Seer (NASDAQ:SEER) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Seer reported Q1 2026 total revenue of $2.8 million, a decline from $4.2 million in Q1 2025, mainly due to macroeconomic headwinds in academic funding and increased competition.
The company reaffirmed its full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $16 to $18 million, indicating confidence in future growth driven by large-scale opportunities and new leadership.
Seer continues to expand its proteomics platform, adding new biobank collaborations and enhancing its product offerings, while also defending its intellectual property against imitators.
Operational highlights include the appointment of a new Chief Commercial Officer, ongoing population-scale studies, and a focus on cost control, reducing operating expenses from $22.8 million to $18.2 million.
Management emphasized strategic investments in innovation, particularly in developing a next-generation detector and expanding software capabilities, as well as maintaining a disciplined approach to capital management.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day and welcome to Seer first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the Star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask question. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Marissa Beish from Gilmartin Group. Please go ahead.
Marissa Beish
Thank you. Earlier today, Seer released financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. If you have not received this news release, or if you would like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to investorSeer Bio. In addition, during today's conference call, we will be referencing a slide presentation that can be accessed on the Events and presentations section of Seer's investor relations website. Participating today from Seer is Omid Farakhzad Farakhzad, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board, and David Horn, Chief Financial Officer and President, Chief Financial Officer and President. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section titled Forward Looking Statements in the press release here issued today. For a more complete list and description, please see the Risks Factors section of the Company's Quarterly report on Form 10Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 and in its other filings with the securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Seer disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today. With that, I would like to turn the call over to omid.
Omid Farakhzad (Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board)
Thank you Marissa and thank you all for joining us this afternoon at Seer. We're making significant progress on our innovation, roadmap, commercial position and strategic objectives as we start the year. We have said that our progress may not be linear quarter to quarter, but my conviction and Seer, the impact of our technology and the market we're building has never been stronger. Let me start by summarizing for you our vision and the progress we made in Q1. Then focus on recent developments and our outlook going forward, starting with our vision and the promise of our platform we imagined and pioneered the first solution for standardized, robust, deep, unbiased proteomics at scale. We have been focused on the steps we need to take to advance our solution both near and longer term. This quarter we accomplished the following in pursuit of this vision, we continue to expand our evidence base, doubling the body of independent publications validating our platform year over year. We announced another biobank collaboration with Precision Health Research Singapore and Thermo Fisher, further advancing our population scale studies effort. We appointed a new Chief Commercial Officer to drive momentum in our sales organization, we successfully defended our patents with the recent PTAP verdict and we remain committed to protecting our foundational technology. We evolved our Insight Grant program to engage pharma and biotech teams directly in the workflows where proteomics can have the most immediate impact and we continue to invest in product and technological innovation including our next generation detector and additional innovations in our scalable cloud based software analytical suites while maintaining tight cost control. Taken together, our accomplishments this quarter advance our mission of imagining and pioneering new ways to decode the biology of the proteome to improve human health. Moreover, we maintain our leadership in and continue to build the market for deep, unbiased proteomics, which ultimately drives value creation in the long run for our stakeholders. In terms of financial performance, our first quarter total revenue was $2.8 million, reflecting the ongoing depressed academic funding environment that has been pressuring customer budgets over the last several quarters, compounded by increased competitive activity from inferior product imitators. In this space we have pioneered. However, the progress we made this quarter that I previously detailed and the underlying momentum in the business give us confidence for the rest of 2026. Consequently, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of 16 to 18 million, representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint over full year 2025. Now I will walk through our Q1 execution and how it advances our trajectory. Turning to Slide 3 Peer reviewed validation of our platform continues to build. There are now 84 peer reviewed publications, preprints and reviews validating the Proteograph product suite. This compares to three publications in 2022 at the time of our broad commercial Launch and and 42 publications as of March 2025 only one year ago. We expect to see additional publications and a broadening impact as we look forward. This includes a growing impact through innovative companies like Prognomic, who just this week announced breakthrough results for the early detection of lung cancer in an ongoing real world study of its novel blood test leveraging the Proteograph