Seer, Inc. Price & Performance (SEER)

Joining me today from SEER is Ameed Farakshad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President Seer.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are looking statements. Within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section titled Forward Looking Statements in the press release they are issued today. For a more complete list and description, please see the Risk Factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10 ks its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Except as required by law, SEER disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward looking statements. Whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time sensitive information is accurate only as of the live broadcast, 02/27/2025. That, I'd like to turn the call over to Omid. Thanks, Carrie, and thank you everyone for joining us afternoon. I will begin our call today by providing updates our business and I will then turn the call over to David to provide more details on our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024, as well as our outlook for 2025. Starting with Slide three, I'm excited to share the tremendous progress we've made over the past year. We're a pioneer of Seer unbiased proteomics at scale and in 2024 we further solidified our leadership in the field. This was driven by exceptional growth of customer publications and a highly compelling body of evidence validating the power of our technology. Our Steer Technology Access Center or STACK played a critical role in expanding access to PuroGraph data allowing more researchers to experience its impact and get access to deep unbiased proteomic insights that they couldn't achieve otherwise.

Demand for protege graph data remains strong and we've now served over 135 customers including 12 large biopharma companies. We ended the quarter with $4,000,000 of revenue, bringing total revenue for the year to $14,200,000 with approximately $300,000,000 in cash cash equivalents and investments. Given the massive value we believe exists in our platform, and the opportunity ahead coupled with in our view, the enormously dislocated market valuation of Seer we used approximately $12,000,000 of our cash to repurchase approximately 6,500,000.0 shares during 2024 reducing the total shares outstanding by approximately 10% to 59,000,000 shares. Despite ongoing macro environment challenges, I'm more confident than ever before about our future. We're transitioning from a pioneer of Seer Biosper diomics at scale to a trusted partner for discovery, translational and population scale, deep and biased proteomic studies. As we expand upon the foundation we built in twenty twenty four, I believe we're well positioned for a stronger year ahead. Now I'd like to walk through our progress in 2024 across each of our strategic initiatives which include first, validating our platform by assisting customers to generate novel data. Second, focusing our resources on enhancing access [indiscernible] And finally, third, driving innovation through enhancements of our technology.

Starting with the validation of our platform on Slide four, To date, there have been 33 customer publications preprints and reviews showcasing the capabilities of our platform. In 2024 alone, 23 new peer reviewed publications have been released, with many appearing in high impact journals. Multiple preprints have already emerged this year including a particularly compelling one added to BioArchive last month that I will briefly highlight. Turning to Slide five. As a pioneer of DeepOnVaz for GeoMx, we're seeing other providers emerge that are attempting to replicate our approach. However, they consistently fall short on delivering the depth, scale and reproducibility that sets the Protograph apart. A recent head to head comparative study led by Professor Josh Kuhn at the University of Wisconsin Madison directly compared Seer Technology against other plasma proteomic methods attempting to emulate the performance of our engineered nanoparticle approach. The results show that Seer outperforms across key metrics detecting more low abundance protein while retaining the lowest noise levels on par with Neat plasma. Specifically, this outperformance is shown across depth of coverage reproducibility of the assay as measured by the quantitative metrics such as limit of detection, or LOD and limit of quantitation or LOQ as well as the best in class measurement completeness to reliably see the same protein across samples.

Similar findings to Professor Kuh's data have been validated by multiple other academic and industry leaders reinforcing Sears' position as the trusted partner in deep unbiased proteomics at scale. Importantly, we believe our performance across these metrics represent only the tip of the iceberg of what our platform can do. Are so many other areas where we believe Seer is far superior to other approaches. These include for example batch to batch and lot to lot manufacturing robustness that makes it possible to run longitudinal population scale studies and our quality and IT systems, our ISO 13,485, and ISO 27,001 certified today. We're proud of the best in class quality and performance at our Protograft product suite making us a trusted partner for our customers. We saw continued validation of our platform at the twenty first Annual U. S. Human Perdium organization, or HUPO conference earlier this week as our customers collaborators and SEER's scientists demonstrated new breakthroughs enabled by our technology across 13 posters and oral presentations. This research highlighted the role of the protege graph in understanding tissue biology, uncovering biomarkers with cardiometabolic dysfunction interrogating downstream proteomics changes and response to novel RNA cancer therapeutics enabling breakthroughs in mass spectrometry proteomics throughout and leveraging model organisms to advance human health.

