Exact Sciences Corporation (EXAS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
January 12, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Tycho Peterson
analystAll right. Good afternoon. I'm Tycho Peterson from life science team. It's my pleasure to introduce our next company this afternoon, Exact Sciences. [Operator Instructions]. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kevin.
Kevin Conroy
executiveTycho, thank you for having us once again. We appreciate and thanks all who are listening. Exact Sciences has a big mission. Our mission is to eradicate suffering caused by cancer. And we want to make the earlier detection of cancer a routine part of medical care. We're going to talk today about how we are doing that. We're going to talk about our results from 2021 and our plans for beyond. Before we get into that, here's a safe harbor statement. We have a full safe harbor statement on our website. I will be making forward-looking projections. Also, before I get into the discussion here today, I tested positive for COVID last night. I'm feeling great. I have a bit of a stuffy nose, but no fever and I'm very thankful for the vaccine. If I do cough, though, I'll go on mute. So excuse me if I do. And let me move forward here. You can't build a company that wants to go tackle big, challenging things without a great team and a tremendous company culture. It's been intentional since I joined Exact Sciences 13 years ago to build a company that is a great place to work. Three years ago, we approached great places to work about participating in their survey. And for each of the past 3 years, I'm really proud to say that we have been awarded their Great Place to Work status based on employee surveys. This is a high cutoff. And I think it speaks to the people that are attracted to the challenges that we're going after. We also were recognized by Forbes as one of the best places to work in healthcare. The first question we always ask is, who? Our people. And they are the ones who are building this company. And you'll see here on Slide 4. If you look at the left column, we have 6,500 people. I never would have believed that 13 years ago when there were 2 of us sitting around a conference room table. And we built the biggest, strongest commercial organization that exists in cancer diagnostics, 1,400 strong. And I'm so proud that we have the largest and we believe the best team of scientists tackling these big problems. And we've proven our ability to deliver with Cologuard, which has reached 7.5 million people and Oncotype DX, 1.5 million. These have changed the standard of care for colon cancer screening, for breast cancer testing. And we intend to keep investing in that R&D effort so that we can move towards achieving that mission of cancer eradication. Let's focus on our R&D capabilities. A lot of people don't appreciate that Exact Sciences has 10 R&D centers and labs globally. Nine in the U.S. and 1 in Oxford. And we are so proud of the scientific acumen that spans the whole range of important competencies in molecular diagnostics. I want to draw attention to our next-generation sequencing capabilities. We have, we believe, the best team in translating next-generation sequencing technology into clinical diagnostic applications. And that's important. You need the ability to do that in bioinformatics and machine learning and AI capabilities. And we have that, in part, through a series of acquisitions and also because we've been able to attract incredible talent to Exact Sciences. Broadly, that talent and that team and the entire team has been able to deliver on growth. When you look at what we achieved in 2021, we are so proud. Our core business of screening and precision oncology grew 29% combined. We are also very proud of the work that the team has done to bring up a COVID test in record-setting time and deliver test to people all over the country. We're proud of the ability to help out during this pandemic, and we'll keep that going. When you look at how strong this team is, we believe that, that strength will help us achieve the broader vision. And the broader vision is about bringing a whole range of clinically valuable tests to the healthcare systems, healthcare providers who want them for their patients. And we want to be the one place that large health systems and physicians all over the country and, indeed, all over the world come to for a range of answers. And they break it into 2 big categories. One is screening and earlier detection that starts with hereditary cancer testing, colon cancer screening, pan cancer or multi-cancer screening and then a range of tests that are used for patients who have been diagnosed for cancer. We'll get into each of these. And our business is organized into 2 big teams. Our screening team, and also our precision oncology team. The presentation will follow those business units. Looking at the significant R&D investments that we're making. The exciting thing is that the 3 biggest investments we're making are happen to be in the largest impact area in diagnostics, period. And these are all cancer diagnostic tests that we believe will change the landscape. Of course, you know the work that we have done in colon cancer screening. We're advancing that work, and we'll talk about that. And multi-cancer screening. It's one of the most exciting things to happen in cancer. And I think 50 years from now, people will look back and say, why in the world didn't we focus on early detection and prevention even sooner as a society. And minimum residual disease testing. A range of tests that are starting to really get great take-up to help patients determine whether their cancer has recurred and to identify that recurrence at the earliest