Item 1A. Risk Factors
Item 1A. Risk Factors.
In addition to the other information set forth in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, you should carefully consider the risk factors and other cautionary statements described under the heading “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 28, 2025 and in Part II, Item 1A of our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on May 7, 2025 and August 6, 2025, as updated below, which could materially affect our business, financial condition or future results. Additional risks and uncertainties not currently known to us or that we currently deem to be immaterial also may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or future results. There have been no material changes in our risk factors from those described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 28, 2025 and our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on May 7, 2025 and August 6, 2025, other than the updates to the risk factors set forth below. We may disclose changes to risk factors or additional risk factors from time to time in our future filings with the SEC.
Our strategic plan may not achieve the anticipated results, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain revenue growth or operate our business on a profitable basis.
Our current strategic plan is focused on three pillars. First, we plan to drive accelerated growth and profitability by focusing on the Cancer Care Continuum, or CCC, market. We plan to do so by increasing investment in research and development and enhancing our commercial capabilities and customer digital experience to better serve the CCC market. We also plan to leverage strategic partnerships and biopharma services to unlock new growth drivers and expand our portfolio of testing solutions to other high-growth cancer segments such as molecular residual disease (MRD). Second, we aim to grow our Prenatal Health and Mental Health revenues at or above market growth by leveraging our expanded prenatal offerings, including FirstGene Multiple Prenatal Screen, to drive increased volume. We also plan to focus on high value GeneSight accounts and leverage state biomarker laws to improve our reimbursement rates. Third, we plan to complement the revenue growth drivers outlined above with an enhanced focus and commitment on delivering sustained, profitable growth. Our future performance and growth depend on the success of our strategic plan, including management's ability to execute upon that plan and the ability of our employees to respond quickly and effectively to strategic projects and changes in our operations and business practices. The implementation of our strategic plan has resulted, and is expected to continue to result, in changes to business priorities and operations, capital allocation priorities, operational and organizational structures, and increased demands on management. The execution of our strategic plan may take longer than anticipated, and we may not realize, in full or part, our anticipated growth targets in our testing volumes and revenue, or such growth may be realized more slowly than anticipated.
In recent years we have not operated our business profitably, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. Potential events or factors that may have a significant impact on our ability to achieve our growth targets and achieve and/or maintain revenue growth and profitability for our business include the following:
• the efforts of third-party payors to limit or decrease the amounts that they are willing to pay for our tests, recoup amounts already paid, not cover our tests, or institute burdensome administrative requirements for reimbursement, such as prior authorization requirements;
• our ability to execute on our strategic plan;
• increased costs of reagents and other consumables required for testing;
• increased personnel and facility costs;
• our inability to hire competent, trained staff, including laboratory directors required to review and approve all reports we issue in our business, and sales personnel;
• our inability to obtain necessary equipment or reagents to perform testing;
• our inability to increase production capacity to meet demand increases;
• our inability to expand into new markets;
• increased licensing or royalty costs, and our ability to maintain and enforce the intellectual property rights underlying our tests and services;
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• changes in intellectual propriety law applicable to our patents or enforcement in the United States and foreign countries;
• the expiration of the patents covering our products;
• potential obsolescence of our tests;
• our inability to obtain or increase commercial acceptance of our tests;
• increased competition and loss of market share;
• global or local economic conditions;
• protectionist laws and business practices, including trade restrictions, tariffs, export controls, quotas and other trade barriers, including China-U.S., Mexico-U.S. and Canada-U.S trade policies;
• increased regulatory requirements;
• material litigation costs, settlements, and judgments;
• our increased investment in research and development, including the possibility that new products may fail to achieve clinical validation, regulatory clearance, or market acceptance; and
• our inability to successfully execute our plan to leverage strategic collaborations and biopharma partnerships, which arrangements may not be available on acceptable terms, or at all, delayed, modified, or terminated, any of which could potentially affect our ability to launch or commercialize new testing solutions.
The failure to achieve our growth targets and achieve and/or maintain revenue growth and profitability for our business could have a material adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, as well as the trading price of our common stock.
An inability to attract and retain experienced and qualified personnel, including key management personnel, could adversely affect our business.
Because of the specialized scientific nature of our business, we are highly dependent upon our ability to attract and retain highly qualified and experienced personnel, including key management personnel. Competition for these personnel is intense, especially for management, sales, scientific, medical, information technology, research and development and other technical personnel. We may not be able to attract or retain qualified personnel in the future due to the competition for qualified personnel among life science and technology businesses as well as universities and public and private research institutions. We have from time to time experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. Our compensation arrangements, such as our short-term incentive and equity award programs, may not be successful in attracting new employees and retaining and motivating our existing employees, particularly in instances where the value of our common stock has declined since the time that incentive awards were granted. Our agreements with our employees generally provide for employment that can be terminated by either party without cause at any time, subject to specified notice requirements. Further, the non-competition provision that certain key employees are subject to may not be enforceable under certain state laws, particularly California, or federal laws or such provisions may be prohibitively expensive to enforce. Moreover, such provisions may not deter or prevent employees from leaving our company. Our growth and commercial expansion have increased demands on our workforce, which has placed additional strain on our employees and may heighten the risk of fatigue, burnout, or employee attrition. In addition, inflation has had an impact on the costs that we incur to attract and retain qualified personnel and may make it more difficult for us to attract and retain such personnel.
