Q1 2024 Fulgent Genetics Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Melanie Solomon; Investor Relations; Fulgent Genetics Inc

Ming Hsieh; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Fulgent Genetics Inc

Brandon Perthuis; Chief Commercial Officer; Fulgent Genetics Inc

Paul Kim; Chief Financial Officer; Fulgent Genetics Inc

Dan Leonard; Analyst; UBS Equities

David Westenberg; Analyst; Piper Sandler & Co.

Andrew Cooper; Analyst; Raymond James & Associates, Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Fulgent Genetics first-quarter 2024 conference call and webcast. (Operator Instructions)
I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Melanie Solomon, Investor Relations for Fulgent Genetics. Thank you. You may begin.

Melanie Solomon

Good morning and welcome to the Fulgent first-quarter 2024 financial results conference call. On the call are Ming Hsieh, Chief Executive Officer; Paul Kim, Chief Financial Officer; and Brandon Perthuis, Chief Commercial Officer.
The company's press release discussing the financial results is available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website, www.fulgentgenetics.com. A replay of this call will be available shortly after the call concludes on the Investor Relations section of the company's website.
Management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions on today's call will contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent management's estimates based on current views and assumptions which may prove to be incorrect. As a result, matters discussed in any forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ from those described in the forward-looking statements.
The company assumes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements it may make today to reflect actual results or changes in expectations. Listeners should not rely on any forward-looking statements as predictions of future events and should listen to management's remarks today with the understanding that actual events including the company's actual future results may be materially different in what is described in or implied by these forward-looking statements.
Please review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements including the discussions of some of the risk factors that may cause results to differ from those described in the forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the previously filed 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023 and subsequently filed reports, which are available on the company's Investor Relations website.
Management's prepared remarks including discussions of earnings and earnings per share contain financial measures not prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States or GAAP. Management has prepared these non-GAAP financial measures because it believes they may be useful to investors for various reasons, but these measures should not be viewed as a substitute for or superior to the company's financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Please see the company's press release discussing its financial results for the first-quarter 2024 for more information including the description of how the company calculates non-GAAP income or loss, earnings or loss per share, non-GAAP operating margin, and adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation of these financial measures to income or loss and earnings or loss per share and operating margins to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.
With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Ming.

Ming Hsieh

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. I will start with some comments on the first quarter in our therapeutic development business. Then Brendan will review our product photo market uptake for our laboratory service business in the first quarter Paul will conclude with the financials and outlook before we take your questions. We are pleased with our results in the first quarter with $64.5 million in total revenue. We recognized $1.3 million of revenue on previously billed. The COVID-19 test is coding. Covid-19 revenue first quarter core revenue of 63.2 million was driven by momentum in precision diagnostics, particular reproductive health and oncology or fusion revenue at this time originated from our laboratory services business previously referred to as our FinCo diagnosis business. Brendan will discuss this business further.
Turning to our therapeutic. If you have a business, we continue to make good progress with the volume from our normal Namal encapsulation technology includes our 30 issued our active patents and active patent applications and the targeted therapy platform designed to improve therapeutic windows and the pharmaco 10 kinetics profile of both new and existing cancer drugs. We are excited about this platform because there's potential to yield a cell road drug candidate. We believe with our lead drug candidate, FIDO. seven has shown promising results in clinical trials to date for treatment of numerous Kansas Encoda head-and-neck ambulatory and in pancreatic observer of a preliminary hedge in SCC clinical results from our Phase one 1b study has shown has been accepted for presentation at a 2024 Asco Annual Meeting, which will be held May 31st store Dreamforce in Chicago, our Phase two clinical protocol for second-line treatment of edge in SCC. was accepted by the FDA, and we expect to enroll the first patient this quarter. We'll look to bring FIDO. seven to more patients in the clinical trial setting and keeping you updated on the progress of the trial, we are advancing second drug can DFIDO. two and then encapsulate the SN. 38 toward an IND or investigational new drug application by end of this year. We believe our NantOS drug delivery platform has the potential to address the challenges of currently available treatments for the colon data and other cancers using as in 30 instead of a pro drug of SN-38.
Building up our nine article technology, we are also developing next-generation antibody drug conjugate ADC technology platform that could potentially provide even broader killing toward heterogeneous cancer cells than does ADCs with a bystander killing effects. Our ADC platform isn't target driven and maybe potentially being applying more targeted ADCs, particular new targets with low single-digit inflation where existing ADCs from have failed to show the effects for ROE. We have a strong strategies with both laboratory service business and the therapeutic development business. And we continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with which we'll execute this strategy.
I'd like to thank our employees, partners, shareholders for your hard work and loyalty will look forward to continued progress in 2024.
I will now turn over the call to Brandon Perthuis, our Chief Commercial Officer, to talk about our laboratory service business results during the first quarter. Brandon?