I'd like to highlight a seminar at Hupo held by Doctor. Jin Jin Shi, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Professor Shi is among the pioneers in RNA nano medicine and among the very first Nanomedicine investigators to study the downstream proteomics perturbation in cells after siRNA and mRNA nanoparticle delivery. The studies she presented at the Hufor earlier this week, he discussed work from his laboratory where they turn off activated tumorigenic drivers of cancer with siRNA to silence androgen receptor expression while concurrently turning on the expression of tumor suppressors using mRNA that encode the P10 [indiscernible] Using prostate cancer as a model, the team then followed the downstream effects of these synergistic therapeutic modalities the molecular level, looking at changes in the cellular proteome, and the biological insight highly differentiated. We're proud that the Protograf product suite is enabling prominent research like Doctor. Xi To accelerate advancements in precision cancer research, and ultimately improve human health.

We believe we are reaching a clear inflection point as more customers' data validates our technology and their scale up project increases in size, We expect the pace of customer validation to further accelerate this year as more researchers get access to our technology. Now moving to Slide six, to take a closer look at our progress with accelerating access to the Proteograph product suite. Our global reach is growing with over 135 customers served across 20 countries. To capitalize on the increasing demand, we made significant investments in our commercial infrastructure in Seer. Before and doubled the size of our commercial team in North America. New sales reps typically take six to nine months to ramp up. And we are seeing these new team members become increasingly productive as they approach this stage. We now have six channel partners covering Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and The Middle East to accelerate market development and drive adoption globally. In addition, we're excited to welcome Anber Faust, as our new Vice President of Global Sales. Amber brings over fifteen years of experience and was most recently Standard Bio Tools where she led the North America sales team for SomaLogic products. And previously held commercial roles of increasing responsibility at Olinc Metabolon and Waters.

With a proven track record of expanding market reach and driving revenue growth, in the proteomic space we look forward to our contributions to accelerate adoption of our Protograft product suite and strengthen our customer relationships. Looking ahead, we will continue to make strategic investments in direct sales and support as needed throughout 2025. A key driver for our performance in 2024 has been the growing demand of Stack which allows a Protograf user to run samples in their own lab and have SEER run the mass spec. Or alternatively provides end to end services from sample to proteomics data and analysis. We opened our first DAC in The U. S. In late twenty twenty three and given the demand we saw, we expanded into Bonn Germany with a second stack in 2024. Approximately a fourth of these customers have returned to repeat stack projects We've seen multiple Stack customers purchase the Product Suite to bring the instrument in house. Importantly, we continue to see strong interest from large biopharma companies who are eager to access our technology and Stack has been an important catalyst for accelerating this adoption. [indiscernible] is applicable to a wide range of sample types and works with any species including the modern organisms typically used in medical and drug development Notably approximately a third of the STAG projects have been utilized samples from model organisms demonstrating a clear unmet need for our differentiated technology.

We believe this increased access through Stack will continue to catalyze the generation of third party data and publications further highlighting the transformative potential of the Pernodraft product suite and facilitating broader adoption. We saw a lot of traction throughout the year with our multiple customers have now purchased instruments through this program, including several large biopharma companies. SIF has been an important catalyst for adoption and we expect for it to continue to remove barriers to access for our customers who are capital constrained given the current macroeconomic environment. In November, we announced an expansion of our partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific to co market and sell the Pernodraft products we alongside the OrbitraV astral mass spectrometers. This powerful pairing makes it possible for the first time to achieve population scale deep on bias for GeoMx with exceptional robustness and reproducibility. Addition, this partnership further strengthens our commercial reach and makes it easier for their customers to access a end to end solution for unbiased for GeoMx. As part of the expanded agreement we will also conduct joint marketing initiatives and research studies including population scale studies to showcase the combined power of the ProdioMx platform. We're currently training the Thermo Fisher sales force and expect to complete the process in the first quarter of twenty twenty five.

