Q4 2020 Seer Inc Earnings Call
[music].
Hello, Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Seer fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the presentation. There will be a question and answer session to ask the question during that session you will need to press star.
One on your telephone you view of required any further assistance. Please press star Zero I will now hand, the conference over to your speaker of today carry Mandeville with Investor Relations.
Earlier today <unk> released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ending December 31 2020.
If you have not received this news release or if you'd like the attitude of the Companys distribution list. Please send an email to investor at Seer got bio.
Joining me today from Seer is still need ferrets on chairman Chief Executive Officer, and founder of we don't sit on President and Chief operating Officer, and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer.
Before we begin I'd like to remind you that management will make statements. During the call that are forward looking statements within the meaning of federal Securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated.
Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section entitled forward looking statements in the press release Seer issue today.
For a more complete listen the description. Please see the risk factors section of the company's annual report on form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2020 and on this other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Except as required by law disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward looking statements, whether because of the new information future events or otherwise.
This conference call contains time sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast Mark Twain on 2021, but that I'd like to turn the call over to me.
Thanks Kerry.
Today marks our first earnings call at the public company.
This is the seminal milestone for our company on the particularly gratifying one for me of the founder of sphere.
We will begin today's call with an overview of our opportunity and our strategy. We would then transition of our comments to provide a review of our progress in 2020.
On the preview of our objectives for 2021.
Fuel has gone from setting our initial vision of enabling broad scale access to deep on box proteomics.
Two shipping products to our customers in just three short years.
We have built a world class team that is second to none in the proteomics space and.
We have of product solution that is well positioned to enable the kind of proteomics studies that were just not possible before sphere.
To our incredible team.
I would like to take a moment and express my sincere thanks to each and every one of you.
For your passion dedication and hard work.
My special Thanks to your families for their support and patience as we navigated very difficult year to deliver exceptional outcomes.
Two of longstanding investors. Thank you for your continued support and so on new investors.
Welcome and thank you for your trust and partnership and building Seer.
We are grateful that you all share our vision of making unbiased deep on large scale proteomics broadly accessible.
And in doing so help our customers drive novel biological of inside create unexpected new end markets.
And ultimately improve human health.
We look forward to developing meaningful long term relationships with each and every one of you as we grow the company and push the boundaries of our technology in pursuit of realizing on Richard.
Our understanding of biology has come a long way in the last 15 years.
Just imagine if we have to face this pandemic today without broad scale access to genomic technologies that have driven testing in vaccine development.
The peso skilled the world had never seen before.
Now it's profound of an impact of genomic has had on health and management of diseases.
I fully expect that broad scale access to put the all mixed up even a deeper and the more profound impact and making the world a better place.
Proteins are the drivers of all cellular function of large scale access to unbiased in the proteomics would likely lead to insights applications and therapeutics otherwise not possible.
I'm excited and humbled to be leaving the company that is committed to making this happen.
I fear, we're developing innovative solutions to empower the scientific community.
To arrive at the exceptional proteomics outcomes.
To deliver against this objective we have a four pronged strategy.
First we wanted to set the pace for innovation in the proteomics space.
We will deliver a continuous stream of disruptive products.
To enable novel approaches for interrogating the proteome.
The second.
We will leverage the unique capabilities of our differentiated solutions.
We will pave the way to catalyze large scale genomic studies that will accelerate function of elevation of the genome of meaningfully advanced our understanding of biology.
Third.
We will couple of exceptional customer experience with transformative products.
We will work with our customers to enhance their ability to create new applications. The new end uses that will expand the market for proteomics and pretty of genomics and force.
We will form.
Strategic relationships with key customers and partners.
We will create.
The rich ecosystem of solutions around the particular product suite debt extend utility expand the reach and drive adoption of our platform to labs of all types.
Yeah.
We have developed the perennial ground product suite of solution that leverages, our proprietary engineered nanoparticles.
To replace the current depletion and fractionation methods used to perform unbiased proteomics today.
These depletion and fractionation methods of unnecessary for the proteomics studies because of the proteome.
And the biological samples cuz standard wide dynamic range from the most abundant to the least of abundance proteins in plasma for example, the.
The dynamic range of the protein kind of expand over 10 order of magnitude.
With fewer than 20 proteins, the accounting for greater than 99 per cent of the total protein by mass and the typical plasma sample now in order to access the broad range of proteins and especially those that are of low abundance.
Researchers are forced to follow the bouygues expensive depletion on fractionation methods.
To methodically separate proteins before detection vs.
These methods simply do not scale well Rx.
They are accessible to few labs and on.
Cumbersome to perform.
Our prodrug of out product suite replaces these methods with a streamlined automated workflow that can fit in front of me really any detector delivering unmatched access to proteomics information.
With the Protium of golf product suite, we have re imagined the entire approach to unbiased the proteomics the.
Liberating a solution that can enable nearly any lap to adopt large scale proteomics and notion that was previously inconceivable.
Now of Protium graph products suite is detect the agnostic.
Providing the solution that makes access to large scale deep unbiased proteomics tangible and importantly, not just for a select group of thought leaders in proteomics, but for really any lap wanting to do on by the proteomics studies.
Today, the proteomics communities detector of choice is of mass spec with the installed base of 15000 set of focused on proteomics analysis.
Our pro geographic product suite can sit upstream to any mass spec addressing the long standing unmet need for efficient deep on box proteomics at scale.
Similar to the way next generation sequencing brought about a sea change in our approach the genomics transcript the Olympics on biology.
We believe Cirrus technology has the potential to affect the similar if not of more profound change.
As we have previously shared with you.
We began the commercialization of a project or a product suite in late 2020.
Our commercialization strategy comprised of three stages, starting with the collaboration phase followed by a limited release and culminating with broad release.
This measured approach to commercialization is ideal for introducing highly disruptive products.
And it's one that has been established and proven to be successful on the other sectors.
Our commercialization approach allows us to demonstrate the power of the part of their product suite for.
The key applications at leading Kols sites.
Develop strong reference sites and accelerate adoption by creating clear blueprint for other customers to follow.
While the existing proteomics labs, using mass specs provided the incredible opportunity for us.
We believe that the opposite is far larger and includes customers who want to add on by proteomics information on scale.
But have not had the technology that allows them to do so.
This includes some of the key lab, the researchers who are performing large skill of genomic studies, but are unable to impedance matched these studies with equally large deep unbiased proteomics studies.
These are the customers, who will advance the field of protein of genomics.
Which is predicated on the ability to conduct genomic information to protein variant of information at the amino acid level.
It is important to note here is the only.
The bailable at scale technology to deliver peptides and I mean, what's the level of resolution, which is necessary to match the nucleotide level of genomic information and enable prettier genomics.
The existing <unk>.
Bias for the Nordic approaches do not scale.
And the existing scalable targeted proteomics approaches are unable to see proteins at the.
I mean, the asset and peptide level before you can see the complexity of the proteome with these technologies, including the million plus protein variance that exists in the body.
Variants that are critically important in understanding the dynamic spectrum of health and disease.
Unbiased proteomics is also where the lion's share of the opportunity in proteomics and protium of genomic reside and where we believe the majority of market expansion will occur overtime.
She will enable population scale project of genomic studies to be performed empowering the scientific community to identify tens of thousands of protein variance in plasma and hundreds of thousands of putting the the other tissue.
This woman rich biological data sets and in the has the number of Biomarkers of drug targets. The overall impact on human health will be enormous.
By combining population scale unbiased proteomics and genomics, we believe scientists will gain the richer understanding of biology.
Drive novel insights.
Accelerate function of realization of genomic variance and ultimately advance human health.
The much faster and broader way.
With the launch of the prodrug of golf product suite, we have started down the path of making our vision of empowering the scientific community to access deep on basketball the Omega scaled the reality I could not be more excited and more proud about what we're doing gets here.
'twenty 'twenty, what's the defining year for us on so many levels and despite the challenging environment. We reached the number of important milestones.
We published results demonstrating the robustness of our platform for rapid deep precise unbiased proteomics and nature of communications.
And the exemplified its utility for early detection of lung cancer.
By the assessment of probably the literature. This publication Mark the largest unbiased deep plasma proteomics studies published at the time.
We spent a lot of product gnomic.
The company focused on couple of going deep unbiased proteomics at scale with other omics approaches for early detection.
In diagnosis of diseases in oncology and other therapeutic areas.
C of retained and 19% ownership in Prague gnomic.
We scaled the organization and added seasoned leaders to our management team and board of directors assembling of uniquely qualified team to deliver on our vision.
We commercialized our Purdue about products, we ship and install our products at the first of our collaboration of customers and signed on additional customers.
This all culminated with the completion of our initial public offering and concurrent private placement in December which raised approximately 314 million in net proceeds.
Now since the last updated you at the Jpmorgan Health Care Conference in early January we've continued to make incredible progress across all dimensions of our business.
We made great strides at our first three collaborations sites, Oregon Health Sciences University that cancer Institute.
The broad Institute and Discovery Life Sciences.
All three sites are progressing at or ahead of our expectations were.
We're also extremely excited and privileged to announce the addition of Salt Institute as a fourth collaboration customer.
With our collaboration customers on board, we're now turning our attention to the limited release phase of our commercialization approach.
Well need will walk you through more details on the overall commodity.
The decision of progress shortly.
And we announced today and you may have seen that we've signed a non exclusive commercial agreement with <unk> to provide complete end to end solution for unbiased the rapid and large scale proteomics.
This builds on the existing commercial agreement with Thermo Fisher on broker that we announced earlier this year.
In 2021, we've already presented at several of scientific conferences sharing exciting results from the studies that we did in collaboration with our customers and partners.
Demonstrating the unique capabilities of our platform.
And finally, we further strengthened our balance sheet by raising an additional 103 million of net proceeds from our follow on offering in February.
We are very much at the onset of this journey.
And while much work remains we are excited and inspired by the opportunity the lays in front of us.
Since our IPO, we've seen an acceleration of enthusiasm energy and investment in the proteomics space.
We're building the technology the team and the commercial path to lead the way in this new era of opportunity.
People and culture are core to innovation.
We have continued to attract the world class pool of talent.
We made significant additions to our management team over the past few months.
We've all come to the rest of the Dickson as our new Chief people Officer.
Marissa brings over 20 years of experience across technology on the health care industries to help build our culture and teams.
We've also welcomed alone of Kogan to sphere of General counsel, a loan of brings broad global experience in publicly traded companies across biotech and pharma.