Brandon Perthuis

Thank you, Ming. Our laboratory services business includes precision diagnostics, anatomic pathology and biopharma services. These three represent our core revenue streams and do not include COVID-19 testing revenue first quarter core revenue was up approximately $500,000 year over year, however, down about 3.3 million sequentially. The sequential decline was attributed to timing of biopharma service contracts and a decline in our anatomic pathology revenue. However, looking at our precision diagnostics revenue stream, precision diagnostics was up $9.5 million or 34% year over year and increased 2 million or 6% sequentially. The growth in precision diagnostics was led by reproductive health and oncology. We saw volumes continue to trend up late in the first quarter and we exited the quarter with great momentum. We believe this momentum will carry into the second quarter. Thus, we expect approximately 10% sequential core revenue growth for the second quarter.
In terms of reproductive health, the outperformance was driven by our Beacon expanded carrier screening product. We continue to execute on the operational front delivering excellent turnaround time, clinical support and comprehensive gene content leading to increased detection rates. We also continue to execute on the commercial front, winning new accounts and working with our B2B partners to win new accounts. We have a robust pipeline for Beacon opportunities. Thus, we are predicting continued growth in this area. Our BEACON volume has mostly been limited to IVF clinics due to carrier screening, often being coupled with noninvasive prenatal testing or NIPT at the OB/GYN level. However, for the first time, we are launching a new NIPT test. This will allow us to shift gears and focus more on the OB/GYN market. This will include hiring a new sales team with OB/GYN and experience currently in progress. Our new NIPT test, which we marketed as Nova spelled KNOVA. is a unique first-of-its-kind approach. Knova will include antibody screening, deletion, duplication, screening and de novo point mutations. All of one maternal blood samples. While there are tests on the market today that include any employee screening and deletion duplication analysis and other tests that look for de novo point mutations, there has not been one lab to offer both and more importantly, not one test to combine all three into one. And this will streamline the process for physicians, allowing them to use one lab for their NIPT needs. We expect Knova volume to start slowly as we onboard early adopters and our key opinion leaders.
Moving to our oncology services. As you may recall, we have two oncology laboratories, one based in Alpharetta, Georgia and one based in Phoenix, Arizona. Both laboratories offer comprehensive heme and solid tumor testing laboratory in Alpharetta caters to a pathologist clientele. While the Phoenix laboratory caters to an oncologist clientele, enabling us to specifically tailor our reports to the relevant client base, both provide full service expert hematopathology diagnosis, cytogenetics flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, FISH and molecular the offer. Red Aladdin, in particular provides solid tumor consultation services to pathologists, along with prognostic immunohistochemical and FISH testing, including tech only services. While the Phoenix operation of the Phoenix solid tumor service concentrate on providing prognostic immunohistochemistry will emit immunohistochemical and testing to oncology.
Ngs is available to both pathologists and oncologists and has performed centrally in our El Monte laboratory This includes separate state-of-the-art NGS assays for solid tumor, including liquid biopsy in hematological neoplasms as well as offering germ line testing. We believe that our HIM assay is extremely comprehensive and is exclusively devoted to hematologic neoplasms, unlike other providers, which usually offer him assay either combined with solid tumor or something else like soft tissue clients useful, is it based on two main points turnaround time and rate and insufficient specimens. We not only promise a turnaround time of less than 10 business days for our somatic cancer assays.
We actually deliver on that in 96% of cases and due to our expertise in nucleic acid extraction or insufficient rates have been lower than what is generally seen in the industry with an overall QNS rates of 8.5% and 4.5%. Qns rates, specifically for lung for heat or QNS rates sits at 0.6%. Our Alpharetta location is growing nicely. Transitioning from an excellent regional lab. It was before Fulgent acquired it and growing into a more national footprint with an expanded sales force and the oncology lab, which started as a regional laboratory with a focus in Southern California has now expanded into multiple regions in the country as we have grown its sales team.
Turning to anatomic pathology. While this revenue stream has seen some headwinds. We are beginning to see the new sales team and structure pay off. We are continuing to gradually layer on additional sales team members and expect to see this business stabilize in 2024. In addition, we have been diligently working on improving operational efficiency. We have recently purchased a new building just outside of Irving, Texas where we will be where we will be able to consolidate our existing Texas operation and our New York operation.
In addition, we continue to invest in digital technology for slight imaging and AI to improve both the efficiency and quality of our operation.
Finally, in terms of our biopharma services revenue stream, we are tracking on plan for 2024, and we continue to believe this revenue stream will perform well over time with our expanded product offerings. The focus is to build a deeper opportunity funnel to help smooth out the lumpiness in this business. To that end, we are continuing to look at expanding on existing biopharma relationships and forging new ones. We have recently expanded the Biopharma sales team to a small degree and we continue to build on our robust product offering that we believe biopharma clients value, allowing us to address a large market for these types of studies. We are encouraged by the momentum in the business, and we look forward to updating our investors on our progress throughout 2024.
I'll now turn the call over to Paul Kim, our CFO. Paul?

