Q4 2020 HTG Molecular Diagnostics Inc Earnings Call
[music].
Greetings and welcome to H T G and molecular diagnostics, Inc, fourth quarter, 2020 earnings Conference call.
And at this time, all participants are in a listen only mode and a question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.
If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference. Please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on <unk>.
Now, let's turn the conference over to your host low new coffee.
Thank you operator earlier today H T T released its financial results for the year ended December 31 2020.
Before we begin the call let me remind you that the Companys remarks include forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal Securities laws.
These forward looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties many of which are beyond H T. J its control, including uncertainties regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on H T G and its customers that may cause actual circumstances events or results to.
Differ materially from those projected on today's call.
Factors that could cause events or results to differ materially include those risks and uncertainties described from time to time and the company's SEC filings.
H E B cautions listeners not to place undue reliance on any forward looking statements.
H T. G is providing this information as of the date of this call March 25, 2021, and the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward looking statements.
With that I would like to turn the call over to John but Netsuke Chief Executive Officer.
John.
Thank you Monique and welcome everybody.
Pleased to be here today to review our year and our earnings.
Hard to believe that were just passed the one year mark of a <unk>.
Significant portion of the world being shut down or significantly impacted by the Covid pandemic.
And we sat down and 12 months ago and review our year on earnings with you and then one could have imagined mesh we.
We had just completed a strong growth year and 2019, and we're looking forward to continued momentum.
The impact of this pandemic on our business and on our lives from that point forward was considerable risk.
We saw many of our customers significantly reduce or completely shut down their operations and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We saw borders closed on governments issued stay at home orders throughout the world.
Many customers froze or significantly adjusted their research funding and budgets as they prepared for the uncertainty and re prioritize their development priorities towards Covid testing and other COVID-19 related studies.
We felt the most significant impact of these changes on our business and the second and third quarters of 2020.
And the fourth quarter, we began to see some signs of business recovery and expect that that will continue and 2021.
Well I can only hope that none of us will ever have to fix.
A year like 2020, again I'm proud of the commitment that our team has shown throughout the year.
The efforts made to reach our development goals and pivot and the face of commercial challenges and has allowed us to be nimble and execute and the face of these extraordinary circumstances.
Before I get into the details of our 2020 operating results I want to take a minute to review our core beliefs and fundamental business strategies, which have guided us this past year, helping us emerge with a strong vision and a belief and what hcg can and will be.
We believe molecular profiling as a cornerstone of precision medicine, and precision medicine as a macro trend that is revolutionary revolutionizing outpatient access safe and effective drug therapy.
We believe that by using the RNA transcriptome to understand the underlying mechanisms of disease.
We'll be help will be critical to helping enable precision medicine.
And we believe we have a highly differentiated platform technology for RNA gene expression that can be leveraged and our <unk> profiling pharma biomarker development and clinical diagnostics.
Yes, COVID-19 interrupted our growth trajectory for 2020.
But our commitment and our belief and our technology and these large and growing markets has not changed.
We continue to see the fundamental macro trend and personalized medicine, driving an increased use of biomarkers, especially RNA based biomarkers.
90% of trials fail clinical development.
Add to that on 96% reported false discovery rate and preclinical screening.
We believe these failures result from a lack of truly understanding the mechanism is a mechanism of action and core validation and preclinical models of both the target and the drug.
We believe our technology is an ideal tool to address this problem.
Our technology can be used by researchers in academic medical centers and pharma to better understand the disease and drug mechanisms of action.
And is designed to be used to build diagnostics to select the right therapy for the right patient.
We believe we are a cornerstone technology to help enable precision medicine.
Okay now to the numbers.
Total revenue for 2020 was $8 5 million.
Breaking that down direct revenue defined as product and product related services revenue and our financial statements was $7 9 million down 46% versus prior year.
COVID-19 impacted our revenue growth has 2020 unfolded.
The revenue decrease included a large decrease and low margin subcontracted laboratory services and 2019 that did not recur in 2020.
Additionally, direct revenue results reflected customer facility shutdowns and subsequent delays were outright cancellations of planned studies shipments of products and the customer locations or preparation of customer samples to be levered to be delivered hcg for planned studies.
Collaboration revenue was $700000.
Decrease of 86% from prior year.
This reflects.
And the completion of remaining procedures under existing arrangements and ongoing sales efforts to identify and contract new programs and this area.
