Quanterix at Canaccord Genuity Conference: Strategic Insights for 2025

On Wednesday, 13 August 2025, Quanterix Corp (NASDAQ:QTRX) presented at Canaccord Genuity’s 45th Annual Growth Conference. The company outlined its strategic direction amidst challenges and opportunities. While facing pressures in its core Simoa business due to funding constraints, Quanterix highlighted the resilience of its consumables sector and the promising potential of its recent acquisition, Akoya.

Key Takeaways

• Quanterix is targeting cash flow breakeven by 2026, leveraging $85 million in synergies from the Akoya acquisition.
• Despite a decline in core business due to funding pressures, the consumables business remains strong with $100 million in pro forma revenue.
• The upcoming SMO-one platform aims to enhance liquid biopsy testing with increased sensitivity and multiplexing capabilities.
• Diagnostic revenues tripled, albeit from a small base, showcasing growth potential in the clinical market.
• The Lucent AD Complete test is set to become a gold standard for Alzheimer’s diagnostics, with Medicare recommendation anticipated by year-end.

Financial Results

• Consumables Business: Achieved approximately $100 million in pro forma revenue for Q2.
• Accelerator Revenue: Reported $4 million, marking a 60% year-over-year decline.
• Akoya Revenue: Recorded $35 million in the first half of the year.
• Cash Usage: Quanterix utilized $50 million, while Akoya used $15-17 million in H1.
• Trends: Academic revenue decreased by 18% year-over-year, with consumables down 4%.

Operational Updates

• Accelerator: Increased trial numbers but experienced smaller project sizes due to biopharma spending constraints.
• Akoya: Achieved its largest-ever quarter for consumables, despite a $10 million drop in CDx business and a $5-7 million macro-related impact.
• Synergies: 75% of synergies from the Akoya acquisition have been implemented, with full realization expected by 2026.

Future Outlook

• Revenue Projections: Akoya is expected to generate about $30 million in the second half of the year.
• SMO-one Platform: Set to launch by the end of the year, enhancing liquid biopsy testing with improved sensitivity.
• Leadership Integration: Quanterix aims to consolidate its leadership and operational teams for streamlined operations.

Q&A Highlights

• Project Sizes: The decline in Accelerator business is attributed to smaller project sizes despite an increase in trials.
• Akoya’s Decline: Linked to non-repeating CDx milestones and macroeconomic impacts.
• Synergy Confidence: Quanterix is confident in achieving $85 million in synergies by 2026.
• Lucent AD Complete: Focused on clinical utility studies and Medicare recommendation for Alzheimer’s diagnostics.

For further insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Canaccord Genuity’s 45th Annual Growth Conference:

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Hi. Welcome to the Canaccord Genuity Group Conference. I’m Kyle Mixon. I come for Life Science Tools Diagnostics for Canaccord. Really pleased to welcome you to this fireside chat with Quanterix.

The company offers a really ultra sensitive protein measurement platform based on digital ELISA. With us from the company, we have Masud Tullu, CEO and Vandana Shiram, CFO. Thanks guys for joining us today. So Masud and Vandana, maybe just start out the 2025 guidance update. You expect a meaningful decline in the core business, the Calynterex business.

Maybe you can talk a little bit about how you expect the Akoya side to do as well. Just if you could just start there, that’d be great based on what happened in the second quarter basically.

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes. I can start off, Colin. Maybe Vandana can provide some additional details on the guide. So for the quarter, we were happy to despite macro pressure in academic and biopharma funding, we had a solid consumables business, about $100,000,000 pro form a business. If you look at the first half of last year and the first half of this year, it’s been pretty resilient.

So we’re happy with that performance and we continue to invest into assays and consumables. The accelerator business, vitality of that business continues to be strong. We had actually more trials this quarter than we did in the quarter prior in 2024, but smaller projects based on biopharma spending. Diagnostics revenues, as which you know, we’re very focused on tripled, still small number, but great green shoots.

