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DATE
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 8 a.m. ET
CALL PARTICIPANTS
- Chief Executive Officer — Jurgi Camblong
- Chief Financial Officer — George Cardoza
- Chief Executive Officer (Incoming), Chief Business Officer — Ross Muken
- Operator
TAKEAWAYS
- Revenue -- $21.7 million, up 22% year over year.
- Platform Analysis Volume -- Reached 108,000, representing 16% growth compared to the prior year period.
- Adjusted Gross Margin -- 75.4%, compared to 75.7% in the prior year period.
- Gross Profit -- $14.7 million, a 21% increase year over year.
- Adjusted Gross Profit -- $16.4 million, up 22% versus the prior year period.
- Net Dollar Retention -- 117%, up from 103%, driven by customers expanding into multiple applications and increased adoption of higher ASP solutions.
- Annualized Revenue Churn -- Less than 1% in the quarter.
- Core Genomic Customers -- 537 at quarter end, up from 490 in the prior year period.
- Operating Loss -- $17.3 million, compared to $16 million in the prior year period.
- Adjusted EBITDA -- Loss of $9.2 million versus $9.5 million loss in the prior year period.
- Cash and Cash Equivalents -- $65.4 million at quarter end, including $14.5 million from ATM proceeds.
- Cash Burn -- $19.5 million, compared to $11.7 million in the prior year period, impacted by increased bonus/commission payouts and investment in a new lab, as well as litigation expenses.
- EMEA Revenue Growth -- 30% year over year, outperforming the company average, primarily driven by the U.K., Belgium, and Switzerland.
- U.S. Volume Growth -- 28% increase year over year.
- APAC Volume Growth -- 31% growth year over year.
- Hem/Onc Revenue Growth -- 24% year over year, with additional growth in rare and inherited disease volumes exceeding 20%.
- Liquid Biopsy -- Performed 3,000 analysis in the quarter, up over 100% year over year.
- Biopharma Revenue -- Positive growth in the quarter, with recent contracts from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Kartos beginning to contribute.
- Latin America Revenue -- Remains soft, with management stating direct actions are being taken to address underperformance in the region, especially in Brazil.
- Patent Litigation Expenses -- $1.4 million incurred, partially offset by $700,000 recovery from Guardant Health; net litigation impact was $700,000 for the quarter.
- Adjusted EBITDA Guidance (2026) -- Loss of $29 million to $32 million, versus $41.5 million loss for full year 2025.
- Revenue Guidance (2026) -- Reaffirmed at $92 million to $94 million, representing 20%-22% annual growth.
- Liquidity -- Expanded credit facility with Perceptive Advisors in January, adding $25 million to available liquidity.
- Gross Margin Outlook -- Management expects slight improvement for the full year, supported by continued optimization of cloud and storage costs.
- Customer Onboarding -- Large customer cohorts signed in 2025 are progressing and expected to ramp up in the second half of the year, especially in the U.S. market.
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RISKS
- CFO Cardoza noted, "foreign exchange headwinds continue to negatively impact reported results, primarily due to the strengthening of the Swiss franc," which increased dollar-denominated costs by approximately 14% compared to the prior year period.
- "revenue remains soft," in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, prompting management to implement leadership changes and assess strategic adjustments to regain growth.
- Legal expenses related to Guardant Health patent litigation totaled $1.4 million during the quarter, offset by a $700,000 recovery but still resulting in a net negative impact on operating expenses.
- Management acknowledged that volatility in exchange rates "may have an impact to reported results" for the remainder of the year.
SUMMARY
SOPHiA GENETICS SA (SOPH 4.16%) reported significant revenue and volume gains in the first quarter, attributable to both increased U.S. decentralized testing adoption and the global demand for SOPHiA DDM applications. The company recorded improved net dollar retention and customer expansion activity, highlighting its ability to drive deeper penetration within its install base. The quarter also saw positive momentum in biopharma collaborations, with contractual contributions from major industry partners beginning to materialize in results. Despite strong topline and operational achievements, foreign exchange fluctuations, Latin America performance, and ongoing patent litigation presented notable financial headwinds.
- CFO Cardoza said, "we are on track to be approaching adjusted EBITDA breakeven by the end of 2026 and crossing over to positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2027."
- The company achieved a new operational milestone by analyzing more than 40,000 patients in a single month during March, contributing to its global network reach of 537 institutions spanning 75 countries.
- Incoming CEO Ross Muken described U.S. market adoption of decentralized testing as "materially increased," citing established reimbursement rates and improved denial rates as structural factors fueling growth.