Now, let me take a closer look at our direct revenue.
We've been working to diversify our customer base and we've been seeing some successes despite the challenges of the pandemic.
Our strategies to diversify our customer base and to extend into markets. Other than oncology continued to have success late in the year.
Sales to U S academic centers remain close to 2019 levels and sales to customers and Europe grew in 2020, despite the extensive customer and country shutdowns.
We see this as evidence of continuing growth and our market adoption and have the opportunity for more expansion of hcg's market footprint. Once we clear this pandemic.
On the publications front.
And now have one and 265 publications that referenced our HDD and seek technology and doubling where we were just two years ago.
We believe the growth and publications reinforces our belief that people are discovering hcg and appreciating what we can do to help them with their research.
And Biopharma, we experienced a large decline and the number of active programs and 2020.
As a reminder, due to income.
On a program and our active programs metrics first it needs to be a pharma sponsored clinical trial.
And next it needs to be traceable and clinical trials dot Gov and third it needs to have generated revenue from <unk> in the last 12 months.
As I've discussed throughout 2020, the largest impact on our decreased revenue when compared to 2019 was and our pharma programs.
A recent study from Jam and network reported an approximate 60% decrease and the number of oncology clinical trials and 2020.
With the largest portion of our business historically focused on oncology, we strongly believe the decline and oncology trials had a significant impact on our business in 2020.
With many clinical trials delayed or canceled and many pharma customers closing facilities completely or opening only for critical COVID-19 related programs. We saw many programs time out during the year.
We finished the year with 50 active programs down from 88 at the end of 2019.
Of the 88 programs, we had at the end of 2000 1963 programs timed out due to inactivity or cancellation.
However, despite the challenges faced in 2000 2025 of our programs that existed in 2019 were extended and 25 new programs were initiated in 2020.
Of these programs. We were also pleased to see that they represented programs with from nine new biopharma customers, reflecting further diversification of our biopharma customer base.
While we are slowly seeing.
And Biopharma customers returned to work and engaging in discussions for future programs and this has been the slowest area of our business to return and we will continue to be and area of focus for our commercial teams and 2021.
Turning to our strategic milestones and product development. We are delighted to have released our second technical Whitepaper late last month characterizing our planned transcriptome product that is and late stage development on.
RNA seek is largely considered to be the gold standard for transcriptome analysis, but it requires complex sample preparation substantial quantities of extracted RNA and longer processing times to generate a quality sequencing library.
And a seek technology typically does not perform well and partially integrated samples, having relatively low quality RNA and.
And it becomes an issue as archival tissue sections are often the sole means of addressing specific specific clinical and biological questions and tend to be low quality RNA degradation.
The data presented and then our latest white paper was generated using a prototype of our HDD panel across multiple cancer indications, including melanoma breast colorectal lung and prostate cancer.
And this panel was able to profile the expression of approximately 20000, RNA targets using significantly less tissue that RNA seek and and less time.
The highlights of the paper show that we are able to generate high quality data from just one to two slides of FTE as a matter of fact and 23 of the 24 samples run we only required one cut of tissue.
Compared to 4% to eight slides for RNA seek.
We had a 100% sample success rate with HTC and <unk> versus the 75% success rate with RNA seek and testing <unk> samples are greater than five years old for.
<unk> samples greater than 10 years old <unk> retained its 100% success rate and the RNA seek success rate dropped to 63% further reflecting the robustness of the hcg assay and its ability to generate high quality data even from degraded samples.
Our panel also demonstrated differences and biology between four different cancer types breast prostate and colorectal and melanoma.
Repeat ability studies of our panel demonstrate demonstrated Pearson correlation coefficient between nine and nine eight even on samples greater than 10 years old demonstrating again, the robustness of the <unk> technology.
Our panel demonstrated Pearson correlation coefficient across multiple tissue types of <unk> eight to the RNA seek demonstrating strong alignment, especially considering the tight methods are different and we also use different sample types FTE for hcg and extracted RNA for RNA seek.
Our panel demonstrated Pearson correlation coefficients of between nine and <unk> 99 across five different tissue types relative to ARCC spiked and controls demonstrating a high degree of accuracy.
And finally, our prototype assay used and the second White paper also included improvements such as and optimize probe design removal of probes for non coding genes and our new licensed step for lower background and improved robustness.
