psnl-10k_20211231.htm

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021

FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO

Commission File Number 001-38943

Personalis, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)

1330 O’Brien Drive Menlo Park, California 94025

(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code:(650) 752-1300

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Title of each class Trading Symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered

Common Stock, par value $0.0001 PSNL The Nasdaq Global Market

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☐No☒

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐No☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). Yes☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the Registrant, as of June 30, 2021, the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was approximately $900,300,019 based on the closing price of the shares of common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market. Excludes an aggregate of 8,624,987 shares of the registrant’s common stock held as of such date by officers, directors and stockholders that the registrant has concluded are or were affiliates of the registrant. Exclusion of such shares should not be construed to indicate that the holder of any such shares possesses the power, direct or indirect, to direct or cause the direction of the management or policies of the registrant or that such person is controlled by or under common control with the registrant.

The number of shares of Registrant’s Common Stock outstanding as of February 18, 2022 was 44,950,109.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Part III incorporates information by reference from the Registrant’s definitive proxy statement to be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to Regulation 14A, not later than 120 days after the end of the fiscal year covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K, in connection with the Registrant’s 2022 annual meeting of stockholders (the “2022 Proxy Statement”).

PERSONALIS, INC.

For the Year Ended December 31, 2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements 3

PART I

Item 1. Business 4

Item 1A. Risk Factors 22

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 60

Item 2. Properties 60

Item 3. Legal Proceedings 60

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 60

PART II

Item 6. [Reserved] 61

Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 71

Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 72

Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 99

Item 9B. Other Information 99

Item 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections 100

PART III

Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 101

Item 11. Executive Compensation 101

Item 14. Principal Accounting Fees and Services 101

PART IV

Item 15. Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules 102

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including statements regarding our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans, and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “contemplate,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “hope,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “objective,” “ongoing,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “target,” “will,” or “would” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning the following:

• the evolution of cancer therapies and market adoption of our services;

• our ability to enter into and compete in new markets;

• our ability to scale our infrastructure;

• potential effects of extensive government regulation;

• our ability to hire and retain key personnel;

• our ability to obtain financing in future offerings;

• the volatility of the trading price of our common stock;

• our ability to maintain proper and effective internal controls.

Actual events or results may differ from those expressed in forward-looking statements. As such, you should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, operating results, prospects, strategy, and financial needs. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors described in the section titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Moreover, we operate in a highly competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based on information available to us as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. While we believe that such information provides a reasonable basis for these statements, such information may be limited or incomplete. Our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain, and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on these statements.

The forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or to reflect new information, actual results, revised expectations, or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements.

Unless the context otherwise requires, references in this Annual Report on Form 10-K to the “company,” “Personalis,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to Personalis, Inc.

PART I

Item 1. Business.

Overview

Personalis’ strategy is to develop some of the world’s most advanced genetic tests for cancer. Today our tests are routinely used by many of the largest oncology-focused pharmaceutical companies for analysis of patient samples from their clinical trials. More recently, we have also begun to work with a growing number of leading cancer centers for clinical diagnostic use of our tests. We believe that adoption and publication by these key opinion leaders will develop an advanced standard of care for cancer patients and eventual broad use in a community hospital setting. We believe that our tests can meaningfully improve outcomes for cancer patients, and we estimate that the market opportunity for our tests for therapy selection and monitoring is approximately $30 billion in the U.S.

In December 2021, we launched NeXT Personal, a next-generation, tumor-informed liquid biopsy assay designed to detect and quantify minimal residual disease (“MRD”) and recurrence in patients previously diagnosed with cancer. NeXT Personal is designed to deliver industry-leading MRD sensitivity down to the 1 part-per-million range, an approximately 10- to 100-fold improvement over other available technologies. NeXT Personal leverages whole genome sequencing of a patient’s tumor to identify up to 1,800 specially-selected somatic variants that are subsequently used to create a personalized liquid biopsy panel for each patient. We believe this enables earlier detection across a broader variety of cancers and stages, including typically challenging early stage, low mutational burden, and low-shedding cancers. NeXT Personal is also designed to simultaneously detect and quantify clinically relevant mutations in circulating tumor-derived DNA (“ctDNA”) that may be used in the future to help guide therapy, when cancer is detected. These include known targetable cancer mutations, drug resistance mutations, and new variants which can emerge and change over time, especially under therapeutic pressure. We consider this approach not just “tumor-informed”, but “comprehensively tumor-informed”. Our ultimate goal is not just to detect cancer, but to provide key information over the entire course of the patient’s disease. We believe this can be better for patients, more informative for pharmaceutical customers, and a larger business opportunity for us.

Our strategy is to work with world-class medical institutions. To that end, in the fourth quarter of 2021, we announced a collaboration with the Mayo Clinic and in the first quarter of 2022, we announced one with the Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. In these collaborations, we provide clinical diagnostic testing and research sequencing and analysis services using our tissue-based NeXT Dx test. We have begun to test clinical patient samples and are excited about the opportunity to work with these renowned cancer centers. If we achieve a favorable reimbursement decision for our NeXT Dx test from the Molecular Diagnostic Services Program developed by Palmetto GBA (“MolDx”), we may also generate revenue in the future from some of these collaborations. Given the advanced nature of our NeXT Dx test, we believe it is a good fit for high-end cancer centers, which have a dual mandate for both clinical care and research. If these key opinion leaders have a positive experience using our tests, we are optimistic that this will also support broader use of our platform by other clinicians in the future.

We have the capacity to sequence and analyze approximately 200 trillion bases of DNA per week in our facility. We believe that capacity is already larger than most cancer genomics companies, and we continue to build automation and other infrastructure to scale further as demand increases and in support of our NeXT Liquid Biopsy, NeXT Dx Test and NeXT Personal offerings. To date, we have sequenced more than 235,000 human samples, of which more than 145,000 were whole human genomes.

In parallel with the development of our platform technology, we have also pursued business within the population sequencing market, and we have provided whole genome sequencing services under contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the “VA”) Million Veteran Program (the “VA MVP”), which has enabled us to innovate, scale our operational infrastructure, and achieve greater efficiencies in our lab. The VA MVP is the largest population sequencing effort in the United States and we have delivered over 140,000 whole human genome sequence datasets to the VA MVP to date. The cumulative value of task orders received from the VA MVP since inception is approximately $186 million, $178.1 million of which we had recognized as revenue as of December 31, 2021. In September 2021, we received a task order from the VA MVP with a value of up to approximately $9.7 million, which was significantly less than in prior years. At that time, we expected the reduced order amount was to be followed by a formal request for proposal (“RFP”) process and a potential new contract to be awarded sometime late in the third quarter of 2022. However, recent discussions with our contacts at the VA MVP indicate that there will be no RFP process in 2022. Accordingly, we do not expect to receive any new orders from the VA MVP this year nor to recognize any revenue from the VA MVP beyond the current order and contract. Unless we receive an additional task order and/or enter into a new services agreement with the VA MVP with a value comparable to that of our current contract and historical contracted orders, our revenue from the VA MVP is expected to decline significantly in 2022 and future periods. Given the strong growth we have already experienced in our oncology business in 2021, and the large market opportunity we see in this space, we plan to focus primarily on cancer as we go forward.

In August 2021, we announced that we will relocate our corporate headquarters from Menlo Park to a new facility in Fremont, California and we plan to beginning moving into it in the third quarter of this year. We signed a 13.5-year lease for the 100,000 square foot facility, which is approximately double the amount of space in our current Menlo Park location. The new facility is intended to allow for expansion of our laboratory for clinical testing to support biopharma customers and clinical diagnostic testing. In addition, the new space is intended to support the expansion of research and development efforts to bring leading edge products and services to the marketplace. The new facility will also provide more office space for our selling, general and administrative workforce.

Our current headquarters – housing our Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (“CLIA”)-certified, College of American Pathologists (“CAP”)-accredited laboratory – is located in Menlo Park, CA. We were incorporated under the laws of the state of Delaware in February 2011 under the name Personalis, Inc. Our customers include pharmaceutical companies, biopharmaceutical companies, universities, non-profits, and government entities.

Personalis: The Genomics Engine for Next-Generation Cancer Therapies

Biopharmaceutical customers use our comprehensive platform across a diverse set of therapeutic approaches to cancer. We generate and analyze data from patients who participated in clinical trials, which we believe will enable these customers to develop more effective therapies. The information we generate is important to our customers developing two major classes of next-generation therapeutics: immunotherapies and targeted therapies.

Genes that are involved in the mechanism of action of any of these drugs may develop mutations reducing or eliminating the effectiveness of those drugs. These are called therapy resistance mutations. In many cases they only become evident after extended treatment of the patient with the drug. When these are detected, it can be an important signal that the patient may benefit from a change to another drug. Thus, it is important not only to test for mutations when a patient is first diagnosed, but periodically to check for the emergence of these potential resistance mutations. Unlike other tumor-informed liquid biopsy tests for MRD, our NeXT Personal liquid biopsy test was designed to look for the emergence of resistant mutations and to guide decisions about effective therapies for patients.

We anticipate that as the clinical utility of our platform is validated, we will have opportunities in connection with diagnostics and the commercialization of cancer therapeutics, which are significantly larger than our initial clinical-trial focused markets. Over time, we expect our biopharmaceutical customers and research collaborators to build evidence of the clinical utility of our platform as a diagnostic for advanced cancer therapies. Separately, we are also acquiring samples and building a database which we expect will hold value for our biopharmaceutical customers and may ultimately allow us to discover new mechanisms of cancer treatment.

Market Opportunities

We estimate the market opportunity for our current and planned products to be approximately $38 billion as follows:

Of these 2.2 million patients, about 200,000 enroll in pharmaceutical clinical trials according to data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, ClincalTrials.gov, January 2019, with the assumption that the remaining cancer patients undergo normal clinical care. As part of that standard care, these patients go through therapy selection and eventual monitoring. For therapy selection, we estimate that each of the approximately 2.0 million cancer patients undergoing normal clinical care will have a tissue biopsy sequenced and tested at a cost of approximately $3,000, which is the approved CMS reimbursement rate, which results in an estimated potential market opportunity of $6 billion per year.

Cancer mutations identified in this initial tissue-biopsy based test can then be used for subsequent monitoring using cell free DNA. For monitoring, we estimate that each patient has a liquid biopsy sequenced and tested four times per year at an estimated cost of $2,840 per test, based on publicly-available data on comparable tests. Our NeXT Dx Test addresses this market for tissue biopsy testing while clinical versions of our products in development may address this liquid-biopsy based monitoring opportunity. Our estimates lead us to project approximately a $22.72 billion potential market opportunity per year for monitoring.

Our Products and Services

Broadly speaking, we provide proprietary genomic information to customers. Our genomic sequencing and analytics products are focused on the following customer applications: precision oncology, clinical and companion diagnostics, pharma research, and population genomics.

NeXT Platform

NeXT is the first platform to enable the comprehensive analysis of both a tumor and its microenvironment from a single sample. Our NeXT Platform is a high-accuracy, clinical-grade, next-generation sequencing and analysis platform. We have created an ecosystem of products and capabilities built on the NeXT Platform that synergize to drive value for our customers: ImmunoID Next (comprehensive tumor profiling from tissue), NeXT Liquid Biopsy (comprehensive tumor profiling from plasma), NeXT Personal (liquid biopsy offering for personalized tumor tracking for patients), NeXT Dx Test (comprehensive genomic cancer profiling test enabling advanced composite biomarkers for cancer treatment), NeXT SHERPA and NeXT NEOPS (neoantigen prediction capabilities). We are currently investing in the development of additional future product offerings, including NeXT CDx (diagnostic test) and NeXT Database (comprehensive tumor immune-genomics database).

Our NeXT Platform is designed to provide comprehensive analysis of both a tumor and its immune microenvironment, from a single limited tissue or plasma sample. Our platform covers the DNA sequence of all of the approximately 20,000 human genes. We also report on the entire transcriptome of a tumor, which encompasses ribonucleic acid (“RNA”) expression across the approximately 20,000 human genes, allowing us to more accurately determine which of the many genomic mutations might actually be driving tumor progression. Furthermore, our platform analyzes elements of the immune cells that have infiltrated a tumor both from the adaptive immune system and the innate immune system.

Given the practical challenges in obtaining high-quality tumor samples via biopsy, we have developed our platform to work with a limited tumor tissue sample. Biopharmaceutical companies face significant challenges in attempting to divide samples to ship to multiple service providers to perform different tests. If a biopharmaceutical company is successful in acquiring results from multiple service providers, it is challenging to compare the results across multiple data platforms from multiple service providers. Our sequencing approach, validated with orthogonal technologies, allows us to run multiple analyses on a single sample. Our platform is composed of multiple proprietary technologies, many of which we have developed from the ground up. The breadth of the assays that we have integrated into our platform, our proprietary sample preparation process, and the comprehensiveness of our platform allow us to maximize the utility of often limited tumor tissue samples that our customers have from their clinical trials.

An overview of key features and differentiators of our NeXT Platform follows.

