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Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Olink Proteomics First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stina Thorman, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for participating in today's conference call. On the call from Olink, we have Jon Heimer, Chief Executive Officer; and Oskar Hjelm, Chief Financial Officer.
Earlier today, Olink released financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2021. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that relate to expectations or predictions of future events, results or performance are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. For a list and description of the risks and uncertainties associated with Olink's business, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our Form F-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 24, 2021.
We urge you to consider these factors, and you should be aware that these statements should be considered estimates only and are not a guarantee of future performance. Also in the remarks or responses to question, management may mention some non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of adjusted gross profit and EBITDA and certain other non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in the recent earnings press release available on the company's website.
This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, May 20, 2021. Olink disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Jon.
Thank you, Stina. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Olink's first quarterly earnings call. Oskar and I will start with prepared remarks, and then we will take questions.
I'd like to start by saying that we are very excited to be speaking to you on our first quarter following our IPO on March 25, listing on NASDAQ and raising USD 264.7 million in gross proceeds. We're pleased to be able to report that we had a strong first quarter with reported total revenue of USD 13.6 million. This represents significant growth of 70% with the first quarter of 2020 on a reported basis.
We generated significant growth in both Kit and Service segments with reported year-on-year growth of 89% and 60%, respectively, driven by the Explore platform. On behalf of Olink, I would like to thank everyone who was involved with the IPO. With the investment community support, we are now better positioned to invest and further accelerate our plans to expand the adoption of Proteomics to help enable better understanding of real-time human biology.
While we had a chance to tell our story to many of you through our IPO process, I'll start today's call with an introduction to Olink and our platform solution. Olink is a market leader in the emerging fields of proteomics, addressing overwhelming, growing and accelerating inefficiencies in health care and drug development today by providing clarity on mechanistic biology with our differentiated platform. Olink is helping researchers and clinicians investigate protein pathways that drive disease to help guide candidates in drug development, improve outcome in drug development, earlier and more accurate diagnosis of patients to ultimately ensure that the right patient receives the right treatment at the right point in time.
Our platform of products and services have demonstrated success and used by over 600 customers in over 40 countries. Our customer base includes both large and small biopharma companies as well as leading academic institutions around the world. In addition to our customer footprint, utility and value of our platform has been validated as the research product used as a basis of almost 550 peer review publications through end of March in 2021.
Two papers worth highlighting are based on the Explore platform, which is of particular interest due to the fact that the platform was launched less than 12 months before each was published. The first publication titled, "Next-generation plasma proteome profiling to monitor health and disease," is a longitudinal wellness diabetes study published in Nature, led by Professor Mathias Uhlén. For this study, Explore was the platform of choice for the researchers to investigate wellness and treatment in the diabetic patient cohort.
The study examined newly diagnosed patients with Type 2 diabetes before and during therapeutic intervention using plasma proteome profiling. The authors found evidence that a panel of proteins can potentially be used for the early diagnosis of diabetes, including the stratification of patients with regards to response to metformin treatment. The authors concluded that the study demonstrated the value of comprehensive plasma profiling for precision medicine efforts. Specific findings from the study will, of course, require validation among larger cohorts, but it's very exciting to see the Explore platform associated with such cutting-edge research.
The second publication, "Longitudinal proteomic analysis of plasma from patients with severe COVID-19," revealed patient survival associated signature, tissue-specific cell death and cell-to-cell interaction. A longitudinal analysis of COVID-19 by researchers at the Broad Institute and MGH in Boston, led by Professor Mike Filbin. One unique aspect of this study was the tenth serial sampling of subjects in both the inpatient and outpatient settings, enabling the monitoring of intra individual changes in circulating protein as patients move from early disease to clinical deterioration.
This allowed not only the identification of potential biomarkers' characteristic for different disease stages, but also the examination of temporal patterns of protein expression that were associated with severe versus non-severe COVID-19. These 2 papers well encapsulate the scientific utility of Olink and the Explore platform as well as the breadth of the research that our platform enables.
