Adaptive Biotechnologies Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 1, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Adaptive reported Q1 revenue of $52.4 M, up 25% YoY, with MRD revenue +34%, sequencing gross margin +17 pp to 62%, operating expenses down 9%, and cash burn of $23 M versus $37 M a year ago, leaving a $233 M cash runway.
  • clonoSEQ clinical volumes hit a record of >23,000 tests (+36% YoY), with blood-based MRD testing up to 44% of U.S. volumes, 27 live EMR integrations driving higher order rates, and ASP up 14% to >$1,220, backed by new payer contracts to support a $1,300 ASP target for FY ’25.
  • MRD Pharma sequencing revenue grew 11% YoY, including $4.5 M in regulatory milestones, with a portfolio now >60% multiple myeloma (22 new trials in the past 12 months) and rising interest in MRD-directed endpoints in CLL and DLBCL studies.
  • Full-year guidance was raised: MRD revenue to $180–190 M, total operating expenses trimmed to $335–345 M, and cash burn cut to $50–60 M; the company expects ~30% MRD volume growth, $8–9 M in Pharma milestones, and adjusted EBITDA positivity in H2.
  • In immune medicine, Adaptive is advancing its Genentech cell therapy program by building a digital TCR–antigen prediction model and progressing a preclinical T cell depletion antibody for autoimmunity, targeting a $25–30 M cash burn for the segment.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Adaptive Biotechnologies Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Adaptive Biotechnologies First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you need to press 11 on your telephone.

Operator

You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Carina Calsadilla, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Karina Calzadilla
Karina Calzadilla
VP, IR at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thank you, Antoine, and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to welcome you to Adaptive Biotechnologies' first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release reporting Adaptive financial results for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. The press release is available at www.adaptivebiotech.com. We are conducting a live webcast of this call and will be referencing to a slide presentation that has been posted to the Investors section in our corporate website.

Karina Calzadilla
Karina Calzadilla
VP, IR at Adaptive Biotechnologies

During the call, management will make projections and other forward looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. These statements reflect management's current perspective of the business as of today. Actual results may differ materially from today's forward looking statements depending on a number of factors which are set forth in our public filings with the SEC and listed in this presentation. In addition, non GAAP financial measures will be discussed during the call and a reconciliation from non GAAP to GAAP metrics can be found in our earnings release. Joining the call today are Chad Robbins, our COO and Co Founder and Kyle Bisco, our Chief Financial Officer.

Karina Calzadilla
Karina Calzadilla
VP, IR at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Additional members from management will be available for Q and A. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chad. Chad?

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks, Karina. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on our first quarter earnings call. As highlighted on slide three, we are off to an excellent start this year, demonstrating strong execution across both top and bottom line results. In MRD, revenue increased 34% from a year ago. Significant growth was observed in clinical volumes, ASP, and pharma sequencing.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

This quarter, we also received our first Medicare recurrence monitoring coverage in MCL, a key part of our strategy to grow the lifetime value of each clonoSEQ Medicare patient. In immune medicine, we're making progress on our preclinical antibody program in autoimmunity. Sequencing gross margin improved by 17 percentage points year over year to sixty two percent. At the same time, operating expenses decreased by 9%, underscoring our disciplined cost management while driving strong sustainable growth. As a result, cash burn for the quarter was 23,000,000, a 38% improvement compared to the same period last year.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Given the strength of our performance and sustained momentum, we are raising our full year guidance to reflect one, a higher MRD revenue range, two, lower operating expense range, and three, a lower annual cash burn. Kyle will provide more details during his remarks. Of note, our full year outlook has minimal exposure to tariffs, trading policy updates, and NIH funding pressures. Importantly, I want to highlight our solid cash position of 233,000,000. We believe our cash on hand provides ample runway to achieve our strategic objectives without the need to raise additional capital in the current market environment.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Let's now take a closer look at the MRD business on slide five. Clomacy clinical revenue in the first quarter grew 55% versus prior year. Test delivered reached a new record high of over 23,000 in the quarter, representing a 36% increase versus prior year and a 10% increase sequentially. Growth was once again observed in all reimbursed indications. Multiple myeloma continues to be the largest contributor of US clonoSEQ volume at 42%, followed by ALL at 33%, CLL at 10, DLBCL at seven percent, and MCL at five percent.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Looking at other key growth metrics in the quarter, it's encouraging to see the positive trends that align with the successful execution of our strategy. Blood based testing contributed forty four percent of MRD tests in The US versus thirty nine percent a year ago. This increase was primarily driven by strong growth in DLBCL and MCL. Test in the community grew 42% versus prior year and 14% sequentially. NHL contribution jumped to 12% from 10% a year ago, driven by continued ramp in MCL and the launch of our enhanced assay in DLBCL.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