Comprehensive tumor and immune genomics from a single limited sample:

• Analysis of both tumor DNA and RNA expression

• Analysis of both tumor and normal tissue

• Analysis of non-human species such as oncoviruses

Makes single, comprehensive tumor molecular profiling practical for cancer patients:

• Tumor and immune molecular profiling from one limited tumor sample

• Overcomes the need for fragmented tumor testing

• One platform for both research and clinical use

Platform anticipates future cancer biomarkers that will come with evolving science:

Generates comprehensive, harmonized data across patients to enable large-scale database creation and insight:

Our NeXT Platform technology can analyze cell-free DNA (“cfDNA”) obtained from blood plasma, also known as a liquid biopsy. As with a tissue biopsy, we analyze all of the approximately 20,000 human genes in each plasma sample, in contrast to currently marketed liquid biopsy panels. This cfDNA may be obtained by a blood draw concurrently with a tissue sample. Together, the two samples can be used to provide a more comprehensive initial characterization of the tumor. Additionally, we expect to monitor changes in tumor genetics that arise in response to therapy through serial measurements using cfDNA samples collected across multiple time points. In 2020, we launched our first liquid biopsy assay designed to analyze all human genes so as to detect potential neoantigens and tumor escape mechanisms that arise under therapeutic pressure. Although we believe our cfDNA test will offer new insights, we believe it will be most useful for our biopharmaceutical customers alongside our primary tumor biopsy product, given that a tumor biopsy is required to analyze gene expression and elucidate tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes which are critical to understanding cancer’s interaction with the immune system.

An overview of key liquid biopsy capabilities follows.

Liquid biopsy approaches look at cfDNA in plasma samples derived from the blood. cfDNA is DNA that is released into circulation by cells, including tumor cells, as a result of cell death. This cfDNA can be obtained by a blood draw and can be used to monitor changes in tumor genetics.

We believe tumor biopsy and liquid biopsy approaches to tumor molecular profiling will provide complementary information for each patient. Tumor biopsies provide tumor immune microenvironment and tumor gene expression information that current liquid biopsy panels do not provide. Liquid biopsies can be useful for providing additional DNA mutation information, especially for monitoring therapy response across different time points when tumor biopsies are not feasible. Unlike typical liquid biopsy panel approaches focused on roughly only 50 to 500 driver genes, our NeXT Liquid Biopsy is designed to sequence all of the approximately 20,000 genes in the human genome. Our broader liquid biopsy approach will help biopharmaceutical customers identify biological changes across multiple time points for each patient in their trials that they would otherwise miss with the current, narrowly focused liquid biopsy panels. We also believe broader coverage will enable better neoantigen prediction, broader biomarker coverage, and higher potential to identify new drug targets.

We anticipate that our exome-scale NeXT Liquid Biopsy approach will have many applications, including monitoring of tumor response to therapy over many time points, detecting new genetic variants from evolution of the tumor under therapeutic pressure, detecting acquired mechanisms of resistance, and identifying neoantigens.

NeXT Personal is an advanced, tumor-informed liquid biopsy assay developed to deliver industry-leading MRD sensitivity in the range of 1-3 parts per million, representing a 10- to 100-fold improvement over other available methods. NeXT Personal is sample sparing, requiring only a single tube of blood, along with a tumor tissue sample. The use of ctDNA as a predictive biomarker for MRD following treatment for solid tumors is rapidly being integrated into clinical trial design, translational research studies, and is on the verge of use in routine clinical care. While detection methods for ctDNA have rapidly advanced, the limited sensitivity of these detection methods reduces its utility for diagnosing MRD across a variety of clinical applications. Standard-of-care (“SOC”) radiological-based technologies, including CT, PET and MRI scans, also remain limited in their ability to detect residual disease during or after surgical or systemic therapy due to the minimum tumor volume required. Therefore reliable, sensitive detection and quantification of MRD remains a key challenge, particularly in early-stage cancers, where timely detection of small micrometastatic lesions may enable treatment that prevents progression to advanced metastatic, incurable disease. We believe that NeXT Personal addresses these challenges. In the biopharma setting, MRD is rapidly emerging as a key biomarker in therapy development, whereby more sensitive detection and quantification of MRD may provide substantial benefits versus less sensitive methods through the reduction of false negative detection of cancer.

Our NeXT Dx Test is a comprehensive genomic cancer profiling test enabling advanced composite biomarkers for cancer treatment and provides a path from translational research to CDx on our NeXT Platform. The NeXT Dx Test helps oncologists identify potential therapies and clinical trial options for cancer patients. NeXT Dx Test is one of the first cancer diagnostic platforms to profile approximately 20,000 genes in both the tumor exome and transcriptome, providing a comprehensive genomic testing solution that goes beyond many existing cancer diagnostic panels that focus on only a few hundred genes. The NeXT Dx Test includes advanced analytics to provide a diagnostic report on genetic alterations in medically-important cancer genes, as well as emerging immunotherapy

composite biomarkers of medical importance. Additionally, immunotherapy-related biomarkerssuch as microsatellite instability (“MSI”) status and tumor mutational burden (“TMB”) are included in the clinical report.

The NeXT Dx Test is a laboratory-developed test performed at our CAP-accredited and CLIA’88-certified laboratory that is optimized for formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor samples. The test utilizes ImmunoID NeXT, our clinical-grade, next-generation sequencing and analysis platform, to report base substitutions, insertions/deletions, gene fusions, and copy number alterations in cancer driver genes of clinical significance. Additionally, MSI status is reported based on five canonical loci (BAT25, BAT26, NR-21, NR-24, and NR-27), and TMB status is reported by leveraging the exome-wide analysis of non-synonymous somatic mutations. Based on the tumor’s molecular profile, the report delivers relevant therapy recommendations and appropriate clinical trial matches. Each case is reviewed by a team of board-certified molecular geneticists and genetic counselors. Test results are electronically delivered to the ordering clinician.

In December 2020, we announced the launch of our Systematic HLA Epitope Ranking Pan Algorithm (“SHERPA”), our proprietary, machine learning-based tool for the comprehensive identification and characterization of cancer neoantigens. Integrated into our NeXT Platform, SHERPA enables the development of new neoantigen-based diagnostic biomarkers and novel personalized therapies. Trained on a proprietary immunopeptidomics dataset derived from engineered cell lines, SHERPA improves neoantigen presentation prediction compared to other in silico methods. With this advancement, SHERPA can enable more predictive biomarkers for cancer therapy as well as facilitate the development of neoantigen-targeting, personalized cancer therapies.

While most conventional in silico methods generally only assess the potential MHC-binding affinity and stability of identified peptides, SHERPA goes a step further by incorporating features relating to the antigen processing machinery and RNA abundance to generate a presentation rank for each detected peptide. We believe this will aid in determining the relative likelihood of a given neoantigen being presented and undergoing immunosurveillance. A large drug development customer of ours has leveraged SHERPA to characterize immune response to precision genetic therapeutics in patients with rare diseases, demonstrating the applicability of this machine learning tool in disease areas beyond cancer.

Our proprietary Neoantigen Presentation Score (“NEOPS”), also launched in December 2020, is one example of a SHERPA-derived composite biomarker that has shown promise in predicting immunotherapy response in cancer patients. NEOPS combines analysis from our state-of-the-art tumor neoantigen prediction tool, SHERPA, with mechanisms of immune evasion to better predict response to cancer therapy. NEOPS combines the tumor genomic and immune-related analytics of our NeXT Platform to create a composite biomarker that can be more effective in predicting immunotherapy response than other, simpler biomarkers.

NeXT makes comprehensive tumor molecular profiling practical for cancer patients at scale

To deliver a comprehensive immune-genomic assessment of a tumor, we invested substantial resources to engineer NeXT to provide data and analysis that would otherwise be unavailable or require many individual technologies, which collectively present significant costs and logistical impracticalities. With NeXT, we built a proprietary platform that is comprehensive, cost-effective, and scalable and enables a short turnaround time, making it practical to profile cancer patients at scale. This has required innovation on a number of fronts.

Revenue in connection with our NeXT Platform products has grown rapidly in recent years, accounting for only a minimal proportion of revenue prior to 2020 but now accounting for over two-thirds of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021, excluding revenue from the VA MVP (discussed below).

ACE Platform

The ACE Platform is the predecessor to our NeXT Platform. To address the limitations of typical NGS-based assay, we developed our patented Accuracy and Content Enhanced (“ACE”) technology for next-generation sequencing. ACE improves nucleic acid preparation processes and combines it with patented assay and sequencing methods to achieve superior, high-fidelity, clinical-grade sequencing quality that ensures high sensitivity for mutations that can inform clinical and therapeutic applications such as neoantigen prediction, biomarker identification, and novel drug target selection. Our ACE Platform powers multiple products and services to our customers including: exome sequencing, transcriptome sequencing, and targeted cancer panels.

Our ACE technology provides coverage of difficult-to-sequence gene regions across all of the approximately 20,000 human genes, filling in key gaps left by other NGS approaches. ACE technology provides superior and uniform coverage of difficult genomic regions, such as high GC content areas, and fills gaps and inconsistencies in sequencing to achieve an optimal output. ACE is able to deliver more comprehensive coverage not by simply generating more data, but by generating higher quality data. We and others have shown in two publications that our ACE technology achieves superior gene sequencing coverage and finishing.

The substantial majority of our revenue since inception, excluding revenue from the VA MVP (discussed below) and our growing revenue from our NeXT Platform described above, were derived from ACE Platform products.

Whole Genome Sequencing

Since 2012, we have been contracted to provide DNA sequencing and data analysis services to the VA MVP. The VA MVP began collecting samples in 2011 and is a landmark research effort aimed at better understanding how genetic variations affect health. The VA MVP is the largest population sequencing effort in the U.S. In September 2017, we entered into a one-year contract with three one-year renewal option periods with the VA for the VA MVP, and received orders under this contract in September 2017, 2018, 2019,

2020 and 2021. To date, we have been contracted to deliver over 140,000 genome sequence data sets to the VA MVP. This relationship with the VA MVP has enabled us to scale our operational infrastructure and achieve greater efficiencies in our lab. It has also supported our development of industry-leading, large-scale cancer genomic testing. The substantial experience that we have developed in whole genome sequencing also optimally positions us for what we anticipate to be the longer-term strategic direction of the cancer genomics industry, which may include whole genome sequencing of tumors.

The VA MVP program has accounted for a substantial amount of our revenue in recent years, 53% in 2021, 71% in 2020, and 67% in 2019. In September 2021, we received a task order from the VA MVP with a value of up to approximately $9.7 million, which was significantly less than in prior years. At that time, we expected the reduced order amount was to be followed by a formal RFP process and a potential new contract to be awarded sometime late in the third quarter of 2022. However, recent discussions with our contacts at the VA MVP indicate that there will be no RFP process in 2022. Accordingly, we do not expect to receive any new orders from the VA MVP this year nor to recognize any revenue from the VA MVP beyond the current order and contract. Unless we receive an additional task order and/or enter into a new services agreement with the VA MVP with a value comparable to that of our current contract and historical contracted orders, our revenue from the VA MVP is expected to decline significantly in 2022 and future periods.

Personalis is Valuable to Biopharmaceutical Companies

We believe that our platform is valuable to our customers because:

Our Strategy

Our mission is to transform the development of next-generation cancer therapies by providing more comprehensive molecular data about each patient’s cancer and immune response. To achieve this mission, our strategy is to:

Our Proprietary Software and Robust Operational Infrastructure

We have invested significant resources to develop an operational infrastructure that allows us to easily customize our services for each of our customers and scale rapidly to meet their potential research and commercial demands. Our NeXT Platform is complemented by our enterprise-grade software and bespoke information management systems that we tailor to meet our customers’ unique needs and integrate with their workflows. Moreover, our infrastructure provides customers with visibility and control over processes, ensures consistency across all components used for the duration of each clinical trial, is traceable for compliance purposes, and allows us to scale while maintaining rapid turnaround times.

We designed our proprietary informatics system, the Symphony Enterprise Informatics System (“Symphony”), as a flexible and scalable enterprise-grade system used to manage the unique complexities and challenges of our genomics laboratory. Symphony integrates laboratory information management systems (“LIMS”) and bioinformatics systems to connect laboratory operations with downstream data analysis. Symphony orchestrates all operational activities from our laboratory starting with sample receipt to the reporting of results of the genomic profiling and data delivery. We also use machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches to generate substantial performance advantages for our algorithms, such as neoantigen binding prediction.

We have the capacity to sequence and analyze approximately 200 trillion bases of DNA per week in our facility. We believe this capacity is already larger than the sequencing capacities of most cancer genomics companies, and we continue to build automation and other infrastructure to scale further as demand increases and in support of our NeXT Liquid Biopsy. To date, we have sequenced more than 220,000 human samples, of which more than 145,000 were whole human genomes.

We rely on a limited number of suppliers for sequencers and other equipment and raw materials that we use in our laboratory operations. For example, we rely on Illumina, Inc. (“Illumina”) as the sole supplier of sequencers and various associated reagents, and as the sole provider of maintenance and repair services for these sequencers. We have in place certain agreements and purchase arrangements with Illumina to satisfy the needs of our laboratory operations.

