Image source: The Motley Fool.
Akoya Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ: AKYA)
Q2Â 2021 Earnings Call
Aug 10, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Akoya Biosciences Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, David Deuchler.
David Deuchler -- Managing Director
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. On the call from Akoya, we have Brian McKelligon, Chief Executive Officer and Joe Driscoll, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, Akoya released financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2021. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results or performance are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. For a list and description of the risks and uncertainties associated with Akoya's business, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our Form S-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 15, 2021. We urge you to consider these factors and you should be aware that these statements should be considered estimates only and are not a guarantee of future performance.
This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, August 10, 2021. Akoya disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events or otherwise.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Brian.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, David, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Akoya's second quarter earnings call. Joe and I will start with prepared remarks and then we'll take questions. I'm very excited to discuss our second quarter 2021 performance with you this morning. This marks our second time reporting results as a public company following the IPO in April.
During the quarter, we continued to deliver on our plan to be the spatial biology company and work toward our mission of delivering revolutionary class of new spatially drive biomarkers, empowering life sciences researchers to better understand disease and helping clinicians improve patient outcomes. We're pleased to report strong second quarter financial results with reported total revenue of $13.1 million, representing growth of 53% compared to the second quarter of 2020. This is ahead of our expectations of at least 45% growth provided on last call. We had a strong quarter of reagent revenue, indicating our customers are back to work and using the Akoya platforms in a significant way. Joe will review our financial performance in detail shortly.
As we discussed in the prior call, spatial biology solutions enable researchers to map the distribution of cell types and biomarkers across whole tissue samples at single-cell resolution. While established technologies like next generation sequencing, single cell analysis and flow cytometry destroy the tissue sample by analyzing it, Akoya's spatial biology platform keeps the tissue sample intact, preserving the underlying tissue structure and enabling the tech detection and measurement of cells in biomarkers within their tissue context. The output is a detailed computable map of the tissue sample, enabling much deeper understanding of the underlying biology, cell dynamics and interactions between key biomarkers.
Spatial biology is the next evolution in tissue analysis and it is happening today across more than 600 Akoya instruments already installed at leading academic institutions, biopharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations. Akoya has the largest installed base of any spatial biology platforms in the industry. This is a true competitive advantage and one that we intend to fully leverage.
Most new technologies in the life sciences market begin in the discovery market with the goal of eventually making their way to the clinic to truly impact patient care. What's unique and powerful about the spatial biology market and Akoya's CODEX and Phenoptics platform specifically is that we are today simultaneously impacting science across this entire continuum, from discovery to translational and clinical research. Priced at under $100,000 and able to integrate with our customers' existing microscopes, our CODEX platform is the industry's most cost effective and complete spatial biology platform for the discovery market. It is an end-to-end automated solution that makes ultrahigh multiplexing spatial biology accessible to all researchers. Our Phenoptics platform is designed as a downstream of CODEX, serving the translational and clinical research markets where sample throughput requirements are in order of magnitude higher. For example, our Phenoptics customers using this platform for clinical trial studies are routinely performing spatial analysis on 30 or more samples per day. Phenoptics stands alone in the marketplace, delivering unparalleled throughput and is a fully automated and complete end-to-end spatial biology solution. With CODEX and Phenoptics, Akoya is uniquely positioned to capture the full market opportunity for spatial biology to revolutionize not just discovery, but also clinical and translational research and ultimately, patient care.
We are encouraged by the continued commercial success of our established on-market solutions, rapidly growing installed base, strong financial performance and accelerating publication rate. Following the IPO and as discussed on the prior call, we're making investments to build on and maintain our leadership position in the spatial biology market. These investments include the ongoing and rapid expansion of our commercial organization and expanded investment in research and development.
In the near future, Akoya will deliver new and improved spatial biology solutions including significant workflow improvements for our new and existing customers. These new products and capabilities will be enabled by leveraging our full technology suites across CODEX and Phenoptics, by internally developing new groundbreaking spatial biology solutions, and by partnering with industry and academic thought leaders. Our R&D team's focus is on delivering expanded multiplexing and throughput, new applications for single-cell [Indecipherable] analysis and the continued advancement of our data analysis and visualization solutions. The result will be a powerful continuum of products that drive expanded market access, increase system placements and growing platform utilization and reagent pull through. In the coming months, we will begin to highlight some of these advancements, so please stay tuned.
