Seer Inc - Ordinary Shares - Class A Aktie

Good day and welcome to the Seer, Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Marissa Bych with Gilmartin Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. If you have not received this news release, or if you would like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to [email protected]. In addition, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be accessed on the Events and Presentations section of Seer's Investor Relations website. Participating today from Seer is Omid Farokhzad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board, and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section titled forward-looking statements in the press release Seer issued today. For a more complete list and description, please see the risk factors section of the company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Except as required by law, Seer disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as a live broadcast today. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Omid.

Thank you, Marissa, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. I want to begin by acknowledging the ongoing efforts of the entire Seer team, whose daily contributions propel us towards a future where proteomics can deliver a revolutionary impact for patients around the world. I've never been more excited than I am today about the differentiated value proposition of our Proteograph technology, the impact we will have, and the market opportunities in front of us. Now, let me walk you through where we stand.

In the second quarter, we delivered a total revenue of $3.1 million, a step up from our first quarter revenue and reflecting the ongoing pressures on academic funding. I want to be direct. Revenue at this stage does not reflect the value of what we're building. In nascent markets, technological advancement precedes commercial inflection. That is exactly where we are. The science and technology at Seer are delivering tangible value to customers and reinforcing our conviction in the opportunity ahead.

With $209.5 million, we have the runway to see this through and enable us to investments, including opportunistic share repurchases. Repurchases reflect our continued belief that there is a significant dislocation in our share price. As of June 30, 2026, we have repurchased approximately 13.4 million Class A common shares over the life of our share repurchase program, reducing our net total common shares outstanding by approximately 15%. We have approximately $25.1 million available for future share repurchases under existing authorization.

Turning to slide 3 to discuss validation of our platform. We now have over 95 publications, preprints, and reviews validating the Proteograph Product Suite, an approximately 80% increase in the last 12 months, spanning independent researchers and leading academic medical centers, biobanks, and pharmaceutical companies. In our field, scientific publications are the currency of credibility. Each one moves us closer to becoming the standard for deep unbiased proteomics. And as that recognition builds, we expect it will translate directly into revenue.

Turning to slide 4, one publication I'd like to highlight is an independent head-to-head comparison from Roche titled, Nanoparticle Protein Enrichment Competition Heats Up Within Broader Plasma Proteomic Space, and published in the Journal of Proteome Research. The study evaluated Seer against 5 other plasma proteomics workflows, some of which we believe are trying to enter the field we invented, which I will address shortly. The study moved the discussion beyond protein counts to biological origin, robustness, and signal interpretability, and concluded that nanoparticle enrichment delivers substantially deeper plasma proteome coverage than conventional approaches, with Proteograph demonstrating an exceptional balance of depth, reproducibility, and resilience to pre-analytical variability.

Importantly, the findings reinforce that the value of proteomics platforms is not simply how many proteins they can measure, but how confidently those measurements reflect underlying disease biology and real-world sample variability. That ability to generate more reliable biological insight is central to helping researchers make better biomarker and therapeutic development decisions. And we believe this publication provides meaningful third-party validation of that value proposition.

Now turning to slide 5, I'd also like to highlight an independent study published in Nature Genetics titled Nanoparticle-Enriched Mass Spectrometry Proteomics in British South Asians Identifies Link Between Genetic Variants, Plasma Protein Levels, and Disease Risk. Researchers compared our Proteograph platform against 2 affinity-based assays, Olink HT and SomaLogic 11K, in a study of about 1,400 individuals of British South Asian ancestry. The results are compelling, and they speak directly to what makes the Proteograph different.

Using machine learning models trained on assay characteristics, the researchers found that only 13.5% of Proteograph targets were unlikely to achieve cross-platform concurrence, speaking to the robustness of our platform, compared to 39% for SomaLogic and over 45% for Olink. The study also found that the Proteograph measured more than 3,400 proteins that neither Olink nor SomaLogic could detect, and drove the discovery of more than 600 new genetic protein associations. Remarkably, 143 of the newly discovered genetic protein associations were not included in previous Olink and SomaScan studies that were up to 30 times larger. And this is a direct quote.

In terms of sample numbers, as noted by the authors, that is a real proof point. In this study, the Proteograph uniquely delivered depth of coverage, reliability, and unique biomolecular discovery, and that combination is exactly why researchers are turning to Seer to find novel biology that is not possible with others. In fact, the data density the Proteograph delivers is exactly what AI foundation models need for their algorithms to learn rules, recognize patterns, and make predictions. A typical assay run identified 77,000 protein measurements per sample, 7x more data points and 11x more average measurements per protein at peptide level resolution when compared to the highest-plex targeted assay.

More important than the sheer quantity of data points generated is that these data help us get to the depth of the proteome where content remains completely undiscovered today. This is where potential new biomarkers exist that can inform new therapeutic innovation. No other platform can deliver this at scale. We are uniquely positioned to advance AI biological models at this critical stage of the field development, and we have concrete plans and opportunity. I want to highlight the milestone that speaks directly where this company is headed.

At ASMS 2026 in June, Seer and Korea University presented preliminary data demonstrating the potential of AI-driven plasma proteomics for multi-cancer screening. Dr. Sang-Won Lee and Dr. [ J. Wu Kang ] perfected the scale example. With the proteomic data sets generated on the Proteograph and the AI framework, the team can learn directly from a substantially larger portion of the underlying data and uncover biological patterns that traditional workflows cannot access. The early findings from Doctors Lee and Kang offer a compelling glimpse into how deep proteomics and advanced AI can open entirely new approaches to disease detection. This is exactly the science the Proteograph was designed to enable, and we're just getting started.

The market we're building continues to attract new entrants, but we believe the Proteograph remains differentiated by depth, standardization, throughput, and reproducibility. Just as importantly, we have built a strong intellectual property portfolio, protecting the core innovation underlying our technology. Our portfolio includes more than 250 patents and patent applications, including 4 issued patents covering nanoparticle protein enrichment and automated deep proteomics, and we remain committed to protecting innovation that is a platform. We are opening our IP regional buildings by the end of the second to two upon early development.

What's more important is that Tony has already spent the last two months on the road meeting with a group of people who are already working on the development, approximately 20% of our North American customers, and also many potential new customers. His interactions with our customers have validated his confidence in our commercial opportunities that lie ahead. Tony has built and scaled commercial organizations inside private equity-backed companies where lean execution, capital discipline, and shareholder value creations are non-negotiable. He has also held leadership commercial and business roles at several larger organizations, including most recently at bioMerieux.

That combination has given him fluency in both the operating rigor of big company commercial infrastructure and the speed and resourcefulness of an entrepreneurial environment. He's bringing the same discipline to Seer. During Tony's short tenure, he has provided a focus that has made commercial engagement more efficient, our customer interactions more targeted, and our resources increasingly concentrated on large accounts that drive meaningful recurrent revenue. While the full impact of Tony's leadership will take several months to fully materialize, we expect the ramp to build over time. The underlying trajectory and the discipline behind our commercial engine are exactly what we want to see. Tony will optimize the commercial infrastructure to maximize its value.

Now an update on the Seer Insight Program. We received a strong set of project applications to access the Proteograph Product Suite through our Insight Program this year. We're pleased to announce that we have secured an exciting new collaboration with the Mayo Clinic in translational research, further validating academic interest in our platform. We're applying to sharpen our commercial approach as we continue expanding Proteograph adoption within the biopharma market.

Turning to slide 6, moving to an update on our population scale studies, which represent one of the most important long-term value drivers for Seer. Progress continues to build. For PRECISE SG100K, the team completed running the 10,000 samples from the prospective 100,000 sample cohort in May. The PRECISE team is currently analyzing the data and is scheduled to present preliminary data during the breakfast symposium at HUPO in September. We believe the data coming out of PRECISE will be the kind of proof point that drives 100,000-plus sample buyback commitments.

This is the inflection point we have seen unlock flywheel dynamics for companies building new markets. We're having active conversations with multiple population scale cohorts across both public and private entities. These partnerships take time to close, but the trajectory is clear. The demand for deep, large-scale, unbiased proteomics is growing and no platform is positioned to meet it the way Proteograph is. We will now turn the call over to David to walk through the financial results for the second quarter.

Thank you, Omid. Turning to slide 7. Total revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $3.1 million compared to $4.1 million in the second quarter of 2025 and to $2.8 million in the first quarter of 2026. The decrease in revenue was due to lower product and service revenue as a result of continuing macroeconomic headwinds in academic and government funding and continued elongation of sales cycles in some commercial accounts related to extended customer evaluations. We were encouraged by the uptick in revenue from the first quarter as we saw increased consumable pull-through and STAC service revenue in the second quarter.

The project revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $2.3 million and consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments and consumable kits. Service revenue was $700,000 for the second quarter of 2026. We continue to see steady customer interest in running projects through STAC, which we view as an important leading indicator of future instrument placements. In addition, customers continue to appreciate the flexibility of accessing our technology through our SIP program. Of total instrument shipments in the first half of 2026, one-third were previous STAC customers and one-third were part of our SIP program.

Other revenue was $100,000 for the second quarter of 2026 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue. Total gross profit was $1.5 million for the second quarter of 2026, representing a gross margin of 49%, compared to 52% in the second quarter of 2025, and a 1,300 basis point improvement sequentially. The decline in gross margin was due to lower product sales in the second quarter of 2026 versus the second quarter of 2025. We continue to expect variability in our gross margin on a quarter-by-quarter basis as the proportion of instrument, consumable, and service revenue fluctuates. At scale, we continue to believe our long-term gross margins will be in the range of 70% to 75%.

Total operating expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were $18.3 million, including $1.5 million of stock-based compensation, compared to $22.6 million, including $3.7 million of stock-based compensation in the second quarter of 2025. Research and development expenses were $8.2 million in the second quarter of 2026 compared to $12 million in the second quarter of 2025. The decrease in R&D expenses is a result of lower employee compensation expense, including stock-based compensation, laboratory, and professional service expenses.

Selling, general, and administrative expenses were $10.1 million in the second quarter of 2026 compared to $10.7 million in the second quarter of 2025. The decrease in SG&A expenses is due to lower employee compensation expense, including stock-based compensation, partially offset by higher professional service expenses. We incurred elevated legal and other professional service expenses in the second quarter. Net loss for the second quarter of 2026 was $16.9 million, compared to $19.4 million in the second quarter of 2025. Free cash flow, defined as net cash used in operating activities less net purchases of property and equipment for the six months ended June 30, 2026, was approximately negative $25.3 million.

Our opportunistic share repurchases in the quarter reflect our continued belief that there is a significant dislocation in our share price. In the second quarter, we purchased approximately [ 1.4 million ] Class A common shares at an average price of $1.68 per share. As of June 30, 2026, we have repurchased approximately 13.4 million Class A common shares at a VWAP of $1.86 per share, utilizing approximately $24.9 million under our share purchase program authorization. As a result, we have reduced our net total common shares outstanding by approximately 15%. We have approximately $25.1 million available for future share purchases under our existing authorization. We ended the quarter with approximately $209.5 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments. We believe that with our current cash on hand, we have sufficient capital to reach cash flow break-even.

Turning to slide 8, despite a softer second quarter, we continue to see positive trends in customer interest and discussions that we believe will lead to revenue growth in the second half of 2026. We are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $16 to $18 million, representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint over the full year 2025. As a reminder, that guidance reflects our ongoing expectation that the challenging academic and government funding environment would persist through 2026, impacting customer behavior.

Despite the challenging funding backdrop and the impact on the length of our sales cycle, we believe the continued ramp in publications, data from population scale studies, and our new commercial leadership will drive increased instrument utilization and consumable pull-through throughout the second half of the year. At this point, I would like to turn the call back to Omid for closing comments.

Thank you, David. Turning to slide 9. The proteomics revolution is underway, and Seer is at the center of it. This quarter, we defended our foundational IP on two continents, presented pioneering AI-driven cancer screening data to a standing-room-only audience at ASMS, and added commercial leadership to convert years of scientific credibility into revenue traction. We are building a new market from the ground up, and we're winning on dimensions that matter most at this stage: scientific validation, the quality of our collaborations, and the IP we defend.

To our shareholders, thank you for your continuous support and confidence in Seer. We appreciate the trust you demonstrated at our recent annual meeting with the reelection of all of our director nominees. We will continue to focus on delivering shareholder value for you. And to our employees, thank you for staying focused on our mission over the past few months. With that, we will now open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Wanted to ask about instrument placement trends first. So in the first quarter, I think 40% were previous STAC customers and 20% were from the SIP program. This quarter both were at 30%. I think I understand on the STAC side, but on the SIP side, does that just mean they're having more SIP customers mature and turn into direct, real instrument producing customers? Just to explain that to you. I'd like to continue to be helpful.

You're exactly right. There is a kind of a push and pull, if you will. We did ship some additional SIP instruments, and we also had some conversions in the first half. So some of those SIPs turned into, you know, owned instruments, if you will. So it's kind of a...

As you move through time. All right. Thanks, David. That's helpful. And then I know this is very small as part of the business, but related party revenue and COGS were nominal in the quarter, I guess 0. So maybe I didn't know there was an update there. What happened with PrognomiQ, even though they had decent data a few months ago?

Yes, as we've said, you know, they've become an increasingly small part of our revenue in that they are squarely focused now on their lab-developed test. And so they are doing kind of the discovery work that was driving a lot of the revenue earlier. So not surprising. And we continue to, you know, talk to them about smaller projects, but they're clearly focused on the LDT that they've developed the ProView on.

Awesome. And then Omid, you talked a lot about AI during the prepared remarks conversation. I guess I'm just kind of curious how you think, you know, Seer and other proteomics tools, detection tools maybe kind of flow into that world, so you think about the identification, quantification, and then preparation proteomics, if that's sort of in your wheelhouse, and what you think about as it relates to the complexity and maturity of this area. Like just how do you think that ultimately we can kind of get to a point where we're seeing AI models being trained on protein data, like we're seeing in the genomics world today?