Paul Kim

, revenue in the first quarter of 2024 totaled $64.5 million compared to $66.2 million in the first quarter of 2023, $1.3 million came from COVID-19 testing in Q1, which was not part of our guidance. Revenue from our core business totaled $63.2 million. Gross margin was 34.3%. The increase in gross margin year over year is primarily related to a decrease in overall compensation expense as we optimized our cost structure. Total GAAP operating expenses were 43.9 million for the first quarter. The decrease from 176.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily related to the onetime noncash goodwill impairment charge incurred in the fourth quarter.
Non-gaap operating expenses totaled $32.4 million, decreased from $45.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Non-gaap operating margin increased approximately 12 percentage points sequentially to a minus 12.9%, primarily due to lower bad debt reserve and legal fees adjusted EBITDA loss for the first quarter was $3.2 million compared to a loss of 7.2 million in the first quarter of 2023. On a non-GAAP basis and excluding equity-based compensation expense and intangible asset amortization loss for the quarter was $269,000, or $0.01 per share based on 30 million weighted average shares outstanding.
Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with approximately $846.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities we are reiterating our outlook for 2024 provided in February with minimal revenue from COVID-19 testing expected or guiding to core revenue, which is total laboratory services revenue for the Company without COVID-19 testing revenue, we continue to expect total core revenues to be approximately 280 million for 2024, representing core growth of 7% year over year. There's no revenues from our therapeutics development business anticipated in our 2024 guidance.
Turning to expected margins for 2024, excluding COVID-19 revenue and stock-based compensation, we expect non-GAAP gross margins to continue to improve as the efficiencies of our integration efforts take effect increasing from the mid 30% range we saw in Q1 to our target of 40% or slightly above 40% by end of year. We expect to see slightly lower non-GAAP operating margins in the quarters ahead as we further invest resources to grow our business with operating margins approximately at minus 18% for the year. We remain focused on managing our spend and continue to believe that our foundational technology platform supports a strong margin profile longer term, we expect associated cash burn for our therapeutics development business of approximately 15 to $17 million this year, which is contemplated in our EPS and cash guidance, utilizing our non-GAAP tax provision and average share count of 31 million. We reiterate our fall full year 2024 net non-GAAP loss of approximately $1 and $0.05 per share for our shareholders, excluding stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets as well as any one-time charges.
Moving on to cash, cash position remains strong, excluding any stock repurchases or other expenditures outside of ordinary course, we would anticipate ending 2020 forecast with approximately 800 million of cash, cash equivalents and investments and marketable securities. But overall, we see strength in our core business, which has grown organically through our strategic acquisitions and see good momentum ahead.
Thank you for joining the call today. Operator, you may open it up for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Dan Leonard, UBS.

Dan Leonard

Good morning, and thanks for the time my first question perhaps for you, Brandon, what gives you comfort on the revenue ramp required to hit that 280 million sales target for the year? And I think you gave us a second quarter target that 10% sequential growth, but it wasn't clear to me if that was just precision diagnostics or if that was the entire lab services business.

