Maravai LifeSciences - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 revenue was $47.4M, down 31.7% YoY; GAAP net loss was $(69.8)M (including a $30.4M goodwill impairment), and Adjusted EBITDA was $(10.4)M.
• Base business revenue (excluding high‑volume CleanCap) grew 5% YoY; Biologics Safety Testing (BST/Cygnus) rose 9.9% YoY, while Nucleic Acid Production (NAP/TriLink) fell 43.1% YoY due to no high‑volume CleanCap orders.
• Management withdrew 2025 revenue guidance and announced >$50M annualized cost reductions and a ~25% workforce reduction; restructuring charges of ~$8–$9M are expected in H2’25.
• Versus consensus, revenue was essentially in line and EPS modestly worse: Revenue $47.40M vs $47.37M*, EPS $(0.08) vs $(0.074); catalysts were guidance withdrawal, impairment, and the cost‑restructuring plan. Values retrieved from S&P Global.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Base business grew 5% YoY, driven by Cygnus BST kits, HCP qualification services, and MockV viral clearance kits; CEO: “our base revenue… grew 5% in the quarter”.
• BST revenue +9.9% YoY; strong demand across product lines and services supported segment resilience.
• Strategic partnerships and product launches: CleanCap license and supply agreement (Thermo Fisher) and an mRNA synthesis kit to streamline IVT workflow.

What Went Wrong

• NAP revenue fell 43.1% YoY on no high‑volume CleanCap orders for commercial vaccine programs; excluding high‑volume CleanCap, NAP was only up 3% YoY.
• GAAP loss widened materially due to a $30.4M goodwill impairment in the NAP segment and higher operating expenses; GAAP EPS was $(0.27) vs $(0.07) in Q2’24.
• Guidance uncertainty: company withdrew 2025 revenue guidance amid CEO/CFO transition and comprehensive business review, raising near‑term forecasting opacity.

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us on our second quarter 2025 earnings call. The press release and slides accompanying today's call are posted on our website and available at investors.maravai.com. During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements and refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. It is possible that actual results could differ from management's expectations. We refer you to slide three for more detail on forward-looking statements and our use of non-GAAP financial measures. The press release provides reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, and we also post reconciling schedules to the IR website. Please also refer to Maravai's SEC filings for additional information on the risks and uncertainties that may impact our operating results, performance, and financial condition. Now I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Bernd Brust.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining. I'm Bernd Brust, and I'm very pleased to be hosting my first earnings call as Maravai's CEO. I'd like to begin with my reasons for accepting the role as CEO, and in this context, frame for investors the incredible opportunities I see ahead for the company. Over the past 30 years, I've been a leader of many successful life sciences companies that have experienced both growth and transformation. My approach centers around alignment, strategic clarity, with operational discipline to drive meaningful, measurable results. I've had the rare opportunity to work directly on a long list of breakthrough technologies in the life sciences sector, including in multiple CEO roles. Most recently, I was the Executive Chairman and prior to that, the CEO of Antylia Scientific, a global provider of tools and solutions for diagnostic testing, sample preparation, biological monitoring, and environmental analysis.

I've known Maravai as a technology leader that delivers meaningful innovation to market. When I was approached about the CEO role, I took a close look, and what stood out to me was how rare it is to find a company in the life sciences tool space with this combination of proprietary technologies, trusted brands, and untapped market opportunity. One I was excited to help shape. I came into this role with a clear understanding that realizing Maravai's full potential would require change. There's important work ahead to position the company for sustainable, profitable growth. I spent my first 60 days understanding where we stand and where we can go next. We completed a top-to-bottom review of our strategy, structure, and financial plans to sharpen our focus and reallocate resources toward initiatives with the greatest potential for impact and return.

Through direct engagement with global customers and competitive benchmarking, we gained a clear view of where we lead and where we must sharpen our focus to win. I spent time with team members across the organization and gained a clear view of what's working and where we face challenges. I've been encouraged by the expertise and dedication of our people, but to move forward, we need to build a stronger culture of accountability and help our teams execute with focus and purpose. From these learnings, we've established a three-part plan to put the business on the strongest footing to deliver on Maravai's full potential. Let's turn to slide six. First, we are making a commitment to improve operational excellence and execution. On Friday, we initiated a restructuring plan designed to significantly reduce our operating costs.

Through reductions in headcount and non-headcount related expenses across all functions in our organization, we expect to lower our annualized expenses by more than $50 million. These reductions will be phased in and should be complete over the next 12 months, with the majority of the savings actioned in the next two quarters. As part of the restructuring, we're evolving from a more complex structure with higher overhead to a streamlined functional operating model. This includes consolidating executive roles and removing layers to accelerate decision-making, reduce duplication, and foster greater accountability and cross-functional collaboration. One key change is to provide centralized oversight for trialing R&D projects to ensure ongoing innovations are providing impactful value to our customers and the largest returns from Maravai. These decisions are never easy, especially when they affect valued colleagues. The challenges Maravai has faced post-pandemic call for urgency and clarity in how we move forward.