possible time. We, as a team, are focused on these large R&D programs, and I am also excited to say that on the next slide, Slide 9, we have the most pipelined data that we are generating and making public than we have in our entire history. In those 3 programs, colon cancer, multi-cancer screening and minimum residual disease testing. I'll talk first about colon cancer. So colon cancer is the #2 cancer killer. There are 150,000 new cases every year. My brother in law [ Pat Brennan ], was one of them. And he died last year and 1 of the 50,000 people who died from colon cancer. Unfortunately, at age 60, he still hadn't been screened. And there are 46 million people who haven't been screened for colon cancer. To date, we've screened 7.5 million people with Cologuard. We won't stop until we continue to make progress in this critically important area because we know that colon cancer is the most preventable, yet least prevented of cancers. On Slide 11, you'll see here Cologuard. I want to draw your attention to the early cancer sensitivity. So for Stage I and II cancers, Cologuard detects 94% of them. It also detects 42% of precancer responses. Those precancerous polyps typically have a 10- to 15-year dwell time. So with repeat testing, Cologuard has indicated every 3 years, the idea is to be able to find those precancerous polyps over time. And that's what's important about a colon cancer screening test that early precancerous polyp and early-stage cancer. For early-stage cancer, 9 out of 10 people survive 5 years or more. For the latest stage, Stage IV cancer, only 1 out of 10 people survive that long. And we're so proud of our success stories. On Slide 12, you'll see here that we've tested more than 7.5 million people in the U.S. for colon cancer with Cologuard. That's led to 240,000 people with precancerous polyps. Cologuard has helped find those, so that they could be removed, leading to cancer prevention. And then also, 35,000 people who have been diagnosed with early-stage cancer, this is a huge impact. One of these -- of the people that we have helped serve is [ Leanna ] you'll see over here. She is a wife and she's a schoolteacher. And she decided to get screened and she chose Cologuard, which led to a positive result and a colonoscopy where they found cancer. Fortunately, it was a Stage II cancer, no evidence of disease in the lymph nodes. And as a result, surgery alone was her therapy. And we're so thrilled that she is happy and healthy and very thankful that she chose to get screened with Cologuard. This is why we do what we do every day, and we're proud of it. And on Slide 13, this shows the impact that we have had. Since Cologuard became available, it was FDA approved and Medicare covered in 2014. There's been a lot of work between now and then. And is probably my favorite slide in the deck. You can see the progress that we've made. There are 260,000 healthcare providers who have ordered Cologuard since launch. There are 300,000 customers that we work with on a regular basis when you include our other tests with 260,000 for Cologuard. And 200 health systems that have integrated with our electronic medical record system, epic. And that has led now to a significant increase in the electronic ordering rate. That's important because physicians want to be able to order a colon cancer screening test right when they're having a conversation with the patient, right from the electronic medical record. They can do that now. And those health systems will power us as we bring new tests to them through that same electronic infrastructure. Growth drivers. In 2021, we brought together the best of Pfizer, the best of Exact Sciences. 450 Pfizer representatives from our co-promotion partnership joined us as Exact Sciences employees. We're so proud of that. They combine with the best of the best on the Exact Sciences team. And in the fourth quarter, they came together as one. And you could see the strength that we had in the fourth quarter because of that team. And they delivered a couple of important messages. One of them is that people do, for their third year, rescreen test with Cologuard should get tested and educating offices all over the country to make it easy to allow them to rescreen people who tested previously with Cologuard. Secondly, great news last year. We know that people under the age of 50 have been growing, the fastest-growing incidents for colon cancer. And as a result, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, the main guideline group lowered the screening age for colorectal cancer to 45 and included Cologuard as an A-rated service. As a result, we saw so many people get tested and our commercial team really focused on this. We expect to grow that revenue to $100 million next year from $40 million this year. And on the rescreens, we achieved about $100 million last year and expect to grow that to about $220 million this year. So this growth of Cologuard fuels our growth as a company. And we expect this growth and these tailwinds to exist for many years. One of the things that we're doing, you can see on the next slide, Slide 14, is setting the bar even higher with Cologuard 2.0. And Cologuard 2.0 is basically changing the biomarkers of the test and how we get a test result to decrease or the false positive rate and improve specificity and also to improve the precancer detection rate. I mentioned that it was 42%. Our goal is to have that over 50%. Next week at ASCO GI, we are going to release data that raises the bar for Cologuard, and we look forward to sharing that data with you. There will be a poster presentation midweek. We look forward to that. We also have a program for our colon cancer blood test. So our large prospective study is