Exigent at TD Cowen Healthcare Conference: Strategic Turnaround Insights

On Wednesday, 05 March 2025, Exigent Inc. (NASDAQ: XGN) presented its strategic initiatives at the TD Cowen 45th Annual Healthcare Conference. CEO John Abali and CFO Jeff Black highlighted the company’s turnaround progress and future ambitions. Despite facing challenges, Exigent is on a growth trajectory, focusing on increasing Average Selling Prices (ASPs) and achieving cash flow positivity by the end of the year.

Key Takeaways

• ASPs have increased for seven consecutive quarters, reaching approximately $404 per test.
• EBITDA loss was reduced by 70% to $4 million in the third quarter.
• Exigent aims to achieve cash flow positivity by Q4 2025 with new product launches.
• The company is exploring inorganic growth opportunities and targeting Medicare rates for further ASP improvements.
• Roughly one-third of U.S. rheumatologists are using Exigent’s tests.

Financial Results

• ASPs have risen materially, increasing about 40% over the last two years.
• Adjusted EBITDA loss decreased significantly from $45 million in 2022 to $10 million last year.
• Gross margins improved by 13 percentage points since 2022.
• Cash used amounted to $14 million last year, with a focus on reducing cash burn.

Operational Updates

• New product launches for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis occurred in January 2025.
• Approximately one-third of U.S. rheumatologists utilize Exigent’s tests.
• Sales territories are set to expand by about 10% in 2025.
• The company faced a 20% volume decline between Q2 and Q3 2023, but recovery is underway.

Future Outlook

• Exigent’s near-term goal is to achieve cash flow positivity by the end of 2025.
• The company plans to explore inorganic growth and focus on ASP improvements.
• R&D pipeline includes indicators of disease activity and liquid biopsies for lupus nephritis.
• The company anticipates transformative equity raises and is monitoring reimbursement rates for new markers.

Q&A Highlights

• Approximately 1,500 rheumatologists use Exigent’s tests each quarter.
• New biomarkers aim to improve sensitivity and expand the market for rheumatoid arthritis testing.
• The R&D pipeline is focused on objective measurements of disease progression.
• Exigent is comfortable with $22 million in cash and expects to be cash flow positive by Q4 2025.

For a complete understanding of Exigent’s strategic direction and financial performance, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - TD Cowen 45th Annual Healthcare Conference:

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Alright. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome back to day three of the forty fifth annual TD Cowan Healthcare Conference. I’m Kyle Boucher, an associate on the life science and diagnostic tools team here. And I’m pleased to introduce, the management team from Exigent, John Abali, CEO, and Jeff Black, CFO. So welcome, guys.

So just jumping into it, Exigent’s in the midst of a very compelling turnaround story. TTM ASPs increased for seven consecutive quarters, now sits somewhere around $404 per test, and you’ve reduced EBITDA loss by 70% to just $4,000,000 in the third quarter, and increased gross margins, 13 percentage points since 2022. There’s a lot to get done in a few years. Now that this is in the past, what do the next two years look like for Exigent?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Well, thanks for the recognition. And, again, pleasure to be here. Really appreciate it. We good. From our standpoint, it’s been about two and a half years of really hard work, and it takes a lot of of energy and, to be honest, consistent work to generate that type of progress.

And the team team from my perspective, has been working really hard and very proud of what they’re doing. So from our standpoint, our next near term goal is, and this has been the goal really since the beginning, is to achieve cash flow positivity. We expect to do that by year end on the basis of, our new product launches, which we just did in January. So that’s our next near term goal. And from that, it’s a big reason why Jeff joined, or at least I was excited for Jeff to join, is, thinking about what we can do from here on out.

And, you know, kind of the first, initial goal was stabilize the business, work to improve it. We have a great product, put that back on a growth trajectory, which we’ve done. And then from there on, look for other ways to develop new products, but also look from an inorganic standpoint.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. So you’re expecting to be EBITDA positive by the end of twenty five. Are improvements from here mainly on volume leverage and revenue growth? Are there further efficiencies you see in the gross margin and OpEx structure of the business?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: We’re always looking at ways to improve from a cost perspective. I think it’s a great mentality to have. It makes you, really make tough decisions, but, those constraints can be very helpful in making you making the right decisions. So, that’s just a natural tendency that the people who have joined us at this organization have. It’s one I’ve had as a as an operator at other companies and will be kind of a very stable aspect to the way we manage.