Yes, thank you. I think the presentation that happened at the ASMS by the professors from Korea University probably be a perfect example of how this will work. When you do proteomics studies using deep unbiased approaches, of which obviously Seer is the one that pioneered it, what you end up with is a significant increase in the number of data points on a per protein basis, and then a large number of proteins get detected at the same time. And what that means is that you're able to actually interrogate the proteome, not just at the level of a protein group, at the level of a variant of a protein group. And that's relevant.

I mean, I think a perfect example of it is the value proposition that Alamar brought to the table where you're looking at a particular variant of tau, and those variants are what drives biology. So now, the reason I think the future of proteome in an unbiased way is actually uniquely positioned well to fit the needs of the AI models is that what's going to drive a lot of that learning is large-scale adequately powered studies where you're looking at these variants of proteins during the spectrum of health to disease. And I think a lot of that is then going to translate into new biomarkers for diagnostics, new therapeutic targets.

And I think that study from ASMS is a good example of that. Now, could you drive AI models using targeted approaches? Absolutely, if the goal and the objective is to interrogate a defined set of proteins or protein variants, then you can absolutely do large-scale studies using that. But the point that I've always made in terms of where we are in proteomics is that the universe of the proteome is very large. And what we have identified to date is just the tip of the needle. So, we need to identify the content first at scale, and that is what becomes possible using untargeted approaches that Seer offers, and that uniquely fits the large-scale data analysis that AI enables.

All right, great. I'll leave it there. Thanks, guys.

Our next question comes from Kyle Boucher with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

I wanted to ask a question on guidance and just what's sort of implied for the back half of the year. You know, I think the low end of the guide implies the second half growth is somewhere, you know, just north of 20%, and that's after being down about 30% in the first half. I guess, can you just walk us through some of the customer dynamics you're seeing that sort of support the ramp, and I guess, any further commentary on your, you know, your orders or sales funnel?

Yes, thanks, Kyle. Yes, so we are reaffirming guidance again because we do feel confidence in terms of what we're seeing in terms of the positive customer conversations and what we see out there in terms of potential for both commercial and biobank folks doing large-scale studies. And that's several factors. One, we're kind of having the conversations both across academic, biopharma, biobank, and other research organizations. And it's not just, you know, here, but also globally. And so, you know, that's certainly a positive.

Certainly we see that with the presentation of the data, both from the Korea University data at ASMS and then, you know, we're very excited about the PRECISE data that's coming up that's going to be presented at HUPO in September. And I think that's, you know, these are just, that's a really kind of foundational study that I think will be very positive. And so I think that just helps catalyze folks to understanding the power of the technology.

And then finally, as we talked about, you know, we have our new Chief Commercial Officer, Tony Bazarko, and he's really, you know, doing a great job in refocusing the commercial organization on the large opportunities, advancing, you know, conversations with top customers and really driving things. So we're seeing a lot of good traction from him as well in terms of what he's doing with the commercial organization. So when you put all that together, we do feel like we feel good about the second half of the year.

Got it. And maybe can you just talk a little bit about what you're seeing from a U.S. academic customer budget dynamics perspective? I guess, did you see any improvement, Q over Q, among U.S. A&G customers? There have been some others in the space that have talked about, you know, strong support for proteomics more broadly, despite sort of the challenging funding backdrop. But I guess, what are you seeing there?

Kyle, Omid here. I think if you look at the academic and government, you also have to kind of break it down into therapeutic areas. I mean, neurology and neuroscience, 2025-2026 seen an increase in NIH budget increase of about 7%. You know, the other areas anywhere between down about half a percent to maybe up about 1.8%. So if you happen to be in the neuro space, then you're a beneficiary of a very directed increase, sequential increase in funding opportunities that doesn't really apply to the other therapeutic areas.

We continue to see, you know, a significant amount of caution among our customer base that are academic. Now, mind you, we don't have a heavy presence in the neuro space, but we have customers that have worked on AD and others, but that is not a lion's share of our customer base. So we continue to actually seek out some hesitancy from the academic customers just by virtue of grant funding delays. They may have received a fundable score, but the funds haven't come yet. And that creates a degree of caution that we continue to observe. And I'm not seeing that ending the balance of 2026.

Got it. Maybe you can sneak one more in here, but can you just talk about what you're seeing from a customer pull-through perspective? I think last quarter, you sort of talked about a lag between the instruments that were placed last year, maybe early this year, and then consumables repurchases, just given that there was a big upfront sort of consumables purchase from those instruments that were placed. I guess, how is consumable pull-through trending for these instruments, and would you expect repurchases to start picking up later on this year?

Yes, Kyle, we did see an uptick in pull-through from the first quarter, so that was encouraging on the installed base. And we do expect, you know, some of the customers that we, you know, brought online in the back half of last year to really, you know, it's kind of a 6 to 9 month kind of get up and going, run your first project, and then start to repeat. So that's certainly something that we've seen and would expect to see in the second half and is partially of what's driving our belief that we should see the business pick up.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Kyle.

This concludes our question and answer session and the Seer, Inc. second quarter conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and welcome to Seer First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I'd now like to turn the conference over to Marissa Bych from Gilmartin Group.

Thank you. Earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. If you have not received this news release or if you would like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. In addition, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be accessed on the Events and Presentations section of Seer Investor Relations website. Participating today from Seer is Omid Farokhzad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board; and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section titled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release Seer issued today. For a more complete list and description, please see the Risk Factors section of the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, and in it's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Seer disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Omid.

Thank you, Marissa, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. At Seer, we're making significant progress on our innovation road map, commercial position and strategic objectives as we start the year. We have said that our progress may not be linear quarter-to-quarter, but my conviction in Seer, the impact of our technology and the market we're building has never been stronger.

Let me start by summarizing for you our vision and the progress we made in Q1 then focus on recent developments and our outlook going forward. Starting with our vision and the promise of our platform. We imagine and pioneered the first solution for standardized robust, deep unbiased proteomics at scale. We have been focused on the steps we need to take to advance our solution, both near and longer term. This quarter, we accomplished the following in pursuit of this vision. We continue to expand our evidence base, doubling the body of independent publications validating our platform year-over-year.

We announced another biobank collaboration with Precision Health Research, Singapore and Thermo Fisher, further advancing our population scale studies effort. We appointed a new Chief Commercial Officer to drive momentum in our sales organization. We successfully defended our patents with the recent PTAB vertical and we remain committed to protecting our foundational technology. We evolved our Insight Grant Program to engage pharma and biotech teams directly in the workflow where proteomics can have the most immediate impact. And we continue to invest in product and technological innovation, including our next-generation detector and additional innovations in our scalable cloud-based software analytical suite while maintaining tight cost control.

Taken together, our accomplishments this quarter advanced our mission of imagining and pioneering new ways to decode the biology of the proteome to improve human health. Moreover, we maintain our leadership in and continue to build the market for deep unbiased proteomics, which ultimately drives value creation in the long run for our stakeholders.

In terms of financial performance, our first quarter total revenue was $2.8 million, reflecting the ongoing depressed academic funding environment that has been pressuring customer budgets over the last several quarters, compounded by increased competitive activity from inferior product imitators in this space we have pioneered. However, the progress we made this quarter that I previously detailed, and the underlying momentum in the business give us confidence for the rest of 2026. Consequently, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $16 million to $18 million, representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint over full year 2025.

Now I will walk through our Q1 execution and how it advances our trajectory. Turning to Slide 3. Peer-reviewed validation of our platform continues to build. There are now 84 peer-reviewed publications, preprints and reviews validating the Proteograph product suite. This compares to three publications in 2022 at the time of our broad commercial launch and 42 publications as of March 2025, only 1 year ago.

We expect to see additional publications and a broadening impact as we look forward. This includes a growing impact through innovative companies like PrognomIQ, who just this week announced breakthrough results for the early detection of lung cancer in an ongoing real-world study of its novel blood test. Leveraging the Proteograph for its proteomic biomarker discovery efforts, PrognomIQ launched ProVue Lung in November 2025 to support early detection of lung cancer in high-risk individuals.

Yesterday, PrognomIQ announced that in the first cohort of 78 high-risk adults, the ProVue Lung blood test accurately detected eight lung cancers. Notably, five of the eight cancers were provisionally categorized as stage 1, and all cancers were confirmed via tissue biopsy. These early findings translate to a performance of 89% sensitivity to detect all stages of lung cancer at 64% specificity, including 83% sensitivity for stage 1 lung cancer. These results represent breakthrough performance for the early detection of lung cancer and could meaningfully enhance the current standard of care, which is a low-dose CT scan with a very low patient compliance rate. We are very excited for what this means for the applicability of proteomics in early cancer detection.

Turning to Slide 4. I want to highlight one aper in particular from this quarter. In January 2026 an article titled, Cross-ancestry comparison of aptamer and antibody protein measures by Nicholas [ Atel ] was published in Nature Communications. This study demonstrated that a meaningful fraction of protein associations in large-scale affinity proteomics may be influenced by protein altering genetic variants, particularly across genetically diverse populations.

Importantly, the authors showed that ancestry-associated variants such as the inflammatory biomarker SPAR and Alzheimer's disease linked PILRA protein could create discordant biological interpretation across platforms with interpretations improving substantially after accounting for the underlying variant. The paper highlights the importance of variant-aware proteomics to properly understand the unique role different variants play in health and disease across populations.

As biobank scale and multi-ancestry studies continue to expand globally, the ability to correctly interpret protein biology, including ancestry specific variants become the differentiator. The Proteograph rovides the ability to perform this analysis and we believe this capability will become increasingly important as proteomics moves towards larger translational studies. This further supports our strategy of building a differentiated evidence base through high-impact peer-reviewed publication.

Turning to Slide 5 to discuss our population-scale studies. As our technology has performed exceptionally well in the hands of our customers, we have become the trusted partner of choice in deep unbiased proteomics at scale. Without Seer, conventional mass spectrometry would be unable to provide the depth and scale that biobanks are looking for.

Last year marked an inflection point as we initiated landmark population scale studies with Korea University and Discovery Life Sciences, followed by the NIH-funded multi-omic study. We built on this success when we announced the PRECISE-SG100K population scale study last month. In collaboration with PRECISE and Thermo Fisher Scientific, the PRECISE team is generating deep unbiased proteomics data for 10,000 participants, and we believe this study may eventually encompass 100,000 participants to generate one of the largest multi-omics data sets in the world.

We believe the data from these biobank studies will drive broader adoption in the existing proteomics market. In the near term, Professor Lee from Korea University will be presenting initial data from a subset of this 20,000 patient cohort at the American Society of Mass Spectrometry Conference in June. He will also be joined by Dr. Kang, who is training a foundation AI model using data from the cohort.

Additionally, we expect the PRECISE team to share their data publicly at the HUPO World Congress in September. When PRECISE-SG100K data is made public, it will demonstrate what the Proteograph makes possible at the population scale, and we believe that is a pivotal inflection point to drive 100,000-plus sample biobank studies. The types of which have historically been the inflection point for the flywheel to begin turning for our peers.

We're having ongoing dialogues with potential partners globally, including academic institutions, national health initiatives and leading research organizations and the emerging data sets from Korea University and PRECISE will help advance these discussions. When it comes to robust standardized deep unbiased proteomics at population scale, we believe the Proteograph is the only commercial solution that exists. We earned the trust of the scientific community by establishing a robust base of scientific validation. As a result, we expect revenue growth to increasingly reflect the true scale of the opportunity in front of us.

We have an update about our commercial organization that we're very excited about. We recently appointed Tony Bazarko as our Chief Commercial Officer, and I want to take a moment on the strategic importance of this hire. We are at a pivotal moment in our growth journey. Our science is validated, the biobank mandates are coming in and seminal data readouts are on the horizon. What we need now is the commercial leadership to go from the massive opportunity in front of us with the same conviction and rigor that has defined our work to date. We believe Tony is that leader. Tony brings 2 decades of commercial leadership across life sciences, diagnostics and biotechnology with a demonstrated track record of scaling go-to-market organizations. He most recently served as President and CEO of Biologis, overseeing its acquisition by Ampersand Capital Partners.

And prior to that, he was the CEO of Specific Diagnostics, which was acquired by bioMérieux. He understands what it takes to translate scientific credibility into commercial momentum, and he's joining at the moment when that translation matters most. I'm confident that his leadership will be transformative for how we engage customers, pursue biobank partnerships and capture the market opportunity we have spent years building toward.

Now spending a moment on our intellectual property. The success and power of our technology have also fueled imitators to enter the markers. We have a robust patent portfolio, and we plan to defend our core technology that underpins the automated deep unbiased proteomics at scale that empowers our customers. In March, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board upheld 23 of 29 claims in one of our nanoparticle protein enrichment patents, serving as an example of the strength of the portfolio of more than 250 patents and patent applications, including 84 issued patents that we have built to date.

Earlier this morning, we announced that we have filed a patent infringement suit against Nanomix Biotechnology. These asserted patents protect Seer's intellectual property in the field of nanoparticle protein enrichment, Brigham and Women's Hospital is joining this lawsuit as well. We believe in preserving the integrity of our products and the trust that researchers place in us.

Products that we believe are technologically inferior do not just strengthen our leadership position, but they also risk undermining our broader goal of eliminating the obstacles to mainstream proteomic adoption and unlocking the full complexity of the proteome for human health. We have made enormous investments to date, and we will vigorously defend what we have built. Protecting our intellectual property is, in my view, protecting the future of proteomics.

Turning to Slide 6 to discuss changes to our Seer Insight grant program. In Q1, we evolved the program into a more targeted initiative with two distinct tracks. The first is a translational research track continuing the work that has consistently generated strong scientific returns and high-impact publication. The second is a new biopharma development track designed to engage pharma and biotech teams directly in the workflows where proteomics can have the most immediate impact such as mechanism of action studies, resistance biology and biomarker strategy.

