Sera Prognostics Inc - Ordinary Shares Class A Aktie

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sera Prognostics Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Zibuda, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Sera Prognostics Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Earlier today, Sera reported financial results for the quarter, which ended September 30, 2026. Joining me on today's call are Zhenya Lindgardt, President and Chief Executive Officer; Lee Anderson, Chief Commercial Officer; Tiffany Inglis, Chief Medical Officer; and Scott Gleason, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. A copy of today's earnings release can be found on the Investors section of our website at sera.com, and a replay of this webcast will also be available. We have also posted an accompanying slide deck presentation pertaining to today's earnings call on the Events section of our Investor Relations website.

Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include projections or forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including regarding our business, future financial results and performance and market opportunities. These statements are based on our current expectations and are subject to risk factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from these expectations and forward-looking statements.

Please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K for important information regarding these risk factors. With that, I will turn the call over to Zhenya.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. At Sera, we believe we're building something truly unique in health care. We have developed one of the most highly validated advanced lab tests in history, addressing one of the most important and underserved challenges in medicine, preterm birth.

The PreTRM test has demonstrated the ability to identify high-risk pregnancies early and drive meaningful improvements in outcomes for mothers and babies. We're no longer simply an evidence generation story. We're actively transitioning into the commercialization phase of our journey with the goal of establishing PreTRM as a foundational component of prenatal care. The opportunity remains largely untapped with no effective standard for broad population screening of preterm birth risk. As a result, we believe there is the potential to create a new category in prenatal care and address one of the largest unmet needs in health care while driving substantial long-term value for shareholders.

The third quarter represented a significant step forward in that journey. Following publication of the landmark PRIME study and the addition of highly experienced commercial leaders to our management team, we saw strong momentum in the third quarter. Compared to the first quarter of this year, the number of physicians ordering PreTRM nearly tripled, while test volume increased approximately fivefold.

We believe these results provide early evidence that the combination of compelling clinical data and focused commercial execution can drive meaningful adoption of PreTRM in real-world clinical practice. We also continue to make significant progress on reimbursement as we execute a multi-tiered strategy to expand coverage across both state Medicaid programs and commercial insurers.

We now have seen a second major Medicaid state cover the test. Florida has established coverage for Medicaid beneficiaries and has added the PreTRM test as a covered service under the state biomarker testing law. Additionally, pricing has been established on the state's fee schedule. With nearly 90,000 Medicaid births and approximately 4 million Medicaid lives, Florida represents our largest reimbursed market opportunity to date. More importantly, we believe Florida further validates a repeatable pathway for expansion into additional states in a market where Medicaid policy often serves as a catalyst for broader adoption.

Combined with coverage in Illinois, these milestones demonstrate the growing recognition of the clinical and economic burden of PreTRM birth and the need for solutions that improve outcomes while also reducing health care costs. Supported by strong clinical utility data, compelling health economic evidence, increasing provider engagement and growing public policy focus on maternal health, we believe we're well positioned to accelerate adoption of PreTRM and advance our long-term vision of establishing the test as a standard component of prenatal care.

While our immediate focus remains on executing in the United States, our long-term vision is to build a truly global company. As evidence of our progress, we continue to advance our international strategy and remain on track to pursue CE Mark approval for PreTRM Global, our kit-based version of PreTRM in 2027. In parallel, we are engaged in active discussions with potential commercial partners, including both laboratory and in vitro diagnostic companies as we evaluate opportunities to expand access to PreTRM in markets outside the United States.

We have successfully completed our registration study and are working with our notified body on our CE Mark submission. This represents an important milestone in our growth strategy. The addressable market opportunity outside the United States is at least as large as our domestic market. We believe these efforts have the potential to establish a meaningful new growth engine and further advance our mission of improving outcomes for mothers and babies around the world. As we go forward, we're actively focused on executing on 3 critical strategic imperatives to achieving our long-term goals. These include: first, demonstrating a repeatable and scalable commercial model.

Our priority is to validate and scale our commercial model in reimbursed markets. With coverage now established in Illinois and Florida, we have 2 significant opportunities to demonstrate how strong clinical evidence, reimbursement and focused field execution can drive adoption.

We believe success in these markets will not only support near-term growth, but also establish a playbook for expansion into additional geographies and validate the scalability of our commercial strategy. Next, converting leading clinical evidence into expanding reimbursement and market access. Our second priority is to convert our best-in-class evidence base into broader reimbursement coverage and increase adoption of PreTRM.

We're executing a comprehensive market access strategy designed to expand coverage across both Medicaid and commercial payer channels while establishing the foundation for long-term growth. We believe the growing national focus on maternal health creates a favorable environment for additional state Medicaid coverage mandates in 2027 and beyond.

We're actively supporting professional guideline inclusion based on the strong clinical utility and health economic outcomes demonstrated through PRIME. We're also evaluating opportunities to take advantage of existing legislative actions and laws supporting improved maternal and neonatal care, which will collectively impact nearly 1.4 million births each year. We believe these efforts position us to expand access to PreTRM, strengthen reimbursement and move closer to our goal of making preterm birth risk assessment a routine component of prenatal care.

And finally, driving capital-efficient growth. Our third priority is to maintain a disciplined approach to capital allocation and ensure that every dollar we invest is directed towards our highest return opportunities. As part of our 2027 planning process, we are carefully evaluating our cost structure, identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and streamline operations and reallocating resources towards initiatives that directly support commercial growth and market expansion.

Our goal is to maximize return on invested capital while building the capabilities, infrastructure and market presence necessary to support the next stage of our growth. To provide more detail on our progress against these strategic priorities, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Commercial Officer, Lee Anderson, to discuss our commercial execution. Lee? Thank you, Zhenya.

We saw a significant positive inflection in the third quarter with new ordering accounts, new ordering providers and total ordering providers outperforming Q2 levels. This trend delivered a 54% increase in test volume sequentially, demonstrating our commercial model is effectively driving adoption of PreTRM.

The third quarter was defined by 2 important milestones: the approval of Medicaid coverage in Illinois and our commercial expansion in Florida following established Medicaid coverage under the state's biomarker law. These 2 states represent approximately 7 million newly covered lives, encompassing approximately 140,000 Medicaid births per year. Illinois represented our first large-scale state coverage activation effort and will serve as the blueprint for future market launches.

In anticipation of coverage becoming effective, we expanded our Illinois field presence in late August with additional regional account executives and a medical science liaison. The team is focused on high-value provider targets, Medicaid-heavy practices and clinical key stakeholders. We saw significant interest and engagement from physicians wanting to learn about PreTRM testing. In the first month, we conducted over 100 field activities across 60 practices and reached over 70 providers. In just 2 months, we have onboarded 9 providers and 8 accounts working with them to incorporate PreTRM into their clinical workflow.

Some of these providers deliver 500 or more babies per year, creating a significant opportunity to drive adoption of PreTRM. We have focused efforts to support driving practices towards standard of care by changing practice patterns, educating the support staff and when needed, integrating with electronic medical records to support workflows.

Late in the third quarter, we began replicating the Illinois playbook in Florida to maximize the opportunity of state Medicaid coverage. In the month of October, we hired additional regional account executives in the state. We aligned the targeted providers and territories based on Medicaid birth volume, provider concentration and the presence of major referral centers. Like Illinois, we also have a medical science liaison in the state to drive our educational efforts and peer-to-peer programs.

Field activity began in mid-August through our Gulf Coast territory, generating approximately 30 engagements across a number of practices, including multiple physician education programs. We have completed sales training for the Florida representatives and have implemented state-specific collateral to support broad market activation. Supporting the field efforts was a broad medical affairs and awareness strategy. As part of these efforts, the medical science liaison team has created and launched a PreTRM implementation playbook. This is a standardized protocol to aid accounts at incorporating PreTRM into their current workflow, which we believe will aid our commercial team in driving depth of penetration at ordering accounts.

During the quarter, we conducted 48 medical education meetings, 24 implementation meetings, multiple conference presentations and ongoing field training programs designed to improve utilization. We will also execute 2 physician advisory boards by year-end, one in Illinois and one in Florida to support KOL engagement. In addition to the field organization and activities, we continued building awareness and demand generation capabilities ahead of broader reimbursement adoption. PreTRM.com traffic increased dramatically in the third quarter as Illinois-specific educational resources were introduced and engagement rates were significantly above industry benchmarks.

We saw over 1,000 page views at our Illinois physician site and patient education assets more than doubled their page views during the quarter. Collectively, our third quarter deliverables demonstrate a commercial plan and company that is increasingly capable of converting reimbursement wins into provider activation, clinical adoption and scalable market expansion. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Tiffany to discuss our payer access strategy.

Thanks, Lee. Turning to market access. Our reimbursement strategy is centered on building durable long-term coverage pathways that support broad adoption of PreTRM across both Medicaid and commercial populations. We're executing a multipronged approach focused on expanding Medicaid access, advancing commercial payer coverage and positioning the company to capitalize on emerging state legislation.

We continue to see momentum in our Medicaid strategy. Medicaid remains one of the most efficient pathways for expanding pregnancy care access and has historically served as a driver of maternal health innovation. Both Illinois and Florida enacted legislation requiring state Medicaid coverage of the PreTRM test and have added our PLA code to their respective fee schedules. We have now completed the credentialing process with Illinois Medicaid and are in the final stages of enrollment in Florida.

We have confirmed that there are no prior auth requirements will apply in Illinois, and we are actively pursuing contracts with the managed Medicaid organizations that administer benefits across each state. Importantly, Illinois and Florida are serving as reference models as we engage policymakers and stakeholders in additional geographies. We are aware of another state actively pursuing similar legislation in early 2027, while a fourth state is evaluating options for action.

Over time, we believe the combination of clinical evidence, real-world outcomes, Medicaid claims data and health economic analyses can support similar coverage pathways in additional states. We are also focused on expanding our commercial reimbursement efforts. Since joining the company this summer, Liana Burns, our Head of Payer Government and Strategic Partnerships, has led a focused payer engagement strategy designed to translate our growing body of evidence into positive medical policy decisions and contract coverage opportunities.

We currently have 4 active pilot programs underway, including 2 with major national health plans and are in discussions regarding a potential multistate 2027 implementation with one of the nation's largest managed care organizations. Our commercial engagement efforts are supported by an increasingly comprehensive body of evidence. We expect to publish our health economic analysis from the PRIME randomized controlled trial in the fourth quarter.

We believe this publication is particularly important because it completes the core evidence package sought by many payers, including analytic validation, clinical validation, clinical utility and health economic impact. We are also currently tracking a proposed change coming to maternity care reimbursement in 2027. The new CPT structure moves away from the traditional global obstetric package and allows prenatal encounters to be reported individually, creating a framework that better reflects the complexity and variation of care delivered during pregnancy. We believe this shift is highly consistent with the value proposition of PreTRM, identifying risk earlier so care can be more appropriately tailored to the patient.

Over time, we believe a more service-based reimbursement framework can help reduce structural friction around providing differentiated care to higher-risk pregnancies and further support the adoption of risk-stratified maternal care. We also continue to see growing clinical recognition of PreTRM. During the quarter, the European Association of Perinatal Medicine included a mention of PreTRM as a potential tools to support improved prediction of PreTRM birth risk in its recently released guidelines.

In parallel, we remain actively engaged with major U.S. guideline organizations. We are collaborating with preeminent thought leaders to explore insights from the rich data set we have accumulated over the last decade.

The first outcomes of these efforts were multiple PRIME-related presentations, which were accepted to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Global Conference, including an oral presentation on first-time mothers and a top 5 ranked health economics poster. Finally, we believe state legislation represents an important longer-term opportunity to accelerate access. As states increasingly seek solutions that improve outcomes while addressing health care affordability, legislative action focused on improving maternal and neonatal morbidity and access to quality care may provide an additional mechanism to support coverage of clinically validated tests. We are actively evaluating opportunities to pursue coverage pathways as part of our broader market access strategy.

Overall, we're encouraged by the progress we're making across the reimbursement landscape. We believe our strategy of first expanding Medicaid access, then translating that momentum into broader commercial coverage while continuing to strengthen our clinical and health economic evidence base positions us well as we enter 2027. I will now turn the call over to Scott for a review of our financial results.

Thanks, Tiffany. As Zhenya highlighted, we have seen substantial growth in PreTRM test volumes in the third quarter, with total volumes increasing almost fivefold from the first quarter of 2026. Key leading indicators such as new ordering physicians and website traffic to our physician landing page were also up significantly in the quarter.