That said, you know, there’s been pretty prominent inflationary pressures over the last couple of years, some of our highest inflation over the last twenty years. And so from that perspective, our COGS profile, we hope to maintain relative stability over the next bit of time so that we’re relatively flat. The gains really on the margin side will come from an ASP improvement. That’s been a core tenant of our, of our strategy the last couple of years, and we’re making great progress. Our ASPs, gone up materially in the last couple of years, as you mentioned, seven consecutive quarters and, very proud of that progress.

So, but we’re still not where we wanna be. We think that half our Medicare rates are very reasonable near term goal, and we’d still have, roughly another hundred dollars to go in ASP wise, which is very material when you’re doing a 30,000 tests.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. So maybe moving over a little bit to, the landscape in the autoimmune markets. Can you speak to the landscape? How do you think about your competitive position in the landscape market growth versus your growth at Exigent? And maybe any other high level, market level data points, we can track to get a pulse on lupus and RA.

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Sure. The autoimmune space is really interesting. You see quite a bit of pharma development there, and we anticipate that continuing to grow. You know, one of the aspects of our business that we’ve been excited about is the progress we’re making on the biopharma side. And, I highlighted that on, I think our q two earnings call.

But, you know, our contract size as well as, structure has changed materially over the last twelve, eighteen months. And so we do see business on that side continuing to pick up, and we see people investing in wanting high profile, unique markers as part of their development efforts on the pharma side. As it pertains to our clinical business, really interesting. You know, you have, a and a positivity as a precursor, a very common precursor for utilization of our our core product. And what we’ve seen here is from February to 2010, a doubling in terms of prevalence of that number in The US.

Our expectation is that about every decade, that number is doubling. I don’t know where it’ll peak, but, we’re now up to forty one million Americans with a positive ANA. That number was 20, again, ten ten years ago or so. And, we don’t know the cause of that positivity. Could be environmental factors, could be a lot of things, could be, higher utilization of testing, what have you.

But that positivity rate increases the market from our perspective, and, you know, those patients need to be evaluated for more severe, more significant systemic disease. So that continues to grow. The labor, the rheumatology, labor pool is continuing to constrict. You know, these physicians are retiring faster than new ones are coming out of fellowship. And so leveraging tools which make clinical practice more efficient, more effective is a value proposition which we believe we provide as part of our core product and sets us up well from our from our standpoint.

So high level market wise, we think we have a few tailwinds in our direction. We’ll have to see, obviously, administration wise, what any implications are there. But, you have some of the NIH funding changes that may actually provide an advantage for us research wise. You know, it gives us an opportunity to step in with some of the KOLs and, and do some maybe lower cost research with them. So we like the way the market continues to evolve, from an autoimmune perspective.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: So maybe building off that a little bit, Avyze has been on the market since 2012. How would you classify market awareness of your testing portfolio? What percentage of US Rheumatologists use Avyze? And will more of your growth come from going deeper in your existing ordering, positions or expanding to, you know, to new positions?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Yeah. It’s a great question. I’ll try to hit on those three areas. So from our perspective, maybe I’ll just start with the last point first. So from our perspective, we just launched a new set of markers for both, diagnosis, systemic lupus, erythematosus diagnosis along with the seronegative rheumatoid arthritis patient population.

And the launch of those markers, we believe, will have, an enhanced value proposition, certainly on the RA side. We did not have unique markers as it relates to rheumatoid arthritis. We do now, and, we’ll continue to enhance, that suite of markers throughout the year. And so, we believe that, you know, greater utilization within our existing customer base is likely a consequence of that. You know, folks that are already using our test for the differential diagnosis of connective tissue disease but focusing in SLE, We have the best test out there.

I’m biased, but we we do. And, and so we’re enhancing that value proposition. But if you’re already using us for lupus, you’re just getting a better offering. It may open new doors with physicians who aren’t currently using us, but we really think that in terms of growth, it enhanced penetration within the existing customer base because we’ve we’ve, improved the value proposition for rheumatoid arthritis. What percentage of our, customer the rheumatologists in The US are using our test.

Roughly about a third is, our estimate. There’s somewhere between 4,500 to 5,000 rheumatologists in The US. Approximately 1,500 are using our tests in any given quarter as part of their routine clinical practice. Somewhere around 2,500 physicians are using our test on a on a quarterly basis. And so that that delta there being, the referral network into rheumatology, various subspecialties.

