Thank you for standing by. My name is Carly and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Quanterix Corporation second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mary Conway, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. With me on today's call are Everett Cunningham, Quantarix's President and CEO, and Jason Faessler, Quantarix's new Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded. and a replay of the call will be available on the Investors section of our website. During today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements covered under the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs and assumptions as of today, August 10th, 2026. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risk and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. To supplement our financial statements presented on a GAAP basis, we have provided certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are used to evaluate operating performance in a manner that allows for meaningful period to period comparison and analysis driver trends in our business and our competitors. We believe that such measures are important in comparing current results with other periods results and assessing our operating performance within our industry. Non-GAAP financial information presented herein should be considered in conjunction with and not as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures set forth in the presentation posted to our website and in the earnings release issued today. Finally, any percentage changes that we discuss will be on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Everett Cunningham. Everett?

Thanks, Maren. I'm pleased to be with all of you here this morning to bring you up to date on both our second quarter results and our plans for the back half of this year. We are revising our expectations and we want to be transparent about our actions and intended impacts. Our first half results were not what we anticipated based upon market softness and executional challenges, even though our cash preservation efforts were better than planned. As a result, we are taking speedy action to address execution, as I'll describe momentarily, but this performance will affect our annual outlook. Let me start by addressing the specifics around what contributed to Q2's results, then share more details on our plans to pivot our organization to improve performance in the second half and in 2027. The revenue shortfall in Q2 was broad-based and roughly $3 million or 9% lower than the guidance we provided on our call in May. The commercial execution initiatives we began earlier this year have not yet delivered the sustained revenue performance or sales productivity we believe this organization can achieve. As a result, more decisive action is required. We enter this next phase with significant strengths. One of the largest install bases in our sector. Market leadership and ultra sensitive, reproducible protein detection. Differentiated proteomic sensitivity across both tissue and blood. And a deeply committed team of employees. Now to fully translate these advantages into durable growth, we need experienced commercial leadership with the acumen, discipline, and expertise to strengthen our customer engagement and drive consistent execution. Accordingly, we are making a series of significant changes in our commercial organization, starting with adding new proven leadership. As we announced today, Jim Guth is joining our team to help drive improved execution in our commercial organization. Jim was most recently Senior Vice President and Commercial Manager General Screening at Exact Sciences. Prior to joining Exact, a $3 billion revenue company acquired earlier this year by Abbott Labs, Jim spent 18 years at GE where he became President of GE Healthcare in 2021. Jim brings more than 25 years of experience leading enterprise organizations, accelerating growth, and transforming complex healthcare and diagnostic businesses. He's developed high-performing commercial organizations that combine strategic vision, operational discipline, and leadership excellence to create sustained enterprise value. We are so excited to welcome Jim to our team and work together to achieve our goal of re-accelerating revenue growth. In addition, we are reorganizing our commercial team around solution-based selling models. Given the highly specialized nature of our instruments, assays, and diagnostic offerings, we believe greater product expertise and more focused customer engagement are essential to improving commercial execution and reigniting sales productivity. As announced in early June, we welcomed a seasoned leader with over two decades of diagnostics experience, Jeff Albrecht, as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Diagnostics. As we transform this business into a critical component of our future growth, Jeff's more than 25 years of deep commercial leadership experience is already making an impact. Most recently, he served as Regional Vice President for the Northeast U.S. at Quest Diagnostics, leading a group generating approximately $2.9 billion in revenue. Lastly, our accelerator business was down significantly in the quarter, mirroring trends towards smaller projects that we saw in Q1. Therefore, we are creating a dedicated sales team focused on driving pharma lab services to deliver improved results in the second half. On a positive note, in Q2, this business produced nice bookings and shortly, I'll share some exciting progress we're seeing in Q3. We believe these actions and this momentum will produce growth starting this year and more meaningfully in 2027 and beyond. Based upon our first act performance and recognizing that the significant changes that we are announcing today will not produce results immediately, we are lowering