Exact Sciences (EXAS) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Exact Sciences (EXAS -0.46%)
Q4 2020 Earnings Call
Feb 16, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Exact Sciences Corporation fourth-quarter 2020 earnings call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Erik Holznecht.

Thank you. Please, go ahead, sir.

Erik Holznecht -- Investor Relations

Thank you, Kathy, and thank all of you for joining us for the Exact Sciences fourth-quarter 2020 conference call. On the call, today are Kevin Conroy, the company's chairman and CEO; and Jeff Elliott, our chief financial officer. Exact Sciences issued a news release earlier this afternoon detailing our fourth-quarter financial results. This news release and today's presentation are available on our website at exactsciences.com.

During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Our actual results may be materially different from such statements. Reconciliation to GAAP figures are available in our earnings press release and descriptions of the risks and uncertainties associated with Exact Sciences are included in our SEC filings, both can be accessed through our website. It is now my pleasure to introduce the company's Chairman and CEO, Kevin Conroy.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Erik. We are thrilled to announce that Megan Jones, our head of Investor Relations had healthy twin girls on Friday, and we congratulate Megan and her husband Chris, on this great news. Last year, we continued to transform Exact Sciences and advance our mission to eradicate cancer. We strengthened our R&D capabilities in our cancer test menu by adding the Thrive, Base Genomics, Paradigm, and Viomics teams to the Exact Sciences family.

Because of our team's resilience throughout the pandemic, we tested more than 4 million people across all of our tests and generated nearly $1.5 billion in total revenue. We'll talk today about how we've evolved into a leading cancer diagnostics company with the broadest and most advanced capabilities, relationships, and foundation. Backed by these strengths, we're confident in the long-term growth of Cologuard, Oncotype DX in our future tests, including minimum residual disease, liquid biopsy, and multi-cancer screening tests. We plan to extend our leadership throughout the cancer continuum, addressing the largest patient impact opportunities in diagnostics.

Cumulatively, this represents a combined total opportunity of $60 billion. Our people, scientific platform, and leading tests place at the forefront of earlier cancer detection and precision medicine. Our CFO, Jeff Elliott will now review our financials.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Kevin. Good afternoon. The fourth-quarter revenue was $466 million. Screening revenue was $250 million, a 9% increase driven by Cologuard volume growth.

8,000 new healthcare providers ordered Cologuard during the quarter, and nearly 227,000 have ordered since launch. Precision Oncology revenue was $118 million. COVID testing revenue was $99 million consistent with our guidance. The fourth-quarter GAAP gross margin was 74%.

Non-GAAP gross margin, which excludes amortization of acquired intangibles, was 79%. Non-GAAP gross margin increased two points sequentially on volume leverage in screening and Precision Oncology. Sales and marketing expense was $167 million. G&A expense was $145 million, including $12 million related to the termination of the Biocartis agreement.

R&D expense was $446 million. Based on the relevant accounting rules, the Base Genomics acquisition was expensed rather than capitalized, excluding this impact, R&D expense was $34 million. Net loss was $437 million also impacted by the Base Genomics acquisition. Adjusted EBITDA was $88 million, bringing the full-year amount to $169 million.

This demonstrates the profit-generating potential of our business model and the robustness of our foundation. We ended the quarter with cash and securities of $1.8 billion. On a pro forma basis, factoring in the January acquisition of Thrive and TARDIS license, our year-end cash balance was $1.4 billion. Turning to our 2021 outlook.

Due to COVID uncertainties, we are not providing formal revenue guidance. We expect first-quarter screening revenue to decline sequentially because of typical seasonal trends. Primary care utilization is lower in December and early January because of the holidays. This impacts screening revenue in the first quarter, due to the normal lag between a Cologuard order and a completed test.

In 2020, first quarter screening revenue was down 4% sequentially. We expect the sequential decline to be slightly more this year because of the year-end spike in COVID that lasted through January and is now tapering off miserably. As a result, we have a positive growth outlook for 2021, as the COVID vaccine becomes more widely available and other growth drivers take hold. For Precision Oncology, we expect to see modest sequential growth in the first quarter as breast cancer diagnosis continued to recover.

We expect COVID testing revenue to be down sequentially in the first quarter. COVID testing in the State of Wisconsin, where most of our volume is from has decreased about 50% from its peak, and COVID cases are down nearly 90%. Year to date, we've done approximately $15 million in COVID testing revenue. Based on recent trends in COVID cases, we expect our COVID testing revenue to decline further going forward.

We plan to continue offering COVID testing as needed to help support our employees and communities. Moving to opex. This year, we plan to increase our investment in growth, given our confidence in the long-term outlook for Cologuard and Oncotype and the potential of our pipeline. For the full year, we expect sales and marketing expense of $800 million, to $850 million.

This includes expanded advertising for Cologuard with a campaign to reach the 45 to 49 age group, and the addition of a women's health field sales team. We've also assumed Pfizer field sales activity starts to normalize in the first half of the year. Due to the nature of this partnership, as Pfizer's field activity increases, so will our partnership fees. For G&A, we expect $550 million, to $575 million before considering integration costs.

Investments include headcount to support growth, multiple IT projects, and the Thrive acquisition. For R&D, we expect $375 million, to $400 million, including roughly $50 million related to the TARDIS license. R&D includes investments to support our multi-cancer and MRD programs and the full-year impact of BLUE-C which is a study of the Cologuard 2.0 and our colon cancer blood test. We expect around $95 million for intangible amortization, and we expect capex to be around $125 million.

