Seer (SEER) Q3 2026 earnings review
Seer cuts its annual sales plan while losses narrow
Seer, which makes lab instruments and chemical kits for studying proteins in blood, grew sales from last quarter but cut its full-year target. Third-quarter revenue rose 28% from the second quarter to $4 million, and excluding affiliated company PrognomiQ, sales edged up 2% from a year ago by our math. Chief executive Omid Farokhzad cited repeat chemical kit orders and new pharmaceutical customers, but university budget delays forced the company to lower its annual plan.
| Revenue excluding related parties | $3.89M +1.8% from a year ago (by our math) |
|---|---|
| Total revenue | $3.98M -3.4% from a year ago |
| Operating loss | $14.7M $19.3M loss a year ago |
| Full-year revenue outlook | Cut $3M middle of the range: $14.0M (-16% from 2025) |
⚖️ Verdict: 🔴 Bearish
The story got worse because Seer abandoned the second-half sales rebound its previous plan required and confirmed a second straight year of missed initial targets. In addition, the board ended its strategic review by deciding to stay independent while nearly halting share buybacks. The good news: a 23% cut in operating expenses reduced cash burn, and trade agency staff backed Seer's request to block rival Nanomics.
The question now is whether the growing pile of scientific studies using Proteograph will ever turn into regular chemical kit orders. Either the machines placed last year start generating steady repeat sales once university budgets loosen, or utilization per machine keeps shrinking while annual cash burn eats into the $198 million cash pile. The full-year installed base and per-machine kit sales disclosed next quarter will tell.
🐂 Bull Case
Lower Research Spending Trims Quarterly Operating Losses
Seer makes Proteograph, a lab system that uses tiny engineered particles to help researchers measure thousands of proteins in blood samples. While sales have struggled to grow this year, the company has steadily cut its overhead to slow its cash burn.
Total operating expenses fell 23% from a year ago to $16.5 million. Research and development — the cost of designing new lab instruments and chemical kits — dropped 40% to $6.4 million, moving down by 100 percentage points of revenue. Selling and administrative overhead dipped 5% to $10.1 million, or 5 percentage points of revenue. Because of those cuts, operating losses narrowed from $19.3 million to $14.7 million, and free cash flow burn slowed to $9.5 million in the third quarter by our math.
What to watch: operating expenses in the fourth quarter. A further drop would show whether Seer can keep shrinking its quarterly cash burn without hurting customer support.
Patent Rival Nanomics Withdraws From Trade Case
Earlier this year, Seer blamed part of its sales drop on rival firms selling lower-priced imitation products and took legal action to block them. That patent defense scored a win in November before the U.S. International Trade Commission, or ITC, which polices imports.
Target rival Nanomics Biotechnology stopped defending itself in the trade agency's investigation. Following that withdrawal, the agency's investigative staff "recommended granting the full exclusion and cease-and-desist orders requested" by Seer and Brigham and Women's Hospital. A final ruling from the commission is due by the end of the year, which would bar Nanomics from importing infringing products into the United States.
What to watch: the commission's final determination by year-end. An exclusion order would remove one low-price imitator from the US market next year.
🐻 Bear Case
Seer Cuts Full-Year Sales Plan By $3 Million
For the first half of the year, Seer kept its full-year revenue outlook at $16 million to $18 million even after first-half sales dropped 29% from a year ago. Hitting that target required second-half sales to jump to at least $5.1 million a quarter by our math.
Third-quarter revenue came in at $4.0 million, up 28% from the second quarter, so the company cut its full-year plan to a range of $13.5 million to $14.5 million. At the middle of the new range, annual sales will fall 16% from last year's $16.6 million. That marks a second straight year in which the biotechnology group has fallen short of its initial annual sales target.
What to watch: fourth-quarter revenue against the $4.1 million implied by the middle of the new full-year outlook. Falling below that mark would show that late-stage customer orders are still slipping.