for its proteomic biomarker discovery efforts, Prognomic launched Provu Lung in November 2025 to support the early detection of lung cancer in high risk individuals. Yesterday, Prognomic announced that in the first cohort of 78 high risk adults, the Proviu Lung Blood Test accurately detected eight lung cancers. Notably, five of the eight cancers were provisionally categorized at stage one and all cancers were confirmed via tissue biopsy. These early findings translate to a performance of 89% sensitivity to detect all stages of lung cancer at 54% specificity, including 83% sensitivity for stage one lung cancer. These results represent breakthrough performance for the early detection of lung cancer and could meaningfully enhance the current standard of care, which is a low dose CT scan with a very low patient compliance rate. We are very excited for what this means for the applicability of proteomics in early cancer detection. Turning to Slide 4, I want to highlight one paper in particular from this quarter. In January 2026, an article titled Cross ancestry comparison of aptamer and antibody protein measures by Nicholas et al. Was published in Nature Communication. This study demonstrated that a meaningful fraction of protein associations in large scale affinity proteomics may be influenced by protein altering genetic variants, particularly across genetically diverse populations. Importantly, the authors showed that ancestry associated variants such as the inflammatory biomarker SUPAR and and Alzheimer's disease linked pilra protein could create discordant biological interpretation across platforms, with interpretations improving substantially after accounting for the underlying variant. The paper highlights the importance of variant aware proteomics to properly understand the unique role different variants play in health and disease across populations. As biobank scale and multiancestry studies continue to expand globally, the ability to correctly interpret protein biology, including ancestry specific variants becomes a differentiator. The proteograph provides the ability to perform this analysis and we believe this capability will become increasingly important as proteomics moves toward larger translational studies. This further supports our strategy of building a differentiated evidence base through high impact peer reviewed publication. Turning to Slide 5 to discuss our population scale studies as our technology has performed exceptionally well in the hands of our customers, we have become the trusted partner of choice in deep unbiased proteomics at scale. Without Seer, conventional mass spectrometry would be unable to provide the depth and scale that biobanks are looking for. Last year marked an inflection point as we initiated landmark population scale studies and with Career University and Discovery Life Sciences followed by the NIH funded Multi Omics study, we built on this success when we announced the precise SG100K population scale study last month. In collaboration with PRECISE and Thermo Fisher Scientific, the PRECISE team is generating deep, unbiased proteomics data for 10,000 participants and we believe this study may eventually encompass 100,000 participants to generate one of the largest multi omics datasets in the world. We believe the data from these biobank studies will drive broader adoption in the existing proteomics market in the near term. Professor Lee from Korea University will be presenting initial data from a subset of his 20,000 patient cohort at the American Society of Mass Spectrometry Conference in June. He will also be joined by Dr. Kang, who is training a foundation AI model using data from the cohort. Additionally, we expect the PRECISE team to share their data publicly at the HUPA World Congress in September. When precise SG100K data is made public, it will demonstrate what the proteograph makes possible at the population scale and and we believe that is a pivotal inflection point to drive 100,000 plus sample Biobank studies, the types of which have historically been the inflection point for the flywheel to begin turning for our peers. We're having ongoing dialogues with potential partners globally, including academic institutions, national health initiatives and leading research organizations, and the emerging data sets from Korea University and PRECISE will help advance these discussions. When it comes to robust, standardized, deep, unbiased proteomics at population scale, we believe the proteograph is the only commercial solution that exists. We earned the trust of the scientific community by establishing a robust base of scientific validation. As a result, we expect revenue growth to increasingly reflect the true scale of the opportunity in front of us. We have an update about our commercial organization that we're very excited about. We recently appointed Tony Bazarco as our Chief Commercial Officer and I want to take a moment on the strategic importance of this hire. We are at a pivotal moment in our growth journey. Our science is validated, the biobank mandates are coming in and seminal data resells are on the horizon. What we need now is the commercial leadership to go from the massive opportunity in front of us with the same conviction and rigor that has defined our work to date. We believe Tony is that leader. Tony brings two decades of commercial leadership across life sciences, diagnostics and biotechnology with a demonstrated track record of scaling go to market organizations. He most recently served as president and CEO of BioLogis, overseeing its acquisition by and Capital Partners, and prior to that he was a CCO of Specific Diagnostic which was acquired by biomarrieu he understands what it takes to translate scientific credibility into commercial momentum, and he's joining at the moment when that translation matters most. I'm confident that his leadership will be transformative for how we engage customers, pursue biobank partnerships, and capture the market opportunity we have spent years building toward. Now spending a moment on our intellectual property the success