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UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021

OR

For the transition period from                      to                     

Commission File Number: 001-38720

Twist Bioscience Corporation

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter)

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681 Gateway Blvd, South San Francisco, CA 94080

(Address of principal executive offices and zip code)

(800) 719-0671

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

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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, a 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. (Check one):

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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  ☒

As of March 31, 2021, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, the aggregate market value of shares of common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant was approximately $4.885 billion based upon the closing sale price on the Nasdaq Global Select Market reported for such date. Shares of Common Stock held by each officer and director and by each person who owns 10% or more of the outstanding Common Stock have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes.

The number of shares of the Registrant’s common stock outstanding as of November 18, 2021, was 49,632,483.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the Registrant’s definitive proxy statement to be filed in connection with its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Form 10-K.

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TWIST BIOSCIENCE CORPORATION

ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

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Forward-looking statements

This Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021, or Form 10-K, contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. These statements relate to, among other matters, plans for product development and licensing to third parties, plans and timeframe for the commercial development of DNA data storage capabilities, expectations regarding market penetration, anticipated customer conversions to our products, plans to expand in the international markets, identification and development of potential antibody candidates for the treatment of COVID-19 and other diseases, and the anticipated timeframe for remediating the material weakness in internal control over financial reporting. Forward-looking statements are also identified by the words “believe,” “will,” “may,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “should,” “plan,” “expect,” “predict,” “could,” “potentially” and variations of such words and similar expressions. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Such statements are based on management’s expectations as of the date of this filing and involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results, events or circumstances to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include:

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You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Such statements are based on management’s expectations as of the date of this filing and involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results, events or circumstances to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements.

Readers are urged to carefully review and consider all of the information in this Form 10-K and in other documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this Form 10-K to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this filing or to reflect new information 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. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments we may make.

When we use the terms “Twist,” “Twist Bioscience,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our” in this report, we are referring to Twist Bioscience Corporation and its consolidated subsidiaries unless the context requires otherwise. Sequence space and the Twist logo are trademarks of Twist Bioscience Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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PART I

At Twist Bioscience Corporation, we work in service of customers who are changing the world for the better. In fields such as health care, food/agriculture, industrial chemicals/materials, academic research and data storage, by using our synthetic DNA tools, our customers are developing ways to better lives and improve the sustainability of the planet. We believe that the faster our customers succeed, the better for all of us, and we believe Twist Bioscience is uniquely positioned to help accelerate their efforts.

We have developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology that provides DNA for a wide range of uses and markets. The core of our platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. We have miniaturized traditional chemical DNA synthesis reactions to write over one million short pieces of DNA on each silicon chip, approximately the size of a large mobile phone. We have combined our silicon-based DNA writing technology with proprietary software, scalable commercial infrastructure and an e-commerce platform to create an integrated technology platform that enables us to achieve high levels of quality, precision, automation, and manufacturing throughput at a significantly lower cost than our competitors.

We have applied our unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next generation sequencing (NGS) sample preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development, all designed to enable our customers to conduct research more efficiently and effectively. Additionally, we are expanding our footprint by harnessing our proprietary platform to disrupt and innovate within larger market opportunities, such as discovery partnerships for biologic drugs, and completely new applications for synthetic DNA, such as digital data storage, to expand the overall reach and impact of DNA-based products. We sell our synthetic DNA and synthetic DNA-based products to a global customer base of approximately 2,900 customers across a broad range of industries.

DNA is the fundamental building block of biology. The ability to design DNA and engineer biology, a field known as synthetic biology, is growing rapidly, and we believe this field represents one of the most exciting areas of growth and technological innovation in the 21st century. The ability to modify DNA to improve health and the sustainability of the planet is leading to a broad range of applications for synthetic DNA and synthetic DNA-based products across multiple industries, including:

Background

We currently generate revenue through our synthetic biology and next-generation sequencing, or NGS, tools product lines. In addition, we are leveraging our platform to expand our portfolio to include other synthetic DNA-based products and address additional market opportunities, including vertical market opportunities in biological drug discovery and development and digital data storage.

As part of our synthetic biology continuum offering, we have commercialized a custom DNA library solution which we believe can be leveraged to facilitate other proprietary tools to provide an end-to-end solution in biologics drug discovery and early development, from target to investigational new drug, or IND, application, adding value as a partner to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. We are also leveraging this capability for our internal antibody discovery efforts.

In fiscal year 2021 we served approximately 2,900 customers and reported $132.3 million in revenue, including $34.5 million in revenue to the chemicals/materials sector, $71.2 million in revenue to the healthcare sector, $25.3 million in revenue to the academic research sector and $1.3 million in revenue to the food/agriculture sector.

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COVID-19 considerations

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a pandemic. During the twelve months ended September 30, 2021, our revenues were not significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We did introduce important tools to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, although revenue from that product line has not been material. Similarly, to date we have not experienced a decline in revenue due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our customers. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic affects our future financial results and operations will depend on future developments which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, including the recurrence, severity and/or duration of the ongoing pandemic, and current or future domestic and international actions to contain and treat COVID-19.

We are following public and private sector policies and initiatives to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 and we have taken and continue to take a variety of measures to ensure the availability and functioning of our critical infrastructure, to promote the safety and security of our employees and to support the communities in which we operate. These measures include increasing our inventory, requiring remote working arrangements for employees not integral in physically making and shipping our products or who need specialized equipment to perform their work, investing in personal protective equipment, and providing paid sick leave to affected employees. On July 20, 2020 we commenced weekly testing of our employees working on site and we require all U.S. employees have been vaccinated as of October 25, 2021.

Due to the speed with which the situation may change, we are not able at this time to estimate the effect of COVID-19 on our financial results and operations, but the effect could be material for fiscal year 2022 and/or during any future period affected either directly or indirectly by this pandemic. For further discussion of the risks relating to COVID-19, see “We are subject to risks associated with COVID-19” under the section titled “Risk factors.”

Our Markets

Synthetic Biology

Our products serve life sciences researchers including those working in the field of synthetic biology, which is undergoing an era of rapid innovation and transformation. Synthetic biology is the engineering of biology to build new biological systems or re-design existing biological systems. The ability to design DNA and engineer biology is creating advances and benefits for a broad and growing range of applications for synthetic DNA and synthetic DNA-based products across multiple industries, including

Synthetic DNA is the fundamental building block of synthetic biology. Researchers at a wide range of institutions can design synthetic DNA to regulate the production of proteins and other molecules to achieve a specific functional purpose. While synthetic DNA has been produced for more than 40 years, the complexities of biology and the production constraints inherent in legacy processes have historically limited the applications and market opportunities for DNA synthesis.

Next-Generation Sequencing

Our NGS tools play an integral role in the way our customers prepare their patient samples to be sequenced. NGS has transformed many markets in recent years by changing the landscape of diagnosing disease and disorders and offers a path to prevent or treat disease. Some of the markets impacted by NGS include oncology, reproductive health, food/agriculture, consumer genomics, infectious disease research and drug discovery. As NGS technology improves and the cost of sequencing declines, new emerging markets that were once considered impractical, such as population-scale sequencing, liquid biopsy (a test that detects multiple types of cancer from a single blood sample), minimal residual disease testing and single cell sequencing, have become major areas of interest and investment.

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Historically, a significant constraint in many NGS applications has been the high cost and long turnaround time of oligonucleotide production. Highly accurate and reproducible oligonucleotide production is required to produce high quality target enrichment data. Traditionally, the lack of options for oligonucleotide production forced researchers to choose between using less precise methods or to reduce the number of samples in their study.

The ability of the Twist DNA synthesis platform to precisely manufacture target enrichment probes at large scale has dramatically increased the types of projects that can now be addressed using NGS technologies. Our platform has unlocked new applications, improved data quality, and dramatically expanded the types of scientific questions that can be answered using NGS. In addition, the speed of our DNA synthesis platform enables customers to quickly deploy NGS technologies to applications where the time to answer is critical.

Our platform

We developed the Twist Bioscience DNA synthesis platform to address the limitations of throughput, scalability, and cost inherent in legacy DNA synthesis methods. Our platform stems from extensive analyses and improvements to the existing gene synthesis and assembly workflows. Our core technologies combine expertise in silicon, software, fluidics, chemistry, and motion and vision control to miniaturize thousands of parallel chemical reactions on silicon and write thousands of strands of DNA in parallel. With a footprint that is similar to the size of a 96-well plate that historically can only produce one gene, we are able to produce 9,600 genes in parallel. Based on current production needs, we have intentionally designed our latest chip to make 6,144 genes in parallel, but we have the current capability to increase this to 9,600 genes, as needed. We have combined our DNA synthesis technology with propriety software and a scalable commercial infrastructure to create our vertically integrated DNA synthesis platform capable of delivering very large volumes of high-quality synthetic DNA at low cost.

Enzymatic Synthesis

Several companies are pursuing an emerging gene synthesis process that uses enzymatic chemistry rather than phosphoramidite chemistry. While the promise of enzymatic synthesis to deliver longer genes in a shorter timeframe provides excitement for the industry, this technology is at the proof-of-concept stage and has not yet been proven to be scalable or commercially viable. If, in the future, enzymatic synthesis proves commercially scalable, we have the ability to include this chemistry within our established commercial infrastructure.

Our products

We have developed multiple products derived from synthetic DNA and our versatile DNA synthesis technology. Our current offering consists of two primary product lines, synthetic biology tools and NGS tools, that address different needs of our customers across a variety of applications, such as synthetic genes, oligo pools, SARS-CoV-2 tools and DNA libraries.

Synthetic Biology Products

Synthetic genes and gene fragments

Synthetic genes are manufactured strands of DNA. Customers order our synthetic genes to conduct a wide range of research, including product development for chemicals/materials, food/agriculture, therapeutics, diagnostics, data storage as well as a multitude of emerging applications within academic research. Virtually all research and development of this type requires trial and error, and our customers require many variations of genes to find the DNA sequence that achieves their objectives.

We offer two primary categories of synthetic genes: genes of perfect quality, clonal genes, in a vehicle to carry the DNA, also called a vector; and genes of near-perfect quality, non-clonal genes or fragments, that customers can place in their own vector. Within these two categories, customers can order different lengths of DNA depending on their required final gene construct. Customers can order longer genes or shorter genes and can stitch genes together to create longer or shorter constructs if desired.

Currently, we manufacture genes of up to 5,000 base pairs in length, yielding a clonally perfect piece of DNA that our customers can immediately use for their research. We offer non-clonal genes of up to 1,800 base pairs in length, which we believe addresses the vast majority of demand for non-clonal genes with an error rate of 1:7500 base pairs. We also offer larger quantities of DNA for customers who require it for their development efforts.

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Oligonucleotide, or Oligo pools

Oligo pools, or high diversity collections of oligonucleotides, are utilized in many applications, including targeted NGS, CRISPR gene editing, mutagenesis experiments, DNA origami (the nanoscale folding of DNA to create two- and three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale), DNA computing and data storage in DNA, among others. Our oligo pools are also used for high-throughput reporter assays that are used to study cell signaling pathways, gene regulation, and the structure of cell regulatory elements. For these applications, we provide customers with accurate and uniform synthetic oligos to precisely match their required designs.

We sell a diverse, customizable set of oligo pools, ranging from a few hundred oligos to over one million, and offer oligonucleotides of up to 300 nucleotides in length, with an error rate of 1:2000 nucleotides.

IgG proteins

Pairing the automation in our synthetic biology platform along with our expertise in antibody discovery, we introduced an immunoglobulin G (IgG) protein offering for our customers focused on drug discovery and development. In the process of antibody discovery, antibody fragments (Fab, small chain fragment variable (scFv) or VHH) must be reformatted to full IgGs. Leveraging its silicon-based synthesis platform, we provide customers with a high throughput IgG capability, removing this bottleneck from the antibody discovery process.

NGS tools

Building from our DNA synthesis platform, we have developed products for the growing NGS market. In particular, we are focused on addressing the demand for better sample preparation products that improve sequencing workflow, increase sequencing accuracy, and reduce sequencing costs. Using our silicon-based DNA synthesis platform, we are able to synthesize exact sequences of interest. In the target enrichment process, our synthetic DNA probes bind to the sequence of interest within the sample, acting like a magnet to isolate and physically extract the targeted segment of DNA.

Our NGS products are primarily used for diagnostic tests for various indications including rare disease, SARS-CoV-2 and cancer through liquid biopsy. In addition, customers use our NGS tools for population genetics research and biomarker discovery, translational research, microbiology and applied markets research. Our customers are primarily diagnostic companies and hospitals, research institutions, agricultural biotechnology companies, and consumer genetics companies conducting diagnostic tests for a wide range of applications.

We offer a wide variety of NGS tools for our customers including library preparation kits, human exome kits, fixed and custom panels as well as Alliance panels, which are customer-curated content sold through Twist. In addition, we offer specific workflow solutions including a methylation detection kit for cancer, rare and inherited disease study, as well as a fast hybridization solution (FastHyb), which allows researchers to go from sample to sequencer in a single day.

Synthetic Viral Controls, Infectious Disease Research Tools

Leveraging our DNA synthesis platform, we launched a new product line of synthetic viral controls in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19. We offer fully synthetic SARS-CoV-2 RNA reference sequences as positive controls for the development of both NGS and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays. Our SARS-CoV-2 controls are now included on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website as reference materials.

In addition, we offer a wide range of respiratory viral controls including for influenzas, respiratory syncytial virus, rhinoviruses, SARS, MERS and other coronaviruses. These controls can be used to provide quality control for the development, verification and ongoing validation of diagnostic tests. These controls for SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory diseases allow researchers to develop tests safely and effectively, without working with live virus samples.

In addition, we introduced the SARS-CoV - 2 Research Panels, the Twist Respiratory Virus Panel and the Pan-Viral Research Panel, for the detection of disease in a research setting. All products can be used for environmental monitoring and surveillance testing, while also providing insight into the full sequence information for monitoring of viral evolution and strain origin.

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Drug and Target Discovery Solutions

Precision DNA libraries

Our platform allows customers to customize every antibody sequence variation and construct a precise library systematically to target the entire region of interest. We can create single-site libraries in which we change a single amino acid (which is encoded by a group of three DNA nucleobases) within the sequence or single-site saturation libraries in which we change every amino acid within the sequence for a more comprehensive approach. We can also generate combinatorial libraries in which we introduce changes to multiple sites within the same gene in specific ratios and combinations. These libraries can be used for antibody engineering, affinity maturation, and humanization, which simplifies downstream screening and identifies more lead molecules. Our libraries are explicitly developed for a specific area of the genome or tailored to a specific disease, with antibody compounds evenly represented across all desired areas of the genome.

We have also developed a comprehensive antibody optimization solution to enable simultaneous optimization of multiple characteristics of a given antibody. We have developed custom software for the optimization of antibody hits, antibody compounds that meet pre-specified criteria for therapeutic development. We have added our high throughput and hyper-variant antibody library capabilities to create a comprehensive antibody optimization solution for potential partners. We are now using this solution to design, build and test hyper-variant, tightly controlled antibody libraries that follow the rules of the human repertoire and mitigate the pitfalls associated with traditional optimization methods. By following the rules of the human repertoire, which means including only DNA sequences known to occur in humans, we have created a “Library of Libraries” made up of many different individual libraries. These libraries are natural in composition and are expected to generate better drug development candidates. The libraries also have a large degree of synthetic variation, enabling simultaneous optimization of several antibody characteristics and the discovery of antibodies with high affinity and specificity to drug targets.

Identification and validation of antibodies for diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19

In 2020, we initiated antibody discovery using our biopharma platform, identifying potential antibodies that could be used for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 for research purposes. In addition, we tested several of these antibody candidates in live virus and advanced a subset through preclinical testing. In September 2021, The Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), a joint academic-industry, non-profit collaborative research effort, performed the blinded analysis, confirming that our internally-developed antibody TB202-3 completely blocked the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from binding to the human ACE2 receptor. The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Science. TB202-3 binds to a majority of known mutations, with the exception of the L452R mutation present in the Delta and Epsilon variants. Twist developed a new antibody which also binds and neutralizes the Delta and Epsilon variants, that is now advancing through late-stage discovery and validation testing.