called the BLUE-C study and that supports both Cologuard 2.0 and our colon cancer blood test. And blood testing can deliver reasonably decent performance. We don't believe the performance of blood-based colon cancer screening test will be as strong as Cologuard. But there is still a role. There are 46 million people who are on screen. Some of them refuse colonoscopy, refuse Cologuard, refuse a FIT test. And so there will be a role for blood-based colon cancer screening because of the performance, we think it is going to be a bit challenging to make it the frontline standard of care. And I'm going to share some internal research that we have. As you could expect, so moving to Slide 16, you will see here our colon cancer blood program. The team has done many surveys of physicians. And in one survey, they ask physicians that if the sensitivity of a blood-based test is below 85%, will you order it. And nearly 8 in 10 said they wouldn't order a test that is 85% sensitive. The reason being, of course, is that Cologuard and colonoscopy are more sensitive than that. We also asked them the question, at 85% sensitivity but below 40% precancer sensitivity. So with both metrics being below Cologuard, where would you -- where would a blood-based test fit. And a blood-based test would fit here as a fourth line. So these are a significant number of docs who we pulled. And that fourth line is behind Cologuard colonoscopy and the FIT test. So we think that it's important -- there is an important role to play. For example, we know the people who haven't returned a Cologuard test. We have the ability to reach out to their physician and to get them in for a blood test. We have 260,000 physicians. Some of them are going to find a role for blood cancer testing, and we are going to be able to deliver to them through health systems and primary care physicians. We believe that it's important. It has a role to play, probably not a major role. Moving on to multi-cancer screening. Over the last 50, 60 years in cardiovascular disease, we've seen mortality drop, 68%, 68% because there's been an incredible focus on prevention, early detection, cholesterol testing, anti-smoking campaigns, but that cholesterol testing and statins have done a world of difference. But the thing is that the intervention early has changed everything. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case with cancer. Here we are with a 1.8 million new diagnoses every year and 600,000 people affected. 70% of those cancers have no screening today, and we want to change that. We believe that with a simple blood-based test that detects even some of the cancers, even if they detected half of those cancers, what you're going to do is move detection from symptomatic late-stage disease to earlier. And I'm so proud that, that research that is being conducted all over the world is focusing, and we're a part of that, is focusing on the problem of early detection and prevention. Our team at Thrive, which joined the Exact Sciences family in the early part of 2021, ran a pivotal study called the DETECT-A study with Geisinger. And in that study, they screen 10,000 women who are going in for regular Pap smears and mammograms and regular screenings and they got a blood draw, with the CancerSEEK technology, and that came out of Johns Hopkins. And what that showed is that 25% of cancers in that population were detected through regular standard of care screening. When you added the blood test, over half of the cancer is filed, 52% were detected combined with standard of care screening and the blood test, think about what that would -- what would happen if you extend that to a population. That's our goal through the team that we have that is chopping at the bit to get a multi-cancer screening test to the physicians that order Cologuard today. This test will not be a replacement for colon cancer screening. It will not be a replacement for mammography or Pap smears, it will be in addition to. And if we can move towards 50% of cancers detected through screening, we believe that mortality will be reduced. It's been true with every form of cancer screening. So what are we doing about it? On Slide 19, you'll see here what we're doing is bringing the very best of Exact Sciences and the very best of Thrive together in one test. It's a multi-omic test. This multi-omic test starts with DNA methylation and protein coming from Exact and mutations in protein coming from the Thrive team. And we're building one test that is able to look for cancer through various marker classes. That's very important. The reason Cologuard detects 94% of early-stage cancers is because we use mutations, methylation and protein to do that. We're the only ones taking this approach and this combination through 2 major studies we're doing this year will lock down our test and allow us to move into a pivotal clinical trial and importantly, to make our test available as a lab-developed test prior to FDA approval. We really look forward to this, and we're so excited for the team that is developing this amazing test. Now let me move on to our incredible precision oncology business. You probably know we acquired Genomic Health just a little over 2 years ago, and we're so excited about what that team has done for Exact Sciences and the progress that has been made. Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score is the standard of care for patients with early-stage breast cancer. It answers the question, will your will you benefit from chemotherapy. And 85% of the time, patients don't benefit from chemotherapy and they can avoid that caustic treatment. We're so proud of it. There are -- this test is standard of care. It has been used by 98% of oncologists in the U.S. There are 300 publications, including 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine, including one last year, which has expanded the use into patients with early-stage cancer that has gone to 1 to 3 nodes -- lymph nodes. And we are extending our reach with this team with therapy selection testing, that's the OncoMap and OncoMap extra test. There's more to come here. We'll talk about this as the year goes on. We're so excited to build on this capability with the teams that we have that are delivering important answers to people with metastatic disease. And if there's one thing that is really unique about this team, it is their long-standing relationship with these oncologists. And also our access and capabilities with that tissue, getting that tissue from the pathologist is not easy. We've shown the ability to do that. And that's important as we look to go into the minimum residual disease testing. In short, minimum residual disease testing is about helping people who have been diagnosed with cancer and treated for cancer to answer 2 important questions. Did the surgeon get it all? Did the treatment get it all? And secondly, has the cancer recurred? And last year, we licensed pretty special technology called the TARDIS technology from TGen, an credible research institution that we believe will lead to 90-plus percent sensitivity for recurrent cancer. And that will help with the 12 million people in the U.S. that are within 5 years of diagnosis and treatment to be tested on a regular basis to detect recurrence if it happens as soon as humanly possible. We're the only company that is also offering a tumor-naive approach. And basically, this uses the 10 years of research and partnership that we have done in the fundamental research in -- with the Mayo Clinic to be able to do just a simple blood draw without having access to that tissue. So this is either or creating a much better result for physicians who may need a faster solution or may not have access to the tumor tissue. On Slide 22, we are so excited to announce, we announced this on Sunday that PreventionGenetics is joining the Exact Sciences family. PreventionGenetics is known as a high-quality lab focused on germline hereditary disease testing. And they have whole genome sequencing expertise, a team of 15 PhD geneticists who helped deliver great results for patients and they have relationships with 300 health systems. This team will help us launch our hereditary cancer test and that test is going to be deployed across every salesperson in our organization, our health systems team, our oncology team, our primary care team, OB/GYN, GI or urology, across the board and helping get important answers. In my family this year or this last year, my wife did a hereditary cancer test and found out that she had elevated risk for ovarian cancer. She was able to take affirmative step to prevent that risk. And that's the power of early detection and understanding your base germline risk. We intend to bring this to all of our customers because people getting a Cologuard test or an Oncotype test, need hereditary testing and to expand this opportunity. If you haven't been tested, I encourage you to get a hereditary cancer test. And moving to Slide 23, coming right back to the people. We first start with who, and we have an awesome team. People are fired up to make a difference. And we're excited about 2022 and beyond. And so -- now I'd like to introduce Jeff Elliott, our CFO and COO; and Everett Cunningham, our Chief Commercial Officer, and welcome them for Q&A.
Tycho Peterson
analystAll right. Thanks, Kevin. Great presentation. We've got about 15 minutes for Q&A. So I'm going to run through a couple quickly. One, really just kind of on what you're seeing in the end market. There's a growing consensus that COVID is going to be endemic. Cologuard order seemed very impacted by COVID waves from sales force and physician access issues. So on a go-forward basis, what's the strategy to revive -- drive volume growth in the near term in this type of environment?
Kevin Conroy
executiveYes. I'll take the first part and then also get Everett to chime in. What we have seen over the past few weeks is a pretty consistent access. It's limited relative to where it was prepandemic, but it hasn't dropped off from a few months ago. And this is hitting us at the slowest time of the year. So we expect to achieve $2 billion in revenue this year, and we expect Cologuard to be a main contributor to growth. And Everett can provide color on that.
Everett Cunningham
executiveYes. What I will say is the first concern or focus that we have is keeping our commercial organizations safe and healthy. And we're happy to say that 100% of our commercial organization is vaccinated, which allows us to go and be on the offense and still make those calls, still adhere to hospital protocols and office protocols around COVID-19. As Kevin said, we do see access being limited due to the variants that are out there. But what we have is we have experience around navigating around COVID. Our organization, Kevin said that we acquired 450 Pfizer representatives. Before we acquired those representatives, they came over to Exact Sciences. They were virtual. We've been in the field with those representatives and our legacy representatives for the remainder of 2021 and headed into 2022. So we're excited about that.
Tycho Peterson
analystGreat. A couple of questions on kind of the strategic moves here, Kevin. Why -- with PreventionGenetics, why get into hereditary cancer testing. It's competitive, it's generally been viewed as a lower margin market. You've got well-entrenched competitors there with obviously Myriad, but -- Invitae. So how do you differentiate there in hereditary?