- Management reaffirmed that new application launches, such as liquid biopsy and enhanced exome products, will drive higher average selling prices and support ongoing margin expansion efforts.
- The latest round of internal efficiency measures included modest reductions in headcount and a stronger focus on cost controls, with resource reallocation toward high-growth geographies and functions.
INDUSTRY GLOSSARY
- Adjusted Gross Margin: Gross margin excluding items such as litigation costs and other one-time expenses, providing a clearer view of operational profitability.
- Net Dollar Retention: A metric indicating the percentage of recurring revenue retained and expanded from existing customers over a set period, reflecting account expansion and churn dynamics.
- ATM Proceeds: Capital raised through an at-the-market offering, allowing a company to sell shares directly into the market at prevailing prices.
- CDx (Companion Diagnostics): Laboratory tests or assays used to identify patients most likely to benefit from a specific drug or therapy.
- Hem/Onc: Refers to hematology and oncology diagnostic applications within the clinical portfolio.
- MRD: Minimal Residual Disease, a highly sensitive measure for detecting remaining disease in patients following treatment, often used in cancer monitoring.
- MSK Access/MSK Impact: Next-generation sequencing tests developed in partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, used for comprehensive and liquid biopsy cancer profiling.
- Adjusted EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, adjusted for nonrecurring items for a clearer picture of ongoing operating performance.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Jurgi Camblong: Thanks, Ken, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report that SOPHiA is off to a strong start in 2026. In the first quarter, we delivered revenue growth of 22% year-over-year. We also performed a record 108,000 genomic analysis as demand for SOPHiA DDM accelerates across the globe. In addition to processing more data volume than ever, we also achieved adjusted gross margin of 75.4%, demonstrating the unique scalability of our hyper-efficient analytics platform. Ross and George will walk you through the commercial and financial details in a few minutes. But first, let me step back and frame why this quarter matters strategically. The precision medicine landscape is at an inflection point.
Sequencing costs are declining, data per patient is exploding, and AI is becoming essential for delivering the highest standard of care. As a result, hospitals and labs around the world are increasingly looking to scale their genomics testing capabilities. With the right partners, turnaround times become faster, economics become profitable and data generated becomes invaluable for performing research and making discoveries. SOPHiA DDM was built for this moment. Our platform streamlines testing and allows any institution anywhere in the world to quickly scale their own world-class precision medicine capabilities.
SOPHiA DDM provides customers with not just a tool, but an AI native service that delivers workflow outcomes, generating highly accurate insights and faster speeds while also unlocking profitable economics for institutions. But that's not all. SOPHiA DDM also makes patient care more intelligent by breaking data silos and allowing clinicians to tap into a collective intelligence of the smartest minds in health care. As hospitals use SOPHiA DDM to generate insights and treat patients, they also contribute a stream of data and knowledge back into the platform. As more data flows through the platform, our algorithms become smarter. This in turn enables boost and clinicians to get better insights, building trust along the way.
Deeper trust, smarter insights and better outcomes ultimately accelerates new platform adoption, creating a virtuous loop with compounding growth effects. As of Q1, this adoption loop has enabled us to connect 537 institutions across the globe who use SOPHiA DDM every day for genomic analysis. In the quarter, this institution uploaded real-time real-world genomic data for 108,000 patients. And in March, we set a new company record with more than 40,000 patients analyzed in a single month. This diverse real-time real-world data stream includes patient data from 75 countries worldwide, creating breadth and globe exposure and is unmatched in our space.
Over the past 2 years, our rich diverse data set, which includes nearly 2.5 million genomic profiles since inception has enabled us to build some of the most sophisticated AI in health care. New applications in liquid biopsy, solid tumor, MRD for AML and enhanced exams are impressing our users with their accuracy, flexibility and AI-powered insights. And the good news is we're just getting started. Our top innovation priorities going forward will focus on deepening clinical relationships and getting closer to the patients. To accomplish this, we will expand platform capabilities to new areas as the market evolves.
This includes supporting larger, more complex NGS applications like all transcriptome and methylation, tracking patients longitudinally with MRD, mastering data compute at scale, optimizing the end-to-end workflow and developing increasingly regulated products. It also includes expanding capabilities beyond genomics into multimodal to support clinical decision-making and accelerate the future of data-driven medicine. Our planned innovations are also designed to resonate with biopharma. Throughout the year, we will invest in evolving our data sets into durable commercial assets for real-world evidence. In addition, we are working hard to create a global decentralized companion diagnostics offering that brings life-saving therapies to patients across our network. In short, our unique positioning and data set are enabling us to build for the future.