I will now turn the call back to Kevin.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Jeff. Our mission is to eradicate cancer and the suffering it causes. Our teams are working to bring to patients and physicians a complete end-to-end menu of life-changing cancer tests. Achieving this starts with great science and scientists, we had an accurate and adaptable platform to support tests at every step from screening to recurrence monitoring.

Our scientific platform is matched by the depth and breadth of our sales and marketing capabilities. We have more than 1,000 team members in our global commercial organization with deep relationships spanning five specialties in large health systems. Our lab and IT systems deliver valuable patient insights and a seamless customer experience, allowing us to be an end-to-end provider of cancer diagnostics for patients and physicians. Each new test we develop will be supported by this unrivaled foundation.

Cologuard has several exciting long-term growth drivers, including the opportunity to screen people earlier and positively impact an alarming trend in colon cancer incidents. Since the mid-'90s, there has been a 51% rise in colon cancer in adults younger than 50, there are nearly 19 million eligible Americans age 45 to 49, and most of them have never been screened. As a result of this, the United States Preventive Services Task Force issued draft guidelines lowering their recommended screening age to 45, which we expect to be finalized by the middle of this year. Last month, we shared prospective data showing Cologuard's specificity was over 95% for patients age 45 to 49.

That means the false positive rate was only 5% in that age group. This very low false-positive rate combined with the convenient at-home nature of Cologuard makes it very well suited to screen this age group. While commercial payers typically follow finalized guidelines, we're excited to see that Humana last week started covering Cologuard at age 45, joining Aetna as the other major health plan to do so. This is a step in the right direction for patients who prefer an accurate, non-invasive screening option.

We have an innovative and comprehensive marketing plan in place to emphasize the No.1 choice. Cologuard is a highly sensitive and specific test and Cologuard 2.0 raises the accuracy bar expanding the growth opportunity in colon cancer screening. Our goals with Cologuard 2.0 are to at least maintain cancer sensitivity, increase pre-cancer sensitivity, and decrease false positives by 30%. We expect these enhancements to improve revenue and cost of goods by 5% to 10% per test.

We're also developing a colon cancer blood test to provide another option for patients to get screened. Our goal is for BLUE-C, our prospective 10,000 patient trials to support FDA approval for both Cologuard 2.0 and our colon cancer blood test.  BLUE-C will collect blood and stool for our blood test, Cologuard, and a fit test, allowing us to compare the performance of all three in one trial. The study is progressing with more than 100 high-quality sites enrolling patients. These programs will deepen our leadership in colon cancer screening over the long-term.

We believe multi-cancer screening will be an incredibly impactful weapon in the war on cancer. We are thrilled to have a team of talented scientists and leaders from Thrive joined us as we expand on the power of early detection from colon cancer to multiple cancers at once. We believe combining Exact Sciences' methylation-focused approach with Thrive's mutation approach will provide a powerful screening test to patients. We plan to make our multi-cancer screening test available through our screening teams.

We'll leverage our primary care sales in marketing, lab, IT, regulatory, and customer experience capabilities to offer the best solution to patients and physicians. Our Precision Oncology team is a foundation we can build on as we expand into minimum residual disease, recurrence monitoring, and therapy selection. With Oncotype DX, we have a world-class brand, deep relationships with oncologists, international strength, and an unmatched evidence generation engine. The Oncotype DX test also generates durable, high margin revenue, and powerful cash flow to support future tests.

We're thrilled to announce, we've agreed to acquire Ashion Analytics to help accelerate the development of our oncology portfolio, including minimum residual disease and other sequencing-based tests. Ashion is a CLIA certified and CAP-accredited sequencing lab based in Phoenix, Arizona. Ashion developed GEM Ex Tra, one of the most comprehensive genomic cancer tests available, and provides access to whole-exome, match germline, and transcriptome sequencing capabilities. This breadth of knowledge will support our efforts to develop innovative diagnostics across the continuum.

Ashion was born out of Translational Genomics Research Institute or TGen, as was our recently licensed TARDIS technology. The TARDIS is a highly sensitive patient-specific approach that can detect very small amounts of tumor DNA in the blood. The talented team at Ashion will be instrumental in advancing TARDIS for minimum residual disease testing. With Ashion, we've added a high-quality team, lab, and unique capabilities to help us lead in Precision Oncology.

We also announced plans for a 10-year research collaboration, bringing in the expertise of TGen and the City of Hope. The city of Hope is a national cancer institute designated comprehensive cancer center. This collaboration complements our continued relationships with Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins University, better positioning us for years to come. We transformed Exact Sciences in the past year and are now well-positioned to fulfill our mission of eradicating cancer and the suffering it causes.

By detecting cancer earlier across the continuum, we can drastically improve outcomes and significantly decrease treatment costs. The acquisitions of Ashion, Thrive, Base Genomics, Paradigm, and Biomics enhance our R&D capabilities and add to our deep pipeline of light-changing cancer diagnostics. These enhanced capabilities along with our established lab, IT, and commercial infrastructure will allow us to deliberate a complete end-to-end menu of high-quality cancer tests to patients in need. We're now happy to take your questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions]. And your first question is from Vijay Kumar from Evercore ISI.

Vijay Kumar -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question. Maybe I'll start with a high-level one. With the guidance, I understand the reluctance of the annual guide. But perhaps on Q1, I guess, the worst -- down 4% sequential, what we saw last year, if I'm looking at the comps here, perhaps the comps look easier in Q1.

So, I'm just curious because the math implies, looks like you guys are guiding to $235-ish million in screening revenues, streets around $255-ish million. So I'm curious about the sequential comments here on screening revenues.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Vijay, I'll start with that. So on the guidance, it's really important to keep in mind here the impact of the holidays. I've said this to forward, I'll say it for future years.