Kevin Conroy
executiveThat market has -- is only minimally penetrated with the great work that Invitae and Myriad have done. I think what -- we intend to expand the market, not take away share. Our focus and ability to call on those 260,000 primary care physicians, and all the large health systems in the U.S. changes everything and will lead to getting more people tested. And that information is so important. Because we believe, over time, the hereditary basis and risk of cancer is going to lead to different screening algorithms. So people who are at a higher risk for multiple cancers may be tested with our multi-cancer test more frequently. And having that information, having that embedded in our EMR and to be able to provide clinical decision support, namely frequency of testing recommendations will be a core part of who we are and what we do. So I think we're going to grow the overall market in a meaningful way, and we look forward to that.
Tycho Peterson
analystOkay. Another question -- I mean, similar question, I guess, on the pipeline therapy selection, MRD. These are also increasingly crowded markets. So how do you plan to differentiate? And on MRD, isn't tumor informed generally better when you can get tissue?
Kevin Conroy
executiveYes. No doubt. So MRD is -- there are multiple players who are aspiring entrants there. Natera has done a great job of creating awareness and doing the fundamental work. I think what sets Exact Sciences apart here is that we have a commercial organization, the IT infrastructure, the EMR systems, the clinical regulatory evidence generation capabilities to deliver this and the customer base to deliver this on a regular basis, and I'll give you an example. Our Oncotype DX testing business, we see about half of all early-stage breast cancers. And one of the things that Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score answers is, what is your relative risk of recurrence. So we are able to 0 in on those patients. We have the tissue which means we can collect the mutations, develop the bespoke test and deliver it to those patients from the tissue that comes in for the breast recurrence test, over 100,000 patients this year. So this is a huge opportunity. We're a company that can help answer these questions. And it also, Tycho, goes back to the fact that large health systems are telling us, we don't want to work with 20 different providers. We want to work with 1, 2, maybe 3. We intend to be #1 on that list.
Tycho Peterson
analystA follow-up and maybe for Everett, just on the Pfizer comments, when can we start to see the Pfizer sales force acquisition start to drive an inflection in Cologuard growth?
Everett Cunningham
executiveYes. And you've already seen it with the trends of Cologuard in the fourth quarter. A couple of things about Pfizer. The field representatives that we brought over, their experience. They've been selling Cologuard prior to coming over to Exact Sciences. So we got a really experienced, knowledgeable sales organization. On average, 16 years of tenure in the primary care space. So the relationships that they have in their respective territories and districts are second to none. And they've built these relationships. Thirdly, I've been in healthcare for 31 years, and 22 of those years were at Pfizer. So I know these folks really well. I know the representatives, the leaders coming over to Exact Sciences and being part of that as one company now. They're excited, really excited, be in the field and to be active. So you saw that in the fourth quarter, and we feel that, that will definitely continue in 2022.
Kevin Conroy
executiveTycho, just to add some data behind that. We brought that team to Exact Sciences in September. They got back out in the field, they're trained, they're onboarded. In October, we saw 10% growth in orders from the first week of October to the last week. That strong momentum continued through year-end and into this year. So as Everett said, we are already starting to see a very strong impact from this expanded sales team.
Tycho Peterson
analystGot it. A separate question just on the reopening or colonoscopy is coming back a headwind at all for Cologuard growth in your view?
Kevin Conroy
executiveWhat we've seen from a market share perspective is just very consistent increase in market share with Cologuard. Colonoscopy popped up to back to where it was previously, about a 40% share of all screening. We're around 20%. And then the FIT test is coming down. So it appears that we're taking share from FIT testing and colonoscopy utilization is staying relatively stable.
Tycho Peterson
analystI've had a couple of questions since you opened up the door on '22, $2 billion in revenues. Are you able to talk at all about how much is coming from screening, Cologuard, precision oncology, Genomic Health, COVID testing. Can you just maybe give us some breakdown of the relative contributions for '22?
Kevin Conroy
executiveJeff, would you please take that?
Jeffrey Elliott
executiveTycho, we expect a very strong year, as Kevin talked about, in Cologuard and in Oncotype. We'll give more details on the breakdown of that revenue. Again, we expect $2 billion of revenue broadly this year. We'll give more color on our February earnings call and how that breaks down.
Tycho Peterson
analystOkay. What about wage inflation? The other topic du jour everybody is dealing with. What are you guys assuming for this year? And then how do you offset?
Jeffrey Elliott
executiveWell, Tycho, a big part of how you offset it is building a great place that people want to work. And Kevin talked about some of the data around that. We continue to invest in our people. We'll continue to invest in making sure Exact is a great place to work. From a wage inflation standpoint, we do see it. This is a competitive market. It will get more competitive. I think something in the high single-digit range broadly is likely this year, and we are taking steps to make sure we continue to be a great place to work.
