Twist Bioscience Corporation (TWST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Twist Bioscience Fiscal 2024 Third Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Angela Bitting, SVP of Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. I would like to thank all of you for joining us today for Twist Biosciences conference call to review our fiscal 2024 third quarter financial results and business progress. We issued our financial results release before market and the release is available at our website at www.twistbioscience.com. With me on today's call are Dr. Emily Leproust, CEO and Co-Founder of Twist; and Adam Laponis, CFO of Twist. Dr. Patrick Fin, President and COO of Twist, will join us for the Q&A. Today, we will discuss our business progress, financial and operational performance as well as growth opportunities. We will open up the call for questions. We ask that you limit your questions to only one, and then requeue as a courtesy to others on the call. This call is being recorded, and the audio portion will be archived in the Investors section of our website and will be available for 2 weeks. During today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or future financial or operating performance. Our expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize, and actual results and financial periods are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks include those set forth in the press release we issued earlier today as well as those more fully described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements in this presentation are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. We'll also discuss adjusted EBITDA, which is a financial measure that does not conform with the generally accepted accounting principles. Information may be calculated differently than similar non-GAAP data presented by other companies. When reported, a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures will be included in our earnings documents, which can be found at our Investor Relations website at www.twistbioscience.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Dr. Emily Leproust.

