Illumina CEO joins Fast Money from the JPM Health Care Conference

Yeah, hi Meg. You're right. I think the Street was pleasantly surprised by the strength in both the 2021 numbers, where we announced our revenue that grew 39% over the previous year, and then the strength in the guidance for this year. We guided for 14 to 16% growth, which was significantly ahead, I think, of where expectations were. I think a few things are playing out. And if you look at last year, you know, every quarter last year we ended up beating expectations, raising expectations, and then beating them again. So what we're seeing playing out is something we saw play out starting last year, where firstly we're seeing an expansion of reimbursement for genomic testing. So last year we crossed a milestone where there are over 1 billion people now around the world that have reimbursement for some kind of genomic testing, and that's continuing to grow. And we said that that expects to get to 2 billion in a few years. So a lot more people have access to genomic testing, whether it's to select the right therapy for cancer or for genetic disease testing for the 5% of the population that has genetic diseases, or NIPT. And that's probably one of the biggest drivers of the growth in our core business, just more access to the tests, expanded reimbursement.

Yeah, well, Meg, it's hard to believe. You're right that it's been two years since the researchers in China identified SARS-CoV-2 and sequenced it using Illumina machines. And you know, we've come a long way in terms of before that, almost nobody had sequencing surveillance infrastructure in any country around the world. And if you look today, you know, over 117 countries around the world are now using Illumina to do genomic surveillance for COVID. So we're, you know, making a lot of progress, and some countries are well ahead of others. I think the UK started in the spring of 2021 and laid out the first genomic surveillance infrastructure in the world, and other countries are catching up, but they're catching up quickly. And if you look even in Africa, for example, you now have sequences from 51 out of the 54 countries in Africa. And so we're laying a global infrastructure for pathogen detection that's going to be essential in terms of helping us get out of this pandemic. But equally importantly, it's laying an infrastructure for global pathogen surveillance that'll help us identify future outbreaks more quickly. And that could be the next coronavirus, it could be emerging antimicrobial resistance, or it could be a bioterrorist attack. And although we won't be able to prevent future outbreaks, we should commit to making this the last pandemic, and genomic sequencing is the essential part of that.

Yeah, I think one of the things that probably investors, you know, would like from the announcements we made is that, as you point out, the opportunity set for Illumina continues to grow because genomics is emerging as a fundamental tool for so many areas of healthcare. We're used today in cancer to match cancer patients to the right treatments, in genetic disease diagnosis, we're used in non-invasive prenatal testing, we're used to fight infectious disease like this pandemic. But the number of areas continue to expand where genomics can add value. We're doing research in cardiovascular disease and how genomics can play an important role there. We're also expanding into the proteomics market through our announcements with SomaLogic today. So the number of markets that we're addressing continues to expand. And as you point out, one of the more exciting ones is the market we're addressing with GRAIL. So last June, GRAIL launched Galleri, which is the world's first multi-cancer early detection blood test. So it's a blood test, and it's on the market now, that you can do, that'll tell you, that can help detect one of 50 different types of cancer. Now, 45 of those cancers, like pancreatic cancer for example, some really deadly cancers, have no other screen. And GRAIL has a less than 1% false positive rate. And so we announced today that, you know, GRAIL is off to a really strong start. That they are signing up employers, they signed up 11 employers including U-Haul. I know we at Illumina have rolled the test out internally to our employees. They signed up a number of healthcare providers, so last year there were 1,500 prescribing providers of the GRAIL test, you know, to people to use it as a screen. In addition, they signed up some healthcare systems. So they announced the Knight Cancer Center today, that's part of OHSU up in Oregon, and the Knight Cancer Center joins other partners like the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic that are embracing the GRAIL test. And so real strong traction of that test in the market. Now we know catching cancer early can make a big difference in survival rates, and so there's a lot of excitement about how a test like GRAIL could help save lives going forward. And the fact that it's got good early traction, exceeding expectations that investors had, I think was very well received.

Thank you, Meg.