To continue to advance CODEX as the most accessible and powerful spatial biology platform on market, we recently announced partnerships with leading microscopy companies including ZEISS, Nikon, CrestOptics and Andor. These partnerships enable robust technical integration between CODEX and our partners' microscopes. It also enables ongoing workflow improvements, application expansion and co-promotional activities to drive further adoption of CODEX. These partners are also important enablers of a recently announced Imaging Innovators Networks called the I2 network. With the I2 network, Akoya is partnering with academic thought leaders to drive innovation and application to development on CODEX, keeping us on the leading-edge of new spatial biology solutions.
So let's now pivot to our translational and clinical research efforts. As we discussed, Phenoptics is the only spatial biology platform capable of meeting the high standards of translational and clinical research studies on the path to true clinical use. Now this is particularly true when considering the requirements to support clinical trials. These core requirements include the following; first, a platform must be high throughput and automated, capable of analyzing 20 to 50 samples per day; second, the platform must have fully demonstrated reproducibility and robustness; and third, the platform must deliver single-cell resolution across the entire slide, single cell whole slide resolution across the entire tissue is fundamental. Phenoptics is the only platform on the market that can meet these throughput, robustness and sample resolution requirements. A seminal publication released last month in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer highlights that our Phenoptics platform meets these high performance standards, called the MITRE Study. This publication was the result of a partnership with Johns Hopkins University, Yale, Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, MD Anderson, and Bristol Myers Squibb. It concluded that the Phenoptics platform delivers the throughput and analytical robustness needed for clinical trial and eventual clinical use. This publication is central and among an accelerating body of peer-reviewed publications that are evidence of our growing success in the translational clinical markets.
In Q2, we also announced the launch of our Advanced Biopharma Solutions service lab out of our Marlborough facility. This team is focused on serving our growing clinical trial partnerships with leading biopharmaceutical companies. We are working closely with bio-pharma companies to implement Phenoptics in their clinical trials to help them better understand and predict response to their novel therapies. Our recently announced partnership with AstraZeneca is a signature example of the value that Phenoptics and the Advanced Biopharma Solutions Group delivers. AstraZeneca's immuno-oncology division is partnered with Akoya to leverage the Phenoptics platform and these services to discover predicted signatures of response to therapy to inform their clinical trial design. Because of the established throughput and robustness of resolution of Phenoptics, similar partnerships are ongoing with a number of other leading bio-pharma companies. A key driver of the continued success of Phenoptics is the discovery and publication of transformative spatial phenotyping signatures.
A stand-out publication in the June 11 Issue of Science feature powerful discoveries from the team at Johns Hopkins University as part of our partnership with their AstroPath initiative. AstroPath is a cutting-edge interdisciplinary partnership within Johns Hopkins between their astrophysics department and their cancer center with our Phenoptics platform at the core. In this paper, the team at Johns Hopkins discover a powerful biomarker signature to predict with a high degree of confidence, response to immunotherapy in advanced melanoma patients. Together, we now aim to leverage this and future groundbreaking discoveries with the AstroPath team to provide even more powerful clinical trial solutions to our shared biopharmaceutical partners.
In addition to the AstroPath publication, the accelerating rate of peer-review publications on our platform continues. There were 109 peer-review publications on our platform in 2020. This is a near four-fold increase over 2019. And now in the first half of 2021, there are already a 138 publications, more than all of last year. That's nearly 250 publications in the last 18 months. Our customs are clearly uncovering high valued scientific discoveries through their use of Akoya's platform.
As we outlined, we remain focused on driving revenue growth by investing in the business to expand our commercial infrastructure and accelerate research and development. As of June 30, we have approximately 225 employees worldwide, a significant increase from the December 31 total of about 170. We are continuing our aggressive investment to add more talent in all parts of the business and are excited about the prospects ahead.
We recently announced the appointment of Mr. Scott Mendel to our Board of Directors. Scott brings 25 years of experience as one of the most accomplished executives in the diagnostic industry and a proven track record of transforming innovative technologies into clinical testing solutions. We are confident that Scott will bring tremendous insights to Akoya as we continue to advance the company.