Thank you, Angela, and good morning, everyone. I am pleased to report another record breaking quarter of revenue growth for Twist. This quarter, we surpassed our revenue, margin and cash burn targets by employing disciplined execution and operational excellence. We have been diligent in our pursuit to serve our customers, introducing differentiated products that build on our proprietary technology and leveraging our unique competitive advantage to position the company for profitable growth. For the third quarter, we increased revenue 28% year-over-year to $81.5 million, with orders coming at $85.3 million. The strong quarter was driven by growth in our synthetic biology product line, including Express Genes, along with robust growth in NGS. We reported a 43.3% gross margin for the quarter, an increase of approximately 900 basis points versus 34.4% for the same period last year. For SynBio, revenue increased to $33 million with orders of $33.8 million. SynBio revenue grew 27% year-over-year and 11% sequentially. We see growing interest and engagement for our Express Genes product line, which together with our expanding portfolio of high-quality differentiated products build on our Express infrastructure continues to drive new customer growth and net new accounts. Our Express Genes provide a differentiated and important offering for our customers and potential customers. With this offering, we ship clonal genes in 5 days at a reasonable cost. And we manufacture and ship all Express Genes from our site just outside of Portland, Oregon in the U.S., where we make all of our SynBio products with the exception of DNA libraries, which are made in our South San Francisco site. Importantly, we continue to launch new products that build off of our Express Genes portfolio and infrastructure. In May, we launched Multiplexed Gene Fragments with direct synthesis of DNA up to 500 base pairs. This direct synthesis length along with poling of fragments enable our customers to pursue myriad applications. Some examples include including entire viable regions for antibody discovery and including entire functional domains of proteins for enzyme engineering, both of which are very useful for parallel screening of AI or ML generated sequences. In addition, two important applications of the 500 pairs lengths enable customers to encode mRNA sequences for personalized therapy or include multiple guide RNA sequences within a single fragment for complex CRISPR screens. These are just four examples of diverse applications for these innovative products that showcase how we augment our processes continuously to drive innovation and new products while expanding our infrastructure capacity. Also building on to the Express workflow, in July, we introduced Express Antibodies, both for CHO and HEK293. The two most currently used cell lines for the antibody discovery and optimization cycle. Multiplexed Gene Fragments and Express Antibodies illustrate the benefit of making all of our DNA on the Express timeline as we do not need to cut the line for particular customers. In addition to growth of our existing portfolio of products, including Express Genes, we will continue to add products that leverage our rapid manufacturing. These products will target areas of the life science market that we do not serve today and have the potential to expand our share of wallet with existing customers as well as open up new market opportunities. Express Genes continues to perform well, showing ongoing sequential growth that contributes not only to revenue and gross margin expansion, but also a key driver for our over increasing net new customers. As we indicated at the time of launch, our long-term intent is to convert gene makers into gene buyers as well as convert customers from competitors. We expect our market share and the category as a whole to continue to grow as we expand our Express offerings. Moving forward, because we continue to add more and more products building on the Express infrastructure, we will report all Express product revenue in our overall SynBio numbers primarily for competitive reasons. Moving to NGS. We posted another very strong quarter as revenue grew to $43.4 million, an increase of 31% year-over-year and $46.7 million in orders. Strength in the quarter came primarily from clinical customers, many of whom are in the liquid biopsy and rare disease spaces. Moving forward, we see continued strength in these areas as well as several additional avenues of growth. Starting with minimal residual disease, or MRD, our products generate minimal revenue today, however, we expect revenue to expand a bit in 2025 with more substantial growth beyond 2025, similar to what we have seen with growth coming from liquid biopsy customers in the last year. In MRD, we provide three workflow offering for customers with the ability to adapt to three distinct type of customer assays. When our customers pursue low-pass whole genome sequencing for the assay, we also have unique cfDNA library prep kit that extracts more rare mutations and to also library preps a competitive advantage for this application. Second, customers developing tumor-agnostic assays use Twist to build a customized target enrichment panel of genes and variants related to a particular type of cancer that applies to all samples. This is similar to the custom target enrichment panels we provide for liquid biopsy customers. Third, customers developing tumor informed workflow or an assay test for individualized mutations can leverage Twist MRD 500 panels, where we incorporate up to 500 different mutations for an individualized assay at the same speed and cost as a handful of probes produced by our competitors. In fact, some customers who want many more than 500 mutations, and we have the ability to scale into multiple thousands of variants to meet their need. Importantly, this third avenue shines a light in Twist's ability to partner with our customers to deliver personalized and customized panels rapidly and at scale. [ Theoretically ], we see growth coming from our RNASeq workflow. We differentiate our RNA products on key benefits, including the elimination of bias through whole RNA prescription [indiscernible] transcription. Our RNA solution offers the potential to capture fusions and gene expression that could be missed by other workflows. In addition, it effectively generates results from degraded samples and our certified and efficient workflows allow customers to save time and run more samples on the sequencer in a cost-effective manner. We also see customers expanding beyond our original flagship NGS offering of target enrichment to include our differentiated library prep kits, both on UDI, UMI barcodes and more when placing orders, expanding our share of wallet with supporting better results for our customers. For biopharma, revenue increased to $5.1 million with orders of $4.9 million. We continue to deliver on programs for our partners across the spectrum of offerings. A few weeks ago, we announced that the first patient has been dosed in Pure Biologics' clinical study of PBA-0405, a fully human IgG1 antibody discovered using Twist Biopharma Solutions synthetic antibody phage display libraries. This advancement of PBA-0405 into human studies validates the potential of our synthetic antibody libraries to be used to discover antibody candidates for how to treat indications. We expect at least one of their partners to initiate human studies within the next year. Additionally, during the quarter, we announced a key publication detailing data for adenosine A2A antibody, which is available for out-licensing. We continue to work diligently to increase revenue and orders for Biopharma. And in this fragmented market, we know our offering resonates. In addition, the Biopharma Solutions Group provides a spectrum of products and services that fit strategically with our SynBio product line. We do believe the revenue ramp will take time, and we will continue to analyze and manage the overall business to ensure this group continues to provide value. For data storage, we remain focused on technology development and enablement of the Terabyte Century archive workflow for early access before the end of calendar 2025. Progress continues, and we see this area of business as a valuable asset with optionality at multiple points of development. Turning to operations. We reported a gross margin of 43.3%, exceeding our guidance and a significant increase of approximately the 900 basis points over the same quarter last year increased revenue growth, the majority of margin growth and included contribution from Express Genes as well as NGS mix. I'd like to note that while we expect fluctuation in any given quarter due to mix and other adjustments, more than 75% of the revenue growth year-over-year dropped to gross profit for the third quarter of fiscal 2024. On average, we expect to continue to see 75% to 80% of revenue growth dropped to gross profit moving forward. Looking ahead, we will continue to focus on margin improvement initiatives, including continuous process improvement, supply chain optimization, operational excellence and in-sourcing. We remain on track to improve our margin by several percentage points, with a path to a gross margin north of 50% by the end of fiscal 2025. With that, I'll turn it over to Adam to discuss our financials.