For the Cologuard business, our screening business, you should expect Q1 below Q4, and that's because of this timing impact of holidays and although the winter weather and all the travel around that affect us in Q1 more. There's about a 30 day lag between an order and a completed test. We recognize revenue on a completed test. And so, the impact of the holidays and this year-end spikes that we had in COVID is felt on that business more so in Q1.

So that's all that's happening here. When you look now at the case count both in Wisconsin and nationally, the case counts are coming down meaningfully. So there's a lot of reason for optimism as you look ahead to the rest of the year. At the same time, we had material growth drivers coming on Cologuard 45, which is a $3 billion addressable market coming on with the guideline update we expect mid-year.

The three-year rescreen opportunity, we expect this year over $100 million of revenue from rescreening and the number of growth from there. On top of that, electronic ordering is a major growth driver that we expect to see more so in the back half of this year. So, there's a lot of reason for optimism here, and longer-term, this market is enormous. There are 45 million Americans who need to be screened right now.

So, we've never been more confident in the growth outlook for Cologuard. The Q1 commentary is really just related to the seasonal impact of holidays and this transitory impact from COVID.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And Vijay, let me add to that. One of --throughout 2020, we started our belief that COVID would actually start to move people more toward a noninvasive at-home screening method. And if you take a look at Q4, even though wellness visits were off appreciably, maybe up to 40% access by our field team was significantly off, and colonoscopy screening was down 25%. Cologuard utilization [Audio gap].

Vijay Kumar -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Thanks. And then now for my follow-up Kevin, just on the data side, the clinical side. I guess it's a two-part question. What is the timing of the validation of the pan-cancer test.

I know it's expected at some point this year. And related to that, I guess BLUE-C, you didn't mention the blood-based results will be out. It's two trials under one, I guess, trial, but two different tests, if you will. What is, I guess -- I know CMS asked for 74% sensitivity given Cologuard has done so well, plus 90%.

Is there a sense of where the blood-based test, what it should look like in your BLUE-C study.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So I'll try to take each of those questions in turn. First of all, as it relates to our multi-cancer test CancerSEEK, we're first focused on developing additional capabilities with that test by combining the best of Exact and Thrive. So the Exact methylation approach and the Thrive mutation approach, plus the protein elements, we believe will improve sensitivity while holding specificity relatively constant. That's important.

So that's what the team is focused on. Now, we'll be conducting additional studies in the second half to validate this approach. And then, we expect to launch the pivotal study to support FDA approval next year. That's the path.

And we'll let you know, as we are able to present that data in scientific forums that are most likely to occur next year. The second question around blood-based testing for colon cancer. The CMS is looking for a minimum of 74% sensitivity. The challenge, of course, with any blood-based test is to detect the rare event in stage one cancers.

We believe that we have equal to, or better than performance with our approach using methylation markers, and that will be part of our study. We would expect to be able to meet that overall sensitivity based on the data that we have internally today. But of course, the proof is in the prospective study. And there are no guarantees for anybody as you move into a prospective setting.

Was there a third question that was embedded there Vijay, or did I get both of those.

Vijay Kumar -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

No, you did that Kevin. I appreciate you taking my questions. I'll step back in the line.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Dan Arias from Stifel.

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp -- Analyst

Yeah. Hi guys. Good afternoon, Kevin, I'm just thinking about some of the things that go into a proper liquid assay for colorectal cancer. There was some data presented by Freenom in January on adenoma detection.

So, I'm just curious about your latest thoughts on polyps and polyp detection, maybe in the context of sensitivity that you saw, or that you see for Cologuard. But also the mid-60s for the initial 2.0 data, and just where you think the bar is headed there for adenoma detection capabilities.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think for anybody who's participating in this space, a truly prospective study of the ability to detect pre-cancerous polyps remains to be seen. That study was not a prospective study in the sense that one would normally use that word, and so, there's going to be the fit test that sets the bar there. So, the fit test did a test about 24% of advanced adenomas, and there just isn't much data on a blood-based test in that prospective setting. We do know that what we saw in our deep-sea study, which was our original study is the polyps.

The advanced adenomas in a prospective study are smaller than you see in case-control studies, and the sensitivity for a stool test is directly proportional to the size of those advanced adenomas. So, it really remains to be seen and requires a large effort to get to a sufficient number of samples to see what the performance is. I would be surprised to see sensitivity equivalent to the fit test. But if so, then what you basically have is, a test that is equivalent to the fit test, and it's going to be hard because to displace the fit test with a blood-based test.

If you have equivalent performance in part, just because of the $25 cost of the fit test, lots of challenges to address this market we're intent on delivering the very best test to fit patients and physicians.

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp -- Analyst

OK, very helpful. If I could just stick with the blood-based assay line of questioning and then touch on the MRD assay. I mean, I know things are still coming together there, but just given how quickly the market is evolving here, the technologies are evolving. What kind of timeline should we be thinking about commercialization there and is the strategy to offer a customized assay, or is it more of an off-the-shelf type of assay that you'll be coming to market with there.

Thanks.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

With our MRD assay, we'll be in a better position to talk about the product configuration, the product performance in the coming quarters. We have a robust team of clinical trials and sample collections that are already under way. And as we mentioned, because of the Ashion acquisition and the TARDIS license, we believe we have just tremendously sensitive and specific technology. And we can combine that with this leading platform that we have and connection to oncologists.

And for example, with our market-leading position in early stage breast cancer testing, one of the things that we're able to do is to leverage a fat tissue sample as a starting point in that patient's journey. We also know, which patients are at the highest risk of recurrence, so our collaborators are really excited about the opportunity to work with us in the breast and colon space, and then expand beyond. We'll get into some more timelines and details in the coming quarters.