We believe these indicators bode well for future volume trends. We are increasingly focused through our PreTRM implementation playbook on driving high-volume practices to implement PreTRM as standard of care for their patients. Physicians moving from initial awareness and early interest to broad adoption and high-volume ordering is a process which we have seen take 12 months to 18 months. Therefore, we believe the recent expansion of ordering physicians will support significantly higher adoption and revenue as we look towards fiscal year 2027.

From an ASP perspective, we saw our ASPs decline in the third quarter as a larger percentage of our patients were derived from low or non-reimbursed patient classes. We expect this trend to begin to reverse in fiscal year 2027 as we derive an increasing percentage of our mix from Medicaid patients in Florida and Illinois, where pricing is expected to be higher given established fee schedule rates.

Additionally, patients on paid commercial pilots could also comprise a larger percentage of our mix in fiscal year 2027. This quarter, we also recognized our first milestone under a subcontract award we have received to provide contract research services to support active research on a new prenatal test.

The current grant allocation will run into early 2028 and is based upon achieving targeted research milestones with the first payment recognized as other income this quarter. We are considering a number of additional potential grant opportunities from government or privately sourced maternal-focused grant funds to augment our commercialization efforts and provide additional real-world evidence.

Depending on the structure of these grant agreements, they could be recognized either as other income or revenue. The timing of these new grant programs, if awarded, would likely start in late fiscal year 2027. From an expense perspective, we saw total operating expenses decline by 11% on a sequential basis based upon our targeted cost-saving efforts initiated following our fiscal second quarter. This was partially offset by some of the incremental commercial investments we made in the quarter to support our Illinois and Florida expansion plans.

We ended the quarter with $72.8 million in cash and cash equivalents. We are currently heavily engaged in our forecasting and budgeting process for fiscal year 2027. As we look to prioritize resources effectively, our focus is heavily weighted towards commercial efforts in territories with coverage such as Illinois and Florida. At the same time, we are looking for areas of structural cost savings to support these increased investments.

On an overall basis, we believe we will see flat or down operating expenses in 2027 while significantly increasing the size of our commercial team. We continue to believe we have sufficient cash to fund our operations into fiscal year 2029.

Following the PRIME publication, our early market access wins and our renewed sales and marketing efforts under our relatively new commercial leadership, we believe we are positioned for meaningful increases in product traction next calendar year, especially as we transition to the second half of 2027. As we look toward our fourth quarter call at the start of 2027, we will look to provide more granular updates to investors on our progress. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Zhenya for closing remarks.

Thank you, Scott. As we complete our prepared remarks, I'd like to leave investors with 3 key takeaways. First, our results demonstrate that Sera's geographically targeted strategy is working. We have seen significant steps forward in reimbursement and commercial traction this quarter, including significant growth in ordering physicians and test volumes. This reinforces our belief that the foundation we have built is beginning to translate into measurable commercial momentum.

Second, we continue to strengthen our reimbursement and market access position. With Medicaid coverage established in both Illinois and Florida, nearly 7 million covered lives and approximately 140,000 annual births are now supported by reimbursement pathways for PreTRM. Just as importantly, we believe these initial experiences provide a repeatable blueprint for future expansion into additional states and commercial payer channels.

Combined with the publication of our health economics data, demonstrating reductions in NICU admissions and health care costs, we believe we now possess one of the most comprehensive evidence packages in maternal health across diagnostics and life sciences tools. Third, we remain disciplined stewards of capital. Our team is focused on deploying resources behind the highest return opportunities, particularly in reimbursed markets where we believe we can demonstrate the scalability of our commercial model.

We're building the infrastructure, capabilities and partnerships necessary to support long-term growth while maintaining a strong focus on operational efficiency and shareholder value creation. When I joined Sera, I believe the company possessed a unique opportunity to transform prenatal care. Today, that conviction is stronger than ever.

We have a highly differentiated product, a growing body of clinical and economic evidence, expanding reimbursement support and an increasingly experienced team executing against a clear strategy. While there is still significant work ahead, we believe we're building a category-defining company with the potential to improve outcomes for millions of moms and babies while creating substantial long-term value for our shareholders. Operator, we are now ready for the Q&A portion of the call.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Bill Bonello from Craig-Hallum.

A lot of exciting stuff going on. A couple of questions to follow up on one about Florida and then if I could follow up with that about the managed care discussion. But on Florida, first of all, you mentioned, I think, if I heard right, that there's -- in Illinois, there's no prior auth [ recoverment ]. Is that also true in Florida? And are there any other restrictions in terms of who can be tested in Florida?

No, the same -- no restrictions in Florida as there are no restrictions for coverage to all Medicaid recipients in Florida as there are none in Illinois.

Excellent. And then are you able to tell us what the reimbursement rate is? I mean we found something that we think list it, but I'm not sure if what we're seeing is right.

For Florida or Illinois?

Florida.

For Florida, I believe it is in the low 400s.

Okay. Yes.

Bill, I think the rate is $450 in terms of -- from a pricing standpoint.

Okay. And that's within your ability to manage on cost and whatnot. I know it's a little bit lower than maybe where you were thinking sort of ASP over the long run. Yes, I think when we look at most --...

Go ahead. Go ahead, Scott.

Bill, I think as we look at most states, they have formulaic approaches typically to determining what the reimbursement rate is based upon the Medicare fee schedule. And so I think that's what we've seen in Florida. Our expectation is that in most Medicaid states, you're going to see that percentage be somewhere between 60%, 70% of the overall Medicare rate, and it depends a little bit state to state.

Okay.

And indeed, Bill, we're very much able to manage it from the cost of goods perspective at scale.

Yes. Okay. And then the last thing was just on the commercial front. You mentioned engagement with a large managed care organization, which is exciting. Could those discussions result in some type of national coverage policy or decision? Or would it likely still be necessary to kind of go through even with that payer on a market-by-market basis?

We absolutely believe it will result in national coverage. The question is on the timing of that. We do believe it will be a step-by-step process. And we will update you on the launch of that program as soon as we're able. For now, it's very, very exciting. It's a very -- it's one of the leading national organizations, and we look forward to engaging on a big program with them on path to national coverage. Yes.

And Bill, I think when you think about what it takes to get kind of national coverage, we've really checked all of those boxes, right, in terms of having the analytical validation, the clinical validation, the very strong clinical utility data as we think about the PRIME study. And then we mentioned on the call that we expect our health economic analysis from PRIME to be published here in the fourth quarter.

And so we're in those discussions, obviously, with payers as they go through their medical policy review cycles. I think when we think about these pilots, what that obviously helps is get actual experience with the payer in their own patient populations and data that they can add to that evidence base. And so that's kind of how we see it from an evidentiary standpoint.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Dan Brennan from TD Cowen.

This is William on for Dan. I'm just curious, what are the key steps remaining before you begin seeing meaningful covered volumes in both Illinois and Florida? And how do you view the revenue TAM for both of these states combined?

First, we do believe we will have meaningful coverage already given Medicaid births on average across the country represent 40%, 43% of all births. So in each Florida and Illinois, we should see a substantial volume of birth there. So that's certainly incredibly meaningful. Plus what we are seeing is physicians treat all patients the same.

So as soon as they adopt the office adopts the test into the standard of care, they don't just administer the test to the Medicaid population. They want to give it to all of their expectant mothers. So from that perspective, we're looking forward to achieving meaningful coverage already in the coming months and years. As far as the revenue TAM is concerned, we're talking about tens of thousands of births in each state.

And we believe it could be at scale when we are deeper penetrated at, let's say, 20%, 30% of each state, could be in tens of millions of dollars. We spoke in the last call that the percent penetration of the births in each state will take time. And we're hoping to achieve in the low single-digits percentage penetration in each state in the first year and quickly accelerating afterwards. I hope that answers the question.

Yes. And Will, I would maybe just provide a little additional color on that. As we think about Florida, there's about 225,000 births per year. About 90,000 of those are actual Medicaid births within the state. As we think about Illinois, it's about 125,000 births and a little under 50,000 of those are Medicaid births. And so as we think about the Medicaid TAM, it would really be kind of in the fee schedule pricing times that population. As we think about the total TAM, obviously, we would expect higher pricing on commercial samples around the business given our current Medicare fee schedule pricing of around $750 or so.

And then just as we think about the adoption curve, I think what we are really excited about this quarter was bringing on the additional the large number of new physicians that we saw, that's what we think is a really strong leading indicator. It does take time as we go through the process with physicians. They typically start off kind of as trialers and then they move through the process through higher utilization.

One of the things we obviously mentioned on the call was our process, what we call implementation, which is the process design that really as a physician comes across from an actual medical conviction standpoint to want to move towards standard of care, it's the process to really help that practice in terms of all the blocking and tackling that needs to be done to get that practice towards kind of standard of care across the whole practice.

And so we're working through that. But as we mentioned, that can take 12 months to 18 months to work through that. And so I think what we would see is kind of the initial physicians will start to scale and that will really build momentum, we think, as we get into the second half of next year.

Got it. And as a follow-up, do you expect any friction at all on the reimbursement side? And then do you have any indication where you could be in 12 months from now as far as the number of states that could be covering this with Medicaid since you've already got 2 of the larger population states with Florida and Illinois?

We believe there are several states that could follow suit. How many of them will fall into fiscal year 2027? We're hoping at least 1 or 2. As far as coverage goes, focus on Medicaid and continuing to run programs with multiple super regional and some national payers will certainly accelerate the commercial plan coverage. in the coming months. We think that the programs need to read out before the national coverage decisions are made. But again, we will update everyone on our progress.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Jennifer for closing remarks.

We would like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today, and please reach out with any questions. Have a good rest of your day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Sera Prognostics Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Wednesday, August 12, 2026.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Jennifer Zibuda, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Sera Prognostics Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Earlier today, Sera reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026.

Joining me on today's call are Zhenya Lindgardt, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Austin Aerts, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. A copy of today's earnings release can be found in the Investors section of our website at sera.com, and a replay of this webcast will also be available.

Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include projections or forward-looking statements around events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including regarding our business, future financial results and performance and market opportunities. These statements are based on our current expectations and are subject to risk factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from these expectations and forward-looking statements. Please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K for important information regarding these risk factors.

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

Thank you, Jennifer, and thanks to everyone for joining us this afternoon. The second quarter was marked by significant wins across key drivers of long-term adoption for PreTRM Test-guided care. During the quarter, we expanded commercial engagement through the launch of the fourth partnership program and increased payer activity across our target geographies. An important policy milestone was unlocked with Illinois Medicaid coverage legislation, which provides access to evidence-based preterm birth risk assessment for tens of thousands of Medicaid pregnancies annually.

We also strengthened our clinical evidence base through publication of PRIME data in first-time mothers, demonstrating significant reductions in NICU admissions and severe neonatal morbidity reductions, while continuing to advance our European regulatory, and commercialization efforts.

Taken together, these achievements reflect increasing alignment among stakeholders around the potential value of PreTRM Test-guided care and reinforce our confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead. We continue to expand payer discussions across the country as we execute our geographically focused commercialization strategy.

Opportunities to expand access are being driven through engagements with payers, state agencies and legislators in markets where maternal health outcomes, Medicaid priorities and policy momentum create favorable conditions for converting market access into adoption. These conversations increasingly center not only on the clinical benefits of earlier risk identification, but also on the potential to improve outcomes, reduce the economic burden of preterm birth and support broader health care affordability initiatives.

Illinois provides an excellent example of the effectiveness of our commercialization strategy. Illinois was not originally included in the states supporting our payer engagement objectives for 2026, yet through increased awareness among providers, policymakers, maternal health advocates and payers the state emerged as one of the most active opportunities in our pipeline.

While many stakeholders contributed to the legislative outcome, we believe growing recognition of preterm birth as a significant public health challenge and increased awareness of evidence-based solutions like PreTRM Test helped create the momentum that led to statewide Medicaid coverage legislation.

Importantly, this illustrates how our strategy extends beyond traditional payer contracting. By combining evidence generation, policy engagement, provider advocacy and awareness building activities, we're cultivating an ecosystem from which the conditions necessary for broader market utilization can organically emerge.

We're also advancing discussions around innovative implementation models designed to integrate PreTRM Test-guided care within existing maternal health programs. This month, we launched our fourth partnership program, expanding implementation of PreTRM Test-guided care through a state-based initiative with a national payer.

