Berkeley Lights - Q3 2021

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Berkeley Lights third quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Carrie Mendivil from Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, madam.

Carrie Mendivil (Managing Director)

Thank you. Earlier today, Berkeley Lights released financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. If you have not received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to [email protected]. Joining me today from Berkeley Lights are Eric Hobbs, Chief Executive Officer, and Kurt Wood, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. For more information, please refer to the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed in our SEC filings.

Except as required by law, Berkeley Lights 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 and is accurate only as of the live broadcast, November 4, 2021. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Eric.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Thanks, Carrie, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning. We delivered record revenue of $24.3 million during the third quarter of 2021, coming in at the high end of the revenue range we pre-announced in mid-October. Our team members across the globe continue to execute on our strategic initiatives, and we are well positioned to find the biology that cures disease. On today's call, I will provide details on the continued progress we are making across our business. I will then turn the call over to Kurt to discuss third quarter financial results and share our outlook for the remainder of 2021. The industry continues to experience strong growth. At the same time, it's going through some significant transformations.

We are increasingly seeing companies outsource both R&D and manufacturing to CROs, CDMOs, which was a main growth driver for our business during the quarter. This trend was accelerated by COVID-19, and we expect this outsourcing trend to continue for the foreseeable future. As a result, approximately 40% of our third quarter revenue came from CROs and CDMOs. Revenue from CRO/CDMO customers grew more than 150% for the first 9 months of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020. Capacity utilization as well as global adoption of our technology in this customer group continues to expand as evidenced by five repeat Berkeley Lights platform purchases year-to-date and more than a twofold year-over-year increase in consumable revenue.

Demand for antibody discovery is primarily driven by the need to access increased levels of biological diversity, in terms of species and cell types that are screened in search for therapeutics against harder to hit targets. Our customers continue to see significant differentiation with our platform's capability when it comes to the hard to hit target classes such as GPCRs and ion channels. As high resolution and the ability to run complex cell-based functional assays becomes even more critical. Access to more biodiversity and different cell types continues to be strong, a strong driver for expanding our opportunity in antibody discovery. With the rollout of Opto Antibody Discovery 4.0, we are focused on product development activities that broaden species access. Our Opto Antibody Discovery 4.0 dramatically increases access to biodiversity, but it also includes the ability to deeply interrogate primary human cells.

This is significant and early access customers are seeing promising results which can be further appreciated in the Vanderbilt webinar on the customer page on our website. Translating more complex antibody products such as multi-specifics into highly productive cell lines requires increasingly deeper polyfunctional clone interrogation and selection. Our Opto Assure product line enables our customers to do just that at unprecedented scale and speed. In Q3, we continued to see global deployment of that capability by an industry-leading CDMO, which is yet another example of the value proposition enabled by Berkeley Lights technology. Other trends emerging are CROs integrating downstream, adding cell line development to their product offering. Genovac is a recent example of this.

With proven success in discovery and development of antibodies against challenging targets using the Berkeley Lights platform. They recently invested in their third Beacon, with two platforms dedicated to antibody discovery and the latest dedicated to their expansion into cell line development. GlaxoSmithKline also shared their success with our platform on an analyst customer panel. They have switched the majority of their cell line development work to the Berkeley Lights Beacon platform, which has enabled them to accelerate their decision-making from a timeframe measured in weeks to now just a few days. GSK also purchased its third Beacon during the quarter, moving upstream in the value chain by adding Beacon antibody discovery workflow capabilities to their antibody therapeutic development and manufacturing capability.

Cell and gene therapies continue to drive significant pipeline growth and are becoming a larger part of the total therapies under development in the biopharma industry. In line with this trend, non-antibody therapeutic revenue as a percentage of total sales grew to nearly 25% in both the third quarter and year-to-date revenues. We continue to build our presence in translational centers by driving the deployment of cell therapy products and demonstrating access to primary biology that previously did not exist. Globally, we have placed 20 platforms across the academic sector. Development efforts around an integrated cell therapy development, QA/QC, and closed loop manufacturing solutions continues to progress nicely.