So, and then I think your middle question, if you don’t mind reminding me.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Yeah. It was just what percentage of US Rheumatologists use

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Okay. So I kinda hit on that as roughly a third.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. Moving over to Jeff, quick question for you. You recently joined Exeter in the August from another company, you know, more in the life science tool space. I guess, so far since August, how is the ramping going? Well, you know, what have been your key priorities over the last six months?

Jeff Black, CFO, Exigent: Sure. Yeah. I mean, returning to an industry that that I that I know well, feels great to be home again, if you will. I feel a little little like I’m cheated because heavy lifting that John has done, rebuilding the team and the operational turnaround, just a phenomenal setup. So I I’ve stepped in, super excited about the technology, the platform, impact on patients.

And while there’s heavy lifting left to be done, it’s really more around optimization and enhancement. I have a great team. You know, the foundation has been built. Really excited about being part of what’s next, and, you know, just I think the opportunity is endless. Got it.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Now maybe moving over to, your upgraded assays for lupus and RA in your commercial launch, recent headline news has been the addition of of three new biomarkers for SLE and four new biomarkers for rheumatoid arthritis, to the Advise CTD test. Markers increased RA sensitivity from 70 to, you know, 85%, with high 90 specificity and improved lupus sensitivity. Was sensitivity a hurdle for physicians, and and can this increase adoption in your opinion? Or is this just about having the best test possible and increasing patient outcomes?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Yeah. So you nailed, many of those metrics there. From our standpoint, we were still missing about twenty percent of lupus patients. Right? So you had a clinical diagnosis of lupus.

You still had no serological abnormalities, whether it was by our platform or up to about half of patients by conventional testing. So the fact that we were missing them was not okay with us. We’re always looking for ways to continue to improve, the personalized aspect to medical practice in this space, and it starts with the correct diagnosis. So we were raising the bar ourselves. I think really what this is is going to impact from a commercial standpoint is we have not turned out anything new in the last, five plus years, certainly of significance for almost seven.

So while the product has been on the market for some time, the focus of the organization has been in other areas. And so what we’ve done in the last twenty four months is really refocused the whole organization, back on the core product, look for ways to raise the bar ourselves. It’s a clinical need, you know, improve diagnostics in this autoimmune space, and, and we’re just trying to narrow the gap in terms of missing some of these patients. And, what we’re finding are there there are various patient populations, you know, that are positive for certain markers and not positive for others. More studies need to occur to see what the implications are from a prognostic standpoint or treatment perspective, but, we’re trying to raise the bar there.

I think on the RA side, it’s likely to have some material impact in expanding the market.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. How do you think these additional markers will affect your ASP for Avise?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: That is that is the golden question. So, what we’ve said publicly is there’s established CPT codes for these analytes. We expect from day one to have both coverage and some form of payment from, the majority of our, payers, insurance companies that we work with. That blended rate or incremental impact to our ASP is not something that we’ve quantified publicly. The reason for that is I wanna be very certain when we come out with a number that, we’ve seen cash in the door.

And so we launched these enhanced markers in the January. We’ve been working hard to file claims for, the testing that’s been performed. As cash has come in, we’re getting a feel for what that blended rate will be, and, we’ll have an update for that likely on our q one earnings call where we’ll be able to specify the the incremental impact.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. So you said you you know, you commercially launched this January for the new markers. Number one, how are the initial stages of the launch going? Yeah. I believe you guys met with over 50 physicians one on one prior to the launch.

But have you been getting any more valuable feedback from physician so far? And, how is the receptiveness from both physicians and payers early on, which maybe you touched to a little, but how are talks with payers going?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Yeah. So, again, it’s exciting because, first of all, this was not easy. So we had to these are all lab developed tests, and we had to get them validated both clinically and analytically and then through New York State Department of Health. And that is the current FDA surrogate with the rules that are in place. And with our current team, this was not something that they had done.

Right? We’ve actually changed all of the senior leadership in the organization in the last two years. And then many levels within the organization, there’s quite a few new players. So you got a new team working together, to bring, you know, several analytes to market past regulatory approval and then to commercialize them. And a lot to get right here in the last twelve months, and the team’s done it.

