MaxCyte, Inc. Common Stock 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me on the call from MaxCyte, we have Maher Masoud, President and Chief Executive Officer, Parmit Ahuja, Chief Financial Officer, and Sean Manarghez, Senior Director of Business Development. Earlier today, MaxCyte released financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statement or comments made during this call may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Federal Securities laws. Any statements contained in this call, other than statements of historical fact, including those that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results or performance, are forward-looking statements.

Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail in our SEC filings. Except as required by applicable law, the company has no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. With that, I will turn the call over to Maher.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining MaxCyte's second quarter 2026 earnings call. MaxCyte reported $7.3 million of total revenue in the second quarter, including $6.5 million of core revenue and $0.8 million of SPL program-related revenue, which consists of milestones and royalties. Results were ahead of our expectations and consistent with the framework we laid out coming into the year. As expected, we entered 2026 facing several headwinds, including inventory drawdown by our largest customer and headwinds resulting from the discontinuation of a few partner clinical programs last year. Despite those challenges, our objective was clear: stabilize revenue in the first half and return to growth in the second half.

Our first half results reflects the stabilization, where both our Q1 and Q2 revenues were ahead of our expectations. We remain confident in our ability to achieve our goal of returning to growth in the back half of the year. We achieved sequential revenue growth in Q2 compared to Q1, primarily driven by instrument placements across our portfolio, including our recently launched GTx platform. We also continue to see GTx placement across biotech and academic customers, reflecting ongoing program advancement. Processing assembly revenue remained stable sequentially, supported by our SPL portfolio. The second quarter reflected disciplined execution against our operating plan, resulting in improved first half financial results. We delivered a meaningful reduction in net loss year-over-year despite the revenue headwinds we faced heading into 2026. We expect to build on that progress as we execute against our plan and return to revenue growth.

Furthermore, we have continued to invest in R&D priorities that expand our platform and strengthen our long-term growth opportunities. Investments in ExPERT GTx, SeQure, and newer strategic collaborations are designed to broaden how we engage with customers, from early discovery through clinical development and commercial manufacturing, while further diversifying MaxCyte's revenue streams over time. Additionally, I want to highlight a significant milestone for the company as we recently announced our multi-platform technology license partnership with Genentech, which we believe reflects the growing recognition of MaxCyte's technology across the ecosystem, from early research all the way through commercial manufacturing. Under the agreement, MaxCyte provides Genentech with access to our ExPERT GTx platform and additional platform technologies, including our electroporation and analytical assessment capabilities across research, clinical development, and manufacturing workflows.

The partnership is structured to support multiple programs and to enable Genentech's ex vivo cell engineering activities from early discovery through cGMP manufacturing. I want to be clear about why I believe this agreement is so important for MaxCyte. It is an evolution in how we partner with the largest players in our industry. Rather than licensing our technology on a single program basis, we have established an enterprise-level relationship with Genentech that supports multiple cell therapy programs under a single framework. We believe this structure reflects how large pharmaceutical organizations increasingly want to deploy enabling technologies as enterprise-wide platforms that support multiple programs. We expect this trend will allow MaxCyte to participate more broadly across the development life cycle of a customer's portfolio, not just one product at a time. The result is multiple platforms being used across a portfolio of programs rather than just for one program.

We structured the partnership with Genentech with the goal of creating long-term value for MaxCyte while shifting a greater proportion of that value earlier in the customer life cycle. We expect that will mean greater revenue capture during research and clinical development across many of our platforms, durable recurring license and platform access revenue complemented by milestone-based opportunities, and continued demand for our instruments, processing assemblies, and analytical technologies. The agreement also provides participation in commercial manufacturing through annual licensing and platform utilization. While the structure differs from a traditional SPL, we believe the risk-adjusted economics are more favorable on a partnership level given the enterprise portfolio-based relationship across the entire development life cycle. This enterprise-based model monetizes multiple revenue streams across the customer relationship while reducing our dependence on the outcome of any single clinical program. This agreement structure complements our SPL model. It does not replace it.

We believe SPLs remain the right commercial solution for many of our biotech customers who are developing individual therapeutic programs, and we expect to continue signing SPLs going forward. Over the past several years, we have consistently maintained strong royalty-based economics across our SPL partnerships, and our current pipeline gives us confidence in our ability to continue doing so, reflecting the value of our offering to cell and gene therapy developers. Our existing SPL agreements continue under the contractual terms, including acquired entity provisions where applicable. Our pipeline continues to support attractive royalty-based SPL opportunities, and we expect both commercial models to coexist, each serving different customer needs. Beyond our relationship with Genentech, we believe this partnership establishes a commercial framework that can be applied with other large pharmaceutical organizations over time.

It helps validate the breadth and strength of MaxCyte's technology portfolio, expand our addressable market within large pharma, and demonstrate our ability to engage a leading global biopharmaceutical company at an enterprise level. Overall, I am very excited by what this partnership represents for MaxCyte and about the opportunities it creates for the future. On the instrument side, ExPERT DTx adoption continues to build with encouraging early traction across discovery and early optimization workflows in both ex vivo and in vivo cell and gene therapy. As I've discussed on prior calls, the DTx is fully compatible with the rest of our ExPERT platform, which give customers who adopt the instrument in discovery a seamless path to scale on our STx and GTx instruments for cGMP manufacturing, and ultimately into a partnership agreement. We expect DTx adoption to build through the balance of 2026 and into next year.

We also continue to see steady progress with SeQure in the quarter. The regulatory environment continues to evolve in our favor, and we continue to expect year-over-year growth for SeQure assay services and licenses in 2026. We firmly believe that SeQure assays will become part of the industry standard for off-target risk assessment and gene editing. Turning to SPL program-related revenue, we recognized $0.8 million in the second quarter, which was comprised of nearly all royalties. Vertex reported approximately $76 million of CASGEVY revenue for the second quarter of 2026, reflecting approximately 75% sequential growth versus Q1 2026 and 150% year-over-year growth. On its earnings call, Vertex noted that more CASGEVY infusions were completed in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025.

Additionally, Vertex also indicated that more than 100 patients initiated their treatment journey for CASGEVY during the second quarter, which marked the third consecutive quarter with more than 100 patient initiations. They also noted that regulatory submissions for CASGEVY are now complete in Saudi Arabia and the U.K. in the 5 to 11 age group, and they are seeing continued strong uptake in the U.K., Italy, and Middle East. Overall, we remain very encouraged by CASGEVY's continued commercial trajectory, and we truly believe in its long-term transformative potential for patients. Turning to our customers, we have 30 total licensed partnerships, which includes 29 SPL partners and our recently announced multi-platform enterprise partnership with Genentech. We continue to see encouraging progression across our partner pipeline, with multiple clinical stage programs moving towards late-stage development.

Importantly, we have five partner programs with the potential to begin commercial launches in the next couple of years, including as early as next year. While any individual program carries clinical or commercial risk, we believe the breadth and diversification of our multiple shots on goal give us a high probability of generating meaningful core revenue, regulatory milestones, and commercial royalties over time. Our SPL portfolio remains a key driver of long-term value, as is evident by the growing commercial royalty revenue and the advancement of a significant number of SPL programs through the clinic. Looking to the second half of the year, we remain confident in our return to revenue growth. We expect growth to be driven primarily by instrument placements, supported by stable license revenue and processing assembly demand from our SPL partners, including our recently announced partnership.