We believe our platform is well positioned to scale rapidly and substantially as the field of personalized cancer therapies matures. We believe that our platform could be essential to the composition and manufacture of any personalized cancer therapy developed using our platform. Furthermore, we expect that patients would be tested at multiple time points during the course of treatment: first to design a therapy according to an initial genomic profile generated from a tissue and/or liquid biopsy, and then as follow-up testing via liquid biopsy to detect any changes that would require therapy modifications after initial therapeutic interventions. If a therapy that uses our NeXT Platform achieves regulatory approval, we believe that our commercial opportunity may increase substantially.

We leverage our proprietary software, laboratory automation and protocols, and other operational and technological know-how to power our NeXT Platform.

Our Industry

Over the past decade, the biopharmaceutical community has achieved major advances in the treatment of cancer, including approval of therapies capable of targeting specific genetic drivers of cancer and novel immunotherapies that empower the immune system to attack cancer cells. Despite these advances, the substantial majority of currently available cancer therapies have significant limitations, including efficacy only in certain subsets of patients, limited long-term survival rates, and significant toxicities. Moreover, the current research and development paradigm in oncology is beset by significant inefficiencies and substantial costs, with the average cost per patient in clinical trials reaching approximately $60,000 (Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, Biopharmaceutical Industry-Sponsored Clinical Trials: Impact on State Economies, March 2015). While tumor molecular profiling technologies have enhanced research and development efforts, most current tumor biopsy and liquid biopsy tests analyze a relatively narrow set of roughly only 50 to 500 tumor genes, missing key genes and immune mechanisms underlying cancer therapy. With the lack of a comprehensive profiling solution, biopharmaceutical companies often attempt to use a disparate array of tests to compensate, resulting in a fragmented view of the tumor biology, insufficient tumor sample, logistical complexities, and increased costs. The resulting data heterogeneity makes it difficult to mine for new biological insights across cohorts of patients in clinical trials. These piecemeal approaches to tumor molecular profiling often result in solutions that are difficult to use at scale, especially in a clinical or therapeutic setting where simplicity, cost, turnaround time, and validation are important.

Our platforms help biopharmaceutical companies seeking to develop more efficacious therapies by comprehensively interrogating a patient’s tumor and immune cells in detail, both to discover tumor vulnerabilities and elucidate potential therapeutic alternatives. To meet the demands of our customers, we built our NeXT Platform to be cost-effective and scalable with rapid turnaround times for tissue sample data and analytics. The NeXT Platform represents the next step of our ACE Platform, allowing customers to move up the value chain by gaining more information from a single sample. We believe that our platforms have the potential to enable a research, development, and treatment paradigm that is dynamic and adaptive to the evolving genomic and immune system landscape of patients’ tumors over time. We believe our technology will drive this evolving paradigm, which will ultimately enable our customers to develop safer and more efficacious therapeutics (see Figure 1). As the clinical utility of our platforms increases, we expect to grow our diagnostic capabilities, including the ability to guide therapy based on a patient’s changing tumor and immune system, and supporting the commercialization of therapeutics developed by our biopharmaceutical customers.

Figure 1. Personalis NeXT Platform addresses the increasingly complex understanding of cancer.

Despite the large sums invested in research and despite new treatments, cancer remains a major challenge for modern medicine and a source of high unmet medical need. According to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Facts & Figures 2020, as of January 1, 2019, there were more than 16.9 million people in the United States who were suffering from cancer or who had previously suffered from cancer. Cancer prevalence is increasing globally as well. The World Health Organization (the “WHO”) predicted in its September 2018 estimates on the global prevalence of cancer that there would be 18.1 million new cancer cases and nearly 10 million cancer deaths globally in 2018. According to the WHO, the total economic impact of healthcare expenditure and loss of productivity resulting from cancer worldwide was approximately $1.2 trillion in 2010.

Improving Cancer Treatment is Increasingly About Leveraging Molecular Data

Despite the rapid evolution of cancer therapies, the current research and development paradigm in oncology is beset by significant inefficiencies and costs. Cancer therapeutics have one of the lowest clinical trial success rates of all major diseases. According to a study of 7,455 drug development programs during 2006 to 2015, the overall likelihood of FDA approval from Phase I clinical trial for oncology developmental candidates was 5.1% (BIO Industry Analysis, Clinical Development Success Rates 2006-2015, June 2016). The majority of currently available cancer therapeutics have serious limitations, including efficacy only in certain subsets of patients, limited long-term survival rates, and significant toxicities. The mechanisms underlying the success or failure of clinical trials are often poorly understood. To develop more efficacious cancer treatments, the biopharmaceutical community is faced with multiple key questions for a given therapeutic approach:

• Why do some patients respond to treatment and others do not?

• What are the underlying mechanisms of treatment resistance?

• What therapeutic combinations can improve outcomes?

• Are there ways to increase patient response through personalized therapeutics?

• Are there ways to reduce toxicity?

There is a growing recognition that there is a tremendous amount of untapped molecular data that can be derived from analyzing tumors from large numbers of cancer patients, whether in cancer clinical trials or post-commercialization, that can help answer some of these seminal questions and accelerate therapeutic development. The threefold increase in probability of FDA approval from Phase I clinical trial for therapies with biomarkers across all diseases and therapeutic types provides an indication of the benefits of leveraging molecular data.

Current Tumor Molecular Profiling Solutions Have Not Kept Pace with New Cancer Therapies

Biopharmaceutical companies are increasingly turning to tumor molecular profiling across large cohorts of patients to generate the data needed to answer these questions. Unfortunately, current tumor molecular profiling methods have not kept pace with new therapy development and overlook crucial elements of our evolving understanding of cancer biology.

Current Tumor Molecular Profiling Falls Short for New Cancer Immunotherapies

Most current tumor molecular profiling panels were designed with a focus on targeted therapies, which, along with chemotherapy, have been used for cancer treatment for the past several decades. Targeted therapies treat cancers based on the specific genomic alterations driving their growth. Some targeted therapies have been developed to target specific molecules that are overexpressed or mutated in cancer cells. Because targeted therapies focus on cancer driver genes, the vast majority of tumor molecular profiling panels today, whether tissue or liquid biopsy based, typically sequence the DNA of between 50 to 500 genes, just a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 human genes.

Recently, however, transformational new approaches to cancer therapy that have been developed to harness the patient’s own immune system have changed the treatment paradigm and our understanding of cancer biology. These new immunotherapies have dramatically improved the treatment of certain tumors that have previously been difficult to treat. Among these new immunotherapies, checkpoint inhibitors of the CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1 genes are particularly effective. These therapies help “take the brakes off” the immune system and elicit a stronger immune response against the tumor. Patients can also be treated by adoptive cell therapy, in which the patient’s immune system is supplemented with cytotoxic cells that have been programmed to attack cells expressing specific antigens on their tumors. There are also new opportunities for personalized cancer therapies where a new therapeutic vaccine or cell therapy is developed for each patient. Despite early success, the majority of patients today still do not respond to immunotherapy, underscoring the importance of gathering data that can help biopharmaceutical companies understand factors governing response and resistance to therapy.

With these new immunotherapies and our rapidly evolving understanding of cancer biology, we believe the data needed to inform therapeutic development goes far beyond the typical 50 to 500 genes on current tumor molecular profiling panels. The paradigm has shifted from the need to understand mechanisms behind a single gene target to a dynamic, systems biology view involving complex interactions between thousands of genes in the tumor and the immune system in the pathogenesis of cancer and cancer drug response.

Information about all of the approximately 20,000 human genes allows deeper insight into the biology of cancer, identifying novel or patient-specific therapeutic targets, including neoantigens, and predictive biomarkers of response to therapy. Understanding the immune cell signatures in the tumor microenvironment and immune repertoire changes is critical for understanding drug response. In addition to DNA, comprehensive RNA expression information from the tumor is needed to analyze complex pathways that may be activated in the tumor. It is important to identify the increasingly complex mechanisms of tumor response and resistance to cancer therapy, such as neoantigen burden, tumor antigens, deficient antigen presentation, oncogenic pathways, immune evasion pathways, HLA mutations, T-cell clonality, immune infiltration, and others. Table 1 describes some of the biological gaps in current panels. Most of these elements go beyond the capabilities of today’s tumor molecular profiling panels.

Table 1. Most current tumor tissue and liquid biopsy profiling panels miss critical tumor and immune biology.

Fragmented Tumor Molecular Profiling Approaches Result in a Fragmented View of Biology and Limited Insights

With the lack of a comprehensive profiling solution, biopharmaceutical companies often turn to fragmented, piecemeal approaches to tumor molecular profiling as a stopgap measure. Those fragmented tumor molecular profiling approaches lead to major problems for therapeutic development. Limitations in available tumor samples, including liquid biopsies, force scientists to pick and choose which profiling platforms to include and which to omit, resulting in a fragmented picture of the biology. Fragmented profiling solutions also result in inconsistent profiling from patient to patient, and clinical trial to clinical trial. This results in data heterogeneity that makes it difficult to mine for new biological insights across cohorts of patients in trials. Finally, these piecemeal approaches to tumor molecular profiling result in solutions that often are difficult to use at scale in a clinical or therapeutic setting where logistical simplicity, cost, turnaround time, and validation are important.

Current Tumor Molecular Profiling Panels Can Become Antiquated with Evolving Science

With the explosion of immunotherapy and advances in our understanding of cancer, new insights into the underlying mechanisms of response and resistance have emerged. New putative genetic or immune biomarkers of response are regularly identified for different therapies in the context of different cancers. For instance, new biomarkers have been identified including tumor mutational burden, neoantigens, HLA type, B2M mutations, TGFß, JAK1/JAK2 mutations, expression signatures, cytotoxicity signatures, and T-cell clonality, among others. A recent Nature Medicine review identified 18 different categories of biomarkers correlating with immunotherapy response spanning tumor, immune cells, and the tumor microenvironment. Due to the limited coverage of most cancer panels, they may miss new biomarkers. We believe this problem will continue as research uncovers new insights into cancer.

Sequencing Quality and Coverage

Next generation sequencing (“NGS”) is the technological basis for many tumor molecular profiling platforms today. NGS rapidly sequences nucleic acids and then uses a computationally intensive process to reconstruct gene sequences from millions of short sequence segments. These segments are processed in parallel, an approach that greatly increases the speed that the sequence data can be generated. However, because the segments come from random locations in the genome, reassembling the original sequence is both a technically and computationally challenging process. A key objective is to ensure that every portion of the genes being sequenced is covered by at least one sequence segment. The average number of sequence segments representing a gene is referred to as the sequence depth. The deeper the coverage, the greater fraction of the gene is likely to be covered and the higher confidence that low-frequency variants can be found.

However, even when sequenced to high depth, typical NGS approaches can leave uneven, poor coverage in genes with mutations linked to cancer and cancer therapy. Many of these regions cannot be fully covered by simply sequencing to higher depth because their sequencing coverage deficits are due to inherent limitations of the NGS platform. Regions of high guanine-cytosine (“GC”) content or repetitive sequence regions are two such examples of regions that are difficult to cover with standard NGS assays. This can leave gaps in coverage of therapeutically important genes. This is particularly problematic in cancer, where there can be significant heterogeneity in the tumor samples that can make it even harder to see mutations in regions of poor coverage.

To address the limitations of typical NGS-based assay, we have developed our patented ACE technology for next-generation sequencing. ACE improves nucleic acid preparation processes and combines it with patented assay and sequencing methods to achieve superior, high-fidelity, clinical-grade sequencing quality that ensures high sensitivity for mutations that can inform clinical and therapeutic applications such as neoantigen prediction, biomarker identification, and novel drug target selection.

Our NeXT Platform uses our ACE technology to provide coverage of difficult-to-sequence gene regions across all of the approximately 20,000 human genes, filling in key gaps left by other NGS approaches. ACE technology provides superior and uniform coverage of difficult genomic regions, such as high GC content areas, and fills gaps and inconsistencies in sequencing to achieve an optimal output. ACE is able to deliver more comprehensive coverage not by simply generating more data, but by generating higher quality data. We and others have shown in two publications that our ACE technology achieves superior gene sequencing coverage and finishing.

Commercialization Strategy

We commercialize our products in the United States and Europe through our targeted sales organization. We have also recently begun efforts to commercialize our products in China. In 2021, we derived 92% of our revenue from our customers in the United States. Our sales representatives have extensive experience in enterprise/consultative selling in the genomics space. We augment this team with Ph.D.-level Field Application Specialists that provide deep understanding and expertise in the areas of oncology and genomics applications, ensuring top-quality pre- and post-sales customer support. Our commercial efforts are focused on demonstrating the value proposition of the NeXT Platform to biopharmaceutical customers with the goal of both increasing utilization of the product at existing accounts and to drive adoption in new targeted accounts. Our entire commercial organization promotes our ability to support biopharmaceutical customers across several application areas including biomarker discovery, new target discovery, therapy development, and treatment monitoring.