So very proud of being able to accomplish that and get get those markers out. What we’ve seen is we are being reimbursed for the new markers. At the specific level, like I just said, we haven’t, come out and said exactly what, but, so far, things are, going to plan. Initial reception is very positive. I, we had, as you mentioned, talked to an extensive number of physicians one on one to try to get the reporting of these analytes correct and really counterbalance what we thought was the right amount of information to provide on the report.

That was all done, in q four around the time of ACR. So ACR is our annual societal meeting, American College of Rheumatology. We got some great feedback at that time. We thought that there’d be some enhanced interest on the RA side. That’s really borne out post launch.

And, and we’re seeing some clinicians where it’s making an real high impact in in clinical care. There’s one example where, clinicians suspected fibromyalgia, and their patient was actually treating them for two years with pain management. And, they were negative for all serological markers that are out there conventionally. And when we came up with the revised panel, they ran our test, and they showed up positive for two of the new markers that we’ve, put out there. So now that patient’s diagnosis has changed from fibromyalgia to RA.

They’re being treated with methotrexate. This was a younger female who didn’t have joint damage yet. And so that’s a very positive outcome. We’ll see, obviously, longer term, but, you know, examples like that are why we do this. Maybe

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: stepping back sort of a higher level question here, but you’ve taken the steps to improve your cost structure, optimize revenue cycle management, or you’re being proactive about investing and in bettering your test. Do you have plans to start adding sales headcount to get a higher number of reps in the field to to, you know, push the product?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Yeah. So I think some context there is important. When I joined the organization, we had 63 sales territories in The US. We downsized that to 40 because the those 23 were not covering the cost of the rep in the field. We have since had all of our territories with the ASP gains be at least accretive from a contribution margin standpoint to our organization.

And so what we’ve taken a look at is now where’s where can we start to grow responsibly and in a profitable manner? And that’s kind of this next phase. I fully anticipate here in ’25 that, we start to expand our various sales territories, and this will be the first time since I’ve been here that we do that. We’re likely gonna get into the low to mid 40 range over the course of ’25, and so that’ll be adding roughly 10% sales territories in into our organization.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Alright. Moving over to guidelines, the American College of Rheumatology recently came out with summary guideline recommendation for lupus nephritis late last year. Is there any read through for EXOGEN here? Is there a time frame to expect guideline updates in SLE, or what do you think?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Yeah. So that was an exciting development. From a lupus nephritis standpoint, what they came out with were pretty clear treatment guidelines, not really much mention of any diagnostic respect to those guidelines, and that’s been the that’s really been the story with the ACR. That’s not a criticism, just more from a factual basis is they’ve stayed away from providing actual diagnostic guidelines for many of these diseases. What they’ve relied upon is, the clinical gestalt of a rheumatologist to arrive at a diagnosis, but then more certainty or specificity in terms of how to treat that patient.

And so that’s what you saw in lupus nephritis, and I think they actually just went, to expand some of the biologic uses in that space is what the guidelines accomplished. It relates to SLE specifically. I don’t fully anticipate changes near term. I think the last, guidelines are updated, north of ten years ago, and these are classification guidelines as opposed to diagnostic guidelines. The distinction there being classification guidelines are useful for ensuring homogeneity in clinical trial enrollment.

They don’t necessarily set a threshold for when a diagnosis is appropriate. And so we’ve been working with the ACR. It’s a concerted strategy we’ve put in place since I’ve been here. There’s a very clear group that has the ability to put out diagnostic guidelines, and several of the physicians on that panel use Advise testing in their clinical practice. It’s just a question of will at this point, and we’ll continue to work with them.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: So do you think the new biomarkers and the related abstracts you presented at the, the ACR societal meeting, does that increase the chances that Advise can be included in the next guideline update?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Certainly increases awareness. So from that perspective, very positive. Also, the physicians associated with, any of those abstracts are very prominent KOLs in the field. And that’s also been part of our strategy over the last, eighteen months is to get the KOL community informed and familiar with our offering so that as these guidelines are formed or contemplated, you know, we’ll have a a better chance of consideration. Again, I I don’t think this is an organization that moves faster that is interested in rapid, evolution of their guidelines, such as MCCN, would be in the cancer world.

But, but I think, again, probably the best thing to characterize it is we’ll continue to work with the the body. And we know the prominent players, and they have experience with our offering. It’s just a question of, does ACR wanna go as far as to create diagnostic guidelines?