We have been a technology company since day 1, building real AI to solve the world's most difficult biological challenges. The market is coming to us, and I couldn't be more confident in our ability to deliver products for future growth. As we continue to invest in the future, we also must remain committed to growing in a sustainable way. Across the organization, our teams are hyper focused on continuous improvement, efficiency and operational excellence. We benefit from a young, agile and tech-centric workforce that has been quick to adopt and deploy emerging productivity tools, including the new AI technologies in the market. Early results from our internal rollout of these AI tools has been overwhelmingly positive.
In Q1, we materialized the benefits of recent efficiency gains and took a series of targeted cost actions, which modestly reduced headcount and nonlabor spend across the business. These actions, which mostly focused on support and operations functions have allowed us to invest even more in high-growth areas while also ensuring that we meet our profitability commitments going forward. As the year continues, we will look forward to updating you on our progress in showcasing the impressive operating leverage that is inmates to our business model. In closing, Q1 was a strong quarter for SOPHiA. The market is reshaping itself around intelligence, and we are perfectly positioned to accelerate this movement. Our network is compounding and our data is unmatched.
We continue to scale and our path to profitability is becoming increasingly clear. As I close out my final earnings call as CEO before I transition to Executive Chair in June, I'm happy to transition leadership of a business that is in excellent shape to a capable leader who will propel SOPHiA to its next stage of growth. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ross, who will provide a more detailed update on the business and growth drivers for the year.
Ross Muken: Thanks, Jurgi. I certainly share your excitement about the business. And today, I'm pleased to share an update on our progress to start the year. In the first quarter, 3 major themes defined the quarter. First, the U.S. business continues to gain momentum. Decentralized testing has always been a widely accepted characteristic of the European and global market. However, in the last 12 months, demand for decentralized testing has materially increased in the U.S. as reimbursement rates become more established and denial rates improve, hospitals and labs are waking up to the benefits of scaling their own testing capabilities. Central labs have proven that testing is profitable and that genomic data has significant value.
Now U.S. hospitals and labs are making testing part of their core strategy, and those who move are seeing significant benefits. In the first quarter, we announced an expanded partnership with Mount Sinai, one of the leading academic health systems in the U.S. who is using SOPHiA DDM to bring haemato-oncology and solid tumor testing to the New York market. They joined a growing number of New York area institutions to partner with SOPHia, including NYU Langone Health and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As more institutions adopt SOPHiA DDM, the cost of not having our platform becomes real.
Regional density causes patients, providers and even payers to push testing volumes towards sites which offer the best insights at the lowest cost with the fastest turnaround times. We're proud to work with our partners to bring these positive structural changes to the New York testing market and welcome a decentralization revolution to the New York City area. The second key theme for the quarter was continued growth of new applications such as the MSK Impact and MSK Access test. In Q1, less than 2 years after decentralizing and deploying these tests globally, we have already reached a total of 100 customers worldwide who have signed on to adopt the applications.
A few of these include prestigious Q1 signings such as Master UMC, a leading Dutch academic medical center, Hospitalia Niguarda, one of Italy's leading hospitals in Milan and Rural University Bulcum in Germany. These customers, along with half of the 100 signed accounts are currently implementing SOPHiA PBM, which means they should begin generating revenue over the next 12 months. Among those who have completed implementation, we are pleased to record 3,000 liquid biopsy analysis in Q1, up more than 100% year-over-year. We look forward to this number continuing to grow as more customers finish their implementation, and start using the sophisticated high SP application.
New applications such as liquid biopsy and enhanced exomes help our sales team expand within accounts. As a reminder, we landed a large amount of new customers in 2025 with 124 new signings throughout the year. As we turn to 2026, a major focus will be expanding across these customers by encouraging them to adopt additional applications. I'm proud to say that our expand engine is off to a strong start in the first quarter. Net dollar retention, or in other words, same-store growth increased to 117%, up from 103% in the prior year period. Moreover, forward-looking indicators show no signs of stopping.
In Q1, we signed many notable expand deals, including 3 in Europe that were each valued at over $1 million in annual contract value. This serves as another impressive proof point for the virtuous loop fueling our platform's growth. It also shows that hospitals are excited to consolidate their data strategies with trusted partners in a market where winner take most dynamics are forming. The final theme for the quarter was substantial increased momentum with biopharma. In the first quarter, biopharma revenue growth was positive and contributed modestly to overall growth as some of the recent new contracts we signed began to generate revenue. We continue to make progress with a growing number of biopharma partners and momentum is strong.