By providing streamlined access to the Proteograph platform alongside integrated mass spectrometry and bioinformatics support, the program lowers the barrier to entry for new customers while generating the kind of high-quality data that drives publications, deepens engagement and builds long-term relationships. We have also expanded the program's geographic reach this year with a deliberate focus on segments where the Proteograph remains underpenetrated. We see this as an important catalyst for biopharma adoption.

Finally, turning to Slide 7 to discuss innovation. Innovation is core to who we are at Seer and how we will extend our leadership. I remain focused on maintaining a responsible but robust innovation effort, including the continuous build-out of our technologies capabilities as we seek to establish our leadership position as the preferred proteomic data platform for AI-driven biology. We are making concentrated high conviction investment in the next generation of our platform while maintaining cost discipline and the progress is meaningful across every layer of the [ stack ].

On assay, to solve the bottleneck of upstream workflow, we introduced the SP200 and Proteograph One Assay, which made large-scale studies, including biobanks possible for the first time. We have additional panels in development designed for more focused applications, expanding the menu and utility of the Proteograph for the broader range of research.

Our next-generation detector, which we have been developing for 4 years, is designed to bring deep unbiased proteomics to a much wider audience beyond existing mass spectrometry users and into the broader multi-omic community. We are working to enter the era of what I call next-generation proteomics, where a robust, standardized and easy-to-use proteomic detector can be used broadly and cost effectively by a range of scientists. We anticipate a data showcase later this year, and I look forward to sharing more as that milestone approaches.

On software and analytics, we're continuing to expand the capabilities of our Proteograph Analysis Suite, which allows researchers to interact with large-scale proteomic data intuitively and dynamically. Most recently, we launched an update to POS, which allows users to interface with the chatbots and notebooks for easy, rapid and stable data analysis, and we anticipate additional features to be launched later this year.

In addition, we recently filed a preprint article on BioArchive titled, Raviant DIA, a fast, sensitive and accurate search engine for quantitative proteomics. As the scale of proteomic studies continues to grow in large part credited to the innovations we have made at Seer, the analytical infrastructure has to keep pace to be able to scale with the increasing amount and complexity of the data being generated.

Existing tools like DIANE were not built for that volume and struggle to scale, which creates a real constraints on throughput cost and accessibility. Raviant DIA is a faster, more sensitive and more cost-effective solution for rapid and scalable proteomic data analysis. It is purpose-built for the large cohort and biopharma workflows that are increasingly defining how our customers use the platform. We will have an oral presentation discussing Raviant DIA at the upcoming ASMS conference, and we look forward to sharing additional details at that time.

Before I turn the call over to David, I want to take a moment to highlight our continued commitment to cost discipline. The progress we made this quarter, expanding our evidence base, winning landmark biobank mandates, strengthening our IP, appointing transformative commercial leadership and continuing to push boundaries of what our platform can do was all achieved while reducing total operating expenses from $22.8 million in Q1 of 2025 to $18.2 million this quarter.

That reflects a deliberate and deeply held conviction that building a great company means being as disciplined with capital as we are with ambitions with science. We are at an inflection point, and we are building the commercial, technological and financial infrastructure to meet this moment.

With that, I will turn the call over to David.

Thanks, Omid. Turning to Slide 8. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.8 million compared to $4.2 million in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease in revenue was due to lower product and service revenue from continuing macroeconomic headwinds in academic and government funding, increased competitive activity from innovation products and a leadership transition as we brought on a new Chief Commercial Officer.

Product revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.1 million and consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments and consumable kits. Service revenue was $0.6 million for the first quarter of 2026, including related party revenue of $0.1 million and primarily consisted of revenue related to STAC projects. We continue to see steady customer interest in running projects through STAC, which we view as an important leading indicator of future instrument placements.

In addition, customers continue to appreciate the flexibility of accessing our technology through our SIPP program. Of total instrument shipments in the first quarter, 40% were previous STAC customers and 20% were through our SIPP program. Other revenue was $0.1 million for the first quarter of 2026 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue.

Total gross profit was approximately $1 million for the first quarter of 2026, representing a gross margin of 35% compared to 49% in the first quarter of 2025. The decline in gross margin was due to lower absorption of fixed period costs in the first quarter of 2026 versus the first quarter of 2025. We continue to expect variability in our gross margin on a quarter-by-quarter basis as the proportion of instrument consumable and service revenue fluctuates.

At scale, we continue to believe our long-term gross margins will be in the range of 70% to 75%. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2026 were $18.2 million, including $2.1 million of stock-based compensation compared to $22.8 million, including $4.5 million of stock-based compensation in the first quarter of 2025.

Research and development expenses were $8.8 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $11.4 million in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease in R&D expense is a result of lower employee compensation expense, including stock-based compensation and professional services costs.

Selling, general and administrative expenses were $9.4 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $11.4 million in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease in SG&A expenses is due to lower employee compensation expense, including stock-based compensation. We incurred additional legal and other professional service expenses in the first quarter and anticipate they will continue into the second quarter.

Net loss for the first quarter of 2026 was $16.8 million compared to $19.9 million in the first quarter of 2025. Free cash flow, defined as net cash used in operating activities of approximately $15.4 million less net purchases of property and equipment of approximately $270,000 in the quarter was approximately negative $15.7 million. Our opportunistic share repurchase in the quarter reflect our continued belief that there is a significant dislocation in our share price.

In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.5 million Class A common shares at an average price of $1.78 per share. As of March 31, we have repurchased approximately 13.2 million Class A common shares at a VWAP of $1.86 per share, utilizing approximately $24.5 million of our $25 million share repurchase program authorized in May 2024. As a result, we have reduced our net total common shares outstanding by approximately 15%.

As a reminder, in February 2026, the Board of Directors authorized a new repurchase program of up to $25 million. We ended the quarter with approximately $219.5 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. We believe that with our current cash on hand, we have sufficient capital to reach cash flow breakeven.

Turning to Slide 9 and our outlook for the full year. Despite a softer first quarter, we continue to see positive developments and progress as a business and are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $16 million to $18 million, representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint over full year 2025.

As a reminder, that guidance reflects our ongoing expectation that the challenging NIH funding environment would persist through 2026, impacting customer behavior. While the challenging funding backdrop and the presence of imitators in the market creates continued uncertainty, we remain confident that instrument utilization and consumable pull-through will build throughout the year.

At this point, I would like to turn the call back to Omid for closing comments.

Thank you, David. Moving on to Slide 10. The proteomics revolution is underway and Seer is leading it. The independent researchers have now published 84 studies using our platform, doubling from a year ago. Population scale studies are underway in multiple countries. Our next-generation detector will bring deep unbiased proteomics to the genomics and multi-omic scientific community, meaningfully expanding the end market for proteomics.

And when PRECISE and other biobanks began to share the data later this year, we believe the strength of the flywheel will begin to turn in earnest. We're in the early stages of building something that will matter enormously, not just for Seer shareholders, but for human health. We are more committed than ever to our vision of enabling the generation of proteomics data at a scale and depth that was previously unimaginable.

With that, we will now open the call for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord.

I want to start with David's last point there about the guidance, I guess. And basically, what gives you confidence you can still meet the higher end of the guidance range. I think like on the last earnings update call, you mentioned a customer had delayed some instruments to maybe 2026 from 4Q. So maybe was there any like instrument pushouts in the first quarter that have committed to being completed later in '26 or anything of that sort in services or the other segments?

Yes, Kyle, thanks for the question. It's David. Yes, look, we do still feel confidence in the guidance and our confidence in the momentum that we're seeing starting to build, including the large-scale opportunities like PRECISE and others. And just our visibility now in the second quarter around the conversations we're having with both academics and the biobanks and the biopharmas.

And so that does give us conviction to kind of continue to drive the business. The other thing to keep in mind is we did have a very good year of instrument shipments and installs last year. And what we found over time is that it takes about 9 to 12 months before we see customers reorder given that they generally take a nice stocking order with their instrument purchase or with the loaner. And so we're now coming up on that 1-year anniversary, and we have seen that trend start to kick in. So we feel confident in the driving of the pull-through for those instruments that were installed last year.

And then finally, we've got Tony Bazarko on board now who has great experience and really, we expect them to continue to drive things. So we do feel like it will be kind of more second half than first half, but we do still feel confident in being able to hit the guidance range.

Kyle does answer your question?

Omid, I had a question for you about you're referencing competitors and imitators, I think, is the word that was referenced. Just first, like just dive into what that kind of means and how that's affecting the business and the progress and all that. And additionally, when you think about the population scale cohort programs, is that just truly on the unbiased side? Or are you seeing kind of affinity-based competition as well?

Kyle, thanks so much for that. So let me first comment on the competitors or the imitators of our products. So first of all, I appreciate that what these imitators mean is that it's a strong validation of the market that we built, the technology platform that we built from scratch and the space that we really pioneered.

I mean, obviously, having been doing this now for many years, we have a portfolio of 250 patent patented applications and 80-plus that are now issued, including one that is now battle tested through PTAP with the Bruker IPR process. So we are now seeing an emergence of these copycat products. They have inferior performance and their approach to the market is to basically just price these products significantly lower than Seer in order to compete.

Now we filed the lawsuit, Kyle, because we want to make sure that our customers are served appropriately. Customers, the most valuable commodity that they have is their samples. In the case of clinical samples, some can be priceless, but some can cost thousands of dollars. And so to use a sample with an inferior product that gives you data that is not appropriate really undermines not only that study, but more broadly, the confidence in the nanoparticle enrichment technology that Seer has developed.

So we are going to vigorously protect our IP against infringers. We started with Nanomix because they were very clearly infringing in a very vocal and visible way, copying a lot of our marketing material and putting material out there that just frankly was not valid. But we'll continue to monitor the space, and we'll continue to protect our product going forward. We've invested in building this platform. We've invested in creating this patent portfolio. And for our customers' sake, we will also protect the integrity of what it stands for going forward.

Now in terms of the biobanks, that's a very good example of valuable samples. Biobanks are very careful about the choice of a provider that they use to use their precious samples. And the fact that Seer is being selected to do unbiased proteomics for these biobanks really is a reflection of the publications from experts like Josh Coon, Claudia Langenberg, Carsten Suhr, Nate Basisty, I mean, many, many more. I mean there's now 84-plus publications, many in top journals that validate Seer.

And so these biobanks are selecting Seer and the Proteograph because we have become the trusted partners to them. I am not actually aware of any biobank that would ever consider a product like Nanomix or one of the other ones like it that are the copycat imitators. The robustness by which Seer builds products stems from 20-plus years of my life in being in the nanoparticle application for medical uses. And a lot of these companies literally have no expertise in this space and they just copy our products. So I'm not seeing that impacting our biobank customers. And my expectation is that our relationship with the biobanks will continue to grow, and I'll be able to announce more and more of those over time.

And then just a really quick one to cap it off here on service revenues, that was I think it was like almost half of what the kind of the quarterly run rate was. And obviously, there were some macro headwinds and challenges and all that. But I would have thought that service was much more insulated than product revenue and you have STAC, which should have helped that, I guess, as well. So if you just kind of elaborate a bit on what happened on that line item in the quarter?

Yes. The STAC is especially prone to some bigger projects, Kyle. And there simply wasn't a huge project in Q1. We did have a big project in Q4. So really, it's just the lumpiness of revenue. We're not worried about the interest or continued momentum there. We've got some interesting things in the pipeline there. And so it's really just a question of when customers can get us their samples and drive that. And a lot of times, it takes a little longer than you expect. But really, it's just a function of our service lab and the size of projects. We just didn't have a particularly big project in the first quarter.

The next question comes from Kyle Boucher with TD Cowen.

I wanted to go back to sort of the sales side. Can you just take a minute to discuss your order funnel? And I guess what you're seeing from a customer perspective? I mean, where do you see more of the growth opportunity this year between bigger population scale studies and then maybe just smaller individual customers?

Yes. Thanks, Kyle. Look, I think we continue to have good momentum with the biobanks. That's for sure. It's a question of just timing of those. And so I think it will certainly -- we don't have much in terms of additional biobank in for this year, although there may be some towards the back half of the year. I think it's really going to -- we see the opportunity with some of the larger projects from both biopharma as well as some academic projects that we're in discussions about. And really, that's just a function of they just tend to move a little bit faster. Obviously, the commercial folks move the fastest and then you have the academics and then finally, the biobank. So I would see that's really what we see in terms of the breakdown is that -- in terms of the opportunities for the back half of the year.

Got it. And maybe just on the instrument utilization trends. I know you ended last year with, I believe, 82 instruments installed. You just mentioned that it can take 9 to 12 months for those newer placements to sort of reorder on the consumables side. But I guess can you discuss the trends you're seeing from a utilization perspective across your older installed base?

Yes. I mean we're continuing to see those folks use the instruments in a regularly pretty consistent way, but also in a way that is project-driven, if you will, right? So folks generally will order when they have a new project, they'll run the project, they'll analyze the data. And then it will be a minute before they repurchase. So we continue to see some utilization.

Obviously, the utilization in the biopharma as a group is a little bit more consistent than academic because they tend to have more projects, consistent projects and academics are a little lumpier. So again, I think it's really -- we're excited to have that big cohort of customers coming online from '25 when they hit their 12-month mark and really start to kind of drive things.

But again, it's something that we expect to have an uptake in the back half of the year. Obviously, Q1 was down a little bit from a pull-through perspective, but installations, we did have some good number of installations in Q1 as well.

Got it. Maybe if I can sneak one more quick one. And just on the margin side, gross margin was a little weaker than we had modeled in the first quarter. I guess going forward, just based on your guidance, would you expect that gross margin can creep back towards that sort of low 50s range like you saw last year as revenue sort of ramps?

Yes. Thanks, Kyle. Yes, we certainly feel like that's the case. I'd tell you the reason for the decline in gross margin was just the lower volume of kit and instruments. And so we have what was -- with the lower volume and the lower revenue, that leads to lower absorption of our fixed costs, right, in the period. So I think if you see -- when you see revenue bounce back, gross margins will bounce back as well. So we still feel that, that, as you mentioned, kind of that's the right neighborhood in terms of where our gross margins should be.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.