We're approaching this process with care and respect, focused on minimizing disruption to our customers and positioning the company for long-term profitability. I'm confident these organizational changes will strengthen the business. Raj will provide more details on these changes later in the call. Second, we are focused on strategic levers for long-term value creation, starting with revenue diversification and growth across each of our businesses. For Biologics Safety Testing, or BST, this includes maintaining and building on our market leadership. We are investing in the development and launch of new analytical products tailored to the evolving needs of our biologics and cell and gene therapy customers. This investment not only supports our existing base of global biopharma customers, but also opens the doors to emerging players who require scalable and compliant testing solutions early in development through commercialization. We believe this business represents a highly valuable standalone platform.

It has high penetration across monoclonal antibody-based products, recombinant vaccines, and all FDA and EMA-approved CAR T cell and gene therapies. With high contribution margins and a foundation of recurring demand, Biologics Safety Testing is not only a core strength, it's a strategic asset. We recognize the standalone value this segment represents, and we're committed to ensuring that this value is more clearly appreciated by the market. While the Nucleic Acid Production, or NAP, business navigates a period of macro and political headwinds, our Biologics Safety Testing segment provides visibility, diversification, margin stability, and capital allocation flexibility. Within the NAP business, we are building on our GMP consumables capabilities. We see this as an area where we hold a distinct advantage.

Our large-scale GMP capabilities are unmatched, and we are actively expanding our product portfolio to support future mRNA applications, particularly in therapeutic categories such as oncology, autoimmune conditions, and rare diseases. This is a vast, evolving market, and our ability to deliver reliable, high-quality, and scalable GMP products positions us as a key partner to our pharma, biotech, and CDMO customers. For our CDMO business, we continue to make strong progress supporting customers from preclinical through commercialization. We're not just a supplier, but an extension of our customers' teams, working side by side with them every day. This trust and partnership leads to stickier relationships, helping us win follow-on contracts as our customers' programs advance. It is a key driver of both near-term revenue and long-term customer relationships, increasing the likelihood that we'll support programs from early research through commercial launch.

For our research customers, we are broadening access to our technologies through innovation and expanding our consumables portfolio. We are also investing in our e-commerce infrastructure and AI capabilities to provide a more streamlined commercial experience for our research customers. This month, we are launching a new version of the mRNA Builder, our online ordering tool for custom mRNA that allows customers to design, order, and build RNA using our products. This tool is the first of several planned upgrades to our e-commerce platform. These initiatives are central to our future growth and position us well for long-term success. With these actions in place, we will get the benefit of the margin flow-through to return to sustainable, positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow by the second half of 2026.

As a CEO, I have to make the tough calls that are in the long-term best interest for Maravai and our shareholders. We were structured for a much larger company than we are today, and these actions will align the business to our current reality and allow us to grow revenue and profitability from here. We have great science and technology, and I'm optimistic that we are going to have a great future. While there is more work ahead and we continue our comprehensive business review and complete our budgeting process, I'm confident in our team's ability to execute and be energized by the opportunity to build a stronger, more focused company for our customers, employees, and shareholders. We have a clear plan and are moving quickly to return Maravai to growth and profitability. Now, I'd like to introduce Rajesh J.

Asarpota, our new CFO, who joined Maravai on June 30th. As you can see on slide seven, Raj brings over three decades of financial leadership experience across both public and private organizations as they went through significant transformation and growth. I've personally worked with Raj at General Electric, Life Technologies, and Antylia Scientific, and I value his leadership and financial stewardship as we continue building Maravai into a scalable, profitable, and free cash flow positive business. I will now hand the call over to Raj.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Bernd. I'm incredibly excited to join Maravai and partner with you as we embark on the next chapter for the company. I firmly believe we can unlock the full potential of what this company can deliver to both its customers and stakeholders. It's clear to me that we have a world-class team and cutting-edge technology, and the opportunity ahead of us is truly unique. We are laying the foundation to drive operational excellence and disciplined growth as we strategically size and scale the business. Now, let's turn to the Q2 financial results on slide nine. Revenue for the quarter was $47.4 million compared to $69.4 million in Q2 of 2024. Excluding revenue for high-volume CleanCap, base revenue was up 5% for Q2 versus 2024. The Nucleic Acid Production, or NAP, segment had revenue of $31.1 million in Q2.

The Biologics Safety Testing segment, or BST, revenue was $16.3 million in the second quarter. I will discuss segment results a little later in the call. Revenues by customer type in Q2 were 28% biopharma, 30% life sciences and diagnostics, 8% academia, 7% CRO, CMO, CDMO, and 27% for distributors. Revenue by geography was 65% North America, 18% EMEA, 12% Asia Pacific, excluding China, and 5% in China. Turning to slide 10, our GAAP net loss before non-controlling interests was $69.8 million for the second quarter of 2025. This compares to a GAAP net loss before non-controlling interests of $18.4 million for the comparable second quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was a negative $10.4 million for Q2 2025 compared to a positive $13 million for Q2 2024. Moving to slide 11 and EPS.