The program is intended to support quality improvement and maternal health objectives through a value-added benefits framework. Importantly, we remain on track towards our goal of establishing 5 to 7 commercial programs as we continue to expand our footprint in targeted geographies.

At the beginning of the year, we set a goal of doubling the number of payer discussions across 15 to 17 states during 2026. We're pleased to report that we have exceeded that objective and are currently engaged with more than 20 payer opportunities across over 20 states.

Importantly, this expansion into new opportunities is driven through payer referrals and growing market awareness, leading existing payer contacts to introduce us to affiliated plans and decision-makers in other states and expanding our pipeline more rapidly than anticipated.

We believe this reflects broader acceptance of both the clinical value and health economic impact of PreTRM Test-guided care and reinforces the effectiveness of our focused commercialization strategy.

As we move through the second half of the year, our emphasis will shift from initiating new conversations to advancing implementation, reimbursement readiness and adoption within our highest priority opportunities. We believe the market access progress achieved this year has significantly expanded our commercialization pipeline.

Today, our opportunities broadly fall into 3 categories: payer engagement and evaluation, implementation preparation and contracting, and continued provider activation in markets where access has already been secured. Each of these 3 stages represents a step forward in converting access into clinical uptake and testing volume increase.

In many cases, opportunities that have secured access enter an implementation and contracting period that can take approximately 6 to 9 months before utilization begins to scale. As opportunities progress through this commercialization pathway, our focus shifts from securing access to driving utilization. Through provider onboarding, workflow integration, champion development and targeted awareness initiatives, we're building a repeatable model designed to translate market access into testing volume and revenue growth over time.

We believe the breadth and maturity of our pipeline position many of these opportunities to contribute meaningfully as we progress towards early 2027. One of the most significant developments during the quarter was the passage of landmark legislation in Illinois. The new law requires the state's Medicaid program to provide coverage and reimbursement for prescribed proteomic blood tests used to identify and manage the risk of spontaneous preterm birth, along with associated care management services and interventions that have demonstrated improved outcomes.

We believe the legislation represents an important milestone for maternal health care and validates that earlier identification and management of preterm birth risk can improve outcomes while addressing significant health care costs. We have already begun engagement with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, managed Medicaid organizations and provider stakeholders across the state.

Over the coming quarters, we will work towards contracting, credentialing, provider education, workflow integration and implementation readiness. With coverage established, attention turns to execution. Illinois is now progressing through the next phase of our commercialization playbook, which we refer to as implementation readiness and contracting. We are advancing contracting and provider onboarding activities to support integration of PreTRM Test-guided care across both Medicaid and commercially insured populations eligible for testing.

As the first state to formally recognize the clinical and health economic value of PreTRM Test-guided care, we believe Illinois can serve as a blueprint for similar initiatives nationwide. Evidence generation remains the cornerstone of our strategy, and we continue to strengthen our already substantial body of clinical and economic data supporting PreTRM guided care.

In July, we published a prime subgroup analysis focused on first-time mothers, a population for which traditional risk assessment tools have limited predictive value. The findings demonstrated a 22% reduction in NICU admissions, a twofold reduction among newborns following spontaneous preterm birth and a 30% reduction in severe composite neonatal morbidity.

The study also showed a number needed to screen and treat of just 28 patients to prevent 1 NICU admission. First-time mothers account for approximately 40% of pregnancies in the United States, making this an important population for broader adoption of biology-based risk assessment. We also remain on track for publication of our health economics analysis in the coming months. This work will further quantify the economic impact of PreTRM Test-guided care and will be an important component of payer and reimbursement discussions.

We were also pleased that 2 PRIME-related abstracts were accepted for presentation at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Global Congress in October. One abstract was selected as an oral presentation and focuses on outcome in first-time mothers.

The second was recognized among the top poster presentations and highlights the economic impact of screen guided interventions using our biomarker platform. These selections represent important external validation from the maternal fetal medicine community, and reflects growing recognition of both the clinical and economic value demonstrated in the PRIME trial.

Importantly, our pathway towards future guideline inclusion remains straightforward. continue publishing high-quality evidence, expand collaboration with a broader network of key opinion leaders who are exploring the PRIME data set and generate new clinical and economic publications that further strengthen the evidence supporting PreTRM Test-guided care.

Another highlight this quarter was the start of an ARPA-H-supported collaboration, which provides important validation of our scientific platform and biomarker discovery capabilities. The multi-institutional program is focused on developing a novel point-of-care diagnostic to help clinicians assess fetal hypoxia risk during labor and delivery, with Sera contributing its expertise in protein biomarker discovery and validation.

More broadly, partnerships, grants and collaborative research programs are an important component of our innovation strategy. These relationships allow us to advance our pipeline, expand our scientific leadership position and pursue new opportunities with limited incremental investment from Sera, while maintaining our primary focus on the successful commercialization of PreTRM Test-guided care. We believe this collaborative approach enables us to create long-term pipeline value without diverting material resources from our core commercial priorities.

Building awareness is a critical pillar of our commercialization strategy. In Q2, we advanced our thought leadership and educational initiatives with an on-demand webinar titled, Improving Outcomes of Preterm Birth, featuring Dr. Tiffany Inglis, and PRIME lead investigator, Dr. Brian Iriye.

We also participated in a Medscape Hear From Her podcast, featuring our team and PRIME investigator, Dr. Mollie McDonnold. Importantly, we continue to execute these initiatives with a disciplined approach to spending, leveraging scalable digital platforms and third-party partnerships to maximize reach and impact. We also scaled digital and social engagement to reach patients, providers and maternal health advocates.

Here's why this matters to our broader strategy. Preterm birth is one of the most common serious pregnancy complications, yet most women remain unaware of it until it affects them personally. Over the course of a pregnancy, women spend roughly 200x more time on social media than with their provider. That's where awareness can begin.

When patients learn to ask about preterm birth risk, they raise it with their OB/GYN, and this is one of the ways that physician behavior can follow. Our consumer efforts reinforce rather than compete with our provider and payer strategies.

Similar approaches have proven effective across diagnostics and health care innovation, helping drive awareness, access and ultimately the adoption of evidence-based care. While still early, the initiatives in Illinois, partnerships with providers and payers and the education and awareness for patients and providers are demonstrating their potential to accelerate provider integration into clinical practice and payer coverage, driving improved access is a fully integrated part of our commercialization strategy.

Our European strategy also advanced during this quarter. European expert commentary supporting the role of biomarker-based risk prediction and biology-driven prevention strategies was published, and we convened a European expert advisory board representing 9 countries.

Participants recognized the PreTRM Test as the first validated risk prediction tool for expectant mothers and affirmed the potential role of biology-driven prevention strategies across European health care systems. To support the strongest possible regulatory submission, we have elected to complete additional performance testing in our ELISA-based assay platform, a decision we believe strengthens the overall package while reducing execution risk. We expect pre-application activities to commence in the third quarter with submission of our full CE marking package to conclude in the fourth quarter of this year.

Finally, we continued strengthening our leadership team and governance structure. During this quarter, we added key leadership capabilities in marketing and payer strategy while also welcoming Mark Capone to our Board. These additions further enhance our ability to execute against our commercial and strategic priorities.

In summary, the second quarter demonstrated meaningful progress across the key drivers of market uptake. We expanded payer engagement, saw an important Medicaid policy milestone in Illinois, strengthened our clinical evidence base, advanced our European strategy and continued building awareness among providers and patients. While we remain in the early stages of commercialization, we believe these achievements further strengthen the foundation for future adoption and long-term growth.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Austin to review our second quarter financial results.

Thanks, Zhenya, and good afternoon, everyone.

Revenue for the quarter was $30,000 compared to $17,000 in the second quarter of 2025. As expected, revenue in the quarter remained modest, reflecting the timing and nature of our geographically targeted commercialization strategy and our ongoing effort to build advocacy and awareness following the PRIME publication.

Importantly, though, we are encouraged by the traction we see across the business. Since publication of the PRIME study earlier this year, testing volumes have increased steadily month-to-month, reflecting growing provider awareness and engagement.

Operating expenses for the quarter were $10 million, up slightly from $9.3 million in the prior year period, consistent with our expectations and reflecting disciplined cost management alongside continued investment in evidence generation, regulatory preparation and advocacy activities.

Research and development expenses were $3.5 million compared to $3.3 million in 2025, reflecting restructuring-related costs. We do expect R&D spending to decline in future periods as we continue to focus resources on our commercialization efforts.

Selling, general and administrative expenses were $6.5 million versus $6.0 million in the prior year, reflecting investments in targeted commercial activities, marketing programs and strategic commercial hires.

Net loss for the quarter was $9.1 million compared to a net loss of $8.0 million in the second quarter of 2025. We ended June 30, 2026, with $80.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities, which we believe will be sufficient to fund the company across significant adoption and commercial milestones through 2029.

As we continue to build the foundational elements necessary for broad adoption, including reimbursement progress, clinical validation and commercial execution, and with testing volumes continuing to increase, we believe the company is entering the second half of the year with strong momentum and a solid financial position.

With that, operator, let's open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Tycho Peterson from Jefferies.

This is Lauren on for Tycho. Congrats again on securing Illinois in the quarter. Maybe just one question around that. Like what are the specific steps to move from provider notice to active reimbursement for individual claims and kind of what that ramp looks like? And then given your presence in first wave states, which of these geographies is likely to follow the Illinois mandate? And then I have a follow-up.

Wonderful. Good to hear your voice, Lauren. Thank you for the question. It's a great opportunity for me to recap on the important sequence of steps that need to be put in place in order to start driving meaningful utilization and volume in any state where we secure access.

So first steps have to do with provider registration in the state and getting into network with the payers. Step #2 is understanding the end contracting with all of the payers present. Specifically in Illinois, there are 5 plans. And you can imagine it will take significant effort to reach out and contract in parallel with the 5 payers on all of the Medicaid population in the state.

While the first step, the registration and getting provider ID in the state might take from a couple of months up to a year, and we have started it across many states. The contracting timeline is a little bit tighter. So instead of a couple of months to a year, it's typically 6 to 9 months for the step #2, actual contracting for reimbursement with all of the payers.

And then the third is provider activation and reaching out sometimes alongside the payer to ensure all of the providers are on board that we activate the champions to educate the provider community since a lot of OB/GYNs are affiliated with hospitals, we typically focus on major institutions who hold MFM opinion leaders among their staff and work with them to have events and programs to ensure quick OB/GYN onboarding and test and intervention bundle adoption. So these 3 steps are typical to convert access like what we've achieved in Illinois to actual meaningful volume. So that's your -- the first half of the question.

Second half is in which other states are likely to follow. There are several other states we believe are close and have prioritized preterm birth as one of their health care priorities to focus on in their communities that allocate health care budget towards such priorities. The time line here is different, though, state by state. So while some states may have prioritized the preterm birth reimbursement higher, their legislative session does not start for another few months.

So what I promise we will do is provide greater transparency as we see public signals from the states that they are moving through evaluation and decision-making on reimbursing preterm test and funding preterm prevention priorities in their state.

Great. That was helpful color. And then just the second one around the SMFM meeting in October. I guess, how will your presence and the nature of your conversations differ this year versus last year now that PRIME and some of the sub-analyses are out there?

Thank you for the question. So first of all, the dialogue and the depth of dialogue and the tenor of the dialogue has shifted dramatically. With the PRIME data out there, we went from communicating the basics of clinical utility and the major endpoint results into much deeper conversations around the biology, the literature expectation of all of the biomarker pathways and how PRIME study and the 2 studies AVERT and PREVENT before the PRIME study came out, showed the same results and very much validated what literature expected SHBG and IBP4 biomarkers to show. And what this signals to me is that the clinical community very quickly passed through the -- does this test work? Into, of course, it works because it validates a lot of what literature said about these 2 biomarkers before and starting to ask questions on what other conditions does the test enrich for.

So a lot of our discussions with opinion leaders are starting to focus on those topics. And that's actually tremendously exciting because it confirms that the validation stage and the convincing stage is almost over, and now we're moving towards the acceptance and implementation and adoption question. Does that help?

Your next question comes from Daniel Brennan from TD Cowen.

Maybe first one, just on the 4 programs that you've signed, could you just remind us about across the programs, how we should think about those developing, meaning like what are the program directors looking for when will you share info and then what happens at the end of the program? Like what would be a success?