Thank you, Emily. Revenue for the second quarter increased to $81.5 million, growth of 28% year-over-year and approximately 8% sequentially. Orders were $85.3 million, an increase of 34% year-over-year. While we received blanket purchase orders as we do every quarter, we saw our order patterns in line with historical trends. As Emily said, gross margin came in higher than expected at 43.3% for the third quarter of fiscal 2024. During the third quarter, we shipped approximately 2,300 customers. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of approximately $289.4 million, a reduction of $4 million versus $293.3 million as of March 31, 2024. Taking a deeper dive into revenue. SynBio revenue increased to $33 million, growing 27% year-over-year with orders increasing to $33.8 million. We shipped 212,000 genes in the quarter. Synthetic genes revenue, which includes both cloned genes, gene fragments and IgG increased to approximately $24.9 million, growth of approximately 29% year-over-year. Within the SynBio umbrella, oligo pool revenue increased to $4.2 million and DNA libraries revenue increased to $3.8 million, year-over-year growth of 12% and 34%, respectively. NGS revenue for the third quarter grew approximately $43.4 million compared to $33.2 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2023, an increase of 31% year-over-year. For the quarter, revenue from our top 10 NGS customers accounted for approximately 39% of NGS revenue. Orders increased to $46.7 million, which we anticipate sets the stage for further NGS growth. We serve 570 NGS customers in the quarter with 141 having adopted our products. For Biopharma, revenue was $5.1 million, with orders of $4.9 million. We have 61 active programs as of the end of June 2024, and we started 43 new programs during the quarter. In the third quarter, we took an impairment charge of approximately $45 million as we revisited the long-term growth forecast for Biopharma, and we believe the outlook shifted from our original view. We continue to mature the business development team and just as our commercial teams for SynBio and NGS took time to accelerate, we are finding that the Biopharma team is taking time to perform at the expected level. Looking at revenue by industry. Healthcare revenue rose 26% to $42.8 million for the third quarter of 2024 compared to $34 million in the same period of fiscal '23, reflecting the increased uptake of our products by pharma, biotech and diagnostic companies. Industrial Chemical revenue rose 38% to $23.2 million in the third quarter, up from $16.8 million in the same period of fiscal 2023, strong growth year-over-year. Academic revenue rose 20% to $14.9 million for the third quarter of 2024, up from $12.4 million in the same period of fiscal 2023. Looking geographically. Americas revenue increased to approximately $51.4 million in the third quarter compared to $39 million in the same period of fiscal '23. Growth of 32% year-over-year. EMEA revenue rose to $23.6 million in the third quarter versus $19.1 million in the same period of fiscal '23. Growth was 24% year-over-year. APAC revenue increased $6.5 million in the third quarter compared to $5.7 million in the same period of fiscal '23, growth of 15% year-over-year. China revenue was $1.8 million, a small percentage of our total revenue for the quarter. Our gross margin for the third quarter increased to 43.3%, we saw strength from Express Genes revenue, lifting margin offset by a contracted SynBio customer who received a large order within their discount terms in Q3. Of note, we expect this customer to take a step back in the fiscal 2024 fourth quarter, and we have factored this into our SynBio guidance. Our NGS offerings continue to have strong gross margin performance, and as we said last quarter, we do expect to continue to see puts and takes in our gross margin based on contracted customer mix. Our margin fluctuates based on the individual customer orders in a given quarter. While we expect quarterly volatility on average, we expect 75% to 80% of revenue to drop the gross profit for the foreseeable future as we continue our margin initiatives, the primary focus across the executive team and throughout the company. In total, operating expenses for the third quarter were $170.4 million, which includes the $45 million noncash impairment charge compared with $124.5 million in the same period of 2023. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding stock-based compensation and the Q3 FY '24 impairment charge, operating expenses were $111.7 million compared with $110.3 million in the same period of 2023. Breaking this down, cost of revenues increased to $46.2 million in the third quarter of 2024 compared with $41.8 million in the same period of fiscal 2023, primarily due to higher product volumes as well as increased depreciation and amortization expense, mostly due to prior year capital investments for the new manufacturing facility in Wilsonville, Oregon. R&D decreased to $22.5 million compared to $24.5 million in the same period of fiscal 2023, primarily due to the reduction in head count as well as a decrease in outside services and lab supplies. SG&A was $56.8 million for the third quarter compared with $46.1 million in the same period of fiscal 2023. The increase was driven largely by stock-based compensation and bonus accruals as the business is performing above forecast this time. Noncash impairment charges on Biopharma intangibles and other assets of $45 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2024. Operating expenses included approximately $6 million for data storage. Stock-based compensation for the quarter was approximately $13.7 million. Appreciation and amortization were $8.3 million for the quarter. For the third quarter of fiscal 2024, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of approximately $22 million, an improvement of $8 million versus the third quarter of fiscal 2023 and an improvement of $5 million versus the second quarter of fiscal 2024. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of approximately $289.4 million, a reduction of $4 million versus a $293 million balance as of March 31. Our strong cash position was driven by continued strong operational performance as well as onetime gains through improvements in accounts receivable collections and other working capital improvements as we continue to evolve our G&A capabilities. Cash flow from operating activities continues to improve and we are driving the breakeven. For the 9 months ended June 30, 2024, net cash used in operating activities was $48.8 million compared to $121.8 million for the equivalent 9-month period in 2023. Turning to guidance. For fiscal 2024, we now expect total revenue to increase by $8.5 million at the midpoint of the range to approximately $310 million to $311 million, anticipated growth of approximately 27% year-over-year. Increased SynBio revenue of approximately $121 million, up from previous guidance of $118 million to $120 million, with anticipated year-over-year growth of 23%. NGS revenue of $169 million to $170 million, an increase of $6 million to $7 million across the range and anticipated growth of 36% to 37% year-over-year. Biopharma revenue of approximately $20 million, consistent with prior guidance. We expect the gross margin to be at the high end of the range and approximately 42% for the year. Our expected loss from operations before taxes in the range of $227 million to $230 million, including the $45 million impairment change. Excluding the impairment charge, loss from operations before taxes is expected to be in the range of $182 million to $185 million on a non-GAAP basis, a slight decrease from our previous guidance of $183 million to $188 million. CapEx is projected to be approximately $13 million for fiscal 2024, a decrease of $2 million from prior guidance. We project ending cash of more than $255 million at the end of fiscal 2024. For the fourth quarter, we expect overall revenue of approximately $82 million to $83 million, an increase from previous guidance of $77 million to $80 million. Gross margin for the fourth quarter of approximately 44% at the high end of the range of previous guidance of 43% to 44%. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $20 million. And we expect gross margin for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 to be 50%. We have been working on capacity planning, and we believe that between the manufacturing facilities we have today the revenue capacity of these facilities can go significantly above the previous estimate of $500 million in revenue with sustaining levels of capital investment, we believe the capacity for our sites in Oregon and California can deliver over $700 million of revenue per year in the future. It is a very exciting time to be a part of the growth of the company. We will continue to march towards adjusted EBITDA breakeven while serving our customers every single day. With that, I'll turn the call back to Emily.