Several of them that look low joined us as the VP and chief of computation sort of him as the global new recognized expert in data science and machine learning.
He was previously on alumina and before that of professor of data science at Stanford for about 15 years.
Shashank couple of my money has joined as VP corporate development within the extensive background in corporate strategy.
The development and M&A most recently at Illumina.
And finally, Karen plus of motto as VP of corporate marketing and communications and Karen has spent 25 years and commercial on corporate leadership roles at industry, leading high growth of life science companies, including a lump of alumina qiagen in neutrogena.
We also announced earlier this quarter that deepen the shore senior managing partner of Softbank and Dr. The most of or whatnot.
The Chief Technology Officer of alumina have joined our board of directors.
The unique and complementary perspective of technology expansion health care innovation and ecosystem creation will be valuable to seer reaccelerate unexplained on markets.
From the existing proteomics researchers the genomic researchers.
And for multi Omics core laughed the commercial entities Biopharma and clinical accounts, we see unbiased deep and rapid proteomics at scale offering tremendous value to our markets and customers.
The proteome is truly the next frontier in furthering our understanding of human health and disease.
As the only available method <unk>.
Vision to unlock and expand biological insight in this way seer is ready to deliver this value.
With that I will turn the call over to a need for more details on our commercial progress Amit.
Thanks.
To ensure we can continue on execute at a high level, we have focused our commercial efforts and investments around three critical areas.
First building a great team.
Delivering a great product and third developing critical strategic partnerships.
All of these are done with the aim of delivering exceptional customer experience that enables our customers to realize their scientific vision and rewards them for their faith in our products and our company.
The exist to serve on empower our customers with products and services that removed technology at the bottleneck to realizing great scientific vision.
Although we're still early in commercialization I'm very encouraged by the initial rollout of the Cardiograph product suite.
In mere weeks, our collaboration customers have made incredible progress.
Oregon Health Sciences University Knight Cancer Institute was our first customer to receive a pretty graph in late November of last year.
Shortly after the new year, they began processing their own samples and the recently completed an initial pilot study in prostate cancer.
They are using the resulting data as the foundation for a larger project of between 500 to 1000 samples.
They are also gearing up for two additional studies.
Is the multi omics study that aims to correlate proteomics and complementary ohmic alterations.
In hematologic cancer and that May include up to 300 diagnostic and longitudinal on time point specimens.
Second is the multi arm study focused on assessing proteomics responses of cancer models following system penetration.
We are deeply committed to our continued collaboration with OE tissue and we look forward to supporting their path towards the inclusion of unbiased deep and large scale proteomics.
An expanding number of programs.
The broken Institute, which received their Proto graph in December 2020 has also begun running their samples for initial project.
Similar to all the tissue the broad expects to use the pretty graph for additional larger projects in the coming months and we look forward to their progress on findings.
And most recently discovery life Sciences received their instrument, which has been successfully installed and they are completing their training.
We expect them to the up and running with samples in the coming weeks and we look forward to partnering with them as they explore the use of the protein graph for a range of studies and number of which are expected to focus on Proteus genomics questions.
And as Hamid mentioned, we have added the Salk Institute of World renowned multidisciplinary Research Institute focused on addressing some of the most challenging health issues, we face, including cancer Alzheimers diabetes and more.
With the addition of the Salk Institute as our fourth collaboration customer we have the opportunity to broaden the range of applications for which the Purdue GAAP will be used to include plant biology of model organisms.
And to further showcase the range on breadth of the part of your GAAP product suite and uniquely addressing technology bottlenecks in proteomics.
While executing on the first phase of our commercialization with our collaboration customers. We have already begun to engage prospective customers for the second phase of our commercialization limited release.
As a reminder, in the second phase, we will selectively expand to customers, who can scale quickly to demonstrate the power and utility of the party GAAP product suite.
We are extremely encouraged by the discussions with these prospective customers and we look forward to working with the number of them to demonstrate the unique capabilities or the pretty GAAP for a wide range of applications.
Let me the release customers will not only exemplify applications at a party graph, but he will also serve as an important reference sites, whose adoption will provide others with a clear blueprint to follow.
Additionally, some of these customers will serve our centers of excellence that offer unbiased deep plasma proteomics services using the pretty of graft product suite.
In Scotland the centers of excellence during limited release will be broadening access to the part of you got product suite and enable an ever expanding number of scientists and researchers to access our product in anticipation of broader release.
We are also excited to announce our strategic relationship with <unk> to expand the number of end to end solutions. We can offer customers who are looking to adopt unbiased in the proteomics at scale.
Coupled with our existing strategic agreements with Thermo Fisher on broker, which we announced in January the <unk>.
And if I X will enhance our ability to accelerate adoption expand markets and broadened the overall proteomics of multi omics ecosystem.
With all three of these partners, who are working to further streamline and develop our end to end workflows to empower customers to scale their proteomics studies deepen their insight and expand the application set.
This January we have already started to engage more deeply with thermo Fisher on broker and we presented our first joint poster withdrew her at the U S. <unk> conference two weeks ago.
This poster demonstrated that the combination of our part of your graph and bookers, Tim store provides the scalable solution for unbiased and deep plasma proteomics that offers an unmatched combination of depth breadth speed and precision.
This end to end workflow enables researchers to measure well in excess of 1700 protein groups in plasma without the need for expensive cumbersome and lengthy depletion and fractionation steps and offers we produce would be the knee and standardization not possible with conventional unbiased methods.
Furthermore, from our conversations with potential customers, we have already begun to see the immense value of being able to talk about complete end to end solutions.
In the number of conversations, especially with prospective customers, who are not deeply immersed in proteomics, our ability to offer complete end to end workflows is helping groups feel much more comfortable and confident.
That day, two can easily adopt large scale unbiased in the proteomics.
Finally, we are building out of our commercial team and increasing our investment on market development.
Since the fourth quarter of 2020, we have added key hires and sales support and marketing.
We are also generating specific market development strategies for target segments.
And customers that we are planning to rollout over the course of 2021.
These market development strategies are designed to enrich our funnel of prospective customers.
The groundwork for adoption and demonstrate the utility of unbiased proteomics data in large cohort studies.
We're also working to establish connections with industry consortia and funding bodies to drive education around our technology.
Importantly, we've been able to exceed our goals while navigating the challenges presented to all of us by Covid over the last year.
And although the risk of Covid is not entirely retired we believe that we have the right plans on mitigation in place to successfully meet our upcoming 2021 milestones.
Our deep collaboration and partnership with our suppliers have proven to be instrumental in our ability to deliver on our objectives.
And these relationships and the commitment of these partners give us confidence that we can maintain our objectives over the coming months.
Overall I'm incredibly proud of our team for the progress we've made in such a short time.
I'm excited and humbled to be part of such an amazing team and I'm inspired by their passion hard work and dedication, which has allowed us to commercialize a transformative product.
In summary, I believe we have the technology the team and strategy to bring the next phase in <unk> to labs around the globe.
With that I will now turn the call over to David for more detail of our financials.
Thanks, Amit total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 of it was $336000 compared to $58000 on the fourth quarter of 2019 total.
Total revenue for the year was $656000 compared to $116000 in 2019.
The increase was due to a small business innovation research grant awarded by the National Institutes of health of the third quarter of 2019, and which continued through 2020.
In addition, we completed a research collaboration study with a partner in 'twenty 'twenty two day all of our revenue has been generated from grant in front of activities and research collaborations with Biopharma companies and we have not generated any revenue from product sales.
Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $13 4 million compared to $5 5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Total operating expenses for 2020 were $34 3 million compared to $17 million in 2019.
Research and development expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $5 4 million compared to $3 8 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Research and development of expenses for 2020 were $18 9 million compared to $12 4 million in 2019.
The increase in R&D expenses for the year was primarily driven by increased product development efforts related to a pretty growth product suite, including an increase in research and development personnel.
General and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $8 million compared to $1 6 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
G&A expenses for the year were $15 4 million compared to $4 6 million in 2019.
The increase in G&A expenses for the year was primarily driven by increased head count and associated compensation expenses, including stock based compensation as well as increased costs related to becoming a public company.
Net loss for the fourth quarter was $12 9 million compared to $5 1 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Net loss for the full year was $32 8 million compared to $16 billion in 2019.
We ended 2020 with approximately $432 million on cash cash equivalents and investments.
This amount includes approximately $314 million in net proceeds from our IPO and concurrent private placement in December of 2020 subs.
Subsequent to year end, we closed the follow on offering in February of 2021, raising an additional $103 million in net proceeds.
In 2020, one we expect to continue to grow our investments in all areas of our business, including sales and marketing in our commercial operations as we continue with the commercial rollout of our part of your graph product suite.
As we move through the balance of the year, we expect to recognize product revenue from our commercial activities beginning in the second quarter of 2021.
At this point I would like to turn the call back to me for closing comments.
Thanks, David.
So in conclusion, while 2020 with the turning point for Seer. We believe this is really just the beginning.
We believe 2021 is going to be even more exciting we're committed.
Two transforming what is possible in proteomics and empowering the scientific community with the tools to achieve exceptional outcomes.
We believe the unbiased deep rapid proteomics at scale will pave the way for broad scale of novel biologic insight with incredible impact across science and medicine.
With that we'll now open it up for questions. Thanks, so much.
Thank you and as a reminder to ask the question simply press Star one on your on telephone.
The other question press, the pound or cash King please standby, while we compile the Q&A Ralph per.
Our first question comes from Tycho Peterson with Jpmorgan.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks, I'll start with the R&D question, just if you could talk on the roadmap for building out the library of nanoparticle beyond the end of the initial five do you have how should we think about the timeline there and how important is that I think in terms of.
Getting additional customer traction.
Hey, Tycho.
Look the last time, we spoke of we were just north of 275 of this thing.
The other part of it goes and that number continues to increase.
Hum the direction that we're taking the earth.
Of principally.
Understanding that the net.
Non of a body of interface on.
On the harvesting physical chemical structure of the particle impact the sun putting debt of particle Doug.
In fact, the paper that fear is.
The submitting and that should be the next publication of the who's who from the company the.
Compared to the workflow to the X.
Listing unbiased approach it on.
Similarly, the chose.
Another part of it of design can selectively tells you what the sample now keep in mind that.
Our five particle panel is just starting to be commercialized now.
Our focus is squarely on putting that part of the cold or the panel in the hands of the customer on.