The number of ordering health care providers grew 31% from the prior year and is now over 3,400. And our pace of EMR integrations is accelerating. We now have 27 live integrations, including five of our top 10 accounts. We expect to add at least five more accounts in the next month. We are seeing a notable lift in individual account growth rates post integration, and growth in integrated accounts is outpacing growth in non integrated accounts.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

In addition, we're making solid progress on our initiatives to increase clonoSEQ ASP. In q one, ASP was north of twelve twenty per test, representing a 14% year over year increase. Importantly, we closed and or renegotiated six key agreements with major national payers, including Aetna, Humana, Anthem, Horizon, and two of the Blue Cross Blue Shield programs. Alongside these payer wins, we've expanded our reimbursement operations team and continue to optimize revenue cycle management. Given this progress, we are confident in achieving an average ASP of $1,300 per test for fiscal year twenty twenty five, setting us up for continued future ASP growth.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Looking at MRD Pharma on slide six. Our MRD Pharma business had a strong start to the year with sequencing revenue grew growth of 11% versus prior year. This quarter, we also recognized 4,500,000.0 in regulatory milestones. We continue to see significant momentum following the ODAC recommendation in multiple myeloma last year. As you can see from the chart, over 60% of our portfolio today is in multiple myeloma, including 22 new studies which closed in the last twelve months.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

The majority of these studies are using MRD as a primary or secondary endpoint. They tend to be larger phase two and three studies, often with large milestones attached. We're also seeing a halo effect from this decision in other disease states like CLL, where treatment advances are necessitating more sensitive MRD assessment in clinical trials. Additionally, we see growth opportunities for the pharma business in DLBCL as multiple companies are preparing to advance MRD directed therapy. To wrap up on MRD, we achieved strong results for the quarter in both our clinical and pharma businesses.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

As shown on slide seven, the stage is set to achieve our full year strategic goals. We are on track to to end the year with over forty five percent of clonoSEQ testing done in blood blood. We are on track with EMR integrations, including Onco EMR launch with Flatiron in the second half. We are on track to begin phase one testing with NeoGenomics in an initial set of accounts in the second half of the year. We're on track to go live with NovaSeq x in the second half of this year.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And we continue to have key data readouts spanning multiple indications. Importantly, we are on track to be adjusted EBITDA positive in the second half of this year. Now let's turn to immune medicine on slide nine. Our immune medicine business focuses on two differentiated immune based therapeutic strategies. One is in cancer with our partners Genentech.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

The second is in autoimmunity based on our highly targeted precision immunology approach. Our focus this year is on three main goals. First is to generate the size and quality of data to successfully develop a digital TCR antigen prediction model that supports our cancer cell therapy program with Genentech. As we successfully scale our data, we're also making good progress in training and improving the performance of our AI and ML models. We're aiming to replace our TCR discovery cellular assays with a digital model that can rapidly and accurately predict TCR antigen binding.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

This has the potential to meaningfully reduce both time and cost of selecting the best TCRs to include in a cancer cell therapy, among other future potential high value therapeutic applications. Our second goal is to build a robust preclinical data package for a lead T cell depletion program in autoimmunity. We're in the process of testing and characterizing a subset of promising antibody candidates in our lead indication. The third goal, as we execute on these two focused therapeutic strategy, we are managing to a target immune medicine cash burn between 25 and $30,000,000. We continue to strategically gate our I'm r and d investments and grow our pharma business revenue to partially fund this spend.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Now I'm gonna pass it over to Kyle to walk through the financial results and our updated full year guidance. Kyle?