Operator

The next question is from Derik de Bruin from Bank of America.

Derik de Bruin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. So Dan just took my MRD question. So let me get -- let me think of something quick here. So I guess, can we talk a little bit about some of the other ethics.

I mean, is liver still on track for this year, I believe.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

It is. We'll make our liver test available in the first half of this year. We're very excited about that. So we have a lot of things to talk with customers about, and we built one of the leading health systems, sales forces, our field forces in diagnostics, I don't think there's a close second.

And so, we just have a number of things to talk with them about from Cologuard to Oncotype DX, to MRD, to CancerSEEK, and now the liver tests. So, we're excited about the impact that we can have at the health system level, which is critical.

Derik de Bruin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

So, there are a number of companies that are targeting the liver market. Can you just be a little bit more specific on how you differentiate us from some of the competition, based on some of the data that's out there.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Derik this is Jeff. The portion of the liver market that we are approaching is -- those that are at high risk of liver disease. That typically means those with cirrhosis and Hepatitis B in the U.S.

that's 3 million people. That's where you test because that's where 90% plus of all liver disease happens. So the goal here is to get more people tested because today, fewer than one of the three people are tested in this market, and we know that testing helps save lives. The differentiator here is that we bring this broad platform.

As Kevin talked about, we've got deep relationships with the GIS, health systems, primary care, all of this will come into play in liver disease. We also downstream our developing tests for recurrence. We have a test for therapy selection so, we are differentiated in that. We have an end-to-end platform with an end-to-end suite of tests and deep relationships.

On top of that, I think our team is very, very good at generating the clinical evidence that's so important for getting the early test-launched, getting adoption, securing reimbursement, and guidelines. So, I love how we're positioned for liver tests and other new tests that we bring to market.

Derik de Bruin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Great. And if I can sneak one final one in on the Oncotype portfolio, you said modest growth in the first quarter. How should we think about that for the full year.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Not getting to that Derik, but things with near-term drivers are really tied to a cancer diagnosis. We've seen breast cancer diagnosis come back and you've seen this business perform very well in Q4, relative to Q3. We do see those diagnoses come back, obviously, mammography volumes are impacted by COVID, back in April last year, they were down 95%. But this comes a long way back.

So too has our business. Over the course of the year, we expect growth to improve as they come back to the rest of the way. On the prostate side there, prostate cancer diagnoses are done more, and so that business is more impacted, but this is a very, very strong business. The evidence behind these tests is incredibly strong.

And now with the responder study that came out late last year that is helping to open up the node-positive market. We're seeing geographies around the world start to move as far as reimbursement, which will help growth, especially as we exit this year and into next year.

Derik de Bruin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Great. Thank you, very much.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure.

Operator

You have a question from Doug Schenkel from Cowen.

Doug Schenkel -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Thank you for taking my questions. I want to start on guidance and then I just want to ask, I guess what one of kind of a couple of pipeline or product development questions. So first on guidance, I mean, this has been touched on a couple of times, Jeff, but I just want to be clear. The seasonality dynamic that you've walked through earlier and asking about screening and really Cologuard guidance makes sense, and you've talked about it in the past. That said, as we think about Q4 of 2020, people weren't traveling as much for the holidays so that would seem to suppress that holiday dynamic that we've always talked about in December.

I think there's still a need for screening catch-ups, as you guys talked about in response to at least one other question. Colonoscopy capacity is constrained and the positivity rates are now just starting to come down again. So, to be clear, are you simply guiding like, this is kind of a regular year with a regular seasonal pattern, but leaving room for upside to account for all the things that you mentioned that I just mentioned, which could result in upside relative to these targets. Is that the right way to think about it.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Well. Doug, we wanted to give very clear guidance on Q1, given the different dynamics here. The biggest dynamic is the seasonal trend. I mentioned last year down 4% in Q1 versus Q4.

This year, we expect a similar trend, perhaps a bit more because of what we saw with COVID. To your point on the holidays, yes. People weren't traveling as much, but you still lose that week during you lose at least a week in Q4 because during Christmas, New Year's, and holidays people aren't going in for wellness visits. So wellness visit volumes, which we can track closely are down meaningfully.

Kevin talked before colonoscopy volumes down at least 25%. So, we are seeing the backlog, this catch-up happening. There are well over a million people still in the backlog. We are capturing that.

That's why we saw a 9% year-on-year growth in Cologuard, and with colonoscopies down where they were. This really sets the stage for an exciting year of this year, and next year and beyond, given that you've got this backlog that we're starting to capture. And as Kevin talked about we're pulling ahead Cologuard growth, this growth we've talked about overtime is being pulled ahead. At the same time over the course of this year, all these new drivers we've talked about are really starting to take hold.

Things like Cologuard 45, again, the midyear guidance update that we expect should help unlock that major new market $3 billion opportunities. This year, we expect, I would say at least $40 million of revenue from that $45 million, to $49 million. So, there's a long way for us to grow there. Electronic ordering, we expect the biggest year in the company's history, as far as converting fax orders to electronic ordering.

And then lastly, rescreening. I mentioned before, we spent over $100 million of revenue this year from rescreening, and the opportunities even bigger next year. So, I wanted to make sure I give a little color on what to expect in Q1. I think some folks, when they update their models last in October after our third quarter call, obviously it hadn't factored in that big spike in COVID because that happened after the call.

And then some folks, I think forgotten how the holiday dynamic plays for Cologuard, which is a bit different than some companies because of that 30-day lag.