Great. Dan, thank you so much for the question. Different program directors and typically, we work directly with the Chief Medical Officers for either the plan or the state or employer or provider network for these programs. And their goals typically differ in size and scope, but they typically have to do with showing that we're able to replicate the tremendously successful outcomes from our clinical trials in real life in their patient population. That's very typical.

And with this latest program that just launched, it's very typical. This national payer took the quality metrics that they're accountable for to the state and knowing that PreTRM Test has the opportunity to impact their achievement. would like to see in the program population us moving the needle on those metrics.

And the spectrum of flavors that these programs take may include value-based care. Some partners look at what will be the outcomes and how much value is created and others really focus on just clinical outcomes. Does this help?

Yes. That's good. Maybe back to the first question in terms of -- I know Austin was talking a lot about as you guys migrate your focus maybe towards more -- start to think about more execution, delivery of volumes. But from the first question, obviously, on the Illinois, given the steps that have to occur in terms of activation outreach and whatnot, it sounds like really the impact there could be more '28 than '27, it feels like.

So correct me if I'm wrong there. But assuming it's more '28 when everything is in place, could you walk us through like you talked about 50,000 eligible births in the press release, like over the first, say, 3 years, I mean, is 10%, 15%? Like what's the way you think about when everything is set in Illinois, like how you might be able to ramp that 50,000 opportunity?

Great question, Dan, and thank you for cutting right to the chase on penetration percentages, which we often think about internally, how quickly can we ramp those. We -- so using the steps that I described in the conversation in the question earlier, we are in the midst of contracting with payers. So that is step number one. In parallel, of course, engaging with all the providers to educate them and running awareness campaigns. So that is step number one.

But I would say from July 1, when reimbursement took place, and we ramped our team immediately on the ground, do take the first 6 months for the contracting, and if I can call it, awareness building. So I do not expect a ton of penetration of these 50,000 Medicaid lives in 2026.

Then when we looked at the benchmarks of how other leading diagnostic and screening tests performed as far as penetration in years 1, 2 and 3 post access, we learned that 1% or 2% is good, 2% to 3% is outstanding and 5% is frequently not achieved until year 3. So we'd like to outperform -- but I would imagine that following that benchmark is at the least we are aiming to achieve.

So if we look at 2027 as full year 1, looking at the single-digit percentage points would be prudent, so 1% to 2% penetration following year, let's say, 2% to 3%, 2% to 4% and growing that to 5% in year 3 would be commensurate with the benchmarks we've seen. But of course, we'll keep you posted and talk a lot about how Illinois is going because that trajectory and that ramp will show you what we can do in other states once access is achieved there. Does this help?

Yes. No, that's great. And maybe I'll just ask one more. So the engagement with 20 payers across 20 states, like what's the -- how do we think about the path there for converting those opportunities in reimbursement?

Yes. So I mentioned that engagement follows a pretty typical pathway after the introductory call and getting everybody familiar with the data. The second step usually is the triage on the payer side. Are they going to put us through their policy review? Are they going to take a path of thinking about a program together in any particular geography or exploration of a value-based arrangement or a conversation around partnering with one of their customers, let's say, an employer or a provider.

So with these 20 payers plus across 20-plus states, the segments fall into these 3 categories. There is a swath of payers where we are being taken through the policy review process. With national payers, the process typically takes 9 to 12 months. None of the payers make it transparent how long their policy review process takes. But typically, once that process concludes, there is a definitive decision for now on where does our product fall in their reimbursement schedule.

The second segment is where they chose to let's do something together like you, Sarah are doing in XYZ state with such and such payer. We would like to do something similar. So we're discussing which states, which geographies would be valuable to them. And payers typically look at both where the need is the highest for the patients, where the cost of care is the highest and where they have an opportunity to win new business. So specifically on Medicaid, they're looking to achieve quality metrics required by Medicaid, leveraging the test. And we've got quite a few payers thinking about which locations we might want to run a program or they might want to implement the test first.

And third set of payers, the engagement is around, okay, well, let's look for a set of customers that would be excited to implement this or a set of providers where the implementation could take place efficiently and they could see real time how quickly we're able to drive results. So if that helps, that's a quick segmentation for lack of a better term of the landscape of payer engagement across the states.

Next question comes from Bill Bonello from Craig-Hallum.

Just a question on any updated thoughts in terms of guidelines?

Bill, thank you for the question. We are working diligently on the strategy we laid out in our previous calls, namely, as you know, ACOG and SMFM are facing a long list of priorities of topics that need guideline updates, and they prioritize the topics that need to be updated based on the literature that has come out recently with new information that may change the guidelines.

So both societies advised us to publish, publish, publish. That's why we've doubled down, not let up after PRIME publication, but doubled down and increased our resources to look at the PRIME data set, expand the set of opinion leaders to engage them to look at our PRIME data set together and continue publishing as much as we possibly can in the near future. And that's why we were highlighting the publication of sub-analysis on the first-time moms -- this is exactly the kind of activity that ensures that the bulletin 2,3,4, which is where update of the guidelines will be most immediate for us is on our priority list and the community received incredibly warmly the analyses that we are conducting. And we've got a pipeline of another half a dozen that will come out in the coming year or 2.

So that is the biggest update. We are executing on the ask from both societies to mine the treasure trove of the PRIME data set and publish as much as possible about the PreTRM Test effectiveness to put it out into the community so that data can be included in the guidelines review when the time comes.

That's helpful. And then just in terms of the oral presentation upcoming at the SMFM, what -- is that going to be new data that above and beyond what was published in July? Or is the presentation essentially of a recap of what was published?

It's data that was published, indeed, the new data that just came out.

And your next question comes from Matt Larew from Blair -- William Blair.

Just one for me, which is on CE Marking. Things targeting fourth quarter now or I guess, by year-end for submission versus midyear. I think you mentioned some additional data that was asked for. Just kind of curious, was that after convening the Advisory Board, was that data they suggested might augment your package? Or was it a feedback in terms of addressing any specific shortcomings in the package? Just kind of curious what led to that decision and if you're still -- I guess, kind of what the confidence is to get it by the end of the year?

Thank you so much, Matt. No, it did not come out from the Advisory Board. It was our internal team's recommendation and actually it had to do with looking at the stability of the samples as they travel to the lab for analysis and a couple of other things.

So to derisk execution, as I mentioned, it would be good to be extra sure given you've heard the heat waves, you've heard that we are pursuing ELISA, and there's a slightly different pathway in Europe that we're taking from the blood draw to the lab where it's analyzed. So that's been the driver, not the Advisory Board. We are working with great consultants, regulatory consultants and are very happy with all of the regulatory interactions and remain on track to get to our CE mark as soon as possible.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Zhenya Lindgardt for her closing remarks. Please continue.

Thank you so much, everyone, for your time today. With growing market access, clinical evidence and encouraging commercial indicators, we believe the business is building meaningful momentum as we move through the second half of 2026, and we look forward to updating you on our progress in another quarter. Thank you so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sera Prognostics' First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that this call is being recorded today, Wednesday, May 6, 2026.

I will now turn the call over to our first speaker today, Jennifer Zibuda, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Sera Prognostics' First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At the close of market today, Sera Prognostics released its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. Presenting for the company today will be Zhenya Lindgardt, President and CEO; and Austin Aerts, our CFO.

During the call, we will review the financial results we released today, after which we will host a question-and-answer session. If you've not had a chance to review our quarterly earnings release, it can be found on our website at sera.com. This call can be heard live via webcast at sera.com, and a recording will be archived in the Investors section of our website.

Please note that some of the information presented today may contain projections or other forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including plans and projections for our business, future financial results and market trends and opportunities. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and the actual events or results may differ materially and adversely from those expectations for a variety of reasons.

We refer you to the documents the company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the company's annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its current reports on Form 8-K. These documents identify important risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections and other forward-looking statements.

I will now turn the call over to Zhenya.

Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Given that we reported full year results just over 6 weeks ago, I'll focus my remarks on several key developments that continue to advance our commercial strategy and expand access to PreTRM. Following the publication of the full PRIME study results in January, our primary focus in the first quarter was building awareness with both clinicians and broader stakeholders. Our education and outreach efforts were designed to broaden understanding of preterm birth risk and prevention, including among audiences that are difficult to reach through traditional health care channels.

From a provider engagement standpoint, we maintained a strong presence across key clinical forums, including the SMSM Annual Meeting in February, and more recently, the ACOG Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting. At SMSM, we highlighted key clinical evidence and engaged directly with maternal fetal medicine specialists on PreTRM's role in risk stratification and early intervention. We also engaged with SMSM leadership to discuss PRIME study outcomes. At ACOG, we built on that momentum with a targeted product theater that showcased both the PRIME data and practical implementation strategies, underscoring how PreTRM can be seamlessly integrated into routine clinical care.

We have been featured in several targeted podcasts this year, which complements our presence at medical meetings and extends our reach. In March, the SHE MD podcast featured an interview with Hailey Bieber discussing her pregnancy and the PreTRM test, which she received under the care of Dr. Aliabadi, SHE MD co-host and Sera's customer. This generated a high level of awareness of PreTRM, given Hailey's global visibility and social following along with a subsequent People magazine exclusive interview. The episode surpassed 0.5 million views and continues to drive awareness.

Following that, we engaged the SHE MD to record a new podcast episode releasing May 14 to coincide with National Women's Health Week. This interview will feature a conversation on the science behind Sera, the clinical evidence from PRIME and how the PreTRM test needs broad awareness and should be considered as future standard of care. The episode discusses Dr. Aliabadi's experience with PreTRM tests over the last few years and the value of prevention and evidence-based risk identification. We hope you will all tune in next week.

As we look ahead, we will also be featured on Medscape Hear From Her, the Women in Healthcare Leadership podcast, engaging in conversation with the podcast host, Jelena Spyropoulos and Dr. Mollie McDonald, Maternal & Fetal Medicine Specialist at St. David's Women's Center in Austin, Texas. The episode dives into the realities of preterm birth, the need for proper intervention and what can be done to help patients. Together, these media efforts continue to drive awareness across patients and providers, policymakers and payers who play an important role in improving pregnancy outcomes.

Turning to our commercial progress. Our efforts during the quarter remained focused on building sustainable access points and referral pathways that we expect to support our long-term volume and revenue. Adding to our 2 live programs, we launched our third partnership program during the quarter, further expanding education and access to PreTRM. This program is expected to reach over 350 providers across 3 states, expanding our clinical footprint and advancing earlier identification and intervention for at-risk pregnancies.

Beyond these established programs, we are contracting with additional partners and expect to provide more detail as these initiatives transition from contracting into live implementation. In parallel, we are now engaged in active discussions with 13 payers across 15 states, reflecting our strategy to deepen relationships with a focused set of target markets. We believe this concentrated approach is more effective in driving meaningful implementation and adoption than pursuing broader but less integrated engagement. Across all of these efforts, our priorities remain execution, reimbursement, physician awareness, clinical integration and provider adoption. We view these steps as foundational to broader coverage and scale over time.

In addition to reimbursement, we are making steady progress in our efforts to drive guideline inclusion while continuing to expand the evidence-based supporting PreTRM. As discussed in our year-end call, European expert commentary on the PRIME trial was published in the Journal of Maternal Fetal and Neonatal Medicine in March. The authors emphasized that current preterm birth prevention strategies failed to identify the majority of women who ultimately deliver preterm and highlighted the alignment of the PreTRM approach with existing European health care systems.

Also in March, results from the PREPARE survey were accepted for publication in the Journal of Women's Health. This survey examined preterm birth awareness and risk perception among women across 5 European countries and identified a meaningful gap between perceived awareness and actionable understanding, reinforcing the need for earlier and more standardized risk communication. We look forward to the formal publication expected in May.

Together, these publications support our stakeholder engagement efforts in Europe and underscore the global relevance of risk-based preterm birth prevention as health care systems increasingly emphasize prevention, education and cost-effective maternal care.

Looking ahead, we remain on track to publish several additional PRIME sub-analyses in 2026, including a highly anticipated health economic study, Medicaid population outcomes of the PRIME study and a focused analysis of first-time moms, further strengthening the clinical and economic foundation for adoption.

During the quarter, we also continued to advance our advocacy strategy. Preterm birth is not only a clinical challenge but a public health and policy issue. We're engaging with stakeholders across multiple states to monitor and, where appropriate, support legislative initiatives and policy discussions focused on earlier identification and prevention, particularly in Medicaid and value-based care settings.