Vandana Shiram, CFO, Quanterix: And maybe just to give some color on end markets. As we had gone into the second quarter, we had expected academic revenues to be down about 20% to 30%. And that played out largely as we expected and we were down about 18% on academic. The pharma drop was a little bit deeper, mainly because of accelerator where we didn’t have a repeat of some of the large projects from last year. Recall that last year, we grew about 44 in Accelerator.

So as we look to our guide for the second half, we believe that we have bottomed out a lot of these risks and incorporated all of that into the Simoa guide. And then on the Spatial side, the Spatial business has actually done pretty well in terms of being fairly resilient on the instruments and consumables side. For consumables, they actually had the largest ever quarter in the second quarter. For them, really, the year over year variance is driven by the timing of their CDx program. Last year, they had several milestones that hit in the second half, which we’re not expecting to repeat.

So that’s kind of how we balanced out the guidance. But we believe we’ve pressure tested it in light of the environment. If the environment were to change or if things were to get better, that would certainly be upside to the guide.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. On the Accelerator side, maybe start like when you had the initial guidance, I think it was like over $140,000,000 How did you think about Accelerator back then compared to the 1Q update where you brought down the guide further, but I think it was like 120,000,000 $130,000,000 revenue. Now it’s lower. So like what’s I feel like that business is like the key kind of variable that’s shifting quite a bit. That was down 60% year over year.

It’s $4,000,000 in revenue in the quarter. I think we had like more than double that. So what’s again, I feel like you were kind of communicating that a lot of that accelerated revenue is going to be in the second half of the year. So again, like those what’s going on with that business given it was such a nice like safe like kind of like in the past?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes. As Vanda mentioned, Accelerator was excellent, had an excellent performance last 40% year on year growth, lot of phase two, phase three trials. We support almost every single Alzheimer’s therapy company in the market. And so I think this year, while that helped us in prior years, we’re facing some pressure. The number of trials that we have are greater.

We’re getting a lot more new customers. But the project sizes are a lot smaller. And the retrospective samples that we typically burn within a quarter, think some of that surprised us in terms of size of projects and some shrinking of budget. But we continue to believe that for as long as there are going to be neuro projects and neuro trials of which there are a lot, the fatality, the number of new customers, number of projects that we’re getting or seeing is still positive. And so can continue to drive growth in the future.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Got you. Okay. And then on the biopharma side, in general, why just taking us to that, why was that so much less favorable than you kind of anticipated?

Vandana Shiram, CFO, Quanterix: Yes. A large part of the biopharma basically came into Accelerators. So a large part of that most of that decline is an accelerator. And on the consumables side, we had a little bit of lumpiness. If you recall, last quarter, the first quarter, we actually had record consumables.

When you put the two together, consumables are down only 4% on a year over year basis. So kind of balances out. There’s a piece of pharma in that consumables number as well. So that was down this quarter, but somewhat balanced on a year to date basis.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. And then on the Acoya business, so $30,000,000 in the second half of the year, that’s $60,000,000 annualized. They did like $82,000,000 or so last year in total revenue. Is there I mean, that’s a pretty big like year over year decline. Is that just because of the milestones, like you said, for CDX or?

Vandana Shiram, CFO, Quanterix: Yes. So they did about $35,000,000 in the first half. So at the current guide, they’re at about $65,000,000 About $10,000,000 of the drop is just the CDx business. And then the rest of it, call it about $5,000,000 7% or 8% is macro related.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: That’s That sounds good. And then if you think about the Akoya, like kind of transitioning to leading this new space business going forward, I mean, what’s the initial like month or so been like when it’s been fully kind of a part of Quanterix? I know maybe talk about who’s leading it and like how like when you’re in the room with these meetings for Spatial, what makes you excited? What do you see for the future in terms of like the vision of the acquisition?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes. So Akoya, if you look at the entire Spatial market and you say, hey, who was the most translational? Translational? There’s only one company. It’s Akoya.

And it’s extremely clear. Akoya had done an incredible job of taking markers that were identified in discovery and moving them to pharma, CROs, and eventually and also the clinic. So we were very excited about that. Quanterix’s philosophy has always been take translational markers, move them into the clinic. That philosophy resonates between the two companies.

