MaxCyte, Inc. (MXCT) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

MaxCyte, Inc. (MXCT -1.34%)
Q1 2022 Earnings Call
May 09, 2022, 4:30 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MaxCyte first quarter earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sean Menarguez, director, investor relations. Please go ahead.

Sean Menarguez -- Director of Investor Relations

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sean Menarguez, and I'm the director of investor relations here at MaxCyte. Thank you all for participating in today's conference call. On the call from MaxCyte, we have Doug Doerfler, president and chief executive officer; and Ron Holtz, interim chief financial officer.

Earlier today, MaxCyte released financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2022. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I need to read the following statement. Statements or comments made during this call may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Federal Securities Laws.

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 any forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, which are discussed in detail in our SEC filings. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. And with that, I will turn the call over to Doug.

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Sean, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining MaxCyte's first quarter earnings call. I'll begin with a discussion of our business and operational headlines during the quarter, and follow that -- a detailed finance review from Ron. We will then open the call for questions. We are very pleased with the start to 2022, as our team continued to deliver on all financial and strategic objectives in our plan.

MaxCyte's expert platform continues to be the premier cell engineering technology, enabling the development of a growing set of advanced cell-based therapeutics. With our additional resources at hand, we continue to invest in our people and capabilities at a measured, but healthy rate, as we seek to ensure the success of our partners. Ron will provide more details later in the call, but I note that we generated very strong first quarter 2022 results, as pre-announced last month and outlined in the press release published today. These results are anchored in robust performance in our core cell engineering business, which was up 48% year over year.

We generated significant SPL program-related revenue in the quarter, with revenue timing running a little sooner than our internal planned forecasted, yielding strong year-over-year growth in the quarter. As you know, we have very limited visibility into the timing of our partners' clinical progress. And as such, it's a challenge for us to provide precise information regarding program-related revenue beyond general expectations for the year. First quarter revenue was a record $11.6 million, up 78% over the first quarter of 2021, with a very strong growth in the core business.

Growth in revenue to cell therapy customers was 57% year over year and to drug discovery customers was 23% year over year. Cell therapy growth was primarily driven by both instrument and PA sales. We are seeing expansion of our global customer base across all stages of development and encouraged by our traction with cell therapy customers at early development stage, which continues to strengthen our robust SPL pipeline. During the quarter, we recognized $2 million in clinical milestone revenues.

As we have previously indicated, our partnership agreements are strictly confidential and so we will not be answering any specific questions relating to our SPL partners, their clinical progress, or their respective development programs. However, we remain excited about the progress our partners have been making in the clinic. We continue to sign new SPL partners and see additional SPL programs enter trials. Further, we have seen our existing clinical SPL portfolio progress into later stage, including pivotal clinical study, suggesting we may see our partner's first commercial product as early as 2023.

Overall, our core business revenue growth and recognition of the SPL program-related revenues are signs of both strong execution by our growing commercial team and robust customer demand. This strength is seen in new sales and leases of instruments, as well as strong PA sales. The timing of customer PA purchases and leased instruments as they prepare for pivotal trials and commercialization can be hard to predict. And we would expect them to remain lumpy, until our SPL portfolio and clinical progress of those partners is broad enough to smooth out that lumpiness from individual programs.

Given our strong performance, we wanted to highlight that we have not seen weakness in the demand for our products and associated support from our customers. We have strong relationships with our partners and customers and believe MaxCyte's expert platform is a core aspect of their therapeutic development strategy. We continue to meet and exceed our customers' expectations for supply and scientific support, and we continue to have a growing new business development pipeline. Our SPL pipeline remains strong, and we continue to expect additional SPL partnership announcements this year, at comparable economics to prior partnerships.

In the first quarter, we signed an agreement with Intima Bioscience, which we highlighted on our last call. We now have 16 SPL partners, covering more than 95 development programs in the aggregate, of which more than 15% have entered the clinic. In the near-term, we are optimistic about the potential for our SPL partners to generate meaningful and growing revenue from both their preclinical research and clinical progress, as well as hopefully commercialization of partner therapeutics over the next 12 months to 24 months and beyond. We are making important investments to support our future revenue growth, including investing in our commercial teams, developing and expanding in-house manufacturing, and in our in-house bioprocessing and cell therapy applications and process development labs.