We also recently launched a targeted letter writing campaign designed to encourage physicians and patients to engage with state Medicaid programs on reimbursement for the PreTRM test. The initiative is intended to amplify at the local level, the existing clinical voice calling for access for its risk populations. To date, we've seen encouraging participation with multiple letters submitted across several states, reflecting growing physician advocacy and awareness. We believe these grassroots efforts will play an important role in advancing broader coverage discussions over time.

Through these efforts, we continue to build awareness and alignment well in advance of formal coverage decisions and to help policymakers understand both the clinical and the economic burden of preterm birth. We view advocacy as an important complement to our commercial and scientific strategies.

In Europe, we continue to make progress towards commercialization readiness. We remain on track for a midyear submission of our CE Marking dossier and have had constructive discussions with regulators and clinical stakeholders. Engagement with our European advisory group continues to reinforce alignment around clinical utility, evidence requirements and implementation considerations.

On capital deployment, we have completed the next phase of our evolution from a clinical-stage company to a commercial organization driven to secure reimbursement and revenue. Following a comprehensive business review, we realigned resources, identified significant operational efficiencies and streamlined R&D and G&A functions. We are prioritizing investments in payer engagement, market access and clinical adoption of PR.

As part of this realignment, we are intentionally shifting capital away from R&D and clinical operations towards commercial and medical activities that directly support access and adoption. Over time, this results in a meaningfully higher proportion of our operating spend focused on commercialization and medical engagement with R&D becoming a smaller share of our overall expense base as we move into 2027 and beyond. These actions are expected to reduce our base operating expenses by nearly $10 million annually while enhancing our ability to focus capital on commercialization efforts.

At this new operating level, we expect that our existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund our operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements through 2029. By extending our runway by an additional year, we have positioned the company to capitalize on meaningful growth expected over the next 12 months and to achieve key access and commercialization milestones in the years to come.

To wrap up, the first quarter was characterized by awareness building and intentional positioning, expanding access points, strengthening referral pathways, advancing advocacy efforts and continuing to build the scientific foundation necessary for long-term adoption. Everything we've discussed today reflects a consistent strategy focused on establishing the prerequisites for durable, scalable adoption. And while these adoption cycles take time, we remain encouraged by the level of engagement we are seeing and confident that the foundation we are laying will support meaningful long-term pull-through.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Austin.

Thanks, Zhenya, and good afternoon, everyone. Revenue for the quarter was $14,000 compared to $38,000 in the first quarter of 2025. As expected, revenue in the quarter remained modest, reflecting the timing and nature of our geographically targeted commercialization strategy and our ongoing effort to build advocacy and awareness following the PRIME publication.

Operating expenses for the quarter were $9.4 million, up slightly from $9.3 million in the prior year period, consistent with our expectations and reflecting disciplined cost management alongside continued investment in evidence generation, regulatory preparation and advocacy activities. As discussed, following our business review, we expect to reduce our operating expense base by nearly $10 million on an annualized basis. The benefit in 2026 will be limited due to the phasing of activities and related charges with the majority of the savings expected to be realized in 2027 and beyond.

Research and development expenses were $3.0 million compared to $3.3 million in 2025. With the PRIME study now published, R&D expenses will continue to decrease as we focus resources on activities that more directly drive commercialization and awareness building.

Selling, general and administrative expenses were $6.3 million versus $5.9 million in the prior year, reflecting our transition from clinical stage investments toward targeted commercial initiatives and strategic headcount.

Net loss for the quarter was $8.4 million compared to a net loss of $8.2 million in the first quarter of 2025. We ended March 31, 2026, with $86.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities.

Based on our measured commercialization strategy and a more sustainable cost base resulting from the activities discussed earlier, we believe our capital resources will be sufficient to fund the company across significant adoption and commercial milestones through 2029. As Zhenya outlined, our strategy prioritizes building durable prerequisites for adoption.

From a financial perspective, that means revenue in 2026 could remain modest and uneven as we continue pushing reimbursement, awareness and advocacy campaigns and as programs move from setup to implementation with increasing pull-through anticipated later in the year and into 2027.

In summary, the first quarter reflects continued financial discipline alongside steady progress in laying the groundwork for broader adoption. We remain focused on execution as these initiatives mature.

With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your question comes from Tycho Peterson from Jefferies.

This is [ Lauren ] on for Tycho. A few from me. First on the partner program. So could we get maybe a little bit of color on the kind of profile of the third partner and kind of how it compares to the first 2? And then in terms of kind of the required cadence throughout the rest of the year to hit the goal of 5 to 7 partner programs and what that's going to look like for the next couple of quarters?

And then second, for the new reps, I think you've talked about before how it could take a couple of quarters to kind of see density of adoption and increased productivity. Are you measuring anything in terms of test per rep per month or other KPIs that you're targeting for the second half of the year for these reps?

Lauren, thank you so much for the questions. On the programs, indeed, very exciting. The way we planned our pipeline of the potential programs is to launch roughly one a quarter to make sure that we swarm the organization and stand them up well. Each program typically is a combination of a payer and provider groups to ensure that the pull-through can happen on the ground in the offices quickly.

We've learned over the last couple of years that it takes a few months to iron out how the patients who test for higher risk of preterm birth get cared for by the physician offices with the intervention bundle. So we make it as seamlessly integrated into the workflow of those offices as possible. So for us, each of these programs, that's why one a quarter roughly, and we're right on track with that with another launch this quarter.

We first select how will the test get paid for, engage on reimbursement, then with the payers, figure out what is the set of providers that are going to partner with us to adopt the test and get them ready for seamless integration to their workflow and delivery of the intervention bundle. So that is critical for fast recruitment and delivery of the test to the participant, which, of course, in turn, gives the results to both payers and providers faster. So it's in all of the partners' interest in these programs to prepare well to get to -- for us to revenue, for them to impact faster.

For many programs, we are engaged deeply with the state as well. So on a quarterly basis, we report out the progress of the programs to the state Medicaid agencies, and these are usually public quorums where other payers are present. And another reason why one a quarter is because there's a fair bit of follow-up with other payers in the state that have the Medicaid plans who are starting to also reach out and want to participate. So we're excited to report that our pipeline of payers that we're engaged with is growing steadily from 10 payers in 13 states, which we reported last quarter, to 13 payers in 15 states.

We're still sticking to our target states. But what we're seeing happen is the payers that we're running the program with now for 6 to 9 months are introducing us to other parts of their organization that cover plans in other states, which is exactly what we were hoping for and expanding with these payers into other regions. So that's why we're pacing it one a quarter roughly, and you can certainly anticipate us announcing one per quarter.

Of course, we'll go faster if we can go faster, but I described the activities so that you get a feel for what an undertaking it is to stand up these pretty substantial provider institutions who partner with us, obviously, of course, because we, with the payers, select large volume institutions so that we could get the density of test ordering after we get reimbursement to go faster and the pull-through to be clear for about once a quarter to give us 3 months to execute on the launch of the program. Does that answer the first part of your question?

Yes, that's helpful color.

Perfect. And then the second question, of course, rep productivity is critical. Actually, our Chief Commercial Officer and our Head of Sales, that's exactly how they engage with Austin and me on our forecasting on the number of reps and the number of tests per month per rep that is anticipated so that we can go the reps and drive towards steady progress. And of course, we're cautiously optimistic, but we want to watch it for another few quarters. We are seeing these metrics move.

Your -- the question behind the question probably is when are you guys going to report on some of these metrics? Let us see the steady progress on them internally first. And as soon as we see the steady up and up, we will start reporting on them.

Your next question comes from Dan Brennan from TD Cowen.

Maybe first one, just on -- you both talked about the shift to a more direct commercial effort, maybe pulling back some resources on the R&D side, extend the cash runway. Just I guess, what prompted the shift? It kind of makes sense logically, but I'm just wondering kind of is there any feedback in the market about timing, how long it's going to take. Or was this in discussion with the Board? Just maybe a little color behind that.

Dan, thank you for the question. That's a very logical one. There's actually 2 root causes that drove that happening now. First, of course, as you know, the R&D and clinical operations efforts, both of these groups were incredibly focused on PRIME. And that was a 7-year effort, if you can believe it, with very, very heavy resourcing devoted to that. As we're shifting towards now publishing as much as possible with a couple of dozen publications in the pipeline from our data, we realized that we need less capacity specifically for our PreTRM birth product, R&D and ClinOps capacity.

Of course, we have a pipeline of other products that we're working on, but we had inbound interest from partners to collaborate on R&D and clinical operations efforts in developing new tests. So what you're really seeing as the first impetus is the less demand on R&D and ClinOps capacity internally and the second one is the demand externally. to continue developing the tests.

And as soon as we lock in these partnerships, of course, we'll communicate all of those to you. And you can imagine our R&D proteomics platform is a great asset with a biobank of thousands and perhaps a couple of tens of thousands of samples, which will allow us to support other diagnostic and screening tests in pregnancy, perhaps also support therapeutics of screening in for eligibility for drug interventions in pregnancy.

You can imagine it's a strategic move as well as just simply less demand internally for now until we pick up in this collaborative model on other assets. So that's the answer on the R&D side. Does that help?

Yes. Yes, that helps. Very logical. Maybe just a couple of other quick ones. Just on the -- I think previously, you talked about low single-digit thousand volumes this year. Is that still on track? Or just maybe kind of how should we think about that?

Dan, I didn't hear you quite well. Low single-digit thousand...

Was talking about volumes for '26.

I got you. That's not unreasonable. As you know, we don't report the volume of orders, but it's certainly not an unreasonable number to be thinking about. And given your question, Dan, and our conversations, of course, we'll -- as soon as we see steadiness, we'll start reporting on it. But yes, that assumption is not unreasonable.

Got it. And then maybe just on the first Medicaid program that began, I think, a little over a year ago, when can you see that program potentially turn into a positive coverage decision, do you think?

Great question. And I think when we announced it, we -- I believe I even talked through the time line for that particular program. We believe it will take us -- it took us about 6 months to stand it up with EMR integration and all of the provider setup to provide care management for the patients. And actually, the set of collaborators are now piloting a digital tool with us that allows the providers to deliver care management a lot more efficiently with weekly symptom check tooling. And we're looking forward to reporting on how that goes because that is something that will remove a significant barrier in terms of taking the OB/GYN nursing capacity from the office for that care management.

So it took us 6 months to do that. It will take us about 9 to 12 months to fully recruit the program; about 4 to 5 months for the patients to deliver, obviously, on a rolling basis; then a couple of months to collect data on the outcomes, NICU admissions, health of the baby, weight of the baby, all of the other outcomes we typically would monitor in these implementation studies. And then, of course, take it to the state.

I will tell you the state is not waiting for it. The state already engaged with us on -- for that particular program on what would coverage mean, why is it needed. We are mobilizing our clinical advocates in that state, and that's what I meant when I said our letter writing campaign. We're asking every provider to write to the state Medicaid and advocate why this test needs to be paid for in the state for all of the pregnant moms there.

So the tactical time line I laid out nets out to be about 2 years to decision time line for the state. I think that probably has plus or minus a quarter or 2 on each side of that 2-year estimate. It could go faster. It could go a little bit slower if data is messy, for example, because in some states, they assign the baby into a different Medicaid plan at birth. Don't ask me why that's done, but that's the case.

And it requires us to do some data chasing to combine the mom and baby outcomes. So for that program, we expect probably beginning of 2027 to bring the decision and the results of the program to us. And of course, we'll report on that. Does that help?

Yes, that helps a lot.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Zhenya Lindgardt, President and CEO. Please continue.

Thank you so much, operator. In summary, we're building the medical reimbursement and advocacy foundations necessary for commercialization and guideline inclusion efforts, and the engagement we're seeing across stakeholders reinforces our confidence in the opportunity ahead. Thank you so much, everyone, for your time today, and we look forward to continuing to share our progress steadily each quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participation. You may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sera Prognostics Fourth Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jennifer Zibuda. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to Sera Prognostics fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. At the close of market today, Sera Prognostics released its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2025.

Presenting for the company today will be Zhenya Lindgardt, President and CEO; Lee Anderson, Chief Commercial Officer; Dr. Tiffany Inglis, Chief Medical Officer, and Austin Aerts, our CFO. During the call, we will review the financial results we released today, after which we will host a question-and-answer session. If you've not had a chance to review our quarterly earnings release, it can be found on our website at sera.com. This call can be heard live via webcast at sera.com, and a recording will be archived in the Investors section of our website.