our revenue guidance for 2026 to a range of 142 to 148 million. from the prior range of $169 to $174 million. Our team has thoroughly assessed the commercial pipeline and underlying in-market assumptions, giving us the confidence that this new forecast is appropriate. At this revenue level, we expect to end 2026 with a roughly $80 million cash balance. This would also push our cash flow breakeven to 2027. While we plan to invest in our business to leverage growth opportunities, Our ability to conserve cash demonstrated by the higher than expected cash position at the end of Q2 2026 will enable us to be disciplined in balancing cash and investment needs. To that end, we completed the ACOIA integration in Q2, finalizing the ERP and cost energies and achieved the planned $85 million in annualized savings. In summary, We expect these actions to support stronger performance in the second half and position the company for higher growth in 2027 and beyond. Our updated guidance reflects a level of performance that we are confident we can deliver without assuming a substantial recovery in our end markets. This confidence is supported by our industry-leading solutions and services, our growing customer base, and the continued momentum in our higher growth diagnostic business. Now let me turn to the factors underpinning our confidence in the strategy and our ability to execute successfully. We see early important signs of momentum throughout the business that we intend to galvanize and accelerate to improve our results going forward. We are cautiously optimistic about the green shoes in Q2, such as a sequential increase in bookings, leading to a book-to-bill of one-to-one, driven by orders in spatial instruments and consumables and some more accelerator business. Farmer Revenue also increased sequentially in Q2, led by Spatial, even though this market has been reported to be struggling recently. The number of Lucid AD complete tests increased significantly in Q2, albeit off a small base, as we strive to transform our diagnostic business into a more sizable component of Quanterix's growth trajectory. We were very pleased that beginning July 1, 2026, Members covered under Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield medical policies can receive coverage for qualifying blood-based biomarker testing, including Quanterix's Lutha-AD complete test, when medical necessity criteria are met. Now, this is happening in advance of our broad-based market access strategy. We're also expanding our assay development with the launch of an important emerging synaptic biomarker, and in spatial, we launched two new products. We intend to keep up the pace of new offerings. We're excited about Quanterix's prestigious election as a co-investigator institution in the PD Bill program, supported by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. This grant-supported mandate will advance Parkinson's disease research by developing and deploying biomarker tools aimed at enabling earlier detection, improved patient stratification, and more effective monitoring Parkinson's disease. Importantly, it will also validate our technology in an important neurological area. We're also seeing momentum across customers and regions within diagnostics. We've dramatically increased the opportunities for which we are competing, and winning our fair share of these will further increase our credibility. We're excited about these opportunities, which involve accelerated revenues as well. Our partnership with Tempus, announced last quarter, is getting underway quickly. and we're working together on several potential opportunities. These, in addition to the clinical utility studies that we expect to read out shortly, should amplify our credibility in the market. Recent studies, including the ones that we shared at AAIC in London, underscore our opportunity to strengthen our commercial mode by demonstrating our premier positioning of an ultra-sensitive, multi-analyte algorithm for targeted translational work as well as diagnostic. I'll speak more about this when I discuss our diagnostic progress. Let me turn to slide four and provide some perspective on where we compete in proteomics today and how our core capabilities extend across the continuum from discovery and translational research to diagnostics. Quanterix is recognized as a market leader in ultra-sensitive protein detection with differentiated and highly reproducible proteomic sensitivity in fluids and, more recently, tissue. However, we believe the near-term diagnostic potential of technologies is not fully recognized, particularly as early disease detection becomes more important across healthcare. As you can see on this slide, Quanterix is a market leader both in blood and tissue proteomics as the only provider with differentiated leadership in ultra-sensitive blood biomarkers and high-flex spatial tissue analysis across the continuum. We start with Quanterix Samoa. The industry standard for low-plex, ultra-sensitive, early detection, utilizing blood samples for translational work and diagnostics, bringing the key benefit of reproducibility. On the tissue side, we bring Quantair Spatial, which sets the bar for high-throughput discovery and translation efforts. As our primary markets in pharma and academia begin to recover, we are primed to be an enormous asset in enabling them to advance scientific discovery to the lab and clinic. Let's move to slide five, where we show our updated organizational priorities. We have three priorities. Number one, laser focus on execution. We realize that we must regain credibility, and the quickest way is to meet our commitments each quarter. Simply put, we must execute better. The leadership and structural changes that we're making are precisely designed to improve execution and we'll be relentless about