These investments will advance our ability to take advantage of expanding markets, the emergence of new therapeutic development programs and companies, and support our partners, as they move toward and into commercial launch of therapeutic products. This investment will come with continued growth in headcount across most areas of the organization, particularly in R&D and sales and marketing, including alliance management. These kinds of investments have delivered strong growth to date, as we support our partners' potential success and we continue to be upbeat about the value of these investments we're making in 2022 and beyond. In closing, we have had an excellent first quarter for 2022, as we continue to execute on our financial and strategic goals.

We're very excited about our opportunity going forward, particularly in the cell therapy market, and are making the right investments to drive growth across the business. I will now turn the call over to Ron to discuss our financial results. Ron?

Ron Holtz -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Doug. Hello, everyone. As Doug mentioned, we realized record revenue of $11.6 million in the first quarter, compared to $6.5 million in the prior year's quarter, based on strong performance in both our core business and through the clinical progress milestones delivered by our SPL partners. Core business revenue was $9.6 million in the first quarter of 2022, compared to $6.5 million in the first quarter of '21.

This includes revenue from cell therapy customers of $7.4 million, growing 57% year over year, while revenue from drug discovery customers was $2.2 million, growing 23% year over year. We saw broad growth across the business, with particular strength in instrument sales in cell therapy and in processing assembly sales in both cell therapy and drug discovery during the quarter. We recognized $2 million of SPL program related revenue in the first quarter of 2022, compared to a material program-related revenue in Q1 2021. Moving down the P&L, gross margin was 91% in the quarter versus 89% in the first quarter of the year prior.

The increase in gross margin was driven by the higher SPL program-related revenues. Excluding that SPL revenue, gross margin was relatively unchanged. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2022 were $14.7 million, compared to $12.2 million in the first quarter of 2021. And recall that, Q1 2021 included $3.9 million of expense from winding down investments in our CARMA platform.

As Doug mentioned, our current strategy is to continue to make meaningful investments across the business to take advantage of the opportunities we see to accelerate organic growth over the coming years. The overall increase in operating expenses was primarily driven by increased headcount to support growth in field sales and field science, manufacturing, and lab teams. Growth in public company related and stock-based compensation expense, also contributed to the higher level of expenses compared to the same period a year ago, as our NASDAQ listing did not occur until the third quarter of 2021. We have a very healthy balance sheet, with total cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments of $246 million as of the end of the first quarter, and no debt.

Note that in Q1, we began to see the first portion of cash investments in construction of our new facility. Total investments this year in our new headquarters is expected to be approximately $12 million in 2022. We are increasing our outlook for 2022. We now expect revenue from our core business, which includes sales and leases of instruments and sales of disposables to cell therapy and drug discovery customers to grow at least 25% compared to 2021 core business revenue.

We saw strong business momentum in the first quarter and remain cautiously optimistic about the balance of 2022. Turning to our SPL program economics, as we have discussed in previous calls, the timing of SPL revenues is predicated on our customers' clinical and regulatory progress, where we have limited visibility. Taking into account the earlier than expected Q1 program-related revenue, we continue to expect 2022 SPL milestone revenue of approximately $4 million. Doug?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you, Ron. In summary, we remain excited about the opportunity to lead the industry forward as the premier cell engineering platform technology, supporting the development of advanced cell-based therapeutics, for patients that may not otherwise have treatment options. As always, we want to take this opportunity to thank our team, Board, suppliers, investors, and the amazing industry that we have the honor of serving. We are very pleased to report strong first quarter results, and MaxCyte remains well-positioned for growth, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead.

We are now opening up the line for questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] And our first question comes from Max Masucci from Cowen. Your line is open.