Olink is differentiated in the market with our disruptive and proprietary Proximity Extension Assay, PEA, technology, which is used in discovery, translational and clinical applications. PEA comprises of 3 product lines, Explore, Target and Focus offers a Kit product or a Service through our analysis service labs. Each product allows scientists to detect and quantify its protein biomarker target with 1,500 available today, soon to be 3,000 and expanding to 4,500 in 2022.
We believe that our proprietary and patented PEA technology has the foundation necessary for broad application, large-scale discovery as well as more targeted clinical trials and diagnostic applications. Compared to many other technologies, PEA is totally scalable and can enable faster, better informed decisions in research with earlier detection and quantification of protein biomarkers in high multiplex and high throughput with an assay performance that so does not compromise on data quality.
Our newest product is Explore, launched worldwide as a service offering in June of last year and rolled out as kit offering just a couple of months ago in March this year. Explore combines our unique PEA high multiplexing technology with next-generation sequencing readout. The product overcomes significant limitations in other proteomic technologies, including remarkably increased performance in high multiplexing, throughput and cost efficiency. We achieved these improvements while maintaining the same robust transparent and thorough validation of each assay, generating accurate and reproducible data that can be trusted, turning findings into actionable outcome.
This exciting offering from Olink has been met with excitement and strong adoption from our customers. In the first quarter, Explore represented more than 50% of total revenue as compared to 26% for the full year 2020. We are pleased with Explore's traction as a service offering and are very excited about the momentum in the kits business. We are just beginning to commercialize this effort, but we are very pleased with the initial success and positive response from the market.
In the end of April, Illumina hosted a virtual meeting on Explore and its integration for NovaSeq and NextSeq NGS users. We expect Explore to continue to be a top driver of revenue growth rolling and a shift of the business from fee-for-service to a kits business model over time.
Our Target and Focus products use qPCR readout on Fluidigm Biomark HD system. But as we discussed during the IPO process, we are very excited to open up our order books for Olink Signature, a next-generation modern, cost-effective benchtop qPCR system for our Target and Olink Focus product portfolios in early June. We anticipate shipments of systems to begin in the fourth quarter. We believe Olink Signature will drastically lower the hurdles of adoption for our more targeted products.
In conjunction with the launch of Olink Signature, we're also very excited to start development of a new flexible product offering, where customers can freely pick and choose up to 20 protein biomarker target. This product will add a great new addition in our Target portfolio, which we believe our customers will very much appreciate. We will begin selling this flexible product in 2022.
On top of that, we will also open up our order books for our 3,000 product already in June, doubling our library of validated protein biomarker target. This is an important milestone in our ambitions to rapidly expand our offering in the [ hi-plex ] space. We know our customers are very excited about the expansion of our protein biomarker target, and we anticipate shipping kit and recognizing revenues related to the 3,000 product in the fourth quarter of this year.
As we reported during the IPO, Olink is a global enterprise with a strong footprint in the U.S. and Europe and a rapidly growing presence in China. During the first quarter, we were particularly pleased with our performance in the Americas, after seeing some impact on our business during 2020 as a result of COVID-19. In the first quarter, revenue was USD 7.3 million in the Americas growing 142% year-over-year. In EMEA and rest of world, revenue growth was 51% and negative 41%, respectively. Oskar will discuss the details of our revenues in a moment.
It's great to see that Americas is picking up steam to pre-COVID growth and also the continued strong growth across EMEA. We established our business in China during 2020, with the opening of our first office in Shanghai early in the year. In China, we've been focused on getting our commercial team in place and have strengthened the business development and field application science teams as well as working through the regulatory and administrative issues to ensure smooth business operation for all customers.
Following the IPO, Olink remains focused on investing in the business to accelerate research and development as well as expand commercial infrastructure to drive revenue growth. We remain confident in expanding our protein library to 3,000 assets later this year and 4,500 in 2022 in the hi-plex space. In parallel, we are building out our mid-plex portfolio products and looking at various opportunities to accelerate R&D as well as product and service offerings from Olink.
Further, the IPO proceeds may enable Olink to pursue technologies and capabilities that are better acquired than built internally. As you recall, we closed an acquisition of Agrisera, a Swedish manufacturer of antibodies, in April 2020. Agrisera had previously been supplier to Olink, and by owning Agrisera, we've been able to accelerate development of antibodies and generation of new assays within the Olink family.