driving better commercial execution, especially in our core research sector. Number two, pursue our strategic roadmap. We will focus on reinforcing our in vitro diagnostics or IDD strategy and strengthening our physician and ultra-sensitive protein detection. thereby continuing and enhancing our competitive mode to accelerate revenue growth in our core business. And number three, build our Alzheimer's disease diagnostics business. We plan to accelerate our diagnostics investment in 2026 prudently with the goals of improving workflow, building lab infrastructure, and increasing our shared mind for Lucid AD with our key audience. Now on the next slide, I'll share more details about executional changes. As I mentioned, we have a seasoned leader heading up our commercial organization. This leadership and a solutions-based approach to customers is designed to drive greater accountability and focus across Samoa, spatial, and accelerator. Our chief commercial officer, Jim Gu, will be accountable for commercial execution across the portfolio. and he brings a strong track record of success leading scale businesses and commercial organizations. We're also pivoting our sales force structure. We're moving from a largely geographically based model to a dedicated solution-based execution, working more closely with customers across all of our businesses. We're confident that this model will generate greater customer success and increase sales productivity. and our team is so excited about engaging with new and existing customers on this basis again. Now moving to the next slide. Let me share you some thoughts on our streamlined strategic roadmap. Feedback from customers and collaborators led us to prioritize our Samoa HDX platform and other investments, both for research tools and for diagnostics, including new neurology marks, We're incorporating learnings and enhancements from our next generation platform into the HDX platform to guide overall development of the Samoa platform. And lastly, we're working diligently on our future 510K application for our HDX platform as an IBD in 2027. As I mentioned, we expanded our assay portfolio with the launch of the Samoa Ultrasensitive Immunoassay for NPTX2. and important emerging biomarker of synaptic function. On the spatial side, our key priorities for 2026 remain. Expanding our PCF biomarker panels for discovery application and also releasing new reagents for the HT platform to better support clinical application. Towards this end, we launched two new products. The spatial molecular barcoding kit for the phenocycler fusion initially available through an early access program and the Spatial Spectral DAPI 2.0 for the Phenol Imager HT. Moving to our third priority, let me update you on our progress in building out our Alzheimer's disease diagnostic business. We're creating a strong foundation within the emerging molecular Alzheimer's disease diagnosis, and we're excited about recent developments to support our efforts. We've developed what we believe is the best-in-class multi-marker test, which provides quantitative biomarker readings for all patients, versus 70% for the other available tests. And only 10% of our patients fall within the indeterminate zone compared to 30% of the competitive approaches. Our value proposition focuses on reliability and reduced ambiguity, addressing the clinician's needs. We're also building on the infrastructure to support the growth trajectory of this business. We submitted a 510K application for our single-site, multi-analyte, algorithmic, blood-based biomarker test to the FDA, and we remain in productive dialogue with the FDA. And we're continuing to advance our efforts to drive adoption and increase mindshare ahead of the FDA clearance, including securing premium pricing of $897 for Lucid AD complete tests from CMS, and now Anthem insurance coverage. We have additional studies underway for use in payer outreach. Healthcare providers who treat Alzheimer's want a reliable, non-invasive test to drive earlier intervention of this terrible disease. We firmly believe that we have the most comprehensive Alzheimer's diagnostic test available today in Lucid AD Complete. And we expect to garner meaningful market share as blood-based biomarker testing continues to grow. In summary, as shown on the next slide, We believe Alzheimer's diagnosis and monitoring will increasingly rely on multi-marker tests that can deliver early detection and low clinical ambiguity. Samoa's combination of ultra-sensitivity, multi-flexing, and automation will power Quanterix to be the lead test provider in this space. Furthermore, Quanterix has a first-in-market advantage with our Lucid AD complete test that is commercially available with established CMS prices Quantair stands unchallenged in offering all the benefits of a multi-analyte immunoassay for Alzheimer's disease diagnostics. And this positions the company as a neurodiagnostic leader. Before I turn the call over to our CFO, I want to assure everyone that our entire team is committed to building a profitable and sustainable research tools business with market leadership in both spatial and ultra-sensitive proteomes. We expect the actions that I discussed today will start to drive commercial effectiveness in the second half of 2026, but more impactfully in 2027 and beyond. We're not waiting for better markets. Instead, we're taking thoughtful and deliberate action to propel Quantarix to where the industry is going. We're excited about our opportunities with a strong, experienced management team leading the way to a brighter future for Quantarix. Now, let me turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Faessler. You know, Jason joined us in late May, and I'm already so pleased on how valuable he's been to me, the management team, and the board already. Jason.