and power of our technology have also fueled imitators to enter the markers. We have a robust patent portfolio and we plan to defend our core technology that underpins the automated, deep, unbiased proteomics at scale that empowers our customers. In March, the Patent Trial and appeal board upheld 23 of 29 claims in one of our nanoparticle protein enrichment patents, serving as an example of the strength of the portfolio of more than 250 patents and patent applications, including 84 issued patents that we have built to date. Earlier this morning we we announced that we have filed a patent infringement suit against Nanomix Biotechnology. These asserted patents protect SEER's intellectual property in the field of nanoparticle protein enrichment. Brigham and Women's Hospital is joining this lawsuit as well. We believe in preserving the integrity of our products and the trust that researchers place in us. Products that we believe are technologically inferior do not just threaten our leadership position, but they also risk undermining our broader goal of eliminating the obstacles to mainstream proteomic adoption and unlocking the full complexity of the proteome for human health. We have made enormous investments to date and we will vigorously defend what we have built. Protecting our intellectual property is, in my view, protecting the future of proteomics. Turning to slide 6 to discuss changes to our SEER Insight grant program in Q1, we evolved the program into a more targeted initiative with two distinct tracks. The first is a translational research track, continuing the work that has consistently generated strong scientific returns and high impact publication. The second is a new biopharma development track designed to engage pharma and biotech teams directly in the workflows where proteomics can have the most immediate impact, such as mechanism of action studies, resistance biology and biomarker strategy by providing streamlined access to the proteograph platform alongside integrated mass spectrometry and bioinformatic support. The program lowers the barrier to entry for new customers while generating the kind of high quality data that drives publications, deepens engagement and builds long term relationships. We have also expanded the program's geographic reach this year with a deliberate focus on segments where the proteograph remains underpenetrated. We see this as an important catalyst for biopharma adoption. Finally, turning to Slide 7 to discuss innovation. Innovation is core to who we are at SEER and how we will extend our leadership. I remain focused on maintaining a responsible but robust innovation effort, including the continuous build out of our technologies capabilities as we seek to establish our leadership position as the preferred proteomic data platform for AI driven biology. We are making concentrated, high conviction investment in the next generation of our platform while maintaining cost discipline and the progress is meaningful across every layer of the stack on assay to solve the bottleneck of upstream workflow, we introduced the SP 200 and Proteograph 1 assay which made large scale studies including biobacks possible for the first time. We have additional panels in development designed for more focused applications, expanding the menu and utility of the protograph for the broader range of research. Our next generation detector, which we have been developing for four years, is designed to bring deep, unbiased proteomics to a much wider audience beyond existing mass spectrometry users and into the broader multiomics community. We are working to enter the era of what I call next generation proteomics where a robust, standardized and easy to use proteomic detector can be used broadly and cost effectively by a range of scientists. We anticipate a data showcase later this year and I look forward to sharing more as that milestone Approaches on software and analytics we're continuing to expand the capabilities of our Proteograph analysis suite which allows researchers to interact with large scale proteomic data intuitively and dynamically. Most recently we launched an update to pos, which allows users to interface with a chat box and notebooks for easy, rapid and stable data analysis, and we anticipate additional features to be launched later this year. In addition, we recently filed a preprint article on BioRxiv titled Rabian Dia, a fast, sensitive and accurate Search engine for Quantitative Proteomics. As the scale of proteomics studies continues to grow, in large part credited to the innovations we have made at Seer, the analytical infrastructure has to keep pace with to be able to scale with the increasing amount and complexity of the data being generated. Existing tools like Diane were not built for that volume and struggle to scale, which creates a real constraint on throughput cost and accessibility. Radian DIA is a faster, more sensitive and more cost effective solution for rapid and scalable proteomic data analysis. It is purpose built for the large cohort and biopharma workflows that are increasingly defining how our customers use the platform. We will have an oral presentation discussing Rabian DIA at the upcoming ASMS conference, and we look forward to sharing additional details at that time. Before I turn the call over to David, I want to take a moment to highlight our continued commitment to cost discipline. The progress we made this quarter, expanding our evidence base, winning landmark biobank mandates, strengthening our ip, appointing transformative commercial leadership, and continuing to push boundaries of what our platform can do was all achieved while reducing total operating expenses from 22.8 million in Q1 of 2025 to 18.2 million this quarter. That reflects a deliberate and deeply held conviction that building a great company means being as disciplined with capital as we are with ambitions with science. We are at an inflection point and we are building the commercial, technological and financial infrastructure to meet this moment. With that, I will turn the call over to David.