We anticipate that patients in clinical trials for cancer therapies will increasingly be tested pre-treatment and periodically afterwards to understand response to treatment in deep molecular detail, as their tumors evolve under therapeutic pressure. Although the majority of our revenue comes from single time point testing, we believe our revenue from multiple time-point testing will continue to grow. We also derive revenue from analysis of multiple customer samples from the same patient and time point to assess genetic differences between the primary tumor and metastases. Given the value of comprehensive genomic information from multiple time points or samples, we anticipate that our revenue, and the available market, will continue to grow.

As the clinical utility of advanced biomarkers is further established, we expect there to be a patient-centered diagnostic opportunity whereby some patients would be guided to personalized therapies. We believe that our platform’s ability to support biomarkers for a broad range of therapeutics positions us to be a leader in therapy selection for patients.

Our Customers

Our cancer genomic services are sold primarily to pharmaceutical companies, biopharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, universities, non-profits, and government entities, while services for population sequencing initiatives are sold primarily to the VA MVP, which is a government entity. Our customers include a majority of the top ten oncology-focused pharmaceutical companies, as measured by annual revenue.

In 2021, we had two customers account for 10% or more of our revenue: VA MVP at 53% and Natera, Inc. (“Natera”) at 10%. In 2020, VA MVP accounted for 71% of our revenue and no other customer accounted for 10% or more. In 2019, we had two customers account for 10% or more of our revenue: VA MVP at 67% and Pfizer Inc. at 13%.

Our Competition

Our principal competition comes from commercial and academic organizations using established and new laboratory tests to produce information that is similar to the information that we generate for our customers. These companies offer services that implement various technological approaches including next-generation sequencing and microarray analyses. Some of our present or potential competitors include Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation, Adela, Inc., ArcherDx, Inc., which was acquired by Invitae Corporation in October 2020, C2i Genomics, Inc., Caris Life Sciences, Inc., Covance Inc., which was acquired by Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings in February 2015, Foundation Medicine, Inc., which was acquired by Roche Holdings, Inc. in July 2018, Freenome, Inc., Geneseeq Technology Inc., Genosity, Inc., which was acquired by Invitae Corporation in April 2021, GRAIL, Inc. (“GRAIL”), which Illumina announced that it had acquired in August 2021, Guardant Health, Inc., InivataLimited, which was acquired by NeoGenomics, Inc. in June 2021, Invitae Corporation, Mount Sinai Genomics, Inc. which does business under the name Sema4, Natera, NanoString Technologies, Inc., NeoGenomics, Inc., Personal Genome Diagnostics, Inc., Predicine, Inc., Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., and Tempus, Inc.

Additionally, several companies develop next-generation sequencing platforms that can be used for genomic profiling for biopharmaceutical research and development applications. These include Illumina, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., and other organizations that specialize in the development of next-generation sequencing instrumentation that can be sold directly to biopharmaceutical companies, clinical laboratories, and research centers. Separate from their instrumentation product lines, both Illumina and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., for example, currently market next-generation sequencing clinical oncology kits that are sold to customers who have bought and operate their respective sequencing instruments.

We believe that we compete favorably because of the integrity and comprehensiveness of the data generated by our NeXT Platform. Maximizing insights into both the tumor- and immune-related components of the tumor microenvironment is essential in identifying and understanding the reasons why certain cancer patients respond more favorably to oncology therapies than others. It is via access to such a comprehensive dataset for each patient that our customers can begin to discover new, clinically relevant biomarkers for the immunotherapy era, and ultimately improve cancer patient outcomes with the development of more efficacious therapeutics.

Intellectual Property

Protection of our intellectual property is fundamental to the long-term success of our business. Specifically, our success is dependent on our ability to obtain and maintain proprietary protection for our technology and the know-how related to our business, defend and enforce our intellectual property rights, and operate our business without infringing, misappropriating, or otherwise violating valid and enforceable intellectual property rights of others. We seek to protect our investments made into the development of our technology by relying on a combination of patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, know-how, confidentiality agreements and procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements, and other contractual rights.

Our patent strategy is focused on seeking coverage for our core technology, our NeXT Platform, including applications and implementations for enhancing sequencing coverage of certain genomic regions, analyzing cell-free nucleic acids, and creating personalized cancer recurrence detection assays. In addition, we file for patent protection on our ongoing research and development, particularly other novel assay technologies which may be applicable in cancer cases and other diseases.

Notwithstanding these efforts, we cannot be sure that patents will be granted with respect to any patent applications we have filed or may license or file in the future, and we cannot be sure that any patents we have or may be licensed or granted to us in the future, will not be challenged, invalidated, or circumvented, or that such patents will be commercially useful in protecting our technology. Moreover, we rely, in part, on trade secrets to protect aspects of our business that are not amenable to, or that we do not consider appropriate for, patent protection. However, trade secrets can be difficult to protect. While we take steps to protect and preserve our trade secrets, including by entering into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants, scientific advisors, and contractors, conducting an annual training for our employees to increase awareness of cybersecurity threats, and maintaining physical security of our premises and physical and electronic security of our information technology systems, such measures can be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for any such breach. In addition, our trade secrets may otherwise become known or be independently discovered by competitors. For more information regarding the risks related to our intellectual property, please see “Risk Factors—Intellectual Property Risks.”

Our patent portfolio is comprised of patents and patent applications owned by the company. These patents and patent applications generally fall into five broad categories:

As of December 31, 2021, we own sixteen issued U.S. and foreign patents in China, the European Union, and the United Kingdom and several pending U.S. and foreign patent applications. Issued U.S. patents in our portfolio of company-owned patents are expected to expire between 2033 and 2038, excluding any additional term for patent term adjustments or patent term extensions. If patents are issued on our pending patent applications, the resulting patents are projected to expire on dates ranging from 2033 to 2041.

Government Regulations

Coverage and Reimbursement

Our ability, and the ability of our customers, to commercialize diagnostic tests based on our technology will depend in part on the extent to which coverage and reimbursement for these tests will be available from third-party payors. Coverage and reimbursement of new products and services is uncertain, and whether the companies that use our instruments to develop their own products or services will attain coverage and adequate reimbursement is unknown. In the U.S., there is no uniform policy for determining coverage and reimbursement. Coverage can differ from payor to payor, and the process for determining whether a payor will provide coverage may be separate from the process for setting the reimbursement rate. In addition, the U.S. government, state legislatures and foreign governments have shown significant interest in implementing cost containment programs to limit the growth of government-paid healthcare costs, including price controls and restrictions on reimbursement. Additionally, the coverage and reimbursement status of newly approved or cleared laboratory tests, including our NeXT Dx test, is uncertain. If we decide to seek reimbursement for our NeXT Dx test or other in vitro diagnostic tests we may develop, and if such tests are inadequately covered by insurance or ineligible for such reimbursement, this could limit our ability to market any such future tests. The commercial success of future products in both domestic and international markets may depend in part on the availability of coverage and adequate reimbursement from third-party payors, including government payors, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs, managed care organizations, and other third-party payors.

Federal and State Laboratory Licensing Requirements

Under the CLIA, a laboratory is any facility that performs laboratory testing on specimens derived from humans for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of disease, or the impairment of or assessment of health. CLIA requires that a laboratory hold a certificate applicable to the type of laboratory examinations it performs and that it complies with, among other things, standards covering operations, personnel, facilities administration, quality systems and proficiency testing, which are intended to ensure, among other things, that clinical laboratory testing services are accurate, reliable and timely.

To renew our CLIA certificate, we are subject to survey and inspection every two years to assess compliance with program standards. Because we are a CAP accredited laboratory, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) does not perform this survey and inspection and relies on our CAP survey and inspection. We also may be subject to additional unannounced inspections. Laboratories performing high complexity testing are required to meet more stringent requirements than laboratories performing less complex tests. In addition, a laboratory that is certified as “high complexity” under CLIA may develop, manufacture, validate, and use proprietary tests referred to as laboratory developed tests (“LDTs”). CLIA requires analytical validation including accuracy, precision, specificity, sensitivity, and establishment of a reference range for any LDT used in clinical testing. The regulatory and compliance standards applicable to the testing we perform may change over time, and any such changes could have a material effect on our business.

CLIA provides that a state may adopt laboratory regulations that are more stringent than those under federal law, and a number of states have implemented their own more stringent laboratory regulatory requirements. State laws may require that nonresident laboratories, or out-of-state laboratories, maintain an in-state laboratory license to perform tests on samples from patients who reside in that state. As a condition of state licensure, these state laws may require that laboratory personnel meet certain qualifications, specify certain quality control procedures or facility requirements, or prescribe record maintenance requirements. Because our laboratory is located in the state of California, we are required to and do maintain a California state laboratory license. We also maintain licenses to conduct testing in other states where nonresident laboratories are required to obtain state laboratory licenses. We maintain a current license with the New York State Department of Health for our laboratory. Other states may currently have or adopt similar licensure requirements in the future, which may require us to modify, delay, or stop its operations in those states.

Regulatory framework for medical devices in the United States

Pursuant to its authority under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (the “FDC Act”), the FDA has jurisdiction over medical devices, which are defined to include, among other things, in vitro diagnostic devices (“IVDs”). The FDA regulates, among

other things, the research, design, development, pre-clinical and clinical testing, manufacturing, safety, effectiveness, packaging, labeling, storage, recordkeeping, pre-market clearance or approval, adverse event reporting, marketing, promotion, sales, distribution, and import and export of medical devices. Unless an exemption applies, each new or significantly modified medical device we seek to commercially distribute in the United States will require either a premarket notification to the FDA requesting permission for commercial distribution under Section 510(k) of the FDC Act, also referred to as a 510(k) clearance, or approval from the FDA of a premarket approval application (“PMA”). Both the 510(k) clearance and PMA processes can be resource intensive, expensive, and lengthy, and require payment of significant user fees.

Although the FDA regulates medical devices, including IVDs, the FDA has historically exercised its enforcement discretion and not enforced applicable provisions of the FDC Act and FDA regulations with respect to LDTs, which are a subset of IVDs that are intended for clinical use and developed, validated, and offered within a single laboratory for use only in that laboratory. We currently market our diagnostic test based on the NeXT Platform as an LDT. As a result, we believe our diagnostic services are not currently subject to the FDA’s enforcement of its medical device regulations and the applicable FDC Act provisions. Despite the FDA’s historic enforcement discretion policy with respect to LDTs, if the FDA determines that our tests are subject to enforcement as medical devices, we could be subject to administrative and judicial sanctions, and additional regulatory controls and submissions for our tests, all of which could be burdensome. We and/or our collaborators may also voluntarily submit one or more of our tests for premarket notification, review, clearance or approval by the FDA as medical devices, which may be as companion diagnostic medical devices.

If the FDA determines that our tests and associated software do not fall within the definition of an LDT, or there are regulatory or legislative changes, or if we voluntarily submit one or more of our tests for premarket notification, review, clearance or approval by the FDA as medical devices, we may be required to obtain premarket clearance for our tests and associated software under Section 510(k) of the FDC Act or approval of a PMA. We would also be subject to ongoing regulatory requirements such as registration and listing requirements, medical device reporting requirements, and quality control requirements. If our tests are considered medical devices not subject to enforcement discretion, or if we voluntarily submit one or more of our tests for premarket notification, review, clearance or approval by the FDA as medical devices, the regulatory requirements to which our tests are subject would depend on the FDA’s classification of our tests. The FDA has issued regulations classifying medical devices into one of three regulatory control categories (Class I, Class II, or Class III) depending on the degree of regulation that the FDA finds necessary to provide reasonable assurance of their safety and effectiveness. The class into which a device is placed determines the requirements that a medical device manufacturer must meet both pre- and post-market.

Generally, Class I devices do not require premarket authorization, but are subject to a comprehensive set of regulatory authorities referred to as general controls. Class II devices, in addition to general controls, generally require special controls and premarket clearance through the submission of a section 510(k) premarket notification. Class III devices are subject to general controls and special controls, and also require premarket approval prior to commercial distribution, which is a more rigorous process than premarket clearance. Under the FDC Act, a device that is first marketed after May 28, 1976 is by default a Class III device requiring premarket approval unless it is within a type of generic device class that has been classified as Class I or Class II. Even if a device falls under an existing Class II, non-exempt, device classification, the product must also be shown to be “substantially equivalent” to a legally marketed predicate device through submission of a section 510(k) premarket notification. If after reviewing a firm’s 510(k) premarket notification, the FDA determines that a device is not substantially equivalent to a legally marketed predicate device, the new device is classified into Class III, requiring premarket approval. It is possible for a manufacturer to obtain a Class I or Class II designation without an appropriate predicate by submitting a de novo request for reclassification.

