Twist Bioscience: Fiscal 2Q21 Financial Results

Twist Bioscience Corporation reported financial results and business highlights for the second quarter of fiscal 2021 ended March 31, 2021.

“The second quarter of our fiscal year delivered growth across all four areas of our business, with increasing revenue and very strong orders building momentum for the second half of the year,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder. “We signed new biopharma partnerships with multiple associated programs, and we continue to drive increasing density for our storage vertical.

“For 2FH21 we expect continued growth of our NGS and synbio customer base as we build out the Factory of the Future in Oregon. We intend to advance all programs with our biopharma partners while simultaneously generating data to support out-licensing for our proprietary antibodies. In addition, for storage, we will continue to pursue innovative engineering and collaborate across the DNA storage Alliance to prepare the market for this novel storage medium.”

2FQ21 results
• Orders: Total orders received were $41.7 million, compared to $24.6 million for 2FQ20.
• Revenue: Total revenues were $31.2 million compared to $19.3 million for 2FQ20.
• Cost of Revenues: Cost of revenues was $19.0 million compared to $13.6 million for 2FQ20.
• R&D Expenses: R&D expenses were $15.8 million compared to $10.6 million for 2FQ20.
• Selling, General and Administrative Expenses: Selling, general and administrative expenses were $34.4 million compared to $27.2 million for 2FQ20.
• Net Loss: Net loss for was $37.9 million, or $0.78 per share, compared to $31.8 million, or $0.85 per share, for 2FQ20.
• Cash Position: As of March 31, 2021, the company had $555.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

“We increased our margin to 39%, reflecting the impact of scaling our revenue, leveraging our fixed costs and the benefit of higher NGS product mix,” commented Jim Thorburn, CFO. “Importantly, the solid results demonstrate excellent execution across all teams at Twist.”

2FQ21 and recent highlights
• Shipped products to approximately 1,700 customers vs. approximately 1,400 in 2FQ20.
• Exercised right of first refusal which gives a cost-effective option to double manufacturing capacity at the “Factory of the Future” just outside of Portland, OR
• Launched the Twist NGS Methylation Detection System, an end-to-end sample preparation and target enrichment solution for identifying methylated regions in the human genome. DNA methylation plays a key role in many biological processes including cancer.
• Received Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration, together with Biotia, for the SARS-CoV-2 Next-gen Sequencing Assay.
• Partnered with Watchmaker Genomics to enable research across a range of high throughput sequencing applications including tumor profiling, inherited disease detection, liquid bIO/sy assays and minimal residual disease monitoring.
• Added new synthetic RNA controls to develop, validate and verify tests for SARS-CoV-2. The new controls include the B.1.351 (first identified in South Africa) and P.1 (first identified in Brazil) variants of SARS-CoV-2.
• Announced 3 new NGS customers in APAC: Berry Genomics, Victoria Clinical Genetics Services and AcornMed Biotechnology.
• Announced 3 new Twist Biopharma collaborations with Kyowa Kirin, Stanford’s Innovate Medicines Accelerator and Pure Biologics, bringing the total number of partners to 21. Biopharma is now advancing 25 active programs through its partners, 17 of which have milestones and royalties. Additionally, 9 programs are now completed.
• Published positive preclinical data demonstrating that GLP-1R antibodies identified from Twist Biopharma’s proprietary G-protein coupled receptor class B GPCR that acts as the receptor for the incretin GLP-1, a peptide released to regulate insulin levels in response to food intake. The data were published online in mAbs.
• Exercised our option to purchase all rights to a G-coupled protein receptor library and its proprietary Twist Antibody Optimization software, both developed in collaboration with Distributed Bio.
• Named one of Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2021.
• Earned Great Place to Work certification.

FY21 Guidance
• Increasing revenue guidance in the range of $121 million to $129 million

• • Revenue from Ginkgo Bioworks expected to be in the range of $11 to $12 million
  • Synbio revenue excluding Ginkgo Bioworks is expected to be in the range of $43 to $46 million
  • NGS revenue is estimated to be in the range of $62 to $66 million
  • Biopharma revenue is estimated to be approximately $5 million

• Gross margin is expected to be 36% to 38% for fiscal 2021
• Operating expenses including R&D and SG&A are expected to be $192 million for the year
• Net loss expected in the range of $144 million to $150 million to reflect our increased investments in our commercial organization and R&D activities

• • R&D is expected to be approximately $66 million
  • Stock-based compensation is expected to be approximately $33 million
  • Depreciation is expected to be $10 million
  • Capital expenditures are expected to be $40 million, including expansion into “Factory of the Future”

Earnings call transcript