Basic and diluted EPS for the second quarter was a loss of $0.27 per share compared to a loss of $0.07 per share in the second quarter of 2024. Adjusted EPS in Q2 2025 was a loss of $0.08 compared to a loss of $0.01 in Q2 2024. Advancing to the balance sheet, cash flow, and other financial metrics on slide 12. We ended the quarter with $270 million in cash and $297 million in long-term debt. For Q2 2025, cash used in operations was $10.3 million. Depreciation and amortization was $13.2 million, and interest expense net of interest income was $3.8 million in the quarter. Stock-based compensation, a non-cash charge, was $6.8 million for the quarter. Next to slide 13 and the discussion of segment performance. The NAP segment had revenue of $31.1 million in Q2.

Base NAP business, excluding high-volume CleanCap, was up 3% year over year, driven by demand for trialing GMP products. This was a sequential increase of $2.3 million from $28.7 million of base NAP revenue in Q1 of 2025, marking our second quarter of base revenue growth in NAP. Adjusted EBITDA for NAP was negative $7.3 million in Q2, highlighting the need for the cost reductions we have initiated. The BST revenue was $16.3 million in the second quarter, up 10% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA for BST was $10.9 million for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 67%. The strong year-over-year growth in BST business was driven by demand for wholesale protein kits and quantification services and increasing adoption of MAKV wild clearance products. Corporate shared service expenses impacting adjusted EBITDA totaled $14 million in the second quarter.

These services include centralized functions such as Human Resources, Finance and Accounting, Legal, Information Technology, and the incremental expenses associated with being a public company. This is another large pocket of costs within the organization that we are significantly reducing with the cost actions announced today. Turning to slide 14, our strategic realignment and cost reduction initiatives are focused on improving how we operate by transitioning to a more consolidated and functional organizational structure. This approach reduces complexity, fewer layers, tighter team alignment, and enhances our ability to operate with greater focus, speed, and executional rigor. We anticipate more than $50 million in annualized savings allocated approximately as follows: 45% to 50% from labor, 15% to 20% from facilities, 15% to 20% from CapEx reductions, and 15% to 20% from other productivity initiatives. Importantly, these actions are not expected to impact customer programs or revenue.

We remain fully committed to delivering the high-quality products, service, and innovation our customers rely on. As Bernd Brust noted, we expect the majority of these savings to be in motion by year-end, with the full impact realized in 2026. While these are difficult decisions, they're essential to restoring the company's financial health and enabling us to reinvest in targeted, purposeful growth going forward. In connection with these actions, we anticipate incurring restructuring charges of approximately $8 million to $9 million in the second half of 2025. These costs will primarily consist of employee severance, benefits, and other related expenses. I'd also like to take a moment to address our guidance philosophy for the balance of 2025. As a new leadership team, we are committed to providing guidance that reflects a high degree of confidence in our ability to deliver.

Given that we are still in the midst of a comprehensive commercial deep dive, we have made the decision to withdraw our prior guidance range. We will look to reinstate guidance once we have completed a full business review and have a clear, data-driven outlook. In 2025, we have no orders for high-volume CleanCap. However, we are encouraged by early indications from a customer for high-volume CleanCap for shipment that is anticipated in early 2026. Finally, before we move to Q&A, I'd like to share a few reflections from my first 40 days. What I've seen is a company with tremendous runway ahead, and that's exactly why I was excited to join Maravai. In addition to the immediate actions we've taken, we believe there are further levers we can pull to enhance profitability.

The finance team is working closely with our new functional leaders and the sales organization to identify and execute on these opportunities as part of a robust budgeting process. As part of this effort, we're also upgrading our commercial metrics, introducing bottom-up KPIs to validate our top-down market assumptions and strengthen accountability across the organization. We'll provide more detail on this progress in our Q3 call. Additionally, I'm addressing some of the operational headwinds we've encountered in the past, particularly around the audit process to ensure that areas within our control are managed with tighter execution and discipline. This includes onboarding a new controller and audit partner. I'm laser-focused on closing the year strong, and I'm confident we are on the right path. I'll now turn the call back to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you do have any questions, please press star one on your telephone. You can always remove yourself from the queue if your question has been addressed by pressing star two. Additionally, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We'll go first this afternoon to Matt Stanton of Jefferies LLC.