The process for submitting a 510(k) premarket notification and receiving FDA clearance usually takes from three to 12 months, but it can take significantly longer and clearance is never guaranteed. The process for submitting and obtaining FDA approval of a PMA is much more costly, lengthy, and uncertain. It generally takes from one to three years or even longer and approval is not guaranteed. PMA approval typically requires extensive clinical data and can be significantly longer, more expensive and more uncertain than the 510(k) clearance process. Despite the time, effort and expense expended, there can be no assurance that a particular device ultimately will be cleared or approved by the FDA through either the 510(k) clearance process or the PMA process on a timely basis, or at all.

If our tests are considered medical devices not subject to enforcement discretion, or if we voluntarily submit one or more of our tests for premarket notification, review, clearance or approval by the FDA as medical devices, one classification regulation that could be relevant to one or more of our tests is a classification for genetic health risk (“GHR”) assessment tests, codified at 21 C.F.R. § 866.5950. If our tests are considered medical devices that are not subject to enforcement discretion, or if we voluntarily submit one or more of our tests for premarket notification, review, clearance or approval by the FDA as medical devices, and one or more of our tests is considered to fall under the 21 C.F.R. § 866.5950 classification regulation for GHR tests, or under another Class II classification that is subject to a premarket notification requirement, we would be required to obtain marketing clearance for such tests. Further, if considered to fall under the 21 C.F.R. § 866.5950 classification for GHR tests, our tests would be required to adhere to specified special controls, such as labeling and testing specifications and information about the test to be posted on the manufacturer’s website.

The FDA requires medical device manufacturers to comply with, among other things, current good manufacturing practices for medical devices, set forth in the Quality System Regulation at 21 C.F.R. Part 820, which requires manufacturers to follow elaborate design, testing, control, documentation, and other quality assurance procedures during the manufacturing process; the medical device reporting regulation, which requires that manufacturers report to the FDA if their device or a similar device they market may have caused or contributed to a death or serious injury or malfunctioned in a way that would likely cause or contribute to a death or serious injury if it were to recur; labeling regulations, including the FDA’s general prohibition against promoting products for unapproved or “off-label” uses; the reports of corrections and removals regulation, which requires manufacturers to report to the FDA if a device correction or removal was initiated to reduce a risk to health posed by the device or to remedy a violation of the FDC Act caused by the device which may present a risk to health; and the establishment registration and device listing regulation.

In addition, any clearance or approval we obtain for our products may contain requirements for costly post-market testing and surveillance to monitor the safety or efficacy of the product. The FDA has broad post-market enforcement powers, and if unanticipated problems with our products arise, or if we or our suppliers fail to comply with regulatory requirements following FDA clearance or approval, we may become subject to enforcement actions such as:

• restrictions on manufacturing processes;

• restrictions on product marketing;

• warning letters;

• withdrawal or recall of products from the market;

• fines, restitution, or disgorgement of profits or revenue;

• suspension or withdrawal of regulatory clearances or approvals;

• limitation on, or refusal to permit, import or export of our products;

• product seizures;

• injunctions; or

• imposition of civil or criminal penalties.

Moreover, the FDA strictly regulates the promotional claims that may be made about medical devices. In particular, a medical device may not be promoted for uses that are not approved by the FDA as reflected in the device’s approved labeling. However, companies may share truthful and not misleading information that is otherwise consistent with the product’s FDA approved labeling. The FDA and other agencies actively enforce the laws and regulations prohibiting the promotion of off-label uses, and a company that is found to have improperly promoted off-label uses may be subject to significant civil, criminal, and administrative penalties.

In addition, many of the products we use to perform our tests, including sequencers and various associated reagents supplied to us by Illumina, are labeled as research use only (“RUO”) in the U.S. RUO products are exempt from FDA medical device requirements provided their manufacturers comply with specified labeling and restrictions on distribution. The products must bear the statement: “For Research Use Only. Not for Use in Diagnostic Procedures.” Manufacturers of RUO products cannot make any claims related to safety, effectiveness or diagnostic utility, and RUO products cannot be intended by the manufacturer for clinical diagnostic use. A product promoted for diagnostic use may be viewed by the FDA as adulterated and misbranded under the FDC Act and is subject to FDA enforcement activities, including requiring the manufacturer to seek marketing authorization for the products. We currently use Illumina and other RUO products for our clinical diagnostic tests. If the FDA were to require clearance, approval or authorization for the sale of Illumina’s RUO products and if Illumina does not obtain such clearance, approval or authorization, we would have to find an alternative sequencing platform for some or all of our clinical diagnostic tests.

Federal and State Fraud and Abuse Laws

We are subject to federal fraud and abuse laws such as the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (the “AKS”), the federal prohibition against physician self-referral (the “Stark Law”), and the federal false claims law, or the False Claims Act (the “FCA”). We are also subject to similar state and foreign fraud and abuse laws.

The AKS prohibits, among other things, knowingly and willfully offering, paying, soliciting, or receiving remuneration, directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind, in return for or to induce such person to refer an individual, or to purchase, lease, order, arrange for, or recommend purchasing, leasing, or ordering, any good, facility, item, or service that is reimbursable, in whole or in part, under a federal healthcare program.

The Stark Law and similar state laws, including California’s Physician Ownership and Referral Act, generally prohibit, among other things, clinical laboratories and other entities from billing a patient or any governmental or commercial payer for any diagnostic services when the physician ordering the service, or any member of such physician’s immediate family, has a direct or indirect investment interest in or compensation arrangement with us, unless the arrangement meets an exception to the prohibition.

The federal civil and criminal false claims laws including the FCA, which imposes liability on any person or entity that, among other things, knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment to the federal government, and the federal Civil Monetary Penalties Law, which prohibits, among other things, the offering or transfer of remuneration to a Medicare or state healthcare program beneficiary if the person knows or should know it is likely to influence the beneficiary’s selection of a particular provider, practitioner, or supplier of services reimbursable by Medicare or a state healthcare program, unless an exception applies. Under the FCA, private citizens can bring claims on behalf of the government through qui tam actions. We must also operate within the bounds of the fraud and abuse laws of the states in which we do business which may apply to items or services reimbursed by non-governmental third-party payers, including private insurers.

The Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act

The Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 (“EKRA”) prohibits payments for referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities, and laboratories and is similar to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute in that it creates criminal penalties for knowing or willful payment or offer, or solicitation or receipt, of any remuneration, whether directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, in cash or in kind, in exchange for the referral or inducement of laboratory testing unless a specific exception applies. Unlike the federal Anti-Kickback

Statute, EKRA’s reach extends beyond federal health care programs to include private insurance (i.e., it is an “all payer” statute). Additionally, most of the safe harbors available under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute are not reiterated under EKRA, and certain EKRA safe harbors conflict with the safe harbors available under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute. Therefore, compliance with a federal Anti-Kickback safe harbor does not guarantee protection under EKRA. Because EKRA is a new law, there is very little additional guidance to indicate how and to what extent it will be interpreted, applied and enforced by the government. Currently, there is no proposed regulation interpreting or implementing EKRA, nor any public guidance released by a federal agency concerning EKRA.

Other Federal and State Healthcare Laws

In addition to the requirements discussed above, several other healthcare laws could have an effect on our business. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) fraud and abuse provisions created federal civil and criminal statutes that prohibit, among other things, defrauding healthcare programs, willfully obstructing a criminal investigation of a healthcare offense, and falsifying or concealing a material fact or making any materially false statements in connection with the payment for healthcare benefits, items or services. Similar to the federal Anti- Kickback Statute, a person or entity does not need to have actual knowledge of the statute or specific intent to violate it in order to have committed a violation.

The federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires certain manufacturers of drugs, biologicals, and medical devices or supplies that require premarket approval by or notification to the FDA, and for which payment is available under Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (“CHIP”), with certain exceptions, to report annually to CMS information related to (i) payments and other transfers of value to physicians (defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, and chiropractors), other healthcare professionals (such as physicians assistants and nurse practitioners) and teaching hospitals, and (ii) ownership and investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members.

The “Anti-Markup Rule” and similar state laws prohibit, among other things, a physician or supplier billing the Medicare program from marking up the price of a purchased diagnostic service performed by another laboratory or supplier that does not “share a practice” with the billing physician or supplier. Penalties may apply to the billing physician or supplier if Medicare or another payer is billed at a rate that exceeds the performing laboratory’s charges to the billing physician or supplier, and the performing laboratory could be at risk under false claims laws, described below, for causing the submission of a false claim.

State client billing laws specify whether a person that did not perform the service is permitted to submit the claim for payment and if so, whether the non-performing person is permitted to mark up the cost of the services in excess of the price the purchasing provider paid for such services. For example, California has an anti-markup statute which prohibits providers from charging for any laboratory test that it did not perform unless the provider (a) notifies the patient, client or customer of the name, address, and charges of the laboratory performing the test, and (b) charges no more than what the provider was charged by the clinical laboratory which performed the test except for any other service actually rendered to the patient by the provider (for example, specimen collection, processing and handling) (California Business and Professions Code Section 655.5). This provision applies, with certain limited exceptions, to licensed persons such as physicians and clinical laboratories regulated under the Business and Professions Code. In addition, many states also have “direct-bill” laws, which means that the services actually performed by an individual or entity must be billed by such individual or entity, thus preventing ordering physicians from purchasing services from a laboratory and rebilling for the services they order. For example, California has a direct bill rule specific to anatomic pathology services that prohibits any provider from billing for anatomic pathology services if those services were not actually rendered by that person or under his or her direct supervision with some exemptions (California Business and Professions Code Section 655.7).

In addition, we may be subject to state laws that prohibit other specified practices, such as billing physicians for testing that they order; waiving coinsurance, copayments, deductibles, and other amounts owed by patients; billing a state Medicaid program at a price that is higher than what is charged to one or more other payors; employing, exercising control over, licensed professionals in violation of state laws prohibiting corporate practice of medicine and other professions, and prohibitions against the splitting of professional fees with licensed professionals.

As a clinical laboratory, our business practices may face additional scrutiny from government regulatory agencies such as the Department of Justice, the HHS Office of Inspector General (the “OIG”), and CMS. Certain arrangements between clinical laboratories and referring physicians have been identified in fraud alerts issued by the OIG as implicating the Anti-Kickback Statute. Efforts to ensure that our business arrangements with third parties will comply with applicable healthcare laws and regulations will involve substantial costs. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws or any other governmental regulations that may apply to us, we may be subject to significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties, damages, fines, imprisonment, exclusion from government-funded healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, disgorgement, contractual damages, reputational harm, diminished profits and future earnings, additional reporting, or oversight obligations if we become subject to a corporate integrity agreement or other agreement to resolve allegations of non-compliance with the law and the curtailment or restructuring of our operations. If any of the physicians or other healthcare providers or entities with whom we do business is found to be not in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to significant criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government-funded healthcare programs.

HIPAA and HITECH

Under the administrative simplification provisions of HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (“HITECH”), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued regulations that establish uniform standards governing the conduct of certain electronic healthcare transactions and requirements for protecting the privacy and security of protected health information (“PHI”), used or disclosed by covered entities and business associates. Covered entities and

business associates are subject to HIPAA and HITECH. Our subcontractors that create, receive, maintain, transmit, or otherwise process PHI on behalf of us are HIPAA “business associates” and must also comply with HIPAA as a business associate.

HIPAA and HITECH include privacy and security rules, breach notification requirements, and electronic transaction standards.

The Privacy Rule covers the use and disclosure of PHI by covered entities and business associates. The Privacy Rule generally prohibits the use or disclosure of PHI, except as permitted under the Rule. The Privacy Rule also sets forth individual patient rights, such as the right to access or amend certain records containing his or her PHI, or to request restrictions on the use or disclosure of his or her PHI.

The Security Rule requires covered entities and business associates to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronically transmitted or stored PHI by implementing administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. Under HITECH’s Breach Notification Rule, a covered entity must notify individuals, the Secretary of the HHS, and in some circumstances, the media of breaches of unsecured PHI.

In addition, we may be subject to state health information privacy and data breach notification laws, which may govern the collection, use, disclosure, and protection of health-related and other personal information. California, for example, has enacted the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, which sets forth standards in addition to HIPAA and HITECH with which all California health care providers like us must abide. State laws may be more stringent, broader in scope, or offer greater individual rights with respect to PHI than HIPAA, and state laws may differ from each other, which may complicate compliance efforts.

Entities that are found to be in violation of HIPAA as the result of a failure to secure PHI, a complaint about our privacy practices or an audit by HHS, may be subject to significant civil and criminal fines and penalties and additional reporting and oversight obligations if such entities are required to enter into a resolution agreement and corrective action plan with HHS to settle allegations of HIPAA non-compliance.

U.S. Healthcare Reform

In the United States, there have been a number of legislative and regulatory changes at the federal and state levels that seek to reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of healthcare. For example, in March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (collectively, the “ACA”), became law. This law substantially changed the way health care is financed by both commercial payers and government payers, and significantly impacted our industry. The ACA contained a number of provisions expected to impact the clinical laboratory industry, such as changes governing enrollment in state and federal health care programs, reimbursement changes, and fraud and abuse.