Partnerships with leading companies

We believe we have several avenues available to monetize our antibody discovery program. In general, partnerships for our antibody development platform require us to provide rapid, on-demand (high affinity) antibodies based on one or more targets provided by the customer. These agreements typically have three elements with respect to the program:

Customers can design and purchase libraries, and we work with partners that bring us a target, to discover antibody leads against that target. These partnerships generate revenue in up-front fees, through the license of libraries and service revenue. In addition, many of our partnerships include success-based milestones for key clinical, regulatory and commercial achievements and/or royalties on any product sales resulting from our collaboration.

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In addition, for our internal development efforts, we have selected several promising targets and have identified antibody leads to these targets. We intend to out-license these compounds at later stages of preclinical development to optimize both the up-front revenue and larger milestones and royalties. By out-licensing antibody leads to experts in development and commercialization of biotechnology products, we can continue to focus on improving health through our proprietary platform. To date, we have generated antibody leads to Adora 2a, GLP1R (agonist and antagonists), SARS-CoV-2, TIGIT, PD-L1, CXCR4, CD3 as well as several undisclosed targets.

As of September 30, 2021, we had signed 34 revenue-generating partnerships. We have 41 completed programs and 41 active programs with 35 of the programs including milestones and/or royalties. Some of our partners include Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Adicet Bio, Kyowa Kirin, Invetx, Inc., and Neogene Therapeutics, Inc. In addition, we collaborate with companies that bring complementary technologies to expand our opportunities and reach.

Our growth strategy

Our objective is to be the leading provider of synthetic DNA and DNA-based products worldwide and to leverage our platform to build a leadership position in other life sciences markets in which we have a competitive advantage. We intend to accomplish this objective by executing on the following:

Beyond these opportunities, we are working with industry partners to create new markets for our products by leveraging our platform.

Sales and marketing

We have built a versatile and scalable commercial platform that enables us to reach a diverse customer base that we estimate consists of over 100,000 synthetic DNA users, and many additional potential customers of our NGS library preparation products today. In order to address this diverse customer base, we have employed a multi-channel strategy comprised of a direct sales force targeting synthetic DNA customers, a direct sales force focusing on the NGS market and an e-commerce platform that serves both commercial channels. Our sales force is focused on customer acquisition, support, and management across industries, and is highly trained on both the technical aspects of our platform and how synthetic DNA can be used in a wide range of industries. Our easy-to-use e-commerce platform allows customers to design, validate, and place on-demand orders of customized DNA online, and enable them to receive real-time customized quotes for their products and track their order status through the manufacturing and delivery process. This is a critical part of our strategy to address our large market and diverse customer base, as well as drive commercial productivity, enhance the customer experience, and promote loyalty. We target customers of our NGS products through a direct sales team focused on the NGS tools market and which is separate from our synthetic DNA sales force. Our direct NGS sales representatives are focused on supporting our early adopters and providing a high level of service in order to familiarize customers with our product offerings.

We sell our products through a worldwide commercial organization that includes direct sales personnel, commercial consultants in Europe and Asia, an ecommerce platform and distributors. As of September 30, 2021, we employed 203 people in sales, marketing and customer support.

Research and development

We are engaged in ongoing research and development efforts focused on enhancements to existing products and the development of new products. Currently, we are pursuing research and development projects with respect to the following:

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In June 2020, we executed a firm fixed-price subcontract with Georgia Institute of Technology to develop the DNA synthesis portion of the Molecular Information Storage program. The total cost for this subcontract is $6.5 million, and we are responsible for providing a minimum contribution of $2.0 million toward the cost of the program, with the remaining $4.5 million to be funded by the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence. We will receive such $4.5 million in funding in fixed amounts over a period from September 2019 to June 2022.

In December 2020, we executed a firm fixed-price subcontract for fulfilling an organization’s primary obligation to perform discovery activities and conduct applied research for technological innovations to improve human health. The subcontract was a $1.0 million research & development cost-reimbursement arrangement. The cost was reimbursed over a period from September 2020 to December 2020.

Research and development activities are conducted in collaboration with manufacturing activities to help expedite new products from the development phase to manufacturing and to more quickly implement new process technologies. From time to time, our research and development efforts have included participation in technology collaborations with universities and research institutions.

As of September 30, 2021, we employed 192 people in our research and development team.

Patents and other intellectual property rights

As of September 30, 2021, we own 33 issued U.S. patents and 24 issued international patents; four in China, three in Europe, six in South Korea, four in Taiwan, three in Japan, one in Eurasia, one in Singapore, one in Australia, and one in Hong Kong. There are 262 pending patent applications, including 72 in the United States, 176 international applications and 14 applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Additionally, we have exclusively licensed a patent portfolio containing ten issued patents, including one U.S. patent and nine international patents, and nine pending applications, including one in the U.S. and eight international applications. We have also licensed a patent portfolio containing two pending applications, including one in the US and one PCT. Our policy is to file patent applications to protect technology, inventions and improvements that are important to our business.

Manufacturing and facilities

The production of our products is a highly complex and precise process. We currently manufacture all of our products and multiple sub-assemblies at our manufacturing facility in South San Francisco, California. We also outsource some of our sub-assemblies to third party manufacturers. All of our products originate from synthetic DNA obtained from nanostructured clusters fabricated on our proprietary silicon technology platform. Due to its on-demand nature, the gene synthesis business requires manufacturing operations to be in operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year. For synthetic genes, we have built a highly scalable gene production process with what we believe is industry-leading capacity to address the growing demand of scalable, high-quality, affordable synthetic genes. As of September 30, 2021, we employed 177 people in our manufacturing and facilities team.

In addition to synthetic genes, we manufacture oligo pools. The pooling process has been fully automated through a mixture of custom proprietary and over-the-counter liquid handling equipment. We are currently only utilizing approximately two thirds of our production capacity for synthetic genes and oligos. We have the capacity to make many millions of high-quality oligos per month that can be used to make genes and gene fragments of various lengths, oligo pools of various sizes, DNA libraries and NGS tools products. We intend to increase our shipments to leverage our production capacity through our e-commerce platform, which we believe will expand both our market opportunity and our customer base.

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The manufacturing process for our NGS tools is highly flexible given the efficiency of our production capability. We have automated the entire workflow using proprietary and over-the-counter laboratory equipment. We have built dedicated production capabilities for our NGS products.

ISO Certification

In 2018, we certified our Quality Management System (QMS) to the ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management Systems—Requirements) standard and ISO 13485:2016 standard (Medical devices—Quality management systems—Requirements for regulatory purposes). ISO is a global network of national standards with over 18,000 standards for nearly every aspect of technology and business. ISO has standard bodies in 163 countries. ISO Surveillance Audits are carried out twice within a three-year period by the registrar (certification body) to ensure we maintain our system in compliance with ISO standards. Recertification is required every three years and we have been successfully recertified since obtaining our original ISO certification. Most recently, we were registered with the FDA as a manufacturer of “Reagents, 2019-novel coronavirus nucleic acid”.

In January 2019, our quality management systems for manufacturing our NGS Target Enrichment Panels in our Mission Bay San Francisco offices received ISO 9001:2015 and 13485:2016 certifications, the latter for medical device applications. In 2020, these certifications were extended to our South San Francisco offices. In addition to continuing to provide NGS tools to our current customer base, we now have the ability to support customers in more regulated markets that require ISO certification from their key reagent suppliers.

In July 2021, we withdrew from the ISO 9001:2015 certification and expanded the scope of our ISO 13485:2016 scope. The expansion introduced additional products, which conform to the ISO 13485:2016 standard. As our product portfolio expands, our customers demand that our reagents and controls conform to ISO 13485:2016. The new scope statement is, "Design, development, manufacture and distribution of oligonucleotide sequences and reagents used for development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) assays, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays and quality control measures".

Supply chain

We have historically purchased many of the components and raw materials used in our products from numerous suppliers worldwide. For reasons of quality assurance, sole source availability or cost effectiveness, certain components and raw materials used in the manufacture of our products are available only from one supplier. We have worked closely with our suppliers to develop contingency plans to assure continuity of supply while maintaining high quality and reliability, and in some cases, we have established long-term supply contracts with our suppliers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we increased our supply of several materials and sourced additional suppliers for key materials to mitigate supply chain disruptions and ensure ongoing operations. The COVID-19 pandemic could disrupt our supply chain and although we continue to take steps to increase our safety stock and qualify other suppliers as it is very difficult to predict the future impact of the pandemic on our supply chain. As outbreaks of the virus continue to occur, we could potentially face disruption which could mean supply chain lead times are lengthened or we experience shortages and consequently this could impact our ability to produce and negatively impact our revenue.

Competition

The synthetic biology industry is intensely competitive and is characterized by price competition, technological change, international competition, product turnaround time and manufacturing yield problems. The competitive factors in the market for our products include:

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Regarding these factors, we face competition from a broad range of providers of core synthetic biology products such as GenScript Biotech Corporation, DNA Script, Inc., GENEWIZ (owned by Brooks Automation), Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc. (owned by Danaher), ATUM, GeneArt (owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.), Eurofins Genomics LLC, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Merck & Company), Promega Corporation, OriGene Technologies, Inc., Blue Heron Biotech, LLC and others. Additionally, we compete with both large and emerging providers in the life sciences tools and diagnostics industries focused on sample preparation for NGS such as Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Illumina, Inc., Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc. (“Agilent”), and Roche NimbleGen, Inc. In the antibody discovery market, we compete with clinical research organizations, such as LakePharma (mouse hybridoma, llama immune libraries, XOMA phage display library) and Aldevron, LLC (genetic mouse immunization coupled with hybridoma), and antibody discovery biotechnology companies, such as Iontas (human phage display libraries, human phage display library focused on ion channels), Abcellera (AI-powered antibody discovery platform), Adimab (human synthetic yeast display libraries), and Distributed Bio, Inc. (“Distributed Bio”) (human synthetic phage display library, lead optimization libraries) (owned by Charles River). In the field of DNA digital data storage, we compete with Catalog Technologies, Inc., ETH Zurich, Helixworks, Iridia, Inc., North Shore Bio and Roswell.

Environmental, social, governance (ESG) and human capital

We are at the forefront of the synthetic biology revolution, and our products are increasingly being used to empower our customers, who are diagnostic, therapeutic and healthcare companies, agricultural biotech companies, chemical companies, academic institutions and government entities, around the world to address large societal challenges. All of our work supports our mission to provide synthetic DNA and DNA product to improve health and sustainability.

Our employees are a key factor in our ability to serve our customers and achieve our mission to provide synthetic DNA to improve health and sustainability. The ability to hire and retain highly skilled professionals remains key to our success in the marketplace. To attract develop and motivate our employees, we offer a challenging work environment, ongoing skills development initiatives, attractive career advancement, opportunities and a culture that rewards entrepreneurial initiative and exceptional execution.

Guiding Principles and Business Ethics

Our guiding principles of grit, impact, service and trust serve as our cultural pillars. Our guiding principles set the tone for how we work together, provide a framework for giving feedback and increase the power of our brand. Service is at the core of our business and our interactions with one another. We relentlessly focus on exceeding internal and external customer needs.

We have 12 dedicated, full-time employees who oversee all aspects of our human resources processes including attracting, retaining and motivating our employees. We are consistently looking at new opportunities and avenues to recruit talented individuals to work in our organization.

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging

Diversity is in our DNA. Our employees come from numerous countries and bring diversity to our workplace across many critical categories. We believe our company is stronger because of the variety of experiences and backgrounds our employees bring to their work every day.

We are committed to creating and maintaining a diverse, inclusive and safe work environment where our employees can bring their best selves to work each day. Our commitment to diversity extends through our recruitment, retention, learning and engagement and community partnerships. As part of our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging strategy, we made an active decision to pursue opportunities for learning and engagement that bring people from different backgrounds together into conversation. We’ve initiated monthly Culture Conversations where we explore identities and systems of power using an intersectional lens each month. Past topics include: disability, LGBTQIA+, ageism, Latinx identity, and more. Our objective is to appreciate each other as individuals with unique lived experiences, rather than define one another by a single trait such as race, sexual orientation or geographical location. To assess our efforts toward building a diverse workforce, we have included questions in our engagement survey to measure employee perception of inclusive culture.

In addition, we mandate training for all employees and managers to prevent workplace harassment. The course equips leaders and employees with the tools they need to identify and address unwelcome conduct in non-adversarial, respectful terms.

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Recruiting

We believe that our employees are our most important asset. Beginning with the pre-recruitment process, we provide internship opportunities for students interested in biotechnology and the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields in both scientific and non-scientific departments. We engage with local communities to provide expert speakers sharing nontraditional career pathways for the biotechnology field. We partner with community colleges, historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-focused institutions to build our brand within diverse communities as a source of diverse, high-quality candidates for every role with the goal of identifying the best possible candidate to fill open positions within the company. We implemented a remote work policy which has resulted in a broader applicant pool because they aren’t limited to geographic location.

We actively engage with future scientists through organizations including the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM), a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the field of synthetic biology. In addition, we have provided internships through the Gloucester Biotechnology Academy, a hands-on training program prepares students for careers as entry-level technicians in cutting-edge laboratories; and Eastside Preparatory Academy, a high school dedicated to serving students historically underrepresented in higher education.

With an active program in place for our employees, we are striving to further support our female and underrepresented employees in advancing their careers while continuing to focus on hiring diverse talent, particularly at more senior positions.

Compensation and benefits, health and wellness

We strive to provide pay, comprehensive benefits and services that help meet the varying needs of our employees. Our generous total rewards package includes above-market pay; fully covered healthcare benefits for employees, with family member healthcare benefits covered at 90%; a health savings account that is fully funded for individuals and their families; approximately four weeks of paid vacation; a minimum of four months of parental leave for all employees globally; flexible work schedules; and onsite services. In addition, we offer every full-time employee, both exempt and non-exempt, the benefit of equity ownership in the company through stock option grants and our employee stock purchase plan.

We have an expert-built educational platform to assist employee’s fertility & family building needs with the help of treatment, fostering or adopting, plus dedicated resources for egg freezers, egg donation, LGBTQ+ families, and solo parents.

We have increased our well-being benefits, by offering programs that help workers monitor and reduce their stress levels, providing apps to support sleep and relaxation. We implemented a Walking Challenge to promote physical health and employee connections. We have further addressed employees’ emotional health and well-being by providing meditation sessions and using telehealth programs to offer mental health counseling.

COVID-19 employee safety and benefits

Many of our customers require our synthetic DNA products to provide critical tools for global health. Twist continues to take extra precautions to reduce the risk of virus exposure for all employees. All of our employees who were able to work from home will continue to do so through January 2022. For those employees who remain onsite to produce our products, we reduced the number of people in the office significantly with the remote work option. In addition, we comply with all local, state and federal mandates requiring masks indoors. We require all U.S. employees to be vaccinated and continue to provide PCR based testing of all on-site employees weekly. As a benefit for all employees, we provide flu shots for the employee and their family.

For any employee who contracts COVID-19, we provide full pay for their entire recovery and quarantine time, regardless of the guidelines of their home country. Twist pays sick leave for all affected employees at 100% of their salary or average hourly wages.

Employee health and safety

We remain steadfast in our commitment to promote the health and safety of our employees. We require annual workplace safety training to reinforce workplace safety procedures that may be useful in the event of emergency situations and to assist our employees in helping to prevent workplace accidents. Our Employee Health and Safety Committee, which is comprised of numerous cross-departmental members meets on a quarterly basis to review workplace safety and adherence to safety policies. As part of our efforts, all employees and managers complete workplace harassment and sexual harassment training that includes details on how to report any violation of these policies.

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Conduct and ethics

Our Board of Directors adopted and regularly reviews the Code of Conduct, which applies to all of our employees, directors and officers. We believe it is imperative that the board of directors and senior management strongly support a no-tolerance stance for workplace harassment, biases and unethical behavior. All employees are required to abide by, review and confirm compliance to the company’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics Policy, our Anti-Money Laundering Policy, our Anti-Corruption Policy. We have established a reporting hotline and email address that enables employees to anonymously report any suspected violations of the Code of Conduct.