The how the responses and then customer demand on customer needs that are going to drive what the next panel will look like.
Our Arsenal of if you would of the coming.
Probably nanoparticle panel will allow us on the relatively short cycle.
Put the net product kind of on the hands of the customer and under one off of that but we want that to the market driven we don't want to have a lot of skus. We wanted to have the relevance of skus of the panels of the customers move where the most of the mountain Dew on.
That's gonna be just the direct communication between us and them at the event.
Some of the platform.
Okay, and then as we think about some of the early placements you know the original kind of deal model was you know kind of to the one commercial versus academic. This year can you just talk to traction early discussions with additional clinical partners beyond discovery of life Sciences.
In particular, some of the liquid biopsy companies you've alluded to in the past.
Sure Tycho Hi, this is I mean I'll sit on so let me answer that question for you.
We still believe that that ratio is going to hold of this year and if anything I think the conversations that we've had with prospective customers continue to affirm that point of view and to be clear on the commercial side of it what we're sensing on when we're actually experiencing and discussions with customers that the interest is quite broad from a commercial application perspective. So your site.
On a detection on liquid biopsy companies clearly they are a subset of customers with whom we've been engaged.
They are quite interested but the range of commercial entities interested in this product as it is fairly broad spanning.
On a diverse set of diagnostic companies therapeutic companies.
<unk> services companies on Crows as one of the zone.
It's focused in some of the some applied areas and so what do you expect what you can expect from us to seize as we've I think talked to you all before is we have.
Roughly about six main customer segment of customer type areas that we're focused on and we expect to have one to two customers from each of those areas. Among our limited release customers on in that ratio I do expect it to end up being again, the two to one of commercial more heavily weighted versus academic as you work.
Are we through limited releases, so hopefully that answered your question.
And then just last one on on the mass spec partnerships I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more you said, you've kind of gone all the deeper with blue part of the thermo, but she's got the here.
I'm curious how you think about <unk> in that context I assume this would be for their triple talk kind of higher on systems, but can you just talk a little bit about how meaningful that could be and how much you can really leverage. These larger players you know of commercial resources.
Sure.
All of that again, Tycho so first of all of them just start off by saying, we're really excited to have these partnerships with the three of the leading mass spec providers in the world. They represent in aggregate. The majority of the installed base of mass spec platform for which we expect our our technology to be used in a complementary fashion upfront of it <unk> clear.
Clearly, adding sites to the list that already exist the thermo Fisher on broker.
Basically continues to reiterate that they like us the seed the opportunity I'm biased on day proteomics to be substantial and that the combination of our platform as a front end to their detection technologies to be something that's going to be very enabling not only for existing customers, but more importantly for prospective customers and so to that end.
Clearly we have all three of these platforms by the way in house, we have science platforms Thermo Fisher on broker.
Which has allowed us to continue to build on the existing relationships and partnerships that we expect to continue to enhance those relationships and sort of drive forward joint collaborations and product development activities that ultimately is going to lead to even a better experience for our customers. So adding science to that on this for US was important because again.
When you look at it but we want to be able to do is we want to be in a position that when we are engaging with customers that we can talk to them by the end to end workflows.
Both in the in front of the perspective that if they have a particular detector, we want to be able to know about the deal itself to them and importantly, if they don't have of detector and they want are.
Sort of input to help guide them through the process. The broader set of solutions. There are that we can offer to them. The more likely it is that we can guide the customer to an optimal solution that meets that customer specific needs and now with the three leading providers of mass effect as our partners. We think we're well positioned to do that moving forward.
Okay, that's great and actually I'm going to ask one more before I hop off you know Theres a lot of capital. That's obviously come into the space with knowledge quantum of Si I'm. Just curious as you go out and talk to prospective customers does that change anything from from your perspective.
A lot of talk of them here.
Keep in mind.
All of the <unk>.
Lucian today the.
Offer deep.
On by pretty low.
Sales for the alternative to the fear.
And basically other unbiased approaches that do not scale.
The activity that we're seeing in the market today I think the.
Validate if you would cause the on.
On the acuity on the procurement savings on the enthusiasm.
The the Investor community of the scientific community hub for what is likely going to be the next frontiers and the lack of information but the.
Targeted approaches that are coming on to existing question that has a different set of questions, but that the customer is able to get using the platform.
And then go on and that takes on talking about companies like owning some of logic that on appropriate by the tug of approaches.
The focus that on.
Trying to develop with you with the next generation detector.
Their business model is to ultimately potentially.
A replay of the detector lack of Mastec and again from the perspective, we are the types of agnostic so not only the way upstream to any of that.
I have always mentioned that we have.
We work with the leading one aspect of our own.
We have a partnership with all of them.
We are also the types of agnostic in that ultimately another factor other than the non effect becomes available.
That's the commercial traction than the quarter growth will go on sit upstream whose architecture.
As we deliver on bias.
After the proteome and then the detector would be that when the temper. The only thing that would change at the very end of our assay the reported that would need to run.
So in that context Tycho.
Mhm either of the detector, Portugal, the company took the our competitor nor do I see the targeted approaches of your competitor what I do see is that just like.
With next generation sequencing and enormous amount of biological insight.
<unk> generated and then when that happens the.
The targeted genomic the approaches if you would like PCR.
The didn't become obsolete. The fact, if anything with new biologics inside of the Mds enabled with so much genetic variant of new markers and other the.
Ultimately the need for the targeted genetic approaches when they were talking of the sequencing or you are actually increase.
So my expectation is that.
As customers begin to adopt the proof of it.
We began to the people on the procurement and scale the.
Number of Biomarkers in plasma would increase by.
By many meaningful probably tens of thousands of the.
The number of proteins on pushing volume in other tissues will increase by the begun by many balls on probably hundreds of thousands of them.
In the from those.
Biologics of insight that is the game.
Using an unbiased approach to procurement.
Actually trigger the need for targeted hurdle of presented the created that drive value from the biological insight, but we see other things Tycho as complementary but not at all of competitors. The sooner we are the only existing or heard of us solutions that don't scale.
Okay. That's helpful I'll, let others jump in thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from cash Savant of with Morgan Stanley.
Hi, guys. Good evening, just wanted to follow up on.
One of Tyco's earlier questions.
On that then Amit can you elaborate a little debt on your experience with discovery life Sciences.
Particularly interesting since they do a ton of multi domain, but they haven't really done proteomics at scale before.
Can you share some color on how the installation went as well as sort of any sort of learnings through the process.
Conversations as you get them up and running on their own samples that you could then leverage to other chemical customers down the road here.
Sure, let's sort of be.
Expand on it so first of all very very excited to have discovery of life Sciences as the collaboration customer in particular, Dr. Shawn Levy as well as.
One of our partners I've known show on for a long period of time and I think he is one of the smartest embraces technology and application of evaluators outcome across so it wasn't accidental that we really targeted early on to work with discovery life Sciences.
Thanks, Sean is fantastic and the way the experiences playing out is exactly that so and they're looking to incorporate proteomics as yet another leg to the multi omics offerings that they have and the reason that they hadn't offered proteomics previously used because if you look at what they do nearly everything they do is done at scale and there werent any existing.
Scaled approaches to unbiased proteomics to complement what they're doing from a genomics epigenomics on transcript billings perspective until the seer offering and so super excited to get going with them. It is very very early days I mean, the system has just got installed and we're completing the training we have already started having some discussions which on around the next day.
<unk> of the collaboration studies.
Rather than sort of the shoe will kind of getting too much into the details of it right now because theres aspects of these collaborations studies quite frankly that we want to make sure we focus on hone in on and demonstrate before we start to talk about the studies.
Are going to be largely on the protium of genomics nature in that we're looking to ask and ideally answering specific questions that connect genomic, possibly transcriptome Mccann epic genomic information with proteomics information.
The resulting from the same cohorts at so very excited to get going with that did you say I mean I can tell you. There's no shortage of ideas on projects that we can do and what we're going through is we have of triage approach to tackling. These one after another so you can expect to hear more color and more results coming from not only discovery life sciences, but our other collaborators over the coming weeks and months as well.
Got it very helpful.
Then.
Given given that you're already in limited release here in March is.
Is that the chances of the broad commercial release.
Perhaps the occurring by by late in the fourth quarter or early next year still the right way to think about it.
Well I'm, assuming you meant there's somebody because the other maybe I was looking at me and the reason of my I'm Chuckling just because this is the question that I'm wondering if he paid you to ask this question I would say yeah I.
Look I think our E.
Our aim is to very successfully execute under three phases of our commercial rollout we feel really good about where we are with our collaboration phase.
Very very encouraged with where we're.
I expect we're going to end up with our limited release phase I don't expect any material change in terms of timing and really quite frankly, the reason for it is because the one of the big things that we're looking to do is make sure that we give these limited release customers the ability to actually not only just demonstrate the initial installation of the project product.
Getting these product the platforms at each of their sites to scale and as you know that does take a moment of time. It does take a little bit of time to actually just do the not only just do the studies, but have the results of that.
We can communicate about it so I don't expect that we're going to move in the timing of broad commercial release, but I'm also cognizant of the fact that we're just about only finishing up the first quarter of 2021. So so.
So right now I would expect that we're going to see.
On track as we have communicated to you.
And and I'm Super excited to now get going with the limits of really phase of our commercialization.
Got it got it and then just sort of just a couple of <unk> on for David.
David I mean.
As I think about sort of the collaboration early access installs and and.
On ramping through the the yoga as of mid teens sort of year end the installed base number of a fairway to think about it in terms of instruments on but you'll recognize revenue on.
Or I know theres, the dynamic where some of these instruments could get install the sort of flattish in December and you might have some sort of that you recognize revenue on the only next year can you just sort of at a high level Directionally, perhaps give us some color on on the installed base ramp here.
Sure Tycho, it's it's you know I.
I think I think is as following up on what are the Mead said just about sticking to our phases. I think we are still committed to the three phases and with the four collaboration partners and as of meters. Also discussed we have six different areas right, where we hope to have one to two customers that kind of puts you.
In high single digits in terms of the number of customers, we will have and the limited release phase. So if you if you put those two together.
You know you're kind of getting you know in that.
And that the.
The area that you were talking about.
And so again I think we're going on we're going to stick to that plan.
And we will certainly kind of be as transparent as we can as that starts to come to fruition, but I think we are committed to kind of the limited release this year with.
With those with those high single digits in terms of customers and then adding on the floor of collaboration customers. We have for 2021, and then moving into 2022 for broader release.