There have been executive, judicial and Congressional challenges to certain aspects of the ACA. Since January 2017, former President Trump signed two executive orders and other directives designed to delay the implementation of certain provisions of the ACA. Concurrently, Congress considered legislation that would repeal, or repeal and replace, all or part of the ACA. While Congress has not passed comprehensive repeal legislation, it has enacted laws that modify certain provisions of the ACA such as removing penalties, starting January 1, 2019, for not complying with the ACA’s individual mandate to carry health insurance and delaying the implementation of certain ACA-mandated fees. On June 17, 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a challenge on procedural grounds that argued the ACA is unconstitutional in its entirety because the “individual mandate” was repealed by Congress. Thus, the ACA will remain in effect in its current form. Further, prior to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, on January 28, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order that initiated a special enrollment period for purposes of obtaining health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace The executive order also instructed certain governmental agencies to review and reconsider their existing policies and rules that limit access to healthcare, including among others, reexamining Medicaid demonstration projects and waiver programs that include work requirements, and policies that create unnecessary barriers to obtaining access to health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the ACA. It is possible that the ACA will be subject to judicial or Congressional challenges in the future. In addition, Congress and the Biden administration are considering other health reform initiatives, such as the Build Back Better Plan. It is unclear how any such challenges and the health reform measures of the Biden administration will impact the ACA.

Other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted since the ACA was enacted. On August 2, 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011 was signed into law, which, among other things, reduced Medicare payments to providers by 2% per fiscal year, effective on April 1, 2013 and, due to subsequent legislative amendments to the statute, will remain in effect through 2031, with the exception of a temporary suspension from May 1, 2020 through March 31, 2022, unless additional Congressional action is taken. Under current legislation, the actual reduction in Medicare payments will vary from 1% in 2022 to up to 3% in the final fiscal year of this sequester. On January 2, 2013, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 was signed into law, which, among other things, reduced Medicare payments to several providers, including hospitals, and increased the statute of limitations period for the government to recover overpayments to providers from three to five years. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, enacted on April 16, 2015 (“MACRA”), repealed the formula by which Medicare made annual payment adjustments to physicians and replaced the former formula with fixed annual updates, and established a quality payment incentive program, also referred to as the Quality Payment Program. This program provides clinicians with two ways to participate, including through the Advanced Alternative Payment Models (“APMs”), and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (“MIPS”). In November 2019, CMS issued a final rule finalizing the changes to the Quality Payment Program. At this time, it is unclear how the introduction of the Quality Payment Program will impact overall physician reimbursement under the Medicare program. Any reduction in reimbursement from Medicare or other government programs may result in a similar reduction in payments from private payors.

In April 2014, Congress passed the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (“PAMA”), which included substantial changes to the way in which clinical laboratory services are paid under Medicare. Under PAMA, laboratories that receive the majority of their Medicare revenue from payments made under the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, or the Physician Fee Schedule are required to report to CMS, beginning in 2017 and every three years thereafter (or annually for “advanced diagnostic laboratory tests”),

private payer payment rates and volumes for their tests. CMS will use this data to calculate a weighted median payment rate for each test, which will be used to establish revised Medicare reimbursement rates for the tests. Laboratories that fail to report the required payment information may be subject to substantial civil monetary penalties. Reporting of payment data under PAMA for clinical diagnostic laboratory tests has been delayed on numerous occasions. Based on current law, between January 1, 2023 and March 31, 2023, applicable laboratories will be required to report on data collected during January 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019. This data will be utilized to determine 2024 to 2026 CLFS rates. The payment rate applies to laboratory tests furnished by a hospital laboratory if the test is separately paid under the hospital outpatient prospective payment system. It is still too early to predict the full impact on reimbursement for our current tests or those in development. In addition, CMS updated the statutory phase-in provisions such that the rates for clinical diagnostic laboratory tests in 2020 could not be reduced by more than 10% of the rates for 2019. Pursuant to the CARES Act, the statutory phase-in of the payment reductions has been extended through 2024 with a 0% reduction cap for 2021-2022 and a 15% reduction cap for 2023 through 2025. It is unclear what impact new quality and payment programs, such as MACRA, or new pricing structures, such as those adopted under PAMA, may have on our business, financial condition, results of operations, or cash flows.

We also anticipate there will continue to be proposals by legislators at both the federal and state levels, regulators and private payers to reduce costs while expanding individual healthcare benefits. Certain of these changes could impose additional limitations on the prices we will be able to charge for our tests, the coverage of or the amounts of reimbursement available for our tests from payers, including commercial payers and government payers. Further, it is possible that additional governmental action is taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Material Agreements

VA MVP Agreement

On September 28, 2017, we entered into a contract with the VA for the VA MVP to provide them with a combination of whole genome sequencing services (the “VA MVP Agreement”). The performance period for the services includes a base period of one year (September 2017 through August 2018), with three one-year renewal option periods that may be exercised upon discretion of the VA MVP. Each task order issued against the VA MVP Agreement has a separate period of performance and is subject to the terms and conditions of the VA MVP Agreement. Funds are obligated by the VA MVP under each task order based on actual needs. We received contracted orders from the VA MVP in September 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The current contract does not include a renewal option. For us to provide additional services to the VA MVP after completion of the current contract, we would need to receive an additional task order and/or enter into a new services agreement with the VA MVP, neither of which had occurred as of the date of filing this Annual Report.

All materials and samples utilized during the course of the VA MVP Agreement and all data first produced or delivered under the VA MVP Agreement are the sole property of the VA MVP. Under the VA MVP Agreement, we are subject to confidentiality and security obligations, as well as various obligations upon events of default.

The VA MVP may terminate the VA MVP Agreement, or any part thereof, at its sole convenience. Subject to the terms of the VA MVP Agreement, we shall be paid a percentage of the contract price reflecting the percentage of the work performed prior to the notice of termination, plus reasonable charges that we can demonstrate have resulted from the termination.

The VA MVP may terminate the VA MVP Agreement, or any part thereof, for cause in the event of any default by us, or if we fail to comply with any contract terms and conditions, or fail to provide the VA MVP, upon request, with adequate assurances of future performance. In the event of termination for cause, the VA MVP shall not be liable to us for any amount for supplies or services not accepted, and we shall be liable to the VA MVP for any and all rights and remedies provided by law. If it is determined that the VA MVP improperly terminated this contract for default, such termination shall be deemed a termination for convenience.

In September 2021, we received a task order from the VA MVP with a value of up to approximately $9.7 million, which was significantly less than in prior years. At that time, we expected the reduced order amount was to be followed by a formal RFP process and a potential new contract to be awarded sometime late in the third quarter of 2022. However, recent discussions with our contacts at the VA MVP indicate that there will be no RFP process in 2022. Accordingly, we are not planning on receiving any new orders from the VA MVP this year or expecting to recognize any revenue from the VA MVP beyond the current order and contract.

Agreements with Illumina

On November 1, 2017, we entered into a master services subcontract agreement (the “Subcontract Agreement”) with Illumina. Under the terms of the Subcontract Agreement, we engaged Illumina as our subcontractor to perform certain genotyping services (the “Services”)on our behalf pursuant to written purchase orders in fulfillment of our VA MVP Agreement. The price for Illumina’s Services set forth in the Subcontract Agreement is effective through March 2022, or later if the VA MVP Agreement is extended.

The Subcontract Agreement extends through the last day of the VA MVP Agreement, currently March 2022 but as may be extended, unless it is otherwise terminated early pursuant to its terms. All or part of the Subcontract Agreement may be terminated at our convenience in the event that the VA MVP terminates the VA MVP Agreement or terminates the part of the VA MVP Agreement that affects the Services provided by Illumina. Each party may terminate the Subcontract Agreement for default in the event that the other party materially fails to perform any of the provisions of the Subcontract Agreement, materially fails to make progress so as to endanger performance of the Subcontract Agreement in accordance with its terms, or becomes financially or legally incapable of completing the work and does not provide a plan of correction or recovery within the provided period of time to cure such failure. The Subcontract Agreement may be renewed for subsequent one-year terms as agreed by the parties subject to a four-year limit.

On March 26, 2019, we entered into a pricing agreement with Illumina, which provides pricing terms for the NovaSeqTM 5000/6000 S4 Reagent Kit (each, a “Kit”). The pricing agreement had a purchase commitment of $1.7 million by June 30, 2019 to

purchase these Kits, which we fulfilled in the ordinary course of business. The term of the pricing agreement extends through December 31, 2022.

From time to time, we receive quotations for supply of genetic analysis products from Illumina that provide for pricing terms on Illumina products outside of those discussed above.

Human Capital Management within Our Company

We recognize that our employees are both our most valuable asset and our most important investment. The success of our organization is reliant upon each individual’s significant contribution to our corporate culture and goals. Following is a list of our core company values:

• Integrity

• Respect

• Teamwork and collaboration

• Commitment to scientific excellence

• Dedication to discovery and innovation

• Passion

At a foundational level, employees receive training related to workplace safety and emergency preparedness, awareness and expectations of inclusion and diversity, required data protection, and other regulatory matters. We offer competitive total rewards programs, ongoing training and development, and a commitment to the safety and health of our employees. We also practice a commitment to diversity by including broader outreach and sourcing for candidates for new roles as well as education and a visible commitment to diversity and inclusion internally. For example, we established a Diversity Committee in 2020 with its mission to promote a sense of belonging for all our employees.

An engaged workforce with skills specific to our needs is critical for our successful growth in a competitive market and sector. We regularly benchmark our compensation and benefits by geography, industry (life sciences), and by role to ensure we maintain our status as an employer of choice in these areas. Our turnover rates over the last three years have been consistent with such benchmarks. Reports of our position relative to the benchmarks are reported to management and the compensation committee of our board of directors on a periodic basis.

As of December 31, 2021, we had 326 employees, of which 325 were full-time employees. Of these full-time employees, 149 were in research and development, 74 in laboratory operations, 55 in commercial operations and 47 in general and administrative functions. 311 of our full-time employees are located in the United States, six are located in Europe and eight are located in China. As of December 31, 2021, more than 50% of our employees had completed a Ph.D. or other advanced science or medical degree.

None of our employees are represented by a labor union or covered by collective bargaining agreements, and we have not experienced any work stoppages. We consider our relations with our employees to be good. The use of independent contractors is not a material part of our workforce strategy.

Environment

We believe we are in compliance with the regulations established by the state of California Division of Occupational Safety and Health Requirements and California Environmental Protection Agency applicable to our operations in Menlo Park, California. This includes, but is not limited to, having an Injury and Illness Prevention Program, a Hazard Communication Program, an Emergency Action Plan, a Chemical Hygiene Plan and an Exposure Control Plan, which are captured in written standard operating procedures (“SOPs”). We provide training to our employees on these SOPs. We are committed to evaluate our compliance to such regulations on a recurring basis.

Available Information

Our website is located at https://www.personalis.com. Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, including their exhibits, proxy and information statements, and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 14, and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available through the “Investors” portion of our website free of charge as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. Information on our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or any of our other securities filings unless specifically incorporated herein or therein by reference. In addition, our filings with the SEC may be accessed through the SEC’s Interactive Data Electronic Applications system at http://www.sec.gov. All statements made in any of our securities filings, including all forward-looking statements or information, are made as of the date of the document in which the statement is included, and we do not assume or undertake any obligation to update any of those statements or documents unless we are required to do so by law.

Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Summary of Risk Factors

The following is a summary of the principal risks and uncertainties that could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, or results of operations. You should read this summary together with the more detailed description of risk factors below under the heading “Risk Factors”.

Operational, Strategic and Business Risks

Regulatory, Legal and Cybersecurity Risks

Intellectual Property Risks

Financial and Market Risks and Risks Related to Owning Our Common Stock

Risk Factors.

Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties including those described below. You should consider carefully the risks and uncertainties described below, in addition to other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of, or that we currently believe are not material, may also become important factors that adversely affect our business. If any of the following risks or others not specified below materialize, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In that case, the trading price of our common stock could decline.

Operational, Strategic and Business Risks

We have a history of losses, and as our costs increase, we expect to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future and may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to achieve or sustain profitability.

We have incurred net losses since our inception. For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019 we had net losses of $65.2 million, $41.3 million, and $25.1 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $247.1 million. To date, we have not generated sufficient revenue to achieve profitability, and we may never achieve or sustain profitability. In addition, we expect to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future, and we expect our accumulated deficit to continue to increase as we focus on scaling our business and operations. Our efforts to sustain and grow our business may be more costly than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenue sufficiently to offset our higher operating expenses. Our prior losses and expected future losses have had and will continue to have an adverse effect on our stockholders’ equity and working capital. Our failure to achieve and sustain profitability in the future would negatively affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows, and could cause the market price of our common stock to decline.

If we are unable to increase sales of our current services or successfully develop and commercialize other services or products, or if we are unable to execute our sales and marketing strategy for our services or unable to gain sufficient acceptance in the market, we may fail to generate sufficient revenue to achieve profitability and sustain our business.

We currently derive substantially all of our revenue from sales of our services. We began offering our services through our CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited, and state-licensed laboratory in 2013. We are in varying stages of research and development for other services and products that we may offer. If we are unable to increase sales of our existing services or successfully develop and commercialize other services and products, we will not generate sufficient revenue to become profitable.