In summary, we're pleased with our second quarter performance, achieving great progress across a range of important metrics and we look forward to executing on our financial and strategic plans as we move forward through 2021 and beyond.
I will now turn the call over to Joe to discuss our financial results. Joe?
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Brian. Hello, everyone. As Brian mentioned earlier, total revenue for the second quarter of 2021 was $13.1 million as compared to $8.6 million in the second quarter of 2020, which represents 53% growth. The prior year quarter was impacted by COVID related disruptions at many of our customers.
Product revenue was $10.7 million for the second quarter of 2021 compared to $6.2 million in the prior year quarter. Services and other revenue totaled $2.4 million in the second quarter of 2021 as compared to $2.4 million in the prior year quarter. Within product revenue, instrument revenue was $6.3 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to $4.5 million in the prior year. Reagent revenue was $4.3 million in the second quarter of 2021 versus $1.5 million in the prior year. Increased reagent revenue was due to higher instrument count, return to work in labs and greater pull-through per instrument than previously experienced. Our annualized pull-through on a year-to-date basis exceeds $30,000 per instrument for both CODEX and Polaris. The Polaris pull-through is in line with our expectations. The CODEX pull-through is significantly higher than our historical performance, which has been in the low $20,000 range. Reagent revenue is expected to be solid in the third quarter, but likely will be below the second quarter due to seasonality.
We monitor instruments sold in the installed base as key performance indicators for our business, which Brian discussed earlier. To reiterate, we had another strong quarter with 31 total instruments sold, highlighted by 18 Phenoptics installations, of which the majority are Polaris instruments. The total installed base is now 618 instruments as of June 30, 2021. We did close several additional CODEX units near the end of the quarter, which will ship in Q3. Additionally, there were some COVID related disruptions in Japan, which resulted in several potential instrument purchases being pushed out of the second quarter.
Gross profit was $8.1 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to $5.3 million in the prior year. This resulted in gross profit margin of 62.2%, an increase from the 61.6% in the prior year period. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by the positive mix of reagent revenue in the quarter.
Total operating expenses were $14.5 million in the second quarter of 2021 as compared to $9.1 million in the prior year quarter. In line with our strategic plan, the increase was part of our plan to significantly invest in the business following our IPO. We are aggressively hiring in all aspects of the business, including increasing our commercial spend to continue to drive market share growth. Looking forward, we project OpEx should be at least $16.5 million in the third quarter.
Net loss for the second quarter of 2021 was $5.6 million compared to net loss of $4.6 million in the second quarter of 2020 due to the increased investment in operating expenses. Our year-to-date revenue is $25.3 million, a 29% increase over the first six months of 2020. This puts us right on track to achieve our targets for fiscal 2021.
We have $135.5 million of cash as of June 30, 2021. Common shares outstanding are $37.1 million as of June 30th.
As highlighted earlier, we remain confident in our ability to deliver strong growth in 2021 and are anticipating third quarter revenue growth of approximately 28% to 30% over the prior year quarter. We are refining our guidance for the full year 2021 from at least $52 million to between $52.5 million and $53 million. The second quarter results exceeded our guidance and we are focused on delivering consistently strong results each quarter.
Now, I'll turn it back over to Brian.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Joe. In summary, we remain excited about the impact of spatial biology on the discovery, translational and clinical research markets and continue to see robust adoption of our CODEX and Phenoptics platforms. We're pleased to report strong results in our second quarter as a public company. We are thankful for the hard work of our fellow dedicated clients and for the support of our customers and shareholders. Akoya remains well positioned for growth and we're excited about the opportunities ahead.
And at this point, we will open-up the call for questions. Operator?
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Tejas Savant with Morgan Stanley.
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Hey guys, thanks for taking the questions. My name -- this is Edmund [Phonetic] on for Tejas. Just to start off, I want a clarification. The quarter-over-quarter step down in instrument placements was driven by the COVID headwinds that we've seen in Japan, is that correct?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
You want to take that?
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Versus Q1 you're talking about?
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Yes.
