Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ADPT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Now, turning to segment reporting on the right side of the slide, restructuring activities during the quarter aligned resources and operations, sales and marketing, and R&D towards either the MRD or Immune Medicine businesses. These resources and related costs are dedicated to each business and are included within the operating spend of MRD and Immune Medicine respectively. Other corporate functions such as finance, legal, HR, and IT continue to be managed centrally to avoid disenergizing from duplication. We allocate the majority of these corporate expenses to each segment using direct headcount in MRD and Immune Medicine, which is approximately 75% MRD and approximately 25% high end. Certain expenses will remain unallocated, such as our corporate insurance costs, governance, audit fees, our idle facility, and interest income and expense, which are reflected under an unallocated corporate segment.

In addition to operating expenses per segment, we are also providing adjusted EBITDA, which adjusting for certain income and expense line items can be used as a proxy for cash burn per segment, excluding CapEx and working capital. Now, turning to our updated full-year guidance on slide 8. Updating our MRD full-year revenue guidance to $135 million to $140 million, bringing up the midpoint of the range to reflect the realization of milestones not previously included in the guide. With respect to trends throughout the year, we continue to expect MRD revenue to be about 45-55 weighted between the first and second half respects. For the year, we are lowering the total company estimated operating spend to $350 million to $360 million, a $10 million reduction from our previous guidance as we continue to drive leverage across the businesses and manage investments.

Of this total spend approximately 70% sits within the MRD business and approximately 25% within Immune Medicine. We continue to be thoughtful about our cash position, excluding one-time costs from restructuring activity. We now expect the burn to average approximately $30 million for the remaining three quarters, which implies an annual cash burn of 130 million versus our previous estimate of 149. This represents a 14% reduction in cash burn over full-year 2023. Of note, approximately 50% of the cash burn this year is expected to come from the MRD business and approximately 40% from the Immune Medicine business. The remaining 10% is due to the unallocated corporate cost. I look forward to providing you with further financial updates throughout the year as we continue to make progress towards our goals.

With that, I’ll hand it back over to Chad.

Chad Robins: Thank you, Kyle. As I think it’s evident, we’ve made important decisions over the last couple months. I’m confident we’re taking the right steps as we move forward with our two business segments and execute on the priorities. Our cash position is strong and we’re disciplined and managed our capital to bridge the MRD business to profitability while supporting measured investments in Immune Medicine to advance our key programs. With that, I’ll turn the call back over to the operator and open up for questions. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first call comes from the line of Mark Massaro from BTIG. Mark, your line is open.

Mark Massaro: Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Thank you for taking the question. I recognize it’s only been about three or four weeks, but following the FDA, ADCOM meeting, or ODAC meeting, where multiple myeloma was recommended to be a unanimous primary endpoint in clinical trials for multiple myeloma. Can you just give us a sense for what you’ve been hearing in the marketplace? Any of your customers perhaps looking to pick things up a little bit on the clinical trial side? How do you envision this impacting your business over the next couple of years?

Chad Robins: Yes. Thanks, Mark, for joining the call. I’m going to pass it over to Susan who can provide quite a bit of color in that. Susan.

Susan Bobulsky: Thanks, Chad, thanks Mark. The ODAC vote, we think it’s a huge milestone in the field of myeloma and obviously tremendous news for patients. We have been in active discussions with our pharma partners to discuss the potential implications. While many companies are waiting for the final FDA guidance, which we do expect to be shortly forthcoming, we already have a few studies that have been upgraded to primary endpoint, as well as a few new studies where MRD is going to be used as a primary endpoint directly as a result of the ODAC vote. In general, as Chad outlined, we see some potential upside in a couple of areas. First of all, acceleration of primary endpoint milestones that have already been established in ongoing studies.

Additionally, upgrading, as I mentioned, of trials that are currently secondary endpoint to primary endpoint status, which will both accelerate the realization of those milestones and also increase their value. And then potentially additional new bookings as pharma companies reprioritize their development programs to center more on back in myeloma. In the clinic, we’ve also had an opportunity to have quite a few conversations around this topic and clinicians are universally very, very excited on behalf of their patients. They see a tremendous remaining unmet need. And they also acknowledge the strength that this recommendation coming directly from ODAC and ultimately likely from FDA provides to the credibility of MRD as a measure of clinical response and as a tool they can use in dialogue with their patients to individualize their care.

We really do believe that there is potential for a halo effect in the clinic as well.

Mark Massaro: Okay, that’s great. And then it was nice to see the Moldex gap-fill rate of 1,823 per test. I think that is scheduled to go live, I think, January 2025. How are you thinking about commercial payers? Is that something that you can potentially initiate that dialogue ahead of the go live date with Moldex? How should we think about that as an incremental driver to the business?