Recently, Dr. Anthony Zamora, from the Medical College of Wisconsin presented at the CAR-TCR Summit on how he was leveraging the Berkeley Lights Lightning tool to identify how modifications in CAR T-cell manufacturing can improve in vivo persistence and clinical efficacy. A link to this webinar and others like it can be found on the customer spotlight pages of our Berkeley Lights website. Expanding into new markets remains a key aspect of our growth strategy. The industry trend to partner in core technology development has driven growth of our business development activities. Here we are developing new solutions with partners by providing access to capacity through our BioFoundry. We currently have two principal engagement models. Both partnership offerings start with an R&D capacity subscription that can span over multiple years.

This is either followed by platform placements of the customer for the developed application, or the arrangement is transitioned into a service offering where Berkeley Lights runs the established workflow in our BioFoundry. In either model, we may share in downstream economics via milestones and/or share in the created downstream economic benefits on a per unit basis. This model continues to gain momentum in both pipeline activity as well as revenue contribution. In 2020, full year revenue from partnerships was $5.8 million compared to $12.5 million during the first nine months of this year. We expect revenue from partnerships and services to exceed $18 million in 2021 and account for approximately 20% of this year's projected revenue. Our current service and partnership backlog for 2022 has grown to approximately $20 million at the end of the third quarter.

To serve this rapidly growing part of our business, we recently completed the build-out of our Boston BioFoundry, which will provide additional campaign capacity as we enter 2022. Before I hand the call over to Kurt, I'd like to again thank our team for their hard work and dedication towards making our vision a reality. We are at the forefront of something profoundly important, and we continue to push the envelope every day on what is possible through the cutting-edge fusion of biology and technology. Our platform is becoming essential in some of the most important fields such as cell therapy, antibody discovery, synthetic biology, and many more. As we have advanced the capabilities of our platform, we increasingly hear from our customers how our technology is enabling them to solve complex problems that were previously thought to be unsolvable.

We are still early in this journey, and there is work to be done to integrate our technology platform across many new market segments. As we have demonstrated this quarter, we are continuing to make great progress, and we remain more excited than ever about the road ahead. I will now turn the call over to Kurt for more details on our financials. Kurt?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Thank you, Eric. Revenues for the three months ended September 30, 2021 increased to $24.3 million, up 34% year-over-year and 26% sequentially. This set a record for quarterly revenue, with $16.7 million coming from product revenues and $7.6 million from service revenues. Regionally, North America accounted for 46% of revenues in the quarter, followed by APAC at 40% and EMEA at 14%. Looking at a breakout across the three revenue streams, revenue from direct platform sales was $14.1 million, increasing 24% sequentially and 14% versus the prior year. These results were driven by strong platform placements, including eight CapEx Beacons, three tech access subscriptions, and two Lightning platforms, ending the quarter with an installed base of 105 platforms.

As a reminder, last quarter we launched a new tech access subscription offering tailored to the specific capacity needs of smaller antibody discovery and cell line development customers. As of the end of September, approximately 10% of our year-to-date placements are to tech access customers in North America and EMEA. We have not yet launched tech access in the APAC region, which we expect to do in 2022. Recurring revenue, which includes revenue related to consumable purchases, subscriptions, and service and warranty, was $4.7 million, an increase of 29% over the prior year and 20% sequentially. The sequential growth from last quarter was primarily driven by an increase in consumable purchases. As a reminder, we recognize consumable revenue when the consumable is purchased by the customer.

Therefore, the timing of the purchase is not necessarily reflective of when the consumable is ultimately used on the system, and different customers deploy different procurement strategies. For example, some customers make one-time purchases for their anticipated annual usage, while others purchase consumables as needed and place orders consistently throughout the year. Additionally, some customers implemented procurement strategies in 2020 designed to de-risk potential supply chain disruptions from COVID shutdowns, resulting in higher inventory levels over the course of 2020, 2021 and a lower correlation between purchase and usage. Joint development agreement and partnership revenue was $5.5 million in Q3, growing 155% from the prior year period and 40% sequentially. Year-to-date, we have signed two significant partnerships with industry-leading participants, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Bayer CropScience.