Perfect and then one final one for me for <unk> again.
Any progress to report on the sample and Brook requirement I know, that's kind of like beyond the <unk>.
Adding of additional nanoparticle panels here that's the.
The other thing that we're focused on.
Should we still expect sort of some improvement there heading into sort of the back half of this year and into 'twenty two.
Yes.
Uh huh.
So we are in the process of doing.
Multiple things at one one extend the particle panel.
True.
The kind of think about of the workflow.
On the perspective.
And then three.
The floor different matrices.
Other than plasma of you know we've already exemplifies the utility of the <unk>.
Platform for plasma zero.
To respond the fluid side of <unk>.
Fluid sales in tissue.
In Europe actually.
And so where we go with the I think there's going to be largely driven.
The market feedback right in other words, the assay could actually be significantly utilized less.
If you wouldn't biological samples.
I think the I'll give you a readout of the.
Real question for Us right now.
We wanted to get market feedback for the.
The next iteration, if you with product through product III that goes to the heart of the customer.
Is it more of a that's exactly what the customer needs. So the capabilities. We're building the configuration of what that will look like I like that to be driven by data.
And by market, which I think the only way to get the when we put this into the hands of enough customers and we have adequate feedback for.
For the next iteration of the pump for capabilities pick up we will have the exact.
Of the duration I would propose the visit the second half of the year and we'll have more clarity of that.
Got it perfect. Thanks, so much I appreciate the time guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Bank of Green of Bank of America.
Hi, good afternoon.
Yes.
Hey.
Hey, so just sort of following up on on one of your earlier points.
You talked I mean, certainly can appreciate the heat about.
The unbiased approach in.
And the of discovery element of it and then the more targeted purchase of coming out there, but I guess vs.
Sort of extend that.
And knowledge he and.
The sort of looking at what what illuminated by the acquiring grill I mean, I know you've got prognostic as.
Some of your discussion you know sort of your diagnostic arm that's involved in that is but I guess.
Are you not ultimately worried about some of these more targeted areas of.
About the value being ultimately go into some of these more downstream applications as opposed to the discovery.
Very good.
Excellent question.
And I have probably pervade I don't know 30 different experts I mean have you been ask your opinion about the question.
As we were thinking about.
The strategy right.
I think the Illumina ended up with Illumina got in large part because for a long time customers.
Im looking over their shoulder thinking.
Thinking the alumina was going to eat the lunch.
And then the sales and they've got 80% of market share.
But that took a number of years to penetrate the market in that way.
And then at that point, if you will.
The ecosystem that they have created because of the ubiquitous. The fact that platform was still of ours that the application aspect of it was growing and then they chose to bring that in house.
Our strategy on in fact, the spin out of the programmatic really kind of speaks volume to that is that we wanted the squarely focused on on.
Opportunity in front of us, which is to be the definitive tool either in the proteomics space.
We wanted to communicate to our customer that we wanted to you of partner, we want to help you to kind of achieve your goals and objectives and research on your application and we never have to look over your shoulder.
But I'm gonna be eating the launch that's going to kind of drive you up quickly as the tends to jump off of my platform and do something else.
In the near future.
Even in the mid future.
I I like for deep on by a per Youll make a screw up the become synonymous with fear on.
And in that regard I think our strategy.
To be kind of focus on our customers. It makes a lot of sense.
If I end up having the privilege and I think time will tell we certainly have the right team we have the right technology, if we execute well on and I think time will tell then if all goes our way and we ended up being synonymous if you would keep on about proteomics.
The magnificently large market share of that than I do think there are part of our next phase of growth I might bring some of the application in house.
But I think today. The current strategy is one that makes sense for us for the foreseeable future.
Great and then just one quick follow up on this one on.
Or another one.
So I realize you're just now getting things into your collaborators hands. Your early access customers hands, but is there any indication that you know the.
The technology transfer won't transfer of easily I mean issues with reproducibility as of any sort of sign that it might be the.
Passes we're transferring things from from your hands to your collaborators hands may have some issues.
I am pausing to answer because I I'm.
I'm, hoping that the jinx myself, so far we haven't seen any sign that suggests it would be in and I speak from a position of having obviously as you know.
Uh huh.
It used to be involved with the introduction of the number of new technology and ease of couple of things about this this technology on this assay that have put us in the physician to feel really confident that the level of I was wondering if you will technology transfer and reproducibility and ease of use are going to translate outside of here and a lot of that has to do with the fact that if you.
Look at what we've done is what we've done if you focused on taking of process today that is unwieldy irreproducible difficult cumbersome you name it and we basically automated it using a really elegant assay design that the that just takes out almost all of the hands on interface that a person would happen with the <unk>.
Flow and by automating that process on by definition, we have taken out potential sources.
And that will lead to things like air and reproducibility. So yesterday haven't really tight process on the back of a liquid handling automation system that is not only globally proven but is that the backbone of much of what's happening in terms of COVID-19 testing and vaccine testing on some of it's a super robust platform, it really well designed and elegant assay.
That takes the operator out of the intervention and so that actually if anything has led to a level of of predictability that makes us confident we can transfer the technology I will honestly tell you far more easily than say the technology like next generation sequencing certainly relative to its early days. So I feel really good about where we are in the experience with the customer.
So far.
Roofs that out and and I think this is going to play out in a very relatively straightforward transfer of product to a variety of customers way.
Great. Thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Schenkel with Cowen.
Hey, everybody. Thanks.
My questions.
On my first question is on your move in cookies, who are the early commercial launch as you make the move or what type of customers of your attrition of targeting is it is it going to be more of the same or ideally where you attract a.
A more diverse customer side, you know maybe more biopharma more multi omics customers. How are you thinking about that.
Yeah, So I think.
Well I love to have more of the same if you will because of the caliber of the customers. We have today are fantastic and I expect we will have others of similar caliber, but as you would expect Doug there was going to be increasing diversity here you talked about biopharma clearly that's going to be one group of going to work with Ah theres going to be.
I suppose you can expect to see customers, who are probably more I don't know if you want to call it sort of translational genomics.
The political genomics types of customers, we will certainly be among them.
Our customers, who are strictly <unk> and then certainly multi omics.
Customers as well and then you'll begin to see some degree of geographic diversity as well because so far on.
As I've noted all four of the customers. We have are based on North America. We've talked to you about obviously not just staying focused in North America. So you can expect to see an increasing diversification of customer type application types and certainly geographic diversity as we move forward through limited relief and then working our way towards problems.
And then how many placements would you expect in <unk>.
As to what's the right way for us the define success there in terms of the number of partners and the number of pretty of graphs out there.
Yes.
What we've talked to you all in the past on I think David just a few minutes ago reiterated it is.
We're targeting somewhere in the high single digits in terms of limited release customers and it's good.
The six if you will primary target customer segment and types that were focused on establishing at least one to two lighthouse accounts.
And so that I think is going to end up in the high single digits in terms of.
Limited release customer sites, and then you can add onto that the collaboration customers. We've got on now I'll give you a sense of the total number of customer sites, we expect to be at through the first two phases of our commercial release.
Okay and building building off of that and as you just noted.
Again.
On a month ago, you were at two customer sites.
It's made of third placement of it you announced your fourth plant.
As we're looking for.
On milestones to really measure of how things are going beyond the placements and the move into the next phase I am curious what you can share in terms of how things are progressing with the phase one customers and specifically how should we think about milestones as we look ahead to Q.
True.
And I'm curious are the collaborators deciding what the studies to do or to seer have input on study design of that sort of by the extent check of what we might actually see some publications.
Okay.
On my country with at least four questions. Let me see if I can answer each of them in terms of the publications of the short answer to that is certainly that is one of the seminal drivers for the collaboration that we're doing the aim of it is and that's not just ours. It is actually in fact out of the collaborators is that the work that we're doing together is novel and publication worthy. So.
Absolutely you can bet on us working with our collaborators to to generate the type of studies that then the merit publication now as you know the lead time for these things is a little bit longer and so what are we doing the interim where our plan is that in the interim.
You can expect to hear from our collaborator customers you can expect to hear from them either.
Through the information that seer is going to be publicly available such as well Mike post certain things on our website that can give you a glimpse into what the customers are doing certainly you can expect to see and hear from these customers at industry conferences in terms of joint poster abstract and certainly in terms of independent poster.
<unk> tracks of presentations.
We absolutely we will make it a point of to make sure that you all are getting.
Getting of getting a view into how our customers are progressing as the year goes on in terms of input into the collaborations and yes, we certainly have not only input but these are joined collaborations that we're defining in the first set of these.
Engagements with these customers.
And then over the course of time clearly customers are going to do more of the things that they really think are going to be very suitable for their out of areas of interest, but we do want to make sure that in the case of every one of these collaborators we have a clearly defined if you will study that we want to demonstrate because that's the purpose of being very selective about the collaborators but at the.
I very much also enabled these collaboration customers, who arent thought leaders to be able to drive the application and the product forward as the best season. So you'll end up being a combination of some absolutely 100 per cent and the rest of them quite frankly theyre going to know we've entered the nine we'll know for example, one of the ways in which the part of your graph is gonna be.
Particularly enabling through their studies and in that case, we're going to let them be able to run with that so hopefully that I think I think I answered all of your questions, but if I failed to answer and please remind me.
No you got it and then last.
The last one just going back to something chaos touched on I just want to make sure I got the answer on when do you guys go to full commercial launch in early 'twenty. Two is at a given that you'll be in a sample types beyond human plasma or should I take.
The answer you gave earlier.
Earlier to me that.
It remains to be seen in and we should wait until the second half to get a black and white answer on that.
Doug.
On the way, we should think of it as that.
We are building the core capabilities to not only the indifferent sample type.
But to be to have a different configuration that would even get different protein types.
The question the key question is.
What is product too and what is the product three what is the timing between that and I think that that has to be driven by the customer otherwise. We're just guessing right we have to let them.
You know we have to let these.
Panels run wild with the customer.
And then they come back to us where the needs are and we're ready to go to kind of put the configuration and then that becomes the product one three and I think we'll be in a much better positioned to tackle that.
The second half of the year and I would like to buy myself, some airtime on asking them to come on the asked me. The question in the suffering of half of the second half of the house.
Okay.
That sounds good okay, alright, thanks, guys.
Sure.
Thank you and I'm not showing any further questions in the Kansai.