Brandon Perthuis

Thanks for the question, Dan. That would be for the entire lab services business. So what's giving us the confidence in the guide in the momentum from what we're seeing come through the front door, right? We're winning. We're winning new opportunities. We're gaining market share in reproductive health. We're gaining market share in oncology. Our anatomic pathology business is beginning to stabilize and we had contracts on in-place for biopharma services that were not delivered in Q. one mission. That timing issue. Those contracts are in place. They will roll into Q2. So really across the in those revenue streams, we see that momentum, and that gives us the confidence in the annual guide, but also the double digit growth we expect in Q2.

Dan Leonard

Appreciate that and then my follow-up question, I was hoping you could touch on the implications of those finalized the lab-developed tests, regulations that were issued earlier in the week.

Brandon Perthuis

The implications for Fulgent Yes, certainly I mean, obviously a big development in new development. We're still digesting some of that information. But our initial read on that, Dan, we believe it bodes well for Fulgent there are appears to be some exceptions that are made for products that are already marketed that may not have to go through a full PMA process. I mean, obviously, Fulton has a large test menu already on the market. So that seems to bode well for Fulgent. In addition, there seems to be some exceptions for New York State approved tests, which we have several of. So our read on it is that we're in a good place from what we've learned so far. And obviously, we will still be under those regulations.
Just perhaps not a big need for PMAs. And we believe we have the quality systems expertise and ability to adhere to these guidelines. So it it's likely to perhaps even strengthen our position in this marketplace, perhaps increasing the bar and barrier for entry for new laboratories. So we'll obviously be monitoring this very closely, and we look forward to working with the FDA closely on these new regulations. Appreciate the thoughts, and thanks, Brendan.
Thank you.

Operator

David Westenberg, Piper Sandler.

David Westenberg

I can tell you I'm actually my questions actually are going to be kind of continuation of some of David's question. I did love the 10% growth sequentially. Can you maybe run us through some of the on.
Yes, things that you saw in March that give you confidence, do you think maybe January February might have been maybe more weather impacted or was there a big customer win? Just kind of run us through why March might have been so much better than the January and February?
Yes.

Brandon Perthuis

Yeah, Jan, I think it's safe to say there was a big customer win, but not just one big customer win. There were multiple customer wins that happened late in the quarter. In addition, as I mentioned there was some biopharma business that we were able to close in the quarter contractually, but not deliver in the quarter. But I would say that most of our competence is coming from that precision diagnostics momentum, which was Fulgent gaining market share late in the quarter that we believe is going to continue throughout the rest of the year.

David Westenberg

Got you.
Okay.
Now and I wanted to also hit on the FDA changes. Do you think any of those you have, for example, the new NIPT. offering is going to go have to have to go to the FDA for five 10-K's. And you do have a very big of a rare disease portfolio and any thoughts to cost on getting into compliance as we look at the years? I know maybe maybe you're not ready to or it still requires look given the fact this was all just this week.

Brandon Perthuis

Yes. Thanks for the question. You're right. If you turn off the press, we certainly haven't been able to model what the cost could look like. But again, our read on it is tests that are currently on the market would be exempted from a PMA process, not exempt from regulation. We will still have to adhere to FDA quality standards and quality guidelines and reporting. And we and we believe we have those systems in place and we've been working on something similar for the IVDR. stuff in Europe. So I think we're in a good place to adhere to those guidelines in. And certainly there's no disruption to our product offering. We can continue to offer these products. So we'll see how that PMA exemption continues to play out for products that are already on the market. But again, we think that's a big part of this that bodes well for Fulgent considering the amount of products we currently offer well, that's great.

David Westenberg

And then I'll ask an actual original question here. I'm sorry, I just didn't meet in terms of the go-to-market strategy with the with the OBJOBGYN. community on how are how is I mean, what's the investment going to look like? Are you going to target maybe sub markets first and expand like you would with the Atlantic when you talked about like Fulgent oncology, are you just going to go maybe maybe high-level system wins? I'm just trying to think about the pacing of SG&A over the course of the next couple of years as you add that on that call point on. So that's really what I'm targeting there.
Yes.