Thank you, Adam. As we are now in the final quarter of our fiscal year, the momentum continues to grow. We are often asked by investors why our SynBio and NGS core groups continue to outperform when others in the space show little to no growth. It begins with our unique platform for writing DNA on the silicon chip. Our team leverages this platform to generate innovative products that meet customer needs. Our platform and products pair very well with our customer prowess, bringing pricing and quality along with the expanding portfolio of products and services. While these are key to our success, it's truly at Twist, we turn our vision to improve health and sustainability into a reality. Our strong financial performance quarter after quarter, coupled with our expanding portfolio of products and services positions us well for sustained growth and value creation. Looking ahead, we're excited about the vast potential of our proprietary technology and the transformative impact it is already having across multiple industries. We will continue to drive towards adjusted EBITDA breakeven pursuing profitable growth path to capitalize on the immense opportunities presented by our proprietary silicon-based synthesis capability. With that, let's open up the call for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] and our first question coming from the line of Matthew Sykes with Goldman Sachs.

This is Evy on for Matt. Congrats on the strong quarter. For my first question, what are you seeing in NGS market overall, we've seen from peers, they've noted weakness in the market, but given your strength are you taking share? And then what is the feedback from customers been?

Thank you. It's a great question. Like you noted, it's a great quarter. We are definitely taking share. I think we've been very focused in our technology development to focus on first application first and then moving to others, and a big bet that we did around at the time of the IPO actually was our focus on methylation and liquid biopsy. And right now, we are seeing the fruit of that investments where in some ways a little bit of overexposed in a good way to liquid biopsy and has a very dominating technology, and the market is growing. We are benefiting from that. And we're very excited that we are trying to do the same thing in other markets. We've launched RNASeq portfolio that is also ramping. We mentioned in our MRD focus. As I mentioned in my remarks, we don't expect MRD to be a big revenue contributor this year. However, similarly to liquid biopsy, as we gain customer now, we gain pilots, and as they ramp, we see it as a future opportunity for growth. So very excited about the NGS. I think again, it's a combination of the commercial strategy we've chosen as well as a very strong technology that really brings value to our customers, and we're being rewarded for it.

Great. And then given your strong growth in Express Genes, have you been able to unlock the Gene Maker's Market at this point? Or is it still mostly growth stemming from market share gains among players that we are already outsourcing?

Yes. Right now it is still mostly buyers that we are converting. However, we're seeing the beginning of conversion. The product does what it says on the tube. There's excitement with customers. We are seeing consecutive growth. And so at the same time, we said it will take some time. It's a very long tail, but we are very, very pleased with the performance of Express Gene and the Express infrastructure, which enables us to launch new products at the same time.

And our next question coming from the line of Steven Mah with TD Cowen.

Great -- congrats on the quarter, and thanks for the questions. So a couple of questions on Express Genes. So now that you have another quarter of market data, can you give us a sense for the customer's acceptance of the dynamic pricing model and how close you are to optimizing the pricing algorithm to maximize margins? And then second part of the question, can you give us a sense of the push by larger accounts wanting to trade this -- trade at fixed pricing subscription-like manner versus this dynamic pricing?

Patty, do you want to take that question?

Yes. Absolutely, Steve. Thanks for the question. The team continues to execute well sort of the product is doing exactly what it says in the label, which is giving us tremendous confidence taking that forward. And the value proposition is resonating across all segments. And so we continue to see good adoption that's captured by obviously, sequential growth in the organization. And we do continue to see the trade of volume for committed price. That does continue. It's still very early since launching the product. And this is a product that is a platform for us and it's going to be quarter-by-quarter execution. Again, we continue to see it with sequential growth, and that will continue to execute into the opportunity. So customers continue to adopt more shots on goal at the price point we have with the scale that we have is very, very compelling.

And our next question coming from the line of Matt Larew with William Blair.

Obviously, a couple of quarters index for Express Genes, but Emily, you alluded to just some newer Express products for launching including most recently Express Antibodies on CHO line. I understand it would be early days there, but in terms of what you're hearing from customers on an Express type offering for rather obviously more complex products. I would just be kind of curious to get any -- early take and any metrics you're tracking around success of those launches?