Speaker 5

Hey, thanks. Maybe just to go back to kind of the guidance philosophy, it sounds like you're still taking a closer look at the forecasting process. On one hand, you're pulling the 2025 guide. At the same time, you're talking about cost actions and pointing to positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow in the back half of 2026. I guess, how should we think about how you're feeling about the visibility, especially around the latter with the 2026 targets? Just given we sit kind of midway through Q3 here, was there any thought to potentially shifting to some form of quarter-to-quarter guidance in the near term? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hey, Matt, this is Bernd. Let me make a few comments on that, and then I'll see if Raj has anything to add to it. First and foremost, I think we've been on board now for, for me, less than a couple of months here, and our primary focus has been getting cost under control in this business. It was just something that was an obvious issue we had. We had to deal with that. That meant some changes to the commercial organization. Add to that the announcements last week from Kennedy on some of the mRNA funding here. It's just important for us that we really get our arms around this and bring confidence back to the street on the numbers that we share. Are there any specific red flags that we see that say, guidance that's been given is not correct? That's not it at all.

It's just us having the right amount of time to really get our arms around this. Now, as far as running this company in a positive growth and a free cash and EBITDA point of view, regardless of where these revenue numbers sit, we're going to run that in a positive way. I think we've taken some great steps to take the right amount of cost out of this business. Last Friday, we took those first steps by reorganizing the organization. One way or another, wherever revenue lands, if that means that there's additional things that have to happen, we'll take care of that. Although we have no indication that that needs to be done at this point. I think this is just a result of us just needing a little bit more time.

The interesting part of Maravai, it's a fairly lumpy business, unlike the traditional life sciences tools and certainly even Maravai before COVID. Very much a run-rate business. If you look at the business today, average order sizes are materially greater than what a run-rate business would be. That means you just have a little bit more susceptibility to performance by quarter, and we just got to get our arms around that. It's nothing more than that. Raj, anything else?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think I just kind of reemphasized that Bernd and I are both committed to operating the business with an expense profile that can achieve positive EBITDA by the second half of 2026. As Bernd mentioned, with the restructuring, we also had to change out on our sales leadership side, which also impacts how we think about guidance. Matt, your final question was around quarter-to-quarter guidance. We're not going to do that again until we have our arms around the whole business. We're not going to provide that quarter-to-quarter guidance for now.

Speaker 5

Thanks, that's helpful. Maybe just on 2Q, you know, Biologics Safety Testing, nice quarter. I think typically 1Q is seasonally stronger there, but if you exclude 1Q the last few years, I think 2Q was the highest dollars in that business going back to the back half of 2022, if my math is right. If you just talk about the durability of kind of the improvement and solid trends you saw here in 2Q, can you just clarify that you are not seeing any pull-forward dynamics out of China or Asia in that business in 2Q? I know some other folks in the bioprocessing chain have kind of called that out, just level of visibility and to, you know, no pull-forward dynamics into that 2Q number. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Sure. I'll take that. You're right. On the Biologics Safety Testing side, if you look at the different parts of the portfolio, like on our wholesale protein kits, which is basically our gold standard, those kits grew by 7% in the quarter, which again demonstrates our position that customers are remaining loyal even in this market uncertainty. MAKV, that's been a great story. That portfolio continues to grow at a super rapid rate. The adoption is really strong, and there's a lot of confidence in that product's performance. Likewise, on quantification services, it continues to grow. We've got many, many repeat customers there, and our focus on tactical programs to engage on new accounts is also starting to work well. To your question around pull forward, we did have a little bit of that in China, but nothing too material.

Right now, I think as far as the sickness business goes, it's very healthy and showing a good growth rate.

Speaker 1

That said, though, I think 10% up is an incredible quarter. I don't think you model that in right. I think this business should be a mid-single-digit top-line grower for the moment, and we'll continue to optimize this business as well.

Speaker 5

Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thank you. We'll go next now to Matt Hewitt of Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC.

Speaker 4

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe first up, regarding China, with kind of the easing that we're seeing between the U.S. and China, do you anticipate that could become a growth driver? Do you think that's a region that could start to scale as we get into 2026?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think so. I guess in one word, the answer is yes. We would expect that to be a good kind of growth lever.

Speaker 4

Great. Maybe a follow-up. Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 1

I think just in general, right, if you look at the global markets, not just for biosafety, but just the Maravai product lines, the U.S. is going to see some obviously retraction given the deep focus on mRNA. I think you're going to see continued increase in investments in the non-U.S. regions, and we'll all position to take advantage of those. That includes China, but I think other non-U.S. regions as well.

Speaker 4

Excellent. Maybe a follow-up question, a little bit different here, but regarding the CDMO business, how do the prospects or the potential for tariffs on imported drugs, how does that affect your business? Does that create incremental opportunity, and have you seen that in your pipeline, or is everyone kind of sitting on their hands waiting to see what's going to happen there? Thank you.

Speaker 1

I think it's more of the second at the moment. We haven't seen a whole lot move from there yet. There's certainly an opportunity that, you know, if tariffs really settle in on this and make it economically beneficial for some of the non-U.S. manufacturers to move production to the U.S., for short discussions we've had, I don't think it's anything we've actively seen. In the event that were to happen, our facility expansions that have happened here over the last years position us incredibly well to take advantage of that.

