Illumina 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Illumina's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, we will review our financial results, released after market close, and provide prepared remarks before opening the line for questions and answers. Our earnings release is available in the investor relations section of illumina.com. Joining me today are Jacob Thaysen, Chief Executive Officer, and Ankur Dhingra, Chief Financial Officer. Jacob will begin with an update on Illumina's business, followed by Ankur's review of the financials. We will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, and a reconciliation to GAAP can be found in today's release and in the supplementary data on our website. Unless otherwise stated, all growth rates are presented on a year-over-year reported basis. Organic growth adjusts for the impact of currency and acquisitions, and rest of world organic growth also excludes Greater China due to our inclusion on China's unreliable entity list.

This call is being recorded. The replay will be available on our website. It is our intent that all forward-looking statements made during today's call will be protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. To better understand the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, we refer you to the documents that Illumina files with the SEC, including our most recent Forms 10-Q and 10-K. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jacob.

Thank you, Conor. Good afternoon, everyone. We had a great first half of 2026, including another strong quarter in Q2. I couldn't be prouder of what the Illumina team delivered. Revenue grew at the fastest rate since I joined the company, driven by increasing demand for Illumina's technology as customers expand clinical applications. Our deep relationships with leading U.S. clinical customers and large installed base reinforce the durability of our position in these markets. Margins also came in above our guidance despite higher than expected costs. I want to thank our teams for their focus and commitment to our customers and shareholders. Our first half results puts us in a strong position as we look ahead. We are raising our 2026 guidance for revenue growth and profitability while remaining committed to executing against our long-range targets.

Today, I'm going to focus on three areas: our performance in the quarter and the trends we are seeing across our end markets, how we are expanding the value of our platform through new workflows and multi-omics capabilities, and the progress we are making against our long-term strategy and financial targets. Let me start with how the quarter came together. Rest of world organic revenue grew 8.1%, above the high end of our guidance, and demand for NovaSeq X remained high more than three years after launch, with more than 95 placements in the quarter. Together with disciplined expense management, this translated into both margin and EPS above guidance. Clinical markets, which represent approximately 65% of sequencing consumables revenue, remained our primary growth driver. Rest of world clinical growth was broad-based across regions and applications, with particular strength in our U.S.-Canada region.

Strong instrument placements over the past three quarters are expanding customer capacity and will support consumable growth for many quarters to come. Placements will vary from quarter to quarter, but demand remains elevated. In research and academic markets, results improved from Q1. Customers remain cautious as they navigate funding uncertainty. We saw some signs of improvements late in the quarter, but it's too early to call a recovery. These customers remain an important source of innovation and help drive clinical adoption over time. Our expanding multi-omics portfolio give customers more ways to analyze biology and broadens how we can support these markets over time. Let me turn next to innovation. Our strategy is to deliver the highest quality insights for the lowest end-to-end cost.

The updates we made this quarter advance that goal by expanding what customers can do on NovaSeq X and increasing the value of the Illumina ecosystem. Within core sequencing, NovaSeq X remains central to our approach. Customers are investing in the platform not only for what it enables today, but because they see a clear path to use it for years to come. The roadmap we laid out earlier this year gives them confidence that the X will continue to support their workflows over time, helping sustain demand for the platform. We recently launched our whole genome MRD research workflow, a tool designed to help customers shorten asset development timelines and lower development costs. The solution runs on NovaSeq systems and is now in early access with select customers. Beyond core sequencing, we are expanding our multi-omics offerings, consistent with the strategy we laid out in 2024.

This summer, we expanded our portfolio with the launch of the StrataMap Spatial, our sequencing-based spatial workflow. This launch broadens our capabilities in spatial biology and gives researchers another way to study tissue biology through the Illumina ecosystem. We are also seeing sustained proteomics momentum following the close of our SomaLogic acquisition. Our newly branded SomaScan and SomaSeq offerings are generating strong interest and helping customers connect proteomics and genomic insights. In BioInsite, we are expanding our data and insights offerings to help pharmaceutical customers advance AI-enabled drug discovery. BioInsite brings together sequencing, perturbation tools, compute power, and AI to build high-quality multi-omics data sets and interpretation tools. These capabilities can deepen understanding of disease pathways, infer causality, and enable more predictive biological models.