Yes. No, thank you for the question. For the Express product has always been an infrastructure play. We make now clonal genes in 5 days. And we always ask the questions to our customers, hey, what do you do with the genes, and some customers use it as CRISPR tools, some they use it to express IgG -- since they use it to make mRNA for personalized therapy. And we're always looking for ways to add value. And we've had an IgG product line for a while, which were received and at the same time, was relatively slow compared to what customers could do themselves. And so when we launched the Express Gene, we always knew that we will shortly thereafter launch an Express IgG because that is what our customers will do. And we've heard from many of them that they rather have someone else do that work themselves. And so it's a great opportunity for the customers to free up some of their resources to do other things like the testing of IgG and it's a great thing for us to leverage our own infrastructure to do market more wallet share and be able to grow our revenue. In addition to launching the Express IgG, we launched a CHO expression. Up until now, all of our expression was done in HEK slides, HEK cell, sorry. And a lot of our customers were telling us that CHO will be well received. And so we keep increasing what we call the flavor of DNAs or protein that we sell. And that really is one of the key things that is enabling us to just reach into more applications that are happening in the life science and be able to enable the customers to offload to us more of their work so that they can focus on the testing.

Now our next question is coming from the line of Luke Sergott with Barclays.

Great. Just wanted to touch on the blanket orders and how those kind of progress in the quarter. If you guys can quantify how many you had? And then it's kind of a more long-term or medium-term question is as you progress on the blanket orders, can you give us an idea of what the conversion rate from your legacy order book is? And the fear is that you could have the conversion of the absolute dollar come in faster than the overall order book growing and could this could lead to an air pocket. So just kind of walk us through the different dynamics that you guys are seeing on the blankets.

Luke, this is Adam. Thank you for the question and happy to talk through it. So just kind of taking a step back, what occurred earlier this year. I mean, obviously, we're extremely excited. We've always had blanket purchase orders in the business. We're extremely excited to see that continue to evolve. In Q2 fiscal for us, I call it the January effect. We did see that step up in blanket purchase orders. I have articulated it roughly an extra $10 million of blanket purchase orders versus the normal run rate of the business. What we saw here is fiscal Q3 was a much more return than normal in terms of it being a normal historical trend like blanket purchase order, so a step back from what we saw in that January effect, which, to be fair, I expect that January effect to continue in years forward because it really just shows that customers are committing to Twist long term. In terms of conversion orders, it's not a matter of so much of if we're seeing the conversion rates now extremely high numbers. It's a matter of timing. And so one of the things that we talked about, our reps aren't incentivized for orders, they're orders are incentivized mainly on revenue. So what we see is this is really a lead generation capability and a customer support opportunity. What we really want to do is get the first blanket purchase order and complete it and go to the next one. It's really that more of a signal of a long-term commitment. So we don't see any risk of revenue air pocket. We've seen the sequential growth every quarter in 2024, and we expect that to continue in perpetuity here.

And our next question coming from the line of Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI.

Congratulations on the nice print here. Just one on the Q4 and sort of jumping off into fiscal '25 kind of questions. Adam, you mentioned blanket orders for normal occurring levels in third quarter. Does it imply we need to be a little bit more prudent on Q4? And sort of related to that, Street's modeling about 20% revenue growth for fiscal '25. Your comps get harder. Some of your peers have spoken about macro being a little bit tougher, end markets being below trend. Any preliminary thoughts on whether the Street needs to be a little bit more prudent about the 20% growth for fiscal '25.