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. Okay. Well well, maybe moving over to financials now. Much of the revenue growth in recent periods has been driven by ASP gains, which we touched a little bit on earlier. The the volume environment has been a bit more modest on that side.

What are you doing to recharge orders and really get some acceleration, over the over the coming, you know, orders and years?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: So perfect question. You know, from my standpoint, we had to reset the expectation within our physician base over the last, year and a half. And what I mean by that is in order for us to have an effective communication or engagement with the payer, we needed, our ordering physicians to provide us with information, to be effective there. So for example, all tests now require medical records from the ordering physician. They require a signed requisition, which you would think is, you know, relatively trivial thing, but it’s actually a pretty significant thing.

We require that physician to be enrolled with Medicare, and a and credentialed such that we can get reimbursed. We changed our patient, fee, patient responsibility on average. So all of those things, especially when you make kind of a rapid change like we did in July of twenty three, has a reset effect on our customer base. And we’ve had to work, through that. So we had a 20% volume decline between ’20, twenty twenty three q two and, q three of twenty three.

Since then, we’ve been building back from that level, and we’ve actually seen, in my opinion, pretty reasonable volume growth over over, you know, a year’s worth of time. I’m very energized by the way the team’s performing now. We’ve changed the caliber and quality of our sales team. Our new, head of sales joined in June of twenty four, and this was an individual that I’ve worked with for five years at a prior organization. Various sales reps within the individual territories, have been changed.

You know, previously, the company was heavily focused in, co promoting a pharmaceutical product. And so, we’ve gone more for diagnostic, experienced reps. They’re seen more as consultants within the field, and they have a more consultative discussion with clinicians. That’s very different than a pharma side where you’re doing a lot more marketing and dropping off materials as opposed to engaging in problem solving. So, I think we have the right team.

We certainly have continued to enhance the value proposition. I think, ’25 will be a a really critical year for evaluating that metric.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. So, you know, you’ve talked about in the past that there there’s a goal to get to at least 50% of the CMS list price or, you know, $525 per test. That’s, you know, somewhere around 25% higher than where your ASP sits today. What are the milestones here that we should be watching?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: I think that is the milestone. You know, the trailing twelve month number is the most critical number, from our perspective. We’ve intentionally not pointed people to quarterly, moves in that in that metric because various accounting things can can have a outsized impact prior period collections, for example, either way, you know, lack of or or additional collections. I think, you know, looking at the trajectory of that trailing twelve month number will really give you an indication of if we’re making progress strategically. And whether that’s a, a mix of revenue cycle optimization or managed care market access type progress, I’m happy to provide a qualitative overlay, but it really comes down to, you know, for a 37,000 tests, what’s your average cash in the door?

And that’s the number we give you. And that number has moved up about 40% over the last two years after being stagnant for, the four or five years prior to becoming. So we are making progress in that in that area. I fully expect it to get

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. Okay. And moving over to the capital structure, how do you see your capital structure evolving over the next few years? You know, are you comfortable setting on, I believe, about $22,000,000 of cash with breakeven expected by the end of the year? How do you see things evolving over the next year or eighteen months?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: Yeah. There’s a couple of things there, and and maybe Jeff can chime in too, especially around the debt. But if if you take a look at cash used last year, we had cut that burn significantly. Right? Our adjusted EBITDA loss in ’22 when I joined the company was 45,000,000 and, around around there.

And, last year, you know, our prerelease before J. P. Morgan was about 10,000,000. So we’ve had some material improvement in cost reduction at the organization. Cash used was about 14,000,000 for last year.

We have 22,000,000 in cash at year end. We expect to be cash flow positive by q four. So from our perspective, we feel very comfortable that we have the cash on hand to reach cash flow breakeven, and and then we’ll take it from there, from a strategic standpoint. But there’s other components, especially related to debt and what have you, that maybe you can talk about, Jeff.

Jeff Black, CFO, Exigent: I think, John, in terms of the setup, laid it out very well, and that is that we the business will cash flow. We’ll we have no issue about continuing to able to fund the operations. We do have debt service that will that will come. We have a 20,000,000 in debt that begins amortized on April 26. We think it’s important to prioritize getting ahead of that.