Doug Schenkel -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

No, understood. And that's all super helpful, Jeff. It's just -- I'm sure as you can appreciate it's on one hand, it seems like you're trying to do some model clean up and set expectations in a way that you normally would, Q4 to Q1 that kind of reflects that pattern. It's just not clear the way you're describing it that Q1 guidance captures all those other positive things that I mentioned.

And you just mentioned again, so I guess we were just trying to figure out how to balance those things, but I get it. Thank you for that. And then, I guess on the pipeline really just a couple. On Oncotype MAP, I know it's early to give a whole lot of new details and I know Dan asked about this earlier, but I just want to make sure, is there any reason you wouldn't the somewhat typical pattern we've seen with others where tissue launches first, and then there's liquid.

And then, you -- would expect to be able to piggyback existing LCDs, and as you're designing the assay, is its design with both U.S. and international markets in mind. So those are the Oncotype MAP questions. And then on Ashion, it sounds exciting.

I'm admittedly just starting to learn more about the asset and their offerings. I'm curious if this acquisition is all motivated by a desire to be better positioned to address both centralized, as well as decentralized markets, depending on how this market evolves over time. Thank you.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Why don't we take Ashion first. The Ashion cancer panel is nearly 20,000 genes, and about 170 introns. It is a robust panel, now that's primarily used by academic centers and more in terms of research. It also serves as a foundation for a tissue first and then liquid approach to MRD.

It can provide that basis. It has -- it's differentiated in terms of its quality both because of its approach of germline subtraction, which reduces false positives. And also bioinformatics is tremendously powerful and it has this evidence curation software, which allows for automated interpretation. And that's very complementary with Oncotype MAP.

We'll be able to offer it through our Precision Oncology sales team, and both of these labs happened to be in the same physical building in Phoenix, Arizona. It's important to note that the GEM ExTra panel has mauled the X reimbursement today. So that's helpful. As it relates to MRD, we just licensed the TARDIS technology.

We just announced that we will be acquiring Ashion. So give us a little bit of time here before we roll out exactly what the product strategy is. We will be doing that. And the first people that we want to lay that out to our prospective customers and collaborators.

Suffice it to say, we have the ability to be very impactful in a quick way here.

Operator

The next question is from Catherine Schulte from Baird.

Catherine Schulte -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst

Hi. Thanks for the questions. And I guess first, Jeff, I think I heard you say, expect over $100 million rescreen this year, which implies recapturing maybe 20% to 25% of the people who got screened in 2018. Is that the right ballpark to be thinking about.

And where do you think that recapture rate can go over the next couple of years.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Catherine, on rescreening, I've said long-term, I think at least half of our revenue will come from rescreening. So this is a huge opportunity. The teams have made tremendous strides at capturing, even more of these patients. Longer-term where it goes, I think we'll capture at least 50% of the patients, knowing that you have to exclude patients that have a positive, and patients that drop out of the pool for other factors.

So, we've made some good progress there. Yes, I'm not going to give you the specific number as far as the recapture rate, but it continues to move higher. Thanks to all the tools that put in place and the efforts of our team to go out and capture these people.

Catherine Schulte -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst

Great. Helpful. And then with the leadership change in the screening franchise, can you talk to any top priorities for Pat or strategic changes as she takes over for Mark, and if you see things start to reopen more, do you have an appetite for expanding the sales force or are you happy with what the size now.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Pat's strategic priorities are the same as Mark's. It is to continue to be obsessive about improving the customer experience and how well we are to reach customers with the message it is screening. There are 45 million unscreened Americans, 19 million in that 45 to 49-year-old group. So there's an immense focus on making sure that we get to that group.

We're kicking off our campaign with Stan that we're supporting stand-up to cancer to focus on underserved populations, which is a really important initiative for the company this year. In terms of expanding the sales force, yes. One of the things that we highlighted here is that we're building a women's health team. There are about 25%, maybe more than that now with 45-year-olds included in guidelines of typical patients in -- of an OB-GYN, about 25% or more are in the colon cancer screening population.

And it's typically, there is the only physician. So getting to women who are currently, maybe only getting the fit tests or not being referred to colonoscopy, getting them to get a Cologuard test is how one of the examples of us expanding. We're really pleased with how Pfizer now is starting to have more activity in the field. And we expect that throughout the year that that will increase.

We're working together very closely with Pfizer and Pat having come from Pfizer, I think is in a unique position to build the collaborative efforts of the two teams. So Pat is -- one of the things she did as she moved people around in the organization and flatten that organization. And you're seeing a tremendous amount of energy, as we start this year. Mark built an incredible team, and that team is -- remains incredibly hungry to make a difference.

Catherine Schulte -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst

OK, great. Thank you.

Operator

You have a question from Brian Weinstein from William Blair.

Brian Weinstein -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Hey, guys thanks for taking the questions. First and perhaps most importantly, congrats to Megan, I'm sure she's listening. I hope everybody is doing well and healthy.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Brian, she better not be listening.

Brian Weinstein -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

For sure [Inaudible]. So the first question on Thrive, you only had it under a year here for a little bit, can you talk about some of the things that maybe you didn't appreciate ahead of time. And as we think about the pathway here, sounds like you're pretty convinced that the FDA path is the way to go. Is there any chance you would launch with an LVT as you think about the FDA.

How to think about the potential for what that trial even looks like in terms of size, scale, costs, those kinds of things. I know it's down the road, but it's an important one.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, let's start with the fact that getting a broad-based reimbursement for a multi-cancer screening test without FDA approval and well-designed randomized studies is just not realistic. And getting patients to pay out of pocket for any type of medical service, we know is very difficult. There is a role though for making a CancerSEEK available as a lab-developed test, potentially, in a way that could help develop real-world evidence and work with health systems that are our customers today in a way that could advance their goals of research and getting more people familiar with the new technology and hiring out all of the finer aspects of a service offering. For example, it's important to be able to educate people on what a positive and negative result means, and what happens to the patient in each case. So, in terms of conducting a study for such a transformative test as CancerSEEK, we intend to do a randomized study.