Good day, and welcome to the Seer Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelly Gura, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2025. If you've not received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an e-mail to [email protected].

In addition, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be accessed on the Events and Presentations section of Seer's Investor Relations website.

Joining me today from Seer is Omid Farokhzad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board; and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section titled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release Seer issued today. For a more complete list and description, please see the Risk Factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and in its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Seer disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise.

This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast, February 26, 2026.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Omid.

Thanks, Kelly, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I will begin our call today by providing updates on our business, and I will then turn the call over to David to provide more detail on our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 as well as our outlook for 2026.

Starting on Slide 3. Fourth quarter revenue was $4.2 million, bringing full year 2025 revenue to $16.6 million, representing 17% year-over-year growth. Our results this quarter fell short of our expectations primarily due to ongoing budgetary pressures, including uncertainty around NIH funding in the fourth quarter that have continued to impact customer spending decisions.

Despite a persistently challenging funding environment, we made meaningful progress across the business in 2025. Our installed base grew significantly. Consumable kit volume increased meaningfully. The Proteograph was selected to power multiple population-scale studies.

Total revenue, excluding related party revenue, delivered strong growth of 33%. We nearly doubled the number of cumulative publications and in November, PrognomIQ commercially launched their best-in-class early lung cancer detection LDT, representing the first diagnostic test developed on Seer's technology. As a reminder, Seer owns approximately 20% of PrognomIQ on a fully diluted basis.

At Seer, we are building both category-defining products and the market around them. With the Proteograph platform, we fundamentally expanded what is possible in unbiased proteomics, enabling deep large-scale studies that were previously out of reach.

In parallel, we've worked alongside the scientific community to unlock the value of this expanded proteomic landscape, demonstrating how comprehensive unbiased access to the proteome can drive entirely new biological insights. We believe the discoveries our customers are positioned to make have the potential to reshape our understanding of disease and over time, result in a sea change in the way we diagnose and treat diseases. My conviction in the transformative potential of our technology has never been stronger.

We ended the year with a strong balance sheet of approximately $241 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Over the last few years, we have consistently reduced cash burn and managed expenses with discipline while continuing to make concentrated investments in innovation and long-term technological differentiation.

I'm proud of the innovation that my team has been working toward, and I will be sharing that with you later in my prepared remarks. Innovation is our key strategic differentiator at Seer, and our balance sheet has and will continue to enable us to make strategic investments toward building a durable world-class life science tools company.

Given the dislocation in our share price and our firm belief in our long-term intrinsic value, we repurchased 5.3 million shares in 2025, returning approximately $10.2 million of cash to shareholders. Since the inception of the $25 million share repurchase authorization program in 2024, we have repurchased approximately 11.7 million shares, resulting in a reduction of our total outstanding shares by approximately 13%.

We believe this dislocation between share price and long-term value still exists. And as a result, our Board of Directors has authorized an additional $25 million share repurchase program. With that, I'll share more details on the progress we've made throughout 2025 across each of our strategic initiatives.

Starting with product innovation on Slide 4. Over the last few years, our focus on innovation has driven a series of product advancements across our platform, spanning our instrument, assay and software offerings. In June, we successfully launched our third-generation assay, Proteograph ONE and our second-generation automation instrument, SP200. These launches have significantly expanded our ability to deliver proteomic depth, scale and reproducibility.

Today, more than 1,000 samples per week can be run on the Proteograph ONE, representing nearly a tenfold increase from the 112 samples per week we achieved in 2021. This step change in throughput, together with the depth of coverage that is achieved with our products is foundational to novel biomarker discovery and population-scale proteomics.

Importantly, our customers are validating the merits of these advances with several examples in 2025. After extensive evaluation of other proteomic technologies, the Proteograph has been selected for multiple large-scale studies, including a 20,000 sample population study with Korea University and a 10,000 sample project in collaboration with Discovery Life Sciences.

Studies of this magnitude were simply not possible with traditional mass spectrometry proteomic approaches, which lacked the depth and scalability to process tens of thousands of samples in a standardized way. The Proteograph fundamentally changed that, enabling researchers to move beyond small hypothesis-driven experiments and into true large-scale biomarker discovery and population-scale multiomic studies.

In 2025, we delivered approximately 69% growth in consumable kit volume, expanded our installed base of instruments by 67% to 82 instruments and grew total revenue, excluding related party, revenue by 33%. This performance reflects the increasing scale of our customers' programs and our deliberate efforts to accelerate market adoption throughout the year.

Among these efforts, we adjusted our approach to volume-based pricing for larger-scale studies and ran awareness and technology validation campaigns. We also repeated our Insights Grant program for the second year. The program aims to enable researchers to conduct deep unbiased proteomic studies at scale, helping to uncover biological discoveries and potential biomarkers.

Past recipients have included researchers from institutions such as Stanford University, NYU and the University of Gothenburg. These initiatives are collectively part of our overall efforts to lower barriers to adoption, drive higher sample volumes and accelerate market development. As a result, we believe we are well positioned to support a growing number of biomarker discovery and population-scale studies in the years ahead.

Our innovation to date has established Seer as a leader of deep unbiased proteomics at scale, opening up the market for true proteomics discovery in ways previously not possible. But we are even more excited about what's to come. We're executing against a product road map designed to catalyze our next phase of growth and meaningfully expand our addressable market.

In the near term, we're developing the fourth generation of our Proteograph Analysis Suite, or PAS, which we will release later this year to meet the demands of increasingly data-intensive large studies that have now become possible. This version of PAS will include AI capabilities to enable customers to interact with their data through a chat-based large language model interface.

As the volume of proteomics data generated across large-scale studies continue to grow, robust and intuitive data analysis will become more necessary. This is an area we have invested in over the past few years and will continue to prioritize.

In addition, a key strategy of our R&D road map is to expand our addressable market opportunity beyond discovery and into the rapidly expanding translational market by commercializing a proteoform profiling assay kit in 2027. This new assay is expected to run on our SP200 automation instrument, expanding the utility of this platform for a broader range of proteomics application.

We see significant opportunity to apply our capabilities in scalable high-resolution deep proteoform profiling to high-impact areas, including neurodegenerative diseases and oncology. Despite advances in genomics, the need for molecularly informed diagnostics and therapeutics remains large for oncology.

In the case of neurodegenerative diseases that are often characterized as proteinopathies marked by misfolded or aggregated proteins accumulating in the brain, spinal cord or peripheral nerves, the neurodegenerative diseases remains largely an unmet need today, and I'm optimistic that advances in proteomics could make a notable contribution toward understanding and treating these diseases.

We believe this new assay kit could support translational researchers with earlier disease detection, improve patient stratification and enable precision therapies guided by molecular subtype rather than broad clinical phenotype.

Finally, our plan has always been to decrease barriers to widespread adoption of deep unbiased proteomics for discovery, translational and clinical use. To this end, we're developing an end-to-end sample to data proteomic solution purpose-built for high-throughput biomarker discovery and population-scale multiomic studies.

A key aspect of this solution is a next-generation detector that is designed to deliver the depth, precision and scale that large-scale biomarker discovery and population studies demand and importantly, it is designed to put deep unbiased proteomics at scale in the hands of a broader group of omics customers.

We are designing this solution to reach a depth of proteomics previously unimaginable at speed, simplicity and cost that results in widespread adoption of this platform for proteomics, analogous to what we have seen in widespread adoption of genomics. We have been investing in this solution since 2022, and the data that has recently emerged from this platform validates a highly innovative architecture for high throughput deep unbiased proteomics.

I want to congratulate my team for thinking boldly and pushing the boundaries of possibilities. Working with our collaborators and partners, I expect we'll be able to share data on the platform in the second half of the year, and I look forward to sharing more details as the project progresses.

Turning to Slide 5. We also continue to expand the reach and impact of our platform. Cumulative publications nearly doubled from 36 at the end of 2024 to 70 at the end of 2025. This strong growth reflects the growing validation around our technology, and we think it serves as a leading indicator of demand.

Since our last earnings call in November, 8 new papers have been published. I've previously highlighted the work of Dr. Karsten Suhre from Weill Cornell Medicine on the Proteograph's ability to translate genomic signals into reliable drug targets and clinical biomarkers as well as Dr. Brendan Keating from NYU Langone Health on how deep unbiased proteomics profiling can reveal critical physiologic and immunologic changes in xenotransplant recipients.

These seminal papers have now been published in Nature Genetics and Nature respectively, and we believe they will serve as a lighthouse studies for other investigators to build on. In November, PrognomIQ, one of our long-standing customers, commercially launched ProVue Lung, a proteomics-based LDT to aid in the early detection of lung cancer. This exceptional multiomic test was developed using biomarkers that were discovered using the Proteograph, which remains the only solution capable of delivering deep unbiased proteomics at the scale required for multiomics discovery.

We are incredibly proud to have enabled what we believe is a best-in-class diagnostic test for early detection of lung cancer with the potential for meaningful impact on human health. This type of breakthrough would not be possible on another proteomics discovery platform.

We look forward to many more customers using our platform to discover novel proteomic signatures of disease and for many more tests to be launched that are enabled by the Proteograph. We also had a strong presence at the 2025 Human Proteome Organization World Congress in November with more than a dozen scientific presentations and 16 posters presented that highlight the translational power of the Proteograph.

Together, these studies highlight the accelerating adoption of the Proteograph and its growing impact across diverse biological and clinical research areas, including cardiovascular disease, aging and cancer. Several posters demonstrated the power of applying our technology at population-scale to uncover disease mechanisms and identify clinically relevant biomarkers.

In invited symposium talks, investigators shared work linking circulating proteins to cardiac dysfunction and aging-related decline through integrated plasma and tissue proteomic analysis. These findings reinforce how Proteograph enables researchers to move beyond narrow panels toward a more comprehensive view of the human biology, helping translate complex molecular signals into actionable biological and clinical insights.

Taken together, the data presented at HUPO reflects accelerating adoption of our Proteograph Product Suite within the global research community and underscore our expanding role in supporting translational and population-scale studies aimed at improving disease understanding and ultimately, patient care.

Now moving to Slide 6. As I mentioned earlier, we ended the year with a strong and growing installed base of 82 instruments, representing 67% growth compared to the end of 2024, despite the ongoing macroeconomic pressures our customers are facing. Approximately 60% of the instruments installed in 2025 were part of our Strategic Instrument Placement Program or SIPP, and the remainder were outright purchases of the instruments.

We implemented SIPP so that capital-constrained customers would be able to leverage their available operating budget for the purchase of consumables and access our technology. Beyond SIPP, we continue to see demand for our Seer Technology Access Center or STAC, which also lowers the barrier for adoption of the Proteograph Product Suite. STAC allows the Proteograph user to run samples in their own lab and have Seer run the mass spec, or alternatively provide end-to-end services from sample to proteomics data and analysis.

Roughly half of our instrument installs in 2025 were from previous STAC customers. We believe our traction last year is a testament to how important and effective these initiatives are to driving adoption of the Proteograph.

Our expanded partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific to co-market and sell the Proteograph Product Suite alongside their Orbitrap Astral Mass Spectrometer continues to progress well. We continue to work closely to pursue numerous opportunities from individual customer accounts to large population-scale studies. We look forward to this partnership driving additional adoption of the Proteograph Product Suite with time.

In addition, we recently initiated a search for a Chief Commercial Officer, a role we believe will be transformative in how we engage customers and capture the market opportunity ahead. We believe this addition will enhance our exceptionally talented team and look forward to sharing an update soon.

While we continue to see pressure on CapEx budgets and elongated sales cycles, especially in light of ongoing funding challenges for academic customers, we're encouraged by the growth in our installed base, the growing utilization of our platform and the external validation supporting its value.

With that, I will now turn the call over to David.

Thanks, Omid. Turning to Slide 7. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $4.2 million, representing an increase of 5% compared to $4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and was primarily due to higher product revenue. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Proteograph automation instruments, consumable kits and service revenue.

Product revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $2.8 million and consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments and consumable kits. Service revenue was $1.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 and primarily consisted of revenue related to STAC service projects.

We did not recognize any related party revenue in Q4 2025. When excluding related party revenue of $389,000 recognized in Q4 2024, total revenue grew 16% year-over-year. Other revenue was $128,000 for the fourth quarter of 2025 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue.

Total gross profit was $2.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a gross margin of 52%, compared to $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, representing a gross margin of 51%. Gross margins were driven by greater consumable kit sales in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $19.6 million, including $3.2 million of stock-based compensation, a decrease of 23% compared to $25.5 million, including $6 million of stock-based compensation in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Research and development expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $9.7 million, a decrease of 23% compared to $12.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease in R&D expenses was primarily due to decreases in laboratory expenses as well as stock-based compensation and professional services.

Selling, general and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $9.8 million, a decrease of 24% compared to $12.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease in SG&A expenses was primarily due to a decrease in stock-based compensation and business expenses. Net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $16 million compared to $21.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Turning to the full year. Total revenue for the full year 2025 was $16.6 million, representing an increase of 17% compared to $14.2 million in 2024. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Proteograph automation instruments, consumable kits and service revenue.

We recognized $761,000 of related party revenue in 2025 compared to $2.3 million in 2024, an expected decline as this customer transitioned from primarily discovery work towards commercialization of their LDT. When excluding related party revenue, total revenue grew approximately 33% in 2025, demonstrating solid underlying revenue growth in our business.

Product revenue for the full year 2025 was $11.2 million, including $5,000 of related party revenue and consisted of sales of Proteograph automation instruments and consumable kits.

As Omid shared, we were pleased to see an approximately 69% increase year-over-year in kit sample volumes, which demonstrates increasing utilization of our technology. In support of our customers running larger studies, along with continued market development efforts, we strategically provided discounted pricing for these kits in order to accelerate the adoption of our technology in population scale studies and expect these efforts will translate into higher volumes in the future.

Service revenue was $4.9 million for the full year 2025, including $755,000 of related party revenue and primarily consisted of revenue related to STAC service projects. We remain encouraged by the continuing customer interest in running projects through STAC, since it allows more users to gain access to Proteograph data.

