Cytek Biosciences: Flow Cytometry Competition

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That is notable, it’s consistent with what we keep hearing. That’s an interesting call out on reviewing a lot of grants and seeing their systems. Would you say they’re taking most of the share of incremental flow cytometer purchasing?

Yes, I would. Obviously, there are other full spectrum systems out there; Sony bizarrely have a system which, on paper, is a higher specification than the Cytek system but I’ve seen very slow uptake on that. It’s also quite expensive for what it is, and there is also a little bit of concern around the commitment from Sony in our area. We’ve never really been quite sure why they got into it to be honest with you.

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You’re referring to the BD relationship? We’ve read quite a bit about that. You tapped on one of the things with the BD relationship that I think is kind of relevant, Cytek’s route in service and building out this service field. Maybe you could tie to that two dimensions; first you called out how phenomenal they are, but second do you think that can make a difference? One of the things Cytek told me to kind of tie it to the Amnis presence now, is it gives them an installed base. The Amnis installed base is fairly mature, so it’s nearing replacement cycle, where those who have the Amnis have been running them for four to five years which, in industry should be the typical lifecycle, so they’ll have an opportunity to sell up that installed base but they’d also get to make money on servicing and you said the servicing is pretty hefty. Does that all fit in well with you with how good their service team is? Do you think that gives a good opportunity to sell into Cytek?

I think it does. I think the only thing to be clear on is, at the moment, Cytek and the ImageStream are two completely different systems. The Cytek system is a full spectrum non-imaging flow cytometer and the Amnis system is an imaging flow cytometer which is not full spectrum. However, interestingly, the joining of this made a lot of sense because the Becton Dickinson system I’ve mentioned that isn’t commercially released yet, does imaging but also has full spectrum capability. It’s clear why they’re doing this, it’s a very smart tie up. Basically, the Amnis technology is not developed; again, just my view, no inside information. Looking from the outside in, it hasn’t developed over the years because they’ve just been sold. They were bought by Merck Millipore, then Millipore put them on to Luminex, and then Luminex put them on to DiaSorin, so I think they just lost the R&D element. It’s always been odd because we were always wondering what would come next, but I suppose if they tie up with Cytek and the R&D gets re-invigorated again, maybe that’s the plan to generate a system that can sort and do full spectrum imaging; that’s what they need. I think the only thing about the installed base, we have, I think, the most current system and it’s over 12 years old.

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That’s really interesting. They do have the dual clinical certification in Europe now, not in the US yet but they have it for their cFluor reagents and for the Northern Lights. How would you compare their total cost of ownership, their cost of run with BD who, I guess, is dominant in that today?

We do a bit of clinical research stuff. I can tell you that, for servicing, BD costs one and a half times the cost of what we pay for Cytek for an equivalent system, which is quite a lot when you are up in the X thousands of pounds per year. In terms of the reagents, I think, on the whole, I would say they’re probably about a third cheaper, so if you use the same amount of reagents as you would BDs, that equates to experiments per sample that are probably anywhere between a third and maybe even a bit more cheap. I wouldn’t say half, but probably between half and a third I think.

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