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks, Chad. Starting on slide 10 with results for the first quarter.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Total revenue was $52,400,000 representing 25% growth from the same period last year. 83% of revenue came from MRD and 17% from the immune medicine. MRD revenue grew 34% versus prior year to $43,700,000 with clinical and pharma contributions of 6535%, respectively. ClonoSEQ test volume, including international, increased 36% to 23,117 tests delivered versus last year, and ASP in The US grew approximately 14%. MRD Pharma revenue grew 7% versus prior year to $15,200,000 inclusive of $4,500,000 in milestones.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Immune medicine revenue was $8,700,000 down 6% from a year ago, driven by an anticipated 23% decrease in Genentech amortization, partially offset by a 12% increase in I'm pharma and academic services. Moving down the P and L, sequencing gross margin, which excludes milestones and Genentech amortization, was 62% for the quarter. This represents a significant improvement of 17 percentage points versus prior year as we leverage lower overhead costs and stable direct labor supporting increased volumes while improving pricing across both our clinical and pharma revenues. Total operating spend for the quarter, inclusive of cost of revenue, was $82,000,000 representing a 9% decrease from last year. This decrease was mainly driven by lower R and D spend from both MRD and immune medicine businesses.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

As you can see from the segment reporting table at the bottom of the slide, MRD adjusted EBITDA is now at a loss of $4,100,000 versus a loss of $17,300,000 a year ago. This improvement of 76% driven by both higher revenue and lower operating spend. The Med Medicine adjusted EBITDA loss was also improved 21% versus Q1 of last year due to reductions in operating spend. Total company adjusted EBITDA was a loss of 12,700,000.0 in the first quarter compared to 28,200,000.0 in the prior year. Interest expense from our royalty financing agreement with OrbitMed was 2,900,000.0, which was slightly higher than interest income.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Net loss for the quarter was 29,800,000.0. Now let's turn to our full year 2025 updated guidance on slide 11. We are raising our full year MRD revenue guidance to a range of 180,000,000 to $190,000,000 up from our previous range of 175,000,000 to $185,000,000 This increase is driven by stronger than expected clinical volume performance in the first quarter and higher MRD milestone payments anticipated for the year. Given the strong clonoSEQ test volumes in the quarter and the momentum we are seeing, we now expect approximately 30% growth in twenty twenty five volumes versus twenty twenty four, and we anticipate sequential growth in the remainder of the quarters. We also expect revenue from MRD milestones to be between 8,000,000 and $9,000,000 up from our previous guidance of 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 With respect to revenue trends throughout the year, we now expect MRD revenue to be approximately 40 five-fifty five weighted between the first and second half, respectively.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

We are also lowering our full year total company operating expense guidance, including cost of revenue to a range of $335,000,000 to $345,000,000 down from the previous range of $340,000,000 to $350,000,000 We continue to expect approximately 69% of the spend to be driven by the MRD business and 23% by the immune medicine business, with the remainder attributed to unallocated corporate costs. Lastly, we are also lowering our full year total company cash burn guidance to a range of 50,000,000 to 60,000,000, down from the prior range of $60,000,000 to $70,000,000 This improvement is primarily driven by higher than expected MRD revenue and reduced unallocated corporate burn. We now expect approximately 24% of this year's cash burn to come from the MRD business. Still anticipate burn from the immune medicine business to be between 25,000,000 and $30,000,000 with the remainder attributed to unallocated corporate costs. We remain focused on disciplined execution to drive sustainable growth while managing our resources responsibly, and I look forward to providing you with further financial updates throughout the year. With that, I'll hand it back over to Chad.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks, Kyle. Our strong first quarter results underscore the focus, agility and execution of our team. We're operating from a position of strength and have high confidence in our ability to deliver on our raised full year guidance. As we look ahead, we remain committed to delivering on our promises and creating lasting value for both patients and our shareholders.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

I'd like now to turn the call back over to the operator and open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you would need to press 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press 11 again. Please stand by while I compile the Q and A roster.

Operator

Our first question comes from Mac Sykes from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Matthew Sykes
Matthew Sykes
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hey. Thanks for taking our questions. You got Will on for Matt here. Congrats on the quarter and appreciate the color on the 30% volume growth with sequential improvement over the course of the year. Just want to dig a little deeper there.

Matthew Sykes
Matthew Sykes
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Are there any specific indications you're seeing growth in? And how are you seeing contribution from each of the indications trending over the course of this year?

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, thanks, Will. And I'm going to hand that over to Susan.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks for the question, Will. Yeah, we're seeing sequential growth across all indications. We had a particularly strong quarter for our lymphoma indications, DLBCL and mantle cell lymphoma. You'll recall that we've launched the mantle cell indication just in Q4. So we're seeing a nice conversion of the promotional effort over the last two quarters.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And then in DLBCL, we launched an enhanced version of our assay and also saw the availability of our assay in New York State under CLEP approval become live in Q1. So a number of factors that contributed there. In terms of contribution across the indications, over the last, let's say, year, quarter by quarter, the contribution has remained relatively stable. Where we're seeing the uptick in DLBCL and MCL, which now contribute a total of 12%, as Chad noted, versus 10% a year ago, mostly taking from other indications. And we've made, as you know, a concerted effort to move our business further toward our Medicare covered indications.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

That's actually a great shift that we've been able to see.