In addition, as a growing genomics company, we have engaged in targeted sales and marketing activities for our services. Although we have had revenue from sales of our services since 2013, our services may never gain significant acceptance in the marketplace and therefore may never generate substantial revenue or permit us to become profitable. We will need to further establish and grow the market for our services through the expansion of our current relationships and development of new relationships with biopharmaceutical customers. Gaining acceptance in medical communities can be supported by, among other things, publications in leading peer-reviewed journals of results from studies using our services. The process of publication in leading medical journals is subject to a peer review process and peer reviewers may not consider the results of our studies sufficiently novel or worthy of publication. Failure to have our studies published in peer-reviewed journals would limit the adoption of our services.

Our ability to successfully market our services that we have developed, and may develop in the future, will depend on numerous factors, including:

• the recruitment, hiring, and retention of our commercial team personnel;

• our ability to continue to fund sales and marketing activities;

• whether our services are considered superior to those of our competitors;

• our success enforcing and defending intellectual property rights and claims.

Failure to achieve broad market acceptance of our services would materially harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Our operations and employees face risks related to health crises, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, that could adversely affect our operations, our financial condition, and the business or operations of our customers or other third parties with whom we conduct business.

Our business could be adversely impacted by the effects of a health crisis, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, that could cause significant disruption in the operations of our customers and third-party suppliers upon whom we rely. Our laboratory facilities (other than the facilities being developed for our use in Shanghai, China), executive team, and most of our employees are located in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the event of a health crisis that becomes widespread in or around the San Francisco Bay Area, we may proactively, or be ordered by government officials to, take precautionary measures such as suspending our lab operations, implementing alternative work arrangements for our employees, and limiting our employees’ travel activities.

Our operations have been impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the previous shelter-in-place order and health orders have negatively impacted productivity, disrupted our business, and slowed research and development activities due to us limiting access to our laboratory space that would otherwise be used by our research and development group, and, to the extent such orders return in similar or more stringent form, they may continue to cause such effects on our operations. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted, and may continue to disrupt, the ability of our suppliers to fulfill our purchase orders in a timely manner or at all. Additionally, we are aware of increased demand in the market for certain consumables used in COVID-19 test kits and vaccines. We use such consumables in our operations, and we have faced, and may face in the future, difficulties in acquiring such consumables if our suppliers prioritize orders related to COVID-19 or if other supply chain issues arise as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several of our customers, including the VA MVP, have been delayed in sending us samples due to the inability to collect or ship samples during the COVID-19 pandemic, and these and additional customers may be disrupted from collecting samples or sending purchase orders or samples to us in the future.

While authorities in many areas have lifted or relaxed pandemic-related restrictions, in some cases they have subsequently re-imposed various restrictions after observing an increased rate of COVID-19 cases as the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to rapidly evolve and to present serious health risks. There is no guarantee when or if all such restrictions and recommendations will be eliminated, such that we and our customers, manufacturers and suppliers will be able to safely resume operations consistent with our pre-COVID-19 operations. The full extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, operations and plans remains uncertain and will depend on future developments that cannot be predicted at this time. Such developments include the continued spread of the Delta and Omicron variants in the U.S. and other countries and the potential emergence of other SARS-CoV-2 variants that may prove especially contagious or virulent, the ultimate duration of the pandemic and the resulting impact on our business and other third parties with whom we do business, and the effectiveness of actions taken globally to contain and treat the disease.

While vaccines for COVID-19 have been developed and administered, and the spread of COVID-19 may eventually be contained or mitigated, we cannot predict the timing of the vaccine roll-out globally (including boosters to vaccinations), the percentage of the population that becomes vaccinated, or the efficacy of such vaccines against Delta, Omicron or other variants, and we do not yet know how businesses, advertisers, or our partners will operate in a post COVID-19 environment. In addition, there is no guarantee that a future outbreak of this or any other widespread epidemics will not occur, or that the global economy will recover, either of which could seriously harm our business. The ultimate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic or a similar health epidemic on our business, operations, or the global economy as a whole remains highly uncertain, but a continued and prolonged public health crisis could have a material negative impact on our business, financial condition, and operating results.

If we cannot compete successfully with our competitors, we may be unable to increase or sustain our revenue or achieve and sustain profitability.

Our principal competition comes from commercial and academic organizations using established and new laboratory tests to produce information that is similar to the information that we generate for our customers. These commercial and academic organizations may not utilize our services or may not believe them to be superior to those tests that they currently use or others that are developed. Further, it may be difficult to convince our customers and potential customers to use our comprehensive test rather than simpler panels provided by our competitors. For example, the information that we provide may be more challenging or require additional resources for our customers to interpret than the information provided by our competitors’ less comprehensive assays. In addition, our suppliers or competitors may announce the development of new products, services or features that result in our customers or potential customers deciding to reduce, postpone or cancel orders from us while they wait to determine which products, services or features are or will be perceived as technologically superior, more commercially successful or adopted as standards in the industry; such decisions by our customers or potential customers may be influenced by their concerns regarding the potential obsolescence of data generated using our services and features if our services or features are or will not be perceived as technologically superior, commercially successful or adopted as standards in the industry.

Some of our present or potential competitors, including Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation, Adela, Inc., ArcherDx, Inc., which was acquired by Invitae Corporation in October 2020, C2i Genomics, Inc., Caris Life Sciences, Inc., Covance Inc., which was acquired by Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings in February 2015, Foundation Medicine, Inc., which was acquired by Roche Holdings, Inc. in July 2018, Freenome, Inc., Geneseeq Technology Inc., Genosity, Inc., which was acquired by Invitae Corporation in April 2021, GRAIL, which Illumina announced that it had acquired in August 2021, Guardant Health, Inc., Inivata Limited, which was acquired by NeoGenomics, Inc. in June 2021, Invitae Corporation, Mount Sinai Genomics, Inc. which does business under the name Sema4, Natera, NanoString Technologies, Inc., NeoGenomics, Inc., Personal Genome Diagnostics, Inc., Predicine, Inc., Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., and Tempus, Inc., may have more widespread brand recognition or substantially greater financial or technical resources, development or production capacities, or marketing capabilities than we do. They may be able to devote greater resources

to the development, promotion and sale of their products and services than we do or sell their products and services at prices designed to win more significant levels of market share. Also, we have had, and may have in the future, customer or supply relationships with our present or potential competitors. For example, we have an agreement with Natera to provide advanced tumor analysis for use in Natera’s MRD testing offerings. During 2021, revenue under our agreement accounted for 10% of our total revenue. See “—We currently derive a substantial portion of our revenue from DNA sequencing and data analysis services that we provide to Natera. If Natera’s demand for our DNA sequencing and data analysis services were to be substantially reduced,our business, financial condition, revenue and other operating results, and cash flows may be materially harmed.” In addition, our present or potential competitors may be acquired by, receive investments from, or enter into other commercial relationships with larger, more well-established and well-financed companies. For example, in August 2021, Illumina announced it completed its acquisition of GRAIL, a company focused on early cancer detection and potentially other forms of cancer analysis using next-generation sequencing technology, which we view as a potential competitor. Illumina is also one of our significant suppliers. See “—We rely on a limited number of suppliers, or in some cases, a sole supplier, for some of our laboratory instruments and materials, and we may not be able to find replacements or immediately transition to alternative suppliers should we need to do so.” Others may develop lower-priced, less complex products and services that pharmaceutical companies could view as functionally equivalent to our current or planned future services, which could force us to lower the price of our services and impact our operating margins and our ability to achieve and maintain profitability. In addition, companies or governments that control access to genetic testing and related services through umbrella contracts or regional preferences could promote our competitors or prevent us from performing certain services. In addition, technological innovations that result in the creation of enhanced products or diagnostic tools that are more sensitive or specific than ours may enable other clinical laboratories, hospitals, physicians, or medical providers to provide specialized products or services similar to ours in a more patient-friendly, efficient, or cost-effective manner than is currently possible. If we cannot compete successfully against current or future competitors, or if we cannot maintain successful customer or supply relationships with Natera, Illumina or other present or potential competitors, we may be unable to ensure or increase market acceptance and sales of our current or planned future services, which could prevent us from increasing or sustaining our revenue or achieving or sustaining profitability.

We expect that biopharmaceutical companies will increasingly focus attention and resources on the targeted and personalized cancer diagnostic sector as the potential and prevalence of molecularly targeted oncology therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA”) along with companion diagnostics increases. For example, the FDA has approved several such targeted oncology therapies that use companion diagnostics, including the anaplastic lymphoma kinase FISH test from Abbott Laboratories, Inc. for use with Xalkori® from Pfizer Inc., the BRAF kinase V600 mutation test from Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. for use with Zelboraf® from Daiichi-Sankyo/Genentech/Roche, and the BRAF kinase V600 mutation test from bioMerieux for use with Tafinlar® from GlaxoSmithKline. Since companion diagnostic tests are part of FDA labeling, non-FDA cleared tests, such as the ones we currently offer as part of our services, would be considered an off-label use and this may limit our access to this market segment. Our customers and potential customers may request, or in some cases have requested, that we consider developing and seeking FDA approval for companion diagnostic tests to accompany those customers’ therapeutic product candidates, and it may be necessary for us to do so in order to successfully compete for the business of these customers. If we do not successfully develop FDA-approved companion diagnostics, we may be at a competitive disadvantage and may be unable to increase market acceptance and sales of our other product offerings, which would prevent us from increasing or sustaining our revenue or achieving or sustaining profitability. If we were to develop one or more FDA-approved companion diagnostics, we would incur increased research and development expenses, and such activities may also divert our resources or the attention of our management and may create competing internal priorities for us. In addition, we have limited experience developing diagnostics, have never developed an FDA-approved companion diagnostic, and may be unable to successfully compete against companies with more experience developing and commercializing companion diagnostics.

Additionally, projects related to cancer diagnostics and particularly genomics have received increased government funding, both in the United States of America (the “U.S.”) and internationally. As more information regarding cancer genomics becomes available to the public, we anticipate that more products and services aimed at identifying treatment options will be developed and that these products and services may compete with our services. In addition, competitors may develop their own versions of our current or planned future services in countries where we did not apply for or receive patents and compete with us in those countries, including encouraging the use of their products or services by biopharmaceutical companies in other countries.

We have substantial customer concentration, with a limited number of customers accounting for a substantial portion of our revenue and accounts receivable; in particular, we currently derive a substantial portion of our revenue from our largest customers, the VA MVP and Natera.

Like other genomic profiling companies that sell to the pharmaceutical industry, we have substantial customer concentration. We currently derive a significant portion of our revenue from the VA MVP, which accounted for 53%, 71% and 67% of our revenue for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Our top five customers, including the VA MVP, accounted for 84%, 87% and 90% of our revenue for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. There are inherent risks whenever a large percentage of revenue is concentrated with a limited number of customers. While we have attempted to grow our customer base and diversify our revenue concentration beyond the VA MVP and Natera, we may not be able to successfully do so in the future. Our predictions regarding the future level of demand for our services that will be generated by these customers may be wrong. In addition, revenue from our larger customers have historically fluctuated and may continue to fluctuate based on the commencement and completion of clinical trials or other projects, the timing of which may be affected by market conditions or other factors, some of which may be outside of our control. Further, while we have long-term contractual arrangements with certain of our customers, including Natera, these customers are not required to purchase a minimum number of analyses. Some of our customers have in the past suspended or terminated clinical trials or projects, received less funding than expected, experienced declining or delayed sales, or otherwise decided to reduce or eliminate their use of our services, and these and other customers may also do so in the future. As a

result, we could be pressured to reduce the prices we charge for our services, which would have an adverse effect on our margins and financial position, and which would likely negatively affect our revenue and results of operations. In particular, if the VA MVP terminates our services for convenience, which it is permitted to do, such termination would have a material adverse effect on our revenue, cash position, and results of operations. Similarly, if the VA MVP was eliminated, awarded its contract to one of our competitors, further reduced the size of our contract or failed to renew our contract in the future, then our revenue, cash position, and results of operations would be materially adversely impacted. Likewise, if Natera or any of our other significant customers were to reduce or cease their use of our services, then our revenue, cash position, and results of operations may be materially adversely impacted. Further, if any of our significant customers were to stop payment for our services, it would have a material adverse effect on our accounts receivable, increasing our credit risk. The failure of these customers to pay their balances, or any customer to pay future outstanding balances, would result in an operating expense and reduce our cash flows.

We have derived a substantial portion of our current revenue from DNA sequencing and data analysis services that we provided to our largest customer, the VA MVP. If the VA MVP’s demand for and/or funding for our DNA sequencing and data analysis services continues to be substantially reduced, if the VA MVP conducts a competitive bid process for the next contract and we do not win, or if the VA MVP does not award any such contract on a timely basis or at all, our business, financial condition, revenue and other operating results, and cash flows will be materially harmed.