Stephanie Iannetta -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Hi, this is Stephanie Iannetta on for Max Masucci. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on a great quarter. If you look broadly at some of the more recent therapies, your SPL partners have launched in the clinic and compare them to the therapies you supported during the 2017 to 2020 timeframe? What sort of diversity of cell types or molecules are you seeing? Are there any emerging trends to call out?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Good questions, Stephanie, and thanks for the question. we are seeing quite a bit of movement since 2017. One of our first deals was with CRISPR, and we're seeing that continuing. We're seeing multiple edits being done to cells.

We're seeing companies move from T-cells and some T-cell subsets of NK cells. A lot of focus now on different sorts of gamma, delta T-cells, and B-cells. So the cell population, the subsets are increasing. I think, again, we're seeing more complex, and it's what I just mentioned, we're seeing different tools being used.

Some of them have been around for quite some time, like zinc finger nucleases and transposon transposase. And so we're just seeing a lot of difference. We're also seeing movement in some new indication areas, principally it was [Inaudible] disease with CRISPR and their sickle cell program, obviously into autologous stem cell, also an allogeneic T-cell treatments and we're also seeing for cancer. And we're also seeing movements into autoimmune disease and some of our earlier stage customers are working in neurodegenerative disease and infectious disease.

So we really think this whole field is just beginning to explode, as people become much more comfortable with these engineering tools and manufacturing methods.

Stephanie Iannetta -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Got it. That's super helpful. And also with the recent pullback in publicly traded biomanufacturing peers and likely some degree of a pullback in private asset values. Has your approach toward M&A changed at all? Are you leaning more toward tuck-in, complementary M&A or are you entertaining some later, more transformational deals?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I think -- well, we're seeing some movement in the private financing now. It's reflective, I think a few months behind the decrease in financings in the public market. I think, just to put an exclamation point. We're not seeing any reduction of demand for our products with our partners, so that's good.

We've always thought about expanding our corporate development group. Our targets are confidential. But I think it's fair to say that, we have talked about staying very close to our knitting, staying close to the cell engineering space, not moving too far upstream and downstream, and really looking for opportunities where we can solve really big pain points that customers are having in the cell therapy field. How we do that? I think we're open to -- with all the different opportunities.

But I think if we do a deal, if we do several deals, we are going to be, again around solving these engineering problems for our customers.

Stephanie Iannetta -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Got it. That's great. Super helpful. And if I could squeeze in one more.

So, during the last call, you highlighted that you were working with several beta customers on the ExPERT VLx to build application data. Can you provide some more detail on the progression of the beta launch or share any additional milestones on the VLx product road map?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, sure. So we released that product in the fourth quarter of this year, and much of the focus at that point was really investing in the business and refining our strategic plan. So we did the release in 2022. We think it's a very interesting marketplace and we think this is a highly disruptive technology in large-scale bioprocessing.

So we're working with these customers with the ExPERT VLx to build applications data, to support that movement. We think the opportunity is large. It's going to take time to -- if you follow that opportunity with our partners, I think one of the areas that we're very excited about, is the rapid production of monoclonal antibodies. We think there is an immediate need for that in the marketplace.

It's a -- I think it's a broad TAM expansion opportunity for the company. And we're doing quite a bit of this in small scale with the STx today. So it's a bit of a natural progression for us to move, as our companies, or partners want to move kind of from a mid-scale, which is the STx up to larger volumes. And, again, you know, work has to be done in this area and the applications.

It's -- there is significant amount of work that's done, pre and post electroporation engineering and process development. That's one of the areas that we've focused investments, is to ensure that we have the ability to support our customers all the way through their process.

Stephanie Iannetta -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Got it. Thanks so much for that color. Really appreciate it.

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

You bet Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Matt Larew from William Blair. Your line is open.

Matt Larew -- William Blair -- Analyst

So Doug, [Inaudible] loud and clear that no change in terms of demand from customers. But just because it's been such a topic, this earning season, perhaps -- often you have six to seven programs per customer and it certainly would make sense that with lead assets, there'll be no change. But just curious, if you've seen any reprioritization or deprioritization of pipelines from customers at all beyond sort of the -- maybe lead or secondary assets?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. We're not -- Matt, we're really not seeing it at this point. I mean, I think that our focus is typically on the lead asset or No. 2 of the company, like you suggested.