Thanks, so much and I think more than done really really appreciate it. Thanks, so much everyone.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for you participation on todays program you may now disconnect kind of a wonderful day.
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Hello, Thank you for standing by.
Welcome to the Seer fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the presentation. There will be a question and answer session to ask the question during that session you will need to press star one on your telephone.
The required any further assistance. Please press star Zero I will now hand, the conference over to your speaker today, Gary Mandel with Investor Relations.
Earlier today <unk> released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ending December 31 2020.
If you have not received the news release or if you'd like the attitude of the Companys distribution list. Please send an email to investor at Seer got bio.
Joining me today from Seer, it's still need facts on chairman Chief Executive Officer, and founder on we don't sit on the President and Chief operating Officer, and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer.
Before we begin I'd like to remind you that management will make the statements. During the call that are forward looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws.
These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated.
Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears on the section entitled forward looking statements in the press release Seer issue today.
For a more complete listen the description. Please see the risk factors section of the company's annual report on form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2020, and then this other filings of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Except as required by law here disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward looking statements, whether because of the new information future events or otherwise.
This conference call contains time sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast of 29 2021, but that I would like to turn the call over Tony.
Thanks Carey.
Today marks our first earning call as the public company.
This is the terminal milestone for our company on a particular the gratifying one for me on the founder of Seer.
We will begin today's call with an overview of our opportunity and our strategy. We will then transition of our comments to provide a review of our progress in 2020.
On the preview of our objectives for 2021.
Fuel has gone from setting our initial vision of enabling broad scale access to deep on bias towards the oil mix.
So the shipping products to our customers in just three short years.
We have built a world class team that is second to none in the proteomics space.
And we of the product solution that is well positioned to enable the kind of proteomics studies that were just not possible before seer.
To our incredible team.
I would like to take a moment and express my sincere thanks to each and every one of you.
For your passion dedication and hard work.
My special Thanks to your families for their support on patients as we navigated very difficult year to deliver exceptional outcomes.
So our longstanding investors. Thank you for your continued support and so on new investors welcome and thank you for your trust and partnership and building Seer.
We are grateful that you all share our vision of making unbiased deep on large scale towards the oil mix broadly accessible.
And in doing so help our customers drive novel biological of inside create and expand new end markets.
And ultimately improve human health.
We look forward to developing meaningful long term relationships with each and every one of you as we grow the company and push the boundaries of our technology in pursuit of realizing on Richard.
Our understanding of biology has come a long way in the last 15 years.
Just imagine if we have to face this pandemic today without broad scale access to genomic technologies that have driven testing in vaccine development.
And the pace and scale of the World had never seen before.
Now lets profound impact of genomic has had on health and management of diseases.
I fully expect that broad scale access to pull the oil mix it up even a deeper and the more profound impact and making the world a better place.
Proteins are the drivers of all cellular function on large scale access to unbiased in the proteomics would likely lead to insights applications and therapeutics otherwise not possible.
I'm excited and humbled to be leaving the company that is committed to making this happen.
I fear, we're developing innovative solutions to empowered the scientific community.
To arrive at the exceptional proteomics outcomes.
To deliver against this objective we have the four pronged strategy.
First.
We wanted to set the pace for innovation in the proteomics space.
We will deliver a continuous stream of disruptive products to enable novel approaches for interrogating the proteome.
Second.
We will leverage the unique capabilities of our differentiated solutions.
We will pave the way to catalyze large scale of protein genomic studies that will accelerate functional ization of the genome of meaningfully advanced our understanding of biology.
Third.
We will couple of exceptional customer experience with transformative products.
We will work with all the customers to enhance their ability to create new applications. The new end uses that will expand the market for proteomics and protium genomics and force.
We will form the strategic relationships with key customers and partners.
We will create.
The rich ecosystem of solutions around the paragraph products suite that extend the utility expand the reach and drive adoption of our platform to labs of all types.
We have developed the pro geographic product suite of solution that Leverages, our proprietary engineered nanoparticles.
To replace the current depletion and fractionation methods used to perform unbiased proteomics today.
These depletion and fractionation methods of necessary for the proteomics studies because of the proteome.
In any biological samples can span a wide dynamic range from the most of abundant to the least of abundance proteins in plasma for example, the.
Dynamic range of the protein kind of expand over 10 order of magnitude.
With fewer than 20 of proteins accounting for greater than 99% of the total protein by mass and the typical plasma sample.
In order to access the broad range of proteins, and especially those that are of low abundance.
The researchers are forced to follow on the board of U S extensive depletion on fractionation methods.
To methodically separate proteins before of detection.
These methods simply do not scale well on.
The accessible to a few labs and on.
Cumbersome to perform.
Our protium products suite, replacing these methods with a streamlined automated workflow that can fit in front of me really any detector delivering unmatched access to proteomics information.
With the proteome golf product suite, we have re imagined the entire approach to unbiased proteomics delivering a solution that can enable nearly any lab to adopt large scale proteomics and notion that was previously inconceivable.
Now on Proteus graph product suite is detect the agnostic.
Providing the solution that makes access to large scale deep on biased towards the omics tangible and importantly, not just for a select group of thought leaders in proteomics, but for really any lap wanting to do on by Proteomics studies.
Today's the proteomics communities detector of choice is the mass back within the installed base of 15000 instead of focused on proteomics analysis.
Our protium graft product suite can sit upstream to any non spec addressing the long standing unmet need for efficient deep on box proteomics at scale.
Similar to the way next generation sequencing brought about a sea change in our approach the genomic transcriptome makes on biology.
We believe she is the technology has the potential to affect the similar if not of more profound change.
As we have previously shared with you.
We began the commercialization of a portion of that product suite in late 2020.
Our commercialization strategy comprised of three stages, starting with the collaboration phase followed by a limited release and culminating with broad release.
This measured approach to commercialization is ideal for introducing highly disruptive products.
And it's one that has been established and proven to be successful on the other sectors.
Our commercialization approach allows us to demonstrate the power of the program's got product suite for.
The key applications at leading Kols types.
Develop strong reference sites and accelerate adoption by creating clear blueprint for other customers to follow.
While the existing towards the Youll make labs using mass spec has provided the incredible opportunity for us.
We believe that the opposite is far larger and includes customers who want to add on my proteomics information on scale.
But have not had the technology that allows them to do so.
This includes some of the key lab, the researchers who are performing large skill of genomic studies, but are unable to impedance matched these studies with equally large deep unbiased proteomics studies.
These are the customers to the advance the field of protein genomics.
Which is predicated on the ability to connect genomics information to protein variant of information at the amino acid level.
It is important to note here is the only.
If bailable add scale technology to deliver peptides and I mean, what's the level of resolution, which is necessary to match the nucleotide level of genomic information and enable protean genomics.
The existing unbiased towards the Dobek approaches do not scale.
And the existing scalable targeted for the Omega approaches are unable to see proteins I Didnt mean, though as it on peptide level before you can see the complexity of the proteome with these technologies, including the million plus of protein variants that exists in the body.
The areas that are critically important in understanding the dynamic spectrum of health and disease.
Unbiased toward your Mig is also where the lion's share of the opportunity in proteomics and protium of genomic reside and where we believe the majority of market expansion will occur over time.
She will enable population scale probably of genomic studies to be performed empowering the scientific community to identify tens of thousands of protein variance in plasma and the hundreds of thousands of putting the the other tissue.
This will then rich biological data sets and in the half the number of Biomarkers of drug targets. The overall impact on human health will be enormous.
By combining population scale unbiased proteomics and genomics, we believe scientists will gain the richer understanding of biology.
Drive novel insights.
Accelerate functional validation of genomic variance and ultimately advance human health in a much faster and broader way.
With the launch of the prodrug of golf product suite, we have started down the path of making our vision.
Of empowering the scientific community to acts of deep on basketball the Omega at scale of the reality I could not be more excited and more proud about what we're doing at the theater.
2021 of the defining year for us on so many levels and despite the challenging environment. We reached the number of important milestones.
We published results demonstrating the robustness of our platform for rapid deep precise on bias toward your mix and nature of communications.
On the exemplified the utility for early detection of lung cancer.
The assessment of probably of literature. This publication Mark the largest unbiased deep plasma proteomics studies published at the time.
We spent a lot of product gnomic, a company focused on coupling deep unbiased proteomics at scale with the other all makes of approaches for early detection.
Diagnosis of diseases in oncology and other therapeutic areas.
C of retained and 19% ownership in Prague gnomic.
We scaled the organization and added seasoned leaders to our management team and board of directors assembling of uniquely qualified team to deliver on our vision.
We commercialized on.
About the products, we ship and install a product at the first of our collaboration customers and signed on additional customers.
And this all culminated with the completion of our initial public offering and concurrent private placement in December which raised approximately 314 million in net proceeds.
Now since we last updated you at the JP Morgan Health Care Conference in early January we have continued to make incredible progress across all dimensions of our business.
We made great strides at our first three collaboration sites, Oregon Health Sciences University that cancer Institute.
The broad Institute and Discovery Life Sciences.
All three sides of progressing at or ahead of our expectation.
We're also extremely excited and privileged to announce the addition of fault Institute as of fourth collaboration customer.
With our collaboration customers on board, we're now turning our attention to the limited release phase of our commercialization approach.
Well meet will walk you through more details on the overall commodity raw extrusion of progress shortly.
And we announced today and you may have seen that we've signed a non exclusive commercial agreement with <unk> to provide complete end to end solution for unbiased the rapid and large scale proteomics.
This builds on the existing commercial agreement with Thermo Fisher on broker that we announced earlier this year.
In 2020, one we've already presented at several of scientific conferences sharing exciting results from the studies that we did in collaboration with our customers and partners demonstrating the unique capabilities of our platform.
And finally, we further strengthened our balance sheet by raising an additional 103 million of net proceeds from our follow on offering in February.
We are very much at the onset of this journey.
And while much work remains we are excited and inspired by the opportunity the lays in front of us.
Since our IPO, we've seen an acceleration in the susiana than energy on investment in the proteomics space.
We're building the technology the team on the commercial path to lead the way in this new era of opportunity.
People and culture are core to innovation.
We have continued to attract the world class pool of talent.
We made significant additions to our management team over the past few months.
We welcome the rest of the Dickson as our new Chief people Officer.
Whereas the brings over 20 years of experience across technology on the health care industries to help build our culture and teams.
We've also welcomed alone the kogan to fear as general counsel a loan of brings broad global experience in publicly traded companies across biotech and pharma.