And our goal here is to create one company, one leadership team, one commercial team, one operating line where we’re able to make and manufacture the single units of assays under one roof. So the goal is to continue build assays, invest into assay development, get consumables running over a 2,400 instrument installed base, expand the technology systems between Nicoya, what we have in Samoa, and invest in diagnostics.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Got you. Okay. And when you think about the espatial market though, mean, like, I mean, what’s your view on trends there? It was thought as being more attractive like a few years ago. Is still like what’s it going be like the growth how is it going to be a growth driver for you going forward?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes. For as long as these biomarkers are important, understanding how they’re spatially resolved in tissue is going to be critical. Right now, Kyle, as we talk to some of the early revenue synergy customers, customers that day in day out use some mobile for neurology, we presented some of the spatial technology coming from Akoya. There’s a lot of excitement. We talked to one group that has over a thousand brain samples, has matching blood pairs.

We’re able to actually identify and understand how tau tangles work, how amyloid works, how are they spatially resolved over a period of time. We think that’s going to be an early synergy between the two companies and super exciting. In the oncology space, there’s a growing area of biomarker research where people are looking at these new markers in tissue leaking into blood where we can identify, measure them in Samoa and there’ll be a lot of synergy opportunity there, identification of markers that could be important in liquid biopsy. So we think it’s still incredibly important. The position in the translational side is key for us because we both want to move things into the clinic.

And I think we have a good perspective there on moving the space forward.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: All right. So on the synergies, I think you’re targeting $85,000,000 by the end of next year, like annualized run rate of synergies. That’s a pretty that’s a big number. What gives you confidence that you can kind of get to that point, implement and like realize those synergies and still grow on the top line, this larger again, like a larger routing base?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes. So we’ve implemented 75% of them already on a run rate basis. By 2026, we’ll have completed all $85,000,000 So the goal is growth. We’re a life science tools company that’s moving things into the clinic. We’re going to continue to invest in R and D this year.

R and D is 30% of our total revenues. And that’s our key North Star, customer continuity, customer synergies, and growth focus and investment. So there we’re actually investing more as a percent of the company than Quinterix has for a long time in R and D. So we’re excited. But at the end of the day, we have one footprint, one commercial team, one leadership team, single G and A.

And this is about efficiency and becoming nimble and organized. And we have a lot of confidence in doing this. I would say we had a running start. We understood the technology really well. We saw it in our customers’ hands.

We did a lot of work before the acquisition closed.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. And then you have the cash flow breakeven target for 2026. Does that assumption like that assumes the macro stays the same or gets better? Can you just talk about that a bit?

Vandana Shiram, CFO, Quanterix: Yes. We’ve basically stress tested that scenario assuming that the macro remains largely the same. So if you think about it, Akoya on a standalone basis used about 15,000,000 to $17,000,000 of cash in the first half. Take out the interest component of that, that’s about $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 on the Akoya side. We, without any cost actions, probably have used about $50 ish million of cash.

Put those two together and then when you take out $85,000,000 of synergies, that’s what gets you to that cash flow breakeven. So even under the current revenue construct, we’re comfortable that we would get to that cash flow breakeven number based on the synergies.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Got you. Okay. Interesting. All right. That sounds good.

Now moving to, how are you using cash, the R and D, like you were just saying, Masood. So talk about the SMO-one, the launch is upcoming. And then you also have the kits that are for like third party flow set converters. How is just again, like give us an update on that kind of rollout in that launch?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes, we’re super excited. We’re increasing the sensitivity of the platform by an order of magnitude. We’re increasing the complexity of the system and we’re making it really easy to use. And if you sort of step back, Kyle, and you said, hey, in diagnostics there are two things that are absolutely going to be needed in a future generation of tests. What would those two be?

I would say, I think you would get consensus agreement, better sensitivity for early detection of disease, and you would get higher multiplex. Not 50 or 100, more on the order of five or 10. And so with Simole one, we’re really providing a platform that will serve as the future biomarker generator for liquid biopsy testing as we move forward, both in neurology but also in oncology. So SOMOO one, day one will have an immunology menu and a growing oncology menu that will help elucidate additional markers and help improve sensitivity of what we think will be an immunology and oncology based liquid biopsy testing.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: So the SMO-one has some clinical use cases or is it just for the research on immunology and I guess oncology too?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: It will start in immunology and oncology. But we’re already working with a handful of important oncology markers that will be using with our collaborators, trying to incorporate protein into different types of genomic tests to improve sensitivity of those existing tests.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay.