Matthew Sykes
Matthew Sykes
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

That's super helpful. And then just as a follow-up, you touched on the EMR integration on the call. I know last quarter we talked about like 30% plus improvements in the smaller customers and waiting for updates on some of the larger ones. Are we ready to give updates on the larger ones or quantify the uptick you're seeing there?

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

I do have a few more updates that I can share. So we've started to analyze the data across both accounts that have been live for at least one year and then also now have five of our top 10 largest accounts integrated, several of which just went live in Q1, but I can share some data. So first, let's start with accounts that have been live for at least a year. These are generally smaller accounts, but there are a couple of larger ones in there as well. Six of those seven accounts exceeded 75% year over year growth over the past year since going live.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And in total, the volume in that group of accounts more than doubled over the past year. Among the newer sites that went live, let's say it went live in the past quarter, which included three of our largest accounts, we saw an average quarter over quarter growth of 27% and that exceeded the 18% we saw in those same sites a quarter immediately preceding integration. So we are seeing continuing to see an acceleration and I think particularly in those large accounts those growth rates are quite I'm quite pleased with them.

Matthew Sykes
Matthew Sykes
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Really impressive results there. Thank you for the color.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

You bet.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Massaro from BTIG. Please go ahead.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. I wanted to start with the strong, performance on the core clonoSEQ volume number. It looks like it was up, I think 2,000 tests sequentially. Other labs in the space have talked about weather.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

I think we're seeing impacts of roughly 100 to 150 bps across other reference labs. So I'm just curious, how did you drive the growth? Where did it come from? I know you talked about a larger contribution from clonoSEQ blood, But and maybe could you spell out if you had a weather impact in Q1?

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Sure. I can take that. Thanks, Mark. We did not see any notable weather impacts this particular quarter. The big growth drivers, one that I noted was non Hodgkin's lymphoma indications, both DLBCL and MCL.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

We did see an increase in the total contribution of blood, but a lot of that was driven by DLBCL and MCL, which are both blood entirely blood based indications. Additionally, the acceleration of our EMR integrations, you know, we added seven accounts since the end of last year, and several of those three of those were among our top 10. So the acceleration we're seeing in utilization in those accounts certainly contributed, and I am optimistic that as we continue to increase the pace of EMR integrations, we'll continue to see good contribution from those sites.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, and I'll just kind of add to that, Mark. And as we kind of talked about, it's not any one thing. It's a combination of these strategic factors that I kind of checked off through my prepared remarks. It's all those things that Susan mentioned that together are coming together and kind of we're executing on the strategy of blood based testing, increasing community accounts, EMR integrations, etcetera. And obviously with the launch of the new indications on top of that, they're starting to be really nice uptake from the clinical community.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

Sounds good. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Oh, sorry, Chad.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

No, I just saying, we had started off and said we 25% plus growth with the emphasis on the plus. And now I think we're quite confident in our 30% growth kind of modified range.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

Okay, yep, perfect. I wanted to ask about the $4,500,000 milestone payment in Q1. You are now a little over halfway towards your revised goal. So I'm just curious, is there any change to the funnel? My impression is that maybe the funnel is growing following the big catalyst you had last year with the ODAC.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

I just wanted to get a sense for how you think about the timing of recognizing these throughout the year.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks, Mark. This is Kyle. As it relates to the funnel, I think what's happening is more and more milestones are becoming available to us. Certainly, we're adding more and realizing more from an offsetting factor, but we are having more come earlier. The realization we experienced in Q1 with a couple milestones coming through, I think just provides us more clarity and confidence in our 2025 outlook and with potential room for upside even further from that.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

But we want to be prudent with all the stuff that's going on with the FDA and just hold the guide a little cautious from that perspective. But all that being said, I think we're seeing more and more trials read out and all these things are positive for our business.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

Okay, great. And last one for me. Chad, you rattled off a number of large health plans. So it's nice to see that positive momentum building there. Can you give us a sense for to what extent are you contracting or being disciplined with the higher Medicare rate that you have perhaps as a baseline?

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

I'm just curious how that pricing and contracting discussions are going as it relates to pricing.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, no, it's a great question, Mark. We inject a significant amount of discipline in our pricing, meaning we will not accept a contracted rate unless it's at or very close to the Medicare rate.