Several of them that look low joined us as the VP and chief of the computation several of them as a globally recognized expert in data science and machine learning.
He was previously on alumina and before that of professor of data science at Stanford for about 15 years.
Shashank couple of pennies that he has joined as VP corporate development within the extensive background in corporate strategy.
The development and M&A most recently at Illumina.
And finally, Karen, but some auto as VP of corporate marketing and communications and Karen has spent 25 years in commercial on corporate leadership roles at industry, leading high growth of life science companies, including the lung alumina Qiagen in neutrogena.
We also announced earlier this quarter that deepen the Shaw senior managing partner of Softbank and Dr. The most of our rollout.
Former Chief Technology Officer of Illumina has joined our board of directors.
The unique and complementary perspective is the technology expansion health care innovation and ecosystem creation will be invaluable to fear as we accelerate and expand our markets.
From the existing towards the Omics researchers the genomic researchers.
And for a multi omics core laughed the commercial entities Biopharma and clinical accounts, we see unbiased deep and rapid proteomics at scale offering tremendous value to our markets and customers.
The proteome is truly the next frontier in furthering our understanding of human health and disease.
As the only available method.
Vision to unlock and expand biological insight in this way he is ready to deliver the value.
With that I will turn the call over to a need for more details on our commercial progress Amit.
Thanks.
To ensure we can continue on and execute on a high level, we have focused our commercial efforts and investments around three critical areas.
First building a great team.
And delivering a great product and third developing critical strategic partnerships.
All of these are done with the aim of delivering exceptional customer experience that enables our customers to realize their scientific vision and rewards them for their case in our products and our company.
The exist to serve on empower our customers with products and services that removed technology at the bottleneck to realizing great scientific mission.
Although we're still early in commercialization I'm very encouraged by the initial rollout of the part of your graph product suites.
In mere weeks, our collaboration customers have made incredible progress.
Oregon Health Sciences University of Knight Cancer Institute was our first customer to receive a priority graph in late November of last year.
Shortly after the new year, they began processing their own samples and the recently completed an initial pilot study in prostate cancer.
They are using the resulting data as the foundation for a larger project of between 500 to 1000 samples.
They are also gearing up for two additional studies.
<unk> is a multi omics study that aims to correlate proteomics and complementary ohmic alterations in hematologic cancer and that May include up to 300 diagnostic and longitudinal on time points specimens.
Second is the multi arm study focused on assessing proteomics responses of the cancer models following system penetration.
We are deeply committed to our continued collaboration with OE, just you and we look forward to supporting their path towards the inclusion of unbiased deep and large scale proteomics across an expanding number of programs.
The broad Institute, which received their Proto graph in December 2020 has also begun running their samples before initial project <unk>.
Similar to all the chest you the broad expects to use the party graph for additional larger projects in the coming months and we look forward to their progress on findings.
And most recently discovered the life Sciences received their instrument, which has been successfully installed and they are completing their training.
We expect them to be up and running with samples in the coming weeks and we look forward to partnering with them as they explore the use of the protein graph for a range of studies and number of which are expected to focus on Proteus genomics questions.
And as Hamid mentioned, we have added the Salk Institute of World renowned multidisciplinary Research Institute focused on addressing some of the most challenging health issues, we face, including cancer Alzheimers diabetes and more.
With the addition of the Salk Institute at our fourth collaboration customer we have the opportunity to broaden the range of applications for which the Purdue GAAP will be used to include plant biology of model organisms.
And to further showcase the range on breadth of the part of your GAAP product suite and uniquely addressing technology bottlenecks in proteomics.
While executing on the first phase of our commercialization with our collaboration customers. We have already begun to engage prospective customers for the second phase of our commercialization limited release.
As a reminder, in the second phase, we will selectively expand to customers, who can scale quickly to demonstrate the power and utility of the party GAAP product suite.
We are extremely encouraged by the discussions with these prospective customers and we look forward to working with the number of them to demonstrate the unique capabilities or the party GAAP for a wide range of applications.
Limit the release customers will not only exemplify applications at a party graph, but he will also serve as an important reference sites, whose adoption will provide others with a clear blueprint to follow.
Additionally, some of these customers who will serve as centers of excellence that offer unbiased deep plasma proteomics services using the protein graft product suite.
In stat wishing the centers of excellence during the limited release will be broadening access to the part of you got product suite and enable an ever expanding number of scientists and researchers to access our product in anticipation of broader release.
We are also excited to announce our strategic relationship with <unk> to expand the number of end to end solutions. We can offer our customers who are looking to adopt unbiased in the proteomics at scale.
Coupled with our existing strategic agreements with Thermo Fisher on broker, which we announced in January. The addition of <unk> will enhance our ability to accelerate adoption expand markets and broadened the overall proteomics of multi omics ecosystem.
With all three of these partners, who are working to further streamline and develop our end to end workflows to empower customers to scale their proteomics studies deepened their insights and expand the application set.
In January we have already started to engage more deeply with thermo Fisher on broker and we presented our first joint poster with Cooper at the U S. Hubel conference two weeks ago.
This poster demonstrated that the combination of our part of the graph in Bucharest, Tim store provides the scalable solution for unbiased and day plasma proteomics that offers an unmatched combination of depth breadth speed and precision.
This end to end workflow enables researchers to measure well in excess of 1700 protein groups in plasma without the need for expensive cumbersome and lengthy depletion on fractionation steps and offers we produce would be the knee and standardization not possible with conventional unbiased methods.
Furthermore, from our conversations with potential customers, we have already begun to see the immense value of being able to talk about complete end to end solutions.
On a number of conversations, especially with prospective customers who are not deeply immersed in proteomics, our ability to offer complete end to end workflows is helping groups feel much more comfortable and confident.
That day, two can easily adopt large scale unbiased in the proteomics.
Finally, we are building out of our commercial team and increasing our investment on market development.
Since the fourth quarter of 2020, we have added key hires and sales support and marketing.
We are also generating specific market development strategies for targeted segments.
And customers that we are planning to roll out over the course of 2021.
These market development strategies are designed to enrich our funnel of prospective customers.
The day groundwork for adoption and demonstrate the utility of unbiased proteomics data in large cohort studies.
We're also working to establish connections with industry consortia and funding bodies to drive education around our technology.
Importantly, we've been able to exceed our goals while navigating the challenges presented to all of us by Covid over the last year.
And although the risk of Covid is not entirely retired we believe that we have the right plans on mitigation in place to successfully meet our upcoming 2021 milestones.
Our deep collaboration and partnership with our suppliers have proven to be instrumental in our ability to deliver on our objectives.
And these relationships and the commitment of these partners give us confidence that we can maintain our objectives over the coming months.
Overall I'm incredibly proud of our team for the progress we've made in such a short time on.
I'm excited and humbled to be part of such an amazing team and I'm inspired by their passion hard work and dedication, which has allowed us to commercialize a transformative product.
In summary, I believe we have the technology the team and strategy to bring the next phase in AUM ex the labs around the globe.
With that I will now turn the call over to David for more detail of our financials.
Thanks, So made total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 of it was $336000 compared to $58000 on the fourth quarter of 2019.
Total revenue for the year was $656000 compared to $116000 in 2019.
The increase was due to a small business innovation research grant awarded by the National Institutes of health in the third quarter of 2019, and which continued through 2020.
In addition, we completed a research collaboration study with a partner in 2020 to date all of our revenue has been generated from grant funded activities and research collaborations with Biopharma companies and we have not generated any revenue from product sales.
Operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $13 4 million compared to $5 5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 total operating expenses for 2020 were $34 3 million compared to $17 million in 2019.
Research and development expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $5 4 million compared to $3 8 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Research and development of expenses for 2020 were $18 9 million compared to $12 4 million in 2019 the.
The increase in R&D expenses for the year was primarily driven by increased product development efforts related to a pretty growth product suite, including an increase in research and development personnel.
General and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $8 million compared to $1 6 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
G&A expenses for the year were $15 4 million compared to $4 6 million in 2019.
The increase in G&A expenses for the year was primarily driven by increased head count and associated compensation expenses, including stock based compensation as well as increased costs related to becoming a public company.
Net loss for the fourth quarter was $12 9 million compared to $5 1 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Net loss for the full year was $32 8 million compared to $16 billion in 2019.
We ended 2020 with approximately $432 million on cash cash equivalents of investments.
This amount includes approximately $314 million in net proceeds from our IPO and concurrent private placement in December of 2020 subs.
Subsequent to year end, we closed the follow on offering in February of 2021, raising an additional $103 million in net proceeds.
In 2020, one we expect to continue to grow our investments in all areas of our business, including sales and marketing in our commercial operations as we continue with the commercial rollout of our protein graph product suite.
As we move through the balance of the year, we expect to recognize product revenue from our commercial activities beginning in the second quarter of 2021.
At this point I would like to turn the call back to me for closing comments.
Thanks, David.
So in conclusion, while 2020 was a turning point for Seer. We believe this is really just the beginning.
We believe 2021 is going to be even more exciting we're committed.
Two transforming what is possible in proteomics and empowering the scientific community with the tools to achieve exceptional outcomes.
We believe the unbiased deep rapid proteomics at scale will pave the way for broad scale of novel biologic insight with incredible impact across science and medicine.
With that we'll now open it up for questions. Thanks, so much.
Thank you and I sort of reminder to ask the question simply press Star one on your on telephone.
The other question press, the pound or cash King please standby, while we compile the Q&A roster.
Our first question comes from Tycho Peterson with JP Morgan.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks, I'll start with the R&D question, just if you could talk on the roadmap or building out the library of nano particles beyond the end of the initial five do you have how should we think about the timeline there and how important is that I think in terms of yes, yes.
Getting additional customer traction.
Hey, Tycho.
Look the last time, we spoke we were just north of 275 of this thing.
None of the part of it goes and that number continues to increase.
Hum the direction that we're programmed it.
Potentially.
Understanding that the non of a body of the interface.
On the same physical chemical structure of the particles impact the sun, putting down of particle does.
In fact, there was the paper that fear is.
Submitting and that should be the next publication in the history from the company.
The compared to the field workflow to the existing unbiased approach it.
And similarly, the chose <unk> nanoparticle designed can select every tells you what the sample now keep in mind that.
Our five part nickel panel is just starting to be commercialized now so on.
Our focus is squarely on putting that part of the Golar that panel in the hands of the customer on pause.
The how the responses and then customer demand on customer needs is that going to drive what the next panel will look like.