Thank you, Everett, and good morning. Before I cover our financial performance, I would like to share a few observations from my first 45 days. First, I'm excited to be here at Quantarix. Everett has moved quickly to put the right leaders in place to drive better customer experiences and healthcare outcomes and put Quanterix on a steady growth path. In addition, Quanterix has a strong brand, strong customer relationships, and we are uniquely positioned in both our tools and diagnostics opportunities. I believe Quanterix is positioned for long-term success, and we now have the leadership to capture it. Moving now to Q2 and slide 12. Revenue for Q2 26 was 32.9 million, lower than expected. Our revenue grew year-over-year on an as-reported basis by 34% compared to Q2 25, revenue of 24.5 million. When including pre-acquisition revenue from ACOYA in Q2 25, what I refer to as pro forma, Total revenue declined year over year by 23%. I will cover details of our revenue performance on the next slide. Despite the revenue performance and volume in Q2, we managed our cash well in the quarter. Cash usage was 5.7 million in the quarter, and we ended Q2 with a cash balance of 96.9 million. On an adjusted basis, after excluding certain severance and integration costs, We reported adjusted cash usage of $4 million. When including pre-acquisition cash usage for Akoya in Q2-25, this represents a decline of $8.4 million. The company has taken significant steps as a part of its Akoya synergies and cost-cutting actions, which combined with improved collection activity enabled us to attain better cash preservation this quarter. On slide 13, I'll provide an overview of our Q2 2026 revenue performance. One factor in our year-over-year pro forma revenue decline was a 5% headwind driven by revenue pulled into Q2 25, ahead of tariffs implemented last year. Excluding this impact, our APAC revenue of 4.5 million was only down high single digits. EMEA revenue of $10.3 million also declined by mid-single digits on lower consumables pull-through. Finally, our Americas revenue of $18.1 million was down significantly, mostly reflecting commercial execution, but also continued softness in academic and government spending. In Q2, Samoa revenue of $20.6 million declined in the low teens percentage. with a smaller decline in Samoa consumables, but year-over-year growth in non-accelerator services. Our accelerator lab services, which mostly falls under the Samoa product family, declined more than the company average on lower project sizes, as we saw in Q1 26. One bright spot in the quarter is the significant increase in bookings in Q2 26 for our accelerator business. Spatial revenue of $12.3 million was down year-over-year across instruments and consumables, reflecting continued weak funding from U.S. ACAGOV markets. Our pharma CRO revenue of $14.2 million was down mid-teens percent year-over-year, but grew sequentially for both our spatial and Samoa products. Academic and government revenue of 18.7 million was down significantly in line with our spatial performance. Revenue from diagnostics partners was 1.6 million. While Q2 instrument sales were lower versus prior periods, consumable volume grew for our single biomarker test from our diagnostics enablement partners. Thanks to new leadership in our diagnostics group, we are making progress with academic medical centers, commercial reference labs, and the physician community, specifically in primary care. In addition, we are working with partners to expand the direct consumer experience in neurology. Moving to the P&L, GAAP gross profit and margin for the second quarter was 12.7 million or 38.5%. Non-GAAP gross profit was 15.8 million, a 54% increase from Q2 2025. and Non-GAAP gross margin was 47.9, an improvement of 600 basis points. The year-over-year improvement in gross margin was largely driven by a COI acquisition synergies and cost cutting. Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2026 were 62.1 million. Included in operating expenses are approximately 30.4 million of costs related to acquisition Integration, Separation, and Purchase Accounting. Notably, this includes a $26.9 million one-time non-cash write-off related to Akoya Goodwill. This impairment is required for U.S. GAAP and was driven by macro factors and company performance. This adjustment has no impact on operations or liquidity, and we believe the Akoya opportunity remains achievable once market conditions improve and our execution strengthens. The resulting non-GAAP operating expenses of 31.8 million in Q2 26 were up 0.7 million from 31.1 million in Q2 2025. But reflecting the significant synergy cost actions over the last 12 months and when applying pre-acquisition expenses from ACOIA to Q2 2025, Our pro forma and non-GAAP operating expenses declined by more than $19 million. As Efford mentioned, we're pleased to finalize the ACOIA integration effort in Q226 with the completion of the ERP integration and our cost synergies finalized by Q126. These cost reductions and strategic roadmap realignment have allowed Ponterix to reallocate capital to drive sustained growth We are prioritizing several investments, such as building out a dedicated commercial diagnostics team and sufficient infrastructure to manage our diagnostics partnerships. We have also made continued investments in our tools commercial organization and in our service teams to get closer to the customer. Our adjusted EBITDA was a loss of 10 million. Sequentially, this was roughly flat despite lower revenues versus the prior quarter. I will now turn to guidance for 2026 on the next slide. Due to the Q2 revenue shortfall, we are revising our guidance for the full year 2026 and now expect to report approximately 142 to 148 million of revenue rather than the previous 169 to 174 million of revenue. In addition, we expect non-GAAP gross margins to be in a range of 48 to 50% compared to non-GAAP gross margins of 49 to 53% previously. We now anticipate achieving cash flow breakeven in 2027 rather than at year end 2026 and expect to end 2026 with cash of approximately 80 million compared to about 100 million previously and no debt. In terms of our quarterly cadence, we expect Q3 revenue to be flat to slightly above Q2. And we expect that the significant commercial organization actions we are taking now will begin to drive increased revenues later in 2026, but more materially in 2027 and beyond. Based on our current plans, Cash usage in the second half is expected to be double digits in Q3, which will moderate in Q4. I will now turn it back over to Everett for closing remarks. Everett?