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. So we closed a couple of additional CODEX units right near the end of the quarter that are going to ship in Q3 and then there were several more units basically in Japan that got pushed out of Q2 due to COVID related issues.
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. So I guess on that note, aside from Japan over the last couple of weeks, have you seen any pockets of weakness developed in certain regions as the resurgence of COVID starts looming, what are you seeing in terms of like [Speech Overlap]
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead.
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
No, that's OK. I was just asking what you're seeing in terms of ordering transfer instruments and reagents?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, it's pretty dynamic as you've likely heard. The ongoing challenges in Asia-Pacific continue. Customer adds scenarios like UK has been an ongoing problem. And in the US, again it's pretty dynamic in terms of the access to customers. At this point though, as we looking forward, we're still confident that the opportunities on the instruments and reagent side are in line with our expectations, but it is pretty volatile.
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. That's very helpful. And then on turning to your I2 network. On your ZEISS collaboration, can you provide any incremental updates there. I'm assuming there's not much you can say in terms of the technical product side, but in terms of mapping out the co-marketing agreement, have you guys made any progress? And then for the three new collaborations that were mentioned, will they be similar types of collaborations or deal agreements?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, maybe in reverse order there. The all four arrangements are structurally similar where the benefits really are ensuring tight technical integration just to continue to streamline the user experience and adapt new workflows, increase acquisition speed, drive deeper resolution. So structurally there we are seeing both technically and the co-marketing side. I would say, to your first question, the co-marketing activities are really just beginning to be put in place now, so nothing more detailed to offer on ZEISS or any of the other three specifically at this point.
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. And then one final one from me. In terms of launching your Advanced Biopharma Solutions, as you rolled out of their strategic clinical research program initiative, can you remind us if you've highlighted any other projects that might be coming up in this clinical research program initiative.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
So we announced the Advanced Biopharma Solutions Group to reiterate as part of our partnership with key Biopharma like AstraZeneca to work in the clinical trial space. In terms of partnerships, similar partnership with UCSF, UC San Francisco, working on the I-SPY 2 trial which is focused on breast cancer, that's another partnership within the Phenoptics portfolio that we announced on top of the publications that we talked about in the opening remarks.
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. Thank you very much for the time.
Operator
Our next question comes from Steven Mah with Piper Sandler.
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Hi guys, congratulations and thanks for taking the questions.
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Sure.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Steve.
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Yeah. So maybe just to stay on the Advanced Biopharma Solutions. I know your -- the Marlborough lab is undergoing CLIA certification to help all your partners do clinical trials patient stratification. To get an update on that timing and should we expect, once you guys get CLIA lab certification, that's going to accelerate the signing on of new partners?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So the timing is a little bit of reliance on the regulatory bodies giving us final stamp. So we expect it to likely be within this quarter. And that's I think similar to what we have discussed before. And to your question about kind of the ABS business was, yes -- to answer your question, yes. With that CLIA certification, that opens up additional business with existing and new partners, for example, to contemplate the use of our services for actual enrollment studies.
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Okay, great. That's helpful color. And then I had a question on the publication side. So can you give us a sense of what proportion of those 135 new publications were for translational clinical studies versus maybe like discovery work?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that the majority of those are on the Phenoptics portfolio. Of the 135, I would guess the overwhelming majority is Phenoptics just because of its long-standing in the market since the launch of Phenoptics 2.0 at the end of 2018. And with CODEX coming out throughout 2019, those are starting to roll-in. And within the Phenoptics portfolio, the overwhelming majority of those are really translational studies like we talked about earlier on the AstroPath science publication. That said, some of these publications are really foundational in establishing analytical robustness. Now, one could argue that those are translational, but those are really the predicate platform requirements that you need to establish the robustness as we talked about earlier for a clinical study. So some of them are translational and even within some of those are really our platform assessments like the MITRE study we talked about, Steven.