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Thanks Omid turning to Slide 8 Total revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.8 million compared to $4.2 million in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease in revenue was due to lower product and service revenue from continuing macroeconomic headwinds in academic and government funding, increased competitive activity from Invitation products, and a leadership transition as we brought on a new Chief Commercial Officer. Product revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.1 million and consisted of sales of proteograph instruments and consumable kits. Service revenue was $0.6 million for the first quarter of 2026, including related party revenue of $0.1 million and primarily consisted of revenue related to Stack projects. We continue to see steady customer interest in running projects through Stack, which we view as an important leading indicator of future instrument placements. In addition, customers continue to appreciate the flexibility by assessing our technology through our SIP program. Of total instrument shipments in the first quarter, 40% were previous stack customers and 20% were through our SIP program. Other revenue was $0.1 million for the first quarter of 2026 and consisted of lease and shipping revenue. Total gross profit was approximately $1 million for the first quarter of 2026, representing a gross margin of 35 compared to 49% in the first quarter of 2025. The decline in gross margin was due to lower absorption of fixed period costs in the first quarter of 2026 versus the first quarter of 2025. We continue to expect variability in our gross margin on a quarter by quarter basis as the proportion of instrument consumable and service revenue fluctuates at scale. We continue to believe our long term gross margins will be in the range of 70 to 75%. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2026 were $18.2 million including $2.1 million of stock based compensation compared to $22.8 million including $4.5 million of stock based compensation in the first quarter of 2025. Research and development expenses were $8.8 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $11.4 million in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease in R and D expense is a result of lower employee compensation expense including stock based compensation and professional services costs. Selling general and Administrative expenses were $9.4 million in the first quarter of 2026 compared to $11.4 million in the first quarter Of 2025. The decrease in SGA expenses is due to lower employee compensation expense including stock based compensation. We incurred additional legal and other professional service expenses in the first quarter and anticipate they will continue into the second quarter. Net loss for the first quarter of 2026 was $16.8 million compared to $19.9 million in the first quarter of 2025. Free cash flow defined as net cash used in operating activities of approximately $15.4 million less. Net purchases of property and equipment of approximately $270,000 in the quarter was approximately negative $15.7 million. Our opportunistic share repurchases in the quarter reflect our continued belief that there is a significant dislocation in our share price. In the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.5 million Class A common shares at an average price of $1.78 per share. As of March 31, we have repurchased approximately 13.2 million Class A common shares and at a VWAP of $1.86 per share, utilizing approximately $24.5 million of our $25 million share repurchase program authorized in May 2024. As a result, we have reduced our net total common shares outstanding by approximately 15%. As a reminder, in February 2026 the Board of Directors authorized a new repurchase program of up to $25 million. We ended the quarter with approximately $219.5 million in cash. Cash Equivalents and investments. We believe that with our current cash on hand, we have sufficient capital to reach cash flow at breakeven. Turning to slide 9 and our outlook for the full year. Despite a softer first quarter, we continue to see positive developments in progress as a business and are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of 16 to $18 million representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint of our full year 2025. As a reminder that guidance reflects our ongoing expectation that the challenging NIH funding environment would persist through 2026, impacting customer behavior. While the challenging funding backdrop and the presence of imitators in the market creates continued uncertainty, we remain confident that instrument utilization and consumable pull through will build throughout the year. At this point I would like to turn the call back to Omid for closing comments.