We look forward to continuing to operationalize this partnership and will provide updates on our progress throughout the year. This momentum underscores our commitment to making on bias for geomics more accessible than ever and we're excited about the opportunities ahead in 2025 and beyond.

Now turning our effort to drive product innovation and application expansion on Slide seven. In 2024, we upgraded our Productive Analysis Seer or PAS to be the most scalable proteomic analysis solution available today. Our upgraded path significantly accelerates end to end workflows and has reduced data analysis time by over 95%. We remain committed to investing in our software and data analysis capabilities to further enhance efficiency and scalability for our customers. In addition to these advancements, we launched a new product application for the Portograph XT earlier this month specifically designed for cell lysate proteomics, This extension extends the power of the photograph XT beyond plasma and tissue analysis enabling researchers to expand intracellular proteomics across virtually any cellular compartments This new capability adds to a growing list of over 10 photograph protocols available to conduct proteomic analysis. And a diverse list of sample types including non human plasma or Seer, condition media, cerebrospinal fluid, and drive blood samples. By leveraging the prototype for this application, researchers are expected to gain access to a significantly greater number of proteins unlocking deeper biological insights. These innovations represent our ongoing commitment to providing the most powerful and scalable solutions [indiscernible] and we look forward to continuing to expand the capabilities of the Prodigal product suite throughout the year.

I remain incredibly bullish and excited about the potential of our technology to trans our understanding of the proteome. With that, will now turn the call over to David. Thanks, Samir.

Total revenue for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $4,000,000 representing a decrease of 10% compared to the $4,400,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Was primarily due to lower instrument sales and no grant revenue recognized in the quarter. Offset by an increase in consumable and service revenue. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Protigrap SP100 instruments consumable kits and service revenue, of which $389,000 was attributed to related parties. Product revenue for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $2,400,000 including $36,000 of related party revenue and consisted of sales of SP100 instruments and consumable kits. We continue to see pressure on CapEx budgets in elongated sales cycles for the outright purchase of new instruments in the fourth quarter. Service revenue was $1,600,000 in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four, including $353,000 of related party revenue and primarily consisted of revenue related to STACK service projects. We continue to be encouraged by customer interest in running projects through STACK their ability to gain access to protegraft data.

With this continued interest in our opening of our European stack facility, we saw sample volumes increase year over year and on a quarter over quarter basis. As we have stated previously, we may continue to undertake projects for key strategic studies that will result in additional presentations publications in the near term but are conducted at a lower price point than our typical STACK service projects. And consisted of lease and shipping revenue. Total gross profit was $2,000,000 for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, representing a gross margin of 51%. Compared to $2,000,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, representing a gross margin of 45%.

Gross margins were driven by a higher mix of consumable and service revenue in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four relative to fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. We continue to expect variability in our gross margin on a quarter by quarter basis since the proportion of instrument consumable and service revenue will fluctuate in any given quarter.

Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four were $25,500,000 including $6,000,000 of stock based compensation. An increase of 5% compared to $24,200,000 in including $7,300,000 of stock based compensation in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Research and development expenses for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four were $12,600,000 an increase of 13% compared to $11,200,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Increase in R and D expenses was primarily due to an increase in laboratory expenses. Selling general and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four were $12,900,000 a decrease of 1% compared to $13,100,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. The decrease in SG and A expenses was primarily due to a decrease in stock based compensation expenses offset by an increase in professional service expenses.

Net loss for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $21,700,000 compared to $17,800,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Turning to the full Seer. Total revenue for the full year of 2024 was $14,200,000 representing a decrease of 15% compared to $16,700,000 in 2023. Revenue recognized primarily consisted of sales of Proteograph SB-one hundred instruments consumable kits and service revenue, of which $2,300,000 was The decrease in total revenue was driven by lower product sales and no grant revenue recognized during the year. However, total product and service revenue in 2024 excluding related party and grant and other revenue increased approximately 11% year over year $11,700,000 from $10,500,000 in 2023. Including $1,500,000 of related party revenue and consisted of sales of SB-one hundred instruments consumable kits. Service revenue was $3,800,000 for the full year 2024, including $828,000 of related party revenue and primarily consisted of revenue related to STACK service projects. Grant and other revenue was $223,000 for the full year 2024 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue. Going forward, we will be providing retrospective annual figures for consumable pull through. In order to provide informative consumable pull through information, we will shift from reporting instruments shipped to instruments installed.