It will be a very large population that we study, and it will include average-risk patients and also higher-risk patients, most likely in that study. That study will start next year. We will do it the right way, if anybody expects to get a test into guidelines in an average-risk population, an average risk study is going to be needed. And so just like with Cologuard, we'll do this the right way.

We will open up large abilities or significant abilities to positively impact patient populations. And we still -- we believe that CancerSEEK can be one of the most impactful diagnostic tests ever developed because of its ability to detect asymptomatic people with cancer earlier.

Brian Weinstein -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Yeah, makes sense. Follow-up here, thinking about the pipeline a little bit. You've talked a lot about the various MRD products that you're looking at. And of course, you just talked about Penn cancer, but you do have this initiative with Mayo that we haven't heard a whole lot about other than the liver product. Can you give us any kind of an update on where some of those key products are in that relationship with Mayo, and when we might get an update on something like lung or pancreatic or anything else.

Thanks, guys.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Brian. I think we should probably wait to talk about the collaboration with Mayo until we can do that with Mayo. For some of those tests, we're working with Mayo Medical Labs, and Dr. Bill Morice and his team there to bring some tests that maybe we wouldn't be able to focus on as we would like to have.

They're pretty remarkable R&D teams and evidence generation capabilities bring some of those tests forward, maybe at one of these sometime in the future we'll do an R&D day where we can share more of that information. But right now, we don't have a lot to share on that front. The teams have started to work, and we're excited about what that could do outside of the core areas that we have decided to focus on.

Brian Weinstein -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Brian.

Operator

And you have a question from Patrick Donnelly from Citi.

Patrick Donnelly -- Citi -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just one on the order side. Can you talk through, I guess the traction you've seen on some of the website, electronic ordering.

Obviously, kind of launched that early mid-last year, a decent amount of marketing around. It seemed like a great fit given what was happening on the primary care visit side. So just wondering any metrics you look at you can kind of help share with us on that front.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Patrick, this is Jeff. Electronic ordering in total right around 40% for Cologuard orders. This year, we expected to exceed 50% as we exit the year. So in total, when you look at all electronic ordering types, I think what you're talking about is our website where patients could go on and on to request Cologuard the consumer site.

There is -- it's a relatively small part of the business still. It is gaining traction. What's happened is we've added new features to the site and made it easier to use. Over time, there are some additional things we're going to branch-off and do to help us tap into the payer channel and the employer channel.

So stay tuned there. We're just really glad that the team could respond so quickly early in the pandemic and bring this new capability out. It gives us one more way to go out and get more patients screened and they [Inaudible] us to continue to increase.

Patrick Donnelly -- Citi -- Analyst

Ok. That's helpful, Jeff. And then maybe just one on kind of the full year. I know people have kind of asked us about it a bit here, but the first quarter makes sense.

I was getting the holiday impact, I guess when you think about the full year on Cologuard volumes. I have all the tailwinds you've gone through a few times here. The pandemic seems to be lingering a bit here in terms of primary care visit headwinds. I guess, when you guys try to kind of balance that out for the year, what does the visibility look like kind of going forward outside of 1Q, and how are you thinking about the tailwinds and headwinds kind of outside of Cologuard being positive.

How do you think about those, those kinds of forces offsetting here.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Let me take that Patrick. Again, I'll point to the fact that although colonoscopy screenings were off 25% in the fourth quarter, Cologuard was up 9%. That tells us that the underlying growth is significant and wellness visits are the best data, say they were still-off 40% in the last quarter. If you've been to a primary care office recently, I have been because I had to get a shingles vaccine, fortunately, no COVID vaccine yet, but it is a very different environment. And it's pretty clear that the people are there for a very specific reason.

And until you get people back into the office for wellness visits, you're going to see a diminished impact across screenings. I think what we're happy about is that we know that Cologuard is solving some of this problem. So we're getting a greater share of screening than we did this time last year. We're tracking that.

And then the 45 to 49 opportunity, this rescreen opportunity that Jeff talked about. The Epic and HL7 integrations that we have seen are really having an impact. And then, the field force coming back to live in-person visits to a much greater degree in Pfizer, which was -- is largely today still doing mostly visits through Zoom or telephone or email, all of that coming to bear this year. We're truly optimistic about what the year looks like because of those factors.

Some of these things we've been working on for years and put this year aside, some of these things are going to power us into 2022 and 2023 and beyond. Jeff, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

I'd just add, normally Patrick, ignore the pandemic. Normally, this is a very, very predictable business model, given that we've got this massive base of order providers that we can model out. I can see how a typical primary care doctor performance over time. And you've heard me talk before about, I can see that doctors let's say whether they're one-year or two years or three years into ordering Cologuard across all those time horizons to continue to order more.

Again, before the pandemic, we had never seen any physician flatten-out. They always keep ordering more and more. And now, we're layered in things like 45 and electronic ordering. So once this pandemic really subsides, we're extremely excited about what the longer-term has in store for Cologuard.

Near-term, COVID makes things a little harder to predict, but longer term, we can see where this is heading.

Patrick Donnelly -- Citi -- Analyst

That's helpful. Thanks, Kevin. Jeff, appreciate it.

Operator

And you have a question from Dan Brennan from UBS.

Dan Brennan -- UBS -- Analyst

Great. Thank you. Thanks for taking the questions, many congratulations. I guess first one, Jeff, you quantified the reorder opportunity in the 45 to 49 opportunity on the call.

