Jacob Thaysen: Yeah, so I can tell you that we are working as quickly as we can under the framework to look at the options here. And I can tell you, I’m as frustrated as all of you, and I look forward to get this behind us. So we are working on very tight timelines. At this point, I don’t want to commit to anything because I want to make sure that I can deliver on my commitments on any timeline here. So by the way, I also want to share with you that this morning we got the feedback from the ECGA that they have now put in a date for the hearing, oral hearing, which would be mid-December. So it’s good news in the way that things now are moving forward. And just on that, that the appeals are important to us, obviously for the reason of GRAIL, but probably as important for ensuring that we have the flexibility for future transactions that we will look into and obviously also we can get rid of the finance and so on. So that’s why the appeals continues to be important.
Joydeep Goswami: NHS’ GRAIL readout timing, I think, that’s as GRAIL had stated before, that’s the final expectation on that is some point in 2024, and they will have a fully readout as well, or preliminary readout before that.
Operator: And we have a question from Michael Ryskin with Bank of America.
Michael Ryskin: Great, thanks for taking the question and welcome board. I guess I want to follow up on the earlier question about sort of underlying demand in the market and what gives you confidence in some of the longer term view. And I guess I’ll phrase it in terms of your update to the guide here in the third quarter. You’re citing some of the same macro headwinds that others are in terms of what’s going on in China, in terms of broader funding concerns and budget tightness and you’re saying that that’s sort of weighing on consumables purchases. But at the same time, you’re not getting the switch over to the NovaX because if you’re looking at the order book, the orders have barely grown between 2Q and 3Q. You went from 260 to 310.
So orders were up 50 units in the quarter and you placed 97. So it’s not like there’s a ton of demand growing for NovaX and yet the Nova 6000 consumable seems to be really slowing. So I’m just trying to reconcile that, if people aren’t sequencing on the Nova 6000 because they’re gearing up for the Nova X, then you would only see those orders grow. So how can you confidently state that some of this is that transition between instruments and not just less underlying demand in the market?
Jacob Thaysen: Yeah, so let me just start again, address that we do see the demand in the market space. We also mentioned this overall, that we see more gigabase growth rates. So we see definitely that it’s a lot of activities out there and again, there’s no doubt that the long-term perspective in this market is very healthy. I think what you’re seeing is that we’re running through and a very challenging environment that everybody else is seeing. And I think everybody also last year when they were providing guidance, they were probably optimistic that things would shrink back in the second half and everybody got surprised or at least that it didn’t. So therefore we are right now a little more prudent in how we look out in the future. So I think that’s one element to it, but if you look into the specifics, I think Joydeep can provide a little more insights.
Joydeep Goswami: So I think there’s a couple of things when we look at, why is it further — the slowdown is further impacted by the transition, right? So definitely Michael, there is an element of the overall macro slowdown. But two things I will tell you about the transition, right? So we look very carefully at high throughput customers that have purchased the X versus those that have not purchased an X and we see definitely that the 6K consumables slowdown is much more pronounced to these customers that have bought the X, right? So that gives us a very good control mechanism of isolating the impact of transition versus the broader macroeconomic trends. And again, realize that they’re still ramping up with the X and the 25B really for many of these customers that are early adopters, they’re really the higher users, the higher output users for the NovaSeq X, right?
So you will see that transition coming, the ramp up on the X consumables coming, especially after the launch of the 25B, but it will take them a few months to get up to full capacity once they’ve validated their workflows.
Operator: And our next question will come from Tejas Savant with Morgan Stanley.
Tejas Savant: Hey guys, good evening and Jacob, welcome to Illumina. I had a couple of questions for you here. Starting on the GRAIL side of things, looks like you’re expecting this ECJ decision in mid-’24. So can you just walk us through the implications of that in terms of what the committee can really do ahead of that timeframe and then beyond the ongoing sort of court cases and figuring out if and how to divest this asset, how are you thinking about monetizing the data value that’s embedded within GRAIL? Is that an active discussion that’s being had at the board level within this committee as well? And the final part of my question really is a broader one on Core Illumina. Where are you in terms of the key leadership roles? Are those — do you feel like you have a settled team yet or could we see some sort of significant changes in the months ahead? Thank you.
Jacob Thaysen: Yeah, so let me start by addressing the GRAIL situation and I think I mentioned before, and that’s why I put the committee in place, or special committee in place, is that we have the European divestiture order and obviously, while we still run the appeals, we will do everything within the framework to move as quickly as possible. As I also mentioned in my remarks is that as soon as we have filed the Form 10, we will go out there and start to talk to potential acquirers and so on. So also looking for the spin and so on. So we are moving as quick as we can within that framework and we will move, yeah, again, we will move as much as we can here. So there’s really nothing that holds us back from, the appeals really runs in parallel. So there’s nothing that prevents us from moving as quick as we can within that. So I think that on that, if you look at the monetization of GRAIL, I don’t know, Joydeep, do you have any thinking about that?