Together, these segments carry a potential contract value of more than $30 million. To date, we have recognized approximately $6 million of the $30 million in backlog, including $2.7 million in Q3. Looking ahead, we anticipate our business development-driven revenues to grow both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of total revenue while maintaining our stated long-term objective of achieving 70% gross margin. Gross profit for the third quarter of 2021 was $15.4 million compared to $12.8 million in the prior year period. Gross margin for the third quarter of 2021 was 63.4% compared to 70.3% in the third quarter of 2020. Similar to prior quarters, our gross margin was impacted by the cumulative impact of the Ginkgo workflow buy-downs.

This impact increased in Q3 due to a ramp in activity as we near completion of one of the workflows in co-development. Excluding the impact from Ginkgo, gross margins for the third quarter were approximately 69%, in line with our long-term target of approximately 70%. Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2021 were $35.4 million, inclusive of $5.9 million of stock-based compensation, compared to $21 million in the third quarter of 2020, which included $2.4 million of stock-based compensation. The increase of $14.4 million was driven by an increase in R&D, G&A related expenses as we transition to a public company, stock-based compensation, and investment in our business development of sales and marketing teams.

Net loss for Q3 was $20.4 million, compared to a net loss of $8.6 million for the third quarter of 2020. All net loss numbers are inclusive of stock-based compensation. We ended the third quarter of 2021 with a cash and cash equivalent balance of $197 million and available liquidity of $207 million, including the unused portion of our revolving debt facility announced last quarter. Turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year, we expect revenue for 2021 to be at or above $90 million, in the low nineties, the lower end of our previously stated guidance range. This represents a growth rate of approximately 40% over 2020. With that, we'll now open it up to questions. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Tejas Savant of Morgan Stanley.

Speaker 9

Hey, guys. This is Edmond on for Tejas. Thank you for the time. Just wanted to ask you about your direct instrument revenue. It seems like your guidance is at the lower end of what you guys have provided before, meaning your subscription model has been fairly successful. First on that, actually, can you comment on how it's been tracking and what your expectations are in terms of traction going forward?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

I missed the first part of that question, Edmond. Was it?

Speaker 9

Well, actually, I can get to that later. First, can you just comment on how the subscription model is tracking given your lower end of the guidance? It sounds like it's going well according to your expectations.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Look, you know, I think we launched that at the end of Q2. It already accounts for, you know, 10% of the placements we have made this year. We've additionally booked one additional one so far in Q4, so I think that's tracking, you know, well, as we would expect. You know, we are seeing some increased demand in CRO and CDMO, which obviously, you know, can be a trade-off there on tech access and if the customer goes there. Either case is good for us because we get the market share of the campaign, but we're pleased with the progress we're making on that product in a relatively short period of time.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you for that. Looking forward, I think The Street is currently estimating around $61 million of direct sales revenue based off of around 36 direct Beacon placements for 2022. Is that still a reasonable assumption?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Do you mean 2021 or 2022?

Speaker 9

2022. The Street is currently estimating about $61 million in direct revenue, derived off of about 36 direct placements.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Yeah. It's a little early for us to give 2022 guidance. We'll do that on a future call. I think what we're seeing now is we're set up nicely. Eric mentioned, you know, we have already this year, our business development team has booked $30 million in new business, of which $20 million will be recognized on the business development side for next year. We have a nice growing installed base, or business and backlog in that area. Then, you know, our installed base has grown pretty rapidly this year, and that'll drive additional consumable spend next year. The specifics of that we'll break out on a future call. We're still finalizing our plans for next year.

Speaker 9

Got it. Thank you. It sounds like the CRO/CDMO demand is still going very strong. I was wondering if you can help us walk through what your customers are thinking when they're making the decision to either sign up for a subscription unit or to leverage a Beacon unit that's already placed at a CRO.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah, happy to jump in on this one. You know, when you think about their purchasing decision, whether they purchase a Beacon, go for a tech access, or work with a CRO or CDMO, right, our customers are really thinking about, you know, more importantly, what's their probability of success? The reason many of our customers go to CRO/CDMOs is actually driven by the desire to access enhanced levels of biodiversity. They want to make sure that they get a therapeutic candidate. Each of the CRO/CDMOs have access to different animal models and biodiversity. That really is one of the primary decisions they make, that they evaluate in making their decision on where they put their money down to find access to their therapeutics. You know, as we look forward into 2022, in antibody discovery, we believe the outsourcing trend to CROs and CDMOs is going to continue.