Speaker 4

That's great. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Next to Subhalaxmi T. Nambi of Guggenheim Securities.

Speaker 2

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. As you were reviewing different aspects of the business, were there things that you were positively surprised by, and then similarly, anything that you didn't anticipate would be very challenging but was challenging?

Speaker 1

It's a good question. I think anytime you come into a new organization, as much diligence as you do, you will find surprises in the end. If I reflect for myself here, and I'll let Raj maybe make some of his comments, I'll lead this off with, again, saying it's fairly early days. Quite surprised by the amount of spenditure that's happened in this organization. It was really scaled for an organization so much bigger than we are. I think that was a much greater extent than we even anticipated. The numbers that we are taking out of this business, and we feel will have fairly limited impact, if any, on our day-to-day operations, kind of shows you how heavy this organization was layered. Certainly a big surprise there.

On the positive front, if you look at the customer profile we are working with here, particularly in this sort of preclinical through phase three, there's a ton of activity going on there. We talk a lot about COVID vaccines and the impact of capping and how that grew this business, and that's really at zero this year. The fact that there's still so much activity going on, customers for that same portfolio, but again, primarily focused on oncology, autoimmune, rare disease kind of solutions, really positions the company incredibly well for, I think, where mRNA will go in the future. That, I think, was an incredibly positive direction. You've heard us talk about our biosafety business at Cignas. I think that organization has struggled a little bit in the past. You're starting to see that come around. There's some great innovation happening there.

Certainly a great brand around the world. We talked Asia a little bit ago. I think there's huge upside in that region for this portfolio. Lots of good movement happening for the portfolio at large. We just now have to get to the part where those all come to fruition and we execute on those.

Speaker 2

Thank you for that, and thank you for the thoughtful response too. I know you said there's a lot of focus on CleanCap, but could I just, if possible, add one? You said you had encouraging conversations with a customer for a shipment in early 2026. Could you provide some more color here, like just confirming you're defining high-volume CleanCap the same way as before?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I'll take that one. We do have an indication and a binding order for high-volume CleanCap in 2026. We're not going to give you the name of the customer or any additional color yet until we've got things sorted out. I think it's an encouraging sign. We don't expect high-volume CleanCap to return to the 2024 level. Having said that, this is at least a step in the right direction. We are basically going to run our business just like we have done this year, thinking that anything we get from high-volume CleanCap is really going to be more upside. All of our business is going to be managed as if we had no CleanCap in our model. To the extent that these orders come in, there'll be a nice incremental kind of goodness to the business, but we're not counting on it.

Speaker 1

Maybe use this opportunity to set the stage of how we label things. High-volume CleanCap really is COVID CleanCap, right? Let's call it that. We're going to get away from that kind of terminology. High-volume CleanCap in the end hopefully will be many other therapeutics that go to commercialization and will use our caps and other consumables to manufacture those therapeutics. High-volume CleanCap in this question is exactly how you would have thought about it in the past. As we progress, assume that will be labeled differently. That's just sort of setting the stage for the future here. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Thank you for that, guys. Good luck.

Speaker 1

Thanks.

Speaker 6

Thank you. We'll go next now to Kyle Andrew Crews of UBS Investment Bank.

Speaker 5

Thank you for taking questions. Some peers have talked about multi-year headwinds in scientific R&D spend going forward. You've achieved mid-single-digit base business growth, not commenting on the current guidance, but looking forward, how should we think about the business over the midterm and how your growth outlook of the business is? Thank you.

Speaker 1

I'll take a couple of comments here, and I'll hand it to Raj. Clearly, you can feel great about the U.S. funding environment in research, specifically in mRNA. Now, our business exposure today is not that significant there. We get most of our revenues from other parts of the business, including GMP and CDMO at this point, certainly from biosafety. I think at a much broader picture for the U.S. markets, we're going to continue to see material research investments outside of the U.S., and that would be great to see where that leads for this country in the future as it relates to new therapeutics into market with this technology. I think our business directly won't have material impacts, but it would be a shame to see for this market locally here not to start coming back into mRNA research in the long term.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add is, again, our Q2 base revenue growth was around 5%, and we are looking to accelerate that. Although, like Bernd mentioned, there is variability quarter to quarter. As we look at kind of what our peers are saying, the long-term growth of this business is mid-single to high single digits. Whether it's Danaher at 7% to 9%, we've heard Thermo citing market growth at about 6%, Sartorius at 8% to 12%, and Lonza at 8% to maybe 10%. That's kind of where we see this business heading.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 1

I think the key takeaway here is, you know, when it relates to GMP and CDMO, I think the markets will continue to be healthy here. There's a lot of programs out there where we're involved with, and you know, I think there's a high level of confidence that will help us out. I think our emphasis to continue to focus on some of the non-U.S. markets in research has become ever more important with the recent news that has happened.

Speaker 2

Can we go to the next question, please?

