Executive Summary / Key Takeaways

• Seer is pioneering deep, unbiased proteomics at scale with its Proteograph Product Suite, leveraging proprietary engineered nanoparticles to overcome limitations of traditional methods and unlock unprecedented biological insights.
• Despite persistent macroeconomic headwinds, including budget pressures and government funding uncertainty, the company delivered strong Q1 2025 revenue growth of 37% year-over-year, driven by increased product sales (including instruments) and robust service revenue from its Technology Access Centers (STAC).
• Strategic initiatives like STAC, the Strategic Instrument Placement Program (SIPP), and an expanded partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific are proving effective in enhancing customer access and driving adoption, evidenced by record STAC-to-instrument conversions in Q1 2025 and increasing scale of customer studies, including a significant 10,000-sample contract.
• Seer maintains a strong balance sheet with approximately $285 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments as of March 31, 2025, which management believes provides sufficient capital to reach cash flow breakeven, supporting continued investment in R&D and commercial expansion while also enabling share repurchases.
• The company reiterated its full-year 2025 revenue guidance of $17 million to $18 million, representing 24% growth at the midpoint, reflecting confidence in the accelerating validation of its technology and strategic execution despite acknowledging ongoing market volatility and potential impacts from tariffs and funding uncertainties.

The Gateway to the Proteome: Seer's Differentiated Approach

Seer, Inc., founded in 2017, set out with a mission to decode the biology of the proteome, aiming to capture deep molecular insights that could revolutionize our understanding of health and disease. Operating within the dynamic and increasingly critical life sciences technology sector, Seer has positioned itself as a pioneer in the field of deep, unbiased proteomics at scale. The company's core offering, the Proteograph Product Suite, is an integrated solution designed to address the long-standing challenges associated with comprehensive proteomic analysis, particularly in complex biological samples like plasma.

The proteomics market, while still in its relative infancy compared to genomics, is gaining significant attention as researchers seek to functionally link genetic information to the dynamic world of proteins. Traditional proteomic methods have often struggled with limited depth, bias towards high-abundance proteins, and insufficient scalability for large-cohort studies. This is where Seer's technology aims to make a fundamental difference.

At the heart of the Proteograph Product Suite is Seer's proprietary engineered nanoparticle (NP) technology. These NPs are designed to selectively capture and enrich proteins across a wide dynamic range from biological samples, including low-abundance proteins that are often masked by highly abundant ones. This sample preparation step is integrated with an automation instrument (the SP100) and sophisticated software (the Proteograph Analysis Suite - PAS) to create a streamlined, high-throughput workflow compatible with mass spectrometry (MS) analysis.

The tangible benefits of this technology are significant and, according to company and customer data, quantifiable. The Proteograph enables unbiased access to thousands of proteins simultaneously, providing a much deeper view of the proteome than many alternative methods. A head-to-head comparative study highlighted in company communications demonstrated that Seer's technology outperforms other plasma proteomics methods attempting to emulate its approach across key metrics, including depth of coverage, reproducibility (measured by coefficient of variance), quantitative metrics (LoD, LoQ), and measurement completeness. A large multi-omics study conducted by related party PrognomiQ, utilizing the Proteograph and a Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO) Orbitrap Astral MS, detected over 13,000 protein groups across 2,840 plasma samples, with an average of over 8,200 per sample – a scale and depth previously considered impractical for unbiased MS-based proteomics. This same study found the Proteograph assay identified 11x more protein groups in a macaque study compared to a direct digestion workflow using the same MS instrument alone. Furthermore, the Proteograph Analysis Suite software has been upgraded to significantly accelerate end-to-end workflows, reducing data analysis time by over 95%.

This technological differentiation provides Seer with a competitive moat. While the life sciences technology market is highly competitive, featuring large, diversified players like Thermo Fisher Scientific, Illumina (ILMN), Bio-Rad Laboratories (BIO), and Waters Corporation (WAT), as well as more specialized proteomics companies like Alamar Biosciences, Nautilus Biotechnology (NAUT), Quanterix (QTRX), and Quantum-Si (QSI), Seer's unique NP-based approach offers a distinct value proposition. Large competitors like Thermo Fisher have dominant positions in mass spectrometry and broader life sciences tools, benefiting from scale, extensive resources, and established customer bases. Illumina dominates genomics and is expanding into multi-omics. Bio-Rad and Waters offer various tools including proteomics solutions. These companies often have significantly larger revenues, higher gross margins (e.g., TMO 41%, ILMN 65%, BIO 54%, WAT 75% TTM), and stronger cash flow generation than Seer.

However, Seer's strength lies in its specialized focus and the performance advantages of the Proteograph for deep, unbiased analysis, particularly in challenging sample types like plasma. While competitors may offer broader portfolios or different technological approaches (e.g., targeted affinity-based methods), Seer claims its untargeted approach is complementary, driving the discovery of new protein content that can then be interrogated by targeted methods. The company believes its technology enables studies (like population-scale cohorts and differentiating epitope effects in proteogenomics) that are difficult or impossible with competing platforms. Seer's R&D efforts continue to expand the platform's capabilities, including new applications like cell lysate proteomics, and refine the software, aiming to maintain its technological edge.

Strategic Execution and Financial Performance

Seer's commercial strategy is centered on expanding its installed base, increasing consumable pull-through, and growing its service offerings. Recognizing the challenges of selling high-capital instruments, particularly in the current macroeconomic climate, Seer has implemented strategies to lower the barrier to entry and accelerate customer adoption.