And as far as we can see, these companies are pulling back on those. Well, a lot of the work, if they're pulling back, they may be pulling back on some preclinical programs. But again, that's pretty -- that's usually pretty confidential with our partners and we wouldn't have much vision on that or ability to see what's going on. The other issue is that our business has grown quite a bit.

We had a very strong core business growth in the first quarter. So I think that's evidence that things continue to be moving forward to a pretty, pretty good rate.

Matt Larew -- William Blair -- Analyst

OK. And then just in terms of hiring, just curious what you're seeing out there and if you've been able to hire at pace with what you're expecting. I think opex might have -- came in a little bit light of what we were thinking, and just curious if that's -- any sort of efficiencies that you've built in, or if you've began scheduling on the hiring front?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I'll let Ron talk about the expense side of it. But we have a very active hiring group. We've expanded our human resources and team building. We're also being -- I think we're being very creative in terms of how people work in the company.

Over the last couple of years, as many of you know, it's been primarily virtual. We're still seeing that as a primary way of bringing in great people. And of course, that has its own series of leadership and management challenges. But if you -- I think, you find the right people, you bring them in and you provide them the tools that they need to work virtually.

I think we're going to do pretty well. Ron, would you like to talk at all about the expense changes for the first quarter?

Ron Holtz -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So we're being successful in hiring the people that we want. I think it's a more competitive environment that we've seen in prior years. That means we might be a little bit behind what our plan was for ramping headcount.

I don't think it's a material effect. But that competitive environment makes it take a little bit more time to find people. We are being successful hiring the people we want. When we find a candidate more often than we've seen in the past, they have other offers in hand, but we're winning the people that we want.

So I think that's going well.

Matt Larew -- William Blair -- Analyst

OK. Thanks, Ron. Last one, just -- just about two months ago, there was a competitive launch in this space. Well, just to be curious, over the last couple of months as you've been out and perhaps heard feedback on that device or had to compare it to your own technology, is there anything you would highlight about what you're hearing or what you see as key differentiators, which have been maintained, even relative to this newer launch?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So I'll say a couple of things, Matt. But I'm obviously not going to give -- we're not going to give the playbook to the competition. This is a product that they've been talking about, it's the Thermo-Fisher product for quite some time.

They are showing it up, it's showing up in major meetings. We're not seeing it playing any role in the commercial, like break-offs with customers. So we're not seeing the impact of that. I think, the thing that I think differentiates us is performance and flexibility and scale and cGMP, and our focus on supporting our customers in the cell engineering space.

So we welcome the competition, and I think it just brings more validation that this is a pretty interesting -- an area that's going to have a lot of future benefit for our company.

Matt Larew -- William Blair -- Analyst

That makes sense. Thanks.

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Dan Arias from Stifel. Your line is open.

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions. Doug, you mentioned some lumpiness that can arise with respect to the individual programs that you have in your prepared remarks. I'm just kind of curious, whether as some of your partners have pushed into the later stages, you've gotten comfortable with the purchasing around key milestone events. In other words, how consistent are you finding their spending to be into a scale up to a new trial stage, and then may be out as well? Should we think about there being step-ups ahead of a milestone and step down afterwards, or is that something to be mindful of, or is it more or less consistent?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think the lumpiness is really around the milestones themselves, because, we know, we have a number of those, but we have 15 in the clinic. I think at some point, we're going to need a larger number of ANDA, actually smoothen it out. I'm not a mathematician, so I don't know how we really get to that number. I think it's still new to us, and so we're seeing ramp-ups, obviously, preclinical into the clinic.

We're actually seeing quite a bit of non-clinical work that's been going on with some of these products as well. I mean, once they don't -- these companies don't call it all pre-clinical, they call it non-clinical because they're doing experimentation alongside the product that's been in clinical development. So I think because of the relatively small number of programs, where we don't really have a good handle on what demand looks like, I think that's one of the reasons why we have elected to start doing more in-house manufacturing. So we have the flexibility to support these customers.