In addition, because synthetic DNA is considered to be a dual use technology, we invest substantial financial and human resources in biosecurity to help ensure that our products are used for responsible research. We abide by all local, national and international regulations as well as trade compliance requirements and are an active member of the International Gene Synthesis Consortium and the Australia Group. We maintain an active relationship with the governing body for synthetic DNA within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In 2021, our employees participated, through the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC), in a 'Malice Analysis' (MA) - a methodology for teaching synthetic biology researchers about both the importance of, and the how-to of, thinking through any security implications of their own research activities.

Growth and development

We invest significant financial and support resources to develop the talent we need to remain at the cutting edge of innovation to ensure Twist Bioscience is an employer of choice. We recently launched a new performance management system to support our culture, maintain consistency with our guiding principles and to focus on continuous learning and development. Our success in the market depends on employees understanding and embracing how their job contributes to the company’s overall strategy. We encourage cross team communication as well as integrated departmental communication. We believe this broadens our employee’s skill set and provides opportunity for growth and advancement. We invest in our next generation of leaders through a one-year leadership program for mid-level managers. In addition, we offer tuition reimbursement aimed at growth and career development.

We have made a significant investment in an online learning platform with on-demand, video-based content. Employees have the opportunity to refine or develop professional skills, learn new software, and explore as they plan their career growth. The platform also offers tremendous potential for managers and employees to create development plans as part of the performance review process.

Communications and engagement

We employ a variety of tools to facilitate open and direct communication including open forums with executives, employee surveys and engagement through focus groups, forums and committees. We endeavor to further refine our employee programs through our employee engagement survey as well as follow up quarterly pulse surveys. Based on the most recent survey conducted in July 2021 where 88% of our employees responded:

The executive leadership team identified key initiatives within their organizations that tie directly back to the survey feedback to further increase employee engagement moving forward.

We hold All Hands meetings twice per month as well as a monthly managers meeting for all people managers.

Community engagement, social and relationship capital

We are endeavoring to develop relationships, give back to our communities and engage in corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives. We provide all employees with eight fully paid hours each year to give back to the community at an organization of their choice. We are working to engage with the local community organizations to provide volunteer opportunities for our employees. As we grow our employee base, we will extend our efforts in these areas.

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Employee population

As of September 30, 2021, we had 652 employees, which includes our team of 81 dedicated commercial consultants. Of these employees, 192 were primarily engaged in engineering as well as research and development activities; 203 were primarily engaged in marketing, sales and customer support; 80 were primarily engaged in general and administrative activities; and 177 were primarily engaged in operations and manufacturing, of which there are 160 full-time employees dedicated to manufacturing our synthetic genes, oligo pools, NGS tools and DNA libraries. Of these employees, 494 hold engineering or science degrees including 118 Ph.D.’s. None of our employees is represented by a labor union, and we consider our employee relations to be good.

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All Twisters (inclusive of executives)

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Environmental management

Many gene synthesis companies rely on oligonucleotide, or oligo (short pieces of DNA) synthesis on a plastic 96-well plate format. The 96-well plate allows researchers to create 96 oligos in parallel, one in each well. While this process can successfully achieve DNA synthesis, it requires high volumes of phosphoramidites, an expensive raw material, as well as other ancillary chemical reagents such as activator, wash, deblock, oxidizer and capping reagents, many of which are toxic and environmentally harmful. The reagent consumption levels vary depending on the DNA synthesizer and its setup.

At Twist, we developed an ultra-high-throughput DNA synthesis platform to address the limitations of throughput, scalability, and cost inherent in legacy DNA synthesis methods like that described above. With a footprint that is similar to the size of a 96-well plate that produces 96 oligos or 1 or 2 genes, we are able to produce approximately 1,000,000 oligos or 9,600 genes in parallel.

With the Twist ultra-high-throughput DNA synthesizer, we believe we are able to achieve at least a 99.8% volume reduction (when compared to a standard manufacturer of oligos) in chemical consumption under the right circumstances compared to legacy oligo synthesis. For the more expensive chemical reagents (e.g., phosphoramidite and activator reagents), we have achieved nearly a 1,000,000-fold volume reduction. This drastic volume reduction is achieved through various engineering breakthroughs, including using of inkjet printing to deliver phosphoramidites and activator reagents (10 picoliter per droplet), and the development of proprietary flow cell chambers and reagent recipes, among other proprietary developments.

In addition, the legacy oligo synthesis process often produces significantly more oligos than is typically required for most subsequent processes. In contrast, the Twist system includes a fully-integrated and miniaturized molecular biology workflow to assemble genes using nearly 100% of the oligos we produced, yielding nearly zero wasted synthesized oligos and reducing the usage of molecular biology reagents (e.g., polymerase and other enzymes, and dNTP).

Overall, Twist’s process to synthesize DNA significantly reduces the quantity of chemicals used, overproduced product and waste, for a more sustainable production process.

Government regulation

Our synthetic DNA products are intended for “Research Use Only” (RUO). We sell these products for non-diagnostic and non-clinical purposes to academic institutions, life sciences and research laboratories, and biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Our products are neither intended nor promoted for clinical use, diagnostic procedures, or use as components of our customers products. Rather, they are intended to be used as research tools that enable our customers to develop a wide spectrum of commercial products. However, in the future we may be subject to a variety of specialized regulatory requirements, including potential regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA. For example, in December 2010, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues recommended that the federal government oversee, but not regulate, synthetic biology research. The Presidential Commission also recommended that the federal government lead an ongoing review of developments in the synthetic biology field and that the federal government conduct a reasonable risk assessment before the field release of synthetic organisms.

Aside from certain labeling requirements, we believe that our products, as currently marketed, are largely unregulated by governmental bodies, including the FDA. As we expand our product development to include products for clinical applications, we may be subject to a variety of specialized regulatory requirements, including regulation by the FDA, any of which could have a material effect on the business.

RUO is a term applicable to our target enrichment products for the next-generation sequencing (NGS) market and is applied to kits sold to this market segment. It is intended to restrict use of the kits to non-in vitro diagnostic purposes. Our NGS target enrichment and library preparation products are used in a more comprehensive workflow for next generation sequencing for research purposes only. In the future, we may develop this larger workflow as an in vitro diagnostic, for which we will obtain prior authorization from FDA or other applicable regulatory authorities before commercialization.

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FDA

Pursuant to its authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or the FDC Act, the FDA has jurisdiction over medical devices. The FDA regulates, among other things, the research, testing, manufacturing, safety, labeling, storage, recordkeeping, premarket clearance or approval, marketing and promotion and sales and distribution of medical devices in the United States to ensure that medical products distributed domestically are safe and effective for their intended uses. In addition, the FDA regulates the import and export of medical devices.

Medical device regulation in general

The FDC Act classifies medical devices into one of three categories based on the risks associated with the device and the level of control necessary to provide reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness. Devices deemed by the FDA to pose the greatest risk, such as life-sustaining, life-supporting or implantable devices, or devices deemed not substantially equivalent to a previously 510(k) cleared devices are generally categorized as Class III. These devices typically require submission and approval of a Premarket Approval Application, or PMA. However, FDA can reclassify or use “de novo classification” for a device that meets the FDC Act standards for a class II device, permitting the device to be marketed without PMA approval. Devices deemed to pose lower risk are categorized as either Class I or II. Class II classification usually requires the manufacturer to submit to the FDA a premarket notification submission requesting clearance of the device for commercial distribution in the United States pursuant to Section 510(k) of the FDC Act, referred to as 510(k) clearance. Most Class I devices are exempt from this requirement, as are some lower risk Class II devices. When a 510(k) is required, the manufacturer must submit to the FDA a premarket notification submission demonstrating that the device is “substantially equivalent” to: (i) a device that was legally marketed prior to May 28, 1976, for which PMA approval is not required, (ii) a legally marketed device that has been reclassified from Class III to Class II or Class I, or (iii) another legally marketed, similar device that has been cleared through the 510(k) process.

All clinical studies of investigational medical devices to determine safety and effectiveness must be conducted in accordance with FDA’s investigational device exemption (IDE) regulations, including the requirement for the study sponsor to submit an IDE application to FDA, unless exempt, which must become effective prior to commencing human clinical studies. PMA reviews generally last between one and two years, although they can take longer. Both the 510(k) and the PMA processes can be expensive and lengthy and may not result in clearance or approval. If we are required to submit our products for pre-market review by the FDA, we may be required to delay marketing and commercialization while we obtain premarket clearance or approval from the FDA. There would be no assurance that we could ever obtain such clearance or approval.

All medical devices, including in vitro diagnostics, or IVDs, that are regulated by the FDA are also subject to the Quality System Regulation. Obtaining the requisite regulatory approvals, including the FDA quality system inspections that are required for PMA approval, can be expensive, may involve delay, and could conclude without such products being approved by the FDA. Changes to the current regulatory framework, including the imposition of additional or new regulations, could arise at any time during the development or marketing of our products. This may negatively affect our ability to obtain or maintain FDA or comparable regulatory clearance or approval of our products in the future.

IVDs are a category of medical devices that include reagents, instruments, and systems intended for use in diagnosis of disease or other conditions, including a determination of the state of health, in order to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent disease or its sequelae. IVDs are intended for use in the collection, preparation, and examination of specimens taken from the human body. A RUO IVD product is an IVD product that is in the laboratory research phase of development. As such, an RUO IVD is not intended for use in clinical investigations or in clinical practice. Such RUO products do not require premarket clearance or approval from the FDA, provided that they be labeled “For Research Use Only. Not For Use In Diagnostic Procedures” pursuant to FDA regulations.

As noted above, although our products are currently intended for research purposes only, the regulatory requirements related to marketing, selling, and supporting such products could be uncertain and depend on the totality of circumstances. This uncertainty exists even if such use by our customers occurs without our consent. If the FDA or other regulatory authorities assert that any of our RUO products are subject to regulatory clearance or approval, our business, financial condition, or results of operations could be adversely affected.

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According to the FDA, merely including the RUO labeling statement will not necessarily render the device exempt from FDA premarket clearance, approval, or other regulatory requirements if the totality of circumstances surrounding the distribution of the product indicate that the manufacturer intended its IVDs for diagnostic use. Such circumstances may include, but are not limited to, the product’s advertising, labeling, or promotion, or the manufacturer’s assistance of a clinical laboratory in validating or verifying a test that incorporates products labeled RUO. This uncertainty exists even if such use by our customers occurs without our consent. If the FDA or other regulatory authorities assert that any of our RUO products are subject to regulatory clearance or approval, our business, financial condition, or results of operations could be adversely affected.

EU Regulation

In the European Union (EU), the new In Vitro Diagnostic Device Regulation (EU) 2017/746, or IVDR, imposes stricter requirements for the marketing and sale of applicable medical devices, including in the area of clinical evaluation requirements, quality systems and post-market surveillance. The IVDR is expected to become effective in May 2022. We likely will be impacted by this new regulation, either directly as a manufacturer of IVDs, or indirectly as a supplier to customers who are placing IVDs in the EU market for clinical or diagnostic use. Complying with the IVDR requirements may require us to incur significant expenditures. Failure to meet these requirements could adversely impact our business in the EU and other regions that tie their product registrations to the EU requirements.

FSAP

The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) administer requirements of the Federal Select Agent Program, or FSAP. FSAP requirements govern possession, use, and transfer of select agents and toxins consisting of biological materials that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products. The FSAP currently lists approximately 67 select agents and toxins, and approximately 247 entities were registered under FSAP to possess a select agent or toxin. The registered entities primarily consist of academic, federal and non-federal government, commercial, and private facilities that conduct research studies or diagnostic activities. We are not a registered entity under FSAP and it is our policy generally not to produce or otherwise work with any biological material that is subject to FSAP license requirements. To the extent that we may possess, use, or transfer any material considered a select agent or toxin under FSAP prospectively, we would seek to register with FSAP and obtain all necessary permits for possession, transfer, importation, or any other regulated activity.

Export controls

Some sequences and synthetic controls we produce may be subject to licensing requirements for export outside of the United States under the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Given the evolving nature of our industry, legislative bodies or regulatory authorities may adopt additional regulation or expand existing regulation to include our service. Changes to the current regulatory framework, including the imposition of additional or new regulations, could arise at any time, and we may be unable to obtain or maintain comparable regulatory approval or clearance of our service, if required. These regulations and restrictions may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Available information

Our corporate website address is www.twistbioscience.com. We use the investor relations page of our website for purposes of compliance with Regulation FD and as a routine channel for distribution of important information, including news releases, analyst presentations, financial information and corporate governance practices. Our filings with the SEC are posted on our website and available free of charge as soon as reasonably practical after they are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. The SEC’s website, www.sec.gov, contains reports, proxy statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. The content on any website referred to in this Form 10-K is not incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K unless expressly noted. Further, the Company’s references to website URLs are intended to be inactive textual references only.

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Risk Factor Summary

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider all information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K prior to investing in our common stock. These risks are discussed more fully in the section titled “Risk Factors.” These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the following:

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The following discussion of risk factors contains forward-looking statements. These risk factors may be important to understanding other statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The following information should be read in conjunction with Part II, Item 7, “Management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations” and the consolidated financial statements and related notes in Part II, Item 8, “Consolidated financial statements and supplementary data” of this Form 10-K. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risk and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we presently deem less significant may also impair our business operations. If any of the events or circumstances described in the following risk factors actually occur, our business, operating results, financial condition, cash flows, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment.

Our business, financial condition and operating results can be affected by a number of factors, whether currently known or unknown, including but not limited to those described below, any one or more of which could, directly or indirectly, cause our actual financial condition and operating results to vary materially from past, or from anticipated future, financial condition and operating results. Any of these factors, in whole or in part, could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, operating results and stock price.

Because of the following factors, as well as other factors affecting our financial condition and operating results, past financial performance should not be considered to be a reliable indicator of future performance, and investors should not use historical trends to anticipate results or trends in future periods.

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Risks related to our business

We are subject to risks associated with COVID-19.

Our global operations expose us to risks associated with COVID-19 that has spread globally. In the past year, the continued spread of COVID-19 has led to disruption to business and economic activity and related uncertainty and volatility in the global capital markets, which increases the cost of, and adversely impacts access to, capital and increases economic uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an economic slowdown and will likely continue to impact business and economic activity globally. While our financial results for the fiscal year 2021 have not been significantly affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, impacts from COVID-19 may, in the future, adversely affect our operations, supply chains, distribution systems and customer demand, including as a result of impacts associated with preventive and precautionary measures that we, other businesses and governments are taking or may take in the future. Due to the health risks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to employees who operate and monitor our internal controls and due to the previous requirement and potential future requirements that a large number of employees work remotely, the COVID-19 pandemic impact on staffing could cause challenges for the effective operation of our internal controls. The unanticipated loss or unavailability of key employees due to the COVID-19 outbreak could harm our ability to operate or execute our business strategy. We may not be successful in finding and integrating suitable successors in the event of key employee loss or unavailability. The effectiveness of our sales teams may be negatively impacted by the lack of travel and their reduced ability to engage with decision-makers. Our NGS business may be negatively impacted by the sequencing capacity dedicated to COVID-19 related orders. Our shipments may be subject to higher freight costs. Our customers may delay payments for shipments received. A significant portion (approximately 19%) of our business is in the academic markets and the demand for our products in this customer segment have been affected by a reduction in their research grants and may continue to be so affected in the future. Supply chain disruptions may result in the lack of raw materials, delay in the release of new products or compressed margins due to an increase in material costs. Due to these impacts and measures, we may experience significant and unpredictable reductions in demand for our products and our customers may postpone or cancel their existing orders. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we and many other employers in the United States and Europe have required all employees whose duties can be performed remotely, to work from home and not to go into our offices. This increase in employee telecommuting activity could increase the risk of a security breach of our information technology systems. If the COVID-19 pandemic continues and business and economic conditions persist or worsen, we may experience a decline in sales activities and customer orders or cancelations of existing orders, and it remains uncertain what impact these declines will have on future sales and customer orders once conditions begin to improve. In addition to existing travel restrictions, some countries have closed their borders to U.S. travelers and may continue to impose or further expand travel restrictions and impose or resume prolonged quarantines, which would significantly impact our ability to support our business operations and customers in those locations and the ability of our employees to access their places of work to produce products, or significantly hamper our products from moving through the supply chain. For example, we may face a shortage of dry ice and other materials which are essential to delivering our products to our customers due to the increased demand for such products due to the COVID-19 vaccination distribution, COVID-19 testing and COVID-19 antibody development. As a result, given the evolving nature of the business and economic conditions in response to the virus, and the uncertainty as to how quickly and effectively mitigation measures, such as vaccines, will be widely available and adopted by the public, the COVID-19 pandemic may negatively affect our revenue growth, and it is uncertain how materially COVID-19 will affect our global operations if these impacts persist or worsen over an extended period of time. Any of these impacts would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations, and at this point, the extent of the impact of COVID-19 remains uncertain. In addition, our ability to raise capital in the future may also be negatively affected.