Coming out of AACR and World CD and CDx Summit Europe 2026, it is clear that biopharma customers are looking to develop comprehensive AI investment strategies with trusted partners. It is also clear that every biopharma company we speak to recognizes that SOPHiA provides differentiated value across the drug continuum. They recognize that our diagnostic network is unmatched in global reach and that the data streaming through our platform has incredible value. They also appreciate our deep AI expertise in the field of biology.
Our offering is continuing to resonate as one of the only companies in this space that could support a drug across its entire life cycle from companion diagnostics to post-launch monitoring with real-world evidence to patient selection and trial design. In the last 6 months, increasing momentum has materialized in the recent signing of contracts with major biopharma such as AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson as well as biotechs like Kartos and others. Moreover, our partnerships with Myriad Genetics in the U.S. and added innovations in Japan continue to progress as we work on building out the infrastructure for a hybrid global CDx offering. We look forward to updating you more on these items over the coming weeks and months.
Looking ahead to the remainder of 2026, our pipeline across clinical and biopharma remains strong and healthy even after strong bookings conversion. Deal size continues to grow and the number of opportunities in our pipeline above $1 million are becoming even more numerous. The market is moving in our direction, and we are excited to continue capitalizing on our opportunity. With that, I will now turn it over to George, who will provide a more detailed look at our financial results and the outlook for 2026.
George Cardoza: Thank you, Ross. As Jurgi and Ross highlighted, Q1 results were strong and our outlook remains positive. Total revenue for the first quarter was $21.7 million compared to $17.8 million for the first quarter of 2025, representing year-over-year growth of 22% I will note that year-over-year revenue growth would have been slightly stronger if not for a onetime benefit in the prior year period from a customer true-up. Platform analysis volume was approximately 108,000 in Q1 compared to 93,000 in the first quarter of 2025, representing solid growth of 16%. From a regional perspective, U.S. volumes continue to expand at healthy levels, growing 28% year-over-year in Q1. APAC also outperformed with 31% volume growth.
In EMEA, revenue grew 30% year-over-year, impressively above the company average, mostly driven by great performance in the U.K., Belgium and Switzerland. In Latin America, revenue remains soft, and we have made changes there to turn around our performance. From an application standpoint, Hem/Onc revenue grew 24% year-over-year. Rare and inherited growth also picked up in the quarter with volumes growing over 20% as our enhanced exome product begins to come online. As Ross mentioned, liquid biopsy, which carries a higher ASP, continues to ramp and contribute to our revenue growth as well with more growth expected for the second half of the year.
Core genomic customers were 537 as of March 31, up from 490 in the prior year period. Annualized revenue churn remained world-class at less than 1% in Q1. As Ross mentioned, net dollar retention for the quarter was 117%, up from 103% in the prior year period. Gross profit was $14.7 million compared to $12.2 million in the prior year period, representing growth of 21%. Gross margin was 68.0% compared to 68.7% for the first quarter of 2025. Adjusted gross profit was $16.4 million, an increase of 22% compared to adjusted gross profit of $13.4 million in the prior year period. Adjusted gross margin was 75.4% compared to 75.7% for the first quarter of 2025.
Total operating expenses for Q1 were $32.0 million compared to $28.2 million in the prior year period. Some specific items temporarily impacted reported operating expenses and are worth calling out directly as they do not reflect the company's underlying operating performance. First, foreign exchange headwinds continue to negatively impact reported results, primarily due to the strengthening of the Swiss franc. The Swiss franc strengthened approximately 14% against the U.S. dollar from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, meaningfully increasing the dollar translated costs of our Swiss payroll and facilities. This is a pure translation effect as our underlying cost structure in local currency remains disciplined.
Second, as previously disclosed, Guardant Health filed patent infringement claims against us in the United Kingdom and at the Unified Patent Court in Paris during Q3 last year, alleging that our MSK access application infringes their patents. We incurred approximately $1.4 million in related legal expenses during Q1, which is reflected as a litigation adjustment in our adjusted EBITDA reconciliation. Importantly, in January, the UPC rejected Guardant's request for provisional measures and ordered them to pay us $700,000 in interim costs, $500,000 of which we received in mid-March and an additional $200,000, which we received in mid-April. Net of this recovery, litigation impact on Q1 operating expenses was approximately $700,000.