Omid Farakhzad (Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board)
Thank you David. Moving on to slide 10, the Proteomics Revolution is underway and Seer is leading it. The independent researchers have now published 84 studies using our platform, doubling from a year ago. Population scale studies are underway in multiple countries. Our next generation detector will bring deep, unbiased proteomics to the genomics and multiomics scientific community, meaningfully expanding the end market for proteomics. And when Precise and other biobanks began to share the data later this year, we believe the strength of the flywheel will begin to turn in earnest. We're in the early stages of building something that will matter enormously, not just for Seer shareholders, but for human health. We are more committed than ever to our vision of enabling the generation of proteomics data at a scale and depth that was previously unimaginable. With that, we will now open the call for questions. Operator
OPERATOR
thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star 2. Please limit to one question and one follow up. this time we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Kyle Mixon with Canaccord.
Kyle Mixon
Hey guys, thanks for the questions. I want to start with David's last point there about the guidance, I guess and basically what could be confident to still meet the higher end of the guidance range? I think like on the last earnings update call you mentioned a customer had delayed some instruments to maybe, you know, 2026 from 4Q. So maybe was there any insurance pushouts in the first quarter that haven't committed to being completed later in 26 or anything of that sort and services or the other segments.
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Yeah, Kyle, thanks for the question. It's David. Yeah, look, we do still feel confidence in the guidance and our confidence in the momentum that we're seeing starting to build, including the large scale opportunities like Precise and others and just our visibility now in the second quarter around the conversations we're having with both academics and the biobanks and the, the biopharmas. And so that does give us conviction to kind of continue to drive the business. The other thing to keep in mind is we did have a very good year of instrument shipments and installs last year. And what we found over time is that it takes about nine to 12 months before we see customers reorder, given that they generally take a nice stocking order with their instrument purchase or with the loaner. And so we're now coming up on that one year anniversary and we have seen that trend start to kick in. So we feel confident in the driving of the pull through for those instruments that were installed last year. And then finally we've got Tony Bazarco on board now who has great experience and really we expect him to continue to drive things. So we do feel like it will be kind of more second half than first half. But we do still feel confident in being able to hit the guidance range. Kyle, does that answer your question?
Kyle Mixon
Yeah, thank you for that. Thanks. David Omid, I had a question for you about your referencing competitors and indicators. I think is the word that was referenced. Just first like just dive into what that kind of means and how that's affecting, you know, the business and the progress and all that. And additionally, when you think about the population scale cohort programs, is that you know, just truly on the unbiased side or are you seeing kind of affinity based competition as well?
Omid Farakhzad (Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board)
Thanks for that, Kyle. So let me first comment on the competitors or the imitators of our product. So first of all, I appreciate that what these imitators mean is that it's a strong validation of the market that we built, the technology platform that we built from scratch, you know, and the space that we really pioneered. I mean obviously having been doing this now for many years, we have a portfolio of 250 patent patent applications and 80 plus that are now issued, including one that is now battle tested through PTAB with the Bruker ITR process. So we are now seeing an emergence of these copycat products. They have inferior performance and their approach to the market is to basically just price these products significantly lower than SEER in order to compete. Now we filed a lawsuit, Kyle, because we want to make sure that our customers are serve appropriately customers. The most valuable commodity that they have is their samples. In the case of clinical samples, some can be priceless, but some can cost thousands of dollars. And so to use a sample with an inferior product that gives you Data that is not appropriate really undermines not only that study, but more broadly the confidence in the nanoparticle enrichment technology that SEER has developed. So we are going to vigorously protect our IP against infringers. We started with nanomics because they were very clearly infringing in a very vocal and visible way, copying a lot of our marketing material and putting material out there that just frankly was not valid. But we'll continue to monitor the space and we'll continue to protect our product going forward. We've invested in building this platform, we've invested in creating this patent portfolio and for our customers sake, we will also protect the integrity of what it stands for going forward. Now, in terms of the biobanks, that's a very good example of valuable samples. Biobanks are very careful about the choice of provider that they use to use their precious samples. And the fact that SEER is being selected to do unbiased proteomics for these biobanks really is a reflection of the publications from experts like Josh Kuhn, Claudio Langenberg, Carson Suri, Nate Basisi, many, many more. There's now 84 plus publications, many and top journals that validate SEER. And so these biobanks are selecting SEER and the Proteograph because we have become the trusted partners to them. I am not actually aware of any biobank that would ever consider a product like Nanomix Biotechnology or one of the other ones like it that are the copycat imitators. And the robustness by which SEER builds products stems from 20 plus years of my life in being in the nanoparticle application for medical uses. And a lot of these companies literally have no expertise in this space and they just copy our products. So I'm not seeing that impacting our biobank customers. And my expectation is that our relationship with the biobanks will continue to grow and I'll be able to announce more, more and more of those over time.