Thanks, Jason. We made meaningful progress in the second quarter, including strengthening our leadership team and preserving cash better than planned. And we're moving very quickly to address the impact of the Q2 revenue shortfall. driven by execution challenges and continued market softness. We're taking immediate and significant action to address commercial performance, including reorganizing our teams and adding seasoned leadership to sharpen accountability, accelerate execution, and improve operating results in the second half and beyond. I'm very excited about the new leadership, and I intend to work closely with all of them to make Quanterra's team among the best in the sector. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mary to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you, Everett. Operator, please assemble the Q&A roster.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from Dan Brennan with TD Calend.

Great, thank you. Thanks for the questions, guys. Maybe just to level set the guide, if you don't mind, just to start out. So when we think about the back half of the year, we got the top overall view from Jason sequentially, but could you break it down a little bit how you're thinking about instruments, consumables, and service, you know, as we go through the back half of the year and any color, since you are breaking out Quinterix and Acquire in the queue, just would be interesting to see how those progress in the back half of the year, just to start.

Yeah, Dan, this is Everett. I'll let Jason take that before I do. You know, I'm pleased with what Jason's done in his first two months. The finance team even got closer to the commercial team in terms of doing a robust, bottoms-up look at our pipeline, our funnel for each of these businesses, Spatial, our Samoa business, and Accelerator. I also think we're driving better forecast accuracy because of that deep dive, so we're confident in our new guy, but I'll have Jason break it out.

Sure. Hi, Dan. Nice to meet you. So a few things I would add.

So we're not going to guide to the product lines, but what I would say is our second half, we expect a pickup in Samoa versus Spatial. I think we're not expecting anything on the ACAGOV recovery. So I think Spatial will lag compared to Samoa. And I think based on our new assay releases. I think we're expecting some pickup on the consumable side, but there definitely is a sequential improvement expected on the instruments as well. I think I'll cut it there. I think the one thing I would also add is seasonally H2 is higher, so I think you would expect a bit of a pickup in the second half as well.

Okay, obviously a lot in the prepared remarks. Maybe Everett, just on Akoya specifically, I think Jason talked about the very end, you know, once market conditions improve and execution improves on ACOIA, I know there's a lot in your remarks about the commercial go-to-market and all the changes you're making, but specifically on ACOIA, what would you say, how would you highlight what needs to get done there in terms of the improvement in execution?

Yeah, thanks, Dan. I'm optimistic about our Akoya Spatial business for a few reasons, and Jason highlighted, first of all, our new launches. I've done over the last two months, guys, an intentional spending time with our customers. I've been in the field with field reps doing field rides globally. and what they've been telling me is, hey, the launch of new assays will give us momentum. So when I think about our PCF platform, we've launched the new PhenoCode molecular barcoding kit. We're already hearing from customers that it makes it easier for them to develop custom assays, which is right, you know, again, in our business space. On the PhenoImager HT, we've had new launches around our new ADC lung cancer panel, and also I spent time in California a couple weeks ago with one of our largest spatial customers, Prelude DX. They're using our phenol imager HT machine as the preferred platform for multiplexing, immunofluorescent, spatial diagnostics. So the technology is out there. We're getting feedback from customers that we're in the right place. In addition to that, we feel that the segmentation of our sales organization will pay dividends in the second half and will provide good sequential momentum. We have a legacy Akoya team that is out there. They know the customer base. They've been selling spatial for decades, and what we're doing now is we're prioritizing that team to sell spatial only to spatial talent. That's the feedback that I received from our organization, and we made the quick pivot, and that should pay dividends in the second half.