But our Arsenal of if you would of the.
On the nanoparticle part of will allow us on the relatively short cycle.
The next product kind of on the highest of the customer and then the one after that but we want that to the market driven we don't want to have a lot of skus. We wanted to have the relevance of scone half of the panels of the customers moved where the most of the mountain Dew.
And then that's going to be just the direct communications between us on them at the they've gone through the platform.
Okay, and then as we think about some of the early placements you know the original kind of deal model was kind of to the one commercial versus academic. This year can you just talk to Neil traction early discussions with additional clinical partners beyond discovery life Sciences in particular, some of the liquid biopsy companies you've alluded to in the past.
Sure Tycho Hi, this is I mean of sedans. So let me answer that question for you.
We still believe that that ratio is going to hold this year and if anything I think the conversations that we've had with prospective customers continue to affirm that point of view and to be clear on the commercial side of it what we're sensing on when we're actually experiencing and discussions with customers that the interest is quite broad from of course, one application perspective, So your site.
Early detection of liquid biopsy companies clearly they are a subset of customers with whom we've been engaged.
They are quite interested but the range of commercial entities interested in this product as it is fairly broad spanning.
A diverse set of diagnostic companies therapeutic companies.
<unk> services companies on Crows, as one of the dose focusing some of it.
Applied areas and so what do you expect what you can expect from us to seize as we've I think talked to you all before is roughly.
We're up to about six main customer segments customer type areas that we're focused on and we expect to have one to two customers from each of those areas. Among our limited release customers on in that ratio I do expect it to end up being again, the two to one of commercial more heavily weighted versus academic as we work on.
The way through limited release, so hopefully that answered your question.
It does and then just last one on the on the mass spec partnerships I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more of you said, you've kind of gone all the deeper with blue part of the thermal which is good to hear on.
I'm curious how you think about <unk> in that context, I assume this would be for their triple top kind of higher on systems, but can you just talk a little bit about how meaningful that could be and how much you can really leverage the larger players you know of commercial resources.
Sure I'll tackle that again Tycho so first of all of let's just start off by saying, we're really excited to have these partnerships with the three of the leading mass spec providers in the world do represent in aggregate. The majority of the installed base of mass spec platform for which we expect our our technology to be used in a complementary fashion upfront of it.
Clearly, adding sites to the list that already existed thermo Fisher on broker.
Basically continues to reiterate that they like us the seed the opportunity for I'm biased on day proteomics can be substantial and that the combination of of our platform as a front end to their detection technologies to be something that's going to be very enabling not only for existing customers, but more importantly for prospective customers and so to that.
And clearly we have all three of these platforms by the way in house, we have IX platform of Thermo Fisher on broker, which.
Which has allowed us to continue to build on the existing relationships on partnerships who've had we expect to continue to enhance those relationships and sort of drive flow.
The award joined collaborations and product development activities that ultimately is going to lead to even a better experience for our customers. So adding some extra that this for US was important because again when you when you look at them, but we want to be able to do is we want to be in a position that when we are engaging with customers that we can talk to them by the end to end workflows.
Both in the in front of the perspective that if they have a particular detector, we want to be able to know about the deal with sharp to them and importantly, if they don't have the detector and they want our.
Sort of input to help guide them through the process. The broader set of solutions. There are that we can offer to them. The more likely it is that we can guide the customer to an optimal solution that meets that customer specific needs and now with the three leading providers of mass specs as our partners. We think we're well positioned to do that moving forward.
Okay, that's great and actually I kind of ask one more before I hop off you know theres a lot of capital. That's obviously come into the space with all of the quantum of side I'm. Just curious as you go out and talk to prospective customers does that change anything from from your perspective.
A lot of talk of all of them here.
Keep in mind.
All of the solution today that offer deep on.
Volume per dealer.
One of sales.
So the alternative to the fear.
And basically other unbiased approaches that do not scale.
The activity that we're seeing in the market today I think the validate if you would have the opportunity and the quality of experience on the enthusiasm.
That the Investor community of the scientific community hogs for what is likely going to be the next frontier and the lack of information.
But the targeted approaches that are coming the answer is this thing question that has a different set of questions.
On the customers able to get using the platform.
And then sort of in that case I'm talking about the companies like owning some of lot of things that are appropriate by the targeted approaches.
The folks that are.
Closed the developed if you would the next generation the sector.
Their business model is true ultimately potentially.
A replay of the temperature like a matter of fact and again from the tier perspective, we are the types of agnostic. So not all of these and we sit upstream to any of that.
And I've always mentioned that we have.
We work with the leading on site.
We of partnership with all of them, but frankly, we are also the types of agnostic in that ultimately another factor other than the non aspect that comes available.
That's the commercial traction than the photograph will go on sit upstream to the architecture.
If we deliver on volume.
Access of the proteome and on the detector we've moved on.
The only thing that would change the very end of our assay the reported that would need to run.
So in that price Tycho.
Mhm either of the detector for European companies of your competitor, nor do I see the targeted approaches of your competitor what I do see is that just like.
The next generation sequencing and the enormous amount of biological insight.
<unk> generated and then when that happens the.
The targeted genomic approach of if you would like PCR that's the.
It has become obsolete. The fact, if anything we can do.
Biologics inside the Mds enabled with so much genetic variant of new markers and others the.
Ultimately the need for the targeted genetic approaches when they were talking of the sequencing or you are actually increased.
So my expectation is that.
Customers began to adopt the perennial growth.
We began to go deep on the procurement at scale the.
A number of Biomarkers in plasma would increase by by many meaningful probably tens of thousands of.
The number of proteins on putting variance in other tissues with income.
We've begun by many bolt on probably hundreds of thousands.
And then from those.
<unk> biologic insight that is the game using an unbiased approach to procurement.
Actually trigger of the need for targeted panel of presenting the created a debt.
Drive value from the biological insights. So we see these are there other things.
Complementary, but not at all of our competitor could see or where do you all of the existing alternative solutions that don't scale.
Okay. That's helpful I'll, let others jump in thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes on cash Savant of with Morgan Stanley.
Hi, guys. Good evening, just wanted to follow up on on one of the cycles earlier questions.
And then Amit can you elaborate a little debt on your experience with discovery life Sciences.
It's particularly interesting since they do a ton of multi zone, but they haven't really done proteomics at scale before.
Can you share some color on how the installation went as well as sort of any sort of learning through the process.
The conversations as you get them up and running on their own samples that you could then leverage to other clinical customers down the road here.
Sure.
Let me expand on so first of all.
Very very excited to have discovery life sciences, as the collaboration customer and in particular, Dr. Shawn Levy as well as one of our partners I've known Sean for a long period of time and I think he is one of the smartest embraced technology and application of value. There's I've come across so it wasn't accidental that we really targeted early on to work with.
The discovery life Sciences.
I just think Sean is fantastic and the way the experience is playing out is exactly that so they're looking to ink.
Incorporate proteomics adds yet another leg to the multi omics offerings that they have.
And the reason that the hadn't offered proteomics previously used because if you look at what they do nearly everything they do is done at scale and there werent any existing scaled approaches to unbiased proteomics to complement what they're doing from a genomics epigenomics on transcript on mix perspective until the seer offering and so super excited to get going with them. It is very <unk>.
Very early days I mean, the system has just got installed and we're completing the training we have already started having some discussions which on around the next phase of the collaboration studies.
Rather than sort of if you will kind of getting too much into the details of it right now because theres aspects of these collaborations studies quite frankly that we want to make sure we focus on hone in on and demonstrate before we start to talk about the studies they are going to be largely on the proteomics genomics nature in that we're looking to ask and ideally answer your specific question.
<unk> that connect genomic, possibly transcript stomach on epigenomics information with proteomics information.
The resulting from the same cohorts at so very excited to get going with that I mean, I can tell you. There's no shortage of ideas on projects that we can do and what we're going through is we have of triage approach to tackling. These one after another so you can expect to hear more color and more results coming from not only discovery life sciences, but our other collaborators over the coming weeks and months as of.
Well.
Got it very helpful.
And then given given that Youre already in limited release here in March.
That of the chance of of the broad commercial release.
Perhaps the occurring by late in the fourth quarter or early next year still the right way to think about it.
Well.
I'm, assuming by the medium into this I mean.
Because the other way I was looking at me and the reason why I'm chuckling. Because this is the question that I'm wondering if he paid you to ask this question I'd say, yes.
I think.
<unk>.
Our aim is to very successfully execute under three phases of our commercial rollout we feel really good about where we are with our collaboration phase.
Very very encouraged with where we're.
I expect we're going to end up with our limited release Phase I don't expect any material change in terms of timing and really quite frankly of the reason for it is because the one of the big things that we're looking to do is make sure that we give these limited release customers the ability to actually not only just demonstrate the initial installation of the project product.
But getting these products to the platforms at each of their sites to scale and as you know that does take a moment of time. It does take a little bit of time to actually just do the not only just do the studies, but have the results of them that we can communicate about so I don't expect that were going to move in the timing of broad commercial release, but I'm also cognizant of the fact that we're just about only finishing up.
The first quarter of 2021, so so.
So right now I would expect that we're going to stay on.
On track as we have communicated to you.
And I'm Super excited to now will get going with the limited release phase of our commercialization.
Got it got it and then just sort of just a couple of the on for David Day.
What I mean.
As I think about sort of of the collaboration early access installs.
The ramping through the the yoga as of mid teens sort of year end the installed base number of a fair way to think about it in terms of instruments on but you will recognize revenue on.
Or I know theres, the dynamic where some of these instruments could get install of sort of flattish in December and you might have some sort of that you recognize revenue on only next year can you just sort of at a high level directionally, perhaps give us some color on on the installed base ramp here.
Sure Tycho, it's it's you know.
I think I think as following up on what <unk> said.
About sticking to our phases I think we are still committed to the three phases and with the four collaboration partners and as of me. There's also discussed we have six different areas right, where we hoped to have one to two customers that kind of puts you in high single digits in terms of the number of customers will have in the limit.
The release Phase. So if you if you put those two together.
Youre kind of getting in there.
And that of that area that you were talking about.
So again I think we're going on we're going to stick to that plan.
And we will certainly kind of be as transparent as we can as that starts to come to fruition, but I think we are committed to kind of of the limited release this year.
With those with those high single digits in terms of customers and then adding on the four collaboration customers. We have for 2021, and then moving into 2022 for broader release.
The fact, and then one final one for me for me the again.