Scientific Papers Keep Rising, Revenue Still Does Not
Chief executive Omid Farokhzad said that "established customers returned to purchase consumables and new pharmaceutical customers adopted the platform" as scientific studies using Proteograph grew. Researchers have now completed nearly 10,000 blood samples in a Singapore population study and over 5,500 samples in a Korean artificial-intelligence cancer study.
- Cumulative publications, preprints and reviews: 116, up from 95 last quarter
- Product revenue (instruments and chemical kits): $2.76 million, up 0.1% from a year ago
- Service revenue (running samples in Seer's lab): $1.06 million, up 17% from a year ago
- Revenue excluding related parties: $3.89 million, up 1.8% from a year ago by our math
The commercial numbers contradict the narrative of building momentum because scientific papers have more than doubled over the past year while product sales have stayed flat. Even after stripping out shrinking sales to affiliated company PrognomiQ, underlying revenue barely grew from a year ago.
What to watch: full-year chemical kit sales per installed machine on the fourth-quarter call. A drop from last year's $113,000 per machine would show that new instruments are sitting underused.
The Board Stays Independent and Halts Buybacks
After rejecting an outside takeover bid earlier this year, a special committee of the board finished its review in October and announced that "Seer will remain an independent public company". Meanwhile, the company has almost stopped buying back its own shares despite having $25 million left on its buyback authorization.
The group bought back 61,000 shares for about $100,000 in the third quarter, down from 200,000 shares in the second quarter and 1.5 million in the first. At the same time, it recorded another $1.4 million loss on its equity investment in affiliate PrognomiQ, bringing nine-month losses on that stake to $5.2 million while nine-month free cash flow burn reached $34.8 million.
What to watch: fourth-quarter share repurchases now that the board review has ended. Another quarter near zero would show that Seer is hoarding cash to fund years of operating losses.
👓 Other Themes
Academic Funding Pressure Continues to Delay Orders
University and government research labs make up a large share of the market for protein-analysis machines. Seer said that "Continued pressure on academic and government funding has extended sales cycles, and several late-stage opportunities are now expected to close later than planned." Because universities are taking longer to approve equipment budgets, deals expected before December have slipped into next year.
💲 Other KPIs
Cash, cash equivalents and marketable investments fell by $11.4 million from the second quarter and $42.5 million since the start of the year. Seer has no debt and repeated that its cash balance is "sufficient capital to reach cash flow breakeven".
Gross margin — the share of sales left after the cost of making instruments and running lab services — fell 4 percentage points from 51.2% a year ago and 1.4 points from the second quarter. Cost of revenue rose to 52.8% of sales.
Inventory on the balance sheet dropped 17% from the second quarter to $6.40 million as the company shipped existing stock. Deferred revenue — cash customers have paid upfront for services or kits not yet delivered — rose 30% from last quarter to $482,000.
🔮 Guidance
Cut. The middle of the full-year range dropped by $3 million, pointing to a 15.6% sales decline for the year after management held the prior target for two quarters. By our math, that leaves $3.6 million to $4.6 million for the fourth quarter, or $4.1 million at the middle of the range — down 1.8% from a year ago and up 3.6% from the third quarter.
❓ Key Questions
How many Proteograph instruments has Seer placed this year?
Seer reported an installed base of 82 machines at the end of 2025 but has given no unit counts in 2026. Without the number of active machines, investors cannot calculate how much chemical kit revenue each instrument generates.
Why did share buybacks stop in the third quarter?
The company spent just $100,000 on buybacks in the quarter while $25 million remained authorized. Now that the special committee has finished its review, management needs to explain whether a trading blackout or cash preservation stopped the repurchases.
How much revenue do the large population studies bring?
Researchers presented data from 9,658 samples in Singapore and 5,500 samples in Korea this quarter, yet third-quarter service revenue was only $1.1 million. Management has never disclosed the price per sample or the payment schedule for these flagship projects.
Will Seer put more cash into affiliate PrognomiQ?
Seer booked a $5.2 million loss on its equity method investment in PrognomiQ over the first nine months while related-party sales fell 81% to $146,000. The upcoming quarterly filing will show whether Seer sent more funding after July.