We're excited by the data that was presented and the second white paper and believe it shows that our planned transcriptome panel and be used as a competitive alternative to RNA seek for identifying differentially expressed genes.
Overall, the data presented and this white paper demonstrated that the <unk> panels can provide excellent robustness across the variety of tissue types will be comparable to RNA seek for gene expression analysis of S&P <unk> issue and may be superior to RNA seek and the analysis of archived ffbe samples or for <unk> <unk>.
Samples exist and limited quantities.
We've also expanded our early adopter program since it was first announced in 2020 and December 2020, and it now includes 15 participating organizations.
Not only are these organizations, helping us with critical cohorts that we need to finish development, but we expect that this group will be the first customers for the product upon commercial launch.
The next milestone from the program design input lock has already been completed here in Q1 and will be followed up by design locks currently scheduled for Q2.
We also anticipate further improvements of the panels design workflow and robustness during this optimization phase of development.
With these milestones and mine we believe we remain on track for formal design and verification and commercialization beginning and a third quarter of this year.
We continue to work at a very high level of productivity and our product development group and look forward to continuing to report out on our technical milestones as the year progresses.
With that it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to our CFO Shaun Mcmeans for a review of our financials Sean.
Thanks, John totaled.
Total revenue for <unk>.
And it was $8 5 million compared to $19 2 million for 2019 direct revenue defined as product and product related services revenue and our financial statements seven 9.002 million 14, compared with $14 $6 million and 2019, we.
We believe this was primarily the result of a decrease and direct revenue associated with our Covid shutdown with Covid shutdowns impacting all aspects of our business in 2020 with.
With and especially expensive impact.
On our business with U S pharma customers, who have been slower to return to previously planned studies and programs that are academic and European customers.
In addition, and 2019 product related services revenue included significant levels of sample procurement and subcontracted laboratory services revenue.
For pharma customer programs, which did not recur in 2020.
While we believe that there will continue to be some lag on our pharma business.
As clinical trial activity returns to pre Covid levels. We are hopeful based on ongoing discussions with our customers. The previously planned studies and programs will resume as our customers return to normal operating levels.
And 2019 to 2020 collaborative development services revenue decreased by $3 $9 million, reflecting very limited activity on existing programs during the year.
Currently do not anticipate additional revenue from our existing collaborative development services programs. However, we continue to seek potential new customer collaborations.
Cost of product and product related services revenue decreased to $4 million and 2020, compared with $3 9.002 million 19.
And overall lower revenue. This also reflects decrease and low margin.
Contracted laboratory services revenue and 2020 compared to the prior year.
Research and development expense decreased approximately $4 5.002 million 20, compared to 2019, primarily related to the decrease and collaborative.
Development services revenue and the full year impact of first half staff reductions made in response to reduced collaborative development services business.
And related to our collaborative development services programs and recorded in research and development expense.
Our continued new product research and development expenses unrelated to our collaborative development programs for approximately $5 6 million from 2020, compared with $7 7 million from 2019.
Despite the complications created by COVID-19, our development team successfully met from milestone goals throughout 2020 and continue to do so in 2021 slight maintaining limited on site activity and our Tucson based facilities.
This is to ensure the ongoing safety of our employees as the pandemic continues.
Our operating loss for 2020 was $19 6 million compared with $19 million for 2019, reflecting our successful management of operating expenses. Despite the pressures COVID-19 had on our business in 2020.
Net loss for <unk>.
Share was $4 50 on sense from you on that.
Number 31 2020.
763 for the same period and 2019.
This reduction reflects additional shares of common stock sold and 2020 through our upmarket facility in.
On November 2020, we completed a one for 15 reverse stock split of our common stock as of December 31, 2020, we had approximately $5 2 million shares of common stock outstanding.
We ended the year with $28 7 million borrowers and cash cash equivalents and short term available for sale securities.
We have sold approximately 1 million additional shares of our common stock through our at the market facility from January one through March 15, 2041 for net proceeds of approximately $6 7 million.
I will now turn the call back to John for closing comments.
Thank you Sean.
While the world continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we're hopeful that almost on a daily basis, we're seeing our market is slowly recovering and moving back to pre COVID-19.
Operating levels, while we can't predict the pace of this process, we expect to regain our revenue growth momentum in 2021 and beyond.
Our customer and market diversification strategies are working and we expect to continue to add new customers and move our technology into new markets.