And then maybe one more just on diagnostics, and I'll go back into it. I think Q1 you talked about $10 million. and partner revenues last year. And then that's not a bad proxy for this year. I think you're expecting FDA in the back half of this year. Can you just update us on where that stands today? You're still really enthused on diagnostics, obviously, from the prepared remarks. You're investing a lot. You think you're differentiated. But just more, how do we think about the next, say, 12 to 18 months in diagnostics, either from revenue contribution, FDA, and then any other key milestones?

Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Really excited about diagnostics. Again, when I got here back in January, I was intentional about ensuring that we had a diagnostics team dedicated to growing this business. I've actually invited our diagnostics leader, Jeff Albrecht, on the call. I'll have him say a couple of comments because this is what he's done 24-7 over the last three months. Let me just mention a couple things that I still feel, again, really enthusiastic about. Number one is our differentiated blood-based biomarker test. We have a five-marker, multi-analyte algorithmic test that we're hearing from our customers. It gives them better answers, right? Every patient gets a quantitative result, so 100% of patients get that. And this indeterminate zone of going down to 10%, that's just giving clinicians better answers. and we're starting to see that pick up with our Lucent AD test quarter over quarter growth. So we feel good about that business. We're in productive discussions with the FDA around Lucent AD complete FDA approval and also our HDX machine. We stated last quarter that we were going to have that IBD ready in 2027. I spent time in Stuttgart, Germany of our contract manufacturer that's working to upgrade that machine. And again, that is right on time. So Our early head start is continuing to play out and just the early biomarker, blood-based biomarker acceptance in the field will only help us with momentum. But Jeff, anything else in your first three months?

Sure, Everett. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for the time here. Everett, I think you hit most of the highlights, but I think a few of the things that I'm particularly optimistic about As we continue to scale this team, we're working with a number of partners on the front end and the back end regarding what we're doing with infrastructure, what we're doing with resources, what we're doing to simplify the process for clients, whether those clients might be academic medical centers, commercial reference labs, or physician clients, as Everett mentioned. We're also continuing to scale this business smartly, prudently, but in a disciplined fashion in terms of How we grow the team and how we deploy that against some of the key resources. I'll close with one other thought, Everett. We did have the opportunity to go to the AAIC conference a couple months ago. We spoke with some of the thought leaders in the space. Their reactions, their responses to what we're doing in the space not only positions us well now, but it positions us very well for where we're going. We spoke of some of the key partnerships that we have with some of the people in the space. really resonating in the market. So we're very bullish here. We're very optimistic about where we're going to go. And with some of the things you mentioned relative to the payer dynamics and some of the things to differentiate a decision making with the multi-marker assay, really going to resonate in the short term and the long term. So thank you for the time.

Maybe I could take one last one in just the free cash. Oh, just in terms of free cash flow break-even getting pushed out to 27, obviously on the lower guide makes sense. Is there a revenue number associated with hitting free cash flow break-even next year that you need, like we should have in mind? Thanks.

Yeah, Dan, one follow-up on the diagnostics before I get to that. I did want to mention we are on track for growth ahead of the 10 million that we mentioned in Q1 for diagnostics. So that's a great sign. based on the partnerships from last year. And that's also on lighter instruments in the first half. So I think there's a lot of reasons for excitement on the DX. And the test volume is ramping accordingly to the partnerships that we established last year and continue to establish this year. So I thought that was useful. And then back to your question. At this time, we're not ready to talk about and many more. We are fully committed to cash breakeven in 2027.

Great, thanks a lot.

Your next question is from Kyle Mixon with Canaccord.

Hey guys, thanks for the questions. Welcome Jason to the call. Everett, good to see all these actions that you're taking, you know, the changes and so forth to improve performance. But maybe just talk about maybe like why continue to focus on investing and establishing that diagnostics business if it's not going to pay any near-term dividends and you have this research solution that continues to be pressured and challenged and you could probably help improve that perhaps first to just, you know, kind of alleviate this cash burn, you know, issue potentially as well. Thanks.