The integration of Agrisera has gone as well as or perhaps better than we had anticipated at the time of closing, and we are now actually expanding operations of Agrisera in new, larger facilities and transferring some of the early upstream PEA development processes to Umeå, where Agrisera is based. In parallel, we remain very open to opportunities to expand commercial and R&D efforts that will accelerate our growth and market leadership position.
We continue to invest according to our strategic plan, consistent with what was communicated during the IPO roadshow. We continued to add meaningful number of hires to our commercial and R&D teams, in particular, but we're also -- but we are really growing all parts of the business, and we are investing slightly ahead of the curve. We ended 2020 with 214 employees. And as of the end of March, we were 270 employees. On a run rate basis, included all hired personnel who have not yet started, and consultants, we are 337 employees as of the end of April.
Olink is off to a strong start in 2021 with significant opportunity ahead. As we continue to grow to meet customer demand, we are making sure to watch our operations carefully. One area that we are more focused today than just a couple of months ago is our supply chain. We started to see some impacts from COVID related to transportation and logistics. But we are diligently monitoring development as needs arise and managing through them as best as we can.
In summary, we are pleased with our first quarter performance, and we look forward to executing on our investment and strategic plans outlined during the roadshow as we move forward through 2021.
I will now turn the call over to Oskar to discuss our financial results. Oskar?
Thanks, Jon, and hello, everyone. As Jon mentioned earlier, total revenue for the first quarter of 2021 was USD 13.6 million as compared to $8 million for the first quarter of 2020. Revenue growth was driven primarily by Explore analysis services and with the Service segment growing 60% year-over-year. The Kit segment was our fastest-growing segment with 89% year-over-year growth on a reported basis.
Analysis services revenues for the first quarter 2021 was $9.6 million as compared to $6 million in the first quarter of 2020. Kit revenue for the first quarter of 2021 was $2.8 million as compared to $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2020. Other revenue was $1.2 million for the first quarter of 2021 as compared to $0.5 million in the first quarter of 2020.
Looking at revenue by geography, revenue in North America was $7.3 million as compared to $3 million in the first quarter of 2020. In EMEA, revenue was $5.5 million as compared to $3.7 million in Q1 2020. Revenue in China and rest of the world was $0.8 million as compared to $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2020.
Cost of goods sold was $5 million in the first quarter of 2021, resulting in a gross profit of $8.6 million in the first quarter of 2021 as compared to cost of goods sold of $3.5 million in the first quarter of 2020, resulting in a gross profit of $4.4 million in the first quarter of 2020. Adjusted gross margin improved to 67.6% compared to 62.2% last year. The increase of 540 basis points was due to an improvement in the production efficiency, leading to lower inventory variances. We typically see an improving gross margin throughout the year.
By segment, adjusted gross profit margin for analysis services was 64% for the first quarter 2021 as compared to 66% in the first quarter of 2020. Decrease in adjusted gross profit percentage compared to the first quarter of 2020 was primarily due to the increase in lab personnel and temporary reduced efficiency in the labs as we were introducing the Explore service offering.
Adjusted gross profit margin for kit was 83% for the first quarter 2021 as compared to 44% in the first quarter of 2020. The improvement in adjusted gross profit percentage for kit was due to an improvement in the production efficiency, leading to lower inventory variances and reduced level of scrapping in 2021. Adjusted gross profit margin for other was 63% for the first quarter 2021 as compared to 67% in the first quarter of 2020. Our other gross margin decreased as there were certain larger low-margin projects related to a specific KOL that was recognized in Q1 2021.
Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2021 were $22.4 million as compared to $9.1 million in the first quarter of 2020. We continue to invest according to our strategic plan and what we communicated during the road show, adding a meaningful number of hires to our commercial and R&D teams, in particular, but we are really growing all parts of the business, and we are investing slightly ahead of the curve. We ended 2020 with 214 employees. And as of the end of March 2021, we were 270 employees. On a run rate basis, including all hired personnel who have not yet started, and consultants, we were 337 employees as of the end of April. We see a lot of opportunity ahead for Olink, and we are investing accordingly.