As Kurt mentioned, we'll continue to support that with placements into the segment. Those placements go into pharma companies, biotechs, and CROs/CDMOs. As Kurt also mentioned, you know, it's our intent to capture the vast majority of the campaign capacity in the market to drive market share ownership of the campaigns in the field.

Speaker 9

Eric, Kurt, thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Mark Massaro of BTIG.

Vidyun Bais (VP of Equity Research)

Hey, guys. This is Vidyun on for Mark. Thanks for taking the questions. How do you think about?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Absolutely.

Vidyun Bais (VP of Equity Research)

Hi. So how should we think about subscription model and capital placement mix looking forward? Could you also maybe discuss how workflow utilization of subscription customers differs since some workflows are only on the subscription model?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Sure. Kurt, would you like to take that one in terms of mix?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Yeah, I'll take it. In terms of mix, you know, I think you got to remember we've got, you know, three legs of our business model that we've talked about. You've got the direct placements, which includes, you know, the CapEx model and the subscription. You've got the service business, which falls into our, you know, partnership and development line items, which is where, you know, we are performing the screenings on behalf of the customer at a BioFoundry that we're doing. Typically, yeah, it's what we're doing with the Thermo Fishers and the Bayers of the world. Third, what you see is, you know, we take a percentage of, you know, the asset revenues that are generated on the back end, whether that's through a milestone or also end unit economics.

You know, as it relates to what you were talking about for the mix going forward, you know, we expect that business development and partnership revenue to increase. It's already going to be 20% of this year. As Eric mentioned, you know, we've already got backlog that will exceed the total absolute dollar value of this year. So we've got, you know, as we ended Q3, $20 million of backlog secured for 2022 already in that aspect. As we think about in the mix in the short term of subscription and tech access, again, I think we'll defer the actual mix split and guidance for that for 2022 when we give more specific guidance.

I'll remind you that, you know, we launched the subscription model for tech access at late Q2. We've already got three placed, and we booked another one this quarter. We're seeing good demand on that front, but we'll give you the specifics as it relates to 2022 on a future call when we talk specifically about guidance for that year.

Vidyun Bais (VP of Equity Research)

Okay. Awesome. Could you also provide an update on how the workflow development with Bayer is progressing, and your development work in SynBio with Ginkgo as well? Does that still remain on track for later this year, and how do you see that new workflow impacting your funnel?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

I'll jump in on this. It was great to be at the Ginkgo Ferment event last week and talk with Jason Kelly and Barry Canton and we continue to move forward and work. We are on track for delivering workflows to Ginkgo this year. That's going very well. In regards to Bayer, in regards to the Bayer workflow, you know, we aren't speaking, you know, of all of the details of the workflow, but absolutely the workflow continues to be developed in our BioFoundry and is moving forward on track. Again, that's quite exciting for us in terms of the ability to take, you know, DNA in from our customers, right?

Express different proteins in NanoPen and test those against primary biology. I think that's a very interesting capability that we will have in our BioFoundry as we continue to move forward. All of these things are part of our overall strategy. You know, when we engage, we find, you know, high value cell-based product opportunities. We work with the industry leaders, and then we engage in these partnerships. I think it's important to highlight how critically important those partnerships are, not only for opening new markets, right, in a business development way, but also building enterprise value in the long term. As we see, you know, these, you know, the termination of these business development deals is not the end. It's not just the end of a deal.

It actually leads to either placements of platforms at the customer, or we transition into a service offering where we run the established workflow in our BioFoundry. In either model in these business development partnerships, we can share in downstream economics, either via milestones and/or sharing downstream economic benefits on a per unit basis. This model continues to gain momentum, and I think it's important to highlight what Kurt stated, which was we anticipate $18 million in revenue this year in those business development activities, but the backlog for next year is already $20 million. It's beyond. This is at the end of the third quarter. We see very nice progress there.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Vidyun, I would just jump in to say, you know, the Bayer, obviously, we just signed that deal in August, so it's still very early on. The other one that I think is making good progress is what we announced earlier in the year with, you know, Thermo Fisher Scientific around stable viral vector manufacturing. We continue to make great progress and push the boundaries of, you know, technology.

Vidyun Bais (VP of Equity Research)

Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Mm-hmm. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Julia Qin of JPMorgan.

