Fulgent Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLGT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brandon Perthuis: Yes, certainly, I echo what Paul said. I mentioned in my section that we may expand this summer, that’s purely driven by the opportunities we’re seeing. Fulgent was presented a fantastic opportunity to grow our reproductive health space by one of the larger competitors exiting the marketplace. We scaled up our operations incredibly fast as we did with COVID-19 to take on this new volume and we’re hitting our turnaround time, hitting our quality metrics, clients are happy. We started this late last year. So we’re a couple of months into it so far. The reimbursement in ASPs we’re seeing, we’re very happy with and there’s still a lot of opportunity out there. So we think we’re very well positioned to win in this space, thus hiring the right salespeople to help us capitalize that is a good investment for the company.

Unidentified Analyst: Perfect. Really appreciate that. And then just last one for me would be so far, how have you seen Fulgent Pharma come into the fold? Just curious on the integration status there? It sounds like there’s a lot of exciting pieces working in that business and would appreciate more color?

Ming Hsieh: Yes. Thank you for the question. The integration is in process. We converted the employees to the Fulgent and we are — still build up a more robust GMP manufacturing capabilities. So literally, we’re making all the polymer, the GMP in-house. So that’s the one very important components for the pharma and manufactured process. We also started to line up another contract manufacturer to provide the polymer and the drug mixing, filtering and labelization . So that process is also in place which will make another few thousand vials of the drugs for a clinical trial. So in general, the integration is pretty successful. In addition, we are getting additional clinical data from the Phase Ib trial. The data has been submitted to the ASCO for presentation in June — in June later this year.

Due to the ASCO’s requirement that we cannot release data before they release data. So that’s why the data will be presented at ASCO. This is a continuation effort and we provided ASCO data in 2021. Now 2 days later, we provided an additional update. So then by then, you will see the additional data which we feel very good about it.

Operator: Next question is coming from Tyler Anderson from Piper Sandler.

Tyler Anderson: Sorry about that. This is Tyler Anderson from David — I mean I’m representing David Westenberg at Piper Sandler. I was wondering what are the expected margin outlook for the new business segments that you’re breaking out? And what levers are you going to be pulling to improve them? And specifically, how is the pharma spending looking throughout the rest of the year? And do you see any opportunities to further expand your menu? And if so, do you think you’re going to be taking any inorganic or an organic approach to that?

Paul Kim: Okay. So I’ll kind of tee it up. There are a lot of different questions that were built on there but we’ll take follow-up — we’ll take several follow-up questions from you because I want to make sure that we hit all those points. First and foremost, on our guidance for the overall business, when I was talking about operating margin, that actually includes the $15 million to $17 million of funding for pharma. So even if that is not commercialized, that’s fully built into the model. And then, we’ll kind of like lead into the 3 areas of our business, the Anatomical Pathology, the Precision as well as the Pharma Services. And I’ll kind of tee it up and share the answers with Brandon from a margin perspective. I think it goes without saying that the margin profile for Precision as well as the Pharma Services that remain highly attractive for the company.