That’s number one priority. We’ll be opportunistic beyond beyond debt refinance on equity. It’s a great setup for us. And I think as you think about equity, equity raise will likely be something on the transformative side.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: I guess, how how de risk does that, you know, breakeven or generating cash by the end of the year? I mean, is there is there anything specific that needs, you know, to happen to get there? I guess, what are the puts and takes on the the breakeven by year end?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: So the first critical milestone would have been launching of the new products. And if there was any hiccups there timeline wise or feasibility wise, we’re past both of those. As I’ve said, we’ve launched, a new suite of products for, systemic lupus along with rheumatoid arthritis, in January of this year. So that was exactly in line with what we have communicated externally. The next question is then what’s your average reimbursement and the impact relative to expectations?

That we will know by our q one earnings call, and then that will factor into our 2025 guide. But from everything we’re seeing now, we are being reimbursed. I just can’t comment exactly on the on the relative level. We don’t have enough data points at this time. So, we’ll have to see.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Alright. Alright. So okay. So may maybe moving, in a little bit of a different direction. But, the new biomarkers were just released, but what do you see your r and d pipeline looking like over the next three to five years?

What do you think the biggest areas areas of investment are gonna be?

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: This is a very interesting aspect for us because if you take a look at certainly diagnostics and biomarkers in the autoimmune space, there’s not a ton. So from our perspective, what we’ve been heavily focused on in meeting is existing customer needs. So I joined the organization. We had a established r and d pipeline. I’ve actually since stopped every single project that was there, because, as I dove into it, didn’t think it was gonna pan out, as intended.

And what we’ve done since is conducted a pretty extensive voice of customer review with our, with the rheumatologist space. And it becomes pretty apparent when you talk to, you know, hundred plus physicians, where they need help. And what are some of the top clinical needs in this space are, indicators of disease activity, objective measurements of if the disease is waxing or waning, progressing or improving. And the reason for that is that’s all done clinically right now. So if you have RA, you know, you’re evaluated based on how many joints are inflamed, is your pain, increased.

There are some radio graphic indicators there, but that tends to be past the point of no return, if you will. You can’t you can’t reverse that. You can just hope to stop it. In in lupus, you know, from that standpoint, it’s have your manifestations progressed? Are you developing new ones?

And that has a recency bias. It’s, self reported. And what clinicians have said is, as I look to throttle back steroids or to intensify therapy, I wanna make an objective decision in this context. And so having measurements of that disease activity are of high clinical demand. We have two programs, one in each, one for systemic lupus, the other for rheumatoid arthritis that, we’re past the level of scientific risk, if you will.

You know? So we have candidate assays where we have some level of clinical validation in house, and we’re working to accumulate the data package around that, for ultimate commercialization, but that’s exciting for us. We’re also looking, we had licensed some technology out of Johns Hopkins. This is exciting because I think it has some pharma impact before it will have a clinical impact. And this is really going deeper within lupus.

Half of all lupus patients have some form of kidney involvement. So the challenge there is the diagnosis requires kidney biopsy ultimately, which is unpleasant as it sounds. And then, evaluating response to therapy is a twelve month odyssey that, you know, that patient’s kidney, potentially is continuing to degrade throughout that period. So we’re looking at, liquid biopsies in this space, urine, proteomics. We have candidate signatures for both of those indications, diagnosis along with, disease activity throughout that throughout that space.

So excited about all three of those programs. We have a few more that I haven’t spoken about just given the level of risk that still is involved with that. But working on restarting the r and d pipeline about two years ago, these new markers are the first fruits really, and and we’ll continue to evolve the platform.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Got it. Got it. We’re we’re out of time, but I one one more quick one if I if I can. You know, clearly a lot going on here with the with the turnaround story, but what are you most excited about if you could boil it all down to to one thing about the story with

John Abali, CEO, Exigent: So most excited is an interesting question, and this is me excited. But, the most excited thing, for me is, you know, you come into an organization, you come in on your own. You don’t quite know exactly who, you’re working with or what you have to work with, and, several things have been reinforced. The product is differentiated and has IP around it. It is providing significant clinical value in the space, and we can optimize the business around it.

You know, you never know if you cut off x, especially the way we’ve done it, how detrimental that is to top line, and we’ve actually continued to grow top line. So, you know, from that standpoint, there’s real opportunity here. Our r and d pipeline has meaningful projects that are addressing strong clinical needs. And when you look at it, it’s a I came, you know, prior, I’ve done a couple different turnarounds, and this one’s just as exciting as some of the others.

Kyle Boucher, Associate, TD Cowan Healthcare Conference: Right. With that, we’re out of time. So John, Jeff, thank you very much.

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