I was hoping you can do the same with Epic, obviously, this has been discussed for a while and the potential impact it could have given fax orders. So any, any way to think about the revenue and your test impact from Epic's rollout this year.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Again, this is Jeff. So Epic, I'll run 50% of primary care doctors in this country use Epic. So this is a huge opportunity for us, and really more important for patients to get more patients tested are, what we have done now is because we are live on Epic and because Epic has been a good partner to Exact Sciences, any doctor, any health system who now upgrades to the latest version of Epic they came up late last year, will have the ability to order Cologuard through the click of a button.

When the order then comes to us, we take care of all that testing and that goes right back to the patients or right back to the doctor. So again, that's about half of the doctors out there. We are rapidly working to help those systems make sure that they're aware that Cologuard is going to be available electronically, and then work to pull through Cologuard ordering once they convert again to this latest version. As far as revenue, if I mentioned before, 40% of our orders at year-end last year came in electronic.

We expect it to be at least 50% this year. And I've said before, when a physician orders electronically, they order at least 50% more than when they order through fax. Now that doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, but that's, if you look at when somebody has scaled to order electronically, they order far more.

So this is a huge opportunity to see order rates go up. It also -- is helping bring more physicians onto ordering Cologuard. Imagine a health system where you can have thousands of providers, they may not order tests through fax. I mean, they may not be allowed to order tests through fax.

However, once you put Cologuard onto the ordering platform, you open up a whole brand new world. So not only do you get more orders per physician you also get more physicians who are now going to order Cologuard. So, we're extremely excited about what this means for the long-term.

Dan Brennan -- UBS -- Analyst

Great. Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate it. And maybe just one follow-up on Kevin, I know, I think there was a question early on in the call about CancerSEEK and the potential as you combined with your own market where that could go.

But I'm just wondering, is it -- I don't think you gave any numbers, which I didn't expect, but I know you've sounded very constructive about the ability to take an already good test and make it even better. Now that you have some time, I'm just wondering if you can help us think through what the potential magnitude of that improvement couldn't be, or just kind of what might be necessary in order to see this become a successful test. Thank you.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Good. Yes. Thanks, Dan. Just last week in meeting with the Thrive team they laid out what each of the potential new marker classes could -- how that could impact the overall sensitivity and holding specificity positive.

I won't share that with you though. And at the end of the day first, we'll do work in a -- with case-control samples to validate each of these approaches, putting them together and doing a larger study in the second half where we will lock our algorithm before we start an interventional study in a randomized study next year. Suffice it to say, you can take a look at the case-control study that we showed the data last September, where there was significant over 80% cancer detection, although samples were biased toward the later stage, that means that the sensitivity is higher, but they made a significant contribution similar to the case-control data that Thrive saw previously. So clearly, as we can see from Cologuard, methylation, and mutation are typically not directly overlapping.

Some of those markers maybe, but as classes, they typically are not directly overlapping. So there is going to be some improvement there and we just have to wait to see what that is. So, I'm not giving you much help other than very qualitatively and we're confident that there will be an improvement.

Dan Brennan -- UBS -- Analyst

That's great. Thanks a lot, Kevin.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And let me just point out one other thing, Dan, is that I'll go back to why we were so excited about Thrive in the first place. They did the prospective study in an average-risk population. In fact, it might be somewhat of a low-risk population because there were people who were in for other screenings, and that gives us a leg up as we begin to have conversations with policymakers with potential customers. They see that why this is committed and now Exact Sciences is committing to doing those prospective studies in an average-risk population.

And that's critical, but average risk population is critical wherever is going to access those markets.

Dan Brennan -- UBS -- Analyst

Excellent. Thank you.

Operator

And you have a question from Puneet Souda from SVB Leerink.

Puneet Souda -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Yeah, Hi Kevin, Jeff thanks for taking the questions. Jeff, just first one is a clarification question, and I apologize if you provided this. I'm wondering if you could give us a sense of where you stand with the Cologuard screening reps today. And maybe just around what percent of those reps are able to do any physician visits currently, obviously with COVID ongoing.

My expectation on that number is low but just wanted to get a sense if they are able to do any visits today versus the online visits that they're currently doing. And we're fully aware that oncology reps are still restricted around oncology clinics. So, just wondering if you are seeing any movement in that.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

On the Cologuard field for sizing, we have about 500 primary care reps in the field. We have nearly 150 more on the inside. Those teams work very well together, I'm calling in doctors. In terms of the access, it's still less than 50% face-to-face, relative to where it was before COVID started.

The teams make the most of it though and do what they can over the phone and through virtual visits. So the team is very, very motivated to get back out there. This team is talented. They really want to help patients, and they know the best way to do that is through face-to-face conversations.

On the -- we also have another 50 or so GI reps. And we've said before, we're adding a team of about 50 women's health reps. So this is a big investment because the market is so large and we know that reps are a highly effective way to educate doctors on Cologuard. On the oncology side, I'll say rep access generically, depends on the territory.

It depends on the COVID cases in an area. We have as a company, so the reps are free to go back out there. Last March, we had pulled all of our reps of the field. Now, typically our territories are open, but we only let our reps go back out there where it's safe to do so independently of what the access is in their territory.

Puneet Souda -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Got it. That's very helpful. And Kevin, big picture question for you. Obviously, you highlighted a few years back your ambition to be a leading diagnostic company in the space and you're well on your way there.

