Maravai LifeSciences Reports Q2 Revenue Growth, Raises EBITDA Guidance

Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ: MRVI ) reported second-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company's second-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation.

4 million, a 9% year-over-year increase, with TriLink revenue growing by 12% and Cygnus revenue by 3%. 7 million. Maravai LifeSciences refinanced its debt, reducing it to approximately $150 million and extending maturities to 2032, enhancing its financial flexibility. Strategic initiatives included launching a new GMP-grade enzyme portfolio and expanding its Motail technology adoption, with plans to introduce GMP-grade Motail later in the year.

The company maintains its 2026 revenue guidance of $205 million to $215 million and raised its adjusted EBITDA guidance to $33 to $35 million, reflecting improved profitability expectations. Management highlighted significant growth in GMP consumables, particularly in discovery mRNA, and ongoing efforts in innovation and operational excellence. TriLink's mRNA segment is the largest growth driver, with expectations for continued high single-digit to low double-digit growth over time, as clinical programs convert to commercial supply.

The e-commerce platform showed strong performance, driving new customer acquisition and revenue growth, particularly in the basic research market. Maravai LifeSciences emphasized its strengthened financial position and confidence in long-term growth prospects, supported by robust innovation and commercial momentum. Full Transcript OPERATOR Hello, and welcome everyone joining today's Maravai LifeSciences Q2 2026 results earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. To register to ask a question at any time, please press star-1 on your telephone keypad. Please note this call is being recorded, and we are standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Deb Hart.

Please go ahead. Deb Hart, Investor Relations Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our second quarter 2026 earnings call. The press release and slides accompanying today's call are available at the investors site.

As you can see from the agenda on slide 2, our CEO, Bernd Brest, will provide a business update, and our CFO, Raj Asarpota, will review our financial results. Dr. Chan Feng Zhao, our Chief Scientific Officer, and Kurt Oreshack, our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, will join us for the Q&A session. Management will make forward-looking statements and refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures during today's call.

Actual results could differ materially from expectations. We will undertake no obligation to update them. We refer you to slide 3 for details on forward-looking statements and slide 4 for our use of non-GAAP financial measures. The press release and the slides provide reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, and we also post reconciling schedules to our investor website.

Please also refer to Maravai LifeSciences' SEC filings for additional information on risks and uncertainties that may impact our operating results, performance, and financial condition. Now I'll turn the call over to Bernd. Bernd Brest, CEO Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our second quarter performance, which builds on the strong momentum we established in the first quarter.

Our results reflect solid execution across the business and reinforce our confidence in both our near-term outlook and long-term strategy. 4 million, representing 9% year-over-year growth. TriLink revenue increased 12%, driven by strong demand for GMP consumables and continued strength in discovery mRNA, particularly from larger preclinical programs building our potential GMP pipeline as customer programs advance into clinical development. Because TriLink supports customers throughout the drug development lifecycle, we believe today's discovery success will create tomorrow's GMP opportunity.

Cygnus also delivered another solid quarter, with revenue growing 3% year over year, marking its fifth consecutive quarter of growth through its industry-leading HCP and ELISA portfolio. Combined with expanding analytical services, Cygnus continues to provide stable, recurring, high-margin revenue while strengthening customer relationships. Across the biologics workflow, our profitability improved significantly. 7 million.

These results reflect higher revenue, a favorable product mix, and the benefits of the operating model we built over the past year. We also significantly strengthened our balance sheet. In June, we refinanced our debt, reducing borrowings to approximately $150 million, essentially cutting debt in half since the beginning of 2026 while extending the maturities to 2032. Combined with improving profitability, we believe Maravai LifeSciences is well positioned from both a liquidity and financial flexibility standpoint.

Now let's turn to slide 7 and discuss our progress against our three strategic priorities: innovation, commercial execution, and operational excellence. Innovation remains the foundation of our long-term growth strategy. During the quarter, TriLink launched its new GMP-grade enzyme portfolio, expanding our ability to serve customers as a differentiated single-source innovation partner. Increasingly, customers are looking for integrated manufacturing solutions rather than individual components, and this launch meaningfully strengthens our competitive position.