Speaker 6

We'll go next now to Brandon Couillard of Wells Fargo.

Speaker 5

Hey, thanks, guys. Good afternoon. Brandon, you talked a lot about e-commerce in your prepared remarks as part of a strategic review. Not been a topic that's, I think, come up much in the past. Do you think you were missing out on revenues before? How much of the revenue base is currently e-commerce today, and where should that be over time, and what kind of investment do you need to make there? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, for starters, do I think it's important? Yes, right? Today's revenue in Maravai is not very significant in the research world, and I think that's really where e-commerce helps you out. It's not that economically viable to put a large team of salespeople in the field for fairly small average order size opportunities, particularly with a fairly narrow portfolio that we have here. It is very important. As you know, we bought EfficientA earlier this year. They really have a really nice AI engine that will help design custom RNA for research customers. We just brought that live on site, I think, last week in sort of a beta version.

We expect that to go primetime later in the year, and that, I think, will be a big driver in the uptake of research consumables, specifically custom mRNA and associated consumables for the business. Critical, yes. At the moment, still a fairly small portion. In my personal background, I come out of sort of large life sciences tools companies with a much higher number of order volumes a day, much broader portfolios. I think it's even more critical there than our world. For us, I think creating this custom mRNA world in an e-commerce fashion without any really sales involvement will become very valuable in the long term for the business. You asked a question, I don't have these numbers offhand, but do we have what the total revenue coming in from e-commerce is today? It's a fairly small percentage.

Speaker 3

It's very small.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's single digits, is my guess.

Speaker 5

Okay. Just one clarification. Based on your comments about the strategic review, it sounds as if you're pretty committed to keeping the BST business in the portfolio. I just want to make sure that it'd be safe to conclude that kind of based on your initial assessments. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yeah, listen, our goal as a leadership team is to create value for our shareholders. What that means in the long term, whether that is selling assets or buying assets or organically investing, we're not ready to make any comments on that.

Speaker 3

What I would add is just, you know, basically us focusing on restructuring the company, making it profitable, just gives us so much optionality and flexibility. All these decisions will be a lot easier once you have that optionality. Right now, we are focused on growth, and that's what will deliver value to the shareholders. Stay tuned on that.

Speaker 5

Thanks.

Speaker 6

We'll go next now to Catherine Schulte of Baird.

Speaker 2

Hey, guys, thanks for the questions. Maybe first, just understand the need to take a fresh look at forecasting and budgeting, but is there anything you can talk to about near-term trends? There have been so many policy headlines in mRNA and cell and gene therapy. It could just be helpful to hear what you've been seeing in July and August and maybe how your customers are responding to some of those.

Speaker 1

Raj, I'd like to take a first step at that.

Speaker 3

I think trends right now are fairly positive. We are, like I think we mentioned a little while ago, some of the CDMO business is kind of lumpy. We are, with new KPIs around trying to look at customer detail, regional details, price volume, all those KPIs and metrics are what we're kind of diving into. Overall, it's a reasonably positive trend that we're seeing.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you got to keep in mind here, a lot of the news that's coming through on funding is heavily tied to research, right? We just don't have a big exposure there. During COVID, and we can debate right or wrong, but during the COVID years, this company was focusing purely on CleanCap business for COVID vaccine manufacturing. A lot of the emphasis on that research was taken away during those years. We're rebuilding that up, and it's just not a big part of our base anymore. I think if we sat in a world where a lot of our revenue was tied to academic research, we probably would have a different position. We haven't heard much from customers. There's been one or two customers that I think we've heard from that may have a little bit of a funding issue, but nothing material to the business.

Speaker 2

Right, great. You are taking steps to right-size the organization. If we look back at Maravai pre-COVID, the company had north of 40% EBITDA margins. There has obviously been a lot of capacity expansion and investment since then, plus some public company costs. Just as we think about longer term, you know, is this still a business that can support those types of margins, or should we think about it as, you know, structurally different today?

Speaker 1

I think it's too early for us to answer that question. I mean, for starters, for sure, we'd like to think we can get this business back to volume and profitability where it should be. I think for us, step one is to get free cash flow positive direction in our business and EBITDA growth. Let's take that step first, and then we'll go from there. Sometimes, you know, somebody asked me a question earlier here about, you know, some of the surprises of what I have seen coming in here in these first couple of months. An early sort of indication for me was, prior to COVID, there was a certain cost base, and that is materially higher today. I do think that a lot of that cost is coming out. That's good.

You also have to keep in mind that we do have GMP manufacturing capabilities today that inherently are a little bit more expensive. They will have a little bit more cost basis, but it also sets you up for some really, really large deal opportunities and some high margin consumables. Kind of lumpiness we've been talking about. I think we are right-sized. I think we are playing with a portfolio that is incredibly well positioned for new mRNA therapeutics coming out in the future. How that will play out over the short term, I think that's what we're getting our arms around. First and foremost, again, getting this business back to profitability versus what we've seen in the last six months here is our first and foremost priority.