Operating loss for the first quarter was $17.3 million compared to $16 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $9.2 million compared to the prior year loss of $9.5 million. Lastly, cash burn, which we define as the change in cash and cash equivalents, excluding cash received from borrowings and stock sales as well as FX impacts, was $19.5 million compared to $11.7 million in the prior year period. This year-over-year increase reflects 2 expected dynamics. First, coming off a strong 2025, annual bonus and commission payouts were meaningfully higher than the prior year, and these were paid in March.
Secondly, we also invested in the build-out of a new lab at our Swiss headquarters with increased capacity to support revenue growth for years to come. This impacted our cash burn by approximately $1 million in the quarter. Third, we continue to vigorously defend ourselves against the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Guardant Health, and we paid several bills for expenses incurred in the first quarter of 2025. The $500,000 from Gardens in Q1 and the additional $200,000 received in April only cover a portion of our total litigation costs. We ended Q1 with cash and cash equivalents of $65.4 million as of March 31, which includes $14.5 million in ATM proceeds received in the first quarter of 2026.
In January, as previously disclosed, we also expanded our credit facility with Perceptive Advisors, increasing total available liquidity by $25 million. We remain confident in our current capital position with respect to the achievement of our long-term goals. I'll now turn to the 2026 outlook. Given the promising revenue growth in Q1, SOPHiA GENETICS is reaffirming our full year revenue guidance for 2026 of $92 million to $94 million, representing 20% to 22% growth on a reported basis.
We still expect 2026 growth to be mostly back half weighted as new business signed in 2025 comes online in the second half of the year and as more MSK ACES, MSK IM PACFLEX and enhanced exome business ramps up to routine usage. We also expect that exchange rates will remain volatile due to macro uncertainties, which may have an impact to reported results. Beyond revenue, we are also reaffirming our full year adjusted EBITDA loss guidance of $29 million to $32 million compared to $41.5 million in full year 2025.
As demonstrated this quarter, we continue to make targeted investments in our platform to further optimize cloud compute and storage costs and expect gross margins to slightly expand beyond 2025 levels. As a global company, we are monitoring the ongoing conflict in the Middle East closely, particularly with respect to shipping and customer activity in the region. So far, the conflict has not materially impacted our results, and we do not believe it will have a material impact this year. In Q1, as Jurgi mentioned, we took a series of cost actions and realized benefits of adopting AI across our teams. These actions reinforce our conviction to grow revenue without increasing headcount.
They also give us confidence that we will be able to continue holding the line on operating expenses in local currencies and reach our profitability guidance. All said, we continue to believe that we are on track to be approaching adjusted EBITDA breakeven by the end of 2026 and crossing over to positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2027. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to Jurgi for closing remarks before we take your questions.
Jurgi Camblong: Thank you, George. As I wrap up my last earnings call as CEO of SOPHiA GENETICS I feel confident as ever in our long-term trajectory. Forward-looking indicators remain strong across the business. We continue to see a steady stream of customer signings across new and existing customers. Biopharma interest is growing and our pipeline is expanding across regions and applications. At the same time, we continue to be laser-focused on optimizing costs and delivering sustainable growth. Thank you to the SOPHiA team, customers, partners and investors for your continued trust and partnership. 15 years ago, we had an ambitious vision to transform health care through data and AI.
Today, we operate the most widely used AI-driven platform in precision medicine, impacting 40,000 patients per month and 2.5 million patients since inception. I'm so proud of what our team has accomplished over the past 15 years, and I know we are just getting started. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mark Massaro from BTIG.
Mark Massaro: Congrats on the quarter. Jurgi, I appreciate the network that you've built globally to decentralize this testing and look forward to working with you as you move to the Executive Chairman role. Sure thing. Yes. So moving into my question, I guess, the adjusted gross margin of 75% was certainly a key highlight of this print. Can you just give us a sense, guys, for your degree of confidence to maintain or how do you think about this gross margin profile going forward? I know that you are planning to onboard some higher mix applications. So is this something that you think you can build on here?
Or were there some onetime items that might be lumpy on the gross margin line?
Jurgi Camblong: Ross?
Ross Muken: So Mark, we've really spent quite a lot of effort modernizing the platform over the past 24 months as we've talked about our Gen 2 transition, and I think you're seeing the benefits of that. And I think there's a lot more scalability left even as we bring on more complex solutions that require a lot more compute. And so in general, I'm super happy with how the team has executed here. I think fundamentally as well, we're seeing positive pricing dynamics in our environment.