Julia Qin (Global Real Estate Associate)

Hi, good morning. Starting with instrument placement, nearly half of your 3Q placement is to repeat customers, which is obviously great to see. I'm curious now that, you know, many of your earlier customers have had the system for a couple of years. Do you expect that mix of repeat customers to tick up going forward?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

I mean, as I.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Oh, go ahead, Kurt.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Yep. Go ahead, Eric. Go ahead.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Well, yeah, I was just gonna say that, I mean, this is exactly the trend we've been seeing over the years, Julia, that our customers get the technology and platform in their businesses. They run it, get familiar with it, see the value, and continue to expand. It's great to see our customers continue to buy. There were two notable press releases, you know, from this quarter, Genovac, which bought their third Beacon, which is the first CRO to integrate both cell line development and antibody discovery into a complete workflow. GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, did the same thing. Now they brought antibody discovery on to an existing cell line development workflow.

The key important point is that these two companies are joining other pharma companies who have integrated both antibody discovery and cell line development. There's a significant reason to do so, in the sense that the overall time to the clinic can be dramatically accelerated by going directly from antibody discovery into cell line development activities with functional characterization happening in parallel. I think it's important to notice that, you know, as we projected in the IPO discussions, that integration across the value chain was going to be important and was going to be kind of our mission in each of the market segments. That's happening. This is, of course, our first antibody therapeutics is of course our first market. What we said was going to happen is happening, and we continue to be excited about seeing our customers further integrate Berkeley Lights across the entire value chain.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Julia, I would also note that.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Thank you, Kurt.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Yeah, I'd say, Julia, I would also note that, you know, we certainly expect to see repeat customers, you know, continue, and we had a nice mix of that this quarter. An example of that is the CRO and CDMO space. If that continues to grow, you know, there's a capacity play, as they need, you know, more business. Their business is dependent upon the Berkeley Lights. They'll buy more tools. We saw that in Q3, and we saw that, you know, earlier in the year as well. Then I think the other thing, when we look at the mix of business with new customers, you know, there's things we do as, you know, they learn more about the Beacon.

You know, we start then talking a little bit more about business development and deeper collaborations of what we can do with those customers. I think you'll see a mix of, you know, those, you know, continuing ongoing business with customers, you know, driven by consumable usage, driven by, you know, tool placements, as well as some deeper partnerships in some cases on the business development and services side of the business as well.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from Brian Weinstein of William Blair.

Brian Weinstein (Managing Director of Medical Technology)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Good morning.

Brian Weinstein (Managing Director of Medical Technology)

Hey, so you've kind of jumped around on this a little bit, but I was hoping to maybe get a little bit more specific on just kind of what the funnel for new accounts looks like and kind of what the sales process in general and what the cycle looks like as you're not only working with your more traditional partners. But as you're transitioning more to the CRO/CDMO space, just how does that funnel and sales cycle? How does that look right now versus maybe what it looked like historically?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah, I think.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

You want to take that, Eric?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Hey, Brian. Yeah, I'll jump in. Good morning, Brian. Good to hear from you, and thanks for the question. You know, as we continue to talk and stay close with our CRO/CDMO customers, right? They continue to be, you know, at capacity limitations. Those discussions, of course, increase. The question is, how do they add to their overall capacity to serve their customers? This general trend of outsourcing in the market we see as something that, you know, has been happening and it's been accelerated by COVID, and it will continue. We don't see that returning, you know, to go back the other way anytime soon. We continue to stay in close contact with our customers, have the discussions.

In regard to overall timelines, you know, previous timelines, 6 months-9 months, I would say it's about the same. What has really dramatically accelerated though, Brian, is the business development pipeline and the timelines on the business development activities, right? I think, you know, the business development team and our deal desk has just done a great job at continuing to work with our customers as we see, you know, continued interest and demand for how do we build those workflows of the future? How do we enable our customers to do things that they're just not able to do today? You know, things that are possible with the Berkeley Lights platform just can't be done very easily or economically other ways. I think, you know, it's very encouraging to see that growth in our overall pipeline leading to a very nice backlog for next year.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Brian, just to add to that, I think that you have to break that down a little bit between existing and new customers. To just kind of give you an example, you know, we've placed. Of our top 10 users of the tools over the last four quarters, eight of them have placed orders for new additional tools. Obviously, that sales cycle for an existing customer that already has experience with the platform is much shorter. When you get a new customer that's new to the Berkeley Lights name, there's oftentimes a feasibility study that goes in. As we talked about before, a lot of times people they hear and they do reference checks, but they're skeptical of whether the technology will work initially on their unique biology. Time and time again, we prove that when we do feasibility studies.

