Thank you for standing by. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator for today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mike Beaulieu, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining the Rapid Micro Biosystems' first quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me on the call are Rob Spignesi, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Sean Wirtjes, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our first quarter 2024 financial results. A copy of the release is available on the company's website at rapidmicrobio.com under Investors in the News & Events section. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that many statements made during this call may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Federal Securities Laws, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results or performance are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements relating to Rapid Micro's financial condition; anticipated future cash usage and cash runway; guidance for 2024 including revenues, expenses, gross margin, system placements and validation activities; expectations for and planned activities related to the company's business development and growth; customer interest and adoption of the Growth Direct system; statements regarding the planned launch and commercialization of Rapid Sterility; and the potential impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on Rapid Micro's business. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. For a list and description of these risks and uncertainties associated with Rapid Micro's business, please refer to the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as updated from time-to-time in our subsequent filings with the SEC. We urge you to consider these factors and you should be aware that these statements should be considered estimates only and are not a guarantee of future performance. This conference call contains time sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, May 3, 2024. Rapid Micro disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Rob.

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. I will begin this morning's call with an overview of our first quarter performance and highlights, followed by a review of our priorities for 2024. I will then turn the call over to Sean for a more detailed review of our financial results and outlook. First quarter total revenue increased 11% to $5.6 million, compared to the first quarter of 2023. This performance is ahead of the guidance we provided in March and represents the sixth quarter in a row that our revenue exceeded guidance. We placed three Growth Direct systems in the quarter, all to existing customers. First quarter recurring revenue increased 15% compared to Q1 2023 and has now grown by double-digits in each of the 11 quarters since we became a public company. Consumable sales, which are part of recurring revenue, increased 22% year-over-year and achieved a new quarterly record, exceeding our prior record set in the second quarter of 2023. This strength in consumables demonstrates that customers are actively using their Growth Direct systems and are realizing value across their global manufacturing networks. In total, our first quarter results reflect a solid start to 2024 and we are reaffirming our full year 2024 revenue guidance of at least $27 million, representing at least 20% growth and at least 20 system placements. We continue to execute against our strategic priorities of accelerating system placements, improving gross margins, commercializing innovative new products and prudently managing our cash. I'd like to provide a brief update and context for these priorities. Over the past few months, I visited with customers across North America and Europe. These meetings are always productive. I would like to provide some recent customer feedback. The Growth Direct value proposition is resonating and customers…

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. I'll start my comments today with a review of our first quarter results and then discuss our second quarter and full year 2024 outlook. Q1 revenue increased 11% to $5.6 million compared to $5 million in Q1 2023. During the first quarter, we placed three Growth Direct systems compared to three in the first quarter last year. We also completed three validations in the quarter compared to two in the first quarter last year. Product revenue, which is comprised of systems and consumables, increased 12% to $3.7 million in the quarter compared to $3.3 million in Q1 last year. The growth in product revenue was primarily driven by a record quarter in consumables as a result of continued growth in validated systems as well as several shipments made during Q1 that were originally expected in Q2. Service revenue increased 11% to $1.9 million in the first quarter compared to $1.7 million in Q1 last year. Service revenue growth was impacted in Q1 by some planned validation revenue that shifted into early Q2. The increase compared to the prior year quarter was primarily driven by a higher level of validation activity as well as higher revenue from service contracts due to the increase in the number of validated Growth Direct systems. First quarter recurring revenue, which consists of consumables and annual service contracts, increased 15% to $3.7 million, compared to $3.3 million in Q1 last year. Non-recurring revenue, which is comprised mainly of systems and validation revenue was $1.9 million in Q1, compared to $1.8 million in the prior year quarter. Turning to gross margins. Product margins were negative $1.5 million in Q1 compared to negative $1.7 million in the first quarter last year. As we expected and is typical for our business, Q1 product…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Tejas Savant from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is [Yuko] on the call for Tejas for taking questions. Some of your peers have been seeing worsening budget pressure leading to further elongation of sales cycles. Could you elaborate on whether you're seeing a similar dynamic? What's your take on the customer sentiment with respect to large CapEx purchases?

It's Rob. So our view and experience with customer budgets is similar to the previous quarters. What we're seeing is, I'd say, continued budget scrutiny with regard to CapEx purchases and ours at least for the quality control labs is on the larger end. It can pick up the second part of your question as well. No meaningfully different changes over the past few quarters. But we have seen, I'd say, more scrutiny. There's more cycles with regard to approval processes, a bit slower to get to an answer as well. That being said, we're executing through it. Moreover, another important dynamic to understand with Rapid Micro Biosystems is the Growth Direct in many cases is considered a strategic project and program that impacts multiple sites around a customer's global manufacturing network. While that doesn't insulate us from these dynamics, we have seen notable cases, where our projects for Growth Direct purchases have continued to be prioritized.

A separate follow-up question, with Sterility launch expected in the mid-year timeframe, could you elaborate on the remaining to dos before commercial launch? And then also is this something that you're actively communicating to your customer or is it something you're holding until the customer event? If you are actively communicating the upcoming launch already, could you give us a sense for the customer interest you're seeing?

