Akoya Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKYA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tejas Savant: Got it. That’s helpful. And then, Joe, back to you for your comments around just taking a more targeted approach to investments. Are there any guiderails you can put around sort of OpEx vis-à-vis last year? I mean I think your 4Q OpEx was a little bit higher than where we were by $2 million or $3 million. Is that sort of $30 million-ish run rate a good benchmark to use when you think about 2023?

Joe Driscoll: Yes. So, I would say, we’re going to hire people in 2023, but sort of spread throughout the year. It’s not going to be a massive number of people. So I think you could look at something like $30 million in Q1 and then maybe it goes up $0.5 million each quarter throughout the year, something like that.

Tejas Savant: Perfect. Very helpful. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Brian McKelligon: Thanks, Tejas.

Operator: Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Massaro of BTIG. Your line is open.

Mark Massaro: Hey, guys. Thank you for the question. Congrats on a strong year. So a lot has been asked, but I’m curious if you could comment about some of the economics with respect to the PhenoCycler Fusion 2.0. I don’t believe you’re looking to drive incremental economics on that instrument relative to the 1.0. Can you just clarify that? And then I guess what I’m really trying to determine is the guide does not look like there is a significant step-up as a result of new products. And so Joe, I appreciate your commentary about $1 million to $2 million on the PhenoCode panels. But other than perhaps negligible revenue contribution for the PhenoCycler Fusion 2.0 upgrade, is it fair to say that you’re baking in a very modest contribution all in from new products in 2023?

Brian McKelligon: I think some — a lot of it is — thanks for the question, Mark. Maybe your first part. So the 2.0, the ASP is the same of the versions built and shipped with and then the future — without and the future versus with 2.0. So we’re not — there’s not a price increase because of the 2.0, if that was your question on the instrument. And then

Mark Massaro: Yes.

Brian McKelligon: Okay.

Mark Massaro: Yeah.

Brian McKelligon: And then in terms of the NPIs, you can see that these are beginning this quarter and throughout the year. And these are continuous rollouts of additional panels, upgrades to systems, software partnerships and it’s all really centered around an accelerating realization of these over time. So I think you have to maybe pull the affinture back outside of a single quarter and the thesis here is all of these improvements that we’ve outlined are really the drivers getting that pull-through from its current level to the low 40s to the low 50s, et cetera. So this is sort of the internal framework or OS within Akoya to drive these continuous improvements from workflow, to content, to software partnerships, so you can do more samples per unit time, faster time to answer. So the realization is not a single binary event, but rather in aggregate over time.

Mark Massaro: Okay. That makes sense.

Joe Driscoll: Hey, Mark. Yeah.

Mark Massaro: Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, Joe.

Joe Driscoll: To add on to that, basically seeing what Brian just said, but the 2.0 upgrade in and of itself doesn’t generate dollars, but it helps that reagent pull-through. That’s really where the dollars are going to come. So it’s not necessarily new products that are delivering that revenue, but it’s — the 2.0 upgrade is helping us drive that reagent revenue to a much higher level.