Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ:TWST) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Luke Sergott: Yes, okay. And then on the second quarter guide from a revenue perspective, is this mostly being relatively flat. Is this mostly due to a capacity constraint on the Factory of the Future. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is you have a really strong 1Q gross margin, assuming that that’s full capacity utilization that you guys are running there. And then as you’re bringing the Factory of the Future, you’re not really going to be selling a lot out of the factory of the future in the second quarter, and that’s why you’re taking on all those fixed costs, so your GM steps down massively and your revs kind of stay tight with that first factory going at full capacity? Am I thinking about that right?

James Thorburn: Yes. So what’s interesting is if you look at Q1, South San Francisco was actually at full capacity. The genes revenue, genes volume did pick up. And you’re right in terms of the step down is driven by bringing the fixed calls on. What’s interesting is we continue to build our customers, we saw SynBio pick up, and we continue to see good marginal improvement in the SynBio and consistent margins in NGS. So part of this is driven by the growth, part of its driven by mix and this focus on expanding our SynBio footprints as well. You’re absolutely right, bring fixed cost line in Q2, margin dipped down to 30%. And then as we scale in Q3 and Q4, we see the gross margin for the year in the range of 39% to 40%.

Luke Sergott: Okay. Great. And then lastly, on the bookings, you guys had a really big step up there. Can you talk about what you’re seeing from — is that a lot of the Biopharma because I saw your active program step up really meaningfully. I’m just trying to get the sense of the cadence of the different segments and how they’re going to roll on through the rest of the year.

James Thorburn: Yes. I mean, what’s interesting is we had record bookings in NGS. The question is going to be, okay, why isn’t Q2 NGS number higher than revenue, much higher than we’re projecting. The answer is because those orders impact the second half. We saw good strong. We continue to do well in SynBio, continues to do well in genes, beginning to see some impact on IgG’s. I mean, across the SynBio portfolio, we’re doing well. And what’s driving that is performance, turnaround time, customer experience, the ability to scale and deliver a great value. So if you look at the value proposition, NGS gives our customers a significant reduction in sequencing. A number of larger customers continue to scale. We keep getting adopted into new assays in terms of the SynBio portfolio, particularly in genes, we’ve brought the turnaround time down.

We offer terrific pricing in terms of the market. And because of that, we’re winning customers. Because of that, we’re seeing a number of small customers come in. That gives us a good platform or springboard for going after the makers market. So I would say we’re executing according to

Luke Sergott: Great. Yes. It’s going to be interesting to watch.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matt Larew with William Blair.

Matthew Larew: Your price per gene has increased meaningfully here over the last 4 quarters, even more so than what’s been a nice trend line over the last few years. Can you just walk through what the key drivers of that increase has been. I think Jim just mentioned IgG had a nice quarter, but what maybe some of the key drivers are ahead of fast genes, which I assume will push that trend line even higher?