One could argue already there, and just help me understand in terms of the portfolio, obviously colorectal screening breast with Oncotype, strong position in the prostate, now multi cancer. And with the acquisitions of Paradigm base and TGen, and I found out you really have quite a bit of capability here. It looks like it's a full plate, but just wondering, are their areas in oncology or beyond oncology, which remained a key priority for you to build out as areas of potential investments. Thank you.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Puneet. We -- several years ago looked at a lot of different paths that we could take strategically and we decided to stay focused on cancer diagnostics. And ultimately that led us to the conclusion that we had to be the very best and most connected, highest quality service, highest quality tests, best evidence, best commercial teams, best clinical, regulatory, IT capabilities. If we were truly going to serve patients that need help, and so that means that the tests that you think about in oncology, we will bring to physicians and patients who need them.

Tissue-based therapy, selection liquid-based therapy selection, MRD colon cancer screening, multi cancer screening. And I guess what I'd like to really highlight are there are three huge opportunities. Colon cancer screening, which we've obviously started to make progress, we believe we have a very long way to grow their multi-cancer screening, which is a game-changer in MRD, which you put those three opportunities together. And it's about 60 billion in total available market opportunity, and more importantly, the chance to impact millions and millions of people around the world.

And we do have global aspirations, the team that Kim Popovits built at Genomic Health outside the U.S., and it is a remarkable team and that will be our -- the basis and foundation upon which we build for both multi cancer screening, colon cancer screening, and MRD. Then when you layer on top of it, the ability to mine the data, do deep learning on the data, then prompt and make suggestions to oncologists and to patients based upon that combined data, which is pretty powerful. You can imagine a day when you have millions or 10 of millions of sequential blood draws from patients that you stored at Genomic information. And then, you can look back in time and ask the question, and this would be on an automated basis.

Do you see a signal in people two years, four years, eight years before they are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And if so, what is that signal. And so then how can you better inform patients and physicians going forward. We will uniquely have that data because of the full range of tests that we offer, the Epic platform that we're on, etc.

So that's why we're so excited about this. We're convinced this is the right strategy. We have an incredible team of people, and I would say that's the other critical thing is our people are -- we believe are the best in this field broadly across the spectrum. And that the culture is a culture that people want to work at.

And that is something that we need to continue to be great at. So, 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, we can say, if you're a salesperson at Exact Sciences, you know, that you've had the very best training. It's considered the crème de la crème. That's our aspiration, and we think we have a good chance to be successful at it.

Puneet Souda -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

That's great. Thank you. Thanks for all the comprehensive detail.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Ok. Thank you.

Operator

Your final question is from Sandy Draper from Truist Securities.

Sandy Draper -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Thanks, so much. And thanks for squeezing me in, a lot of the questions have been asked and answered very well. So maybe one, Kevin for you on your comment on the 5% to 10%, I think revenue lift from Cologuard 2.0 when that comes out, just would love some thoughts. Is that more on just incremental volume.

And you're going to get it from that is the only price component, but just want to make sure I understand that comment and what's driving that. That's the first question. And then maybe the second question, the step-up in sales and marketing understandable a little bit bigger than I thought, maybe started with the Super Bowl ad, but could you sort of Jeff maybe talk about when I think about getting back with Pfizer out there, adding a women's salesforce, overall marketing. So I had a sort of rank order where the big step up is coming.

Thanks.

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Sandy, this is Jeff. I'll take those two. On the 5% to 10%, really this gets at the heart of what Kevin talked about, the reduction in false positives of at least 30%.

When you think about what that means for patients, the 3 percentage points overall, fewer patients getting a false positive. When you compound that over time, not only is it a great thing for patients, it also helps drive our revenue. So 3% more patients stick with us as a repeat Cologuard every three years. So that's part of the 5% to 10% left.

There's also a benefit from a lower spoilage rate. There is a low-single-digit percent of samples that come back that are spoiled, and we can't get a result then. No result, no revenue. So as we address those two things, it's at least 5% combined.

Longer-term, perhaps the biggest benefit of Cologuard 2.0 is not from the lower spoilage rate or that the 3% revenue, it's that, as we raised the bar even further on this test, I think that will help our positioning with physicians and help us make an even bigger share of this market. So, I think that's the biggest driver of value for Cologuard 2.0. On sales and marketing, a few things on the step up. One is, as we talked about before we are resuming getting more reps back out in the field, we expect to over the course of this year, and as reps get back out there, there's a little more spending involved with that.

Pfizer, the same case. We expect Pfizer sales activities to normalize over the course of the year, and of course under our partnership now, Pfizer has paid for the activities that they perform. We also have now with Cologuard 45 a major new opportunity to help test more patients. I talked before about a $3 billion market opportunity to help us catalyze that market and help overall raise the education in that market, so people know that they should be screened earlier.

We have a marketing campaign targeted directly at that part of the market. So these are some of the bigger initiatives. Again, big new market 40, 45, you're starting to see a normalization of sales and marketing activities, because we expect the pandemic to decline and those are the big drivers.

Sandy Draper -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Thanks so much, Jeff. Appreciate it.

Operator

You have no other questions in the queue.

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for joining us to review our fourth-quarter results. Progress made in 2020 and our plan for 2021 and beyond. Special thanks to all of our employees for their unwavering commitment to our mission. We've never been more excited about the future of Exact Sciences, and have confidence this team will continue to advance our mission of eradicating cancer and the suffering it causes.

Thank you.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 69 minutes

Call participants:

Erik Holznecht -- Investor Relations

Kevin Conroy -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Jeff Elliott -- Chief Financial Officer

Vijay Kumar -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp -- Analyst

Derik de Bruin -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Doug Schenkel -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Catherine Schulte -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst

Brian Weinstein -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Patrick Donnelly -- Citi -- Analyst

Dan Brennan -- UBS -- Analyst

Puneet Souda -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Sandy Draper -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

More EXAS analysis

All earnings call transcripts