Thanks, Kyle. Our strategy is an and strategy. Our research tools business is a very important business to be in. We differentiate when it comes to being in this space. When I think about our Samoa technology and hearing from customers, we deliver clinical grade, ultra-sensitive results, precision, reproducibility, which I keep hearing when I'm in the field. Reproducibility is critical in this translational and clinical setting. having consistency from, you know, lot to lot, test to test, lab to lab is critical, and Samoa, we're right there. And then Spatial, listen, we're a high-flex proteomic platform for discovery, and also we play in the translational and clinical applications. So what we offer there in terms of our customers, they need Quantarix. We need to do a better job of executing our strategy and articulating our value prop, and we're going to do that with our new go-to-market. The other end is diagnostics, especially Alzheimer's disease diagnostics. Listen, Alzheimer's is a terrible disease. And like I said, I spent the last two to three months in the field talking to neurologists, talking to memory centers. They are thirsty for instruments. They're thirsty for solutions that can give them earlier detection of this disease. and because we have a differentiated blood-based biomarker in Lucent AD Complete because we feel we have the instrument that will be IBD ready and now we have dedicated team focused on this, we're in the right place to grow Quanterix sequentially. So we're excited about both the research tools and the diagnostics opportunity.

All right, got it. Thanks for that. And then on consumables especially, I mean, it makes sense the instruments would be down and everything, it's a tough environment, but On reagent revenue for Akoya, that was a smaller business for them historically, but others in the spatial consumables market this quarter had seen growth, so I'm curious what happened there. And then in Samoa, anything on Poulter you can talk about over there?

Yeah, maybe let me kick it off and I'll go to Jason. Listen, our spatial business, the space market has been facing headwinds, especially in U.S., Government and Academic Accounts. Funding remains constrained. Again, we're hearing this directly from our customers. Listen, our job is going to be, I keep getting back to this, we're going to execute better in the second half. I love the fact that we're now going to have singularly focused, segmented representatives going to talk to customers that they've been talking to for decades. And that prioritization will definitely help us with not just instrument placement, but just as important as consumable pull-through. So we have good, solid strategies and incentives to do that in the second half. Jason, I don't know if you want to add anything.

Sure, Kyle. I think what I would add is I think the Samoa consumables were a bit weaker, and that's likely linked to some of the execution challenges. I think we're excited about the tool and its capabilities. So I think this is much more an execution issue. And Everett's taking, you know, very decisive, significant steps here. to impact the execution of the second half. So I think that's what I would add.

All right, perfect. And then lastly, on the Anthem coverage for the Alzheimer's test, that was great to see. Obviously not really any impact revenue-wise from that for a while probably, but how does that maybe influence other commercial plans to grant coverage to those types of tests or other neurology tests, do you think?

Yeah, Jeff handled this in a second, but we're excited about the Anthem coverage of blood-based biomarkers, specifically our opportunity with Lucent AD Complete. I think it justifies the importance of blood-based biomarkers, the fact that Anthem was a first mover. What I'm excited about is this is happening before our kind of scalable, broad-based reimbursement strategy that Jeff has in place. But Jeff, if you want to talk a little bit about Anthem.

Sure, Everett, thank you. And I think the Anthem position puts us in a nice situation to look to the other payers in terms of what's next. And I can say also, in conjunction with where we are with CMS, it puts a lot of the dominoes in line for what we're looking to do. Obviously with Anthem being one of the larger payers, there's other payers out there of their size and significance that we'll be speaking with this about as well. But we think that as we move forward, we'll apply a dedicated resource against this for health plans. They will work with the local plans as well as the nationals. And we think, again, this first mover experience with Anthem is going to put us in a good position to line up some of the opportunity that we have there.

Excellent. Okay. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Puneet Salda with Lear Inc. Partners.

Yeah. Hi, guys. So Everett, I mean, I understand the guide just given what you're seeing in the quarter. But maybe just walk us through, you know, what are you assuming for Samoa versus the spatial and versus Alzheimer's in the full year guide? And I think the bigger question here is, you know, why is there not risk for further guide cuts? Just given the macro backdrop, we're in the competitive positioning of the products you have versus, you know, core Samoa spatial launches are also coming in the market. and all of this is happening while the organization is undergoing somewhat of a transformation towards Neurology DX. So with all of these moving parts, maybe just give us a sense of your thinking in the overall guide cut and why should this be the last one?

