“As analysts, we provide advice to investors on what to make of all this news flow and updates from life sciences and diagnostics companies.”
That quote from my guest this week, Canaccord Genuity Analyst Kyle Mikson, simply captures the considerable overlap between his job and mine.
What to make of all this.
While analysts like Mikson are often interested in aspects of these companies that I’m not (e.g. gross margins) a lot of what drives monetary value is what I’m interested in as well: how well a technology works, how it fits in with the competition, and how it’s being used in research. To understand these companies, the analysts have to understand the world in which they operate.
Years of listening to questions during quarterly earnings calls and notes has revealed Mikson to be one of the sharpest observers of this space so I’m pleased to have him on this week to talk about everything that happened during the first quarter earnings call season, which ran from April to May.
What kind of market share can Illumina expect when it launches its own MRD kits and is it worth the risk of annoying customers that also offer those tests?
Why did liquid biopsy company stocks do so well in May?
What were his headline takeaways from the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting?
Where is he going on summer vacation after a hectic several months?
Tune in to hear the answers to these questions, and more.
You can also listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:
If you’re interested in learning more about Kyle’s takes on the life science tools and diagnostics industries, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn to start a conversation.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylemiksoncfa/
For full disclosure, he asked me to note that Seer is an investment banking client of Canaccord Genuity.
To help illustrate our discussion about Illumina’s high-throughput consumables, here’s the slide from Illumina’s Q1 presentation showing NovaSeq X consumables as a percentage of high-throughput consumables revenue and total gigabases shipped.
Following the Q1 call, Illumina said the percent of high-throughput consumables should be in the range of 54 to 56 percent, Mikson told me.
Links to all of the Ion Genomics Q1 coverage:
Illumina
Natera
Grail
10x Genomics
GeneDx
Pacific Biosciences
Twist Bioscience
Qiagen
BGI