Other revenue was $459,000 for the full year 2025 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue. Our installed base of instruments as of year-end 2025 was 82 instruments, representing a 67% increase from 49 at the end of 2024. We were pleased by the significant uptick we saw in terms of expanding our installed base throughout the year, despite the continued pressure we are seeing on CapEx budget and elongated sales cycles for the outright purchase of new instruments.

Looking closer at our installed base, approximately 60% of our installations were part of our SIPP program, and roughly half were from previous STAC customers. For 2025, the consumable spend across that installed base represents a pull-through per instrument of approximately $113,000. We calculate pull-through based on our year-end installed base rather than average installed base throughout the year.

Therefore, due to our significant increase in instrument installations in 2025, we saw a decline in our pull-through per instrument in 2025 as these new customers get up to speed with their use of the Proteograph Product Suite and work through their initial stocking order of consumable kits. Going forward, we will continue to report instrument installed base and consumable pull-through on an annual basis.

Total gross profit was $8.5 million for the full year 2025, representing a gross margin of 51% compared to $7.1 million in 2024, representing a gross margin of 50%. Gross margins were driven primarily by greater consumable kit sales in 2025 relative to 2024. We continue to expect overall volatility in our quarterly gross margins and believe that at scale, our long-term gross margins will be in the range of 70% to 75%.

Total operating expenses for the full year 2025 were $86.5 million, including $15 million of stock-based compensation, a decrease of 19% compared to $107.2 million, including $26.6 million of stock-based compensation in 2024.

Research and development expenses for the full year 2025 were $43.9 million, a decrease of 13% compared to $50.6 million in 2024. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the full year 2025 were $42.6 million, a decrease of 25% compared to $56.6 million in 2024.

Net loss for the full year 2025 was $73.6 million, compared to $86.6 million in 2024. In addition, we continued our share repurchase activities in 2025, since we continue to believe that there is a significant dislocation in our share price that does not reflect our intrinsic value.

During the year, we repurchased approximately 5.3 million Class A common shares at an average price of $1.93 per share. Since the beginning of our repurchase program in May 2024 through December 31, 2025, we have repurchased approximately 11.7 million Class A common shares at a VWAP of $1.87 per share, utilizing approximately $22 million of our $25 million share repurchase program authorization.

As a result, we've reduced our net total shares outstanding by approximately 13%. In addition, given the continued dislocation in our share price, the Board of Directors has authorized an additional $25 million share repurchase authorization.

Free cash flow loss was approximately $45.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, an improvement from $49.4 million in 2024 and $66.4 million in 2023. We expect to reduce our free cash flow loss again in 2026, and we'll continue to manage our cash in an extremely prudent manner.

We ended the quarter with approximately $241 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Importantly, we believe that with our current cash, cash equivalents and investments on hand, we have sufficient capital to reach cash flow breakeven.

I also want to briefly address an announcement that we made earlier today that the Board voted unanimously to adopt a tax benefit preservation plan to help preserve and protect our net operating loss carryforwards and other tax assets. As of December 31, 2025, we had an NOL balance of approximately $262 million, which represents a valuable asset of Seer that can reduce our future federal income tax expense.

The plan we've adopted is consistent with similar plans adopted by other public companies and goes into effect immediately. Additional details are available in the Form 8-K filed today.

Turning now to our outlook for the year on Slide 8. We expect revenue to be in the range of $16 million to $18 million for 2026, representing growth of approximately 3% at the midpoint over the full year 2025. At the midpoint, our guidance reflects ongoing pressure on instrument placements and new project funding since customers remain cautious with new expenditures in the current uncertain funding environment, especially as it relates to NIH funding.

We expect customer behavior to remain in line with the trends observed in the second half of 2025, which have persisted into the start of the year. We were encouraged by recent NIH budget approval, but there remains ongoing uncertainty around government funding and our customers' ability to accurately forecast and rely on the receipt of NIH funds, which causes them to delay purchases.

Given our current revenue base, our results can vary quarter-to-quarter as larger opportunities move through our pipeline, creating natural fluctuations in reported revenue. Of note, our guidance does not include contributions from additional population scale studies that we may announce in 2026, which would represent upside to our guidance range if they occur.

At this point, I would like to turn the call back to Omid for closing comments.

Thank you, David. Moving on to Slide 9. I'm encouraged by our progress in 2025 as exemplified by the growth in our installed base, kit sample volume, product and service revenue, number of peer-reviewed publications and quality of large-scale studies powered by the Proteograph.

We believe the field is at a clear inflection point, shifting from focused hypothesis-driven experiments toward large-scale data-driven biological discoveries. Advances in AI are enabling researchers to extract entirely new biological insights from vast multimodal data sets.

However, these models are only as powerful as the data behind them and require proteomic content that is complete, precise and scalable. We believe Seer is uniquely positioned at the center of this transformation as we enable the high-quality, large-scale proteomics data needed to power AI-driven biological discovery.

Looking ahead, we believe we have a strong set of catalysts that will drive our growth in 2026 and beyond. These include expanding our addressable markets through new product innovation, which I discussed earlier; winning additional population-scale cohort programs; growing and driving utilization of our rapidly expanding installed base; and establishing our leadership position as the preferred proteomic data platform for AI-driven biology.

I have never been more confident in the opportunity ahead, and I look forward to updating you on our progress against our key initiatives throughout the year.

With that, we will now open it up for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today will come from Dan Brennan with TD Cowen.

It's Kyle on for Dan. Maybe to start, just on the fourth quarter, can you maybe just walk us through some more of the puts and takes of the quarter? You came in a little bit below the low end of your guide. I mean, was there anything that kind of slipped out of the fourth quarter into 2026? Or how should we think about that?

Yes, Kyle, thanks. It's David. Yes, I think that, as we said in our prepared remarks, there was some NIH funding around some projects that got delayed that was supposed to be paid in '25 and didn't, got pushed into this year. So consequently, we had a customer delay a purchase from the fourth quarter. So it was really around that delayed NIH funding. And we've seen it across a couple of our academics where they're just -- they're much more hesitant now to purchase without the money in the bank, just given the current environment.

Got it. And then maybe just moving on to the guide for '26. You saw a lot of momentum in 2025, including over 30 instrument placements. That's the number of studies analyzing tens of thousands of samples, and there's been a number of third-party publications that have driven a lot more awareness among customers.

I guess, with that being said, can you walk us through the puts and takes of the guide then? With the momentum you've seen in the last couple of quarters, even with the disruptions that you've seen, is there any reason why growth couldn't be better in '26, just considering the momentum and the number of instrument placements you achieved in 2025?

Kyle, Omid here. Maybe let me start it, and I'll hand it to David. So I agree with you that given the installed base growth in the consumable volume, the guide may seem conservative. I think the challenge we have is that until I see a very clear momentum, we want to be guarded in the way we see our revenue projections.

Remember, today, the customer has a choice to make when they engage in a proteomic study. And that choice is, do they use the approaches that are targeted. Often, the readout is on an NGS platform that they're very familiar with. Or do they go to an untargeted approach, the one that Seer offers, where the detector is a different one that they have used or been familiar with, which is the mass spec.

And if you've invested years of research in generating lots of data, body of data that reads on that targeted approach using a detector that you're familiar with and now comes an alternative, which is the unbiased approach, there's an activation energy to take you off of what you've done, a lot of data that you've generated, and into a new platform.

Now the value of that new platform is becoming very clear, increasingly clear at a pretty sharp velocity. I mean, we started with literally no publication just 3, 4 years ago to now 70 publications showing the value of it. And many of these publications are in top journals like Nature and Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Nature Aging.

And we're also seeing an entire diagnostic test being launched on biomarkers that could only be discovered using an untargeted or unbiased approach, when you go deep and you do it at scale, and Seer is the only solution that does that. So I think there is a matter of time when that activation energy results in a shift and a transition where the potential discovery power of Seer becomes clear. And when that happens, revenue growth shouldn't be in 10%, 20%, 30% range, revenue should double or even more. I'm just not seeing that yet, but the tailwind is getting stronger.

Now the challenge we have, and I think David should comment, is that when you're in small numbers of revenue, 2 customers coming or not makes quarters very lumpy. So we're going to have lumpy quarters, and we're going to try to build the business. And if you look at it, excluding PrognomIQ, the revenue has actually grown by about 30% or so.

But again, these are small numbers. My expectation is that when the flywheel begins to turn, revenue growth could be more substantial. And I'm just not seeing that yet, Kyle. But what I do see is that the tailwind is getting stronger and stronger, despite the ongoing headwind of the macro picture, the dynamics around the NIH and everything else and our peers are struggling with.

David, I'm not sure if you want to add any to that.

Yes. All I'd add, Kyle, is, yes, the guide does assume we kind of have a difficult NIH environment remaining as far as we can see. As I also said in the prepared remarks, we do see some upside from some additional population studies. And we are in conversations with several large cohorts and we did not build that into our guidance because, again, it's kind of binary.

It's something where you either get it and it's significant or you don't. So we just decided to be conservative until we get some of those potentially larger studies. So there is some potential for upside if we are able to get some of those additional population scale studies.

Got it. And maybe just one more quick one here. Now that you have over 80 placements out there and awareness has grown so much among customers, are there any other factors that are limiting adoption beyond the funding environment and beyond what you just mentioned? What does customer feedback sort of sound like as you place more of these instruments?

Kyle, I think the data that's coming from the customers is reflected on the publications that are coming. The biological insight that comes when you do untargeted proteomics at scale is profound. And by the way, several years ago, when we were just launching Seer in terms of our commercial product, back then I said that targeted approaches and an approach like Seer, untargeted approaches are complementary and will always coexist.

Analogous to NGS and microarrays, value proposition of both for distinct application is clear. The thing is back then, just going back 2 or 3 or 4 years, there was an arms race for trying to get more and more plex on these targeted approaches to increase it. The thing is, no matter how much you do that, you're never going to get to the depth of the complexity of the proteome. Untargeted approaches allow that, allows discovery of content that is not known.

And what we're seeing now is, in fact, targeted approaches are getting smaller and smaller plex. That is exactly the right answer. In fact, if you look at one -- in one case, where they're having enormous success commercially, their plex is a little bit more than 100 proteins. But importantly, those 100 proteins are protein variants that are important in disease. So, for example, a particular phosphorylated form of a protein that results -- that has a signal in the disease, not just that protein in its normal form that you would find.

So to answer your question, I think what we need is for the evidence to grow. It has grown from almost no publications. In fact, it has grown from no publications to now 70. Those data, the body of data that's coming from the customers, is translating in opportunities like large-scale biobank studies. Remember, we're still relatively early in this game. So to have opportunities to do large-scale biobank studies on the back of 70 publications, speaks volume to the recognition that the scientific community has in the profound impact of untargeted proteomics at depth and scale that Seer enables.

David, I'm not sure if you want to add anything.

No, I think you covered most of it, Omid. Yes, it's just continuing to try and drive the commercial side, Kyle, with all the various facets that we have with evidence and growing body of customers and references.

And this does now conclude today's question-and-answer session as well as today's conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your line.

Good day, and welcome to the Seer Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelly Gura of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2025. If you've not received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. In addition, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be accessed on the Events and Presentations section of Seer's Investor Relations website.

Joining me today from Seer is Omid Farokhzad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board; and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ than those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section titled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release Seer issued today. For a more complete listing description, please see the Risk Factors section of the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, and in its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Seer disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise.

This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast, November 6, 2025.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Omid.

Thanks, Kelly, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I will begin our call today by providing updates on our business, and I will then turn the call over to David to provide more detail on our financial results for the third quarter of 2025 as well as our outlook for the full year.

Starting on Slide 3. During the third quarter, our team continued to execute with discipline to advance the reach and impact of our platform. We saw a record number of third-party publications, demonstrating the value of the Proteograph and further validating its performance across a range of applications. As more customers generate data on the Proteograph, it is becoming increasingly clear that this technology is unlocking new biological insights that were previously not possible. Beyond publications, we delivered our third consecutive quarter of strong instrument shipments, reflecting continued demand for the Proteograph. In fact, in the first 9 months of 2025, we have shipped just under 3x as many instruments as we did in all of 2024, representing a significant step-up in our installed base.

We ended the third quarter with $4.1 million of revenue, representing 2% year-over-year growth and a strong balance sheet of approximately $251 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. As of September 30, we have repurchased approximately $22 million of our Class A common shares under our $25 million share repurchase program that was authorized in May 2024, reducing our net total shares outstanding by approximately 14%.

It's been an especially challenging year with shifting government policies around tariffs and research funding causing uncertainty and capital spending constraints on our customers. The government shutdown has yet another headwind to these customers, escalating their uncertainty around budgets and availability of funding. That said, I'm even more confident in the value proposition of the Proteograph than ever before as more customers are adopting our platform for their studies and the growing evidence from their work is revealing biological insight that will advance our understanding of health and disease in ways previously not possible.

Now I'd like to walk through our recent progress in our core initiatives of validating our platform, enhancing access, driving innovation and enabling larger core studies in more detail.

Starting with product innovation on Slide 4. Over the last 3 years, Seer has helped redefine deep unbiased proteomics by enabling researchers to move from small-scale exploratory studies of a few dozen samples to now conducting large population scale studies involving tens of thousands of samples. Previously, these studies were only possible using targeted proteomics approaches that inherently are not able to address the complexity of the proteome and are prone to erroneous epitope effects because of the millions of protein variants that exist at the population level.

Our Proteograph ONE Assay and SP200 Automation Instrument launched in June represent a true step change for Seer and the proteomics field. As a reminder, the Proteograph ONE more than doubled throughput to over 1,000 samples per week, improves precision and reduces run time by roughly 30% compared to Proteograph XT. Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we're seeing both strong demand and utilization in the first few months following the launch. For example, of all the instruments shipped this year through September 30, almost 2/3 were SP200s, even though this instrument was only launched in late May.

