohrman with Craig-Hallum.

You talked about process improvements taking effect in '26. Are there any other areas you're looking to drive more efficiencies?

Yes, of course. I mean, this is a constant theme here. Since we started on this journey about 5 years ago, we mapped out a lot of these processes that we felt like are inefficient. And now we put the IT infrastructure and the systems in place that we can really track and identify those areas. So we're always looking at efficiencies.

Now there's a couple of different kinds, right? So on the operational side, you can look at labor and direct labor savings. But of course, if we can get more output with the same fixed cost, right, that drives a lot to the bottom line and will allow us to keep the same number of, say, headcount as we ramp up in revenue.

And in fact, you heard in the transcript, we have 161 employees at the end of Q3. Now there was a time where we were actually over 300 with a similar revenue amount. So significant work has gone into driving efficiency across the board, and we won't stop that as we go forward. So there's efficiency in the operations, but then there's efficiency in all the other supporting functions as well.

So a lot of IT infrastructure here, a lot of processes being optimized around metrics and then even rolls all the way to the commercial side, right? How do we do more with the same number of people.

And so it's just a mantra here more than anything else and probably -- it would take us a long time to go into all the details here, but I think you can kind of see that from a company, we have like 2 major focuses. One is how do we drive top line and continue that going forward as we wait for these customers to come all the way through the therapeutic pipeline as well as then how do we continue to optimize our processes, whether it's operations, commercial, HR, you name it.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Massaro of BTIG.

This is Vivian on for Mark. I'll actually just keep it to one. So I think you touched on briefly maybe some incremental spend on the sales force, just trying to get ahead of a recovery in funding. Could you just remind us where your sales force sits today and kind of at what levels you might feel rightsized?

Yes. And we will often talk to us about how many people you have in the field, and we think about it much more broadly as a commercial organization. So -- we're talking about modest increases here, as we said, since the beginning of the year, where we're talking maybe a couple of headcount here and there. But again, back to the last comment, a lot of these are process improvements that we're driving efficiency.

So I think what you'll see over the course of the next year is less than 10 headcount increases overall for the entire commercial organization, including customer support and marketing and field sales.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.