Mark Massaro
Managing Director - Senior Equity Research Analyst at BTIG

Okay. Great. Thanks, guys.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

You bet.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Westenberg from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

David Westenberg
David Westenberg
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. So I wanted to ask on your many different multiple myeloma trials. I'm guessing that a lot of times with drugs, you might be seeing tighter tighter testing intervals. Is there kind of a way to show better outcomes through tighter testing intervals?

David Westenberg
David Westenberg
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

I'm just like maybe thinking about that as multiple myeloma and all the clinical trials you're in, but maybe some of the other indications as well could benefit from tighter intervals.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, it's an interesting question, David. I I think what you mean by tighter, of course, is more frequent testing, if I'm correct. Yes. And so, you know, there's clearly a balance here, but in general, because of course it increases the cost of the study, but in general, we are seeing a greater interest in increased frequency of testing. In some indications in particular, the kinetics of disease can be indicative of the patient's performance over time.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And so additionally, because the FDA has myeloma, they've specified a certain range within which a primary endpoint can be defined. It's generally sort of within the nine to fifteen months of the start of therapy. And so in those studies, we do see people utilizing multiple time points to be able to give themselves some optionality. And additionally, I think over time, we'll see that in the leukemias, in DLBCL, which are increasingly blood based indications, the frequency of testing is certainly a conversation topic in many of these trial designs.

David Westenberg
David Westenberg
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

Got it. No, very helpful. And then just wanted to ask about technology or addressing market adjacencies. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you just recently got into dbo DLBCL and and that's a very large market.

David Westenberg
David Westenberg
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

So you you definitely have a a a large market at itself. But is there any technology or any kind of ways to address other maybe blood malignancies and then or maybe even improvements in terms of the technology in terms of getting to greater sensitivity. I mean, I'm guessing 10 to the minus eight is probably really difficult to do, but maybe you improve can improve like the confidence interval or the yeah.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, mean, think the way I can answer that is to say that we're absolutely at all times looking at ways that we can continue to enhance our technology, improving the sensitivity to some extent, the sensitivity of the assay is simply limited by the amount of input material, right? We're also balancing that with what's practical in the clinic or practical for our clinical trial. And so we are actively looking at a number of strategies that could allow us to continue to extend the sensitivity in practical settings, as well as ways that we might enhance the technology or even new technological approaches we could bring to solve some of the problems that continue to exist in the space. For example, the very strong desire in the clinic for an entirely blood based approach to MRD monitoring in multiple myeloma, which is something we can support, but that there may still be ways to improve upon.

David Westenberg
David Westenberg
Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

Got it. No. Thank you very much for taking the question, and congrats on the quarter.

Karina Calzadilla
Karina Calzadilla
VP, IR at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thank you.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks, David.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tejas Savant from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Yuko Oku
Yuko Oku
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hello. This is Yuko on the call for Tejas. Thank you for taking my questions. Just regarding the Epic integration, in addition to the volume lift from the EMR integrated accounts, are you also realizing associated cost savings, productivity gains as a result? If so, what could it mean in the context of your goal to have 50% of your ordering volume coming from EMR integrations by year end?

Yuko Oku
Yuko Oku
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

And is that factored into your updated OpEx guide as well?

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, thanks for the question, Yigal. So it's an interesting one because of course, most of the volume that we have going through integration has really only been going through integration for the past one to two quarters at most. But I think that where you're headed is fair. The idea that there are potentially operational efficiencies to be gained in the medium to long term as more and more of our volume goes through these integrations. I can tell you just as an anecdote, that the largest account, our number one largest account integrated in October.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And they have told us that under their measurement, they have achieved a 90% decrease in callbacks from our staff to address order discrepancies since integration. So you can imagine that's also not just saving them time, which is fantastic, also saving us time on that particular account. If we can achieve even half that improvement in callbacks at other accounts over at a scale, you can imagine that can help us either redirect our staff time or save staff time entirely. But I don't we have not incorporated any operational savings into our guide in 2025 at this time and we'll be continuing to monitor that. There are a number of ways by the way, beyond just reducing callbacks on orders, that we can leverage EMR to reduce, total operational time, but those, gains will be probably achieved over the next couple of years.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And one other area of potential upside is looking at revenue cycle management and being able to leverage our EMR integrations to kind of reduce time to cash.

