SAN FRANCISCO – Sophia Genetics executives expect the firm to reach profitability in approximately the next two years as it continues to push into cancer analysis with an important new launch this year.
Sophia CEO and Cofounder Jurgi Camblong and CFO and Chief Operating Officer Ross Muken updated investors on the firm's financial progress and product development during their presentation at the 42nd annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.
They provided a brief overview of the company's preliminary full-year 2023 financial results, which they said are expected to be in line with the previous guidance of revenue growth at or above 30 percent. Constant currency revenue growth excluding COVID-19-related revenue is expected to be between 30 percent and 35 percent, according to the company's presentation slides.
"We have sufficient capital, we intend to cross over to profitability in the next two-plus years and have a nice comfortable cash buffer as we do so," Muken noted. Camblong said that the firm added 35 new core genomics customers in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 87 over the full year. He also described the growth in analysis volume by application in 2023, as rare and inherited disorder volume grew 19 percent, hereditary cancer volume was up 25 percent, hematology oncology was up 26 percent, solid tumor volume rose 32 percent, and liquid biopsy volumes skyrocketed 362 percent.
The Sophia execs also touted the firm's liquid biopsy growth, namely its agreement with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to commercialize the MSK-ACCESS clinical liquid biopsy test. It will launch the liquid biopsy offering on a full routine basis in the first part of 2024, Muken said, although it has already gained early adopters such as BioReference Laboratories. The firm is "quite confident that this will become for us one of the more important growth drivers over the next … 24 months," Muken added.
The Swiss firm with a US base in Boston is also seeing growth in the use of its Sophia DDM platform for homologous recombination deficiency detection in ovarian cancer, with analysis volume up 180 percent in 2023, Camblong said. Sophia Genetics expects growth to continue throughout 2024 as it is seeing increased uptake in new geographies and in the biopharmaceutical industry, he noted.
There is room for upselling in the business as well, Muken said. "With the menu that we now have of applications, our average customer still is only using one to two" of the more than 10 applications the company offers, he noted.