Operating expenses are broken out as follows: sales and marketing expenses for first quarter were $5.7 million as compared to $2.7 million in the first quarter of 2020. General and administrative expenses for the first quarter were $12.4 million as compared to $3.9 million in the first quarter of 2020. General and administrative expenses in the first quarter of 2021 includes approximately $4 million of expenses related to our IPO, $2.4 million related to management fee to Summa Equity and $2.7 million relating to intangibles amortization, stemming from the purchase price allocation following Summa Equity's acquisition of Olink in 2019.
Research and development expenses were $4.2 million versus $2.6 million for the prior year period. And other operating income and expenses were negative $0.1 million in the first quarter of 2021 as compared to $0.1 million of income in the first quarter of 2020.
Net loss for the quarter of -- first quarter of 2021 was $14.3 million as compared to $11.1 million in the first quarter of 2020. Net loss per share for the first quarter of 2021 was a loss of $0.48 as compared to a loss of $0.76 in the first quarter of 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2021 was negative $3.7 million as compared to negative $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2020. We ended the quarter with $191.4 million of cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2021. Following the IPO, we repaid all our outstanding debt facility.
Moving to our outlook for the rest of the year. We expect revenue for the full year 2021 to be in the range of $90 million to $92 million, representing 66% to 70% growth over 2020.
Now I'll turn it back to Jon. Thank you.
Thank you, Oskar. In summary, the first quarter of 2021 was a very exciting time at Olink for our dedicated team, our customers and our shareholders. We continue to see robust adoption and appreciation from the market on our portfolio of products and services. Our successful IPO has positioned us to invest further in our business and continue to deliver strong operational and financial results this year and beyond. At this point, we will open up the call for questions. Operator?
[Operator Instructions] And our first question coming from the line of Puneet Souda with SVB Leerink.
Great. Jon, congrats on a first quarter, definitely a strong one. And it looks like the revenue guide is definitely ahead of the consensus numbers prior to the quarter. So the first one, if I could ask, is what -- if you can provide Explore versus Target kits? I don't know if that was provided during the call? And how should we think about the service -- I mean, service [ for each ] was pretty meaningful versus what we had in our numbers.
So I wanted to just get a view of how should we think about service versus kits throughout the year? Obviously, the Explore product is a new product that's getting out into the market and customers have a little bit of a build-up time in order to build their capabilities to bring this product in. But wanted to get a sense from you how should we think about modeling that for the full year?
Sure. No, thanks very much, Puneet. So we have not shared sort of the greater details of the difference between Explorer and Target kits. But as you heard from Oskar that we had a significant growth in the kits business in this quarter compared to the quarter in 2020. And -- so exactly to your point, if you revert to the Explore kits business, we launched that offering, as you know, in March, so towards the end of the third month in the first quarter. And to your point as well that there is a process for customers to setting it up.
However, the market, as we just said, that we've had a very strong reception from the market in this kit offering, and we are looking at a very strong pipeline of customers to internalize this. So we remain very confident in the projections and our plans for this year and feel very, very confident and comfortable with where we're at and where we want to be towards the end of the year.
Okay. That's helpful. On the -- and I really appreciate you providing full year guide. But on the second quarter, I just wanted to get a sense from you in terms of the factors we should be considering? Obviously, COVID is ongoing right now, but you obviously delivered a strong growth here in the first quarter. UK Biobank is starting, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's a second quarter, third quarter phenomenon more than the fourth quarter. Obviously, we appreciate the fourth quarter seasonality is usually very meaningful for you. So given those considerations, what can you give us for the -- in terms of the second quarter? And how should we be thinking about that in terms of modeling?
Right. Yes, you're correct, we will actually be receiving the first batch of samples from UK Biobank today. But we will not probably complete those or send data until the third quarter. So we will start seeing -- collecting revenues from that in the third quarter. We -- as we pointed out, the guidance for the year, it remains intact to what we just communicated. And we are -- remain very happy where the business is at, where it's going. And to your point as well that especially in America, as you see a fantastic growth over last year and that we had a very strong business in Europe last year despite COVID-19 going on. But now we see America is really picking up steam, and -- which we foresee will continue throughout the year. Obviously COVID hasn't left us. It's still around. But we're still very hopeful and optimistic for the situation we're in and what we're looking at ahead.