So you have both the mix of trade up to more complex solutions as well as more value realized for solutions like ours as a percentage of total cost of diagnostic or as a percentage of revenue. So I think on both of those parameters, this is quite constructive for us. And so I'll let George comment on what's contemplated going forward. But for me, I still think there's some room to go, but certainly, we're very pleased with how we've executed.
George Cardoza: Yes. No, Mark, as Ross said, I mean, we're very pleased with the performance of our tech team, and we were pleased with where gross margin came in for the quarter. We do have some pharma business. And if anything could be lumpy on the margin side, it would probably be more of the pharma business. Our full year guidance was modest improvement in gross margins, and we're still holding to that. But certainly, we were pleased with where Q1 came in.
Mark Massaro: Okay. Great. And it looks like you guys took some cost reduction actions in the month of April. It looks like it's a small action, but can you just speak to which regions were impacted? Anything in the U.S. that was material? And how should we think about that in terms of headcount?
Ross Muken: So a couple of things, Mark. So one, the action was quite small, right? So it was a very modest change to the cost structure. We are an organization very focused on continuing improvement. We've also seen some gains in parts of the business from -- and so we wanted to be able to drop some of that down and then reinvest other parts. So I would say, in general, again, this was quite isolated and generally, I would say, in the G&A functions where we gained efficiency. And so this was our ability to show that, obviously, we're an organization very committed to our profitability targets.
And also as a software and AI business, we're one that could not only obviously deploy games to our customers, but also utilize some of that on our own operations, which will help us again, as we scale as growth continues to reaccelerate here. George?
George Cardoza: Yes. No. And again, we've -- in our guidance for the year, we said EBITDA -- adjusted EBITDA of $29 million to $32 million. And this was an important part is maintaining that cost discipline across the organization. And like Ross said, that's just part of what we're doing and making sure that we continue to have that discipline going forward. And as mentioned, Mark, regionally, most of it was G&A. So I would say probably a bit more concentrated in the Swift operations. But honestly, no real geographic bias to it. And actually, the U.S. is where some of the headcount redeployment, particularly on the commercial side will go. It will be modest.
And that's because we're seeing really great characteristics in that business and really are confident in our ability to continue to grow market share in the territory.
Mark Massaro: Great. And maybe just my last question. You alluded to the fact that you signed a lot of new customers in 2025, many of which are planning to turn on to the DDM platform in the second half. I just wanted to get a sense for -- obviously, you did reaffirm the revenue guidance, but I just want to get a sense for whether or not you believe that you're tracking to initiating the go-lives for many of these customers and wanted to test your degree of confidence on these folks coming on to the platform.
Ross Muken: So Mark, we came in ahead of our plan in the first quarter. So we're very happy with our performance. You know we're conservative. And so given it's early in the year, despite we're really pleased with the signals and we remain extremely confident in sort of the customer onboarding and progression. We want to make sure that we're well set up for the year. So I would say stay tuned. But ultimately, we're feeling very good around delivering on our commitments and ideally, obviously outperforming. I would say, overall, on the onboarding side, I'm really pleased with our implementation team on our tech side and our bioinformatics group as well as in services.
We've seen the pacing of some of the large customers pick up. We have quite a number of them coming online, including some that came on late in March, which helped with that record month that you saw. and helped us have a record quarter. And so my expectation is that we will -- that cadence will continue to improve. Again, a lot of the AI and other initiatives we have are focused on speeding up that time to revenue.
And so again, as George talks about the back half ramp, a good portion of that is highly visible and is obviously tied somewhat to some of those customers, particularly some of the large U.S. ones coming online, and we remain super confident on our ability to execute on that. And ideally, if they ramp consistent with what we've seen historically, that may provide some cushion for upside as we tend to initially guide fairly conservatively for the on-ramp of new business. So again, a lot to look forward to on our side as that growth ideally continues to move in a favorable direction.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Dan Brennan from TD Cowen.
Kyle Boucher: This is Kyle on for Dan. I wanted to jump into your net dollar retention, which accelerated again this quarter to 117%. Can you just discuss some of the drivers a little bit more? I mean is this more driven by customers expanding into multiple applications on DDM? Or is it more a mix of the uptake of higher ASP tests like MSK ACES that's driving that performance?