We shipped 10 SP100 instruments in 2024 bringing our cumulative instruments shipped to 72 as of December 31. 2024. Our installed base of instruments as of year end was 49 instruments. The difference between these two numbers reflects instruments that have been sold and shipped yet not installed and instruments that have been sold to our channel partners but not placed in customer sites as of year end.

And any instrument that has been retired or in the case of a loaned instrument, returned to us. For 2024, the consumable spend across that installed base represents a pull through per instrument of approximately $174,000 Going forward, we will be reporting consumable pull through in will provide an update to these numbers retrospectively for the previous year on our earnings call to report fourth quarter and annual results. We will not be providing updates on a quarterly basis. Total gross profit was $7,100,000 for the full year 2024, representing a gross margin of 50% compared to $8,500,000 in 2023, representing a gross margin of 51%. While we continue to expect overall volatility in our quarterly gross margins, we anticipate that overall gross margins for the full year 2025 will be in the range of 50% to 53%. Continue to believe that at scale, our long term gross margins will be in the range of 75% Total operating expenses for the full year 2024 were $107,200,000 including $26,600,000 of stock based compensation decrease of 4% compared to $112,000,000 including $32,900,000 of stock based compensation in 2023. Research and development expenses for the full year 2024 were $50,600,000 a decrease of 5% compared to $53,000,000 in 2023.

Selling, general and administrative expenses for the full year 2024 were $56,600,000 a decrease of 4% compared to $59,000,000 in 2023 Seer. Net loss for the full year 2024 was $86,600,000 compared to $86,300,000 in 2023. As previously announced, our Board of Directors authorized a $25,000,000 share repurchase program in May of last year. Under this program, we repurchased approximately 6,500,000.0 shares of Seer Class A common stock at an average cost of $1.82 per share.

During the year. Reducing our shares outstanding by approximately 10% to approximately 59,000,000 shares of Class A and Class B common stock. As of 12/31/2024, approximately $13,200,000 in authorization remaining under this share repurchase program.

Consistent with our share repurchase program, we have taken two additional actions that leverage our strong balance sheet and fundamental belief in the long term value of the SEER platform make prudent investments while limiting or decreasing shareholder dilution whenever possible. First, given our visibility to organizational growth, we believe that the existing equity incentive plan is sufficient for 2025 and thus we opted to forego the annual automatic refresh of the plan in 2024. Second, we net shares settled and retired approximately $360,000 shares as part of our February 2025 RSU vesting date. Further reducing our outstanding shares by approximately another half of a percentage point. On top of the 10% reduction achieved with our share repurchase program. Free cash flow loss was approximately $49,400,000 the year ended 12/31/2024, significantly less than our free cash flow loss of $66,400,000 in 2023. Looking ahead for 2025, we expect free cash flow loss to be in the range of $40,000,000 to $45,000,000 for the year. We ended the year with approximately $300,000,000 in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Aim to continue to manage our significant cash balance in an extremely prudent manner and to continually evaluate our deployment of capital in order to maximize shareholder value.

Importantly, we believe that with our current cash, cash equivalents and investments on hand, have sufficient capital to reach cash flow breakeven.

While our long term target is to become a profitable company, we are balancing that goal with the investments needed to innovate and build the company to drive sustained growth in the future.

Believe that our strong balance sheet is an important differentiator and puts us at a significant advantage to capture the massive opportunity ahead. Turning now to our outlook for the year on Slide nine. We expect revenue to be in the range of $17,000,000 to $18,000,000 for 2025, representing growth of 24% at the midpoint over the full year 2024. Our guidance range assumes continued macroeconomic uncertainty and budget pressure for our customers similar to what we have seen in the second half of twenty twenty four. However, the NIH and government funding environment remains extremely uncertain and volatile. In 2024, revenue from government entities represented approximately 12% of our overall revenue. And any fluctuations in NIH and government funding uncertainty may impact a portion of these customers in 2025. Given this uncertainty, we have adjusted our outlook for these accounts and this is reflected in our guidance.