We have incurred net losses in every period to date, and we expect to continue to incur significant losses as we develop our business and may never achieve profitability.

We have incurred net losses each year since inception and have generated limited revenue from product sales to date. We expect to incur increasing costs as we grow our business. We cannot be certain if or when we will produce sufficient revenue from our operations to support our costs. Even if profitability is achieved, we may not be able to sustain profitability. We incurred net losses of $152.1 million, $139.9 million and $107.7 million for the years ended September 30, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. As of September 30, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $610.6 million. We expect to incur substantial losses and negative cash flow for the foreseeable future. We may incur significant losses in the future for a number of reasons, many of which are beyond our control, including the other risks described in this Form 10-K, the market acceptance of our products, business and economic conditions resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, future product development, and our market penetration and margins.

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We may require additional financing to achieve our goals, and a failure to obtain this necessary capital when needed on acceptable terms, or at all, could force us to delay, limit, reduce or terminate our product manufacturing and development and other operations.

Since our inception, substantially all of our resources have been dedicated to the development of our DNA synthesis platform and our sample preparation kit for NGS. We believe that we will continue to expend substantial resources for the foreseeable future as we continue to expand our production capabilities and enter additional markets we may choose to pursue, including new COVID-19 testing products, pharmaceutical biologics drug discovery and digital data storage in DNA. These expenditures are expected to include costs associated with research and development, increasing manufacturing and supply capabilities as well as marketing and selling existing and new products. In addition, other unanticipated costs may arise.

We expect that our existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to fund our planned operating expenses, capital expenditure requirements and debt service payments through at least the next 12 months. However, our operating plan may change as a result of factors currently unknown to us, and as a result, we have sought and may in the future need to seek additional funds sooner than planned, through public or private equity or debt financings or other sources, such as strategic collaborations. In addition, we may seek additional capital due to favorable market conditions or strategic considerations even if we believe we have sufficient funds for our current or future operating plans. Such financing may result in dilution to stockholders, imposition of debt covenants and repayment obligations, or other restrictions that may adversely affect our business.

Our future capital requirements depend on many factors, including:

Additional funds may not be available when we need them, on terms that are acceptable to us, or at all. If adequate funds are not available to us on a timely basis, we may be required to:

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If we are unable to maintain adequate revenue growth or do not successfully manage such growth, our business and growth prospects will be harmed.

We have experienced significant revenue growth in a short period of time. We may not achieve similar growth rates in future periods. Investors should not rely on our operating results for any prior periods as an indication of our future operating performance. To effectively manage our anticipated future growth, we must continue to maintain and enhance our manufacturing, sales, financial and customer support administration systems, processes and controls. Failure to effectively manage our anticipated growth could lead us to over-invest or under-invest in development, operational, and administrative infrastructure; result in weaknesses in our infrastructure, systems, or controls; give rise to operational mistakes, losses, loss of customers, productivity or business opportunities; and result in loss of employees and reduced productivity of remaining employees.

Our continued growth could require significant capital expenditures and might divert financial resources from other projects such as the development of new products and services. As additional products are commercialized, we may need to incorporate new equipment, implement new technology systems, or hire new personnel with different qualifications. Failure to manage this growth or transition could result in turnaround time delays, higher manufacturing costs, declining product quality, deteriorating customer service, and slower responses to competitive challenges. A failure in any one of these areas could make it difficult for us to meet market expectations for our products, and could damage our reputation and the prospects for our business.

If our management is unable to effectively manage our anticipated growth, our expenses may increase more than expected, our revenue could decline or grow more slowly than expected and we may be unable to implement our business strategy. The quality of our products may suffer, which could negatively affect our reputation and harm our ability to retain and attract customers.

Our quarterly and annual operating results and cash flows have fluctuated in the past and might continue to fluctuate, causing the value of our common stock to decline substantially.

Numerous factors, many of which are outside our control, may cause or contribute to significant fluctuations in our quarterly and annual operating results. These fluctuations may make financial planning and forecasting difficult. In addition, these fluctuations may result in unanticipated decreases in our available cash, which could negatively affect our business and prospects. In addition, one or more of such factors may cause our revenue or operating expenses in one period to be disproportionately higher or lower relative to the others. As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis might not be meaningful. You should not rely on our past results as indicative of our future performance. Moreover, our stock price might be based on expectations of future performance that are unrealistic or that we might not meet and, if our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, the price of our common stock could decline substantially.

Our operating results have varied in the past. As a result, our operating results could be unpredictable, particularly on a quarterly basis. In addition to other risk factors listed in this section, some of the important factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly and annual operating results are further described in “Risk factors—Risks relating to owning our stock.”

In addition, a significant portion of our operating expense is relatively fixed in nature, and planned expenditures are based in part on expectations regarding future revenue. Accordingly, unexpected revenue shortfalls might decrease our gross margins and could cause significant changes in our operating results from quarter to quarter. If this occurs, the trading price of our common stock could fall substantially.

If we are unable to attract new customers and retain and grow sales from our existing customers, our business will be materially and adversely affected.

In order to grow our business, we must continue to attract new customers and retain and grow sales from our existing customers on a cost-effective basis. To do this, we aim to attract new and existing buyers of synthetic DNA and NGS tool kits, convert makers of synthetic DNA into buyers of synthetic DNA, monetize our antibody discovery platform by entering into partnerships and achieve widespread market acceptance by delivering both our current product offerings and new products and technologies at low cost, with high-quality, reliable turn around times and throughput, superior e-commerce services and effective technical support. We cannot guarantee that our efforts to provide these key requirements will be consistently acceptable to, and meet the performance expectations of, our customers and potential customers. If we are unable to successfully attract and retain customers, our business, financial position and results of operations would be negatively impacted.

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If we experience a significant disruption in, or breach in security of, our information technology systems, or if we fail to implement new systems and software successfully, our business could be adversely affected. Cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position.

We rely on several centralized information technology systems throughout our company to provide products, keep financial records, process orders, manage inventory, process shipments to customers and operate other critical functions. In addition, we currently generate a growing portion of our revenue through sales on our e-commerce platform. We manage our website and e-commerce platform internally and as a result any compromise of our security or misappropriation of proprietary information could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. We rely on encryption and authentication technology licensed from third parties to provide the security and authentication necessary to effect secure Internet transmission of confidential information, such as credit and other proprietary information. We announced on February 12, 2020 that our information security management system received ISO 27001:2013 certification, an information security standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards, and the International Electrotechnical Commission. Even though our information security management system received ISO 27001:2013 certification, our information technology systems may still be susceptible to damage, disruptions or shutdowns due to power outages, hardware failures, computer viruses, attacks by computer hackers, telecommunication failures, user errors, catastrophes or other unforeseen events. Our information technology systems also may experience interruptions, delays or cessations of service or produce errors in connection with system integration, software upgrades or system migration work that takes place from time to time. If we were to experience a prolonged system disruption in the information technology systems that involve our interactions with customers or suppliers, including negatively impacting our order fulfillment and order entry on our e-commerce platform, it could result in the loss of sales and customers and significant incremental costs, which could adversely affect our business. In addition, security breaches of our information technology systems could result in the misappropriation or unauthorized disclosure of confidential information belonging to us or to our employees, partners, customers or suppliers, which could result in our suffering significant financial or reputational damage. Further, such a breach may require notification to governmental agencies, the media or individuals pursuant to various federal and state privacy and security laws. We would also be exposed to a risk of litigation and potential liability, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our actual operating results may differ significantly from our guidance.

From time to time, we may release guidance in our quarterly earnings conference calls, quarterly earnings releases, or otherwise, regarding our future performance that represents our management’s estimates as of the date of release. This guidance, which includes forward-looking statements, is based on projections prepared by our management. This guidance is not prepared with a view toward compliance with published guidelines of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) regarding projections or the SEC regarding forward-looking statements, and neither our independent registered public accounting firm nor any other independent expert or outside party compiles or examines the projections. Accordingly, no such person will express any opinion or any other form of assurance with respect to the projections.

Projections are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while presented with numerical specificity, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control and are based upon specific assumptions with respect to future business decisions, some of which will change. Our aim is to state possible outcomes as high and low ranges to provide a sensitivity analysis as variables are changed but are not intended to imply that actual results could not fall outside of the suggested ranges. The principal reason that we release guidance is to provide a basis for our management to discuss our business outlook with analysts and investors. We do not accept any responsibility for any projections or reports published by any such third parties.

Guidance is necessarily speculative in nature, and it can be expected that some or all of the assumptions underlying the guidance furnished by us will not materialize or will vary significantly from actual results. Accordingly, our guidance is only an estimate of what management believes is realizable as of the date of release. Actual results may vary from our guidance and the variations may be material. In light of the foregoing, investors are urged not to rely upon our guidance in making an investment decision regarding our common stock.

Any failure to successfully implement our operating strategy or the occurrence of any of the events or circumstances set forth in the “Risk factors” section in this Form 10-K could result in the actual operating results being different from our guidance, and the differences may be adverse and material.

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Rapidly changing technology and extensive competition in synthetic biology could make the products we are developing and producing obsolete or non-competitive unless we continue to develop and manufacture new and improved products and pursue new market opportunities.

The synthetic biology industry is characterized by rapid and significant technological changes, frequent new product introductions and enhancements and evolving industry demands and standards. Our future success will depend on our ability to continually improve the products we are developing and producing, to develop and introduce new products that address the evolving needs of our customers on a timely and cost-effective basis and to pursue new market opportunities that develop as a result of technological and scientific advances. These new market opportunities may be outside the scope of our proven expertise or in areas which have unproven market demand, and the utility and value of new products and services developed by us may not be accepted in the markets served by the new products. Our inability to gain market acceptance of existing products in new markets or market acceptance of new products could harm our future operating results. Our future success also depends on our ability to manufacture these new and improved products to meet customer demand in a timely and cost-effective manner, including our ability to resolve manufacturing issues that may arise as we commence production of any new products we develop. Unanticipated difficulties or delays in replacing existing products with new products we introduce or in manufacturing improved or new products in sufficient quantities to meet customer demand could diminish future demand for our products and harm our future operating results.

In addition, there is extensive competition in the synthetic biology industry, and our future success will depend on our ability to maintain a competitive position with respect to technological advances. Technological development by others may result in our technologies, as well as products developed using our technologies, becoming obsolete. Our ability to compete successfully will depend on our ability to develop proprietary technologies and products that are technologically superior to and/or are less expensive than our competitors’ technologies and products. Our competitors may be able to develop competing and/or superior technologies and processes and compete more aggressively and sustain that competition over a longer period of time.

The continued success of our business relies heavily on our disruptive technologies and products and our position in the market as a leading provider or synthetic DNA using a silicon chip.

Our future profitability will depend on our ability to successfully execute and maintain a sustainable business model and generate continuous streams of revenue. Our business model is premised on the fact that we are the only DNA synthesis provider to synthesize DNA on a silicon chip on a large commercial level and the competitive advantages this creates. Our DNA synthesis methods, among other things, reduce the amount of raw materials required, speed up the synthesis process and deliver large volumes of high-quality synthetic DNA at low unit cost. However, if other competitors develop and commercialize a manufacturing process using a silicon chip or other similar technologies providing for the development of competitive synthetic DNA products at scale, this could be disruptive to our business model and could adversely affect our business prospects, financial condition and results of operations. If we are unable to convert sufficient number of current manufacturers of synthetic DNA to buyers of our synthetic DNA, surpass our competitors regarding certain industry-related data points, and effectively implement our e-commerce platform which facilitates efficient order entry and fulfillment for our customers, our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operation will be adversely affected.

If we are unable to expand into adjacent addressable markets, our business may be materially and adversely affected.

Our future revenue growth and market potential may depend on our ability to leverage our DNA synthesis platform together with our custom libraries and other proprietary tools, such as our antibody discovery and optimization platform, in adjacent businesses such as pharmaceutical biologics drug discovery and digital data storage in DNA. There can be no assurance that we can continue to utilize our antibody libraries to accelerate the lead identification and lead optimization steps of antibody discovery or to discover more effective antibody drugs. In addition, our technology may not develop in a way that allows data storage in DNA to become cost competitive with traditional data storage media or in a way that otherwise enables us to address the markets opportunities that we believe exist. If we are unable to expand into adjacent addressable markets, our business, financial position and results of operations could be negatively impacted.

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A significant portion of our sales depends on customers’ budgets that may be subject to significant and unexpected variation, including seasonality.

Our customers’ spending on research and development impacts our sales and profitability. Our customers and potential customers include chemicals/materials, diagnostics, therapeutics, food/agriculture, and their budgets can have a significant effect on the demand for our products. Their research and development budgets are based on a wide variety of factors, including factors beyond our control, such as:

Any decrease in spending or change in spending priorities of our customers and potential customers could significantly reduce the demand for our products. As we expand into new geographic markets, our revenue may be impacted by seasonal trends in the different regions, the seasonality of customer budgets in those regions and the mix of domestic versus international sales. Moreover, we have no control over the timing and volume of purchases by these customers and potential customers, and as a result, revenue from these sources may vary significantly due to factors that can be difficult to forecast. Any delay or reduction in purchases by customers and potential customers or our inability to forecast fluctuations in demand could harm our future operating results.

We generally do not have long-term contracts with our customers requiring them to purchase any specified quantities from us.

We generally do not have long-term contracts with our customers requiring them to purchase any specified quantities from us and without such contracts our customers are not obligated to order or reorder our products. As a result, we cannot accurately predict our customers’ decisions to reduce or cease purchasing our products. Additionally, even where we enter into contracts with our customers, there is no guarantee that such agreements will be negotiated on terms that are commercially favorable to us in the long-term. Therefore, if many of our customers were to substantially reduce their transaction volume or cease ordering products from us, this could materially and adversely affect our financial performance.

We may be unable to successfully increase our market share and expand our customer base.

Our ability to achieve profitability depends on our being able to increase our market share and expand our customer base. Although members of our sales and marketing teams have considerable industry experience and have engaged in marketing activities for our products, in the future we must expand our sales, marketing, distribution and customer support capabilities with the appropriate technical expertise to effectively market our products. Furthermore, it takes six to nine months to recruit, onboard and ramp sales personnel to full capability and both new hires and sales personnel who operate at full capability are currently encountering challenging sales conditions due to business and operational difficulties arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and may not be fully productive while these conditions persist or worsen. To perform sales, marketing, distribution and customer support successfully, we will face a number of risks, including that:

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If our sales and marketing efforts, or those of any third-party sales and distribution partners, are not successful, our new technologies and products may not gain market acceptance, which could materially impact our business operations.

The United Kingdom’s (“U.K.”) referendum to exit from the European Union (“E.U.”) will continue to have uncertain effects and could adversely impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.

As a result of a referendum in June 2016, the U.K. withdrew from the E.U. (“Brexit”) on January 31, 2020. It began a transition period in which to negotiate a new trading relationship for goods and services that ended on December 31, 2020. During the time since the June 2016 referendum, there have been periods of significant volatility in the global stock markets and currency exchange rates, as well as challenging market conditions in the U.K. On December 24, 2020, the U.K. and E.U. announced they had entered into a post-Brexit deal on certain aspects of trade and other strategic and political issues. We are continuing to evaluate our own risks and uncertainty related to ascertain what financial, trade, regulatory and legal implications this new Brexit trade deal could have on our U.K. and European business operations, including our ability to ship our products into the U.K. This uncertainty also includes the impact on our customers’ business operations and capital planning as well as the overall impact on the biotechnology industry in the U.K. While we have not experienced any direct material financial impact since the 2016 referendum, we cannot predict its future implications, and Brexit and its related effects could result in a negative impact on our consolidated financial position and results of operations.