Tycho Peterson
analystAnd somebody had asked if it's a little bit harder given you've got 10 R&D centers through all the various acquisitions, is employee -- R&D employee retention more challenging, given that you're a little bit spread out.
Kevin Conroy
executiveOne of the things I'm most proud of, if you take a look at our core R&D team, we've had leaders. All of our Vice Presidents have stayed with us, that started with Cologuard, they're still here. And we don't -- we historically just have not lost research and development talent. Part of that is take a look at where, we're in Madison, we're in Arizona. We're now in San Diego and Redwood City. We're in Oxford. People are coming to work for us for a reason, and we haven't been losing R&D talent. We have been recruiting R&D talent from other companies like crazy. And it's one of the things we're proud of. People want to come work for us. I've had other CEOs say, hey, could you stop hiring our people. My answer is, hey, look, we're -- our goal is to make Exact Sciences a great place to work, and it's a free country, and people should be able to choose where they want to work and we're going to keep hiring. So either change the perspective or we're going to have more of your people working for us.
Tycho Peterson
analystCologuard 2.0 data at ASCO GI. Can you just talk a little bit about how that differs from other colon cancer case-controlled studies we've seen so far from some of the peers?
Kevin Conroy
executiveYes. So it's only partially -- only a small number of the samples are truly case controls, that is retrospective samples. For all of the patients with advanced adenomas, those were all prospectively enrolled. So you didn't know that they had an advanced adenoma when you collected a stool sample, then they went in for colonoscopy. Also the people who are normal, collected a stool sample, then they got a colonoscopy. Patients with cancer, those because you'd have to enroll 10,000 people to get appreciable number of cancers. Those we collected after the cancer was diagnosed for colonoscopy. So it's in major part, a prospective study, the specificity and the adenoma detection are not case control. And those are the 2 data points we'll draw your attention to next week.
Tycho Peterson
analystAnother question that came in on -- back to MRD for a minute. What cancers are kind of on the near-term roadmap here for you guys around [ R&D ].
Kevin Conroy
executiveBreast cancer and colorectal cancer, where we have strength are on the near term and more of a pan-cancer approach. Our fundamental R&D here and the work that we have done with Mayo Clinic, with Johns Hopkins and with TGen, we believe, are broadly applicable to cancer. So you can expect us to start a broader study with most cancers in that study. Minimum residual disease is going to change everything about moving recurrence to earlier detection, and we're excited to be in the middle of that.
Tycho Peterson
analystGot it. And you would never go down the path of tumor informed, right? You're going to stay tumor naive?
Kevin Conroy
executiveNo. We're fundamentally tumor informed with the TARDIS technology. With the DNA methylation technology that we have developed with Mayo Clinic, we have the ability to do either or. So I would guess that 70-ish percent will be tumor informed and 30% will be tumor naive, but the key thing is if a physician will be able to -- if they don't have tissue, still work with one provider. They won't have to use either or they can just come to Exact.
Tycho Peterson
analystGot another question, just the high-level confidence in the 2022 revenue target and if there's a cushion if rough access still remains soft.
Kevin Conroy
executiveWe're confident in that $2 billion. We're very confident in that number. Rough access is soft, and we still delivered a strong fourth quarter. It's about half of what it was before. I don't expect that, that will get worse. In the primary care setting, they're now starting to say, hey, come on back, we want to talk to you. And the key thing is we're going to have more things to talk to them about.
Tycho Peterson
analystYes. How are you thinking about larger M&A. I mean you've done a lot of bolt-ons, odds of a bigger deal in '22?
Kevin Conroy
executiveYes. We don't comment about M&A, but our view has been, I think you can see it from the size deals we have done. It's to bring things in that can add to our commercial reach. It has to be high quality. If it's a lab, the lab has to be super high quality. Technology has to be high quality. Look, if we deliver on $2 billion or more in growth. If we deliver on our R&D programs next year. When we do that, we're going to have an amazing year. And so we have a lot on our plate right now. Right now, everybody is in a priority setting mode, and we're going to deliver on those priorities and go. So that's really our focus right now, not some large deal.
Tycho Peterson
analystGood. I think that's a good note to leave it on since we're out of time. So Kevin, Everett, Jeff, good to see you guys. Thanks for taking the time and that will...
Kevin Conroy
executiveThank you. Tycho.
Everett Cunningham
executiveThanks.
Jeffrey Elliott
executiveThanks.
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