Moving on to Slide 5. This incredible performance is translating into tangible momentum. Multiple customers have initiated large-scale studies, including the 20,000 sample population study with Korea University and the 10,000 sample project in collaboration with Discovery Life Sciences. In addition, we're having an increasing number of conversations with other large biobanks about how they can access the Proteograph technology to run large cohorts. These initiatives exemplify how our technology is enabling deep unbiased proteomics research at scale, and we expect they will be an important catalyst for future revenue growth.

Building on this momentum, I'm pleased to share that after a rigorous evaluation of a number of commercially available proteomics technologies, the Proteograph has been selected for use in a large multiomic study funded by the NIH. A study of this size, especially in the face of ongoing NIH budget uncertainty demonstrates how deep unbiased proteomics is critical to advancing research on human health and disease. We're proud that Seer has been chosen to provide proteomic solution for this important initiative.

Turning to Slide 6. As I mentioned earlier, validation of our technology continues to grow with 66 customer publications, preprints and reviews to date, many in high-impact journals. Nearly half of these were published this year, reflecting the increasing momentum and visibility of our technology within the scientific community. Notably, in the third quarter alone, we achieved a new record of 13 publications and preprints highlighting the accelerating adoption and impact of the Proteograph Product Suite.

One study I'd like to highlight this quarter comes from the Genes & Health cohort, a large-scale genomics initiative studying British, South Asian populations. This population has a high rate of parental relatedness, which increases the chance of homozygous genetic abnormalities, meaning it increases the chance of receiving the same loss of function mutations of given genes from each parent. The result is that the individual will lack functional copies of a specific gene and in essence, represents a genetic knockout of that specific gene.

In this study, doctors Claudia Langenberg and Maik Pietzner from Queen Mary University used the Proteograph to explore how these natural gene knockouts affect protein expression and disease biology. Among 1,500 individuals that they analyzed, nearly 200 individuals harbor these rare loss of function protein knockouts. Importantly, the Proteograph uniquely detected 11 such variants where the corresponding protein was completely absent in affected individuals but present in everyone else. In contrast, the complete absence was not detected for any protein knockout by 2 affinity-based proteomic technologies that were also used in the same study. The study then linked specific genetic variants to rare disease phenotypes and even identified new potential disease-causing proteins not observable by affinity-based methods.

This work underscores how the Proteograph Product Suite isn't just measuring proteins, it's revealing human biology at an entirely new scale and resolution. The ability to directly connect genetic variation to proteomic signatures is opening a new window into disease mechanism with enormous potential for precision medicine and therapeutic discovery.

When we first introduced the Proteograph, our team partnered closely with early adopters to generate foundational data and publications that validated this technology and demonstrated its potential. Over time, that dynamic has evolved significantly. And today, the majority of publications are being produced independently by our customers, reflecting growing confidence and adoption of the platform. Researchers are now uncovering unique and differentiated biological insights across areas such as metabolic health and aging, and we're seeing increasing momentum as our customers expand their work into the clinical space. It's incredibly rewarding to see these years of investments come to fruition.

While we continue to see pressure on CapEx budgets and elongated sales cycles, especially in light of the government shutdown and its impact on NIH funding for the outright purchase of new instruments, we believe the tailwinds are starting to take effect. The flywheel is turning and the pace of external evidence and validation continues to accelerate.

We're excited to see increased awareness of the Proteograph within the genomic community as these researchers ramp up their work in proteomics after seeing the power of the Proteograph. The Proteograph is a critical component of multiomic translational studies and enables profiling of protein isoform-specific biomarkers. As human genetics research increasingly moves from sequence to function, proteomics is becoming an essential complement to genomics in understanding disease biology and accelerating precision medicine.

This is clearly exemplified by the level of interest in proteomics at the most recent American Society of Human Genetics Conference in Boston last month. Seer had a strong presence at the conference and our technology was represented in several scientific presentations. Multiple customers demonstrated how the Proteograph can translate genomic data into biological and clinical insights and 2 of these prominent researchers gave talks in our collab session.

Turning to Slide 7. Notably, Dr. Gloria Sheynkman, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, discussed how proteomic profiling identified isoform-specific biomarkers, predicting survival differences in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or IPF patients, pointing to new avenues for biomarker development in complex disease. In summary, Dr. Sheynkman is setting the potential role that plasma protein isoforms play in associating with IPF patient survival to discover isoform-specific biomarkers for IPF survival. While her data analysis is continuing, the early biological insights are extremely encouraging with only 30 patient samples, 15 from stable patients and 15 from sicker patients. From an 800 sample cohort, Dr. Sheynkman was able to identify and determine 2 protein isoforms that were preferentially expressed in a sicker patient population relative to the stable patient population using the Proteograph Product Suite.

When she looked at these markers at the protein group level, there were no significant difference between these 2 populations. This highlights the critical role that protein isoforms may play in disease and the need for researchers to have peptide level resolution to gain important biological insights. We're especially pleased with this insight since Dr. Sheynkman was awarded a Seer Insights Grant last year. This type of study is exactly why we set up the Insights Grant Program, and we look forward to continuing to work with Dr. Sheynkman and her study progresses.

We're looking forward to attending the Human Proteome Organization World Congress next week in Toronto, where several posters and data will be presented, highlighting the power of the Proteograph.

Now moving to Slide 8 to take a closer look at our progress with accelerating access to the Proteograph Product Suite. As I mentioned earlier, we were pleased to see another strong quarter for instrument shipment, particularly in the current macroeconomic environment, reflecting a consistent trend from the first half of the year. In the first 9 months of the year, we have shipped just under 3x as many instruments as we did in all of 2024. Within the instrument shipment this year, a little more than half were part of our Strategic Instrument Placement Program, or SIPP, and the remainder were outright purchases of the instruments. We implemented SIPP so that capital constrained customers, particularly in the current macroeconomic environment, would be able to leverage their available operating budgets and access our technology. We believe our traction this year is a testament to how important these initiatives are to driving adoption of the Proteograph.

Beyond SIPP, we continue to see demand for our Seer Technology Access Center, or STAC, which also lowers the barrier for adoption of the Proteograph Product Suite. STAC allows the Proteograph user to run samples in their own lab and have Seer run the mass spec or alternatively provide end-to-end services from sample to proteomics data and analysis. In Q3, more than 2/3 of our instrument shipments were acquired by customers who had previously accessed the STAC. Looking ahead, we expect the percentage to fluctuate in any given quarter. We continue to see interest in a broad and diverse set of use cases and I look forward to serving more customers as they generate deep unbiased proteomics data for their studies. We're pleased that this initiative is bringing in new customers to access our technology and ultimately driving increased instrument adoption.

Our expanded partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific to market and sell the Proteograph Product Suite alongside the Orbitrap, Astral mass spectrometer continues to progress well, and we received our first joint sale from this partnership in the third quarter. We continue to work closely with Thermo Fisher to pursue numerous opportunities from individual customer accounts to large population scale studies. We look forward to this partnership driving additional adoption of the Proteograph Product Suite with time.

Last year, we launched our 2024 Seer Insights Grant Program aimed to support innovative and collaborative researchers who require access to comprehensive unbiased proteomic insights to advance scientific discovery. We repeated the Insights Grant Program in 2025 and received 88 applications, which is more than twice as many as last year. We recently notified the winners of the grants and look forward to seeing the results of their innovative studies. Given this incredibly strong demand, I'm pleased to share that we have launched an additional 2025 Seer Insights Grant Program focused specifically on translational researchers and their projects. With continued strong interest in the additional program, we received numerous new applications from a variety of prominent institutions. We recently closed the application period and the winner has been selected. We look forward to providing participants in the 2025 Insights Grant Program with an opportunity to present their findings at a prominent scientific conference in 2026.

My conviction in the potential of the Proteograph is stronger than ever. We believe that Proteograph is the only technology capable of delivering the depth, scale and reproducibility that is needed to explore biology and undertake deep unbiased population scale proteomics. Our team is continuing to deliver on our mission to push the boundaries of what's possible in proteomics.

With that, I will now turn the call over to David.

Thanks, Omid. Turning to Slide 9. Total revenue for the third quarter of 2025 was $4.1 million, representing an increase of 2% compared to $4 million in the third quarter of 2024. It was primarily due to higher product and service revenue. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments, consumable kits and service revenue.

Product revenue for the third quarter of 2025 was $2.8 million and consisted of sales of Proteograph instruments and consumable kits. We were pleased by the continued traction we saw in terms of instrument shipments and the purchase of consumable kits in the third quarter despite the continued pressure we are seeing on CapEx budget and elongated sales cycles for the outright purchase of new instruments.

Service revenue was $1.2 million for the third quarter of 2025, including $300,000 of related party revenue and primarily consisted of revenue related to STAC service projects. We remain encouraged by the strong customer interest in running projects through STAC, particularly as more users gain access to Proteograph data. And as Omid mentioned, more than 2/3 of our instrument shipments in the third quarter were acquired by customers who had previously accessed STAC.

Other revenue was $152,000 for the third quarter of 2025 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue.

Total gross profit was $2.1 million for the third quarter of 2025, representing a gross margin of 51% compared to $1.9 million in the third quarter of 2024, representing a gross margin of 48%. Gross margins were driven by higher consumable and service revenue in the third quarter of 2025. We continue to expect variability in our gross margin on a quarter-by-quarter basis as the proportion of instrument consumable and service revenue fluctuates in any given quarter. At scale, we continue to believe our long-term gross margins will be in the range of 70% to 75%.

Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $21.5 million, including $3.5 million of stock-based compensation, a decrease of 18% compared to $26.3 million, including $6.1 million of stock-based compensation in the third quarter of 2024.

Research and development expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $10.8 million, a decrease of 17% compared to $13 million in the third quarter of 2024. The decrease in R&D expenses were primarily due to decreases in stock-based compensation and allocated costs.

Selling, general and administrative expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $10.7 million, a decrease of 20% compared to $13.3 million in the third quarter of 2024. The decrease in SG&A expenses was primarily due to a decrease in stock-based compensation and business expenses.

Net loss for the third quarter of 2025 was $18.2 million compared to $21.3 million in the third quarter of 2024.

Free cash flow loss, defined as net cash used in operating activities in the period less purchases of property and equipment in the period was approximately $35.1 million for the 9 months ended September 30, 2025. In addition, we continued our share repurchase activities in the third quarter of 2025 since we continue to believe that there is a significant dislocation in our share price. In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 1 million Class A common shares at an average price of $1.99 per share. Since the beginning of our repurchase program in May 2024 through September 30, 2025, we have repurchased approximately 11.7 million Class A common shares at a VWAP of $1.87 per share, utilizing approximately $21.9 million of our $25 million share repurchase program authorization. As a result, we have reduced our net total shares outstanding by approximately 14%.

We ended the quarter with approximately $251 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Importantly, we believe that with our current cash, cash equivalents and investments on hand, we have sufficient capital to reach cash flow breakeven.

Turning now to our outlook for the year on Slide 10. We continue to expect revenue to be in the range of $17 million to $18 million for 2025, representing growth of 24% at the midpoint over the full year 2024. Embedded in this range is the assumption that our customers will continue to face headwinds from budget constraints and ongoing uncertainty around government funding, particularly related to the NIH. Given these near-term macro pressures are likely to continue weighing on our market visibility through year-end, we anticipate our full year revenue will likely be in the lower half of our guidance range. We did not factor in any additional impact from the government shutdown. If the shutdown were to continue for a second month or so, then this may delay grant funding and potentially impact some instrument and consumable shipments in the fourth quarter.

At this point, I would like to turn the call back to Omid for closing comments.

Thank you, David. Moving on to Slide 11. I'm encouraged by the traction we saw in the third quarter as exemplified by a strong quarter of instrument shipment, a record number of peer-reviewed publications and growing number of large-scale studies powered by the Proteograph. Together, these achievements highlight the growing adoption of our technology and reinforce our leadership in enabling deep unbiased proteomics at scale. I'm proud of our team's execution as we advance the reach and impact of the Proteograph Product Suite.

With that, we will now open it up for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Dan Brennan from TD Cowen.

This is William on for Dan. I start out, just wondering if you could provide -- I know you talked about the partnership with Thermo on the call, I was wondering if you provide a little bit more update on that partnership and just if that's expected to be a material revenue driver next year. And then just over the last few quarters, you highlighted a number of large studies using the Proteograph platform. Just wondering if you could talk about the potential for more of these studies in the future? And what are the barriers to doing larger sample size products in the future?

David, why don't you take the Thermo question, and I'll take the larger study question.

Thanks, William. Appreciate the question. Yes, the Thermo partnership is going well. As we said on the call, we landed our first joint opportunity. We actually closed 2 different opportunities with Thermo during the quarter. So that was great. There continues to be a pipeline of opportunities that we're pursuing jointly. Again, they're looking to find accounts where they can sell Astrals and a lot of their customers are interested in also doing high-throughput proteomics in which we play a role, so they can offer the package solution. So it's been a very good partnership, not only that, but we're also working with Thermo to pursue some of these joint large biobank opportunities as well. We're working with them on one right now, and we're in discussions with others. So it's been a great partnership. They're a fantastic partner. And we continue to expect good things as we move into 2026 from that partnership, both on individual account wins, but also some larger biobank projects.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Omid to talk about some of those studies.

And then regarding the question about the -- what does it take to do these large-scale studies? I mean I think it's worth just taking a step back of where were we and how did we get here. Mass spec has always been considered a gold standard for doing proteomics work. It's just that before Seer, mass spec approaches did not scale. And in fact, if you wanted to do deep proteomics, meaning you wanted to look at a large number of proteins in a sample, the workflow to process those samples was so complicated that a very deep proteomic study usually would be limited to tens of samples. So that was the state-of-the-art in mass spec proteomics prior to the introduction of the Proteograph Product Suite.

Since then, with the innovation that we've had and most recently, we launched Proteograph ONE together with the SP200 Automation Instrument and together with the Proteograph Analysis Suite, or PAS, that lets the customer go from mass spec data to insight. It is now possible to do very large-scale studies, tens of thousands of samples or even hundreds of thousands of samples and to do it at the depth of thousands of proteins, approaching 10,000 proteins per sample.