Kyle Mixon
Thanks Amit for that. And then just really quick one to cap it off here on service revenue. So that was, I think it was like almost half of what the kind of the quarterly run rate was. And obviously there were some macro headwinds and challenges and all that, but I would have thought that service was much more insulated than, you know, product revenue. And you have the stack which should have helped out I guess as well. So if you just kind of elaborate upon what happened on that line item in the quarter.
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Yeah, stack is especially prone to some bigger projects, Kyle. And there simply wasn't a huge project in Q1. We did have a big project in Q4. So really it's just a lumpiness of revenue. We're not worried about the interest or continued momentum there. We've got some interesting things in the pipeline there. And so it's really just a question of when customers can get us their samples and drive that. And a lot of times it takes a little longer than you expect. But really it's just a function of our service lab and the size of projects. We just didn't have a particularly big project in the first quarter.
Kyle Mixon
Okay. All right, makes sense. Thanks, guys.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question comes from Kyle Boucher with TD Cowan.
Kyle Boucher
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to go back to sort of the sales side. Can you just take a minute to discuss your order funnel and I guess what you're seeing from a customer perspective, I mean, where do you see more of the growth opportunity this year between your population scale studies and then maybe just smaller individual customers?
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Yes. Thanks, Kyle. Look, I think we continue to have good momentum with the biobanks, that's for sure. It's a question of just timing of those. And so I think it will certainly, you know, we don't have much in terms of additional biobank in for this year, although there may be some towards the the back half of the year. I think it's really going to. We see the opportunity with some of the larger projects from both biopharma as well as some academic projects that we're in discussions about. And really that's just a function of they just tend to move a little bit faster. Obviously the commercial folks move the fastest and then you have the academics and then finally the biobanks. So I would see that really what we see in terms of the breakdown is that in terms of the opportunities for the back half of the year.
Kyle Boucher
Got it. And maybe just on the instrument utilization trends, I know you ended last year with, I believe, 82 instruments installed. You just mentioned that it can take nine to 12 months for those newer placements to sort of reorder on the consumable side. But I guess can you discuss the trends you're seeing from utilization perspective across your older installed base?
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Yeah, I mean, we're continuing to see those folks use the instruments in a regularly pretty consistent way, but also in a way that is project driven, if you will. So folks generally will order when they have a new project. They'll run the project, they'll analyze the data, and then it'll be a minute before they repurchase so we continue to see some utilization. Obviously utilization in the biopharma as a group is a little bit more consistent than academic because they tend to have more projects, consistent projects and academics are a little lumpier. So again, I think it's really, we're excited to have that big cohort of customers coming online from 25 when they hit their 12 month mark and really start to kind of drive things. But again, it's something that we expect to have an uptake in the back half of the year. Obviously Q1 was down a little bit from a pull through perspective, but installations, we did have some good number of installations in Q1 as well.
Kyle Boucher
Got it. Maybe if I can sneak one more quick one. And just on the margin side, gross margin was a little weaker than we had modeled in the first quarter. I guess going forward, just based on your guidance, would you expect that gross margin can creep back towards that sort of low 50s range like you saw last year as revenue sort of ramps?
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Yes. Thanks, Kyle. Yes, we certainly feel like that's the case. I tell you, the reason for the decline in gross margin was just the lower volume of kit and instruments. And so we have, with the lower volume and the lower revenue that leads to lower absorption of our fixed costs right in the period. So I think if you see, when you see revenue bounce back, gross margins will bounce back as well. So we still feel that as you mentioned, kind of that's the right neighborhood in terms of where our gross margins should be.
Kyle Boucher
Got it. Thanks guys.
David Horn (Chief Financial Officer and President)
Thanks, Kyle.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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