Ross Muken: Thanks, Kyle. Obviously, we're happy to see that metric get back to, I would say, really high-quality standard among software businesses. So we're quite pleased with the organic growth. As you mentioned, it's coming from a mix, right? So we were very intentional this year versus the last 2 years of really focusing on the expand -- and so that obviously will benefit the NBR line. And ideally, this will continue into next year. This is a very high ROI acceleration as well as it carries with it very little incremental cost. And so it helps as we think about our shift to EBITDA profitability.
I would also say, and you can see it by the strong EMEA results, the underlying growth in our industry, I think, has become healthier. You see it in one of the large equipment vendors numbers relative to clinical consumable growth. But I think overall, customers are healthy. New technologies are coming online. For us, that would be things like liquid biopsy or exomes. And in general, pricing remains, as I mentioned, favorable. So I think the component of all of that with incredibly low churn all of that comes together to give us confidence that the improvement in sort of that organic underlying growth rate will sustain.
Kyle Boucher: Got it. And then maybe just on your Latin America business. You noted it was soft in the first quarter. I think in your 6-K, it said it was down over 30%, but I believe you had a really tough comp there year-over-year. Can you just dig into some of the trends that you're seeing in Latin America and just expand upon that a bit?
Ross Muken: Yes. So thank you for the question. Obviously, we've been disappointed in that region, albeit it's a small one, but it's strategically important for the last number of quarters. So we did make a change there in leadership. I was actually just there myself very recently as was our CSO in Brazil and Colombia and Argentina, all 3 critical countries. I would say Brazil at the moment is where some of that softness is kind of isolated. And so we've got some ideas and thoughts of how we're going to reaccelerate the territory. I would say I'm quite optimistic on Mexico and Colombia and to a lesser degree, Argentina.
But I think overall, we expect the region to return to growth. We think we're going to make the necessary changes there, and we think the portfolio is also well positioned. It's also a region that's highly pharma sensitive. And so sometimes as well, it's dependent on where pharma pipelines are, and there are a few key new drugs coming online that will be highly relevant for Latin America. And so we would expect that as well to drive an increase in testing in some of the geographies. And so overall, I would say we're cautiously optimistic, but certainly, we've taken actions to ensure that we get back on track in this strategic territory.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Bill Bonello from Craig-Hallum.
William Bonello: A couple of questions here. First of all, I want to follow up on one of the questions that Mark asked just about implementation time. But more specifically to MSK ACES. I'm just curious what you're seeing these days in terms of sort of typical onboarding time once a customer has said that they want to adopt MSK Access? And then what you're kind of seeing as a typical ramp once they're up and running the test?
Ross Muken: Bill, it's a great question. Thank you. So obviously, as you know, MSK Access is incredibly important to us. We're really proud of the 100 accounts that have come online, if you just put that in context. the world didn't really have liquid biopsy testing outside of the United States. And so we're really pleased to see it adopted at this great rate. And we're also really proud to have great pharma partners in that journey that have helped us in that adoption rate. And so I would say, overall, I wish I could tell you that there's a pattern on some of the adoption.
I would say several accounts have come online and oncologists have really, I would say, understood how to utilize the technology, and we've seen volumes ramp. I think others take more education. And so again, there's varying degrees of sophistication and understanding on different sort of cancer types dependent on where we look around the world. But at the moment, about half of the accounts are online. I would say they're all ramping. We continue to believe this will be a very material part of the incremental growth. And so overall, I would say we're pleased.
But certainly, you start to see some of that impact the revenue line, but I would say more is to come over the next several quarters and into 2027. And so far, it's hitting our internal expectations, but we'd obviously like to see that inflect more materially. And we think we, again, better doctor education or oncologist education in some of the territories. And then if you see some of what's going to be presented at ASCO as well as at ESMO, our expectation is all of this will help drive with that utilization to much higher levels over time. But it's been pretty broadly adopted, right?
And so you should expect to see different adoption curves in each of the different nations.
William Bonello: That's helpful. And then just a follow-up on the pharma side. And you touched on this just slightly in your response to that question. It's great to see the recovery there. It does seem like typically pharma revenue might capture a lower multiple just because it's not seen -- it is seen as potentially less recurring. Could you maybe talk to us about how you think about the pharma business vis-a-vis the clinical business? In other words, how does pharma drive clinical if it does?
Ross Muken: Bill, it's another great question. So -- and it ties, frankly, into your first question because a product like MSK ACES, which is really a platform for pharma, does have a fantastic flywheel between biopharma and clinical usage, as you alluded to. So I would say, overall, we're very pleased finally with where our pharma business is performing. We've now gotten back into the green, and we're starting to see some nice momentum where I think over the next several quarters, you'll see that acceleration play out in the total revenue performance. So certainly, quite a different picture than where we were 24 months ago.