Okay. Sure. I'll take that. And last question, if I can squeeze in, Jon. In terms of the product pipeline, you have 3,000 products -- product -- protein panel coming up here, 4,500 after that. Can you give us a sense of where do you stand in terms of validation of that and other things that you need to do in order to launch those products? And anything you can provide sort of beyond that 4,500 product and really appreciate you providing some details around the flexible product offering, that sounds really interesting. If you could just maybe just briefly elaborate as to what is the target market for that product for the 20 proteins or so?
Sure thing. Good question, Puneet. Yes. No, we're very excited too, as we pointed out, open up the order books for the 3,000 product here in June. So obviously, that is a very strong signal that that development is going very much to plan. And that we are now in the later stages of the product validation, which we think is a very important aspect and piece of our offering that provides very robust data quality that you can trust and immediately act on. So this is very high validation, which is totally unique for Olink in this market, and we put a lot of emphasis and focus on that. So the 3,000 product is according to plan. The 4,500 product is also progressing to plan, where we're now in the antibody generation phase for that to develop targets to ramp up from the 3,000 to 4,500. I'm also glad you mentioned the flexible offering we will be launching here -- or start developing, rather, and start selling in 2022. So as I also mentioned, that we will be launching the signa -- or start taking orders for the Signature platform here in June as well. Obviously, also sort of validating the fact that it goes according to plan and on timeline and so forth, expecting to collect -- start collecting revenues in the fourth quarter.
And when we look at that market, we have what we think a fantastic offering and very strong portfolio for that market with a more targeted panels where customers wants to look at a bit fewer proteins and not the very extreme high throughput system with Explore. But in addition to that, we also see that, that market wants to be able to pick and choose a bit from a pre-validated library of assays. So that is exactly what we're providing.
Since PEA is unique in its ability to multiplex, we can also provide that sort of flexible offering in higher multiplex than what any technology can offer in that market as well. We will be very much focused on insulin inflammatory markers, where we -- which we know represents the biggest piece of that lower/mid-plex market of more protein analysis. So customers will be able to pick and choose from a pre-validated library of initially a few hundred targets and select which proteins they want to use. And we will rapidly turn that around and deliver those products, which we think will really complete the offering and be very, very attractive to that lower mid-plex market.
Our next question coming from the line of Matt Sykes with Goldman Sachs.
Congrats on the first quarter. I just wanted to talk a little bit about sort of new versus existing customers. I know there's -- the Explore launch is very new, but obviously, you're getting probably a lot of feedback and seeing potentially some new customers, and a lot of them are coming within analysis, and then we'll likely see it as show up in the kits business. But could you just talk about the trend of new versus existing customers? And in particular as it relates to Explore and other products?
Yes. Thanks, Matt. Yes. And I think the amazing opportunity that we're providing this industry here is the ability to complete the multiomics perspective with proteomics on the same underlying platform that these research groups already have in-house, i.e., the Illumina, NovaSeq and NextSeq. So I think a fantastic example of that is the seminar we -- actually Illumina hosted where catering to their internal sort of community of customers to those genomic customers that have not been able to add proteins in a single smooth way in the past.
So that is one segment of the market where we are very excited about and who we believe also sees a very great value and addition to add proteins to complete that multiomics perspective to provide much higher and better clarity on real-time human biology driving their research. So as we look probably later in the year, it's a bit early with the launch of kits just in March, right, to look at that mix of existing customer base versus new customers. But if we would point in the direction, I think that us being able to offer the proteomics tools for genomics users will definitely be one such area we can talk to later in the year.
Got it. And kind of related to Puneet's question, but just given that we're in May now and you've just started selling the Explore in March, any sense for trends for the Explore kit that you can give us? And then lastly, just any feedback on pricing or anything from customers on that end in relation to Explore as you're continuing to roll that out?
Sure. Yes. No, I mean, it's a bit early to talk about specifics. I think we are very excited by the interest we see from the market. The pipeline we're building, the discussions we have. Everything in the works of many of these customers wanting to bring the Explorer platform in-house. Plus we've been able to increase multiplexing, utilize the tremendous advancements we see in NGS, bringing prices down. We also see strong excitement and interest on that perspective as well from this customer base. So a bit early to comment on specifics, but we feel very solid on where we're at, and we're super excited about all the excitement that the market and our customers are sharing with us around the Explore platform, for sure.