We also continue to see outstanding adoption of Motail just one year after commercial launch. More than 125 customers are now actively using this technology, including many of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. Customer adoption continues to accelerate through new accounts, repeat orders, and broader use across multiple applications. Later this year, we expect to launch GMP-grade Motail, extending this platform into clinical manufacturing.

Customer interest has been strong, particularly in cell and gene therapy applications, further demonstrating how discovery innovation creates future GMP growth opportunity. Cygnus also continued to expand its innovation portfolio through the launch of a new residual PrismA Mix-n-Go kit, while continuing to invest in mass spec analytical services. Although services have a longer sales cycle, we are encouraged by growing customer engagement and increasing repeat business, and we expect this capability to become a more meaningful contributor over time. Finally, we continue strengthening our intellectual property portfolio across CleanCap, Motail, and Cygnus assays.

In addition to two new European patents we received in Q1, during Q2 TriLink received a new China patent covering a full family of CleanCap capping analogs, further reinforcing our global IP position. Commercial execution: Our commercial momentum continued to build throughout the first half of the year. Greater customer engagement has improved forecasting, increased visibility, and strengthened order conversion, and those improvements are clearly reflected in our results. Within discovery mRNA, we added 67 new customers in Q2, a record quarter for new customer acquisitions, while our e-commerce platform also delivered record quarterly revenue.

GMP consumables remained a standout performer, growing 55% year over year, driven by large CleanCap clinical orders and our first GMP enzyme order. We had no COVID GMP-related revenue in Q2. Operational excellence remains a key driver of our financial performance. The restructuring actions we implemented last year are now largely complete.

Combined with our debt refinancing, the company has fundamentally reset its cost structure. Importantly, our manufacturing infrastructure is already in place. Between our state-of-the-art mRNA facilities and new GMP enzyme facility, we believe our operating model is now built to scale, and we can support meaningful future growth with relatively modest incremental fixed costs. This operating leverage is central to our long-term financial model.

Now let me switch gears for a minute and share how we think about TriLink. As part of our recent long-range planning process, we concluded that investors may appreciate greater visibility into the distinct growth engines within TriLink. While we continue to report and manage our business in two operating segments, TriLink and Cygnus, we increasingly think about TriLink through three distinct market categories: mRNA, CDMO, and Specialty Chemistry. mRNA is our largest and most strategically important business out of these three.

It spans the full development lifecycle through discovery, clinical trials, and ultimately commercial programs. Discovery mRNA, which grew 17% year over year in Q2, includes our research-use products such as CleanCap, Motail, and related reagents. This spans the full research spectrum: academic and basic research customers on one end, and biopharma and biotech conducting advanced preclinical screening and program development on the other. This business not only generates revenues today but also seeds future GMP demand.

GMP consumables, which grew 55% year over year in Q2, is the clinical-grade supply business within mRNA: GMP CleanCap, GMP enzymes, and soon GMP Motail. This is where TriLink's operating leverage becomes most evident. The growth potential for TriLink here is straightforward. As customer programs advance through clinical development, we expect their demand for GMP materials to increase significantly while our infrastructure remains largely unchanged.

During the quarter, four new GMP customers. More importantly, with additional GMP product launches, we expect to increase the number of products each customer sources from TriLink, deepening relationships and expanding our share of wallet. The third stage is commercial programs. 3 million in Q1, or approximately 7% of estimated 2026 revenue at the midpoint of guidance.

Over the longer term, we expect commercial launches from our current non-COVID clinical pipeline to become a meaningful growth driver as customers' programs advance toward commercialization, expected to begin around 2028 and 2029. We believe TriLink is well positioned to support commercial-scale manufacturing using infrastructure that already exists. Overall, excluding COVID, CleanCap mRNA represents approximately 35% of expected 2026 revenue, and we continue to expect this business to grow at high single-digit to low double-digit rates over time. The second component within TriLink is our CDMO business, which represents less than 5% of expected 2026 revenue.

While project-based and inherently variable, it serves a select group of highly strategic cell and gene therapy customers with programs progressing toward commercialization. Finally, Specialty Chemistry. This is a stable, recurring research tools business consisting of oligo services and reagents, NTPs, and other related reagents. This business represents a little more than 20% of our expected 2026 revenue.