We currently derive a substantial portion of our revenue from sales of our DNA sequencing and data analysis services to the VA MVP. In September 2017, we entered into a one-year contract with three one-year optional renewal periods with the VA for the VA MVP, pursuant to which we received contracted orders from the VA MVP in September 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The current contract does not include a renewal option. For us to provide additional services to the VA MVP after completion of the current contract, we would need to receive an additional task order and/or enter into a new services agreement with the VA MVP, neither of which had occurred as of the date of filing this annual report.

The VA MVP may initiate a competitive bidding process for its next DNA sequencing and data analysis services contract, if any. However, there may not be any such potential bidding process or new contract awarded on a timely basis or at all, we may not win any such potential new contract in any such potential bidding process, the value of any such potential new contract or the VA MVP contracted orders thereunder may be lower than our current contract and historical contracted orders from the VA MVP, and/or the scope or nature of the services required under such new contract may change such that we are unable to serve the VA MVP in the future.

The VA MVP’s contracted orders for DNA sequencing and data analysis services have fluctuated significantly in value over time and are subject to the availability of funding, enrollment of veterans in the VA MVP study, and the VA MVP’s continued demand for our services among other factors. For example, the VA MVP contracted order received in September 2020 had a value of up to approximately $31 million, whereas the VA MVP contracted order received in September 2021 has a value of up to approximately $9.7 million, which represents a substantial decline. Unless we receive an additional task order and/or enter into a new services agreement with the VA MVP with a value comparable to that of our current contract and historical contracted orders, our revenue from the VA MVP will decline significantly in the future.

We have no certainty that funding will be made available for our services, or that the VA MVP will award any future contracts, contract renewals or contracted orders to us. If the priorities of the VA, the VA MVP, or the U.S. government have changed or change in the future, including in response to the COVID-19 pandemic for example, funding for our services may be limited or not available, and our business, financial condition, and operating results and cash flows will be materially harmed. Similarly, if we do not win future VA MVP contracts and renewals (whether due to being outbid by a competitor or the VA MVP’s decision not to award a future contract on a timely basis or at all, or to terminate for convenience or failure to renew any contract, for whatever reason), our business, financial condition, revenue and other operating results and cash flows will be materially harmed. The success of our business and our future operating results are significantly dependent on the VA MVP’s continued demand and receipt of funding for use of our services and the terms of our sales to the VA MVP, including the price per sample, the number of samples and the timing of the VA MVP’s deliveries of samples. Furthermore, we only recognize revenue under our VA MVP contract upon the receipt and processing of samples, and the timing and number of VA MVP samples we receive has been and could in the future be negatively affected by factors beyond our control, which has resulted, and may result in the future, in delaying our ability to process and recognize revenue for such samples. For example, the revenue we recognized during the contract year that began in September 2020 significantly exceeded the value of the VA MVP contracted order we received in September 2020 because we continued to receive after such date, and subsequently processed, samples under VA MVP contracted orders that remained unfulfilled as of September 2020 due to the time required for the VA to select optimal samples from its collection for research and then provide us those samples. Therefore, period-to-period comparisons of our operating results relating to VA MVP contracted orders may not be meaningful and, even if we win a potential new VA MVP contract and order with a value comparable to that of the September 2020 contracted order, the revenue we recognize under such potential new contract and order may be less than the revenue we recognized during the 2020-2021 contract year. The timing and number of VA MVP samples may also have been or be negatively affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in March 2020, the VA MVP announced that it was suspending sample collection due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have been a contributing factor to the reduction in value of the September 2021 VA MVP contracted order compared to the September 2020 contracted order, as the VA MVP delayed new enrollment and also may have needed to divert resources to respond to the pandemic, and the COVID-19 pandemic may also negatively impact the value of any potential new VA MVP contract or order.

We currently derive a substantial portion of our revenue from DNA sequencing and data analysis services that we provide to Natera. If Natera’s demand for our DNA sequencing and data analysis services were to be substantially reduced, our business, financial condition, revenue and other operating results, and cash flows may be materially harmed.

On February 17, 2021, we announced that we had entered into a partnership in the field of personalized oncology with Natera, pairing our NeXT tumor profiling and diagnostic products with Natera’s personalized ctDNA platform SignateraTM for treatment monitoring and MRD assessment. Under this non-exclusive agreement, Natera is responsible for validating the design of, and commercialization of, Signatera personalized ctDNA assays using matched tumor and normal exome sequence data from us. The agreement covers MRD testing for both clinical use and research use. Since that time, Natera’s sample volumes have increased such that we currently derive a significant portion of our revenue from sales of our DNA sequencing and data analysis services to Natera under our agreement. For example, during 2021, revenue under our agreement accounted for 10% of our total revenue. While our agreement with Natera is a long-term contractual arrangement, Natera is not required to purchase a minimum number of analyses from us under the agreement, and we have only limited visibility to Natera’s forecasted sample volumes for future periods. We are aware that Natera has at least one third party supplier of DNA sequencing and analysis services, such that Natera has elected, and may continue to elect in the future, to send a portion (or all) of its samples to its other supplier(s) instead of us, which it is not contractually prohibited from doing, given the non-exclusive nature of our agreement. Natera may also bring a portion (or all) of such services in-house in the future, which may result in them purchasing fewer (or no) such services from us, or none from us at all. Our agreement with Natera requires us to achieve certain quality and turnaround time metrics for Natera samples. Recently, the volumes of samples sent to us by Natera have fluctuated significantly and may continue to do so in the future, which could cause us to experience difficulty in achieving such metrics from time to time, or to meet our other obligations under our agreement. If we consistently fail to achieve such metrics, or any of our other obligations under our agreement with Natera, Natera may elect to send a portion (or all) of its samples to its other supplier(s) and/or bring such services in-house.

Additionally, Natera may allege that such failures to achieve the required metrics are a breach of our agreement and seek to terminate our agreement and/or pursue any remedies available to it under the agreement, at law or in equity. Relatedly, we have incurred expenses in connection with our scale-up activities under our agreement with Natera, and we may incur additional expenses to increase our laboratory’s capacity to process increased sample volumes from Natera, in addition to those from our other customers, in the future. Our activities under our agreement with Natera have had, and may continue to have, an impact on our business, including diversion of our resources and the attention of our management, including with respect to our internal research and development objectives and projects for our other customers, collaborators and/or partners. If we are unable to successfully increase our laboratory’s capacity and manage any such competing objectives and/or projects for other customers, we may be unable to meet the quality and timing requirements of our agreement with Natera or our other customers, collaborators and/or partners. We may also be unable to successfully research, develop, launch and/or commercialize our services or service capabilities. Furthermore, we recently announced the launch of NeXT Personal, a next-generation, tumor-informed liquid biopsy assay designed to detect and quantify MRD and recurrence in patients previously diagnosed with cancer. If NeXT Personal or any of our other services is seen as competing with Signatera or any of Natera’s other services, we will still be required to fulfill our obligations to Natera under our agreement, although Natera may elect to send a portion (or all) of its samples to its other supplier(s) and/or bring such services in-house. If the volume of samples received under our agreement with Natera were to be significantly reduced or eliminated, or if our agreement with Natera were to be terminated, for these or other reasons, or if we are unable to successfully research, develop, launch and/or commercialize our services or service capabilities, including NeXT Personal, our business, financial condition, revenue and other operating results, and cash flows may be materially harmed.

If we cannot maintain our current customer relationships, or fail to acquire new customers, our revenue prospects will be reduced. Many of our customers are biopharmaceutical companies engaged in clinical trials of new drug candidates, which trials are expensive, can take many years to complete, and have inherently uncertain outcomes.

Our customers other than the VA MVP and Natera are primarily biopharmaceutical companies that use our services to support clinical trials. Our future success is substantially dependent on our ability to maintain our customer relationships and to establish new ones. Many factors have the potential to impact our customer relations, including the type of support our customers and potential customers require and our ability to deliver it, our customers’ satisfaction with our services, and other factors that may be beyond our control. Furthermore, our customers may decide to decrease or discontinue their use of our services due to changes in research and product development plans (including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic), failures in their clinical trials, financial constraints, or utilization of internal testing resources or tests performed by other parties, or other circumstances outside of our control.

We engage in conversations with customers regarding potential commercial opportunities on an ongoing basis in the event that one of these customers’ drug candidates is approved. There is no assurance that any of these conversations will result in a commercial agreement, or if an agreement is reached, that the resulting relationship will be successful or that clinical studies conducted as part of the engagement will produce successful outcomes. Speculation in the industry about our existing or potential relationships with biopharmaceutical companies could be a catalyst for adverse speculation about us, our services, and our technology, which can adversely affect our reputation and our business. In addition, the termination of these relationships could result in a temporary or permanent loss of revenue.

Our customers’ clinical trials are expensive, can take many years to complete, and their outcome is inherently uncertain. Failure can occur at any time during the clinical trial process. Product candidates in later stages of clinical trials may fail to show the desired safety and efficacy traits despite having progressed through pre-clinical studies and early clinical trials. Many of the biopharmaceutical companies that are our customers do not have products approved for commercial sale and are not profitable. These customers must continue to raise capital in order to continue their development programs and to potentially continue as our customers. If our customers’ clinical trials fail or they are unable to raise sufficient capital to continue investing in their clinical programs, our revenue from these customers may decrease or cease entirely, and our business may be harmed. Furthermore, even if these customers have a drug approved for commercial sale, they may not choose to use our services as a companion diagnostic with their drug, thereby limiting our potential revenue.

We rely on a limited number of suppliers, or in some cases, a sole supplier, for some of our laboratory instruments and materials, and we may not be able to find replacements or immediately transition to alternative suppliers should we need to do so.

We rely on a limited number of suppliers for sequencers and other equipment and materials that we use in our laboratory operations. For example, we rely on Illumina as the sole supplier of sequencers and various associated reagents and other materials used in our routine laboratory operations, and as the sole provider of maintenance and repair services for these sequencers. Our Subcontract Agreement with Illumina is set to expire in March 2022, and our various pricing agreements with Illumina are set to expire on various dates up to December 2022. In August 2021, Illumina completed its acquisition of GRAIL, a company focused on early cancer detection and potentially other forms of cancer analysis using next-generation sequencing technology. Any disruption in Illumina’s operations, or our inability to negotiate an extension to our agreements with Illumina on acceptable terms, or at all, or any competitive pressure resulting from Illumina’s acquisition of GRAIL, could negatively impact our supply chain and laboratory operations and our ability to conduct our business and generate revenue. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted, and may continue to disrupt, Illumina’s ability to perform under our Subcontract Agreement and fulfill our purchase orders for reagents or other materials in a timely manner and the pandemic has also disrupted, and may continue to disrupt, the ability of our other suppliers to fulfill our purchase orders in a timely manner or at all. Our suppliers could cease supplying these materials and equipment at any time, or fail to provide us with sufficient quantities of materials or equipment that meet our specifications. Our laboratory operations have been and in the future could be interrupted if we encounter delays or difficulties in securing sequencers or other equipment or materials, or if we cannot obtain an acceptable substitute. Any such interruption could significantly affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and reputation.

We believe that there are only a few manufacturers other than Illumina that are currently capable of supplying and servicing the equipment necessary for our laboratory operations, including sequencers and various associated reagents. Likewise, we believe that there are a limited number of manufacturers and suppliers for other reagents and materials necessary for our laboratory operations, such as the sample preparation reagents required for our ACE technology, which enables our NeXT Platform to provide more comprehensive sequencing coverage, as well as those required to create personalized liquid biopsy panels for each patient as part of our NeXT Personal assay. Although we have evaluated and may continue in the future to evaluate equipment and materials from other suppliers, the use of equipment or materials provided by these replacement suppliers would require us to alter our laboratory operations. Transitioning to a new supplier would be time-consuming and expensive, would likely result in interruptions in our laboratory operations, could affect the performance specifications of our laboratory operations, or could require that we revalidate our tests. Additionally, an existing supplier of ours may allege that such activities constitute a breach of its agreement with us and may cease supplying us with sufficient quantities of materials or equipment that meet our specifications, in a timely manner or at all. Moreover, an existing supplier or third party may allege that such activities, replacement equipment or materials infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate its intellectual property, and may bring infringement or other intellectual property-related claims against us. See “—Litigation or other proceedings or third-party claims of intellectual property infringement, misappropriation or other violations may require us to spend significant time and money, and could in the future prevent us from selling our tests or impact our stock price, any of which could have a material adverse effect.” We cannot assure you that, if we were forced to replace Illumina or another supplier on which we rely, we would be able to secure alternative equipment, reagents, and other materials, and bring such equipment, reagents, and other materials on-line and revalidate them without experiencing interruptions in our workflow. If we encounter delays or difficulties in securing, reconfiguring, or revalidating the equipment and reagents we require for our services, our business, financial condition, results of operations, and reputation could be adversely affected.

PSNL US Equity

PSNL · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

Item 1. Business.

Item 1A. Risk Factors.

PSNL US Equity☆

PSNL · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

Item 1. Business.

Item 1A. Risk Factors.

PSNL US Equity