We also expect that we'll be able to rebuild our pharma pipeline as more biopharma companies and clinical trials come back online.
Additionally, we remain enthusiastic about the potential for our plan and groundbreaking transcript on product.
The transcript on project is running on time and on spec and we believe the early adopter interest is a clear sign on the commercial potential for this product.
This product will be sold into molecular profiling and academic medical centers into Biopharma as a universal companion diagnostic.
And as a platform for LDC technology development as well as two other large centralized diagnostic companies.
We believe we have a winning formula for the business.
2021, our key priorities will continue to be the one look to regain our growth and our core based profiling business to help fund continuing operations and to create new collaboration opportunities.
This is a $1 billion market with robust growth and we believe we're just scratching the surface of the opportunity for H T. G SEC.
Secondly, we're looking to reload our pharma pipeline that was impacted by trial delays and cancellations and last we look forward to finishing developing and begin to commercialize our groundbreaking transcriptome product.
With that and now my pleasure to open up the call for any questions operator.
Thank you at this time and will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad.
A confirmation tone will indicate your line is and the question queue.
Press Star two and if you'd like to remove your question from the queue from participants.
And it may be necessary.
And cyclical parts and starting when.
On that please while we poll for questions.
And our first question is from Alex Nowak with Craig Hallum.
Please proceed.
Great Great. Good afternoon, everyone I was hoping to start with the organization and that now signed up for day early access program can you just provide some more detail who are these customers with the traditional makeup of are they doing this for translational science. This for pure research use only sort of work just any detail there.
Helpful. And then also just economics with those with those partners are they are they paying for the panel are they getting access to it for free with anticipation and I'll pay later thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Alex This is John.
And regards to the kind of the demographics of that group, it's about third pharma two thirds.
On academic translational medicine.
It's predominantly being used and net trans med spa.
Spot.
And that's being positioned as an alternative to RNA seek relative to.
Really less sample faster turnaround time.
And in regards to the economics.
The first couple of samples that we're running your first couple.
We're kind of a quid pro quo. So that we can get access to cohorts, but the expectation is that the vast majority of these will actually start paying for the product.
And will be our essentially our day one customers when we launch in Q3.
That's great how I guess, how are you thinking about pricing now and any thought.
Do you plan to use and any external partners to help with commercialization and commercialization still Q3.
Did I hear that correct.
Yes, so full commercialization obviously the early adopter program is the start of commercializing the product because they are looking to build.
And.
Buildup.
Demand for the product.
And regards to pricing, we're still finalizing that.
We're very aware that we're on AC.
And as from a total cost standpoint, and what what other service providers are charging per full transcriptome RNA seek.
And we'll be looking to position the product relative to that.
That's great.
You mentioned the some of the competitive advantages, so I guess as youre going out there and talking to.
<unk>.
Potential partners and the academics and Thats a requirement I guess what is the response that you are hearing from them I guess, what's the major pushback and then ultimately and whats the major interest that they have and the platform is the ability to do this on the great examples less sample quantity, whereas the real.
The secret sauce, and why and why a customer site.
Right up so far.
Yes, good question.
I was actually surprised because I thought it was going to be something different but it's turning out to be the assay failure rate associated with RNA seek as a real pain point.
Especially on on SSP tissues.
Again, I keep saying, our and a fantastic technology, but you need.
Very pure and quite a bit of arent purified RNA.
And and a real world specifically with retrospective cohorts.
And that frequently isn't the case so the number one driver is our ability to deliver a quality.
And dataset from archived Ffbe with then follows adjusted was a little surprising to me was the faster turnaround time.
And.
The turnaround time that we cited and the paper assumes you've got bio stats resources available to analyze your RNA seek data and many institutions those are kind a precious commodity and go sample to data for RNA seek can take.
By the time, we get it back from from bio <unk>.
So the turnaround time, and just kind of the ease of use with our bioinformatics is probably another big big upside.
And regards to adversity or headwind, it's going to be the fact that R&D sneakers perceived as the gold standard.
So we have to be able to provide.
Something different and something better than that and I think initially when we when we position the product and market and it'll be a co exist.
<unk> it will be for hey, if you've got.
FTE or if you don't have.
A lot of samples.
This is a very good alternative to RNA seek where you otherwise might not but then I think the benefits that we're bringing on these views faster turnaround time.
High call quality data and low assay failure rates.
I think we'll start nibbling into the rest of the business.