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Yeah. That's helpful. And yeah, maybe just you know -- yeah, I mean -- yeah, I appreciate that a lot of the publications were Phenoptics and translational, how do you square that away with the CODEX pull-through being higher than Phenoptics in the quarter?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
It's just -- well, the publications usually take about a year and a half to come out. So CODEX kind of launching throughout 2019, the wet blanket for COVID 2020, we're starting to see a lot more CODEX publications as it's probably, I'm going to say over 135 and this is the complete estimate. It's probably 20 or so on the CODEX plan. And the pull-through is happening I think just because people are really starting to get value and accelerate the use of the platform. We just didn't have a lot of visibility, Steven, of the pull-through throughout 2020 just because of such a unique year.
I don't know, Joe, if you want to add any color to that.
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. I think CODEX is really just starting to hit its stride now. So we launched in 2019. People were getting used to using it in 2019, then 2020 came and that was kind of a strange year. And I think people are now back in their labs and really seeing the value of the CODEX instrument. So I think it's really just starting to hit its stride right now.
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Okay. No, that's great color. And then, Joe, maybe a question for you and also Brian. As you guys say you're going to continue to invest in the business aggressively hiring on the sales and marketing side, do you see any higher spend, any specific geographies or is it sort of balanced across the globe? Thank you.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think generally it's balanced. I think we're having an opportunity to get some really stellar talent just because of how far we advance. I think we're just more broadly recognized, but I don't think there's any surprises in terms of the cost basis, but Joe, I guess you got color.
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. We're adding commercial people throughout the world. So that's happening in every geography right now. We would be adding more people in the US just because of areas like research and development and some areas that are just purely US-based functions. But on the commercial side, we are adding sales and marketing talent all over the world.
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kyle Mikson with Canaccord Genuity.
Kyle Mikson -- Canaccord Genuity -- Analyst
Thanks. Hey, Brian and Joe, thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on great quarter. I [Speech Overlap] as well. Yeah, sure. So the fourth quarter implies 15% year-over-year growth which is below the Street. I mean, the third quarter is above the Street, I was wondering what level of conservatism or maybe tempered expectations that you have kind of baking in there?
And then kind of jumping off of that and also piggybacking on the prior question. I was wondering if the third quarter instrument placements would be like abnormally higher just given the Japan delays, I guess, and some of the installations that are out of 2Q as well? Thanks.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think we're dealing with, Kyle, and I'll let Joe dig into the details. Obviously, what we're dealing with here in terms of the prior years -- quarterly growth of the prior years is kind of an awkward -- like everybody is facing an awkward predicate in the prior year. So I think the percentage gross lumpiness will continue. Yeah, we do expect to be sort of in line with our expectations on instrument placements for Q3 and through the rest of the year. But Joe, I will let you add little bit more color.
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. I think Q3 is going to be a normal quarter. I don't think it's going to be a big pop-up from a -- carried over from Q2. So I think you're looking at probably a few more instruments being placed in Q3 than in Q2. And really just our guidance for the year, we're trying to take a conservative posture right now. Really just want to kind of deliver quarter after quarter and if we have another solid Q3, we'll certainly take a look at updating our Q4 guidance. But right now we're just trying to stay conservative, make sure we meet everyone's expectations. And like I said, we can easily update it after next quarter if things continue to trend in the right direction.
Kyle Mikson -- Canaccord Genuity -- Analyst
Okay. I appreciate that, guys. Thank you for that. I was also wondering about the competitive landscape. Obviously competitor with the spatial transcriptomics platform [Indecipherable] recently. Obviously there is differences between [Indecipherable] etc. I'm just wondering if you are noticing any change in the landscape with the entrant of that [Indecipherable]? And as you think it's too early, like, what type of impact do you think it could have over-time or being Q2 platform, I guess, right? And honestly, I mean are you going to accelerate any front development on your end just based on what's happening in this space?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I think the way we look at the competitive environment is that this market is still rapidly growing and most of the system placements are really greenfield placements and not necessarily head to head. I think what's unique about a lot of the spatial transcriptomics solutions that are coming out is they do have a high degree of complementarity to what we're doing on the CODEX side. There is a recent webinar that we did and doing some of these multiomic comparisons and extracting a lot of value out of it. So I think you're going to see a lot of customers leverage platforms like that and ours to move their signs forward. And as we look forward to the future, we will look at our capabilities as I alluded to earlier to expand our application suite as well.