Speaker 6

Thank you. We'll go next now to Doug Schinkel of Wolfe Research LLC.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Madeline Kendall Mollman on for Doug. Regarding the risk, which is always a difficult decision and process, can you break down where the cuts were being made and also where you didn't make cuts? We just want to better understand how you're balancing cuts versus working to reinvigorate growth. Building off of that, regarding eliminating the CCO position, what does that mean for changes in commercial strategy?

Speaker 1

All right. Let me take a couple of pieces here. Did you say Chief Technology Officer or Chief Commercial Officer?

Speaker 2

Chief Commercial Officer.

Speaker 1

Yeah, on the, I'm sorry, the first part of the question.

Speaker 3

I'll take that one.

Speaker 1

On the Chief Commercial Officer side, we have a very, very large commercial organization that simply needs to be scaled back to where I think the focus should lie. Given the number of larger opportunities that exist, having a very strong field sales organization is critical. We have hired a new EVP of Sales who will be responsible for selling all of our larger GMP manufactured products, CDMO products around the world. I think that is a specific skill set required. Secondarily, having a Chief Marketing Officer who will take the lead in this e-commerce world that was brought up earlier becomes equally critical. I think those are two very, very different skill sets. A company our size, you just kind of need to separate that out and focus on those separately.

This is nothing more than just some organizational realignment, focus on sales for larger deals, focus on e-commerce for some of this research business, and executing on that. I will also say that's primarily tied to TriLink and not to our Cignas business.

Speaker 3

I think the other question, the other part of your question was around where this is, where the reductions are coming from. If you think about the $50 million, there's half of that, it's going to be 50% from G&A. You've got about 20% to 30% on kind of sales and marketing, and then about 10% to 20% from R&D. A little bit more color around, we've consolidated these executive roles, like Bernd mentioned, removed layers in the organization, and centralized it to a functional alignment to improve kind of how we work and strengthen the company's financial health. These actions basically will streamline our decision-making, remove duplication of efforts that we've seen, and just foster greater accountability as we execute and kind of move forward. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 2

Yeah, great. That was really helpful. Just one more regarding the high-volume CleanCap order you think that might come in 2026. Do you need that order or other high-volume CleanCap orders in 2026 to meet your goal of being EBITDA and free cash flow positive in H2 2026?

Speaker 3

No, I've made that clear. We are operating this business like we had no CleanCap, and anything that we get is going to be upside to what we're planning.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 6

We'll go next now to Matthew Richard Larew of William Blair & Company LLC.

Speaker 5

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. You mentioned a couple of times throughout the call, you highlighted the standalone value of BST and also referenced working to create a vision for what an attractive life science tools asset would be. If we think back to how Maravai was created by aggregating four independent assets in different parts of the country, some of them pitted products like HCP, some of them large fixed cost reagents offerings like the NAP business in Diego. It was, as you referenced, built to be a bigger, diversified company. Some of that you've pared off over the years, like the protein business. Now, as you think for the future, how do you think about right-sizing what you're doing from an operational standpoint, but then rescaling to your point that attractive life science tools would be?

Do you think building around customers, as you did before, around capabilities, around geographies? I understand that it's early, but as you got together with the board and you accepted these jobs, what was the vision here?

Speaker 1

For starters, I think it's a really good question. If you look at Maravai when it started, honestly, I think it was a little bit more of a holding company setup and buying good assets at good valuations and kind of trying to optimize those accordingly. I'm not 100% sure that it had a really well-thought-out exit strategy at the time, but this is 2018 or whatever, maybe even earlier. Some time ago. Why did we call out Biologics Safety Testing in our earnings call? I think two or three times. It's just a reality. If you look at Maravai today and where it trades, that business is incredibly valuable as an asset. 99% of the discussion we're having is on our TriLink business. I think we're just trying to call that out as an asset that we shouldn't overlook. We must understand the value that that brings.

Whether we are going to sell that asset or not, as I said earlier, and Raj responded to, we're here to create ultimately shareholder value. The decisions we're going to make, whether we divest or whether we acquire other assets and leveraging our capabilities to put those together, that will happen. We will think about, after we stabilize this organization, how can we add new assets into the business to make these assets stronger? We'll think about whether or not some fit or not. We are by no means ready to make those decisions today.

Speaker 5

Understood. You referenced obviously the timeline for the operational changes in terms of most of them occurring by calendar year end. It's more challenging to put timelines on strategic reviews. I get that, but there's obviously an element of an overhang, be it on employee turnover or customer conversations with this out there. Do you have any sort of sense for a timeline you'd like to hold yourself to sort of emerge on the other end of the strategic review?

Speaker 1

For starters, I think we've been here for less than two months, and you've seen the massive overhaul we've done in a very quick period of time. We are not a management team that sits on its hands very long and makes no decisions. You can safely assume that as we put these first steps behind us in right-sizing the organization to start thinking about and executing on what is the strategic plan moving forward beyond that will come rather sooner than later.