Please note that some of the information presented today may contain projections or other forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including plans and projections for our business, future financial results and market trends and opportunities. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and the actual events or results may differ materially and adversely from these expectations for a variety of reasons. We refer you to the documents, the company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the company's annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its current reports on Form 8-K. These documents identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections and other forward-looking statements.

I will now turn the call over to Zhenya

Thank you, Jennifer, and good afternoon, everyone. I will start with an overview of our 2025 progress, and Lee and Tiffany will speak about our commercial and medical affairs efforts, and Austin will provide a recap of our financial results.

As we shared last year, to support Sera's next phase of commercialization, we strengthened our leadership team with Lee Anderson joining us as Chief Commercial Officer, and Dr. Tiffany Inglis as our Chief Medical Officer, enhancing our commercial and clinical depth, and I wanted to use this opportunity to introduce them to all of you on today's call and have them discuss our progress with you.

2025 was a critical year for Sera, finalizing our PRIME publication to advance our evidence portfolio, setting up for commercial push in 2026, building our organization, ensuring we have capital to deploy in our commercialization efforts and laying groundwork for potential international expansion. Our goal was simple: to build the evidence, access and commercial infrastructure required to drive PreTRM adoption at scale. Across all of these dimensions, we made meaningful progress. We began 2025 focused on strengthening the clinical and scientific foundation supporting our commercialization strategy, the presentation of PRIME study at Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Meeting in Q1. A major milestone followed as expected late in the year when our pivotal PRIME study was accepted for publication in December with a full manuscript published in January 2026.

The publication reported important new data, showing that the PRIME study resulted in amazing 56% and 32% fewer babies born before 32 and 35 weeks of gestation, respectively. The full peer-reviewed publication of PRIME in the pregnancy Journal of Society of Maternal and Fetal Medicine, like studies before it, namely AVERT, reinforces what we've long believed that biomarker-based identification of women at higher risk of preterm birth, paired with a preventive treatment protocol, can deliver meaningful reductions in preterm birth rates and drive improved health outcomes for babies.

As we move into 2026, we plan to extend this momentum through a thoughtful further analysis, publication and real-world evidence for generation strategy, designed to communicate and replicate PRIME outcomes across diverse populations, geographies and care models. These data will be essential as we engage payers and broaden awareness across the clinical community. I will ask Dr. Inglis to speak more about our scientific and guideline engagement shortly. Post publication, we are making meaningful strides in advancing payer coverage and access as our top priority. A central part of the strategy has been launching targeted programs, particularly in Medicaid in high-preterm birth burden states, to generate outcomes data that support both clinical adoption and reimbursement expansion. Historically, we referred to these efforts as Medicaid pilot programs. However, with additional real-world experience, it is clear that these programs take many forms, and our discussions involve both Medicaid and commercial payers.

As a result, we believe Partner Programs more accurately reflects the breadth of our commercialization efforts. So we'll speak about those. Last year, we set out to engage with our first wave of 6 target states and to launch Partner Programs. We exceeded our state engagement goals in 2025, expanding discussions to 13 states and met our goal of engaging in now 2 live partner programs. We expect these partner programs to play a critical role in shaping policy, validating economics and informing future contracting discussions. We're maintaining our disciplined geographic focused approach, targeting expansion of up to 15 to 17 states by year-end, representing 58% to 60% of U.S. births. This strategy allows us to deepen our traction in our existing target states while thoughtfully adding new ones.

With this focused growth plan, we are on track to be running 5 to 7 partner programs by the end of 2026. Lee will detail our execution, 2026 KPIs for states in active discussions and Partner Programs as well as how we expect to convert engagements into coverage pathways.

In Europe, we continue to make steady progress towards unlocking a significant largely unaddressed obstetric care opportunity. Over the last 2 years, we have advanced our regulatory pathway for the PreTRM Global Test and are working towards CE marking approval. We remain on track to submit our European dossier in the coming months. Importantly, recent European expert commentary published in the Journal of Maternal Fetal and Neonatal Medicine reinforces that current prevention strategies miss most women who deliver preterm and highlights our PRIME study approach as well aligned with European health care systems.

Alongside ongoing engagement with regulators, clinical leaders and patient advocacy groups, we're building the foundation needed for successful market entry, following regulatory clearance. We continue to expect revenue growth to build gradually as Partner Programs mature and real-world evidence results are generated and disseminated. We'll remain disciplined, investing in market access, commercial infrastructure and state expansion in a measured way.

With that, I'll hand it over to Lee to discuss our commercial execution. Lee?

Thank you, Zhenya, and hello, everyone. In 2025, we refined a region-first approach, pairing payer engagement with OB/GYN and maternal fetal medicine education, health system outreach and patient awareness to build local market density. That integrated model now guides our early commercialization across all target states.

Following PRIME's publication, we saw strong interest across the payer landscape. Our team engaged broadly with Medicaid agencies, commercial plans and related organizations nationwide, leading to a meaningful cohort of payers reengaging to begin or advance internal reviews. These interactions reinforce the value of our Partner Program approach, a flexible model that adapts to each state, payer and population. As Zhenya mentioned, in 2025, we were in active discussions with 10 payers across 13 states. Looking towards 2026, we expect to expand our efforts to be in active discussions with 15 to 17 states, and we will double the number of payers, we are engaged with. As these discussions mature, our goal is to convert these engagements into positive coverage decisions or formal partner programs that support broader access and utilization.

For Partner Programs, we expect to be running 5 to 7 active programs by the end of the year. We expanded provider education and awareness via peer-to-peer programs, medical center and service sessions and digital education through leading clinical platforms, building clinical champions and strengthening relationships across OB/GYN and MFM practices while supporting early health systems conversations.

Operationally, we refined the ordering experience, expanded field education, enhanced on-boarding and are progressing integrations and collaborations so that PreTRM can be incorporated more seamlessly into the everyday clinical workflows. To illustrate how the model comes together, consider a representative region. We align with the payer on a Partner Program to evaluate outcomes and economics. We brief the leading hospital system and its OB/MFM department on PRIME in the care pathway. We also provide targeted onboarding and practice level tools to ordering is simple. and we activate a localized awareness effort, so that patients and providers understand the why and the how. Over time, we focus on repeat ordering within early adopters, then widen access as results occur and the payers' review process advances. While each region is different, this playbook helps us drive consistent execution without overextending resources.

Our near-term commercial priorities are to convert payer discussions and Partner Programs into contracted coverage pathways using outcomes and economic data. Scale repeat ordering within our current early adopter providers and health systems by driving workflow reliability and clinical habit formation and to expand provider awareness and educational efforts.

Before I turn the call over to Tiffany, please join me in welcoming Ms. Adrienne Lugo as the new Head of Sales and Strategic Accounts for Sera. Adrienne brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in women's health and molecular diagnostics, along with a strong track record of building high-performing teams, expanding market access and partnering with health systems to drive adoption of innovative testing solutions. Her strategic expertise will be instrumental as we scale commercial execution and accelerate adoption of our technology to advance improved outcomes in maternal health.

With that, Tiffany will provide a clinical and evidence update.

Thank you, Lee, and good afternoon. Our medical affairs work in 2026 is focused on ensuring PRIME acts as a catalyst for consistent evidence-based practice. We're emphasizing three themes. One, is identify risk early in the second trimester before symptoms are present. Second, we deploy a standardized test-and-treat pathway consistent with PRIME. And lastly, we support improved neonatal outcomes with the potential to reduce avoidable neonatal hospital utilization.

We're partnering closely with clinicians on patient selection, timing and care pathway deployment while expanding our clinical champion network and peer partnerships. In practical terms, PreTRM is designed to provide early individualized risk information from a routine blood draw, information that clinicians can act on through a standardized care pathway. The goal is straightforward: know who is at elevated risk early before symptoms begin, intervene with measures that are already familiar to providers and safe for patients and do so in a consistent way that has been proven to support both quality and affordability across populations.

To complement PRIME, we're generating real-world evidence results across diverse populations, care settings and payer environments. This includes outcomes tracking within Partner Programs, health economic and outcomes research, assessment of budget impact, population level analysis for state and payer decision-making and collaborations with academic centers to broaden the evidence base beyond the PRIME cohort. These efforts are foundational to guideline inclusion, payer policy updates and thoughtful adoption. We continue to partner with Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine and ACOG and other payer guideline committees, providing evidence-based packages that include clinical outcomes, safety considerations, implementation data and economic modeling aligned to each group's evaluation framework.

Our goal is to demonstrate how incorporating PreTRM into care pathways supports early proactive identification of need, complements existing risk tools, improves episode of care quality metrics and addresses affordability by leveraging a major driver of maternity cost. In addition to these education initiatives, we've also launched a campaign to assist providers in requesting coverage for the PreTRM Test. This campaign is available broadly with multiple providers confirming submission of requests in 4 states and an additional 10-plus providers across all of our focus states in the process of submitting additional requests.

Beyond our efforts, several state Medicaid agencies and state legislatures have begun exploring policy approaches to address the significant clinical and economic burden of preterm birth. This could come in the form of a bill, budget appropriation or coverage from the Medicaid department mandating that payers cover the PreTRM Test. While we have been engaged when asked to provide education and perspective, these discussions have largely been driven by the state's recognition of the unmet need, their focus on health equity, the impact preterm birth has on their communities and the financial burden it places on Medicaid budgets.

I'll now hand it to Austin for the financials and our capital allocation approach.

Thanks, Tiffany, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start with our financial results and then discuss our cash runway and capital allocation philosophy.

Starting with the fourth quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $10,000 compared to $24,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. As a reminder, revenue remains modest and can fluctuate from period to period in this early commercial stage. We continue to expect revenue expansion as we move towards broader commercialization following the PRIME publication. Operating expenses for the quarter were $9 million, down from $9.4 million for the prior year period, reflecting our continued disciplined expense management.

Research and development expenses were $3.2 million compared to $3.1 million in 2024. With the completion of the PRIME study, R&D expenses will likely decrease as we focus resources on activities that support commercialization and awareness building. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $5.7 million versus $6.3 million in the prior year, reflecting our prudent allocation to targeted commercial initiatives and strategic headcount. Net loss for the quarter was $7.9 million compared to a net loss of $8.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Turning to the full year. Total revenue for 2025 was $81,000, up slightly from $77,000 in 2024. Total expenses were $36.6 million compared to $36.7 million last year as we began our strategy of capital reallocation from R&D to commercial activities in advance of PRIME publication. Research and development expenses for the full year were $13.2 million, down from $14.7 million in 2024 and driven by lower clinical study costs following PRIME completion. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $23.3 million compared to $21.9 million last year due to targeted commercial readiness investments. Net loss for the year was $31.9 million compared to $32.9 million in 2024, again, demonstrating our disciplined approach to capital deployment.

We ended December 31, 2025, with $95.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities. Based on our current operating plan and commercialization strategy, we believe this capital will fund the company across significant adoption and commercial milestones through 2028.

In summary, 2025 was a year of important financial and operational progress. We maintained tight expense control, strengthened the balance sheet and position the company to execute effectively as we move into a transformative year with the publication of PRIME and our expected commercial expansion.

Before we open the call for questions, I will provide a brief overview of our capital allocation philosophy for the near term. Our approach is anchored in disciplined deployment toward milestones that de-risk the commercial model while maintaining the strength of our balance sheet. One, we'll prioritize market access, making investments that accelerate coverage decisions such as Partner Programs that include quality of care and health economic outcomes research; two, focus on commercial scale-up, concentrating resources where we see the greatest adoption potential like regions with payer engagement, clinical champions and health system readiness; three, fund additional evidence-generating programs such as RWE and targeted clinical collaborations that could support guideline inclusion and payer policy updates; and four, maintain financial discipline and flexibility, pacing spending in line with key milestones and emerging adoption or reimbursement tailwinds. As sales volumes build following payer decisions and broader access, we will sequence certain commercial and infrastructure investments when appropriate. This ensures our ability to preserve runway while supporting a healthy, sustainable ramp from early adoption to repeat ordering.

Regarding this last point, concurrent with today's 10-K filing, we reestablished our at-the-market or ATM facility. While we have no immediate plans to issue shares, maintaining an ATM is the best practice in corporate hygiene for companies at our stage. It provides the optionality of an efficient and low-cost tool to maintain financial flexibility and provide sustainable ramp as we advance payer coverage, commercial adoption and key milestones for PreTRM. With our current cash position providing runway through 2028, this does not reflect any change in the capital allocation priorities I discussed or any near-term funding needs. It simply renews our access to our existing shelf registration and maintains financial preparedness.