The timing of that, you know, is always, you know, dependent upon the customers getting us the biology, running the test, and that can take a little bit of time on their. Then the business development pipeline that Eric was mentioning, you know, that varies depending on the complexity of the deal. Like we talked about with the Thermo deal, you know, that came to fruition in just, you know, one or two months. The Bayer deal took a little bit longer than that, and others we have in the pipeline are kind of between the two that we've been working with. We're getting good traction with that. It's, you know, one part of the process of proving the technology works to accomplish, you know, what they're envisioning doing.

Then the second part for them on the sales cycle for the tool is then going through the, you know, funding, you know, portion within process within their company. That process differs between tech access and the CapEx, where the CapEx takes a little bit longer. Tech access is a lower financial commitment and generally, you know, can be done a month or two sooner than what we see on the CapEx side.

Brian Weinstein (Managing Director of Medical Technology)

Understood. Just transitioning quickly to kind of geographic mix and breakdown there. You guys are kind of unique in, given you know, you're not overly focused on just the U.S. market. I'm curious about, you know, some of the trends that you're talking about, how prevalent they are in areas outside the U.S., and just what are the different trends that you're seeing in various geographies at this point?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as we've mentioned in the last three earnings calls, right, the growth in the Asia Pacific region team, you know, continues to grow. High level of interest in antibody discovery in APAC. I think our head of Asia Pacific, Yue Geng, is just doing a fantastic job building the team there as we continue to execute in that region. It's not just in China. We have placements in Japan, and Korea, and also lots of discussions happening in Singapore area. You know, I think that overall region is a very important region for us to continue to focus on. You know, in the EMEA, Gareth Jones is also doing a great job, bringing up.

I think the placement at GSK is really significant in terms of, you know, leading to full integration of the Beacon platform there across, you know, antibody discovery and cell line development. Globally, we continue to see high levels of demand from our customers, whether it's, you know, pharma customers or CROs, CDMOs, and in particular, the Asia Pacific region continues to drive high levels of demand in antibody discovery.

Brian Weinstein (Managing Director of Medical Technology)

Okay, great. Thank you guys so much.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Thanks, Brian.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Arias of Stifel.

Speaker 10

Hey, guys, this is Evan on the phone for Dan. Thanks for the question. Sorry to bring up a little bit of a sore subject, but I'm just wondering, you know, the report that came out a couple of months ago. I'm just actually just wondering if that is impacting or that's coming up in conversations with customers, and if that's impacting the sales process at all. That's my first question.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah, happy to jump in and take this one. I mean, the claims in the report have left our customers, you know, relatively speechless in terms of some of the blatant lies and false statements created against our technology. I think it's important to note, as a matter of fact, that we had multiple repeat purchases in the quarter post the short report being published. But on the bright side, the report has further cemented the strong relationships we have with our customers. Many have offered to continue to provide broad support towards Berkeley Lights. In general, the customer response has been very positive, as we move forward. I think, you know, in general, we have not seen a dramatic impact from the Scorpion short report.

Speaker 10

Got it. I mean, anything from new customers, though, that aren't as familiar with the technology?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah. For any new customer who has a question, you know, is more than welcome to have discussions with our existing customers. They do reach out. It's a small community. It's not a broadly based community, and people do have those discussions. Our new customers freely reach out to our existing customers who continue to provide support, you know, in regards to what capability they're achieving with our product. It hasn't had an impact on our overall pipeline.