With that then comes the customers, the biobanks now have a choice. They can use their samples in their biobank to do proteomic using conventional targeted approaches, which is historically what they've done. I mean we've seen large-scale studies get published with the SomaScan with the Olink platform. But increasingly, those same biobanks are approaching us and asking us what would it take to do 10,000, 100,000, 600,000, 500,000, million samples. And the answer is, the existing technologies absolutely makes it possible to do those types of studies. And the velocity and cost and the ease the reproducibility, those are all becoming so relatively comparable to the alternative that the customers now have an absolute choice of doing one or the other. And of course, everyone recognizes that the mass spec is the gold standard. And in many ways, if you have the data set from targeted approaches paired with the mass spec approaches, it's extremely complementary and very powerful.

So the first half of the year, and David mentioned, we did the 20,000 sample study with Korea University. We did a 10,000 sample study with Discovery Life Sciences, another biobank study involving Thermo Fisher and some colleagues that we have not announced yet. And we're in multiple discussions with other biobank doing studies that are much, much larger. And my prediction, by the way, is that, the first study of 100,000 sample using mass spec is right around the corner, probably in 2026. And so, I'm super excited about the biological insight that's going to come from these types of studies, these very large-scale studies.

Got it. If I could just ask one more? Just wondering if you could just speak to the trends you're seeing among academic customers now that we're well into the new fiscal year, has spending gotten better or worse? And do you expect -- I guess you're talking about what the government shutdown impact would be, but just wondering kind of trends on academic.

Yes. Maybe I'll start off, and I'll have David add additional layers of information to it. I mean, look, this has been an interesting year because of a lot of challenges that we've had in terms of policies, the macroeconomic picture. And so, there have been uncertainties both in biopharma and CapEx spending and academics and there are uncertainties about the grant, especially also in the government sector. And so, we have been dealing with this since the beginning of the year. And that -- despite of that headwind, what has been constructive for us is that the tailwind for us has been getting stronger. Customer publications are robust and increasing at a high velocity. This quarter, we saw 13 customer publications, which was a record for us. And I think that momentum is continuing.

And by the way, it isn't just the number of publications. It's the magnitude of what these publications means. So if you look at the papers that are coming from Claudia Langenberg's group or the [indiscernible] Group, the biological insight that they're revealing using this platform and large-scale mass spec-based proteomics, deep mass spec-based proteomics is very differentiated to what was possible. So that tailwind is helping us. Now, of course, the government shutdown happened outside of the Q3 window. But we saw almost a pause to academic spending. And of course, government, they have no choice because government shut down. Most recently at a conference -- at the ACT conference, it was a very light presence in that conference. And I think part of it is because of this guarded demeanor that the shutdown has layered on top of an already complex macroeconomic picture that we've been dealing with.

So the headwinds have been very strong. In fact, this last month, even stronger -- but the tailwind also is strong and they continue to get stronger. So I'm very, very bullish and optimistic about what's ahead. But boy, does it seem like it's a bumpy road. And when you think you have a break, another challenge comes in front of you that was an unforeseen one.

David, I'm not sure if you want to add anything in addition to that.

Yes. No, the only thing I would add is, again, I think we -- to kind of echo Omid, it is encouraging that we see increasing interest from academics. Just to give you a stat for revenue year-to-date, the first 9 months of the year, about 40% of our revenue was from academic and government customers. That's a higher percentage than last year. So academics are applying for their grants. They're getting their grants. They're spending money with us. But as Omid said, it's just super challenging when a lot of that source for some of that funding, i.e., the NIH is essentially shut down right now. And so, it just creates more uncertainty. And even if people do have money, they are pushing the pause button a little bit while they wait to see what's going to happen. So great interest from that academic and government, and we're very bullish long-term, but we just have to kind of get through these near-term challenges that are beyond our control right now.

And let me just add one more layer of information to this, which is I alluded to it in our prepared remarks. We'll elaborate on it in the very near-term. There was a very large consortium of scientists that got a very, very large multi-tens of millions NIH grant and that's a multiomic study. And they did a very thorough investigation in terms of the proteomic platform that would be used for that multi-institutional consortium. And I was very, very proud that Seer was selected for that. So when I say that the tailwind is getting stronger for us, this is an example of that. But it's also been extremely challenging given the broader picture that both David and I alluded to.

There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Hi. My name is Yuko Oku and I'm part of the life science tools and diagnostics team at Morgan Stanley. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that important disclosure information can be found at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales rep.

With that, it's my pleasure to host Seer, and speaking on behalf of the company, CEO, Omid Farokhzad. Thank you for joining us today.

Thanks, Yuko.

You made significant progress over the last couple of years and increasing awareness of the Proteograph suite and highlighting its use cases via over 52 preprints and publication from the scientific community. To set the stage, would you reflect on how customer discussion has evolved over the last year?

Of course, yes. So look, when we started Seer, the overarching hypothesis was that if we were right about it, that we would be able to give access to proteomic information in an unbiased way at scale, speed, cost robustness that wasn't previously possible. And we shipped our first instrument at the end of 2020, beginning of '21. And at the time, biggest study ever done that looked at plasma in a deep way was 48 samples that was published. The deepest study ever published was from Broad that was about 5,000 proteins. And we've now gone through 3 cycles of our product. We just released the latest the third generation Proteograph ONE in -- sorry, June of 2025. And with that, it's now possible to do really what we had predicted would happen, which is large-scale proteomics.

And so first half of this year, we've already announced 1 corporate customer that did -- started a 10,000 sample study. We announced in Q2, the second customer, Korea University that announced a 20,000 sample study. We're in discussion with biobanks now and also soon be announcing a third one, which has already happened, which is a pilot study of 10,000 samples to pave the road to 100,000 sample study. So I think the -- we've now are able to impedance match proteomic and genomic at the same scale speed.

And so the shift in conversations have been that we would have customers asking to do 10 or 20 proof of principle studies with us before they kind of adopt, I'm not seeing those anymore. And now customers are starting with our Seer Technology Access Center, which, by the way, has been a great asset. They're starting literally out of the gate with hundreds of samples at the time. And now we're in discussions with customers doing thousands or even tens of thousands of sample studies. So I think the validation and the proof points are driving customers to kind of bypass the very initial skeptical view, which scientists should be skeptical, but kind of now just adopting like the way they would the proteomic solution to for their application.

Great. Well, that's a great overview into what we'll be digging more into. There are many emerging competitors in the proteomic space, including those with affinity-based proteomic platform, such as Olink, and SomaLogic as well as those with touting higher sensitivity like Alamar and Quanterix. Moreover, [indiscernible] and PreOmics are using nanoparticle-based platform to improve proteomics workflow for mass spec as well. In the midst of so many options for proteomics, where does Seer's offering fit?

Yes.. Okay I think the -- I'll break up the offerings into really 2 buckets: targeted offerings and untargeted offerings. And before the world of untargeted at scale became possible, the only option you had if you wanted to do any study at scale with a targeted offering. And so that was Olink and Soma for a long part. And when we started Seer and we started becoming a commercial company, making it possible for the first time to do untargeted at scale, the conversations were always that the customer would say, well it's Olink or Soma and then should would consider Seer. I would say over the last 4 or 5 years, I've seen a shift where the conversations are more -- is it Olink or is it Seer? I'm hearing a lot less Soma out there in terms of customers options.

But -- and so the wallet where that the customer needs to kind of open up and share is really between the targeted approach in Olink, let's say, versus Seer and actually see both platforms as really very complementary to each other. They answer different questions. And the questions are both needed for the scientists to be answered. In fact, if I just look at a company that we spun out PrognomIQ from Seer before we went public, it was to look at leveraging proteomic information for liquid biopsy and early detection of lung cancer. They were our largest customer, and we would report them on our earnings related for a transaction. They went from mid-30% of our revenue to mid-20% -- mid-30% in 2022 to mid-20% in '23 to mid-teen percent in '24. And if I look at '25, first half of the year, they were 6% and we'll probably finish the year with them being low single-digit percent.

But what that means is they started off using Seer for discovery and then they shifted to targeted for their clinical and LDT. So both Olink and Seer have value to the customer. I think for discovery purposes, you need an untargeted approach for content discovery. But I think once you know what you're looking for, targeted is perfectly fine. Now you mentioned kind of other need to follow-ons that came after Seer did. Frankly, it's flattery for me that our approaches are being replicated. I mean -- but those are -- those me-too ones, they don't have the performance that Seer does. And they do create confusion and distraction in the customers' eyes because they go to them and say, here's something that looks similar to Seer and they offer it at, I don't know, 1/3, 1/4 to price.

But then if you look at, a lot of our customers have begun to actually publish comparative studies, the performance of those things are terrible in terms of depth of coverage, reproducibility, batch to batch variability and robustness that one needs because if I look at a company like PrognomIQ or most biopharma companies for that matter, the most valuable commodity they have is their biological samples. I mean, PrognomIQ probably spend $2,500 for every patient sample that they collect it. So if you offer PrognomIQ, run Seer for a price of X, or run this me-too follow-on for 30% of X, they will never choose an inferior product because their major commitment financially was under sample. Seer is a very small part of that in terms of cost.

But more importantly, the lifeline is developing a test. And if they use an inferior product and never end up with a test, boy they wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of invested capital. So I'm finding those solutions to be more of a distraction than relevant from a customer perspective. And I always say, if you give people a rope that's long enough, they hang themselves anyway. And so what's happening is instead of us needing to do anything about this, me-too follow-ons because we have a very robust IP portfolio. I'm seeing customers beginning to publish comparative studies and those comparative studies kind of answer the questions for most people. And those studies are now in the public domain by many customers that are unrelated to us as well.

And you mentioned complementary use cases using the unbiased approach for the discovery purposes and then maybe going into affinity. Do you ever see it going the other way around where you see -- maybe you see the affinity population that scale discovery studies using affinity-based approaches and then using mass spec-based Seer kind of approach to probe more deeper into the results, translational modification or other protein-protein specific interactions?

Yuko, I guess there's always an outside case where somebody may do X, and that X may be very different than what everybody else does. So I'll never say never, but I think that's kind of backward, meaning, when you're looking at something like the proteome, where the complexity is massive, and we know a tiny bit about it in terms of its content. You need untargeted approaches for discovery, not the other way around. Targeted approaches have no discovery power because you're interrogating the same thing. If you look at the prognomic test, that test will never exist without Seer. If you look at the biomarkers that were discovered for early detection of lung, majority of them were not in the public domain to go pick from, but once you found them, a targeted approach is a perfectly fine approach to utilize them.

So now if you happen to like a targeted approach, sorry, a particular protein that you're interrogating a targeted approach, and you now want to go look at PTMs of that or I don't know, maybe protein interaction with that, sure, you can use an untargeted approach. But that, I would say, is 1% of the value add of that approach, meaning the lion's share of value proposition when you look at a hypothesis-free approach, untargeted approach is seeing things that you were not seeing before. And so I don't see the customers going from a targeted approach backward toward an untargeted approach. I would say for every -- probably 1,000 people, I would see 1 in that direction, I might see 1 thinking in the other direction because there's also other tools that one could use for protein-protein interaction, et cetera, other than this approach, that are easier for customers to adopt. So I don't see that Yuko actually.

Got it. Okay. Makes sense. And I wanted to dig into your product offering since you introduced a number of them this year. So starting with the Proteograph XT and cell lysate application, you launched this application early in the year. Could you provide some feedback on the application that you heard so far? And then how much did the ability to look at cell lysate theoretically expand the application samples that could be analyzed on the Proteograph?

So what we released at the ASMS conference, American Society of Mass Spectrometry Conference in June was 2 things: one, second generation of our instrument is the SP200. And then the second thing was Proteograph ONE, which is our third-generation assay and then we introduced a new assay, which is Proteograph assay direct, which is for cell and tissue. So let's break those 3 and say what each of them does.

So in the first iteration of our instrument SP100, the key innovation was that Seer-enabled nanoparticle capture of intact whole proteins by compressing the dynamic range. That protein capture happened at the beginning step. And then as the assay moved on, it would get washed and then those protein get digested into peptides. And then the peptide will be purified through a method that was not proprietary to Seer, that method required kits from thermal for purification of the peptides, which would then go into the mass spec.

With the second iteration of the instrument, the SP200, the workflow is now end-to-end Seer. So at the beginning, the nanoparticles do whole protein capture. So -- and this is relevant because if you're interested in PTMs, because you're capturing the whole protein, you would capture PTMs of that protein as well or variants of that protein. It then becomes peptides on the back end instead of using that other kit for peptide purification, we now have proprietary engineered nanoparticles that now do the peptide capture. So we have proprietary nanoparticle for protein capture and for peptide capture. So the total workflow is now end-to-end Seer. It's obviously for the proprietary and data generation and IP perspective, much stronger. So that's the instrument.

The workflow also got compressed from about 8 hours to 4.5 hours in automated way by eliminating the -- optimizing some of the assay and eliminating the need for that additional peptide purification in the back end, we were able to compress the workflow. The other innovation was that the assay went from one run of the instrument being 40 to one run now being 80 assay because each sample is being analyzed through 1 well and a well of a 96-well plate has a multiplex nanoparticle that a single well does their job of multi-wells. And so that's the Proteograph ONE then enabled this assay to go through so that in 4.5 hours, you can sample 80.

Now the direct product, the purpose of that was that customers were saying for the footprint that is occupying in my lab to run your assay, I would also like to be able to run other proteomic assays that may not require your particles, but are helpful to me, let's say, in cell and tissue. Now where Seer's value proposition is very distinct is when you have a high complexity sample, by compressing the dynamic range before it goes into the mass that you can see a lot of content. If you look at less complex sample like cell lysate or tissue where the dynamic range is much, much narrower, the relative value add of using proprietary engineered nanoparticles for content is smaller. And so the real value proposition is the automation.