With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Brackmann with William Blair.

I want to go back to something Lee said in his remarks, sort of around sort of converting payer discussions and Partner Programs by using sort of outcomes and some economic data. Can you maybe just expand on that a little bit, just sort of in practical terms, how does that work with each of these partners? And then typically, what do you expect that these partners will look for in these results to sort of move forward with some of those contracts that you might expect?

Sure. Thank you for the question. I'm also going to list Tiffany on this as well. But by the Partner Program approach, excuse me, you take an entity that's interested and they look at the clinical outcomes, they're also going to look at their books and their numbers and their patient population and equate that to the economic benefit that if they adopted PreTRM and the treatment regimen as standard of care, what could that do for their patient base, so to speak? So as we have these discussions, we are not only highlighting the clinical outcome improvement, but also the health economic outcome improvement. And that's, as you can imagine, very important for state Medicaid agencies or providers throughout the country.

Yes. The only thing I would add, I agree completely is as we look at the results of Prime and that 20% reduction in NICU admissions, NICU utilization is a huge driver of spend and trend for those who are paying the bill on the backside, whether that's our government or whether that's employer groups or whether that's payers. And so as we think about our partnerships with each of those entities, they've really struggled with how to control that spend and trend. And this is really an avenue for them to have a significant impact on something that drives a large cost driver for many of them as well as something that drives things like high-cost claimants and things like that on their books.

So as we continue to do sub-analysis and evidence generation post-PRIME, the health economic model and the impact to what that looks like will be something that we'll be able to speak even more deeply about from a publication perspective, but we're able to share with our partners now what that 20% NICU reduction really looks like.

Perfect. That's really, really helpful. And then I want to go back to the comment made around sort of SMFM, it was earlier in the year, it's been a couple of months now. Can you maybe just sort of talk about some of the feedback that you received at the conference? And then since then, how the conversations maybe changed now that PRIME is published, you've gone through that conference and sort of where we're at today?

Yes. No, it's a great question. So the SMFM Conference, the National Conference was in February of this year, and it was shortly after we obviously had our publication go live in the pregnancy journal, which is the SMFM Journal, and it was a great conference, a ton of engagement with providers, but also with the leadership at SMFM and really understanding next steps and how we work together and how we make this test more accessible to women. And so we're continuing on those next steps with our partners there, many of whom are investigators on our study, have been integrally working tightly with SMFM from day one, including the company itself as well.

So really looking at all the next steps, what does that look like and then opportunities for rapid response or other things like that with those partners so that we can understand what that guidelines and what the changes would look like and how we get to that endpoint, which, again, is just about access for patients to this test and for providers for this test to be able to change those outcomes for moms and babies.

And I will add, Andrew, that the team has seen a marked improvement in engagement across providers, payers, state legislators, key opinion leaders, societies, employers. The study really proved and gave us credibility. We've long believed can be supported by an RCT-level evidence. And indeed, it's coming to fruition. It's been only about 10 weeks since the publication took place, but we're incredibly excited about the signal we're seeing from all of these audiences, and we'll keep reporting on engagement specifically with the guideline setting bodies and the signals that we can send to the market about where the standards of care are evolving to.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson with Jefferies.

This is Lauren on for Tycho. My first question, I guess, is around the cash runway into 2028. How are you guys planning to balance investments in kind of successful U.S. states versus the capital requirements of the global EU launch? And do you kind of expect to accelerate SG&A spend into this year?

Lauren, thanks for the question. Yes, I think we said this in the last quarter, but I'll reiterate some of the basics, and then I'll get into the questions. So last year, OpEx -- cash OpEx was in the low 30s. We have budgeted the same -- roughly the same cash OpEx this year, and that's with reallocating a significant amount of our spending, from our clinical and R&D activities more towards our commercial activities, which does include the work we're doing in the EU, a pretty significant spend that we're doing in the EU to explore the opportunities there as well. Certainly, as the commercial opportunities, domestic or EU continue to develop, we'll continue to shift, reallocate more capital from other areas to the commercial side of the business.

Great. And I guess one more going back to the second active partnership program. Could you elaborate a bit more on kind of the profile of this new partner, whether it's a regional health system, national commercial carrier and whether or not and how their model differs from your first partnership?

Yes. Great question. Multiple partners, multiple partnerships, all of them are a little similar, but all of them different. You hit the nail on the head. Yes, we have large health systems, IDNs that we're negotiating with. We have provider payers we're negotiating with. We have large, large group practices. And then we can't forget the PRIME sites themselves. How do you take the study site from a great study site with PRIME and now implement this into their clinical workflow for their entire organization, so that it's truly standard of care for any woman that comes in and appears to be low risk for preterm birth, they get a PreTRM Test. So there is a very similar aspect of the model, but each payer partner or each partnership is going to be a bit different. Our goal is to fill the needs of that partner. What works best for them and what are they looking to achieve.

And I will just add that the second partner is an example of an employer collaborative that is multistate, and we're entering with them in the first state, and there's a great opportunity for expansion. As Lee said, there is a lot of flavors here. We're partnering far and wide from the legislative bodies at the state level to mid-wife associations to innovative providers of tele-health services and pregnancy. We want to make sure that we capture all of those adopters that are ready to go. Does this help?

There are no further questions. I'll hand the call back over to Zhenya for closing remarks.

Sounds great. Thanks, Vincent. Before we close, I wanted to leave you with how we see the year ahead. With PRIME now published, a growing base of payer and state level engagement and an expanded leadership team in place, we're entering 2026 with strong momentum. This year is about disciplined execution, advancing all of the Partner Programs we've talked about, expanding real-world data and supporting clinicians as they integrate PreTRM into their workflows.

While adoption will be gradual, the foundation we've built gives us confidence in the path forward. We believe the combination of compelling clinical evidence, increasing payer engagement and thoughtful commercial scale-up positions us to unlock meaningful value in a large underserved market. Thank all of you so much for your continued support as we work to improve outcomes for mothers and babies and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. Over to you, operator, to close the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Sera Prognostics Conference Call to review third quarter fiscal year 2025 results. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Zibuda, Sera's Head of Investor Relations for a few introductory comments. Sarah, (sic) [ Jennifer ], please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Sera Prognostic's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At the close of market today Sera Prognostics released its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2025. Presenting for the company today will be Evguenia Lindgardt, President and CEO; and Austin Aerts, our CFO. During the call, we will review the financial results we released today, after which we will host a question-and-answer session. If you've not had a chance to review our quarterly earnings release, it can be found on our website at sera.com. This call can be heard live via webcast at sera.com and a recording will be archived in the Investors section of our website.

Please note some of the information presented today may contain projections or other forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including plans and projections for our business, future financial results and market trends and opportunities. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and the actual events or results may differ materially and adversely from these expectations for a variety of reasons. We refer you to the documents the company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the company's annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its current reports on Form 8-K. These documents identify important risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections and other forward-looking statements.

I will now turn the call over to Zhenya.

Thank you, Jennifer, and good afternoon, everyone. Building on the momentum from our PRIME study and ongoing commercialization efforts in the third quarter of 2025 marked continued progress in our transition towards preterm test adoption. We advanced our geographically focused strategy. In these regions, we are executing an integrated approach to achieving fair coverage, physician education and patient awareness.

We've continued to build visibility through key industry events and data presentations. Earlier this week, we presented health economics data at the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, or ISPOR, Europe Conference. In October, Dr. Brian Erie delivered a compelling presentation of PRIME study outcomes at the Inaugural Renaissance Conference, the 3 ages of the women-- titled Dismantling the Preterm Barrier: Biomarker-guided Bundled Care to Improve Neonatal Outcomes. Links to both the poster and the presentation are now available in our press release issued today.

We remain on track to publish the full results of our PRIME study in a peer review journal by the end of the year. We're very far along through the process of preparing a publication and we look forward to sharing it with all stakeholders. What you can expect from us is a press release upon acceptance for publication followed by an investor and analyst event with our principal investigators to discuss the strong primary outcomes we shared earlier this year as well as some new and compelling data points from the study, demonstrating the efficacy of the preterm test.

Following prime, we plan to maintain a steady cadence of data publications and presentations focused on key topics, including health economic benefits, population analysis, for example, first-time moms versus other moms and Medicaid expected cost savings associated with ser-preterm test. These data subsets will build on the robust evidence base, already established by our PRIME and VERT clinical studies. Together, they will not only reinforce the clinical and economic value preterm, but also help support its adoption into standard prenatal care.

Let's now shift to our commercial strategy and progress. And for those newer to our story, I'll start with a quick overview. Our sales and marketing efforts are concentrated in select regions where we see strong alignment across several factors, headway with payer and Medicaid program discussions, support from influential local opinion leaders, engagement from early adopter institutions and presence of PRIME study sites. By focusing on areas where these elements converge, we are creating conditions for meaningful clinical update of the preterm test.

We've made real strides with Medicaid plan pilot programs and our inaugural pilot in Nevada, is actively enrolling patients. We're engaging payers in our first wave of 6 started states, collectively representing a strong commercial opportunity, covering approximately 33% of U.S. births and 35% of Medicaid births annually. Beyond this first wave, we've initiated outreach to the next year of target states, expanding our footprint of states in discussion to 13 in total.

We're also in discussions with organizations with regional and national reach across multiple lines of business. These early signals of market engagement give us confidence that we are well positioned to drive meaningful coverage and adoption in our target states and beyond. Our commercialization strategy is anchored in getting coverage first. It is built on a 2-pronged approach. First, targeting state engagement across first and second wave states. -- for example, Nevada, Texas and Massachusetts that have shown interest, face high preterm births and have leveraged tools to adopt innovative programs in prenatal care.

Second, they are driven adoption through pilots and alignment to value-based care programs. By engaging state and payer leadership and connecting to the efforts of local institutions driving improvement in prenatal and maternal care quality outcomes, we're building a local flywheel of adoption that aims to accelerate provider buy-in and lay the groundwork for broader coverage. With Medicaid financing over 40% to 3.6 million U.S. births annually, the opportunity to drive meaningful cost savings and improve outcomes is substantial. We believe the preterm test offers a differentiated, data-driven solution for states seeking to reduce neonatal complications and manage Medicaid expenditures more efficiently.

Our health economics data shows potential in-year savings from preterm test screening of low-risk pregnancies. The path from initial state Medicaid director engagement to a state coverage decision takes time. Initially, we anticipate a cycle of about 24 months or more driven by the nature of prenatal testing and claims data availability. For example, the blood draw occurs between weeks 18 and 20 of pregnancy and followed by 4 to 5 months until delivery of babies and another 3 months or so for claims data to become available for analysis. Once the data is reviewed, we present the pilot results to the Medicaid plan and other state stakeholders to inform coverage decisions.

As additional pilots launch, we will use the resulting data to demonstrate feasibility and build a strong business case for statewide coverage. Our commercialization strategy in the immediate term will focus on the target geography adoption wave by wave until guideline inclusion. Success of these efforts depends on achieving coverage in Medicaid and commercial plans value-based care arrangements and activating physician adoption and advocacy. Engagement with clinical leaders and alignment on target populations will be critical to securing guideline inclusion and accelerating adoption.

Post guidelines will scale nationally with a field sales force aiming for broader air coverage and expand national awareness building through traditional marketing channels. Although guideline inclusion is a longer-term milestone, our focused efforts, both in evidence generation, KOL engagement, targeted state coverage and physician adoption are all needed to support it. Ultimately, the strategy positions us to drive meaningful revenue growth while improving outcomes from mothers and babies nationwide in helping address health care utilization trends, including rising costs associated with rising NICU admission rates and longer hospital stays surrounding maternal and neonatal care.

To provide clear visibility into our accelerating commercial execution, even at this early stage, we will begin sharing some key traction indicators such as Medicaid pilot momentum, including a number of live pilots, enrollment completion milestones and expanding pipeline of states and discussions that will serve as tangible markers of progress as we build towards sustainable revenue growth. We're gaining meaningful traction across the payer landscape. We're actively engaging with 10 payers across 13 states, a diverse mix, both national and regional, Medicaid and commercial, who are focused on offering a competitive health care benefits while managing rising costs.