Speaker 10

Yeah. That's good to hear. Follow-up question, you know, related to, I guess, your, I mean, obviously, you're having an evolving business model. And you know, you highlighted CROs and CDMOs. But you're also, you know, within your service business, it sounds to some extent like you might be competing with them. Have you, I mean, have you sensed this from your CRO customers or CDMO customers that, have they brought this up? Has this been impacting any sort of, you know, sales, yeah, sales?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah. To just be clear, right, we do not compete with our CDMO and CRO customers in the antibody therapeutic space. In the antibody therapeutic space, our customers, our CRO and CDMO customers are executing antibody discovery and cell line development workflows. Our service business is focused on new markets and new market development. You know, where we're working on new spaces like synthetic biology, you know, creating stable cell lines for viral vectors with Thermo or working in Ag-bio with Bayer. These are completely different markets. No, there is no conflict between, you know, the services business we offer to develop new markets versus existing markets where we sell product.

You know, as we engage in different market segments, we delineate them as is this gonna be a service business we're going to go into, such as the ag bio market, or is it gonna be a platform placement business, such as what we had decided for antibody therapeutics. No conflicts there.

Speaker 10

Gotcha. I just have one more follow-up related to that in this with the service business. You highlighted the $20 million for the funnel for next year. Is that including Bayer and Thermo? Or is that?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

That's Bayer, Thermo and Ginkgo.

Speaker 10

Okay, great. Thanks.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Mm-hmm.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Brennan of Cowen.

Dan Brennan (Senior Analyst of Life Science and Diagnostic Tools)

Great. Thanks for the question, guys. Just maybe to start off, just a question on the guidance, really good quarter here in Q3. You narrowed the guide to the lower end. Was there any timing-related benefits in Q3 that, you know, are leading you to kinda take down the revenues a little bit there for you?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

No, I think what we said on prior calls is we expected to be a little bit at the lower end of that range as we were, you know, successful with what we're doing on the business. You know, nothing really there. You know, it's more the range that we're doing here is, you know, we're still at that level where, you know, each tool you're selling $1.5 million-$2 million, you know, so, you know, one timing moving in and out of a quarter, you know, can have, you know, a material impact. That's more what we're saying in that narrowed range there.

Dan Brennan (Senior Analyst of Life Science and Diagnostic Tools)

Got it. Great. Any impact at all from, you know, all the supply chain issues that are occurring, whether impacting kind of, you know, customer usage of the platform or your own ability to make the platforms, and, you know, just also, you know, wondering with the Delta COVID impact in Q3, just, you know, did that have any influence at all on, you know, kind of what you guys reported?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah, first coming into.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

Go ahead, Eric.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Oh, yeah, first coming into customer use, right? One of the benefits of the Berkeley Lights platform is the high levels of automation, right? Our customers are able to come in the lab, place a well plate in the tool, hit the go button, and then many of our customers go home and run the tool remotely. No major issues there. You know, I think, unlike other companies who are, you know, heavily reliant on the academic space, we operate in a commercial area with commercial entities who are heavily leveraging CROs and CDMOs. The CROs and CDMOs continue to crank through this time as they gain market share in the space. It's actually been quite positive and a business driver for us.

In regard to supply chains and delivery of goods to customers, I mean, globally, the supply chains are fragile today. Although this could change at any time, we haven't seen a disruption to our overall services, as we move through the supply chain challenges with COVID. Anything to add, Kurt?

Kurt Wood (CFO)

No, I think you got it.

Dan Brennan (Senior Analyst of Life Science and Diagnostic Tools)

Great. Maybe just a few more quick ones if you don't mind. Cell and gene therapy, it's a quarter of your revenues today. I know there was a question earlier on a sales funnel, but I'm just wondering, how do we think about like that mix for that opportunity going forward? Does it stay there? Just any color about how that looks, going forward for you?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

This is, I'll let Kurt take the mix question in a second, but, you know, look, cell and gene therapies continue to grow in the overall market. We see it and everybody else sees it as well. These new therapeutic modalities require because these new therapeutic modalities require, you know, integrating, accessing and understanding live primary biology in a very high throughput and scalable way, Berkeley Lights is really well positioned. In regards to, you know, cell therapies, we believe when we integrate our characterization capabilities for QA/QC into a manufacturing platform, we really will provide the industry with the greatest opportunity to dramatically accelerate deployment of cell therapies. Now, that will take time, but I do believe there's great promise as the complexity of biology increases into the future, Berkeley Lights is very well positioned.

I don't know, Kurt, if you wanna add anything in regards to some of the mix questions.