That's great I guess, just two quick questions on <unk>.
On guidance no guidance from $5, one, but how should we be thinking about growth over the course of this year should we think of sequential growth off of Q4 of $2 6 million number is that accurate or and then how are you incorporating <unk> into that growth.
Yeah. Good question so.
I wish I had a crystal ball and that's going to say what each of the quarters is going to look like we are expecting turbulence is probably a good way to put it.
And this year and we've seen some of that in Q1, where we had some unexpected.
Border closures, and Europe that impacted us and our ability to either install or instruments or get samples out and.
And we saw some similar events in the U S. Both on academia and pharma.
On.
So it's going to be hard for us to predict.
Every quarter.
But we.
Continue to believe we will be back in that 30% to 40% growth range year on year.
And I think it's going to be lumpy based on whatever wherever the hotspots are for for Covid and.
And then what we've done with the <unk> or what we're now calling whole transcriptome is.
Because we are launching and the second half usually we have a business rule not to layer and revenue for that so it's a pretty modest revenue contribution for 2021.
On.
Obviously, we'd love to exceed that with a strong early adopter program, but we are I.
And I think being conservative with that but we do have very high expectations for the product.
In 2020.
Okay got it and then how do you think about need and desire to raise additional capital it looks like and use the ATM again and the first half of the year. So I'm just curious you've got about two years of cash it looks like at the current burn rate why why raise additional capital now versus weight towards the whole transcriptome panel launches and start to generate.
And at that time.
Alex This is Sean we're just trying to be responsible to the balance and.
Making sure that we.
Have enough runway to get through these key milestones that we've talked about on the earnings call.
And again Opportunistically enter the market, we have the tools available to extend runway and.
As we indicated on the call.
And we will use them when we think they're appropriate.
That's great alright. Thank you appreciate it.
Thanks, Alex.
And our next call is from Kristen <unk> with Cantor Fitzgerald.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. So I wanted to follow up about the 15 organization through the early access program. I know you are also using this program to collect.
Any last feedback ahead of the launch and the third quarter. So I wanted to ask if you could talk about.
First of vacation across these pharma and academic translational medicine centers are they using it all for different reasons and how is the process been about.
Collecting real time feedback.
Yeah, So it's a very structured process.
And we actually had demand that exceeded kind of the capacity for <unk>, we're probably going to sign up more.
And I think we were directionally looking toward maybe 30 by the time, it's all said and done.
Right now we're also trying to get.
Releases, so that we can actually start naming some of these folks because to date.
And we're still under CDA with everybody.
But what we're trying to do is really pushed this assay around and see how it performs in.
And what I would call the real world.
We've got a white paper that where we procured samples, but what we wanted to be able to do is.
Beat it up with other tissue types beyond the five that we've looked at.
And then begin to expand it into other sample types like like tax gene like.
Sub sells purified RNA et cetera.
And this is the time, where we're going to make all the final.
Assay tweaks, if you will.
And if this product is robust as possible and as previously mentioned starting to charge people for the use of it so that we've got day one customers.
And of these.
15 organizations can you speak to how many were involved before the publication and number two for the white paper on to that no. Just curious about the feedback that you've gone from this white paper came out as I answered some of the questions that lingered since a white paper one came out.
Yes.
Remember white paper one.
The RNA seek arm sale.
Which is why and the second white paper, we increased the sample load for the R&D seek the four to eight.
Cuts of tissue to make sure that we had.
More than hopefully more than adequate sample load and.
And we ran net against one cut from HDD and so by having both arms of that study we were able to show the Pearson coefficient correlation of eight two of our product relative to RNA seek which was an important data point and then again, we followed up with the ERC controls, which we would consider.
And <unk> to be.
Synthetic true 50, well to demonstrate clinical accuracy and again, our correlations there for $9 98.
So I think that that was a big.
A big piece of additional <unk>.
Data however, the.
14, new customers.
Or new organizations, we signed up.
Going into the year.
We're signed up before that second white paper came out.
We're very very bullish on net profit.
Yes.
Commercially.
And good.
Great. Thank you so much I appreciate it.
Thank you Chris.
Yeah.
And our next question is from new chain with H C. Wainwright. Please proceed.
Hi, This is global and dialing for each and just really quick.
And can you comment on the potential model okay.