No, it's definitely something we're talking a lot about right now internally as we're building our plans for '25. But let's talk about 2024. I know we just gave the print on the full year guidance and the Q4 guidance, we have a step-up across the range in terms of our guidance for the quarter. We're expecting sequential growth across the business on Q3 to Q4. So I think the strength continues and the momentum continues as we're ending out our fiscal year. I'm not going to give a lot of color on '25, we're still working through the plans. What I can say when we are feeling very confident about the business, we expect to see sequential growth continue in the business. And really, what it comes down to is, it was Emily talking to -- it's the dynamic of we expect to continue to take share and where we see low to mid-single-digit category growth in certain areas, and we're significantly exceeding that. We don't expect a trend decrease in terms of our sequential growth. We expect that to continue. Obviously, we'll give more color as we get into fiscal '25 when we sit down in November.

Our next question is coming from the line of Sung Ji Nam with ScotiaBank.

Congrats on the quarter. I was just following up on an earlier question. For your next-generation sequencing, our NGS business, obviously doing well there. But given that there has been kind of capital spending constraints across the NGS players, the big delays in some large-scale projects, et cetera. Just kind of curious if you're starting to see any [Technical Difficulty] the funnel at all. And then just a quick follow-up after that. In terms of your -- for the liquid biopsy-based business, if you're continuing to see a lot of smaller early-stage players target? Or do you feel the market has kind of stabilized to kind of the large players?

Thanks for the question. It's Patty here. I think what we're seeing is really the power of our platform in the market segment. I think when budgets are tough Twist value resonates even stronger than anybody else out there. And it really is about maximizing the use of your sequencing platforms. I think that's what we truly enable. And so therefore, I think that's allowed us to execute well into the opportunity. I think on the second part, just continuing to talk about scale and the opportunity to work with new customers I think it's a feature that's often overlooked in our platform. It scales in many, many directions. For the R&D scientists, they can quickly do work to develop new product, new panels. And then we'll be there with the customer as the new panel or new product scales up towards the manufacturing of their future goals. So we like our position. And yes, although the market is tough, there's always opportunity to execute into. And when you partner that with excellence in commercial execution for every touch point to the customer, then we continue to be optimistic and confident going forward.

Our next question coming from the line of Subu Nambi with Guggenheim Securities.

Realizing book-to-bill is an intra-quarter metric. If I have this right, SynBio book-to-bill decreased from 1.5 to 1.0, is this just seasonality or something else or the large order you mentioned? Is it related to China softness? And which segement is China revenue most concentrated in?

Thank you for the question. I'm excited to take it. In terms of book-to-bill, that seasonality of orders that we talked about from the -- I'll call it, the January effect is real, so you're going to see some noise coming there, particularly on the SynBio side of the business because that's where most of that step-up in blanket purchase orders occurred. So we'd expect that seasonality to continue every year going forward. In terms of the China business, you'll see this in our Q from last quarter, and you'll see it again when we put the print out this quarter. It's less than $2 million of revenue a quarter for us in China. It's relatively stable. Obviously, there's a lot of folks dealing with headwinds, but when it's low to mid-single digits a percent of business, it's not something that we're terribly concerned about. We do see an opportunity long term, but it's -- we aren't seeing significant effects of headwinds. I will say most of our business in China, it is spread across both sides of SymBio and NGS, but there's definitely propensity towards the NGS side. But thanks for the question.

And our next question coming from the line up Puneet Souda with Leerink Partners.

I appreciate the comments that you have on the overall growth with Express Genes, that's in SynBio. You're building more products on top of that and your guide. But when we look at your guide, it does imply a step down in the fourth quarter for SynBio. You talked about blanket purchase orders last quarter in SynBio and there was a significant pickup in those orders last quarter. So I mean I hear some of the comments on that, that it is more going to be more normalized. So just sort of trying to understand, given that backdrop, why are these blanket purchase orders or the order momentum stepping down so quickly in the quarter? Is there a different pattern you're seeing from the customers or competitive response in the market?