At this point, I would like to turn the call back to Omid for closing comments. Thank you, David. Moving on to Slide 10. I'm incredibly proud of our team and their execution in 2024.

We've made significant progress in driving customer publications and validating the power of our technology. Despite ongoing macro environment challenges, I believe we are well positioned for a stronger year ahead. We're focused on four key growth drivers in 2025, which expanding our user base and continuing to enhance access, driving larger cohort studies, continuing to drive product innovation, and enabling more customers to generate meaningful and actionable biological I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress And with that, will now open the call up for questions. Operator?

Thank you.

At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Dan Brennan of TD good afternoon guys. This is Kyle on for Dan. Thanks for taking the questions.

I wanted to start with guidance for 2025. You talked again about budget sort of being constrained and things looking similar to how they did in the back half of twenty twenty four. But I guess in the context of you guys placing around 10 instruments in 2024, how should we think about sort of the split between instruments and consumables in 2025 then maybe how should we think about 1H2H pacing? Thank you.

Karl, thank you. Omid here. Let me Let me start it and then I'll hand this to David to give you some additional color if you don't mind. 2024 was a really tough year in terms of CapEx. And if I look at that instrument placement in 2024, it was very much tilted towards the back half of the Seer. The beginning of the year was really tough. If I look at our pipeline, including what I expect would happen in the beginning of the year in 2025, We feel good about the the guidance being given By the way, and this is in the context of the broader picture, which is the challenges around uncertainty with the NIH budget, all of those are factored in So I think that the the expectation for instrument placement to be very meaningfully different from last year is reasonable. While we're not going to give quarter by quarter placement. If I just look at the pipeline, including what's available in Q1, and Q2, I think the pace is going to be a very different pace than what we saw in 2024. I would attribute this increase in velocity largely to the progressively strengthening tail that we're experiencing as the validation of our technology and the customers is becoming more and more robust.

Despite the challenges in the macro environment by the way, even more complexity around some of the budgeting with the NIH, I think the tailwind is strong enough that I do feel very good about the guidance being provided. But let me have David to give you additional color on that. David? Yes. Thanks, Hamid. Yes, Kyle, I think in terms of how we think about 25, I think we'll probably see it shake out similar in terms of the breakdown. If you looked at where in 2024 is around 72% of overall revenue and I'm including related party in that product revenue.

Service was about 27%. So I think the breakdown will probably be pretty similar. This year. Again, we do, as Amit said, expect more instrument placements. '4 was a really tough year. We are seeing some some loosening of that and more interest in the technology. And but at the same time, Seer also seeing interest in bigger projects. So consumable revenue will will obviously be a significant portion as well.

Got it. Thank you. And then maybe another one on the STACK program. You look pretty strong in 4Q, at least Q over Q Seer. Is there anything you can discuss on the STACK pipeline and back and maybe how we should think about the trajectory of Stack revenue as we move throughout this year? [indiscernible] So we said this when we started The U. S. Tax. Repeated it when a year later we added Via the European stack in Bonn. Which is that we're not interested in becoming a service company. And so the stock capacity that we've built in U. S. And the capacity that we've built in Europe My expectation is that we're going to keep that capacity [indiscernible] If there is a surge then the opportunities for those service projects to then go to our centers of excellence We have excellent centers in Europe and U. S. That would be able to service those customers extremely well. Now if you look at the stack revenue, and Vistac capacity, You'll see some increasing in revenue and I think a large part is because the purpose of the stack was to lower the barrier to access We did some important collaborations with key Lighthouse account, with key KOLs those stack projects were done at a lower price [indiscernible] early on As the technology is getting more and more validated, the STACK projects tend to be closer to what the normal service project would be priced so you're going to see an increase in revenue.

Terms of capacity, this fact is running largely at the capacity that we would expect and we're not going to be able to add additional capacity. So at some point, STAG revenue will begin to plateau.

Now there's opportunity for us to do improvement in product offering and those offerings will also translate into product offerings in the stack that may alter, if you would, stack capacity But in terms of the infrastructure for services, What we have built is largely what we're going to keep if anything, in terms of additional capacity or likely come in terms of adding a stack maybe in Asia I have any immediate plans to do that? In the first half of twenty twenty five. Let me have David give you some additional color in terms of the kinds of customer we're seeing And by the way, some of the repeat accounts that we're seeing, I think some additional colors with the SaaS may be helpful.