So the direct assay does not require our particles, but it runs the assay on our instrument so that for a very small dollars, the customer can take away a manual workflow that with it comes inherent reproducibility that happens with a manual assay, complexity of a workflow and it let you do cell and tissue on our instrument, broadening the utility of that instrument that occupies the footprint, and that was really kind of reacting to the market and reacting to what the customers' needs were.

Now with every new product offering , Yuko, as you know, it takes time for adoption. So the adoption of the direct assay is foremost going to require an expansion of the installed base of the SP200 because the direct assay only runs on the SP200. So as the SP200 installed base grows, my expectation is that Proteograph ONE will feed the folks that are looking at complex sample and the direct assay will feed the folks that are looking at relatively less complex sample on the same instrument.

Okay. Got it. And before we get in -- dig a little bit more into Proteograph ONE, as we think about your workflow and menu broadening over time on direct, what are some other assays that you could offer that would enable customers to further their proteome?

Yes. So I mean, we've now done 10 -- about 10 white papers in various different kind of expanding low-volume animal model organisms, cell and tissue and various other ways of leveraging our platform, by the way, including also PTMs in collaboration with Professor Kelleher's group. So my expectation is that over time, Yuko you're going to see us addressing what the ask of the customers are. So what are they? So number one, the customer wants to see content. The customer wants to understand the value of that content that's different than seeing the content. And then the customer wants to do that efficiently. So every innovation and every advancement we make is along the line of one of these three accesses in terms of delivering the value that the customer wants to see it in the Seer platform.

There's obviously interest in PTMs. And Seer's technology uniquely allows that because protein capture happens at the whole protein level where PTMs can be captured. And we're certainly thinking about that. But I think Proteograph ONE being a new assay has a lot of legs to run, you can see some almost like a label expansion, if you would, in that leveraging the Proteograph ONE in different ways for customers. It's probably the direction we're going to go in the next 12 to 18 months. And then trying to increase the throughput and adding flexibility like seeing PTMs that may be of interest to them, et cetera, should be forthcoming.

Got it. Okay. So going back to Proteograph ONE. So this workflow basically doubled the throughput to 1,000 samples per week, reused 1 time by 30% to 4.5 hours compared to XT. How does the workflow, if any, differ from Proteograph XT?

Yes. Very similar workflow, Yuko, with the following 2 exceptions. One, XT required 2 wells per sample. And each well would be separately injected into mass spec, so XT required 2 wells per sample, plus 2 injections of mass spec for samples. Proteograph ONE is 1 well per sample, 1 injection or mass spec for sample. So it halved the mass spec time, that was doubling the mass spec throughput, while concurrently doubling the throughput of the Proteograph because instead of now running 80 samples, you run 40 samples. But it also almost doubled the throughput in that the previous assay was, 8.5 hours is not 4.5 hours. So it became half the length, double the numbers. Mass spec time went down by half.

The -- in terms of the chemistry differences, there's difference in the engineered particles. And we now also added our proprietary engineering nanoparticles for peptide purification in the back end as well in the Proteograph ONE. Now that all said, it's improvement in terms of throughput, speed, reduction in cost but in terms of content, the customer is not compromising because they're seeing the same number of proteins. They're seeing it with a very similar reproducibility and precision. And so if you happen to be a customer that is not a high-volume customer, then XT is actually still a perfect assay for you.

But if you happen to be a high-volume customer in terms of your need then likely you would shift to Proteograph ONE. So if you're a population skills customer, you want to be on Proteograph ONE just because over time, in tens of thousands of samples, cost and time become very different between the an XT and ONE. But if you happen to be running hundreds of samples at a time, and maybe you run a couple of thousand samples in the course of a year, 2,000, 3,000, then it doesn't really make a difference to you overall. And you may continue to be on XT versus going on ONE.

We'll continue to support both customer types and there are customers that have now shifted to ONE, meaning they upgraded to the next instrument. The customer that says, we want to bring in ONE in addition. But my expectation is Yuko that over the course of the coming couple of years, a lot of customers would probably shift to the ONE because you're getting the same information just a lot faster and why would you not do that?

What proportion of customers do you think will stay on X? Like what do you think the steady state mix to be?

I think it depends. I think if you happen to be a customer in the midst of a study, then you may not transition until your studies are done to the next assay, right, just for steadiness of your data. We certainly are seeing customers saying, boy, that sounds great, but I'm really, really happy with the XT, and we're in the midst of the study, and so we'll support those customers for the foreseeable future. Any new customer is going to get the ONE. And a subset of the customers have already opted to upgrade, but the sample size, Yuko is too small for me to have like a very precise number. But the general theme is, if you're a mid study, you tend to continue it. If you're starting from scratch, odd are you would pick the faster, more efficient system available to you.

Okay. That makes sense. Are there any price differences between price per sample or margins with Proteograph ONE version of the assay versus the XT?

Definitely, there is. So our COGS are significantly better would be with the ONE versus XT. It's 1 well versus 2 for us. And we want -- and a kit is 80 samples versus 40. And so a lot of those reagents like enzymes and buffers is the same volume, but now it does twice as much. And -- so from a COGS perspective, we're better off and that obviously helps our margin. That margin expansion can give us flexibility in terms of pricing if we want to. We have not found the need to discount because if anything, we're giving a better product to the customer. But the cost saving comes, for example, and the fact that they'll use half as much mass spec time. They're saving money because from an FTE perspective, running a Proteograph, it's half as much time of an FTE to run twice as much of the samples.

So definitely, there's a cost saving in terms of operating the system and also running the mass spec. But from a kit perspective, pricing is very similar and the margins are better.

Okay. Great. And then I wanted to move on to some of the population scale studies that you announced. So you announced that Proteograph was selected to run a 20,000 sample with Korea University. From the press release, it sounded like they evaluated several proteomics platforms before settling on Seer. Tell us key features of a Proteograph that resonated with Korea University and ultimately led them to choose your platform over other proteomics solutions.

Yes. Yes, thank you, Yuko for that. And you're right, they did kind of boil the ocean and I'll give you one other boil the ocean in just a second. But in their case, they definitely boiled the ocean and looking at various different platforms. But at the end of the day, the reproducibility of the assay. And by that, I don't mean if I run your sample over and over again, of course, we're reproducible there. But by that, I mean, I need to be reproducible in the long run, meaning if you're running a multiyear study and you're going to cross manufacture lots of mine, that reproducibility needs to be high for longitudinal long-term study. The study needs to be robust. Let's say you are multisite study, and you may be running in hospital A and they're running in hospital B, different operators, different instruments, you need to generate same data. I mean the robustness of the Seer platform is fantastic. And nothing else comes close to that for unbiased proteomics.

And it does that by the way, when you think of the CVs of Seer's, when you hear CV numbers, let's say, on an ELISA assay, it's usually 1 ELISA 1 antibody detects 1 analyte and so you look at the CV of that, you repeatedly mix that antibody with the antigen and you see how reproducible it is. But when we talk about the reproducibility of Seer, the CV is being measured not across 1 analyte, but across almost 10,000 analytes. So you're seeing CV reproducibility across 10,000 proteins that may be seen in plasma. So the robustness of the CV, you have to also put it in the context of how much am I seeing. So the reproducibility robustness was very important for the folks at Korea University. The automated system made a scalable for them.

And by the way, I'm very proud to also share with you, and I'll get into it in more detail over the course of the coming maybe weeks. We just had another customer, a government entity that wanted to fund a multi-institutional team, multi-tens of millions of dollars study, and they boiled the ocean for proteomic solution. This is the U.S. government. And many of these multi institutions had comfort with the other proteomic platform, which I will not name because they've been around longer than we are. and yet the final solution that got picked for that gigantic study with Seer, which is fantastic for me to see because that is a highly informed group of scientists with extreme level of experience with the other platform, generating a lot of body on the other -- body of bid on the other platform and yet conclusively reaching a scientific answer, which is for our purpose, which is discovery of large amount of content when we're spending tens of millions of dollars, this is the right solution. And so anyway, that's great. So...

Great. Looking forward to hearing more on that. Are there other large -- as you mentioned in the opening comments, it sounds like you're getting a lot of traction with these large-scale projects. Are there any others that we should keep in mind and kind of monitor as we go through the remainder of the year?

Yes, we're definitely in discussion with biobanks. We've already signed one which we'll discuss more. I mean it's -- and we'll let the biobanks themselves kind of disclose it. But it's a 10,000 sample pilot to become 100,000-plus sample study. And then we're also in discussion with others with multi-tens of thousand samples. So I had by the way -- by the way the first time I predicted that we would be at 10,000 sample plus was at your conference. In fact, it was exactly a year ago at your conference, where I said, I think 2025 will be a year where we will see for the first time, population skill studies get done at tens of thousands of samples. Well, I'm thrilled to say that the first half of the year that we finished, 3 such customers were signed in 2025.

So let me be also here to say that I predicted just a couple of weeks ago at the Canaccord conference that I think 2026 is the year that we'll see the first 100,000 sample study in terms of unbiased proteomics, Yuko. Now of course, a study like that, it's going to take time to finish. But I think studies like that will be initiated because the innovations that happen at Seer but also improvements that our colleagues in the mass spec space are making is really making it possible that a biobank can actually realistically choose to do this in an unbiased way because the speed, the depth and cost all make it possible for them to do a 100,000, 200,000 sample study in an unbiased way using a mass spec.

So macro environment continues to be pretty challenging for instrument vendors broadly within life science tools. Could you provide some color around how the environment has trended since about a year ago in terms of sales cycle and funding availability? And how does the dynamic differ between biopharma and academic customers?

Yes. I mean the macro picture has been challenging for multiple quarters for us and our peers. And I think that continues to be the case. There's volatility on top of that with tariffs and questions about NIH budget. You cut the budget, then it comes back and then tariffs are there, and then they come back and then they go away again. And so all of that makes any reasonable customer kind of pause or at the very least slowdown in terms of the decision-making, and we are observing that as everybody else is. I think what has helped us and I want to be cautious because the path isn't going to be linear for us. and we'll go through ups and downs, no question about that. But what has helped us is in the setting of that headwind that's been reasonably strong, our tailwind has continued to get stronger and stronger, which has helped us kind of maneuver this and push us through. We'll continue to have challenges, I think, over the course of the coming -- certainly the balance of the year, but maybe even into next year, as we maneuver this, the macro picture, Yuko.

Great. And then you ended 2Q with a healthy balance sheet with $263 million in cash. Walk us through your capital allocation priorities between share repo, M&A or internal investments?

Yes. Look, we've been very disciplined about the way we spend money. Despite of our balance sheet, our cash burn, and I say that in the context of free cash flow, it's come down year after year. This year, we'll probably do low 40s. And my expectation is that next year will be even lower than that. It will be somewhere in the 30s. And this is in the context of heavily investing in innovation and product development. We launched our third generation of products just a couple of months ago. And what's in our R&D road map is incredibly exciting, and I'll make announcements about that over the course of the coming months. And we -- and given our balance sheet -- and frankly, no debt, we are constantly being asked by others to look at opportunities for us to do inorganic growth. And I have no ego in this game nor do I think that we have a monopoly innovation. And so we're always looking for other verticals to kind of add that is synergistic and valuable to our customers. And I've seen a lot of things come on my way.

We have not acted on any and the reason for that is that I have not found any that we would want to deploy our own cash on, but we're always looking. What I think has been the most incredible value that I do want to invest in is I do our own share. We've now -- we authorized a $25 million buyback, as of the end of June, we had done $20 million of that. My expectation is that we'll try to finish the rest of that $5 million balance of this year. And if the stock continues to be where it is, I hope the Board would authorize another $25 million buyback after that. We bought back about 10.8 million shares of the -- as of end of June, which is roughly about 14% of our stock. And we have more than enough cash on the balance sheet that I think we're going to get to a cash flow positive company with a significant cushion. So we'll continue to invest internally. We'll continue to look outside and we'll continue to buy back our stock.

Right. And then I wanted to wrap up with a quick like bigger picture question. How do you anticipate proteomics to evolve in the future with new emerging technologies, improving scalability of proteomics as well as increasing the number of targets that can be identified on the platform? And what will become the key differentiating factor in your view for those that take majority of the market versus those that are limited to niche applications?

Yes. Look, I break up this space in discovery, translational clinical. And for discovery, you need to find new content. When you're starting in a space like proteomic, we're the tip of the iceberg in terms of content, then the question is what solution offers content discovery. I think the only solution that offers content discovery is untargeted approaches and to that Seer is a leader, frankly, the only person or the only organization that can deliver on that. When you shift on translational clinical, the need shifts a bit in that for those applications, you need to reproducibly and robustly interrogate a set of known proteins to do it efficiently -- and by the way, it isn't always that you need to be the most sensitive because sensitivity gives you an edge if you happen to be looking at something that is very low abundant, but a lot of important proteins may not be low abundant. But you need to do it in a reproducible, scalable, robust way and you need to do it very cost effectively.

So those targeted approaches will dominate there. And I think the real money at the end of the day is in the clinical part of it. And so the platforms that can grab clinical are going to take a significant part of it. Now if you happen to be a platform that can go all the way from discovery to clinical then I think you will likely dominate that. And let me give you one prediction here, which is when content discovery velocity is slow, frankly, relatively speaking, at snail's pace, then targeted approaches have the time to discover an analyte-specific reagent for a particular protein of interest. When content discovery velocity picks up as it now has because of technologies like Seer, you no longer have the time, the capability or the dollars to begin to interrogate analyte-specific reagents for all that content that is forthcoming.

And I think, and that's a prediction that we're going to see innovation comes on the mass spec side, that it's going to leverage a lot of those targeted -- specific targeted approaches. that they will actually effectively compete with the targeted panels today. And so I think the jury is out with who's going to own from discovery all the way to clinical. Certainly, discovering these untargeted approaches. So I don't think any of the targeted approaches are going to get there. But the question is, would an untargeted approach get themselves all the way to clinical or not, and I think time will tell.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Really appreciate, Yuko. Thank you.