Yuko Oku
Yuko Oku
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Got it. That's super helpful. And then a second unrelated question. With a number of headlines around cost cutting at pharma, is it possible to see more back end loaded or milestone based agreements with pharma versus pay as you go type of contracts. Have you seen any shifts in types of MRD agreements with pharma over the last six months or so?

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Actually, I've mentioned this at a couple of investor conferences. We're actually trying to, over time, when contracts come up for renewal, the opposite of that, which is to move more to a recurring revenue model business to front load, I'll say, the fee for service or sequencing component of that and move away from some of the lumpier, hard to predict from a time perspective milestones. So it really depends on the focus of pharma companies and indications that they're doing. But, no, we we have we have not we have not seen that and don't anticipate being impacted by it.

Yuko Oku
Yuko Oku
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Got it. Thank you so much.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

You bet.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Rachel Venzdahl from P. J. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Sebastian Sandler
Sebastian Sandler
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Hey. This is Sebastian Sandler on for Rachel. Thanks for taking the question. I'd like to turn back to the strong sequential growth in clonoSEQ volumes seen. I think it was one of the best step ups in terms of absolute tests since 4Q 'twenty three, looking at the slides, like around 2,000.

Sebastian Sandler
Sebastian Sandler
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

So just looking ahead to the rest of the year, I'm wondering if the surround 2,000 test step up is appropriate. And then I'm curious if there's any further upside to the acceleration based on the number of drivers you laid out in the call.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Sure. Thanks for the questions, Vashti. I mean, am very pleased to see the volume growth in Q1. The step up only strengthens my confidence in our potential for the remainder of the year. As you know, when we started the year, talked about there being an upside.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And I think some of that materialized in Q1. And with this updated guidance, we still see room for upside and we do still anticipate sequential growth quarter over quarter, although I won't speculate on whether that the magnitude of the step up will look the same every single quarter. I think the reason for us being prudent on that is simply that we have a number of strategic initiatives that we are pursuing this year and that will go live in the second half. And these are just things that we haven't done before. So we're kind of erring on the side of under promise and over deliver right now versus speculating too much about how much upside, how fast that upside can be realized.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

EMR is a big driver, particularly in the second half, but we have to see how the Flatiron launch goes. Those are in accounts that are new or emerging for us. So we're going to wait and see how quickly we can leverage that to help us with adoption of those community accounts. The Epic integrations, we have a long slate of those plans, but it's not fully in our control when they get done since we need to rely on account side IT resources. You know, so we'll be eager to provide further updates, and we feel very confident we don't see any material headwinds at this point, but it's still early in the year.

Sebastian Sandler
Sebastian Sandler
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Understood. Thank you for the color. And then turning to the community setting, you called out, I think, 40% plus growth there. So I'm curious if this was driven mostly by adding new accounts or deeper penetration into existing accounts. And then just curious on the outlook in the community setting for the rest of the year. Thank you.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, both. We have a number of community accounts where we now have some significant volume. We have now an account in our top 10 that is a community account, which by the way was one of the ones that just went live recently with an integration. In fact, our first ever non Epic point to point integration. Although that hasn't had time to drive volume yet, it just happened in April.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

I am bullish about the opportunity there. And so we do have accounts where we have significant penetration and where it's really about continuing to drive that depth. We also have accounts that have not ordered or are just getting started. And so both contributed in Q1 to the continued growth. I'm really pleased with the work that our community focused field team is doing.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And I'm excited about the potential of not only our Flatiron integration to help us lift the community business in the later part of the year, but also the work we're doing with NeoGenomics, which albeit we will only launch in a selected group of phase one accounts in the second half of this year, but in 2026 and beyond, that'll be an important driver for our community footprint and our community growth pace.

Sebastian Sandler
Sebastian Sandler
Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tom Stevens from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Tom Stevens
Tom Stevens
Analyst at Cowen

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on a really strong operating quarter. My first one is just on the contribution of kind of Mantle Cell into this year and also more broadly just the level of new patient adds, that is the number of new clonoSEQ IDs in this quarter versus 4Q? I was hoping you could comment on, a, the number of MCLs you expect in guidance this year and b, the number of new patient adds as it were.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

I think what I can say, Tom, is that in Q1, we were very pleased with the growth. We saw 28% quarter over quarter growth and the contribution of MCL was 5%, which is up from about 3.5 a year ago. That indication, as you know, is a smaller indication, but I think one with a significant unmet need that is well suited to the value proposition of clonoSEQ. And certainly, we're encouraged by the recurrence monitoring coverage that we achieved earlier in Q1, which while it won't change our promotional strategy, we've been promoting the importance of serial monitoring of patients off therapy since launch. It certainly strengthens our resolve to make sure we drive testing in that space because we can now get paid for a larger number of these tests, which I think are clinically very, very valuable to patients.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

In terms of MCL growth over time, we haven't commented specifically on the contribution of any one indication, but I do think that it's possible to have you know, higher single digit contribution over the course of the next year or so. That is an indication again that we believe we can penetrate quickly because of the treatment paradigm there being so conducive to the use of MRD.

