Twist Bioscience Revenue Growing From $2 To $200 Million As It Eyes The $186 Billion Antibody Market

It’s one other lovely sunny day in San Francisco, and Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ
NDAQ
: TWST) is making information as soon as once more. 4 years in the past, virtually to the date, Twist CEO Emily Leproust rang the bell on its opening day on the Nasdaq, and the corporate’s income has been rising steadily because the IPO. Twist reported its file earnings of $56.1 million for the fiscal third quarter of 2022, a 60% improve in comparison with $35.0 million for a similar interval in 2021. And final week, they introduced the promotion of Patrick Finn to the newly created place of President and Chief Working Officer.

Patrick beforehand served as Chief Business Officer liable for constructing the corporate’s international commercialization efforts. He joined Twist in 2015 upfront of the launch of its industrial artificial DNA merchandise. Since then, the corporate has considerably expanded the vary of its choices, venturing into next-generation sequencing (NGS) and DNA information storage, along with their ongoing DNA synthesis program for artificial biology, healthcare, and educational sectors. However the greatest cause why Twist is at the moment valued at $1.9 billion is the potential to make use of their silicon DNA synthesis platform for the invention of recent medication.

“We’re laser-focused on attaining adjusted EBITDA breakeven for our core enterprise – SynBio and NGS. And we imagine that finally biopharma and information storage have the potential to be bigger than both of those alternatives,” says Emily Leproust.

With the current promotion of Patrick Finn, it’s clear that the corporate goes for the gold. The brand new President and COO is liable for rising gross sales from $2 million in 2016 to a projected $203 million for 2022. Over his 8-year tenure at Twist, Patrick has helped increase its footprint globally, overseeing the industrial groups within the Americas, Europe, and APAC. Previous to Twist, he had launched merchandise in numerous manufacturing environments at QIAGEN, Agilent Applied sciences
A
, Beckman Coulter, Invitrogen, and GE Healthcare/Amersham Worldwide. This breadth of expertise has translated into forward-thinking, strategic management, and customer-centric focus as the corporate continues to extend its market share throughout SynBio, NGS, and biopharma sectors, in addition to creating its future information storage industrial product.

“Each Friday for the final 8 years I’ve met with Paddy. Over that point, I’ve realized that not solely does he have some nice Scottish phrases for intense conditions however he is an enormous strategic thinker”, joked Emily Leproust. “He’s an enabler, a catalyst, and an advocate targeted on folks to drive the enterprise ahead, and I could not be extra excited in regards to the future.”

Twist has been making its manner into the biopharma house since 2018 when it promoted Aaron Sato, an professional in antibody-based medication and machine studying, to guide its biopharma division. Sato has been overseeing the corporate’s revenue-generating verticals to find and develop novel antibody therapeutics. This method might help biopharma firms to considerably de-risk R&D by offering them with a number of pictures on aim. A current licensing settlement with Astellas Pharma, a 25-billion-dollar firm, is a testomony to the success of Twist’s mannequin. Below the unique possibility license settlement, the 2 firms will accomplice to develop potential therapeutic candidates based mostly on Twist-discovered antibodies, and Twist will gather royalties if the drug makes it to market.

Antibody-based medication are a $186 billion market, rising at a 13.2% compound annual development price. And Twist is investing closely in creating its know-how on this space: final 12 months it acquired an antibody firm known as Abveris to bolster its functionality for antibody discovery and characterization in animals. This acquisition enhances the already current platform for animal-free antibody discovery and machine-learning approaches led by Aaron Sato’s workforce.

“Our function within the [SynBio] neighborhood is to serve and leverage the size of the Twist synthesis platform to allow extra discovery and optimization,” Patrick Finn commented on the path that the corporate is creating in. “The place Twist is phenomenal is that we take heed to the market and comply with alternatives the place our know-how aligns with what the market wants.” With the corporate shortly outgrowing its present area of interest, Patrick’s function will likely be to assist it scale.

“I’m tremendous excited to have Paddy as our President and COO. He is pushed our income development quarter over quarter, including prospects and product strains. One of many issues that Paddy brings to this new place, that isn’t solely liable for industrial but in addition operations, is customer-centricity. I imagine he will likely be an incredible pressure of development for Twist,” mentioned the CEO.

Twist is, in reality, scaling fairly actually: the corporate is opening a brand new facility exterior of Portland, Oregon, which is ready to begin delivery its first product in January 2023. Tracey Mullen, who was the CEO of Abveris on the time of acquisition, is main the trouble to construct the “Manufacturing unit of the Future” in her new function as VP of Operations. It’s roughly 110,000 sq. ft, practically twice the scale of the San Francisco Bay Space facility, with the choice to almost double this sq. footage sooner or later. It is going to home the brand new antibody discovery and validation program and supply further house to assist Twist fulfill the wants of its rising markets, from DNA synthesis to biopharma to DNA information storage.

“The quantity of the merchandise popping out of our services is gigantic,” says Patrick. He sees the corporate’s core platform as a necessary driver for the quickly increasing biotech business with purposes in healthcare, industrial chemical compounds, agriculture, and educational analysis. “Bringing our know-how as much as scale will allow us to drive profitability in enterprise.”

Thanks to Katia Tarasava for added analysis and reporting on this text. I’m the founding father of SynBioBeta, and a few of the firms that I write about, together with Twist Bioscience, are sponsors of the SynBioBeta convention and weekly digest.