And as we hear from our sales team, some of the things physicians like in a firmness case, for example, we’ve got the new ordering portal as we’ve just launched GRID. And then of course, there’s evidence. One of the most important differentiators for all of our tests is the level of evidence. In the case of Decipher, You’ve got NCCN level one. In case of Afirma, you’ve got a tremendous array of evidence supporting the use of our test, including comparing it to other tests. So I think that and then you couple that with a very effective salesforce in both cases, who are very good at making sure that existing and new customers are aware of the level of evidence behind that then you start to see the kind of share gains we’ve talked about.
Sung Ji Nam: Great. Thank you so much.
Marc Stapley: Okay. You’re welcome.
Operator: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Mason Carrico with Stephens Inc. Your line is now open.
Mason Carrico: Hey, guys, thanks for the questions. Congrats on another strong quarter. Maybe a higher level one here on the $14 million in cash from operations. That’s great to see and obviously pretty unique in the space. As we look into 2024, how are you thinking about the focus going forward, balancing investments and driving top- line growth versus focusing on operating leverage and starting to drive free cash flow?
Marc Stapley: I’ll maybe start. And Rebecca, please weigh in as well. But nothing’s changed in our philosophy in that regard. We’ve always been very focused on doing everything that we can drive top line growth appropriately, and we’re not getting ahead of our skis in that regard. I think we balance that extremely well. We have been optimizing throughout our P&L for the last couple of years, if not before that. So there’s a lot of things that we’re doing that drive operational performance. In fact, you saw some of that as I talked about what the accomplishments in our Decipher CLIA lab in San Diego and the turnaround time and efficiency there. That’s one example. Another example would be ITN [ph] systems, for example.
So we’re continuing to invest in terms of helping us scale our business, but also keeping a very close eye on the net profitability and cash flow. And we’re not in a position, fortunately, where we need to raise cash. And we don’t anticipate we will be. Anything to add?
Rebecca Chambers: No, just I think what you’ve seen out of us in 2023, our goal would be to continue that into the future. And obviously, now we’ve had four of the last five quarters where we’ve generated cash flow from OPs. And that is a good new story and one that we hope, obviously, we’re not guiding to 2024 at this point in time, but one we have, from a philosophical perspective, every intention of moving forward with. And we don’t believe that is coming at the expense of revenue growth, and we would not want to do that at the expense of revenue growth. So, I think, Mason, thanks for asking the question, but I think when it comes down to it, we believe this is a differentiated portion of the Veracyte investment thesis, and one we feel strongly we should continue.
Mason Carrico: That’s helpful. Thank you. And moving to the Decipher metastatic draft LCD, could you talk about kind of your interpretation of the LCD, thoughts around the languaging criteria that needs to change or could change in order to potentially open it up to multiple tests per patients – per patient. And then maybe if that were to occur, I’d assume that testing up front when patients have localized disease would potentially decrease the percentage of patients who ultimately progress. So could you kind of frame up how we should be thinking about if that were to occur the incremental testing opportunity?
Marc Stapley: I think to your first part of your question, I’ll come back to the second one, but to the first part of the question, you’ve hit, really, the nail on the head in terms of the key element of the draft LCD that we’re focused on. Let me take a step back. The draft LCD in and of itself is extremely favorable, as it should be for patients. We believe in testing for this cohort of patient. We believe we’ve got evidence to suggest that Decipher supports it. And so we’re very happy to see the LCD. The one area that we believe needs to be addressed is what you called out, which is the multiple tests per patient. There are many, many examples where legitimately the same patient might need multiple rounds of molecular diagnostic testing.
And as currently written, it would preclude that. So, of course, as you can imagine, we’ve shared our feedback very openly with MolDX and prepared – shared our comments. And so we’re somewhat hopeful that that gets addressed. It’s important for it’s not a large number of patients, but it’s enough and these patients do need to be taken care of appropriately. So we’re hopeful that that gets dealt with. Now, in terms of the second part of your question, I want to make sure I understand, but are you saying that by identifying patients earlier you increase the – maybe you can just repeat the question and we can make sure we’re addressing.
Mason Carrico: Yes, and maybe my interpretation here is flawed, but I guess the way I think about it is a certain number of localized patients ultimately progress. There’s numbers out there. I think that the way I kind of think about it is if you’re tested up front with Decipher, treatment management is better. Maybe the progression rate goes down. Maybe that’s not the case. I was kind of just asking about how you think about the incremental testing opportunity if you were able to test each patient twice.
Marc Stapley: Yes. So, I don’t think you should think of it as a multiple episodes of testing for every patient type of approach. More so than there are some patients for whom multiple tests would be required. And an example of that might be. And it’s a little bit related to the case you described where a patient is on active surveillance and then develops another lesion. And that other lesion needs to be tested and it’s a more aggressive cancer. And so that will be driven by clinical factors. And we agree that there should be a concern from the physician who’s treating them to desire a second test in that case. But I don’t think you should think of it as every patient gets tested multiple times over their lifetime.
Mason Carrico: Right. And now that’s pretty clear. But thank you guys. I appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Mike Matson with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.