Tom Stevens
Tom Stevens
Analyst at Cowen

And just on clonoSEQ ID, I'm not sure I got that in your response.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Right, sorry. So more generally, the contribution of clonoSEQ ID. I mean, we are starting to see an increased contribution of repeat patients. This is beyond MCL. Of course, I'm talking about the business overall.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

At this point, think about a third, maybe a little less 30% of our tests are ID tests. And then another 20% are first MRDs, and about half of the tests are repeat MRDs. That's kind of how the business breaks out right now.

Tom Stevens
Tom Stevens
Analyst at Cowen

Cool. And then just one more follow-up on just kind of how you're thinking about gross margins for the year. 62% sequencing is obviously very impressive. I know you have lots of spinning plates with EMR initiatives into the back half, but just wondering what the kind of fee per service contribution to ASPs were in the quarter and just to make sure that NovaSeq X transition is still on track for Q3 and maybe why not raise the cash burn or excuse me, reduce the cash burn guidance more than the beat in Q1?

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yes. Thanks for the question, Tom. As it relates to progress on gross margin, first quarter was great. We're seeing improving our cost structure is improving the lab and the volume is certainly helping that. NovaSeq is still on track for the second half of the year and we would reiterate the five to eight percentage point improvement from that in the first twelve months post launch.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

So everything's kind of coming along with gross margin, so I don't have any concerns there and expect to see it continue to grow, especially as we get more and more pricing favorability from both our clinical and pharma businesses. Yeah, and if

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

you recall, Tom, we talked about 70% plus gross margins at scale and we're a little bit ahead of the pace based on strong, really strong quarter.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And on your question about cash burn, I think, yes, opportunity there to beat the number we put in our guide. But again, we're just it's early, the exact timing of NovaSeq launch, all those types of things, certainly an opportunity for some additional upside and reducing our burn further given the strong performance in Q1.

Tom Stevens
Tom Stevens
Analyst at Cowen

Right. So no, just like is there like incremental reinvestment in the sales force or anything like that we should be aware of?

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Nothing currently planned. We did make some investments in our revenue cycle management, our reimbursement operations operations team, and we believe those are paying off accretively. So but, you know, no no major expansions from there.

Tom Stevens
Tom Stevens
Analyst at Cowen

Awesome. Thank you, guys.

Chad Robins
Chad Robins
Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Thanks, Tom.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sung Ji Nam from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Corey Rosenbaum
Equity Analyst at Scotiabank

Hey. This is Corey Rosenbaum on for Sung Ji. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the quarter. So first, on DLBCL, do you expect the upgraded assay with the sevenfold increase in sensitivity to meaningfully change the trajectory of adoption in the indication? And could you talk about the potential use case expansions with the significant improvement sensitivity?

Karina Calzadilla
Karina Calzadilla
VP, IR at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Sure. Thanks for the question, Corey. So first off, I

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

think the primary opportunity to leverage the enhanced assay to drive adoption, I think, is in the pharma setting, where, as you know, we've faced somewhat increased competition in recent years. And I think there is, a strong desire to have a very sensitive assay, particularly on the frontline end of therapy setting, where a number of companies are going after study designs in which patients essentially receive additional treatment of varying classes based on the fact that they are MRD positive, even though they've achieved conventional complete response by PETCT. So that detecting that disease at those levels where imaging isn't revealing anything there requires that particular degree of sensitivity compared to other use cases. And so in the pharma setting that's where the enhanced assay has really been an important part of our messaging and our data generation. Of course in the clinic this is important broadly as well and we are increasing our focus on that end of therapy use case as, frankly, a synergy with what's going on in clinical trials.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

We anticipate that over time these clinical trials will read out, they'll be successful, there'll be opportunities for patients to be treated with additional therapy when they don't achieve MRD negativity by the end of a standard round of, let's say, R CHOP. And even now, there are opportunities for patients to enroll in clinical trials. And so it's to patients' benefit for us to be able to provide the most sensitive assay possible in the clinical setting as well.