Our strategy targets forward-thinking organizations with strong member bases in key states where our sales reps are positioned well to maximize pull-through. We're also prioritizing institutions with value-based payment models, aligning incentives for providers and payers in preventing preterm growth complications. PRIME and AVERT data strongly support value-based approach and can accelerate preterm uptake where positive outcomes translate into payer, provider and patient success. To recap our commercial progress, momentum is building. Our first Medicaid pilot is now live. We are in active dialogue with all 6 of our initial target states, and we've already begun engagement with the next wave of states, setting the stage for broader adoption and impact.

To support our fundamental clinical and commercial efforts, we've made high-impact leadership appointments to the Sera team. As announced in October, Dr. Tiffany Inglis, who was appointed Chief Medical Officer, an accomplished OBGYN with over 20 years of experience, including a decade in clinical practice and recent leadership at Eleven Health and Carillon Health. Dr. Inglis excels at driving women's health initiatives their coverage and cost-effective outcomes. She will spearhead our medical affairs and strategy to accelerate preterm test adoption and establish it as a standard of care for preterm birth risk.

In preparation for broader adoption of the preterm test and our target states and beyond, we appointed Marisol Orvana as the Head of Commercial Operations. With 20 years of health care experience and a proven track record in diagnostics, her leadership will be instrumental in accelerating customer onboarding and supporting clinical integration, key enablers of commercial traction during this foundational growth period. Complementing this leadership, we have successfully completed the hiring of sales representatives across all 6 of our target states and are well positioned to expand market access and preterm utilization.

Lastly, beyond our progress in the United States, we continue to explore Europe in a region that fully appreciates the pressing gap in preterm birth risk screening. We remain engaged in productive discussions with European regulatory bodies and are on track to submit our dossiers in early 2026.

In closing, we've made significant strides in laying a strong foundation for adoption and reimbursement, setting the stage for future growth. Looking ahead, we're optimistic about the flywheel effect on these initiatives, which we believe will drive meaningful adoption and contribute to better maternal neonatal outcomes.

With that, I'll turn it over to Austin, our CFO, for a review of our financial results. Austin?

Thanks, Zhenya, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll provide an overview of our financial performance for the third quarter of 2025 and our balance sheet position. Net revenue for the third quarter was $16,000 compared to $29,000 in the same period last year. During the quarter, we received a $100,000 prepayment from the first Medicaid pilot in Nevada, which increased our deferred revenue balance as of September 30, 2025.

Total operating expenses for the quarter were $9.0 million compared to $8.9 million in the third quarter of 2024. Research and development expenses were $3.3 million, down from $3.5 million for the third quarter of 2024, primarily due to lower clinical study costs, following the completion of the pivotal PRIME study and as the company shifts towards commercialization.

Selling, general and administrative expenses were $5.7 million, up from $5.4 million for the prior year period, a modest increase as we carefully invest in targeted commercial activities and strategic headcount additions while building market awareness and preparation for the publication of PRIME study data.

Our net loss for the quarter was $7.8 million, down from $7.9 million in the third quarter of 2024 as we continued our focus on managing our capital resources ahead of revenue expansion in the future.

As of September 30, 2025, we had cash, cash equivalents and available for sale securities of approximately $102.4 million. We are encouraged by the commercial momentum that Zhenya discussed, including our first Medicaid pilot program in Nevada. We are diligently working to translate our foundational progress into tangible outcomes and significant growth opportunities.

In the meantime, we continue to manage our capital prudently, prioritizing high ROI opportunities to support commercialization while maintaining a strong balance sheet to fuel our growth strategy.

Operator, we can now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Dan Brennan from TD Cowen.

Great. Maybe just on the Medicaid pilots, Nevada. You've got 6 other states behind it or 5 other states behind it. I know at the Q2 call, you discussed 2 to 4 pilots signed up, kind of, I don't know what the time frame was, but it was kind of in the near term. So do you feel like progress is going on track. Do you feel ahead of plan, behind plan in terms of getting Nevada signed up? And when do you think you'd have -- get to or get to the 6 pilots signed up?

Dan, thank you so much for the question. We are very much on track. One is launched in recruiting, another one is in contracting. And so that gets us to -- and we believe a couple more shortly in active discussions with the payers in other states.

So with that, the fact that we've expanded to the next wave of states tells you that we're very much on track on getting a foot in the door in each of the states and going beyond because we feel we have good traction even in the first wave of the states. So we'll definitely continue communicating progress once the pilots are up and running.

Obviously, while we're in contracting, we're going to probably not communicate what the states and the payers are. But once we are underway with their permission, we'll share it with all of you.

And how big are the pilots? So Novadi, you said 100,000 prepayments? Just how do we think about -- I know the criticality is to get it established, you can eventually get state Medicaid coverage. But just speak to during the pilot phase, like what's the economics? Like what are you getting to run these tests? How big is the Nevada program? Just any color around that?

Sure. The trade-off here, Dan, are how fast we want results. So the fewer patients in the pilot, the faster the decision on coverage, which, of course, would be best to driving outcomes for moms and babies sooner. The drive to have a bigger pilot, of course, is powering the pilot to show great results. because, again, we are looking at reasonably rare events of significant preterm birth that we want to ameliorate.

So from that perspective, the typical size of a pilot would probably be a few hundred patients. However, I will tell you, as we're engaging with plans and state Medicaid directors, we're not only suggesting that we pilot, but we are in active discussions with some value-based health care arrangements and contracts where we can show what the test can do when screening the moms in the state with achieving quality metrics and putting some dollars at risk as opposed to setting up a similar conversation in context of a pilot. So it's hard to tell you specifically because each state has a slightly -- or each payer has a slightly different arrangement and size and scale of the program. Some payers and states are looking for a state-wide contract that is value-based. So obviously, that would be many thousands of patients as opposed to a few hundred. Does that help?

Okay. And -- okay. And are you collecting like full price when you -- even though it's small, like hundreds of thousands are you collecting the full preterm birth price? Or is the discount and just how does that work?

So again, the specifics I won't get into, but we are very happy with the price realization in these early engagements with payers and state Medicaid. We don't know how that will evolve when we get to full scale coverage for the state, but we're optimistic with what we've seen to date.

Got it. And then just in terms of PRIME, so timing-wise, you guys still feel confident it will come before year-end. So we've got whatever 8 weeks -- excuse me, like 6 weeks after you think it will come before then. So maybe just any more color on the confidence there if it slips a little bit, I guess no big deal.

But then, b, just remind us of the additional data we're going to get and what's going to be impactful that will come out in the publication that we didn't see so far?

Yes. No, Dan, we are -- I know we've been talking about any day now for the last few quarters, but it truly is super close now, and we are confident it is in the coming weeks, ideally before the end of the year. And in terms of specific data, of course, it would be impossible to highlight the data before the publication itself. But what I can promise is as soon as the publication is out, we'll have an in-depth event to go over all of the new insights.

I will highlight that the insights are coming from engagement with the reviewers. And as you know, we've talked about a series of publications coming out of mining an incredibly rich data set that comes out from PRIME. So we pulled forward some of the insights that we coming in future publications because of the requests of the reviewers to add that to the publication. So look forward to sharing that, but unfortunately, I can't highlight those until publication dates.

Got it. And maybe one more. Just in terms of the path forward, $100 million in cash, you have these pilot studies in the background and then the PRIME study and then obviously, guidelines. But as we think about the next 1, 2, 3 years, getting PRIME out, getting the pathway to guideline inclusion, whatever you need to do there and then simultaneously, like you said, with these pilot studies. But on the guideline, you said in the past, I think, typical cadence is what, 24 to 48 months post publication. Is that still your best guess right now such that the publication, let's say, comes out in the next month? The end of '25, are we thinking more like end of '27. End of '29 is when guidelines could occur? And then I guess the focus between then and now would just be these pilot studies?

Okay. So a couple of questions on that one. Yes, we are -- that is still 24 to 36 months, still a pretty good guesstimate, I would say. We are -- we've developed an engine to mine the data and add real-world evidence to our portfolio that certainly is going to be the best thing we can do to influence and create literature for review for the guidelines to be updated with the new tools that are available to clinicians. So that is a critical work stream for us, and we're hoping that we'll be a truly a steady stream of data.

In addition to mining PRIME data, of course, we talked about a real-world evidence, which should see its first publication next year as well as the data that's coming out of engagement with the plans and the states. Until the guidelines, I do think the key focus is this geographic focus in driving density of adoption in specific states, given our first target states represents over 1/3 of births in the United States, that's not small volume at all. There is plenty of work to get done and volume to drive. I don't want to just zero-in and call it pilot engagement. Not at all. It's going to be much broader than that, including policy -- positive policy coverage achievement across plans and value-based care contract arrangements and just driving physician adoption, institution by institution in some of the multi-hospital systems and women's health clinics. So a lot more to come on that, but please don't just focus on the pilots. Pilots is one tool in our toolkit. But indeed, it's going to be a geography-focused effort and post guidelines, we're going to move to a nationwide commercialization.

Got it. Okay. Great. I've taken up by 4 questions. So I guess I'll stop there.

No problem at all. Thank you for the great questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Andrew Brackmann from William Blair.

This is Maggie Boeye on for Andrew today. Maybe first just to start, can you walk through just once you have the PRIME publication in your hands, what your plans are there? And how you think about organizational readiness at this point once the PRIME publication comes hopefully before year-end?

Thank you so much, Maggie. Organizational readiness, we've been preparing for quite a few quarters for PRIME to come out. So what we've done is prepared the dialogue that can commence once the data is out, specifically policy review by payers.

As you can imagine, without a peer-reviewed publication, engagement is on the pilot basis and early engagement. However, once we have the publication, the formal processes of review can commence within the payer institutions. So number one priority, as we mentioned, is getting coverage and reimbursement. So that's the first thing that organization will drive upon publication.

Second, of course, is dissemination of information with clinicians, education awareness building. What you can anticipate is presence at conferences, Ecog district conferences, seminars, CME events. We really want to get the data out to as many physicians and opinion leaders as possible. In parallel, of course, we are engaging with opinion leaders on the new data that is coming out of the PRIME that will shape new publications coming out of the data.

Our field force is going to use as a third key thrust, the PRIME publication to make sure that in all of our target states, we are driving physician adoption with the major institutions and hospitals who have been engaging with us under CDA around the data to go ahead and drive education with all of their clinicians with the publication in hand. So we feel the organization is very much ready with all of the appointments we've made this year with our Chief Commercial Officer, Lee Anderson; with our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tiffany Inglis. A lot of roles within the commercial organization and hiring our sales force. We are in great shape to press go on our planned post publication.

And then maybe just one, just on the commercial team. How should we be thinking about that build out as we get into 2026 once the PRIME publication is out there? And then just with that, how should we think about your expense in 2026.

Great question. I'll start with the commercial team size and then Austin, if you want to talk through the SG&A question, that would be great.

So Maggie, what we're aiming to do as we expand the engagement with states and the payers and have the initial coverage established. We plan to expand the sales force to drive the pull-through in those geographies. So each of the waves is about 4 to 6 states, so we've staffed the first wave of 6 states. You can anticipate that we will bring new sales reps and medical science liaisons to the next wave of states as traction in those geographies is achieved.

So we'll continue following our philosophy of investing behind the wins to put field personnel in place to drive engagement on the ground with physicians, with practices, with office managers and opinion leaders.

So Austin, do you want to talk through on the parameters of our SG&A change anticipated in 2026?

Sure. Maggie, thanks for the question. We're aiming next year to keep expenses relatively similar to the way they are this year, while also shifting a lot of our capital allocation certainly towards sales and marketing activities. So we do expect to see relatively significant increase on the sales and marketing line, while overall expenses stay relatively flat.

In from our main evidence-generating activities over the last couple of years.

There are no further questions at this time. Ms. Lindgardt, please proceed with closing remarks.

Thank you so much. Before we close the call, I just want to emphasize the strong foundation we've built this quarter. with advancing the evidence generation, accelerating commercial execution and strengthening our leadership team. With the first Medicaid pilot live and active engagement across 13 states and key hires in place, we're really well positioned to drive adoption of the test and delivering meaningful impact in maternal and neonatal outcomes.

Looking ahead, we remain focused on disseminating prime results, expanding payer coverage and working towards guideline inclusion. Thank you all so much for the continued support as we work towards transforming prenatal care and creating long-term value for patients, providers and shareholders. Over to you, operator, to close the call.

Thank you. And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.