And obviously, we want more of that, once we start moving into a commercial launch of one of these -- of some of these products in the next couple of years. Hopefully, that answered your question, I had a couple of things -- 

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

Yeah. It does, and you're right, and I think it just is -- it seems like it's naturally TBD on what happens from here. Maybe just on a different topic, new business development and new account wins. If I go back a year ago to when we were talking about the business at the time of the listing, you guys had mentioned share within the clinical non-viral delivery market, that was like 40% or so.

And then there was another 15% that were in discussion as you put it, which kind of felt like it had good conversion potential. Are you able to sort of update us on that chunk and how you've converted the business that looked like it was coming your way, call it six to 12 months ago?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I can't update it quantitatively. But I can say qualitatively that we're meeting all of our goals, and we're winning that business and converting companies even in early stage through our technology. We're also -- we've invested in -- we've invested a bit in working in these translational medical centers, where you have a cGMP manufacturing suite within an academic setting. And we've begun to have a much more focused marketing effort and sales effort in that.

Because at the end of the day, that's where many of these companies are spawned from, right. They're coming out of an academics lab, and once they get into the clinic or they backfill into the clinic, someone's forming a company around them. And so, if we can get that -- our technology kind of embedded in that early enough, we think that's going to just feed that SPL pipeline for the future.

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

OK. Maybe if I could just sneak one more in here, since I feel like we have the time here. On the strategic plan that you were kind of touching on, you had alluded to it, I think in your comments with the VLx. But I think part of what you were trying to do this year or into this year, was move upstream and downstream of where you are today in cell therapy or at least evaluating how you can do that.

Is that something we should keep an eye out for? And if so, would that be an organic effort or more on the inorganic side?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So we're building out a corporate development group. We've been spending a lot of time on strategy and where we want to play. And I think, we can win around -- again around, like I said, with the first call around the cell engineering step.

Some of these are going to be organic, where we've already identified some opportunities that we can kind of build into what we do. We do believe that there's a real need in the marketplace for product consistency, product characterization, ways of being able to control product potency, which has become more and more of an issue. And we think there's some analytical techniques that we may be looking to become more basic in. These opportunities will most likely be in the manufacturing area, not in the early phase discovery area.

So I think, you know, I think we've got a -- if you think about our company, we're -- in the quadrant, we're up in the high-value proprietary manufacturing enablement. We want to stay up in that sector. We only focus our team on that. So there's a -- we think there's quite a bit of opportunity there.

Technologies that may be being used in other ancillary industries, like in bioprocessing [Inaudible]. And there's also a number of technologies and products are being developed by smaller companies that have to make that decision, whether or not want to make those investments in sales and marketing. And in today's environment, where capital isn't quite as -- capital markets aren't quite as robust as they were six or nine or 12 months ago, I think there's going to be boards of smaller companies, that will be thinking hard about if they want to make an investment, and take that risk, because execution is -- it can be very difficult in that marketplace. And I think we've been able to achieve a certain level of success in that.

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

OK. Helpful, Doug. Thank you. 

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks. Thanks, Dan.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jacob Johnson from Stephens. Your line is open.

Mac Etoch -- Stephens, Inc. -- Analyst

Hi. This is Mac on for Jacob. Just a couple of quick ones from me. On the drug development side, can you talk about how much of the investments in R&D and sales and marketing are focused on this side of the business? And how much do you think this could accelerate growth in the segment?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So some of the, I think we're starting to see the benefits and some investments we've made over the last couple of years on new processing assemblies. So we try to -- we continue to have a rather robust voice of customer and voice of customers is focused on drug discovery, we've been talking about that for a bit, because that market has been, I think flat -- slightly growing and we wanted to really try to accelerate that a bit. And I think we were reasonably successful in the first year -- the first quarter of picking that up with that.