Puneet, this is Adam. I'm happy to take the question here. I think we mentioned on the pre-record, but really the dynamic we're seeing in this quarter, particularly to bigger one in Q4 is one particular contracted customer had a pretty significant set of orders volume in Q2 and Q3. That customer is taking a step down in Q4. It's factored into my guide. And for me, I just don't want to get over my skis on any particular quarter. So we're factoring that in. We're seeing sequential growth across the business. From customers, we're seeing a step up in the total number of customers ordering each quarter. We're also seeing a step up quarter-on-quarter in terms in the SynBio business, in terms of the revenue, excluding that one customer. So we're feeling pretty good about it. But obviously, given the nature of our base, there will be customers that have challenges, and we're here to support them, but it's not going to affect the overall growth.

And our next question coming from the line of Tom Peterson with Baird.

Congrats on solid print. Maybe just one for me. Given the guide for the adjusted EBITDA loss of about $20 million here in the fiscal fourth quarter, can you just give us some sense to think about how we should be thinking of adjusted EBITDA loss in fiscal 2025? Would you expect quarterly improvement off that $20 million a year and just think about -- help us think about pacing on the adjusted EBITDA trajectory.

This is Adam. Thanks for the question. Yes, we're very laser-focused on our North Star the path to profitability and it's been for me about 6 months in the chair now. It's really important as an organization that we're focused on our three key priorities, driving growth, driving gross margins in that and ensuring that we have that path to profitability without needing to ever go back to the market for future equity race. That's been kind of the standing mantra and the charge of the organization. We've been looking at the $20 million EBITDA -- adjusted EBITDA loss is an important marker in Q4. We don't see that as a stopping point, but really jumping off point for continued sequential improvements as we move forward. Again, I mentioned earlier in the call, we'll spend more time talking about the 2025 guide. But I expect that path to profit focus and the organizational energy to continue to just be laser focused on that moving forward. So more to come as we get together at the end of the year.

And our next question coming from the line of Tom DeBourcy from Nephron Research.

Just going to combine two questions here. So the first one is on BioSecure, and we've heard from both academic and pharma customers that -- can you hear me? I'm sorry.

We can hear you.

Okay. Sorry. We've heard from academic and pharma customers that there is concern about moving proprietary products for synthesis into China. And so whether that's tailwind for you being based in the United States? And the second question is just on CapEx of $13 million and just is this approximately the level of maintenance CapEx that you would expect going forward...

I'll take the first question. I'll let Adam answer the CapEx question. On BioSecure, we've expressed in the past that yes, it's probably a geopolitical headwind for our competitors that are not building DNA in the U.S. At the same time, it is hard to predict an act of congress. So our view is that we will be on the merits, our products and on their own for speed, scale, quality, prices, added futures and so on, the entire user experience. So our view is that we will take market share and we will win. And it is possible that BioSecure headwinds for our competitor will accelerate the timeline. We already saw it. And at the some time, we are very strongly focused on execution and providing the best user experience to our customers. Adam, you want to take the CapEx question?

Absolutely. No. Tom, thanks for the question. It's -- yes, we are seeing a pretty light year in CapEx this year so far. I think we're running just north of $3 million year-to-date. I do see a potential step up beyond the $13 million in 2025 and beyond. But the modest amount of -- I think we [Technical Difficulty] this year closer to $20 million. So those kind of numbers wouldn't surprise me. That being said, we currently have about $30 million to $35 million a year in depreciation today. I don't expect that to increase. I expect that to be roughly holding flat -- orchestrating down as we move forward over the long run.

And to add to my previous answer, just a quick clarification that BioSecure is actually not focused on DNA synthesis. It's focused on genetic analysis and bioprocessing. There was a letter [Technical Difficulty] to ask the FBI to investigate some of our Chinese competitors. So there is some geopolitical headwinds. But to be clear, this is -- it is not part of BioSecure at this point.

And I'm showing no questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Dr. Emily Leproust for any closing remarks.

In closing, we are very confident in the continued impact and [Technical Difficulty] generated from our proprietary DNA synthesis platform. Our growing customers base, our increasing revenue profile, our defining product portfolio and of course, our exceptional employees positively move the needle for our customers [indiscernible] industry. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.