The Seer Technology Access Center (STAC) is a key component of this strategy. By offering service projects where customers can send samples to Seer for processing and analysis, STAC allows researchers to experience the power of Proteograph data without the upfront capital investment. This has proven to be an effective lead generation tool, with Q1 2025 seeing the highest number of STAC-to-instrument conversions in a single quarter, and nearly half of STAC customers being new. Building on the success of the U.S. STAC, the company expanded its footprint by opening a STAC lab in Germany in June 2024, extending access to European researchers.

The Strategic Instrument Placement Program (SIPP) offers another pathway to adoption, allowing customers to place an instrument in their lab with an upfront purchase of consumables, leveraging operating budgets rather than capital budgets. This program has been an important catalyst, particularly for large pharma customers.

A significant strategic development was the expanded partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific, announced in November 2024. This non-exclusive agreement allows Thermo Fisher's global sales force to co-market and sell the Proteograph Product Suite alongside their Orbitrap Astral mass spectrometers. This collaboration aims to provide customers with a seamless end-to-end solution for unbiased proteomics and leverage Thermo Fisher's extensive commercial reach. Sales force training was completed in the U.S. in Q1 2025, with European training planned next. This partnership is expected to strengthen Seer's commercial efforts, although the full revenue impact remains to be seen and is factored modestly into current guidance.

Financially, Seer is an early-stage company focused on growth and market penetration rather than near-term profitability. The company has incurred significant net losses since inception, with an accumulated deficit of $412.3 million as of March 31, 2025. Operating expenses remain substantial, driven by R&D ($11.350M in Q1 2025) and selling, general, and administrative costs ($11.442M in Q1 2025). However, operating expenses decreased by 14% in Q1 2025 compared to the prior year, primarily due to lower stock-based compensation.

Revenue performance in Q1 2025 showed positive momentum, reaching $4.205 million, a 37% increase from $3.066 million in Q1 2024. This growth was fueled by a 73% increase in product revenue ($2.890M vs $1.668M) and a substantial 195% increase in service revenue ($1.203M vs $0.408M). The increase in product revenue was notably driven by instrument shipments in Q1 2025 equaling the total number shipped in all of 2024. Gross profit in Q1 2025 was $2.061 million, resulting in a gross margin of 49%, an improvement from 44% in Q1 2024, attributed to a favorable revenue mix with higher service revenue. For the full year 2024, revenue was $14.2 million, with a gross margin of 50%. The consumable pull-through per installed instrument in 2024 was approximately $174,000 across an installed base of 49 instruments.

Seer maintains a strong liquidity position. As of March 31, 2025, the company held $285.3 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments. Management believes its current cash position is sufficient to fund operations for at least the next twelve months and reach cash flow breakeven, balancing investment needs with prudent capital management.

Cash used in operating activities was $11.417 million in Q1 2025, compared to $10.456 million in Q1 2024. For the full year 2024, free cash flow loss was $49.4 million, an improvement from $66.4 million in 2023.

The company has also utilized its strong balance sheet to repurchase shares, believing its stock price is significantly dislocated from its intrinsic value. In Q1 2025, 352,000 shares were repurchased at an average price of $1.91, with $12.6 million remaining under the authorization as of March 31, 2025.

Outlook, Risks, and the Path Forward

Looking ahead, Seer reiterated its full-year 2025 revenue guidance of $17 million to $18 million, representing 24% growth at the midpoint compared to 2024. This guidance reflects management's confidence in the company's strategic execution and the increasing validation of its technology, particularly the growing pipeline of larger-scale studies being discussed. However, the outlook is tempered by the assumption of continued macroeconomic uncertainty, including budget pressures on customers and volatility in government funding (which impacted approximately 30% of 2024 revenue), as well as potential implications from tariffs. The company expects a free cash flow loss in the range of $40 million to $45 million for 2025, an anticipated improvement from 2024.

Despite the positive momentum and strategic progress, several risks could impact Seer's ability to achieve its goals. As an early-stage company, its operating results may fluctuate significantly due to factors like the unpredictable length of sales cycles, the pace of market acceptance for novel technologies, and changes in customer funding environments. Competition is intense, and larger, more established players have greater resources and broader market reach. Reliance on single suppliers, such as Hamilton Company for instrument manufacturing, poses supply chain risks. The company's path to profitability is uncertain and depends on its ability to scale revenue faster than expenses. Protecting its intellectual property is critical, and challenges to patents or trade secrets could erode its competitive advantage. Furthermore, while currently selling products for research use only (RUO), any future intent to pursue diagnostic applications would subject the company to lengthy and costly regulatory processes.

However, the investment thesis for Seer hinges on its ability to capitalize on the massive, largely untapped potential of the proteome. The growing body of customer-generated data, including publications in high-impact journals and the initiation of population-scale studies, provides compelling evidence of the Proteograph's unique capabilities and value proposition. Strategic initiatives like STAC and the Thermo Fisher partnership are expanding access and accelerating the adoption curve. While macroeconomic headwinds persist, the underlying demand for deep, unbiased proteomic insights is increasing, driven by advancements in genomics and the need to understand biological function at the protein level.

Conclusion

Seer stands at the forefront of a transformative field, armed with a differentiated technology capable of unlocking unprecedented insights into the proteome. The Proteograph Product Suite's ability to provide deep, unbiased, and scalable proteomic analysis positions the company to address critical unmet needs in research, translational science, and potentially diagnostics. While the path forward involves navigating macroeconomic uncertainties, intense competition, and the inherent challenges of scaling an early-stage technology company, recent performance, particularly the strong Q1 2025 results and increasing traction for strategic access programs, demonstrates encouraging momentum. The company's solid cash position provides a runway to continue investing in innovation and commercial expansion. For investors, the story of Seer is one of technological leadership and market creation potential, balanced against the risks inherent in pioneering a new paradigm in life sciences research. The ability to translate technological superiority and increasing customer validation into sustained revenue growth and improved financial performance will be key to realizing the long-term value proposition.