Market size of the whole transcriptome panel and maybe if you can touch upon the projected revenue from this panel and 2021 2020, two and that will be appreciated. Thanks.
Yes sure.
And in our Investor decks, we've done quite a bit of.
Analysis on what we consider to be the the RNA gene expression profiling market.
And we sized that at around $1 billion.
Growing at about 15% per year. So we expect it to double over the next five years. So we see that as the total available market for this product.
So, it's a pretty big market on.
And this product is not going to do everything on RNA seek does RNA seek does other things like looks at methylation and alike, but 80% of the utility of RNA seek as gene expression.
So.
We're hoping that we can gain either high single digit or low.
Double digit share of that on that market and this product.
It's not lost on us that our top selling product today is our whole transcriptome micro RNA product.
And thats, a much smaller market much more niche.
So we're again cautiously optimistic that.
We've got a great product and a big and growing market with all transcriptome.
And in regards to the total expectations.
And we'll know a lot more on net once you're on market for a quarter or two.
Alright Thats it from me thank you.
Thank you.
And our next one.
And the question is from Sweden.
And with SBB Leerink.
Hey, guys.
Leslie today on for Puneet and thanks for taking my questions and congrats again on the second way day growth.
So I guess starting on the whole transcriptome product.
John You mentioned the number of customers that Youre focused on on the early days of launch when that time comes.
Just curious about a third and pharma academic and the early adopter program.
And with your plans on launch.
What type of acceleration.
Or should we be expecting to see.
On the Dx.
On side of things from the launch does come.
Again, usually we have a business growth and create great question.
That if something comes in and the second half we generally don't plan.
A substantial revenue for it and we've kind of almost leave it as upside now that being said because the feedback continues to be very positive from the early adopters and there is kind of more and more demand to come into that program and we can currently handle.
We're actually looking at expanding our commercial team.
So we have kind of opened up a couple of additional sales territories that we had not originally planned.
Because we really want to drive this is art.
And we possibly can and when it becomes available and it's Q3.
And that is still look and real good and Thats a risk adjusted plan and.
We're really through all the heavy lifting where through design and foot locker and we're really close to design lock.
And that's the last big trigger before we go travel is up from the product.
Great and then I guess just following the write off of but should we be expecting any additional update on the data front and there are additional papers for.
For the less complete or is a little bit.
Although weighted commercialization.
Yes, we will probably have one more big white paper to support commercialization.
Okay.
And then I guess switching gears, a little bit on the pharma side of things you highlighted a number of trials that timed out during the year and <unk>.
This year the bring more trials on board.
And you anticipate any of those times out trials.
Coming back into the funnel.
Let me just just having them starting back up again.
And then.
And because youre Julien.
And sensitivity for the market windows to these customers are true.
And our indications.
Once once something times out.
They are probably re looking at their portfolio, which accounts for a couple of our customers dead and.
And yes.
It just continues to be painful to see that the trial volume is down so.
And so substantially more than a 50% reduction on oncology and it's like I said, it's forcing us and we have to go get new customers that are outside of the top five which we had kind of event.
That was our core business, if you will and also.
Moving into other markets besides oncology specifically.
And response is another area, where R&D is very valuable biomarker, we're getting some traction and we really need to continue to.
Make that happen in 2021.
Great. Thanks, John.
And I believe our pharma business is probably where we're still going to face the most uncertainty and regards to.
How and when will it come back Unfortunately for us pre COVID-19 that was our biggest market and our biggest driver.
So we're working very hard to replace that growth with growth coming out of academia and the U S and Europe, and then pushing our pharma strategies and to.
Smaller and more mid sized biopharma as well as market expansion and.
Thank you.
And to see the results of that and Q4 as I said, we are seeing a little.
And hick up here in Q1, we'll know more and at the end of the quarter, but.
We do see the markets coming back and again, we're looking forward to getting back on a growth trajectory.
Great I appreciate the color. Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session and I'd like to turn the call back over to John <unk> for closing remarks.
Great. Thank you operator, I really want to thank everyone for joining us today and it.
Really want to thank the employees here at hcg.
That was a really challenging year and they.
Adjusted tremendous work tremendous self sacrifice and continue to demonstrate that we can grow this company attaining our technical milestones on our customer growth our customer diversification.
It's extremely important for us and I would also want it takes time and thank our board and our shareholders for their continued support and we look forward to updating you again on our next earnings call. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference you may disconnect your lines and this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great evening low.