While we expect lower growth in mRNA, it remains an important contributor with strong customer relationships and attractive profitability. To be clear, our external financial reporting remains unchanged. We continue to operate and report through our two segments, TriLink and Cygnus. The additional framework we're providing today is intended to help investors better understand the different growth drivers within TriLink and how they contribute to our long-term opportunity.

In summary, we delivered another quarter of strong execution. We advanced innovation, strengthened commercial momentum, improved profitability, and significantly enhanced our financial position. Perhaps most importantly, we believe the investments we've made over the past year have fundamentally changed the company's earnings profile. Our infrastructure is in place, our balance sheet is stronger, and as customer programs continue advancing from discovery into clinical development and ultimately commercialization, we believe we are well positioned to deliver attractive long-term revenue growth, expanding margins, and increasing cash generation.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Raj to review the financial results and discuss our updated outlook. Raj Asarpota, EVP & Chief Financial Officer Raj, thank you, Bernd. Our second quarter reflects solid execution across both segments with improving margin flow-through. I'll focus on the key drivers behind the quarter, including revenue composition, profitability, and our updated outlook.

Let me start with a closer look at revenue on Slide 10. Our business remains well diversified across end markets. Revenue by customer type was 30% biopharma, 35% life sciences and diagnostics, 5% academia, 7% CRO, CMO, CDMO, and 23% distributors. By geography, revenue was 62% North America, 20% EMEA, 11% Asia Pacific excluding China, and 7% in China.

6 million. 8 million in the prior-year period. 7 million for Q2, exceeding our expectations and improving by more than 19 million year over year. This was driven by stronger revenue, favorable mix toward high-margin GMP and mRNA discovery, as well as continued OpEx discipline.

27 per share in Q2. 08 per share last year. Moving to the balance sheet and other financial metrics on Slide 12, as Bernd mentioned, in early June we significantly reduced debt and refinanced our term loan, extending the maturity out to 2032. 1 million in debt.

8 million. 2 million for the quarter. Turning to segment performance on Slide 13, TriLink represented 67% of total revenue in the quarter and contributed $7 million of adjusted EBITDA, benefiting from high-margin GMP product mix and improved operating leverage. 2 million year over year.

Within TriLink, mRNA—and specifically the GMP consumables and discovery mRNA categories—were the primary growth drivers. Specialty chemistry was steady. CDMO was down year over year and in line with our expectations based on the timing of customer programs. Cygnus represented 33% of total revenue and continued to deliver strong profitability.

4 million of adjusted EBITDA with margins of 68%. Cygnus saw steady demand for HCP analyzer kits and strength in China due to distributor ordering timing. 7 million in the quarter. These expenses include HR, finance, legal, IT, and public company costs.

Turning to our guidance on Slide 14, we are maintaining our expected 2026 revenue range of 205 million to 215 million, representing growth of 10% to 16% over 2025. We expect TriLink to grow in the high teens, driven by continued strength in GMP and discovery mRNA consumables. For Cygnus, we continue to expect low- to mid-single-digit growth. We are raising our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to 33 to 35 million, representing an improvement of 64 to 66 million year over year, primarily driven by improved performance in TriLink.

We continue to see strong demand in higher-margin areas of the portfolio, including GMP consumables, our high-margin mRNA discovery consumables, and key Cygnus product lines. That mix shift, combined with the structural improvements we've made, is driving the outperformance in EBITDA. Additionally, we see further upside in gross margin expansion and now expect greater than 1,400 basis points of improvement, supported by restructuring actions, cost discipline, favorable product mix, and a strong first half of the year. The remainder of the guidance framework provided in our Q1 call is unchanged.

The adjusted EBITDA guidance raise reflects higher confidence in profitability expectations rather than a change in our prudent revenue assumptions. We are maintaining the expected revenue range because two meaningful parts of our business—CDMO and large GMP consumables orders—are program-driven by nature. Individual orders can be large, and their timing can vary meaningfully quarter to quarter. It's simply how these businesses work, and our range is sized to reflect it.

Overall, we are encouraged by the momentum in the business. Improved commercial execution, a more efficient cost structure, and favorable mix are driving meaningful financial progress, and we remain confident in our outlook for 2026 and increasingly excited by the longer-term commercial opportunity Bernd described. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A. OPERATOR Thank you.

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