Yeah, thanks, Puneet. I appreciate the question. Listen, Jason has come in in short time, and I'm really happy with the robust nature now of us just digging in rep by rep, territory by territory, funnel by funnel, You know, spending time out in the field, getting kind of what I would call just-in-time feedback on not just our offerings, but the market, what customers are saying. I feel confident in our second half re-guide. I do. I also feel confident of the momentum that we're building in our diagnostics business, Puneet. We're putting the right resources in place. We're having the right conversations, not just internally, but Jeff has accelerated partnership conversations with reference labs. That will actually pay some dividends here in the second half, but most importantly in 2027. In addition to that, I like the leadership that we're adding. And this isn't new leadership to healthcare. I spoke about Jim, who has decades of experience in capital equipment. with his experience at GE Healthcare. Jim also led a big service business at GE Healthcare. And then just his background at Exact Sciences of establishing sales and marketing and operations discipline. I mean, he will absolutely hit the ground running on day one. And Jeff with the same background of growing our diagnostics business. These guys are seasoned veterans that I've worked with in the past. So you combine the fact that we have differentiated instruments and technology, the fact that we're going to have a renewed focus on everyday sales execution, and then just, you know, been there, done that leadership that's going to drive day to day, we feel confident in our second half guide. Jason, I don't know if you want to add anything around.

Yeah, the one thing I would add, Puneet, is I really think that the productivity benefit from This reorganization of the sales team, I think we're excited about that. I think this was an effect that took place with the past alignment. I think we're excited about the potential, and I think the team is excited about it as well.

Yeah, I'll add this lastly. This segmentation of what we're doing with our commercial organization and how we look at our current talent, and the fact that I think that there's going to be less disruption, this is something that they've been asking for. They want to get deeper within their respective expertise, get deeper with customer interactions and being able to just articulate their specified value prop. Like Jason said, we're excited about the second half sequential improvement.

Maybe to your question on the guide, I won't guide to the specific platforms, but what I would say is probably the decline for spatial continues to Q3, Q4, similar to the first half, with more of a recovery on the Samoa side, led by consumables with some sequential improvement in instruments. So that's some more detail.

Yeah, that's helpful. and then look in the you know pivot to Alzheimer's, the act and overall neurology diagnostics. I mean could you talk a little bit about sort of how much of you know the tools business is you know how much of a core is that business within that within the life science tools business how much of a core is a spatial versus and the similar. I mean, we're just getting questions around whether this is, given the pivot, you know, how are you thinking about these two businesses longer term? Is this something that remains core to Quantirix longer term as well?

Yes. Thanks, Puneet. Our research tools business is absolutely core. We look to stabilize this business. get it back to flat and then start growing it very soon. I think it's representative of the leader that I brought in. I mean, I brought in Jim Goot, who I've worked with in the past for seven years at GE and Exact. He is experienced in terms of bringing back discipline, sales productivity, and growth. Jim will be responsible for turning our research tools business around. and I'm confident that Jim will do that. In addition, diagnostics is the same. We've done and we've said this on previous earnings calls, we've made priority decisions here and that's freed up some resources and investments and we're taking those investments and we are investing in diagnostics. So it's not like it's going to all of a sudden blow out our spending, but we're prudently, again, investing in diagnostics with partnerships with leaders that we're bringing in and really like what Jeff has done in the last two months with having a focus on scaling diagnostics in the right way, you know, to drive growth this year. And then you're going to see that take off in 27.

Got it. And just last one for me. I mean, with the rapid CMS pathway, I don't know if you had a chance to look at that and see if there are any benefits here. Anything you can provide on the FDA side would be helpful too. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Puneet. And again, I'll have Jeff maybe talk about the CMS $897 differentiated price. Listen, we're in regular dialogue with the FDA. We believe that those discussions have been really productive, especially over the last month that's enabling us to ensure that we get approval for our Lucent AD complete test somewhere towards the end of this year. But Jeff, CMS?

Yeah, super pleased with where we've landed with CNS relative to the multi-marker assay. I think it really just solidifies the fact that they see the value in terms of what we have with the algorithm, with the decision-making tied to the five assays. It's starting to take hold right away. I mean, this is relatively new to the space and this is getting out there to the physician community. Initially, when we were starting with this message, we were talking to many of the academic medical centers, but as this discussion has evolved into the physician community with primary care, memory centers, neurologists, these are folks that are really appreciative in terms of what we've done with this CMS piece. So I think you've really just seen the beginning of where we're going to go with this. We'll report more traction on this in the very near future, but we're bullish about where this is going to go.

Got it. All right. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

At this time there are no further questions. With that we'll conclude today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now