Our success also depends on the skills, experience and performance of key members of our senior management team, who are critical to directing and managing our growth, profitability and development in the future. Our senior management team has recently undergone significant changes. On April 30, 2025, Paul J. Diaz stepped down from serving as our President and Chief Executive Officer. On the same date, Samraat S. Raha, our former Chief Operating Officer, succeeded Mr. Diaz as our President and Chief Executive Officer and Mark S. Verratti, our former Chief Commercial Officer, succeed Mr. Raha as our Chief Operating Officer. On May 1, 2025, Brian Donnelly, was appointed as our new Chief Commercial Officer. In addition, on August 16, 2025, Benjamin R. Wheeler, our former Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Operations, was appointed as our new Chief Financial Officer. Although we have taken steps to help ensure a smooth and successful transition of our senior leadership, there can be no assurance that these steps will be successful. The transition of our senior leadership team or the loss of any member of our senior management team may create uncertainty, involve a diversion of resources and management attention, or cause us to experience difficulties in competing effectively, developing our technologies, and implementing our business strategies. Furthermore, the loss of the services of or failure to recruit key scientific and technical personnel and other qualified personnel who are necessary to operate our business would adversely affect our business and it may have a material adverse effect on our business as a whole.
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Planned or potential changes in the way the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates tests performed by laboratories like ours could result in delay and/or additional expense in offering our tests and tests that we may develop in the future.
Historically, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has exercised enforcement discretion with respect to most laboratory developed tests, or LDTs, and has generally not required laboratories that furnish LDTs to comply with the agency’s requirements for medical devices (e.g., establishment registration, device listing, quality systems regulations, premarket clearance or premarket approval, and post-market controls). However, in May 2024, the FDA issued a final rule to regulate LDTs under the existing medical device framework and to phase out its longstanding enforcement discretion policy over a four-year period. Following issuance of the final rule, the American Clinical Laboratory Association and one of its members filed a complaint against the FDA in the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that the agency does not have authority to promulgate the LDT final rule and seeking to vacate the FDA’s action. A second lawsuit was also filed against FDA by the the Association for Molecular Pathology on August 19, 2024 in the Southern District of Texas, and subsequently the two cases were consolidated into a single action pending in the Eastern District of Texas. On March 31, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated the final rule in its entirety and remanded the matter to the FDA, holding that the rule exceeded the agency’s authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA did not appeal the decision. As a result, the phase-in deadlines established by the rule are no longer operative, and in September 2025 the FDA implemented the court's vacatur of the final rule with a formal public notice.
The court’s decision striking down the final rule preserves the existing enforcement-discretion policy for LDTs, which reduces the immediate regulatory burden for laboratories such as ours. However, uncertainty remains regarding the future of federal oversight in this area. The FDA could seek to reissue a revised rule, or the U.S. Congress could enact new legislation establishing a statutory framework for regulating in vitro diagnostics, including LDTs. Any such actions could impose new requirements on our operations and may result in increased compliance costs, delays in test development or commercialization, and other operational disruptions.
If future legislative or regulatory changes expand FDA’s oversight of LDTs, we may be required to obtain premarket clearance or approval for some of our existing or future tests, modify our quality-system procedures, or make other costly changes to our operations. Failure to comply with any applicable FDA requirements, or future comparable regulatory regimes, could trigger a range of enforcement actions by the FDA, including warning letters, civil monetary penalties, injunctions, criminal prosecution, recall or seizure, operating restrictions, partial suspension or total shutdown of operations and denial of or challenges to applications for clearance or approval, as well as significant adverse publicity.
Changes in health care policy could increase our costs, decrease our revenue and impact sales of and reimbursement for our tests.
In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, collectively called the ACA, became law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021. This law substantially changed the way health care is financed by both government and private third-party payors and continues to significantly impact our business and operations in ways we may not be able to predict. Future changes or additions to the ACA or the Medicare and Medicaid programs, such as changes stemming from other health care reform measures, especially with regard to health care access, financing or other legislation in individual states, could have a material adverse effect on the health care industry in the United States. The impact to reimbursement levels and the number of insured individuals under the ACA may lead to delay in the purchasing decisions of our customers, which may in turn negatively impact our product sales. Further, if reimbursement levels are inadequate, our business and results of operations could be adversely affected.
The ACA has also been the focus of ongoing legal challenges that could materially affect insurance coverage for our products and services. For example, in Braidwood Management v. Becerra, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2024 upheld a lower court ruling that found the ACA’s mandate requiring insurance coverage for certain preventive services without cost sharing to be unconstitutional. However, in June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Braidwood Management v. Becerra and upheld the ACA’s requirement that insurance cover certain preventive services, in a ruling now captioned Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc. Future health care reform initiatives, whether at the federal or state level, intended to reduce health care costs may instead have the effect of discouraging third-party payors from covering certain types of medical products and services.
In addition, recently enacted federal legislation, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, is expected to reduce enrollments in Medicaid and ACA marketplace exchanges, which could limit access to insurance coverage for certain patient populations. To the extent these changes decrease the number of insured individuals or alter reimbursement rates for our tests, our test volumes and revenues could be adversely affected.
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Beyond the ACA, there will continue to be proposals by legislators at both the federal and state levels, regulators and private third-party payors to reduce costs while expanding individual health care benefits. Certain of these changes could impose additional limitations on the prices we will be able to charge for our tests or the amounts of reimbursement available for our tests from governmental agencies or private third-party payors. Any future changes to legal or regulatory requirements or new cost containment initiatives could have a materially adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operation, and cash flows.
Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds.
Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities
Not applicable.
Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
We did not repurchase any of our equity securities during the q uarter ended September 30, 2025.
Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities.
None.
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.
Not applicable.
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.