Kyle Mikson -- Canaccord Genuity -- Analyst
Okay, thanks for that. And then just turning to the I2 network. I don't know if you disclosed this, how many partners have joined so far? And I guess any like novel applications [Indecipherable]. And then also how is utilization kind of trending, I guess, or just how does the acceleration kind of ramping up?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
So I didn't hear the second part of your question, but the first part is we have not yet talked about the specific members and the number of memberships we have in those yet. We're probably talking about who those partners are and what their application focus is going to be in the coming quarters.
And what was the second part of your question, Kyle?
Kyle Mikson -- Canaccord Genuity -- Analyst
No. I think, Brian, that kind of answers. I think I'm good. That kind of answers both sides of the questions, that's good. Just one last question on the AstraZeneca partnership around Phenoptics. Just was wondering if you can kind of tell us what lies ahead in that collaboration, any like timelines or important milestones? And in the context of the broader work with bio-pharma, how meaningful could that be for efforts really aligned with drug development in the future?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So no specifics on AstraZeneca that I can reveal. Obviously a lot of that's confidential in terms of the underlying details. But what's important not just with our partnership with them, but with other large bio-pharma partners that these are multi-project partners -- partnerships. And so I think you're correct. As we look forward, we're investing more and more in the Advanced Biopharma Solutions Group because it is a really important vehicle to really embed ourselves within the clinical trial of these -- the clinical trial work of these key IO bio-pharma, immuno-oncology bio-pharma. And so that's an important avenue for us -- the ABS Group to leverage as part of these partnerships.
Kyle Mikson -- Canaccord Genuity -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks a lot for taking the questions and congrats again.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Thanks.
Operator
Thanks. Our next question is from Julia [Phonetic] with JPMorgan.
Julia -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- Analyst
Hi, good afternoon. Maybe just following up on the consumable strengths this quarter. I guess, are there any timing factors or big partner projects such as I2 that really contributed to strength? And as we think about the second half, how should we think about the pull-through going forward and what are the chances that we can see consumable revenue above what you're guiding to?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So there was no single event that drove the consumables. I think it was generally a lot of unlock demand for people that didn't have the ability to get in the lab and do a lot of work. I think that was one of the big drivers. We sort of have a standard seasonality that you see particularly on the consumable side that go sort of Q4, Q2, Q3, Q1 in descending order. So that's the general seasonality that one sees with the consumables and I suspect that that's going to continue. But that said, year-over-year, we're seeing pretty profound growth in aggregate, year-to-date.
Julia -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- Analyst
Got it. And as we think about kind of the clinical trial piece of your business, obviously it's great to see that you now have CLIA validation of the clinical trial readiness of the platform. How do you monetize this part of the business? Is it mostly through instrument placements or through your own ABS service or perhaps does the answer depend on the time horizon? Just help us think through that a little bit.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. So the way we monetize that is really through both -- is through both. So again, we'll use AstraZeneca because that's the one that's publicly disclosed. They have a number of systems internally as well that they bought over the last couple of years. So what we see is really both the acquisitions of the Phenoptics platform by our bio-pharma customers, by CROs who is an important customer base of us as well as growing business through our ABS services. So it's really both. And then what also happens is the -- these projects are generally larger in size, so it does help drive our consumables as well.
Julia -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- Analyst
Got it. And so how should we think about really the revenue contribution starting in the second half of this year and how it ramps from there? And how much kind of you know benefit from the CLIA certification is already embedded in your current guidance?
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. I mean, I think most of what we've talked about today as part of our efforts in the translational and clinical research effort, this has been part of our 2022 plan. So I think we have a lot of this already contemplated in the model with both the work out of ABS and the growing system placements in bio-pharma and CROs.
Julia -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. And this concludes our Q&A. I would like to turn the call back to Brian McKelligon for his final remarks.
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Well, just a thank you to everyone for participating today. We really do appreciate your time and look forward to following up again soon. So thank you all.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 37 minutes
Call participants:
David Deuchler -- Managing Director
Brian McKelligon -- Chief Executive Officer
Joe Driscoll -- Chief Financial Officer
Edmund -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Steven Mah -- Piper Sandler -- Analyst
Kyle Mikson -- Canaccord Genuity -- Analyst
Julia -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- Analyst