Brandon Perthuis

Thanks for the question. I think what we're currently planning right now is ramping to a new net new sales head count of around 20 people by the end of 2024. Again, this is a novel in IPT. products. It's not lost on us that we're late to this market and late to this game. But and we talked about this for a while that we were interested in this market, but we did not want to launch a new other similar product that was on the market. So I think we were able to develop this product be a differentiated product. We do expect volume to start slowly and we will be offering this novel product. So there will be some some education involved in why this product is different and in how this product leads to additional diagnostic yields. And we'll be able to detect a significant number of conditions that are currently being missed by products on the market so a long answer to your question of how we will build the sales team gradually throughout the year in terms of a regionality approach. And we believe there's no no particular reason to focus in certain regions other than just based on population density and where where pregnancies are happening, the population density, I don't see any reason that we have to focus on certain regions or states. So I would consider this a national rollout, but again, starting slowly throughout the year.

Operator

Andrew Cooper, Raymond James.

Andrew Cooper

Hey, guys, thanks for the time. Maybe just first kind of following up on the OB/GYN launch. Just to make sure we understand the guide. No nice beat on the bottom line in 1Q, but some step down in the margins from here is part of that in terms of reiterating the guidance layering in incremental costs from this Knova ramp and build out? Or was that already contemplated in the prior guide?
Yes.

Paul Kim

Thank you for that question. On the on the operating expense structure that we have experienced, including the first quarter we've had benefits from, particularly like collection and low, but lower fees from an operating expense perspective. If you take a look at our operating expenses in Q2, Q3 and Q4. That should be more normalized, which is consistent with the original guide that we had. So excluding stock-based compensation, we anticipate the operating expenses to be approximately $43 million in each one of the quarters of Q2, Q3 and Q4.
But I think the real highlight of what we wanted to point out was one of the elevated revenues and the expansion of the business that Brandon indicated. So what we are indicating for the second quarter core revenues to be approximately or in excess of about 70 million. That already puts us at a 208, CAD280 million annual core revenue rate, which we're very, very pleased with the other thing that I wanted to point out is our gross margins that we've been talking about increasing our gross margins for some period of time and what the acquisitions that we made a year or two ago. And if you take a look at our gross margins, excluding stock-based compensation and if you strip out on the COVID 19 revenues and 2023.
In the first quarter, we had our gross margins at approximately 28% in the back of increased to about 33%. And then in Q3 and Q4 of 2023, it was approximately 35% this quarter, that gross margin rate was approximately 36%. But starting in the second quarter of 2024, we anticipate our gross margins, excluding stock-based compensation, to be approximately 40% or higher. We think that that will grind even higher than that in Q3 and Q4 to approximately 42%. So what we see as one, our core revenues are being intact because we raised our guidance from to 62 to 80. But we see the gross margins continuing to grind higher for the business, which we're very proud of.

Brandon Perthuis

Okay, that is helpful. Maybe next, just on AT., I know presented diagnostics has been a lot of time on doing very well. You want to dive in a little bit just on anything that you've seen on the anatomic pathology side in terms of competitive landscape or or any share shift and maybe what you attribute that to and how you can get that business back to a little bit healthier growth there?
Yes, certainly, thanks for the question. I think one of the things we've done there is a revamp of the sort of go-to-market strategy in the sales organization. I want to get into the details specifically, but sort of the focus of the sales team, their roles and responsibilities. It wasn't overly calibrated to hunting in finding new new business. So we this year January this year, we revamped that and change that go-to-market strategy in addition, we've layered on some additional sales leadership and additional sales headcount for that area. So we expect that team to perform better this year. I wouldn't say there's been any macro changes in the competitive landscape or market share.
We continue to see some consolidation with physician groups and sometimes that would lead to creation of these super groups and physicians owned laboratories. So they continue to be a competitor. And but our goal there is to blocking and tackling and getting back to growing that business. We have the quality turnaround time. The subspecialty trained pathologists, the product menu to be successful in that space for some time. We've talked about synergies with the precision diagnostics division and the ability to cross-sell, I would say over the last year or so. We've been sort of more focused on fixing and growing the AP. business.
But as we're beginning to see that business stabilize, I think we're getting to the point now where we can spend more time and energy on these opportunities to cross sell, for example, perhaps cross selling germline hereditary oncology to many of our AP. clients, which include GIGU. in derm. So we continue to invest in that business. Again, focusing on operations there, improving operational efficiencies, but obviously Importantly, we do want to see that business return to top line growth. You put up all our stuff there.
Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our Q&A session. And that concludes our call today. We thank you for your interest and participation. You may now disconnect.