Corey Rosenbaum
Equity Analyst at Scotiabank

Great. Thank you for that insight. And I appreciate the pharma commentary throughout the call. But can you discuss the current split between later stage clinical trials versus earlier stage trials for the active trials underway with the MRD pharma partners?

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah. Sorry. The majority of our studies are in later stage study or later stage trials for multiple myeloma, which is, as you know, sort of sixty plus percent of our business and the most well developed indication. In some of our earlier stage indications, for example, in lymphomas, where we have a smaller portion of our business, the mix tends more towards earlier phase studies. But in general, the use of MRD is really evolving toward registrational uses, whether primary endpoint or secondary endpoint status, and increasingly toward the utilization of MRD as a means to direct therapy, stratify patients. And so that, by nature, is helping the business evolve toward a later phase, you know, more heavily weighted, mix.

Corey Rosenbaum
Equity Analyst at Scotiabank

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you would need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question comes from Andrew Brackman from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Maggie Boeye
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Hey, everyone. This is Maggie Bowie on for Andrew. Thanks for taking our questions. Maybe just to start, it's nice to see the reduction in the OpEx guide for the full year. On the MRD side, can you talk about any areas in particular you're seeing leverage from?

Maggie Boeye
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

And then just what other areas do you think that you could see leverage from building out from here? Then just looking further out over the next few years, where do you plan to prioritize your investment spend? Thank you.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Yeah, thanks for the question. As it relates to leverage, I think we're seeing a ton of leverage across the business, first and foremost in the lab. Again, increasing volume, some of the assay consolidation initiatives we put in place in last year and we're seeing the fruits of that labor pay off. Secondarily, we're seeing a ton of leverage through our volumes increasing in our field force as well. That's all of those things are driving improvement.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And while we're making investments in our reimbursement operations, at least early days from those investments paying off and gaining leverage, but we'll continue to monitor that. I think all those things are pointing to a healthy profile for this business longer term. In terms of prioritizing our investments, I think some of this has been discussed previously in terms of what we do with our assay going forward, but we'll provide more color into that as things progress.

Maggie Boeye
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Great.

Kyle Piskel
Kyle Piskel
CFO at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Oh,

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

sure. I can just add perhaps that a couple of things that we've talked about throughout this call will potentially be areas where we'll be able to where we want to continue to invest and may ramp up investment over time. Revenue cycle management is the one that Kyle alluded to, EMR integration and related sort of technology investments that can help us increase the stickiness of our business, increase our access to data that will support our ability to operate effectively. There are some potential investments we're evaluating there. Data generation will remain a priority for the foreseeable future in addition to some earlier stage R and D investments that we're assessing.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And then lastly, you might wonder, I didn't mention commercial field force, we don't have any near term plans. We looked at the investment we've made and I think we're very comfortable with covering 90% of the relevant patient population. We have reasonably sized balanced territories and reasonable numbers of HCP and account targets per rep. So we're pretty happy there, but we will evaluate whether there are additional or new deployment strategies that we might want to implement over time in response to the evolution of the market dynamics.

Maggie Boeye
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Got it. Thank you. That was super helpful. And then maybe just one on the NeoGenomics partnership. Can you just update us on the progress you're making there and talk about what work is being done to ensure readiness for the early pilot launch in the second half of this year?

Maggie Boeye
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

And then just how you're thinking about how that will inform your full launch down the line? Thank you.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

Sure, I'm really pleased with how that partnership has been progressing and very grateful to be working with great partners on the NEO side. The work we've been doing up till this point was to select the phase one accounts that we wanted to target based on a variety of criteria that will allow us to gain insight to ensure that we optimize the broader national launch at the beginning of next year. We've been finalizing the TRS design, test requisition form design. We've been designing or creating the field direction and designing accompanying training. We've been determining how samples will actually flow between the companies, how orders and reimbursement data will flow between the companies.

Susan Bobulsky
Susan Bobulsky
Chief Commercial Officer of MRD at Adaptive Biotechnologies

And we've been firming up how we will manage handoffs between various members of our cross functional teams that face our customers. So all that work will inform the second half Phase I launch and will directly benefit the longer term national launch.

Maggie Boeye
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Karina Calzadilla
      Karina Calzadilla
      VP, IR
    • Chad Robins
      Chad Robins
      Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman
    • Kyle Piskel
      Kyle Piskel
      CFO
    • Susan Bobulsky
      Susan Bobulsky
      Chief Commercial Officer of MRD
Analysts
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