We'll continue to do that. And I think the more we can focus the use cases and drug discovery, which includes bioprocessing, I think the better off we're going to be able to build that business. The VLx is that launch -- the initial launch when it happens, will be probably over in the bioprocessing side, not in cell therapy. Because in our minds, drug discovery would include the mid and large-scale production of monoclonal antibody.

So I think you're going to see, I think, hopefully quite a bit of growth in that sector, as we continue to make investments in the drug discovery side.

Mac Etoch -- Stephens, Inc. -- Analyst

Thanks. And also, last quarter, you commented on -- that you're seeing interest outside the U.S. How large of an opportunity are the European and Asian Pacific markets for you?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. We've been in Europe for quite some time, and there just continues to be strong growth throughout the E.U. and U.K. So we're pretty basic in sales and SAS and marketing operations there.

So, you know, we think -- I think, we're making the rightful investments to be there. You know, we're seeing growth in cell therapy, certainly in China. We're figuring out the best way of approaching that, it's a tough market to, I think, be successful in. I don't think it's particularly tough market to get into, but I think it's a tough market to maintain some level of sustainability.

And that's what we're really focusing our attention on. We've had some success. I think we've had a lot of success in Japan, and in some extent, Korea. So I think, you continue to see us focusing our interest in Asia and of course, in Europe.

I mean, Europe, is one of the backbones now for our cell therapy.

Mac Etoch -- Stephens, Inc. -- Analyst

All right. Thanks, Doug.

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] And our next question comes from Mark Massaro from BTIG. Your line is open.

Vidyun Bais -- BTIG -- Analyst

Hey, guys. This is Vidyun on for Mark. Thanks for taking the question. So for your existing SPL portfolio, can you share any detail on the rough split of your customers that are in the clinic at present or in later-stage development?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So the only -- what we do share, and we said that there's 16 partners out at the end of last year, at 2021. And of those 16 partners, 95 programs were associated with those partners and 15% are in the clinic. And then I know there's been quite a bit of, I think, speculations and views by some analysts in terms of what products we're supporting.

We have publicly disclosed that we're supporting the CTX001, which is obviously the drug for sickle cell disease. I think we've been a bit less forthright in some of the other programs, because all these deals, as we mentioned are confidential. So we really don't feel comfortable talking about those in any setting.

Vidyun Bais -- BTIG -- Analyst

OK. Got you. And can you just touch on the SPL funnel? I think you have previously discussed, you need to sign three to four SPLs per year. And just any updates there, and how are the conversations around these progressing?

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So the pipeline continues to be very robust, since they have been larger. We just signed into the first quarter of this year. We continue to guide to -- I think three or four I will let Ron talk about that specifically.

And we're building out our business development groups, our alliance management groups. So we think that there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to that. A lot of that has to do more with the progression of our partners, and it does actually in our negotiations, because as they move from kind of preclinical into IND-enabling studies. So that's the turning point where they will want to have access to our patents or technology or masterplan, those sorts of things.

Vidyun Bais -- BTIG -- Analyst

Thank you. Great. Thanks for answering the question.

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Doug Doerfler for closing remarks.

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Great. Well, thank you, all, for the questions and your interest, and your support of MaxCyte. It's been indeed, an amazing 2021 and a great start to 2022 despite the -- obviously the investor sentiment in the industry, and we're quite hopeful and I think we're very confident that we're going to see some really amazing clinical data coming out of our partners over the next several quarters. And that -- I think that's going to portend well for the cell therapy industry in general and MaxCyte in particular.

So again, thank, you, all for your support, and look forward to any subsequent discussions we will have. But we will be in meeting with investors in the next several days, and if you have any particular questions, you can certainly contact us at [email protected]. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Ron.

And thank you all for -- and Gigi, thank you as the operator for this call. Be safe. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 35 minutes

Call participants:

Sean Menarguez -- Director of Investor Relations

Doug Doerfler -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Ron Holtz -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Stephanie Iannetta -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Matt Larew -- William Blair -- Analyst

Dan Arias -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

Mac Etoch -- Stephens, Inc. -- Analyst

Vidyun Bais -- BTIG -- Analyst

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