Your next question coming from Tejas Savant with Morgan Stanley.
So one question for you, Jon, just to start things off on the guide. Is there anything that you're embedding in terms of a residual COVID impact in the customer base and/or the supply chain here? I know you called out sort of potential supply chain issues ticking up a little bit and you're doing -- you're sort of putting in place efforts to deal with it. But it would be great if you can elaborate on that, specifically on the kit side? And then if you can share some color in terms of the trends you saw in terms of the order book in April and May, that would be terrific as well?
Sure. Yes. No, thank you. Right. No. So obviously, we have a pandemic going on, right? And we have seen some strains on the supply chain, especially around very simple products like plates and tips for [ pipetting ], for example. So we're obviously extremely on top of that, very proactive. We have placed orders. We're monitoring very closely. We ensure that we have what we need in stock, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's just pandemic going on, a lot of COVID testing and so forth as everyone knows, right?
So we just wanted to point to that fact, there is a strain on the supply chain in our industry. However, we don't feel that, that has any bearing on our guidance, that we're on top of it and being very proactive to handle that. So we feel very comfortable on where we're at. I just wanted to highlight that fact that there is such strain.
And just I sort of commented on just recently, I mean, we are very excited about all the discussions we have. We see a huge tailwind for proteomics. It's the next omic that will drive the science in this industry. And we are very strongly positioned as a key player there. So hence, we feel very good about where we're at, where we're heading and the remainder of the year.
Got it. Helpful. And then in terms of just the UK Biobank work, I know you mentioned you just got the samples and hope to start generating revenue in the third quarter. But can you share some color on any sort of follow-on conversations with other kind of like population proteomics customers in the pipeline? Or does it still remain very early for that at this stage?
No. On the contrary, it's a lot of discussion about such strategic projects and initiatives. It's a bit too early to be specific in terms of which cohorts and players and so forth. But that's a very important element of the whole industry that we've collected these important biobanks. We populate them with a lot of genomics data. And now we need to add the next very important, perhaps the most important omic to that mix. So hence, proteomics is what people is looking at as that has now become readily available at scale, cost, throughput, quality and so forth.
So I think that is something that is, for sure, in a lot of discussions and something we will hopefully be able to talk much more in detail on in later calls.
Got it. Got it. Helpful. And then 2 -- sort of a 2-parter here. One on your analysis service expansion plans. Clearly, as was mentioned earlier in the call, analysis service came in higher than where I think most Street models were. So just seeing that and how the offering is resonating with customers here. Can you just elaborate on plans for expanding that service outside of Europe, particularly in the U.S.?
And then in terms of the clinical strategy, can you just share what you're seeing in terms of customers looking to bring panels to the clinic and your own internal efforts as well?
Sure. Yes. No. I mean, as we see a very rapidly growing demand for proteomics and Olink in particular, we need to beef up and show that we can deliver to that growing demand. As you know, we're extremely focused on pushing the kits business in a more decentralized manner and which is sort of a very strong focus of ours with the launch of the Explore kits here in March and all these discussions we're having with customers on the market and building the pipeline and all of that. But obviously, we need to ensure that we can meet demands on both legs of the business for sure.
And the second part of the question, regarding the clinic. Yes. So we're super excited to see how [ Optane ] is progressing. We know they're closing in on launching their LDT offering in the multiple sclerosis space. A fantastic, I think, initiative, which hopefully will really make a serious impact for patients with multiple sclerosis and ensure that each patient there gets the right treatment at the right time. And it's great to follow the progress in clinicaltrials.gov, where we see the expansion and use of Olink in many clinical studies and so forth. So obviously, this starts the whole process with casting that broad net in discovery to identify the novel biomarkers that can drive those insights and then take them into the clinic as well.
So proteomics is still early days, but despite that, we see a lot of fantastic traction towards clinical use. So we are equally excited in that department.
Got it. And one final one for me for Oskar. Oskar, $22 million in OpEx in 1Q, should we essentially be thinking of that as the baseline and grow from that number sequentially through the remainder of the year?