Kurt Wood (CFO)

No, I think you got it. I think, you know, obviously you got the mix of what we're seeing now, at least in the short term, we see that being consistent, and we'll continue to evaluate the market and adjust. You know, the great thing about our technology is it's applicable to many different markets, as Eric said in his prepared remarks, and we're ready to play in all of those and have partnerships and relationships with key players in each of those segments. We're poised, and then, you know, we obviously use business development to expand like we did, you know, into gene therapy with Thermo Fisher and then ag bio with Bayer. I think you'll see us expand into some additional markets, you know, here in the next 12 months.

Dan Brennan (Senior Analyst of Life Science and Diagnostic Tools)

Great. Then maybe one last one. For antibody discovery and cell line development, you know, you mentioned how the utility of your platform enables, you know, more complex antibodies, you know, bispecific fragments and whatnot. Just how much progress are customers having using the platform for these versus traditional full length antibodies?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Yeah, we had some great results this quarter on the bispecific side with cell line development. It was published at one of the conferences whereby, you know, we're able to understand and see. This is a project done with one of our customers, you know, the relevant fraction. One of the big challenges in cell line development for bispecifics is to ensure that you find the cell lines which are making, you know, a majority of the bispecific that you want, not you know, partial fractions of the antibodies that you want. We're able to see that inside of a NanoPen. We run multiple assays. Again, this is unique to Berkeley Lights.

We run multiple assays against, you know, the different antigen targets, and we can tell you what the relative fractions of antibodies that are being manufactured by this thing. Our customers are quite excited about this new capability that we're releasing and making a lot of progress there. These new, you know, I think there was a misnomer, mischaracterization from, you know, the overall report that was filed that, you know, complex antibodies are not able to be run on the Berkeley Lights platform. That couldn't be further from the truth, actually, in the fact that our customers are making great progress on these complex antibodies in the Berkeley Lights platform.

Dan Brennan (Senior Analyst of Life Science and Diagnostic Tools)

Great. Thank you.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Mm-hmm.

Operator (participant)

Your final question comes from the line of Paul Knight of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Paul Knight (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks. On the academic side, what are they ordering? I know that this has been a developing market relative to the others. What are you doing there, and what are they buying?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, right, we now have 20 placements globally at different academic institutions. You know, I think in the last quarter, one of the very interesting things was, you know, what we saw from Dr. Anthony Zamora, his talk at the CAR-TCR Summit, which he provided an overview on how he's using our Lightning platform to identify how modifications in CAR T-cell manufacturing can improve in vivo persistence and clinical efficacy. He's doing that by determining the mechanisms and specific features of T-cell biology that drive these therapeutic responses. You know, we see a real interest in the interrogation of live biology.

What our customers are really interested in the academic space is that, you know, having access to and interrogating live primary biology from humans is really challenging in the sense that the cells, you know, don't stay alive long outside of the body. A platform like the Berkeley Lights platform enables our customers to interrogate these things with a velocity that means they can answer many questions prior to the cells expiring or changing. You know, this is seen in work that we did with Vanderbilt, also with La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Papers have been published on this, where the Berkeley Lights platform is being used to interrogate these human cells. I think it's quite a promising future for us there. In any case, happy to answer additional questions.

Paul Knight (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Is it fair to say that existing customers are buying platforms and new customers are going to the subscription model?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

There's certainly a mix of both that we see, right? We, you know, as we launch into this, we see some customers continue to buy, new customers continue to buy CapEx, place CapEx orders, and even some existing customers who had CapEx moving to the Tech Access subscription. Again, you know, I think we're still learning about our customers and how they want to interface with our technology as they move forward. Look, we have seen where customers face budget challenges, they go to Tech Access. If customers have budget, they go to CapEx. In the long run, it's likely better for them. Any case, we see a mix of both, no clear. I don't think there's a clear rule that says these customers go this way and these customers go this way at this time. It's great to see continued uptake of the Berkeley Lights technology.

Paul Knight (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Lastly, are the academics tending to go subscription or does it vary?

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

We see variance there. We do have, you know, platforms placed with subscription and again, also with CapEx. You know, when people have grants of significant size, they go for the purchase, and if they don't, they go for the Tech Access.

Paul Knight (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thanks.

Eric Hobbs (CEO)

Mm-hmm.

Operator (participant)

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