Any progress to report on the sample input requirement I know that's kind of like beyond the.
Adding of additional nanoparticle of panels here that's the.
The other thing that we're focused on.
Should we still expect sort of some improvement there heading into sort of the back half of this year and then to 'twenty two.
Yes.
Uh huh.
So we are in the process of doing.
Multiple things at one one extend the political panel.
True.
The kind of think about of the workflow.
The perspective.
And the three <unk>.
Floor different matrices.
The other than the plasma and as you know we've already exemplifies the utility of the platform for plasma zero.
To respond on fluid tug of youll fluid cells and tissue.
In Europe actually.
And so where we go with the I think there's going to be largely driven.
For the market right in other words the assay.
Actually significantly utilized less.
If you would biological sample.
I'll give you a readout of the real question for Us right now.
We wanted to get market feedback.
So that is the next iteration, if you would product true product three that goes to the heart of the customer.
It's more of a that's exactly what the customer needs. So the capabilities we're building the <unk>.
Configuration of what that will look like I like that to be driven by data.
And by market, which I think the only way to get the need to put this into the hands of enough customers and we have adequate feedback.
For the next iteration of the pump for capabilities of pickups will have the exact.
Figuration I would propose the visit the second half of the year on we'll have more clarity of that.
Got it perfect. Thanks, so much appreciate the time guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jay Cohen of Bank of America.
Hi, good afternoon.
Hey.
Hey, so just sort of following up on on one of your earlier points.
You talked I mean, certainly can appreciate the heat about.
The unbiased approach in.
And the of discovery element of it and then the more targeted approaches are coming out there, but I guess.
Sort of extend that.
And knowledge.
And you sort of look at what what Illumina did by acquiring grill I mean, I know you've got prognostic as.
Of your.
Some of your diagnostic arm that sort of there youre involved in that is but I guess.
Are you not ultimately worried about some of these more targeted areas.
The value being you'll ultimately go into some of these more downstream applications as opposed to the discovery.
Third book.
Excellent question.
And I have probably pervade I don't know 30 different experts I mean have you been ask your opinion about the question.
As we were thinking about.
Our strategy right.
The Illumina ended up with Illumina got in large part because for a long time customers one of them looking over their shoulder thinking the alumina was going to eat the lunch.
And then the sales and they've got the 80% market share.
But that took a number of years to penetrate the market in that way.
And then at that point, if you will.
Good day.
Ecosystem that they have created because of the ubiquitous the fact that platform, what's still of ours that the application aspect of it was growing and the.
They chose to bring that in house.
Our strategy on in fact, the spin out of the prognostic really kind of speaks volume to that is that we wanted the squarely focused on our opportunity in front of us which is to be the definitive tools either in the proteomics space.
We wanted to communicate to our customer that we wanted to you of partner.
On that help you to kind of achieve your goals and objectives and research on your application and we never have to look over your shoulder.
Then I'm going to be eating your lunch, that's going to kind of drive you as quickly as you can see a jump of my platform and do something else.
So I think the in the near future.
Or even in the mid future.
I like for deep on by a per you'll make a screw up the becomes synonymous with fear on in that regard I think our strategy.
To the kind of focus on our customers makes a lot of sense.
The end up.
The privilege and I think time will tell we certainly have the right team we have the right technology, if we execute well on a comparable tell then if all goes our way and we ended up being phenomenon. If you would keep on about proteomics.
At the magnificently large market share of that than I do think there is part of our next phase of growth I might bring some of the application in house.
But I think today the current strategies one of that makes sense for us for the foreseeable future.
Great and then just one quick follow up on this one on.
Another one.
So I realize you're just now getting things into your collaborators hands. Your early after the customers hands, but is there any indication that you know the.
The technology transfer won't transfer of easily I mean issues with reproducibility of is there any sort of sign that it might be the.
Passes we're transferring things from from your hands to your collaborators hands on May.
It may have some issues.
Im pausing to answer it because I.
I'm, hoping it up the jinx myself, so far we haven't seen any signs that suggest it would be in and I speak from a position of having obviously as you know.
Ben I don't have that debt.
Privilege to be involved with the introduction of a number of new technology I think there's a couple of things about this this technology on this assay that have put us into the physician to feel really confident that the level of I was wondering if you will technology transfer and reproducibility and ease of use are going to translate outside of here and a lot of that has to do with the fact that if.
You look of what we've done is what we've done of who focused on taking of process today that is unwieldy.
<unk> just simple difficult cumbersome you name it and we basically automated using a really elegant assay design that that just takes out almost all of the hands on interface that a person would happen with the workflow and by automating that process on by definition, we have taken out potential sources.
And that will lead the things like air and reproducibility, So you're absolutely havent really tight process on the back of a liquid handling the automation system that is not only globally proven but is that the backbone of much of what's happening in terms of COVID-19 testing and vaccine testing on so it's a super robust platform, it really well designed and elegant assay.
That takes the operator out of the intervention and so that actually if anything has led to a level of of predictability that makes us confident we can transfer the technology I will honestly tell you far more easily than say 10.
All of you like next generation sequencing certainly relative to its early days. So I feel really good about where we are of the experience of the customers so far.
Proves that out and and I think this is going to play out in a very relatively straightforward transfer of products to a variety of customers way.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Eric.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Schenkel with Cowen.
Hey, everybody thanks for taking my questions.
My first question is on your move in cookies, who are the early commercial launch on as you can.
Make the move what type of customers you're on attrition targeting is it is it going to be more of the same or ideally where you attract.
A more diverse customer side, maybe more biopharma more multi omics customers how are you thinking about that.
Yeah I think.
The.
We would love to have more of the same if you will because of the caliber of the customers. We have to date are are fantastic and I expect we will have others of similar caliber, but as you would expect.
There is going to be increasing diversity here you talked about biopharma clearly that's going to be one group of going to work with Ah Theres.
Theres going to be I suppose you can expect to see customers, who are probably more I don't know if you want to call it sort of translational genomics.
Clinical genomics types of customers, we will certainly be among them.
Our customers, who are strictly <unk> and then certainly our module maker.
Customers as well and then you'll begin to see some degree of geographic diversity as well because so far.
Yes.
As I've noted all four of the customers. We have are based in North America. We've talked to you about obviously not just staying focused in North America. So you can expect to see an increasing diversification of customer type application types and certainly geographic diversity as we move forward through limited relief and then working our way towards problems.
And then how many placements would you expect in phase two what what's the right way for US the declines success. There in terms of the number of partners and a number of pretty aggressive out there.
So I think what we've talked to you all in the past on I think David just a few minutes ago reiterated it is.
We're targeting somewhere in the high single digits in terms of limited release customers and it's good.
There are six if you will primary target customer segment and types that were focused on establishing a lead one to two lighthouse accounts.
And so that I think is going to end up in the high single digits in terms of limit.
The limited release customer sites, and then you can add on to that the collaboration customers. We've got on that will give you a sense of the total number of customer sites, we expect to be at through the first two phases of our commercial release.
Okay and building building off of that and as you just noted.
Noted.
Again.
On a month ago, you were at two customer sites.
It's made of third placement in the you announced your fourth plant.
As we're looking for.
On milestones to really measure of how things are going beyond the placements and the move to the next phase I am curious what you can share in terms of how things are progressing with the phase one customers end and specifically how should we think about milestones as we look ahead to Q.
True.
And I'm I'm curious are the collaborators deciding what the studies to do or to see or have input on the study design of that.
Sort of by extension of what we might actually see some publications.
Okay.
On my country has at least for questions. Let me see if I can answer each of them in terms of the publication of the short answer to that is certainly that is one of the seminal drivers for the collaborations that we're doing the aim of it is and that's not just ours. It is actually in fact out of the collaborators is that the work that we're doing together is novel and publication worthy. So.
Absolutely you can bet on us working with our collaborators to to generate the type of studies that then married publication now as you know the lead time for these things is a little bit longer and so what do we do in the interim while our plan is that in the interim.
You can expect to hear from our collaborator customers you can expect to hear from them either.
Through the information that seer is going to be publicly available such as well Mike post certain things on our website that can give you a glimpse into what the customers are doing certainly you can expect to see and hear from these customers at industry conferences in terms of joint poster abstract and certainly in terms of independent poster.
<unk> tracks of presentations.
We absolutely we will make it a point of to make sure that you all are getting.
Getting of getting a view into how our customers are progressing as the year goes on in terms of input into the collaborations yes, we certainly have not only input but these are joined collaborations that we're defining in the first set of these.
Engagements with these customers.
And then over the course of time clearly customers are going to do more of the things that they really think are going to be very suitable for their areas of interest, but we do want to make sure that indicates of every one of these collaborators we have a clearly defined if you will study that we want to demonstrate because that's the purpose of being very selective about the collaborators but at the.
I very much also enabled these collaboration customers who are thought leaders to be able to drive the application on the product forward as the best see fit so you'll end up being a combination Doug.
Some absolutely, 100% and the rest of them quite frankly, theyre going to know we've entered the and I will know of for example, one of the ways in which the part of your graph is going to be particularly enabling through their studies.
And in that case, we're going to let them be able to run with that so hopefully that I think I think I answered all of your questions, but if I failed to answer and please remind me.
You got it and then.
Last one just going back to something chaos touched on I, just want to make sure I got the answer.
Where do you guys go to full commercial launch in early 'twenty. Two is at a given that you'll be in a sample types beyond human plasma or should I take the answer you gave.
Earlier to me that all of it.
It remains to be seen and we should wait until the second half to get a black and white answer on that.
Doug Let me share.
On the way you should think of it as the.
We are building the core capability to not only be indifferent sample types.
But to be to have a different configuration that would even get different protein types.
The question the key question is.
What is product too and what is the product three what is the timing between that and I think that that has to be driven by the customer otherwise. We're just guessing right we have to let them.
You know we have to let these.
Panel run wild with the customer.
And then they come back to us where the needs are and we're ready to go to kind of put the configuration and then that becomes the product one of three and I think we'll be in a much better positioned to tackle that.
The second half of the year and I'd like to buy myself. Some airtime on asking of the comment of asked me. The question in the suffering of the half of the second half of the how does that four four okay.
That sounds good okay, alright, thanks, guys Cooper.
Thank you and I'm not showing any further questions on the cancer.
Thanks, so much and I think all of them done really really appreciate it. Thanks, so much of everyone.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for your participation in today's program. You may now disconnect have a wonderful day.