One of the first key BioInsite initiatives is the Billion Cell Atlas, a genome-wide perturbation data set that deepens understanding of disease biology and generates data for AI models. We are producing this data at an unprecedented scale and with the quality and consistency needed to support biological discovery. With over 300 million cells delivered to date, biopharma interest continues to grow. We have started booking revenue from our Billion Cell Atlas, and we added three new partners subsequent to quarter end, bringing our total to six. While still early, these milestones are an encouraging sign of the opportunity ahead. Later this year, we look forward to sharing additional BioInsite updates as we expand how customers can use biological data to accelerate discovery.

Turning to our improved 2026 outlook, we are increasing our full year revenue outlook to reflect both our Q2 outperformance and our expectations for the remainder of the year. The momentum we are seeing, especially from our clinical customers, gives us greater confidence as we enter the second half. We now expect full-year rest-of-the-world organic revenue growth greater than 5%. We expect the pace of growth in the second half to remain broadly consistent with the first half, although the mix will shift. Consumables revenue will continue to grow from a higher installed base, while instrument growth moderates against tougher comparison following several quarters of elevated NovaSeq X placements. The expanding NovaSeq X installed base will also add further consumables growth beyond 2026 and support our path towards high single-digit revenue growth in 2027.

We are also raising our EPS outlook, reflecting Q2 outperformance, higher revenue expectations, and continued expense discipline. Ankur will provide the details in his remarks. Our updated guidance reinforces our progress toward the long-term financial targets we laid out in 2024, and we remain focused on achieving them. We operate in a healthy market with significant untapped opportunity. By continuing to deliver innovative technology that improves customer workflows and expands their capabilities, we expect to maintain our leadership as the market evolves. With three consecutive quarters of growth, we enter the second half from a stronger position. Our teams are energized by the response to our recently launched end-to-end workflows. That interest confirms that we are solving the right problems and reinforces our innovation priorities. We are also strengthening the team leading this work.

We recently welcomed Michael Sullivan and Julie Coletti to our management team, adding deep commercial and legal experience as we scale the business. We are equally pleased to welcome David King and Dan Skowronski to our board. Their experience across healthcare, diagnostics, and R&D will be valuable as we advance our clinical and innovation priorities. I want to thank the entire Illumina team for their focus and commitment, and our customers for the trust they place in us. With that, I'll hand it over to Ankur to walk through the financial details before we move to Q&A.

Thank you, Jacob, and good afternoon, everyone. I will walk through our second quarter financial results, provide additional color on revenue, expenses, earnings, the balance sheet, and capital deployment, then discuss our updated outlook. Before I get into the details of the financial performance, let me provide a high-level view of how the second quarter played out. For Q2, our revenue and earnings results came in ahead of our expectations and guidance. Revenue grew 8% on organic basis ex China, margins were ahead, and EPS of $1.31 grew 10% year-over-year. We placed more than 95 Xes. Turning to the details. During the second quarter, Illumina's revenue of $1.16 billion was up 9.5% year-over-year, and 6.5% on an organic basis, with currency and acquired revenue together contributing approximately three percentage points to our reported growth rate.

Rest of the world organic growth rate was 8.1%. Sequencing consumables revenue of $775 million was up 5% year-over-year on both a reported and organic rest of world basis. High throughput volume drove most of the revenue growth as the NovaSeq X install base continues to expand and pull through increased year-over-year. Sequencing consumables revenue in clinical markets grew 15% ex China, with the U.S. Canada region continuing to grow above 20%. We saw slower growth in Europe, Middle East, and Latin America region, largely due to ongoing near-term dynamics in the region. First half growth was approximately 17%, a slight acceleration versus the second half of 2025, reflecting continued adoption of sequencing-based diagnostics and more sequencing-intensive applications. We are raising our growth outlook in clinical markets towards the high end of our prior guide and now expect mid-teens growth for the year.