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: So it is a solid generator, solid base point for identification of new markers. And having the tissue knowledge upstream of that critically important. I mean, we’re already finding with some of our collaborations ubiquitous markers that were in tissue that were never in blood secreted into blood at ultra low levels. The ability to measure that with our current technology or even better, some one is going to be important as we see more multiomics based liquid biopsy based testing.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. But when you think about like tangibly how that impact from SMO-one comes like flows through to the P and L, maybe like in 2026. I mean how is it more of like these proof statements of like proves out that the technology can be used like for these biomarkers? Or is it going to be like a real revenue contributor pretty It’s

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: going to be it’ll be a new platform. It’ll be a next gen platform. We are excited about its contribution on the top line. We plan on launching a platform with reagents flowing through that platform by the end of the year. And then we’ve also said on our prior call that in an environment that is CapEx constrained, we decided that in 2026 we’d be opening up some of the Simole reagents to a much larger flow cytometer installed base.

And we sort of have the walled garden option and the open garden option. And so with the ability to take the reagents and go to 20 times our install base, we’re basically enabling a lot of research, lot of academia, the ability to get ultra sensitivity without having to purchase an instrument.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: All right. Great. And then Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnostics, it’s obviously a big portion of the long term kind of thesis on QuinterX. So you have Lucent AD complete. That’s probably it’s a five marker test.

It’s performance pretty well and that’s where your go to market, I would think. You want to go to FDA with that. You’re expecting reimbursement relatively soon, maybe a price point about triple digits, like almost $900 So that all sounds good. What are the next steps though with Lucent ID Complete basically? Just like go step by step and how low risk, high risk these milestones kind of are.

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes. So first, clinical utility is super important. I mean if you look at the last five or ten years, you kind of step back and you say, well, we’re at an incredible time where there’s now two new Alzheimer’s therapies on the market and people want to be tested and want to get tested for the disease. They either have family history or are exhibiting symptoms. And there’s actually for the first time something that you can do about it.

These are, when I say first gen therapies, we expect second and third gen to be coming online. So while this is happening, it’s a unique moment in time, really important that we get solid diagnostics to the market. So Lucent AD Complete is a big step ahead of just a single marker test. It provides not only just ability to triage, but you can actually diagnose someone with high level of confidence and be able to potentially in the future do differential diagnosis, look at tau staging. And we have a lot of other plans that we’re going to do with the five marker test.

So through five or six clinical utility studies, we intend to increase the usability, the value of the test for payers. We have a Medicare recommendation coming up by the end of the year That’s going be important to get the test reimbursed. And then we’re going to be spending a lot of effort commercializing the test and getting it into our partner’s hands.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. Then on the tests, again, markers or so. I mean, you done kind of adding markers to it? Or do think like more the merrier when it comes to neurology biomarkers? Yes.

We are

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: a leader in this space, Gal. So we thankfully have an incredibly strong R and D group. We have incredibly strong KOLs and pharma partners that we work with on a regular basis that are always coming to us with unique markers and bringing them and trying to understand how those markers can better differentiate disease. And so as we bring those in, we launch them as RUO products. They’re always candidates for can this additional marker provide value as a measure for monitoring?

Can it differentiate disease? Can it differentiate frontotemporal from Alzheimer’s? And we’re just getting started. The five marker test, I think, is a sign of evolution of diagnostic tests. With more markers, you can do more and learn more.

And it’s going to help the patient physician and it will be of interest to payers.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Right. And you just had the update on zero five PT0205 and two twelve. Does that have some clinical utility as well over time?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yeah, two zero five and two twelve are incredible progression markers. So we just launched those at our AIC, available on the Simoa platform. Super excited. They look at neurofibrillary tangles. And so you have to imagine if you put that into our Leucine AD test, you’d not only provide a diagnosis for the patient, but if you were positive on pTau217 but had low two zero five, you would be at the very early stages of that disease.