Yes. So Kyle, I we kind of hit on it. The growth was really we had done some strategic collaboration projects early on But we are continuing to see good demand. Both from large pharma who we've got quite a number of large pharma customers now testing the technology through our stack. And we have had a good number of of repeat customers that want to do bigger studies and things. So generally the trends are very positive.

We are seeing an uptick in the ASP relative to STACK. So again, the growth coming from not only increased volumes, but but increased prices from large pharma and also academic customers. Interestingly, we also see a lot of model organism projects as well. So about a third of our projects last year were model organisms. So that's really encouraging that people want to test different species, which our technology can obviously do very well. And so all signs are very encouraging just around STACK in general. So we're very optimistic for it in 2025.

Got it. Thanks guys.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rachel Botenstein of JPM. Your line is now open. Hello. This is Martha Zaremba on for Rachel Vanstall.

From JPMorgan. Thank you for taking my question. So I just wanted to dig in to the NIH headlines we've been recently hearing that you touched a little bit in your prepared remarks on.

So can you discuss what you heard from your research customers related to these NIH risk And are you perhaps seeing more hesitation from customers then can you also discuss January and February trends with your academic customers? Thank you.

Martha, maybe I'll open it up and again I'll have David comment which is if I If I break down our government customers and that includes the likes of NIH, and then academic customers that also rely on NIS funding about 12% of our revenue in 2024 overall revenue came from government entities and then additional 18% came from academic groups in aggregate, it was about 30%. If I look at what the customers are saying, keep in mind that the indirect funding doesn't directly impact the funding that the PI has to spend So in indirect funding, is the additional funding that goes to the to the organization in terms of paying for the overhead. But the actual money that a researcher spends that's part of their direct funding and there's no immediate plan to reduce that. That said, in terms of the unknown. What is happening Is there reduction in indirect actually going to materialize or not? Because if it does, it impacts how a broader research organization [indiscernible] infrastructure investments not necessarily that specific PI spending money on their research, but a much broader type of investment that you make in innovation. Research organization. So I think that uncertainty is making everyone kind of pause and think and we factored all of that into the guidance that we provided So our current guidance assumes a very constrained, a very cautious mindset in terms of that roughly 30% of our account, 12% government 18% academic And how and they may view the funding and how they may view their spend.

But by the way, as a former academic, I'm actually optimistic that at the end science will prevail and that ultimately what has made this country great is our innovation and investments in those innovations are going to remain intact. So I have to assume that some of the uncertainties that we're seeing over the course of the coming months are going to clarify and I think are going to put the scientific community more at ease. David, let me hand it to you as well.

Yes.

Just to address your second question, Marta, around the what we're seeing in the early part of the first quarter Seer.

I think it just is consistent with what Omid said, a lot of uncertainty. So people unsure if their funding is there, There's no change in the desire to bring the technology in. It's just am I going to have the funding to be able to do that. We have had people kind of pause and in certain instances they've gotten clarity that they do have their funding. It is intact. And so they're moving forward. Others are still kind of more uncertain. So I think it's just there's no better word for it than just uncertainty and that's creating some time phase delays and sometimes not. So it's really case by case and we tried to boil the aggregate in our guidance. But to the extent there's significant changes one way or the other that will obviously impact that.

Understood. Thank you. And then can you discuss what the publication pipeline for 2025 looks like?

And then are you seeing any exciting projects on the horizon similar to the large government contracts that you called out last quarter and the projects you called out today?

Thank you.

Martha, it's been the publications has been really a a bright light for us. Saw our first customer publication in 2023. And so 2024 was really a robust year in publications and now we have more than 30 of them. I'm beginning to see the slide we all start to take place. As researchers are seeing really uniquely what is possible using the proteograph And I expect that same velocity in terms of publication will continue in 2025 in terms of the number of publications [indiscernible] This stack has been a great source of that by the way because it lets the customer access data very quickly. And then that data then translates for the customer in terms of possible presentations or possible mechanism to write grants So I think the pace of publications will take off. And and the evidence that the customers are putting forward is accelerating adoption by others. It's terrific to see this. We just did the HuPO by the way earlier this Seer. There were 12 total posters and oral presentations, again, a fantastic conference. A lot of visibility for SEER One of our customers gave an excellent talk in terms of looking at RNA medicines and when you treat models of prostate cancer with RNA therapeutics What is the downstream effect in terms of proteomic perturbation and if you look at this in an unbiased way, meaning you're not coming to it with any preconceived notion of what protein you should be looking at to be up or down regulated.