Yes. I think sort of looking at sort of, we're not providing any guidance on sort of OpEx and operating margins. But I think if you look in the -- in the details, you would see that the $22 million is sort of impacted by around $6 million of IPO-related and nonrecurring expenses that I would sort of subtract from the underlying cost base. And then as we sort of -- we've talked about sort of during the roadshow and also during the call, we continue to invest in the organization to sort of execute the commercial ramp up and build up, continue to invest in R&D to pursue this opportunity and doing that at a high pace.
Congrats on solid first quarter out of the gate.
Your next question coming from the line of Sung Ji Nam with BTIG.
Congratulations on the quarter as well. Just maybe starting off with, obviously, you guys are seeing a lot of strong momentum, especially with the Explore kits and Explore in general. But was curious if you have any insight into kind of the customer activity levels, across the different geographic regions relative to pre-pandemic levels? I don't know if that's hard to tease out, but given just, obviously, strong growth in North America and still decent growth in EMEA, a little bit I think, pressure in the -- in China, rest of the world regions. If you could kind of talk about what you guys are seeing from a customer activity level relative to pre-pandemic levels, that would be helpful?
Sure. Thank you. No. And obviously, it's super excited to see the Americas back to pre-COVID growth or accelerating from there to be honest. So fantastic first quarter from the Americas and a great shout out to our fantastic team there delivering very, very strong results. But I would really also say the same thing about EMEA, to be honest. I think our EMEA team did wonders throughout 2020 and delivering solid growth during a pandemic and continue building on that growth in 2021 as well is fantastic to see.
So -- and as to your point, I mean, it's still early days for us in Asia. We are just getting established, setting up the business processes, as we said, maneuvering the human genetic regulations in China to ensure smooth operations for our customers and ourselves in that region. So it's a little bit early, of course, to say too much about that, but a lot of excitement there as well, and we know that they are looking very closely on what goes on in the western world and adopting similar type of strategies in their research as we see led by Americas and EMEA. So overall, very excited and perhaps mostly around the fantastic momentum and buildup in growth we now see in the Americas to pre-COVID very aggressive growth.
Got you. Super helpful. And then just obviously, 2 publications related to Explore, very impressive already. And then you talked about the strong pipeline of customers. Could you kind of talk about kind of characterize these customers? Any surprises there in terms of potential customers that are interested in the PEA application, would love to hear kind of what you're seeing currently?
Yes. Yes, no real surprises. I think it's pretty evident to this research community that we really need to add proteins to this mix, right? And it's just that proteomics technologies in very high multiplexing with high sensitivity, high specificity, validated data in a high throughput, cost-effective manner hasn't been there. And obviously, now it's here, and people are excited and [ entering it ]. So it really goes across the mix from the industry to academia, CROs and core labs across those domains to add this extremely important omic to the mix of opportunities they have to conduct the research. So no real surprises really but rather very a lot of excitement and interest around the offering and the capabilities that we bring to the table.
Great. And then lastly for me. The impending launch of the 3,000 protein library, obviously, very exciting there. Just kind of curious, how should we think about that transition in terms of from the customer standpoint? Are there customers that are kind of actually holding off until that's available before starting some of the projects? How would they incorporate that from the 1,500 and then moving on to 3,000 and then beyond?
Yes. Great. Thank you. No, we're super excited as well. It's a tremendous milestone for us. So one of the beauties in how we present our products is it's very simple to start over the first 1,500 and add the next 1,500 on top of that. So I wouldn't say that customers are holding off, rather start building and adding to that mix. So I think that's a great solution and offering that we provide that you can really add to the mix rather than have to, for example, rerun samples with new offerings and so forth, so it's just additions. So I wouldn't characterize it as -- rather that it's just capacity, customers are excited. They want to get more proteins and expand, and they can build on to the data set that they have or are generating.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's all the time we have for questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Jon Heimer for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, operator, and thank you, everyone, for listening in today. We are obviously super excited with the first quarter and the strong excitement and opportunity Olink represents in this very important research community. So thanks, everyone, for joining, and we look very much forward to speaking to you soon again. Have a fantastic day.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.