And so a good progression marker and we think that there could be utility for that as we look at differential diagnosis and monitoring.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. And then when you think about the Akoya is bringing you closer to oncology, I would say. They have a nice footprint there. Have you seen already like your kind of like a better channel to speak to those kinds of customers and maybe those applications are going to make more sense for like Samoa over time too, given maybe some of the biomarkers that you already have identified?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yes, absolutely. Both ways. I was just in Toronto at our AIC meeting and talking to all of our customers, all our neuro customers about the neuro brain panel that Echoya has. Tons of excitement, huge interest in how does the biomarker relate to pathophysiology in the brain? Are there connections?

Can we develop even better blood markers if we understand how these are spatially oriented? And so from that side, good progress. I think that’s a very low hanging fruit. On the other side, can the channel, can working with more oncologists generate additional markers in blood? I think early days says yes.

We’re working on a couple of high value candidates that markers that are always been in tissue and we’re identifying they leak into blood and turning them into some of our products and getting into the hands of some early researchers.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Gotcha. Okay. Sounds good. And you’re launching a lot of new assays the past couple of years the past two years or so, big focus of the company. What’s the kind of roadmap like going forward?

Do want to launch like X amount each year? And how I mean, is this like important for the kind of revenue model to work basically?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: It’s the most critical thing in the revenue model. We looked at ICOIA. And when we were thinking about the acquisition, Quanterix’s platforms are some of the most high throughput life science tools platforms in the market. If you looked last year, each of the platforms in our accelerator lab would deliver over a million or so in consumables per system. So massive utility, high throughput.

So in that sort of situation, the goal is develop as much rich and diverse many as you can. We’ve been only doing it in neuro and just started to do it in immunology to get our existing over 1,000 instrument installed base running and operating with exciting menu. That had been the focus. With the acquisition of Acoya, we now have a 2,400 instrument installed base, a $100,000,000 consumables pro form a group. And we’re weekly meeting on exciting menu that we can add on the Acquia systems and also on the Simo systems, many of them as we’ve been talking about synergistic between the two platforms.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: One challenge that Acoya had historically was the pull through on their systems. If you look identified, that is a little bit subpar. Are there ways to kind of expand that, I guess, whether it’s through some kind of a synergy effort or like new products?

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yeah, we love boxed salads, Kyle. I think you’ve heard me say that before. We are extremely focused on new menu and adding new menu, new markers and providing it so that it’s easy for a customer to use. Just because we’re in the translational space, that’s what people want. They want everything packaged together.

They don’t want to make their own salad. They want to buy a box salad. And that’s one thing that we do really well. I think we’re learning that they have a great R and D team, a lot of really talented individuals on both sides. And our number one focus in the company is increased throughput of those platforms.

The capabilities are already there. They don’t need an instrument change. It’s all about developing great content. And I think we have a plan on that path to achieve it.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Okay. Finally, on 2026, it feels like investors are not truly appreciating the vision of the merger, maybe even the cash flow targets and the synergies. How are you going to surprise people next year in 2026? And basically to prove people wrong.

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Yeah. Well, we’re telling everybody what we’ll do. And I think it’s sort of like you look into 2026 and we will achieve our cash flow breakeven number. We’ll have a balance sheet that’s north of $100,000,000 with a great business, 2,400 instruments, dollars 100,000,000 consumable, high margin, reoccurring revenue model with significant investments in diagnostics, with things that are on their way to becoming strong successes in the clinical market. So I think as they say, proof is in the pudding, but we’re on our way to achieving it.

And we have a high level of confidence with a talented team to get there.

Kyle Mixon, Life Science Tools Diagnostics, Canaccord Genuity Group: Awesome. Okay. Thanks, Vasude. Thanks, Madhavana. Good to have you.

Appreciate it.

Masud Tullu, CEO, Quanterix: Thanks, Kyle.

Vandana Shiram, CFO, Quanterix: Great. Thanks, Kyle.

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