Yes. In reverse order, we have been communicating to customers. We were communicated this at a recent trade show, the PDA annual show earlier this year and the interest is, as we expected, quite strong. It reaffirms our belief and our voice of customer work that the market needs a rapid sterility automated system that has -- what I would call differentiated features from what's available in the market today. That's faster time to detection, much faster time to results, full automation and the full complement of value proposition that the Growth Direct provides, walk away, full automation, data integrity. To our view, those features are not available in, I'll call it, other technology enabled solutions in the market today and certainly not in the legacy companion manual method, which is still the majority of the market. The first part of your question to dos with regard to the Sterility launch are the final elements of our development process to include the transfer to manufacturing. Think of this as the final stages of the R&D process and then the progressive hand off to the manufacturing organizations that will be charged with scaling up the product for commercial release and shipment to customers.

The next question comes from the line of Dan Arias from Stifel.

Rob, can you maybe just talk a little bit about the confidence that you have in the acceleration of the instrument placement trajectory? I think by the end of the year, you're looking for something higher than where you are just based on that comment alone. But should we think one to two systems higher? Or by the time 4Q rolls around, can you be -- I actually have more than double what you did in 1Q. Just checking to make sure that, you're on a path and that the sales funnel is suggestive of getting more than just a couple of boxes higher so that the full year kind of jives with where we are?

Yes. Confident standing behind our full year guide to have at least 20 system placements and confidence is driven by a number of factors. Sales teams in the field executing globally a fully staffed team. The funnel in particular looks like, we want it to look to backstop our guidance, the size and the composition, the geographic diversity of it, the customer diversity of it. And customers -- we continue to spend a lot of time with customers, and this is where quite a bit of the confidence comes from as well is customers are increasingly planning -- continuing to plan deployments across our manufacturing networks. Increasingly, I'm seeing automation being viewed as a critical strategic priority across customers' networks to include our automation. I mentioned as well, which is helpful for our guide is, we continue to get access to senior level executives at customers. We are becoming more of a strategic A, platform and B, a larger spend from a practical stand point in some of these large customers' quality manufacturing operations. Accordingly, we get better access to senior level decision makers and that's where I spend quite a bit of my time as well. That provides insight and confidence as well. The last one would be Sterility. I think we mentioned we are not sort of expecting any enormous impact in the year, but we are serving the right for upside. So a number of these elements are colluding to give us confidence in our guide, notwithstanding the potential impact of Yuko's question of budget scrutiny.

And then maybe on the consumable side and it might be a question for Sean, but can you just talk a little bit about the consistency of where you are here going forward? With that or within that is a question about the customer that had sold the site, I believe, last quarter, which was impactful. Can you talk about that this quarter and then whether you're gaining some visibility on what that reacceleration at that one customer might look like?

Yes, sure. I think this quarter, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we did have some things that we expected in Q2 happen in Q1. The growth that Rob mentioned 22% was the highest growth in the business and amongst the different product and service lines. That does reflect a tough comp because of that customer site sale that you mentioned. We did not have benefit from that in Q1. We clearly did have consumable sales into that site at an ongoing high level in Q1 last year. That 22% would have been higher, if it were not for that challenging comp as a result. Looking forward, guided down sequentially in Q2, largely based on the timing of the orders and the shipments of the consumable. You have seen it the past couple of years. We do have a tendency to bounce around from quarter-to-quarter. I think more important to look at the annual trends and kind of where things are going in the pull through. The pull through was above 80% in the quarter. I think we talked last quarter about that pull through for the year, looking relatively flat this year in part because of that site sale last year, part of the way through the year, excuse me. I think, with them, we are in touch with them. I do expect, we will see some contribution from them more in the second half of the year. I don't think it's going to be particularly close to the level that site bought at in 2023 or the first half of 2023, but it is a positive sign for us that it feels like things are going in a direction where there will. We'll be coming off the zero and moving up into some revenue contribution from that site in the second half.

And then just to finish that thought, it feels like, I know we're still in the first half of 2024. But if I think about 2025, are you okay feeling like, we're not going to have to sort of explain away that situation come the beginning of the year and that actually against the comps of this year it can be a tailwind?

Yes. I don't see why that would, I mean, if anything, it should be a little bit of a tailwind next year on the comp. Yes, I don't think it will be a negative discussion item in '25.

The next question comes from the line of Steven Mah from TD Cowen.

On Rapid Sterility on the June demo, can you give us a sense for the interest and types of organizations that are going to be attending?

Yes. We're still compiling all the customers, Steve, but we expect a representation from our current customer base, which leans towards biologics and cell and gene therapies. But also customers from other segments such as sterile injectable manufacturing, where we're a bit less represented in our current placement. The approach and strategy around Sterility is certainly penetration within our current customers, which is significant. As you know, we have majority of the global top 20. I would say, attracting new global top 20 companies that we don't have to include new segments as well. We do expect a broad array and a diverse group of customers for those events.

And then maybe sticking on Rapid Sterility, I think you mentioned before in a prior call that there would be a technical presentation at a conference. Was that the trade show that you mentioned?

Yes.

We had a data published.

I'm sorry.

Was that data published somewhere or white paper or?

No. We have some internal documentation that was publicly furnished at the show, but we don't have a formalized, I would call, white paper that we would ultimately plan to do either with our internal groups or with a customer. What we do have is, our internal test data and our top level product claims at this point available.

Last one for me, sticking on Rapid Sterility. On the dedicated Rapid Sterility sales force, is that sales force now fully staffed, ramped up and ready for the launch?

Yes. We touched on this on the last call. Our core commercial approach is to leverage our existing sales force, who has been trained and continues to be increasingly trained on the platform. We will likely have a Sterility specialist or specialists that can help with specific elements of the application discussion with customers. But we don't envision standing up a dedicated standalone sterility sales force per say.

Thanks for the question Steve and everyone. Thank you all for joining today. Have a great weekend.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.