If we are unable to expand our DNA synthesis manufacturing capacity, we could lose revenue and our business could be harmed.

In order to expand our manufacturing capacity of new and existing products, we need to either build additional internal manufacturing capacity, contract with one or more partners, or both. We are currently building a new production facility in Wilsonville, Oregon but we cannot guarantee that such facility will allow us to effectively increase our manufacturing capacity. Our technology and the production process for our DNA synthesis equipment and tools are complex, involving specialized parts, and we may encounter unexpected difficulties in the manufacture, improvement or increasing the capacity of our DNA synthesis equipment and tools, and addressing these difficulties may cause us to divert our time and resources from our other product offerings. There is no assurance that we will be able to continue to increase manufacturing capacity internally or that we will find one or more suitable partners to help us towards this objective, in order to meet the volume and quality requirements necessary for success in our existing and potential markets. Manufacturing and product quality issues may arise as we continue to increase the scale of our production. If our DNA synthesis equipment and tools do not consistently produce DNA products that meet our customers’ performance expectations, our reputation may be harmed, and we may be unable to generate sufficient revenue to become profitable. Any delay or inability in expanding our manufacturing capacity could diminish our ability to develop or sell our products, which could result in lost revenue and materially harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are substantially dependent on the success of our synthetic DNA products.

To date, we have invested a substantial portion of our efforts and financial resources towards the research and development and commercialization of our synthetic DNA products. The DNA synthesis business is very capital intensive, particularly for early-stage companies that do not have significant off-setting revenues and which are making significant investments in the commercialization and marketing of their products.

Substantially all of our revenue generated to date is from our synthetic DNA products. Our financial results are dependent on strengthening our core business while diversifying into other developing sectors such as pharmaceutical biologics drug discovery, creating useful DNA libraries and data storage.

Our near-term prospects, including our ability to finance our research and development activities and initiatives and enter into strategic collaborations, will depend heavily on the successful development and commercialization of our synthetic DNA products. These initiatives will be substantially dependent on our ability to generate revenue from our synthetic DNA products and obtain other funding necessary to support these initiatives. Our inability to continue these initiatives and initiate new research and development efforts could result in a failure to develop new products, improve upon existing products such that sectors like pharmaceutical

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biologics drug discovery, DNA library creation and data storage may never be fully developed, and expand our addressable market, which could have a material and adverse impact on our sales, business, financial position and results of operations.

We depend on one single-source supplier for a critical component for our DNA synthesis process. The loss of this supplier or its failure to supply us with the necessary component on a timely basis, could cause delays in the future capacity of our DNA synthesis process and adversely affect our business.

We depend on one single-source supplier for a critical component for our DNA synthesis process. We do not currently have the infrastructure or capability internally to manufacture this component. Although we have a reserve of supplies and although alternative suppliers exist for this critical component of our synthesis process, our existing DNA synthesis manufacturing process has been designed based on the functions, limitations, features and specifications of the components that we currently utilize. We have a supply agreement in place with this component supplier. However, there can be no assurance that our supply of this component will not be limited, interrupted, or of satisfactory quality or continue to be available at acceptable prices. Additionally, we do not have any control over the process or timing of the acquisition or manufacture of materials by our supplier and cannot ensure that it will deliver to us the component we order on time, or at all.

The loss of this component provided by this supplier could require us to change the design of our manufacturing process based on the functions, limitations, features and specifications of the replacement components.

In addition, the lead time needed to establish a relationship with a new supplier can be lengthy, and we may experience delays in meeting demand in the event we must switch to a new supplier. The time and effort to qualify a new supplier could result in additional costs, diversion of resources or reduced manufacturing yields, any of which would negatively impact our operating results. Further, we may be unable to enter into agreements with a new supplier on commercially reasonable terms, which could have a material adverse impact on our business. Our dependence on this single-source supplier exposes us to certain risks, including the following:

Moreover, to meet anticipated market demand, our single-source supplier may need to increase manufacturing capacity, which could involve significant challenges. This may require us and our supplier to invest substantial additional funds and hire and retain the technical personnel who have the necessary experience. Neither we nor our supplier may successfully complete any required increase to existing manufacturing capacity in a timely manner, or at all.

We must continue to secure and maintain sufficient and stable supplies of raw materials.

Although historically we have not experienced price increases due to unexpected raw material shortages and other unanticipated events, there is no assurance that our supply of raw materials will not be significantly adversely affected in the future, adversely affecting our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operation.

In addition, as we grow, our existing suppliers may not be able to meet our increasing demand, and we may need to find additional suppliers. There is no assurance that we will always be able to secure suppliers who provide raw materials at the specification, quantity and quality levels that we demand (or at all) or be able to negotiate acceptable fees and terms of services with any such suppliers. Identifying a suitable supplier is an involved process that requires us to become satisfied with their quality control, responsiveness and service, financial stability and labor and other ethical practices. Even if we are able to expand existing sources, we

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may encounter delays in production and added costs as a result of the time it takes to train suppliers in our methods, products and quality control standards.

We typically do not enter into agreements with our suppliers but secure our raw materials on a purchase order basis. Our suppliers may reduce or cease their supply of raw materials and outsourced services and products to us at any time in the future. If the supply of raw materials and the outsourced services and products is interrupted, our production processes may be delayed. If any such event occurs, our operation and financial position may be adversely affected.

A deterioration of our relationship with any of our suppliers, or problems experienced by these suppliers, could lead to shortages in our production capacity for some or all of our products. In such case, we may not be able to fulfill the demand of existing customers or supply new customers. A raw material shortage or an increase in the cost of the raw materials we use could result in decreased revenue or could impair our ability to maintain or expand our business.

In the event of significant price increases for raw materials, we may have to pass the increased raw materials costs to our customers. However, we cannot assure you that we will be able to raise the prices of our products sufficiently to cover increased costs resulting from increases in the cost of our raw materials or overcome the interruption of a sufficient supply of qualified raw materials for our products. As a result, a price increase for our raw materials may negatively impact our business, financial position and results of operations.

We may encounter difficulties in managing our growth, and these difficulties could impair our profitability.

Currently, we are working simultaneously on multiple projects, expanding our capacity as well as targeting several market sectors, including activities in the chemicals/materials, diagnostics, therapeutics, food and data storage sectors. In addition, we work to renew our ISO certifications from time to time. These diversified operations and activities place significant demands on our limited resources and require us to substantially expand the capabilities of our technical, administrative and operational resources.

If we are unable to manage this growth and the periodic ISO recertification of our manufacturing facilities effectively, our shipments to our customers could be impacted, our time and resources could be diverted from other products and offerings and our business and operating results could suffer. Our ability to manage our operations and costs, including research and development, costs of components, manufacturing, sales and marketing, requires us to continue to enhance our operational, financial and management controls, reporting systems and procedures and to attract and retain sufficient numbers of talented employees. Failure to attract and retain sufficient numbers of talented employees will further strain our human resources and could impede our growth.

Our revenue, results of operations, cash flows and reputation in the marketplace may suffer upon the loss of a limited number of large customers.

We have derived, and believe we may continue to derive, a significant portion of our revenues from a limited number of large customers. Our customers may buy less of our products depending on their own technological developments, end-user demand for our products and internal budget cycles. In addition, existing customers may choose to produce some or all of their synthetic DNA requirements internally by using or developing manufacturing capabilities organically or by using capabilities from acquisitions of assets or entities from third parties with such capabilities. The loss of any significant customer or a significant reduction in the amount of product ordered by any significant customer would adversely affect our revenue, results of operations, cash flows and reputation in the marketplace.

Our credit facility contains restrictions that limit our flexibility in operating our business.

In September 2017, we entered into an amended and restated loan and security agreement with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) which provides a $10.0 million revolving credit facility and a $10.0 million term loan. The credit agreement contains various covenants that limit our ability to engage in specified types of transactions. These covenants limit our ability to, among other things:

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Our incurrence of this debt, and any future increases in our aggregate level of debt, may adversely affect our operating results and financial condition by, among other things:

A breach of any of these covenants could result in a default under our credit facility. Upon the occurrence of an event of default under our credit facility, SVB could elect to declare all amounts outstanding under our credit facility to be immediately due and payable and terminate all commitments to extend further credit. If we were unable to repay those amounts, the lenders under our credit facility could proceed against the collateral granted to them to secure such indebtedness. We have pledged substantially all of our assets, other than our intellectual property, as collateral under our credit facility.

We depend on the continuing efforts of our senior management team and other key personnel. If we lose members of our senior management team or other key personnel or are unable to successfully retain, recruit and train qualified researchers, engineering and other personnel, our ability to develop our products could be harmed, and we may be unable to achieve our goals.

Our future success depends upon the continuing services of members of our senior management team and scientific and engineering personnel. We are highly dependent on Dr. Emily Leproust, our President and Chief Executive Officer, who is employed “at will,” meaning we or she may terminate the employment relationship at any time. In particular, our researchers and engineers are critical to our future technological and product innovations, and we will need to hire additional qualified personnel. We may not be able to attract and retain qualified personnel on acceptable terms, or at all. In addition, to the extent we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations that they have been improperly solicited or that they have divulged proprietary or other confidential information, or that their former employers own their research output. Our industry, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, is characterized by high demand and intense competition for talent, and the turnover rate can be high. We compete for qualified management and scientific personnel with other life science companies, academic institutions and research institutions, particularly those focusing on genomics. Many of these employees could leave our company with little or no prior notice and would be free to work for a competitor. If one or more of our senior executives or other key personnel were unable or unwilling to continue in their present positions, we might not be able to replace them easily or at all, and other senior management may be required to divert attention from other aspects of the business. In addition, we do not have “key person” life insurance policies covering members of our management team or other key personnel except Dr. Leproust. The loss of any of these individuals or our inability to attract or retain qualified personnel, including researchers, engineers and others, could prevent us from pursuing collaborations and adversely affect our product development and introductions, business growth prospects, results of operations and financial condition.

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We may engage in strategic transactions, including acquisitions that could disrupt our business, cause dilution to our stockholders, reduce our financial resources, or prove not to be successful.

In the future, we may enter into transactions to acquire other businesses, products or technologies and our ability to do so successfully cannot be ensured. While historically we have not completed many acquisitions, we recently closed the acquisition of iGenomX International Genomics Corporation (“iGenomX”) in the third quarter of 2021 and we are continuing to pursue opportunities in the life sciences industry that complement and expand our synthetic DNA product, products and markets both locally and internationally. If we identify suitable opportunities, we may not be able to make such acquisitions on favorable terms or at all. Any acquisitions we make may not strengthen our competitive position, and these transactions may be viewed negatively by customers or investors. We may decide to incur debt in connection with an acquisition or issue our common stock or other equity securities to the stockholders of the acquired company, as we did for the iGenomX acquisition, which would reduce the percentage ownership of our existing stockholders. We could incur losses resulting from undiscovered liabilities of the acquired business that are not covered by any indemnification we may obtain from the seller. In addition, we may not be able to successfully integrate the acquired personnel, technologies and operations into our existing business in an effective, timely and non-disruptive manner. Acquisitions may also divert management attention from day-to-day responsibilities, increase our expenses and reduce our cash available for operations and other uses. In addition, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to fully recover the costs of such acquisitions or that we will be successful in leveraging any such strategic transactions into increased business, revenue or profitability. We also cannot predict the number, timing or size of any future acquisitions or the effect that any such transactions might have on our operating results.

From time to time, we may consider other strategic transactions, including collaborations. The competition for collaborators is intense, and the negotiation process is time-consuming and complex. Any new collaboration may be on terms that are not optimal for us, and we may not be able to maintain any new collaboration. Any such collaboration may require us to incur non-recurring or other charges, increase our near- and long-term expenditures and pose significant integration or implementation challenges or disrupt our management or business. These transactions would entail numerous operational and financial risks, including exposure to unknown liabilities, disruption of our business and diversion of our management’s time and attention to manage a collaboration, incurrence of substantial debt or dilutive issuances of equity securities to pay transaction consideration or costs, higher than expected collaboration, acquisition or integration costs, write-downs of assets or goodwill or impairment charges, increased amortization expenses, difficulty and cost in facilitating the collaboration or combining the operations and personnel of any acquired business, impairment of relationships with key suppliers, manufacturers or customers of any acquired business due to changes in management and ownership and the inability to retain key employees of any acquired business. Antitrust or other competition laws may also limit our ability to acquire or work collaboratively with certain businesses or to fully realize the benefits of a strategic transactions to acquire or collaborate with other businesses. Accordingly, although there can be no assurance that we will undertake or successfully complete any collaborations, any transactions that we do complete may be subject to the foregoing or other risks and have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. Conversely, any failure to enter any collaboration or other strategic transaction that would be beneficial to us could delay the development and potential commercialization of our products and technologies.

As we expand our development and commercialization activities outside of the United States, we will be subject to an increased risk of inadvertently conducting activities in a manner that violates the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and similar laws. If that occurs, we may be subject to civil or criminal penalties which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects.

We are subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or the FCPA, which prohibits corporations and individuals from paying, offering to pay, or authorizing the payment of anything of value to any foreign government official, government staff member, political party, or political candidate in an attempt to obtain or retain business or to otherwise influence a person working in an official capacity. We are also subject to the UK Anti-Bribery Act, which prohibits both domestic and international bribery, as well as bribery across both public and private sectors. We require that our employees review our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, our Anti-Money Laundering Policy and our Anti-Corruption Policy on an annual basis.

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In the course of establishing and expanding our commercial operations and complying with non-U.S. regulatory requirements, we will need to establish and expand business relationships with various third parties and we will interact more frequently with foreign officials, including regulatory authorities. Expanded programs to maintain compliance with such laws will be costly and may not be effective. Any interactions with any such parties or individuals where compensation is provided that are found to be in violation of such laws could result in substantial fines and penalties and could materially harm our business. Furthermore, any finding of a violation under one country’s laws may increase the likelihood that we will be prosecuted and be found to have violated another country’s laws. We require that our employees annually certify that they understand and will comply with our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics Policy, our Anti-Money Laundering Policy, our Anti-Corruption Policy as well as the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015. Even so, if our business practices outside the United States are found to be in violation of the FCPA, UK Anti-Bribery Act, antitrust or other similar laws, we may be subject to significant civil and criminal penalties which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

We could engage in exporting or related activity that contravenes international trade restraints, or regulatory authorities could promulgate more far-reaching international trade restraints, which could give rise to one or more of substantial legal liability, impediments to our business and reputational damage.

Our international business activities must comport with U.S. export controls and other international trade restraints, including the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations and economic sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls.

We have established an international trade compliance program that encompasses best practices for preventing, detecting and addressing noncompliance with international trade restraints. Furthermore, to date our exports have not been licensable under export controls; however, we could fail to observe the compliance program requirements in a manner that leaves us in noncompliance with export controls or other international trade restraints. In addition, authorities could promulgate international trade restraints that impinge on our ability to pursue our business as planned. One or more of resulting legal penalties, restraints on our business or reputational damage could have material adverse effects on our business and financial condition.

We operate in a highly competitive industry and if we are not able to compete effectively, our business and operating results will likely be harmed.

We face competition from a broad range of providers of core synthetic biology products such as GenScript Biotech Corporation, DNA Script, Inc., GENEWIZ (owned by Brooks Automation), Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc. (owned by Danaher Corporation), DNA 2.0 Inc. d/b/a/ ATUM, GeneArt (owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.), Eurofins Genomics LLC, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (owned by Charles River Laboratories, Inc.) (an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Merck & Company), Promega Corporation, OriGene Technologies, Inc., Blue Heron Biotech, LLC and others. Additionally, we compete with both large and emerging providers in the life sciences tools and diagnostics industries focused on sample preparation for NGS such as Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Illumina, Inc., Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc., Agilent, and Roche NimbleGen, Inc. In the antibody discovery market, we compete with clinical research organizations, such as LakePharma and Aldevron, LLC and antibody discovery biotechnology companies, such as Iontas, Adimab, Distributed Bio (owned by Charles River) and AbCellera Biologics Inc. In the field of DNA digital data storage, we compete with Catalog Technologies, Inc., ETH Zurich, Helixworks, Iridia, Inc., North Shore Bio and Roswell. We may not be successful in maintaining our competitive position for a number of reasons. Some of our current competitors, as well as many of our potential competitors, have significant name recognition, substantial intellectual property portfolios, longer operating histories, greater resources to invest in new technologies, substantial experience in new product development and manufacturing capabilities and more established distribution channels to deliver products to customers than we do. These competitors may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards or customer requirements. Our competitors may develop disruptive technologies or products that are comparable or superior to our technologies and products. In light of these advantages, even though we believe our technology is superior to the products offerings of our competitors, current or potential customers might accept competitive products in lieu of purchasing our products. Increased competition is likely to result in continued pricing pressures, which could harm our sales, profitability or market share. Our failure to continue competing effectively or winning additional business with our existing customers could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

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We may be subject to significant pricing pressures.