Speaker 5

Okay, thank you.

Speaker 6

We'll go next now to Dan Arias of Stifel.

Speaker 4

Afternoon, guys. Thank you. I was going to ask a question about M&A there, but I think you kind of covered that. Maybe I'll just ask one. On the fixed cost base of the company, that's been a bit of an issue for margins at times when the top line view changes. Do you see it as possible that the company can come to better absorb deviations at the revenue line? Is that something that you think can evolve, or is it just sort of the nature of the business such that you're kind of beholden to the way fixed costs are set up for the company?

Speaker 1

I'll take a macro look at this. This may be something we need to have as a follow-up call to get exact numbers to you. Obviously, this business has built a ton of infrastructure over the last years, and that does give you a bit of a hangover when your revenue materially changes. When we look at our cost savings, our old corporate offices in San Diego that have not been used now for some time, that lease is up, I think, in September next year. That will fall away. We have some other facilities we're looking at, potential other opportunities to work with. Right-sizing that part, although it's not the largest part of our restructuring, I think it's partially decided on in other areas we may think a little bit longer about.

Somebody asked a minute ago about, you know, are there potentially European or Asian pharmaceutical companies that need some U.S. footprint? We have some facility space here that we could use for that. Instead of actively getting out of that type of infrastructure, you want to breathe a little bit to see what happens in the next six months or so. I think in general, we feel good about sizing the organization right with our infrastructure over the next six months.

Speaker 3

Yeah, which will give us more flexibility on gross margin, for sure, and operating margin.

Speaker 1

Okay, thank you.

Speaker 6

We'll go next now to Matthew Moriarty Parisi at KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Speaker 5

Hi. Yes, this is Matt Parisi on for Paul Knight at KeyBanc. I was wondering if you could kind of go into more detail on the expanded CDMO enablement strategy that you mentioned in your press release regarding the new license and supply agreement for CleanCap with Thermo Fisher.

Speaker 1

Right. I'm not sure what this question is, CDMO and licensing and CleanCap? That's specifically the Thermo one. Listen, I think that's just another example of CleanCap being used not just by our own CDMO capabilities, but broader CDMO as well as pharmaceutical manufacturing. Clearly, that's one of our, if you look at our consumables space, our GMP consumables space, I think it has many targets out there, whether they are manufactured by a pharmaceutical company or whether they're manufactured by a CDMO, ours or somebody else's. We want CleanCap to be used as much as possible. This agreement was just not a licensing agreement with Thermo, and that will hopefully lead into a number of opportunities beyond from what we have today.

Speaker 3

Okay, thank you. That's really the bulk of my question.

Speaker 6

Thank you. We'll go next now to Justin D. Bowers of Deutsche Bank AG.

Speaker 5

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Just two-parter for me. You talked about the preclinical market earlier in the prepared remarks. Can you discuss some of the trends that you're seeing in either the order book or the RFP volume over the last, call it, 6 to 12 months? Part two would just be on the broader commentary on mRNA. Are you starting to see opportunities ex-U.S. as a result of some of the announcements and sort of the policy and regulatory environment since last November?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I'll give you more of a macro answer, and then maybe Raj, you have more specifics. I'm not sure what we have in front of us here, but I think if you look at the broader market, there's no question that the number of targets that are out there that are appearing in preclinical, moving their way through phase one, two, three, I think it's a solid number. When you look, for instance, at our Q2 numbers, although still in research, it's mainly GMP consumables that are picking up there. I think there's good activity there. Much of it still sits in the U.S., quite frankly. As we look at our funnels outside of that, I don't know the exact numbers here, but we're seeing great growth as it relates to GMP manufactured consumables, which all sits in clinical trial stages.

If I recall, in Q2, our research growth primarily came from GMP consumables.

Speaker 5

Right.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Gentlemen, it appears we have no further questions this afternoon. Mr. Brust, I'd like to turn things back to you, sir, for any closing comments.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Again, thank you, everybody, for joining us today. For my and Raj's first conference call since joining Maravai, as we outlined in the prepared remarks, there's much work to do, but we're well underway. Through organizational restructuring and cost reduction initiatives, we are focused on driving speed, accountability, and operational excellence across the portfolio to fundamentally transform our business model. These are structural wholesale changes to how Maravai operates, from headcount and organization design to cost-based and accountability. The unique value we offer in our portfolio of our brands provides our customers for the life-changing development of the next generation medicines and diagnostics is unmatched, and we will focus on areas where we see the highest returns to drive growth and diversify the business.

I believe we can build a stronger, more focused company for long-term sustainable growth, beginning with a return to positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow in 2026. Thank you again for all your questions and your time and the interest in Maravai. Take care, everybody.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Mr. Brust. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's Maravai LifeSciences second quarter earnings call. Again, thanks so much for joining us, everyone. We wish you all a great evening. Goodbye.