As you know, we made some tough decisions in that business, and we really refocused and we're seeing the benefits now of that play out in the numbers. And so I would say, again, one of the key things we've strategically decided to do is less kind of large one-off project type business that doesn't yield strategic and/or recurring revenue benefits. So we're much more confident that the type of business we're bringing online is recurring, can be repeated and can be scaled.
And as you think about, again, some of the types of CDx projects even that we do, much of that is done with the intent of not only being able to serve pharma through the CTA and CDx portion, but obviously, on the clinical side thereafter. And the idea that you can have one harmonized global solution in all markets, right? Think about that in liquid biopsy that doesn't require large bridging studies that doesn't require some hybrid mix of 7 or 10 laboratories around the world solving for a geographic or a global picture. I think it's a super compelling offering. And it's also different in that for us, we're already embedded in so many of these accounts.
And so once we flip the switch from some of the pharma work into the clinical market, it's the same solution, right? And we can start relatively quickly serving customers in that market post approval for a drug. So I think for us, again, that flywheel is hypercritical. We're really happy with the progress pharma has made. And I would say, overall, you can hear from us our confidence is up. Again, we're not declaring victory. We're just starting to show kind of the right level of performance here, but it's certainly materially better than where we were even 12 months ago.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Subu Nambi from Guggenheim Securities.
Subhalaxmi Nambi: This is Ricky on for Subu. So in the slides, you have the average price per analysis ranging from $100 to $500. And for the first quarter, just some back of the envelope math here, it comes in around $195 per sample analysis -- per analysis. So what is your expectation for the ASP trend through the remainder of the year? And what are you assuming for this in guidance?
Jurgi Camblong: George?
George Cardoza: Yes. If we exclude the pharma business and just look at the clinical business, our price sequentially was up $2. So as Ross said, we're building in terms of selling more higher-value tests. So our expectation is to continue to see that lift as the quarters go on during the year. And we continue to see the access clients, the 100 clients that we booked ramp up. So we're optimistic about ASP. Now there's a balance there because, obviously, we are expecting growth now in our Latin America business and some emerging markets like India and Turkey. But still, in terms of modeling, we do expect the ASP to have lift in it for the remaining quarters of the year.
Subhalaxmi Nambi: Got it. That's helpful. And a lot has been asked on biopharma, but maybe just a slightly different approach of the question. You mentioned how this is a modest positive contributor to growth in the quarter, and there was lots of positive color on signings and outlook. But did the quarter turn out the way you expected? Or was it above your expectations? And did it change what you're expecting for the remainder of the year?
Ross Muken: Yes. So as I mentioned before, we're quite conservative, Ricky. So despite the fact that pharma performed quite well, and I would say we're optimistic for continued sequential improvement and a step-up in the second half of the year as well. We did not change our expectation in the guide. I'll let George give some color. But I think just fundamentally there, since we're early in that reacceleration, we want to remain conservative. But what we're trying to convey is if we look at the picture in terms of -- and even for myself, I was at two large conferences during the quarter.
If we look at the level of interactions we're having with pharma and what we're discussing and the comprehensive nature of that, if we look at the RFPs we're responding to, if we're looking at what's in the pipeline and what's late stage and then what we've now executed on over the last several quarters in terms of new pharma customers as well as new contracts with our existing customers. It's a much better mix than what we've seen in the past, both across, frankly, diagnostics and data. And we haven't talked about data or our evidence generation business in a while, but we're actually seeing as well there subtle improvements.
And so I think overall, what we're trying to kind of point to is our increased confidence that, that will improve, but we remain conservative, right, George, in terms of how we factor that into the forecast.
George Cardoza: Yes. We're very pleased with the performance of the Pharma business. As Ross said, I mean, it's really been building momentum. It's tangible. We can see it. And again, I think in 2026, it's going to be an accelerator, but it's really going to be an accelerator in 2027 and beyond as that business just continues to build and build.
Operator: There are no further questions. Please continue.
Jurgi Camblong: Well, thank you so much for joining us today and for joining us and me in a journey of 15 years. I'm very happy to basically let the driving seats to a fantastic leader who sits next to me here in Switzerland today, surrounded by a very talented team and with a technology that is better than ever to be able to capture even more opportunities in the market. So I'm very, very pleased with what we have achieved, and please continue following us. As you will see, we will continue to transform precision medicine over the next years. Thank you.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