Over time, increasing customer demand for lower prices could force us to discount our products and result in lower margins. The impact may be further exacerbated if we are unable to successfully control production costs. Alternatively, if due to rising market prices, our suppliers increase prices or reduce discounts on their supplies, we may be unable to pass on any cost increase to our customers, thereby resulting in reduced margins and profits. Furthermore, changes in our product mix may negatively affect our gross margins. Overall, these pricing pressures may adversely affect our business, financial position and results of operations.

Ethical, legal and social concerns surrounding the use of genetic information could reduce demand for our technology.

Our products may be used to create DNA sequences of humans, agricultural crops and other living organisms. Our products could be used in a variety of applications, which may have underlying ethical, legal and social concerns. Governmental authorities could, for safety, social or other purposes, impose limits on or implement regulation of the use of gene synthesis. Such concerns or governmental restrictions could limit the use of our DNA synthesis products, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. In addition, public perception about the safety and environmental hazards of, and ethical concerns over, genetically engineered products and processes could influence public acceptance of our technologies, products and processes. These concerns could result in increased expenses, regulatory scrutiny, delays or other impediments to our programs.

We use biological and hazardous materials that require considerable expertise and expense for handling, storage and disposal and may result in claims against us.

We work with materials, including chemicals, biological agents, and compounds and DNA samples that could be hazardous to human health and safety or the environment. Our operations also produce hazardous and biological waste products. Federal, state and local laws and regulations govern the use, generation, manufacture, storage, handling and disposal of these materials and wastes. Compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations is expensive, and current or future environmental laws and regulations may restrict our operations. If we do not comply with applicable regulations, we may be subject to fines and penalties.

In addition, we cannot eliminate the risk of accidental injury or contamination from these materials or wastes, which could cause an interruption of our commercialization efforts, research and development programs and business operations, as well as environmental damage resulting in costly clean-up and liabilities under applicable laws and regulations. Furthermore, environmental laws and regulations are complex, change frequently and have tended to become more stringent. We cannot predict the impact of such changes and cannot be certain of our future compliance. While our property insurance policy provides limited coverage in the event of contamination from hazardous and biological products and the resulting cleanup costs, we do not currently have any additional insurance coverage for legal liability for claims arising from the handling, storage or disposal of hazardous materials. Accordingly, in the event of contamination or injury, we could be liable for damages or penalized with fines in an amount exceeding our resources and our operations could be suspended or otherwise adversely affected.

We could develop DNA sequences or engage in other activity that contravenes biosecurity requirements, or regulatory authorities could promulgate more far-reaching biosecurity requirements that our standard business practices cannot accommodate, which could give rise to substantial legal liability, impede our business and damage our reputation.

The Federal Select Agent Program, or the FSAP, involves rules administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Toxins and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that regulate possession, use and transfer of biological select agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products.

We have established a comprehensive, biosecurity program under which we follow biosafety and biosecurity best practices and avoid DNA synthesis activities that implicate FSAP rules; however, we could err in our observance of compliance program requirements in a manner that leaves us in noncompliance with FSAP or other biosecurity rules. In addition, authorities could promulgate new biosecurity requirements that restrictions our operations. One or more resulting legal penalties, restraints on our business or reputational damage could have material adverse effects on our business and financial condition.

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Third parties may use our products in ways that could damage our reputation.

After our customers have received our products, we do not have any control over their use and our customers may use them in ways that are harmful to our reputation as a supplier of synthetic DNA products. In addition, while we have established a biosecurity program designed to comply with biosafety and biosecurity requirements and perform export control screening in an effort to ensure that third parties do not obtain our products for malevolent purposes, we cannot guarantee that these preventative measures will eliminate or reduce the risk of the domestic and global opportunities for the misuse of our products. Accordingly, in the event of such misuse, our reputation, future revenue and operating results may suffer.

Any damage to our reputation or brand may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We believe that developing and maintaining our brand is important to our success and that our financial success is influenced by the perception of our brand by our customers. Furthermore, the importance of our brand recognition may become even greater to the extent that competitors offer more products similar to ours. Many factors, some of which are beyond our control, are important to maintaining our reputation and brand. These factors include our ability to comply with ethical, social, product, labor and environmental standards. Any actual or perceived failure in compliance with such standards could damage our reputation and brand.

Because we are subject to existing and potential additional governmental regulation, the markets for our products may be narrowed.

We are subject, both directly and indirectly, to the adverse impact of existing and potential future government regulation of our operations and markets. For example, the export of our products is subject to strict regulatory control in a number of jurisdictions. The failure to satisfy export control criteria or obtain necessary clearances could delay or prevent the shipment of products, which could adversely affect our revenues and profitability. Moreover, the life sciences industry, which is currently the primary market for our technology, has historically been heavily regulated. There are, for example, laws in several jurisdictions restricting research in genetic engineering, which can operate to narrow our markets. Given the evolving nature of this industry, legislative bodies or regulatory authorities may adopt additional regulation that adversely affects our market opportunities. Our business is also directly affected by a wide variety of government regulations applicable to business enterprises generally and to companies operating in the life science industry in particular. Failure to comply with these regulations or obtain or maintain necessary permits and licenses could result in a variety of fines or other censures or an interruption in our business operations which may have a negative impact on our ability to generate revenues and could increase the cost of operating our business.

Our products could in the future be subject to additional regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or other domestic and international regulatory agencies, which could increase our costs and delay our commercialization efforts, thereby materially and adversely affecting our business and results of operations.

The FDA regulates medical devices, including in vitro diagnostics, or IVDs. IVDs are a category of medical devices that include reagents, instruments, and systems intended for use in diagnosis of disease or other conditions, including a determination of the state of health, in order to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent disease or its sequelae. IVDs are intended for use in the collection, preparation, and examination of specimens taken from the human body. A RUO IVD product is an IVD product that is in the laboratory research phase of development. As such, an RUO IVD is not intended for use in clinical investigations or in clinical practice. Such RUO products do not require premarket clearance or approval from the FDA, provided that they are labeled “For Research Use Only. Not For Use In Diagnostic Procedures” pursuant to FDA regulations. Our IVD products are not intended for clinical or diagnostic use, and we market and label them as RUO. However, the FDA may disagree with our assessment that our products are properly marketed as RUO and may determine that our products are subject to pre-market clearance, approval, or other regulatory requirements. If the FDA determines that our products are subject to such requirements, we could be subject to enforcement action, including administrative and judicial sanctions, and additional regulatory controls and submissions for our tests, all of which could be burdensome.

In the future, certain of our products or related applications could be subject to additional FDA regulation. Even where a product is not subject to FDA clearance or approval requirements, the FDA may impose restrictions as to the types of customers to which we can market and sell our products. Such regulation and restrictions may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Other regulatory regimes that do not currently present material challenges but that could in the future present material challenges include export controls and biosecurity.

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Many countries have laws and regulations that could affect our products and which could limit our ability to sell our products in those countries. The number and scope of these requirements are increasing. We may not be able to obtain regulatory approvals in such countries or may incur significant costs in obtaining or maintaining foreign regulatory approvals. For example, the European Union, or EU, is transitioning from the existing European Directive 98/79/EC on in vitro diagnostic medical devices, or IVD Directive (IVDD), to the In Vitro Diagnostic Device Regulation (EU) 2017/746, or IVDR, which imposes stricter requirements for the marketing and sale of medical devices, including in the area of clinical evaluation requirements, quality systems and post-market surveillance. The IVDR is expected to become effective in May 2022. It is likely that we will be impacted by this new regulation, either directly as a manufacturer of IVDs, or indirectly as a supplier to customers who are placing IVDs in the EU market for clinical or diagnostic use. Complying with the requirements of the IVDR may require us to incur significant expenditures. Failure to meet these requirements could adversely impact our business in the EU and other regions that tie their product registrations or chemical regulations to the EU requirements.

Certain of our potential customers may require that we become certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988.

Although we are not currently subject to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment of 1988, or CLIA, we may in the future be required by certain customers to obtain a CLIA certification. CLIA, which extends federal oversight over clinical laboratories by requiring that they be certified by the federal government or by a federally approved accreditation agency, is designed to ensure the quality and reliability of clinical laboratories by mandating specific standards in the areas of personnel qualifications, administration and participation in proficiency testing, patient test management, quality control, quality assurance and inspections. If our customers require a CLIA certification, we will have to continually expend time, money and effort to ensure that we meet the applicable quality and safety requirements, which may divert the attention of management and disrupt our core business operations.

Our manufacturing operations in the United States currently depend primarily on one facility. If this facility is destroyed or we experience any manufacturing difficulties, disruptions, or delays, this could limit supply of our product or adversely affect our ability to sell products or conduct our clinical trials, and our business would be adversely impacted.

While we are in the process of building out a second manufacturing facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, a substantial portion of our manufacturing currently takes place at our headquarters in South San Francisco, California. If regulatory, manufacturing, or other problems require us to discontinue production at this facility, we will not be able to manufacture our synthetic genes, oligo pools or NGS tool or create our DNA libraries, which would adversely impact our business. If this facility or the equipment in it is significantly damaged or destroyed by fire, flood, power loss, or similar events, or is shut down for health and safety or other reasons, we may not be able to quickly or inexpensively replace our manufacturing capacity or replace the facility at all. In the event of a temporary or protracted loss of this facility or equipment, we might not be able to transfer manufacturing to another third party. Even if we could transfer manufacturing from one facility to another, the shift would likely be expensive and time-consuming, particularly if we were to maintain the current manufacturing standards procedures at such alternative facility.

Natural disasters, public health crises, political crises, and other catastrophic events or other events outside of our control may damage our facilities or the facilities of third parties on which we depend and could impact our ability to sell products.

Our headquarters in South San Francisco is located near known earthquake fault zones and is vulnerable to damage from earthquakes. An earthquake or other natural disaster or power shortages or outages could disrupt operations or impair critical systems at our headquarters or at any of our other facilities throughout the world. We, our suppliers, third-party service providers and customers are vulnerable to damage from natural disasters, including fire, floods or monsoons, power loss, communications failures, public health crises, such as pandemics and epidemics, political crises, such as terrorism, war, political instability or other conflict and similar events. If any disaster were to occur, our ability to operate our business at any of our facilities could be seriously, or potentially completely, impaired. In addition, the nature of our activities could cause significant delays in our research programs and commercial activities and make it difficult for us to recover from a disaster. The insurance we maintain may not be adequate to cover our losses resulting from disasters or other business interruptions. Accordingly, an earthquake or other disaster could materially and adversely harm our ability to conduct business.

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Delivery of our products could be delayed or disrupted by factors beyond our control, and we could lose customers as a result.

We rely on third-party carriers for the timely delivery of our products. As a result, we are subject to carrier disruptions and increased costs that are beyond our control, including travel restrictions, employee strikes, inclement weather and increased fuel costs. Any failure to deliver products to our customers in a timely and accurate manner may damage our reputation and brand and could cause us to lose customers. If our relationship with any of these third-party carriers is terminated or impaired or if any of these third parties are unable to deliver our products, the delivery and acceptance of our products by our customers may be delayed which could harm our business and financial results. The failure to deliver our products in a timely manner may harm our relationship with our customers, increase our costs and otherwise disrupt our operations.

Doing business internationally creates operational and financial risks for our business.

During our fiscal years ended September 30, 2021, 2020 and 2019, 42%, 36%, and 34%, respectively, of our revenue was generated from customers located outside of the United States. In connection with our growth strategy, we intend to further expand in international markets. Conducting and launching operations on an international scale requires close coordination of activities across multiple jurisdictions and time zones and consumes significant management resources. If we fail to coordinate and manage these activities effectively, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be adversely affected. International sales entail a variety of risks, including longer payment cycles and difficulties in collecting accounts receivable outside of the United States, currency exchange fluctuations, challenges in staffing and managing foreign operations, tariffs and other trade barriers (including tariffs enacted and proposed by the U.S. government on various imports from China and by the Chinese government on certain U.S. goods), unexpected changes in legislative or regulatory requirements of foreign countries into which we sell our products, difficulties in obtaining export licenses or in overcoming other trade barriers, laws and business practices favoring local companies, political and economic instability, difficulties protecting or procuring intellectual property rights, and restrictions resulting in delivery delays and significant taxes or other burdens of complying with a variety of foreign laws.

Changes in the value of the relevant currencies may affect the cost of certain items required in our operations. Changes in currency exchange rates may also affect the relative prices at which we are able to sell products in the same market. Our revenue from international customers may be negatively impacted as increases in the U.S. dollar relative to our international customers’ local currency could make our products more expensive, impacting our ability to compete. Our costs of materials from international suppliers may increase if in order to continue doing business with us they raise their prices as the value of the U.S. dollar decreases relative to their local currency. Foreign policies and actions regarding currency valuation could result in actions by the United States and other countries to offset the effects of such fluctuations. The recent global financial downturn has led to a high level of volatility in foreign currency exchange rates and that level of volatility may continue, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations.

In general, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” is subject to limitations on its ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, to offset future taxable income. If the Internal Revenue Service challenges our analysis that our existing NOLs will not expire before utilization due to previous ownership changes, our ability to use our NOLs could be limited by Section 382 of the Code. Future changes in our stock ownership, some of which are outside of our control, could result in an ownership change under Section 382 of the Code. Furthermore, our ability to use NOLs of companies that we may acquire in the future may be subject to limitations. For these reasons, we may not be able to use a material portion of the NOLs reflected on our balance sheet, even if we attain profitability.

The enactment of legislation implementing changes in taxation of international business activities, the adoption of other corporate tax reform policies, or changes in tax legislation or policies could impact our future financial position and results of operations.

Corporate tax reform, base-erosion efforts and tax transparency continue to be high priorities in many tax jurisdictions where we intend to have business operations. As a result, policies regarding corporate income and other taxes in numerous jurisdictions are under heightened scrutiny and tax reform legislation is being proposed or enacted in a number of jurisdictions. For example, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, or the Tax Act, signed into law on December 22, 2017, adopting broad U.S. corporate income tax reform, among other things, reduced the U.S. corporate income tax rate, but imposed base-erosion prevention measures on non-U.S. earnings of U.S. entities as well as a one-time mandatory deemed repatriation tax on accumulated non-U.S. earnings of U.S. entities.

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In addition, many countries are beginning to implement legislation and other guidance to align their international tax rules with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting recommendations and action plan that aim to standardize and modernize global corporate tax policy, including changes to cross-border tax, transfer-pricing documentation rules, and nexus-based tax incentive practices.

Such legislative initiatives may materially and adversely affect our plans to expand internationally and may negatively impact our financial condition and results of operations generally.

Our inability to collect on our accounts receivable by a significant number of customers may have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Sales to our customers are generally made on open credit terms. Management maintains an allowance for potential credit losses. If our customers’ cash flow, working capital, financial conditions or results of operations deteriorate, they may be unable or even unwilling to pay trade receivables owed to us promptly or at all. As a result, we could be exposed to a certain level of credit risk. If a major customer experiences, or a significant number of customers experience, financial difficulties, the effect on us could be material and have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Risks related to being a public company

If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls, our ability to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis could be impaired, which would adversely affect our business.

As a public company, we are required to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”), which requires, among other things, that companies maintain disclosure controls and procedures to ensure timely disclosure of material information, and that management review the effectiveness of those controls on a quarterly basis. Because we ceased to be an “emerging growth company” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”) with our transition to large accelerated filer status as of September 30, 2020, we are also now subject to Section 404(b) of SOX, which requires that our independent registered public accounting firm provide an attestation report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2021, among other additional requirements. Effective internal controls are necessary for us to provide reliable financial reports and to help prevent fraud, and our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time to these compliance requirements. These rules and regulations also increase our legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time-consuming and costly.