And in turn, you look at the totality of the cellular proteome, for example, in response to an up regulation of a tumor suppressor or down regulation of an oncogene and really what happens to that cell and all the proteome exchanges it's just fascinating the types of biological insight that is emerging. And so I'm very, very bullish in terms of the our customer publications. And just earlier this week, I heard of another customer, a government customer research or government entity who just got a Nature level paper accepted. So I think the velocity is taking up Martha and it should be an exciting year for us in terms of papers.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Lai of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Hi, this is Jason on for YUKO OCCU.

Thank you for taking our questions.

So you announced a co marketing and sales agreement with Thermo Fisher last quarter.

Just wondering what's baked in the 2025 guide for this collaboration?

Are you expecting a material contribution this year from this collaboration as so does that imply a material 2H ramp? And also I believe it's a non exclusive agreement. So how are you thinking about opportunities for future co marketing collaborations like this one? And what criteria are you looking for in a partner? Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Yes, I'll take the first the first question. In terms of the co marketing, so we did announce that back in the fourth quarter. This quarter, we are currently working with Thermo to train their sales force. And so we're working through that this quarter. It's going well. And so we expect to see that completely operationalized in the second quarter. So So excited about the partnership and what it can do In terms of what we what we guided or how much is built into our guidance. I think we were pretty modest in that. I think we just want to see how things come together over the course of the next quarter or two. And so we try to be be relatively circumspect around that.

But we remain very, very excited for it. They've been great partners And so we're looking forward to a good year with them. And I'll let Amit speak to the other potential partnerships. David, thank you for that. Thank you for that, David. [indiscernible] Look, Assemble partnership was based on or built on several years of an excellent relationship that we had with them. But it's non exclusive to give us flexibility really to work with other mass spec providers. Key is that we're always looking for ways to enhance access to the proteograph. And our enthusiasm for the partnership with Thermo was based on the exceptional performance that the Protograf and the Orbiter of Astrol did together, and the value that that would then provide to our customers. Now as great as the Astrol is, and as unparalleled the performance of it is with the proteograph, The proteograph Also, significantly enhances the performance of every other mass spec including those by Cyx and by Bruker, And we've had many customers or even our own labs that have demonstrated the meaningfully enhanced performance of those other instruments through many presentations and many publications. We continue to have dialogues with these parties as well.

For potential partnership in various different areas. They may not look the same as the thermal partnership. They may be in other areas. But our approach is really just facilitating access to the photograph ultimately to help the customer get the best data they need for their studies.

Thank you. That was helpful. And if I may ask a follow-up, I believe I heard you say about $174,000 on consumables pull through per instrument. Please correct me if I misheard. Just wondering what is your assumption in the guide for consumables pull through for 2025? And how do you see this number turning over the next few years? How much more room is there for this number to grow on your Yes. Thanks, Jason.

We're not going to guide in terms of the overall pull through. You did hear the correctly. It's $174,000 per instrument. But look, I think there's obviously, it's customer dependent. Obviously, our commercial customers, which is are well north of that number and the academic are kind of below that number. So and this is kind of where it averages out. But again, I think there's there's plenty of capacity in a single protege to do more than that per year. It really is just going to be project dependent and what types of projects customers are working on be small or large, I think the encouraging news is we are talking to folks about doing large population scale studies now, So we previously haven't really had significant opportunities in that area, but we're definitely in conversations with parties now. So again, there's room, but again, we also hope to grow the installed base. More rapidly this year, right?

So that's the tension. How fast does the installed base grow relative to the pull through on that? And so we're not going to give guidance now, but again, we feel we feel good about that pull through number and we'll continue to monitor as we go forward and update you in a year.

Thank you. Appreciate the color.

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