As disclosed in Part II—Item 9A, “Controls and Procedures”, of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, we identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting related to controls surrounding our journal entry process, revenue order entry process, and information technology general controls. As a result, management concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of September 30, 2021. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement in a company’s annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. The material weaknesses identified in Item 9A in this Annual Report on Form 10-K did not result in any misstatement of our financial statements for any period presented. We have designed and have begun implementation of a remediation plan for these material weaknesses. However, our remediation efforts may be inadequate, and we may in the future discover other areas of our internal controls that require remediation.

We cannot be certain that we will be able to maintain adequate controls over our financial processes and reporting in the future. If we fail to maintain effective internal controls, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness or our financial reports, the market price of our securities may be negatively affected, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigation by regulatory authorities, such as the SEC or Nasdaq.

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The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources and require a substantial amount of management’s attention.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or the Dodd-Frank Act, the Nasdaq listing requirements and other applicable securities rules and regulations. The SEC and other regulators have continued to adopt new rules and regulations and make additional changes to existing regulations that require our compliance. Stockholder activism, the current political environment, and the current high level of government intervention and regulatory reform may lead to substantial new regulations and disclosure obligations, which may lead to additional compliance costs and impact, in ways we cannot currently anticipate, the manner in which we operate our business. Compliance with these rules and regulations may cause us to incur additional accounting, legal and other expenses. We also incur costs associated with corporate governance requirements, including requirements under securities laws, as well as rules and regulations implemented by the SEC and Nasdaq, particularly as a large accelerated filer. These rules and regulations have increased our legal and financial compliance costs and we devote significant time to comply with these requirements. We are currently evaluating and monitoring developments with respect to these rules and regulations, and we cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we may incur or the timing of such costs.

Risks related to our intellectual property

Our ability to protect our intellectual property and proprietary technology through patents and other means is uncertain.

Our commercial success depends in part on our ability to protect our intellectual property and proprietary technologies. We rely on patent protection, where appropriate and available, as well as a combination of copyright, trade secret and trademark laws, and nondisclosure, confidentiality and other contractual restrictions to protect our proprietary technology. However, these legal means afford only limited protection and may not adequately protect our rights or permit us to gain or keep any competitive advantage.

As of September 30, 2021, we own 33 issued U.S. patents and 24 issued international patents; four in China, three in Europe, six in South Korea, four in Taiwan, three in Japan, one in Eurasia, one in Singapore, one in Australia, and one in Hong Kong. There are 262 pending patent applications, including 72 in the United States, 176 international applications and 14 applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Additionally, we have exclusively licensed a patent portfolio containing ten issued patents, including one U.S. patent and nine international patents, and nine pending applications, including one in the U.S. and eight international applications. We have also licensed a patent portfolio containing two pending applications, including one in the US and one PCT. Our policy is to file patent applications to protect technology, inventions and improvements that are important to our business.

Several patent applications covering our technologies have been filed recently. We cannot offer any assurances about which, if any, patents will issue, the breadth of any such patent, or whether any issued patents will be found invalid and unenforceable or will be threatened by third parties. Any successful opposition to these patents or any other patents owned by or, if applicable in the future, licensed to us could deprive us of rights necessary for the practice of our technologies or the successful commercialization of products that we may develop. Since patent applications in the United States and most other countries are confidential for a period of time after filing, we cannot be certain that we were the first to file any patent application related to our technologies or products. Furthermore, an interference proceeding can be provoked by a third party or instituted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or the USPTO, to determine who was the first to invent any of the subject matter covered by the patent claims of our applications.

Patent law can be highly uncertain and involve complex legal and factual questions for which important principles remain unresolved. In the United States and in many international jurisdictions, policy regarding the breadth of claims allowed in patents can be inconsistent. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have made, and will likely continue to make, changes in how the patent laws of the United States are interpreted. Similarly, international courts have made, and will likely continue to make, changes in how the patent laws in their respective jurisdictions are interpreted. We cannot predict future changes in the interpretation of patent laws or changes to patent laws that might be enacted into law by U.S. and international legislative bodies.

If we are unable to obtain, maintain and enforce intellectual property protection, others may be able to make, use, or sell products and technologies substantially the same as ours, which could adversely affect our ability to compete in the market.

We may not pursue or maintain patent protection for our products in every country or territory in which we sell our products and technologies. In addition, our pending U.S. and foreign patent applications may not issue as patents or may not issue in a form that will be sufficient to protect our proprietary technology and gain or keep our competitive advantage. Any patents we have obtained or do obtain may be subject to re-examination, reissue, opposition or other administrative proceedings, or may be challenged in litigation, and such challenges could result in a determination that the patent is invalid or unenforceable.

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Patents have a limited lifespan. Patent terms may be shortened or lengthened by, for example, terminal disclaimers, patent term adjustments, supplemental protection certificates, and patent term extensions. Although extensions may be available, the life of a patent, and the protection it affords, is limited. Patent term extensions and supplemental protection certificates, and the like, may be impacted by the regulatory process and may not significantly lengthen patent term. Non-payment or delay in payment of patent fees or annuities, delay in patent filings or delay in extension filing, whether intentional or unintentional, may also result in the loss of patent rights important to our business. In such an event, competitors might be able to enter the market earlier than would otherwise have been the case. In addition, certain countries have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled to grant licenses to other parties. Furthermore, many countries limit the enforceability of patents against other parties, including government agencies or government contractors. In these countries, the patent owner may have limited remedies, which could materially diminish the value of any patents.

We cannot be certain that the steps we have taken will prevent unauthorized use or unauthorized reverse engineering of our technology. In addition, competitors may be able to design alternative methods or devices that avoid infringement of our patents. To the extent our intellectual property, including licensed intellectual property, offers inadequate protection, or is found to be invalid or unenforceable, we are exposed to a greater risk of direct competition. If our intellectual property does not provide adequate protection against our competitors’ products, our competitive position could be adversely affected, as could our business. Both the patent application process and the process of managing patent disputes can be time consuming and expensive.

Monitoring unauthorized use of our intellectual property is difficult and costly. From time to time, we review our competitors’ products, and may in the future seek to enforce our patents or other rights against potential infringement. However, the steps we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may not be adequate to prevent misappropriation of our intellectual property. We may not be able to detect unauthorized use of, or take appropriate steps to enforce, our intellectual property rights. We cannot guarantee that any of our patent searches or analyses, including but not limited to the identification of relevant patents, the scope of patent claims or the expiration of relevant patents, are complete or thorough, nor can we be certain that we have identified each and every third-party patent and pending application in the United States and abroad that is relevant to or necessary for the commercialization of our products in any jurisdiction. For example, U.S. applications filed before November 29, 2000 and certain U.S. applications filed after that date that will not be filed outside the United States remain confidential until patents issue. Patent applications in the United States and elsewhere are published approximately 18 months after the earliest filing for which priority is claimed. Therefore, patent applications covering our product candidates or technologies could have been filed by others without our knowledge. Additionally, pending patent applications that have been published can, subject to certain limitations, be later amended in a manner that could cover our platform technologies, our products or the use of our products or technologies. The scope of a patent claim is determined by the interpretation of the law, the written disclosure in a patent and the patent’s prosecution history. Our interpretation of the relevance or the scope of a patent or a pending application may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to market our products. We may incorrectly determine that our products are not covered by a third-party patent or may incorrectly predict whether a third party’s pending application will issue with claims of relevant scope. Our determination of the expiration date of any patent in the United States or abroad that we consider relevant may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our product candidates.

A court or other judicial body may decide that the patent we seek to enforce is invalid or unenforceable or may refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that the patent in question does not cover the technology in question. An adverse result in any litigation could put one or more of our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly. Some of our competitors may be able to devote significantly more resources to intellectual property litigation and may have significantly broader patent portfolios to assert against us if we assert our rights against them.

We may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights throughout the world.

Filing, prosecuting and defending patents on our technologies and products in all countries throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive. In addition, the laws of some non-U.S. countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States, and many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending such rights in foreign jurisdictions. Consequently, we may not be able to prevent third parties from using our inventions in countries outside the United States, or from selling or importing products made using our inventions in and into the United States or other jurisdictions. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own technologies and products and, may export otherwise infringing products to territories where we have patent protection. These products may compete with our products, and our patents or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from competing.

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The legal systems of certain countries, particularly China and certain other developing countries, do not favor the enforcement of patents and other intellectual property protection, particularly those relating to biotechnology, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of our patents. Proceedings to enforce our patent rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial cost and divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of our business, put our own patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly, put our patent applications at risk of not being issued, and provoke third parties to assert claims against us. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate, and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful. Accordingly, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we develop. Certain countries in Europe and developing countries, including China and India, have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled to grant licenses to third parties. In those countries, we may have limited remedies if any of our patents are infringed or if we are compelled to grant a license to a third party, which could materially diminish the value of those patents. This could limit our potential revenue opportunities. Accordingly, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we develop or license.

If we are unable to protect the confidentiality of our proprietary information and know-how, the value of our technology and products could be adversely affected.

In addition to pursuing patents on our technology, we take steps to protect our intellectual property and proprietary technology by entering into confidentiality agreements and intellectual property assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, corporate partners and, when needed, our advisors. Such agreements may not be enforceable or may not provide meaningful protection for our trade secrets or other proprietary information in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure or other breaches of the agreements, and we may not be able to prevent such unauthorized disclosure. Monitoring unauthorized disclosure is difficult, and we do not know whether the steps we have taken to prevent such disclosure are, or will be, adequate. If we were to enforce a claim that a third party had illegally obtained and was using our trade secrets, it would be expensive and time consuming, and the outcome would be unpredictable. In addition, courts outside the United States may be less willing to protect trade secrets.

Trade secrets and know-how can be difficult to protect as trade secrets, and know-how will over time be disseminated within the industry through independent development, the publication of journal articles, and the movement of personnel skilled in the art from company to company. In addition, because we may rely on third parties in the development of our products, we may, at times, share trade secrets with them. We seek to protect our proprietary technology in part by entering into confidentiality agreements and, if applicable, material transfer agreements, consulting agreements or other similar agreements with third parties prior to beginning research or disclosing proprietary information. These agreements typically limit the rights of the third parties to use or disclose our confidential information, including our trade secrets. Despite the contractual provisions employed when working with third parties, the need to share trade secrets and other confidential information increases the risk that such trade secrets become known by our competitors, are inadvertently incorporated into the technology of others, or are disclosed or used in violation of these agreements. If we are unable to prevent unauthorized material disclosure of the intellectual property related to our technologies to third parties, we will not be able to establish or maintain a competitive advantage in our market, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Despite our efforts to protect our trade secrets, our competitors may discover our trade secrets, either lawfully or through breach of our agreements with third parties, independent development or publication of information by any of our third-party collaborators. Competitors could willfully infringe our intellectual property rights, design around our protected technology or develop their own competitive technologies that fall outside of our intellectual property rights. In addition, if any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor, we would have no right to prevent such competitor from using that technology or information to compete with us, which could harm our competitive position. Given that our proprietary position is based, in part, on our know-how and trade secrets, a competitor’s discovery of our trade secrets or other unauthorized use or disclosure would impair our competitive position and may have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

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We may be involved in lawsuits to protect or enforce our patents and proprietary rights, to determine the scope, coverage and validity of others’ proprietary rights, or to defend against third party claims of intellectual property infringement that could require us to spend significant time and money and could prevent us from selling our products or impact our stock price.

Litigation may be necessary for us to enforce our patent and proprietary rights and/or to determine the scope, coverage and validity of others’ proprietary rights. Litigation on these matters has been prevalent in our industry and we expect that this will continue. As the biotechnology and synthetic biology industries expand and more patents are issued, the risk increases that there may be patents issued to third parties that relate to our technologies and products of which we are not aware or that we may need to challenge to continue our operations as currently contemplated. In addition, our competitors and others may have patents or may in the future obtain patents and claim that the use of our products or processes infringes these patents. As we move into new markets and applications for our products and processes, incumbent participants in such markets may assert their patents and other proprietary rights against us as a means of slowing our entry into such markets or as a means to extract substantial license and royalty payments from us.

Patent infringement suits can be expensive, lengthy and disruptive to business operations and the outcome following legal assertions of invalidity and unenforceability is unpredictable. We could incur substantial costs and divert the attention of our management and technical personnel in prosecuting or defending against any claims and may harm our reputation. Some of our competitors may be able to sustain the costs of complex patent litigation more effectively than we can because they have substantially greater resources. There can be no assurance that we will prevail in any suit initiated against us by third parties, successfully settle or otherwise resolve patent infringement claims. If we are unable to successfully settle claims on terms acceptable to us, we may be required to engage in or continue costly, unpredictable and time-consuming litigation and may be prevented from or experience substantial delays in marketing our technologies and products. Furthermore, parties making claims against us may be able to obtain injunctive or other relief, which could block our ability to develop, commercialize and sell products, and could result in the award of substantial damages against us, including treble damages and attorneys’ fees and costs in the event that we are found to be a willful infringer of third party patents.

In the event of a successful claim of infringement against us, we may be required to obtain one or more licenses from third parties, which we may not be able to obtain at a reasonable cost, if at all. We could therefore incur substantial costs related to royalty payments for licenses obtained from third parties, which could negatively affect our gross margins. In addition, we could encounter delays in product introductions while we attempt to develop alternative methods or products to avoid infringing third-party patents or proprietary rights. Defense of any lawsuit or failure to obtain any required licenses on favorable terms could prevent us from commercializing our products, and the risk of a prohibition on the sale of any of our products could adversely affect our ability to grow and gain market acceptance for our products.

We may also be subject to claims that former employees, collaborators or other third parties have an ownership interest in our patents or other intellectual property. We were previously involved in litigation of this kind with Agilent. While we have settled this dispute, there can be no assurance that future litigation will not be initiated by these parties. Some of our employees were previously employed at universities or biotechnology or biopharmaceutical companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. We may be subject to claims that these employees or we have inadvertently or otherwise used or disclosed trade secrets or other proprietary information of their former employers. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these and other claims challenging inventorship or ownership. If we fail in defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights. A loss of key research personnel or their work product could hamper our ability to commercialize, or prevent us from commercializing, our products and technologies. Such an outcome could have a material adverse effect on our business. Even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and distraction to management and other employees.

Furthermore, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property litigation, there is a risk that some of our confidential information could be compromised by disclosure during this type of litigation. In addition, during the course of this kind of litigation, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Such litigation or proceedings could substantially increase our operating losses and reduce the resources available for development activities or any future sales, marketing or distribution activities. Finally, any uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of any litigation could have a material adverse effect on our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our operations.

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In addition, our agreements with some of our suppliers, distributors, customers and other entities with whom we do business may require us to defend or indemnify these parties to the extent they become involved in infringement claims against us, including the claims described above. We could also voluntarily agree to defend or indemnify third parties in instances where we are not obligated to do so if we determine it would be important to our business relationships. If we are required or agree to defend or indemnify any of these third parties in connection with any infringement claims, we could incur significant costs and expenses that could adversely affect our business, operating results, or financial condition.

We may not be successful in obtaining or maintaining necessary rights to our products and technologies through acquisitions and in-licenses, and our intellectual property agreements with third parties may involve unfavorable terms or be subject to disagreements over contract interpretation.

We may find that our programs require the use of proprietary rights held by third parties, and the growth of our business may depend in part on our ability to acquire, in-license or use these proprietary rights. We may be unable to acquire or in-license compositions, methods of use, processes or other third-party intellectual property rights from third parties that we identify as necessary for our products and technologies. The licensing and acquisition of third-party intellectual property rights is a competitive area, and other companies may also be pursuing strategies to license or acquire third-party intellectual property rights that we may consider attractive. These companies may have a competitive advantage over us due to their size, financial resources and greater commercialization capabilities. In addition, companies that perceive us to be a competitor may be unwilling to assign or license rights to us. Moreover, collaboration arrangements are complex and time-consuming to negotiate, document, implement and maintain. We may not be successful in our efforts to establish and implement collaborations or other alternative arrangements should we so choose to enter into such arrangements. We also may be unable to license or acquire third-party intellectual property rights on terms that would be favorable to us or would allow us to make an appropriate return on our investment.

We engage in discussions regarding other possible commercial and cross-licensing agreements with third parties from time to time. There can be no assurance that these discussions will lead to the execution of commercial license or cross-license agreements or that such agreements will be on terms that are favorable to us. Even if we are able to obtain a license to intellectual property of interest, we may not be able to secure exclusive rights, in which case others could use the same rights and compete with us. In addition, if we enter into cross-licensing agreements, there is no assurance that we will be able to effectively compete against others who are licensed under our patents.

In addition, provisions in our licensing and other intellectual property agreements may be susceptible to multiple interpretations. The resolution of any contract interpretation disagreement that may arise could affect the scope of our rights to the relevant intellectual property or technology or affect financial or other obligations under the relevant agreement, either of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

We have not yet registered some of our trademarks in all of our potential markets, and failure to secure those registrations could adversely affect our business.

Some of our trademark applications may not be allowed for registration, and our registered trademarks may not be maintained or enforced. In addition, in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in comparable agencies in many foreign jurisdictions, third parties are given an opportunity to oppose pending trademark applications and to seek to cancel registered trademarks. Opposition or cancellation proceedings may be filed against our trademarks, and our trademarks may not survive such proceedings.

In addition, third parties may file first for our trademarks in certain countries. If they succeed in registering such trademarks, and if we are not successful in challenging such third-party rights, we may not be able to use these trademarks for marketing our products and technologies in those countries. Over the long-term, if we are unable to establish name recognition based on our trademarks, then our marketing abilities may be materially adversely impacted.

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We depend on certain technologies that are licensed to us. We do not control these technologies and any loss of our rights to them could prevent us from selling our products.

We rely on, or may in the future rely on, licenses in order to be able to use various proprietary technologies that are material to our business. We do not or will not own the patents that underlie these licenses. Our rights to use the technology we license are subject to the negotiation of, continuation of and compliance with the terms of those licenses. In some cases, we do not or will not control the prosecution, maintenance, or filing of the patents to which we hold licenses, or the enforcement of these patents against third parties. Some of our patents and patent applications were either acquired from another company who acquired those patents and patent applications from yet another company or are licensed from a third party. For example, Twist Bioscience acquired Genome Compiler Corporation in 2016, and Genome Compiler had a non-exclusive license to U.S. Patent No- 7,805,252 owned by DNA 2.0. Thus, these patents and patent applications are not written by us or our attorneys, and we did not have control over the drafting and prosecution. The former patent owners and our licensors might not have given the same attention to the drafting and prosecution of these patents and applications as we would have if we had been the owners of the patents and applications and had control over the drafting and prosecution. We cannot be certain that drafting and/or prosecution of the licensed patents and patent applications by the licensors have been or will be conducted in compliance with applicable laws and regulations or will result in valid and enforceable patents and other intellectual property rights.

Our rights to use the technology we license is subject to the validity of the owner’s intellectual property rights. Enforcement of our licensed patents or defense or any claims asserting the invalidity of these patents is often subject to the control or cooperation of our licensors. Legal action could be initiated against the owners of the intellectual property that we license. Even if we are not a party to these legal actions, an adverse outcome could harm our business because it might prevent these other companies or institutions from continuing to license intellectual property that we may need to operate our business.

Our licenses contain or will contain provisions that allow the licensor to terminate the license upon specific conditions. Our rights under the licenses are subject to or will be subject to our continued compliance with the terms of the license, including the payment of royalties due under the license. Termination of these licenses could prevent us from marketing some or all of our products. Because of the complexity of our products and the patents we have licensed, determining the scope of the license and related royalty obligation can be difficult and can lead to disputes between us and the licensor. An unfavorable resolution of such a dispute could lead to an increase in the royalties payable pursuant to the license. If a licensor believed we were not paying the royalties due under the license or were otherwise not in compliance with the terms of the license, the licensor might attempt to revoke the license. If such an attempt were successful, we might be barred from producing and selling some or all of our products.

Risks relating to owning our common stock

We have never paid dividends on our capital stock and we do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future. Consequently, any gains from an investment in our common stock will likely depend on whether the price of our common stock increases.

We have never declared or paid any dividends on our common stock and do not intend to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. We anticipate that we will retain all of our future earnings for use in the operation of our business and for general corporate purposes. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Accordingly, investors must rely on sales of their common stock after any price appreciation as the only way to realize any future gains on their investments. Furthermore, we are party to a credit agreement with SVB which contains negative covenants that limit our ability to pay dividends. For more information, see the section of this Form 10-K captioned “Management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operation—Liquidity and capital resources.” For more information regarding the negative covenants in our loan and security agreement with Silicon Valley Bank, see “Risk factors—Our credit facility contains restrictions that limit our flexibility in operating our business.”

Our charter documents and Delaware law could prevent a takeover that stockholders consider favorable and could also reduce the market price of our stock.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change in control of our company. These provisions could also make it more difficult for stockholders to elect directors and take other corporate actions. These provisions include:

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These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management. In addition, the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporate Law, or the DGCL, govern us. These provisions may prohibit large stockholders, in particular those owning 15% or more of our outstanding voting stock, from merging or combining with us for a certain period of time without the consent of our board of directors.

These and other provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws and under Delaware law could discourage potential takeover attempts, reduce the price investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our common stock and result in the market price of our common stock being lower than it would be without these provisions.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware and the federal district courts of the United States will be the exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the sole and exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty owed by any of our directors, officers or other employees to us or our stockholders, any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to any provisions of the DGCL, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws, any action or proceeding asserting a claim as to which the Delaware General Corporation Law confers jurisdiction upon the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine, subject in each case to the Court of Chancery having personal jurisdiction over the parties named as defendants therein. The exclusive forum provision will not apply to suits brought to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange Act or any other claim for which the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction. The choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. If a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we might incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions.

In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the U.S. federal district courts are the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act. Our exclusive forum provision will not relieve us of our duties to comply with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder, and our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with these laws, rules and regulations.

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The enforceability of similar federal court choice of forum provisions in other companies’ certificates of incorporation has been challenged in legal proceedings, and it is possible that a court could find our federal court choice of forum provision to be inapplicable or unenforceable. If a court were to find either of the choice of forum provisions contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions. Additionally, while the Delaware Supreme Court recently determined that choice of forum provisions for actions arising under the Securities Act are facially valid, a stockholder may nevertheless seek to bring such a claim arising under the Securities Act against us, our directors, officers, or other employees in a venue other than in the federal district courts of the United States of America. In such instance, we would expect to vigorously assert the validity and enforceability of the exclusive forum provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, and this may require significant additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions.

General risk factors

The market price of our common stock is likely to be volatile and could fluctuate or decline, resulting in a substantial loss of your investment.

The market price of our common stock could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to, among other things, the factors described in this “Risk factors” section or otherwise, and other factors beyond our control, such as fluctuations in the valuations of companies perceived by investors to be comparable to us.

Furthermore, the stock markets have experienced price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. These fluctuations often have been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. These broad market fluctuations, as well as general economic, systemic, political and market conditions, such as recessions, interest rate changes or international currency fluctuations, may negatively affect the market price of our common stock.

Factors that could cause the market price of our common stock to fluctuate significantly include:

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In the past, many companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have become subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could harm our business.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business or publish negative reports about our business, our share price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock will depend on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business and we will not have any control over such analysts. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our shares or change their opinion of our shares, our share price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which could cause our share price or trading volume to decline.

Future sales and issuances of our common stock or rights to purchase common stock, including pursuant to our equity incentive plans, could result in additional dilution of the percentage ownership of our stockholders and could cause the stock price of our common stock to decline.

As we have in the past, we may sell common stock, convertible securities or other equity securities in one or more transactions at prices and in a manner, we determine from time to time. We have also issued and expect to issue common stock to employees and directors pursuant to our equity incentive plans. If we sell common stock, convertible securities or other equity securities in future transactions, or common stock is issued pursuant to equity incentive plans, investors may be materially diluted. New investors in such subsequent transactions could gain rights, preferences and privileges senior to those of holders of our common stock.

Claims for indemnification by our directors and officers may reduce our available funds to satisfy successful third-party claims against us and may reduce the amount of money available to us.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws provide that we will indemnify our directors and officers, in each case to the fullest extent permitted by Delaware law.

In addition, as permitted by Section 145 of the DGCL, our amended and restated bylaws and our indemnification agreements that we have entered into with our directors and officers provide that:

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Evolving expectations around corporate responsibility practices, specifically related to environmental, social and

governance (“ESG”) matters, may expose us to reputational and other risks.

Investors, stockholders, customers, suppliers and other third parties are increasingly focusing on ESG and corporate social responsibility endeavors and reporting. Certain institutional investors, investment funds, other influential investors, customers, suppliers and other third parties are also increasingly focused on ESG practices. Companies that do not adapt to or comply with the evolving investor or stakeholder expectations and standards, or which are perceived to have not responded appropriately, may suffer from reputational damage and result in the business, financial condition and/or stock price of a company being materially and adversely affected. Further, this increased focus on ESG issues may result in new regulations and/or third-party requirements that could adversely impact our business, or certain shareholders reducing or eliminating their holdings of our stock. Additionally, an allegation or perception that we have not taken sufficient action in these areas could negatively harm our reputation.

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None.

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Our principal facilities are described below:

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The Company believes its existing facilities are in good operating condition and are suitable for the conduct of its business.

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We are subject to various legal proceedings and claims arising in the ordinary course of business. Although occasional adverse decisions or settlements may occur, management believes that the final disposition of such matters will not have a material adverse effect on our business, financial position, results of operations or cash flows.

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Not applicable.

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PART II

Market information for common stock

Our common stock began trading on The Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “TWST” on October 31, 2018 in connection with the initial public offering of our common stock. Prior to that date, there was no public market for our common stock.

Performance Graph

This graph is not “soliciting material” or subject to Regulation 14A, deemed “filed” with the SEC for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or otherwise subject to liabilities under that section, and shall not be deemed incorporated by reference into any filing of the Company under the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, whether made before or after the date hereof and irrespective of any general incorporation language in any such filing.

The following graph compares the cumulative total return to stockholder return on our common stock relative to the cumulative total returns of the Nasdaq Composite Index and the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index. An investment of $100 is assumed to have been made in our common stock and each index on October 31, 2018 (the first day of trading of our common stock) and its relative performance is tracked through September 30, 2021. Pursuant to applicable SEC rules, all values assume reinvestment of the full amount of all dividends, however no dividends have been declared on our common stock to date. The stockholder returns shown on the graph below are based on historical results and are not necessarily indicative of future performance, and we do not make or endorse any predictions as to future stockholder returns.

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Holders of Record

As of November 18, 2021, there were approximately 53 holders of record of our common stock. Because many of our shares of common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of stockholders represented by these record holders.

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Dividend Policy

We have never declared or paid, and do not anticipate declaring or paying in the foreseeable future, any cash dividends on our capital stock. Any future determination to declare cash dividends will be made at the discretion of our board of directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant.

Securities authorized for issuance under equity compensation plans

Equity compensation plan information

The following table presents information as of September 30, 2021 with respect to compensation plans under which shares of our common stock may be issued.

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Sales of unregistered securities

None.

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

None.

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The following Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (MD&A) is intended to promote understanding of the results of operations and financial condition. The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes to those statements included elsewhere in this Form 10-K. In addition to historical financial information, the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results and timing of selected events may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of many factors, including those discussed under “Risk factors” and elsewhere in this Form 10-K. The last day of our fiscal year is September 30, and we refer to our fiscal year ended September 30, 2019 as fiscal year 2019 or 2019, September 30, 2020 as fiscal year 2020 or 2020 and our fiscal year ended September 30, 2021 as fiscal year 2021 or 2021.

Overview

We are an innovative synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a scalable DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of our platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. We have miniaturized traditional chemical DNA synthesis reactions to write over one million short pieces of DNA on each silicon chip, approximately the size of a large mobile phone. We have combined this technology with proprietary software, scalable commercial infrastructure and an e-commerce platform to create an integrated technology platform that enables us to achieve high levels of quality, precision, automation, and manufacturing throughput at a significantly lower cost than our competitors. We are leveraging our unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next generation sample preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development.

Additionally, we believe our platform will enable new value-added opportunities, such as discovery partnerships for biologic drugs, and will enable new applications for synthetic DNA, such as digital data storage. We sell our synthetic DNA and synthetic DNA-based products to a customer base of approximately 2,900 customers in fiscal year 2021 across a broad range of industries.

We launched the first application of our platform, synthetic genes and oligo pools, in April 2016 to disrupt the gene synthesis market and make legacy DNA synthesis methods obsolete.

We have grown rapidly and generated revenues of $132.3 million in the year ended September 30, 2021, $90.1 million in the year ended September 30, 2020 and $54.4 million in the year ended September 30, 2019, while incurring net losses of $152.1 million, $139.9 million and $107.7 million in the years ended September 30, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Since our inception, we have incurred significant operating losses and have accumulated net deficit of $610.6 million. To support our growth, we have increased our number of employees and increased investment in our manufacturing capabilities. Our ability to generate product revenue sufficient to achieve profitability will depend heavily on the success of our existing products and development and commercialization of additional products in the synthetic biology industry, biologic drug industry and the data storage industry.

In 2021, 2020 and 2019 we served approximately 2,900, 2,200 and 1,300 customers, respectively.

Highlights from fiscal year 2021 compared with fiscal year 2020 included

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We have built a scalable commercial platform that enables us to reach a diverse customer base in a variety of industries including industrial chemicals/materials, academic research, healthcare, food, agriculture and data storage. To address this diverse customer base, we have employed a multi-channel strategy comprised of a direct sales force targeting synthetic DNA customers, international distributors, and an e-commerce platform. We launched our proprietary, innovative, and easy-to-use e-commerce platform in October 2017 to existing customers and expanded access to the general public in January 2018. Our platform allows customers to design, validate and place on-demand orders of customized DNA online. This is a key component of our strategy to address and support our diverse and growing customer base, as well as support commercial productivity, enhance the customer experience, and promote loyalty.

Seasonality

Over the years, we have experienced a pattern, although not consistently, of our third-quarter revenue growth being lower than revenue growth in other quarters due to a decrease in demand from certain potentially significant customers during such quarter and periodic revenue fluctuations in our NGS tools. As we grow our NGS tools, our revenue may continue to fluctuate from quarter to quarter. As our European and APAC businesses become larger percentage of our revenues, we anticipate reduced revenue in our fourth quarter due to the seasonal slowdown caused by summer vacations and European holiday schedules.

Key business metrics

We regularly review the following key business metrics to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate financial projections and make strategic decisions. We believe that the following metrics are representative of our current business. However, we anticipate these will change or may be substituted for additional or different metrics as our business grows.

Value of orders received

We believe that the value of orders we receive is a leading indicator of our ability to generate revenue in subsequent quarters, although there can be no assurance orders will translate into revenue. We define an order as a contract with a customer or purchase order from a customer, which outlines the promised goods at an agreed upon-price. In some cases, we receive a blanket purchase order from our customers, which includes pricing, payment and other terms and conditions, with quantities defined at the time each customer subsequently issues periodic releases against the blanket purchase order. We regularly assess trends relating to the value of orders we receive, including with respect to our customer concentration.

Orders may never convert into actual revenue and the timing of delivery of our orders and recognition of revenue, if any, may vary based on the nature of the order, and there can be no assurance that orders will result in recognized revenue. The following table lists the value of orders received during the periods indicated:

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Number of customers

We believe that the number of customers who have purchased from us since inception is representative of our ability to drive adoption of our products. We define customers as separate legal entities or persons who have purchased and directly paid for our products. This means that if a parent company is a customer of ours, it is counted as one customer, and if its subsidiary also purchases our products from us, and the subsidiary makes a payment directly to us, we count the subsidiary as a separate customer. We apply this methodology of counting customers because it is not possible for our e-commerce platform and other data tracking software to distinguish accurately between affiliated purchasers.

Percentage of revenue from new and repeat customers

We believe that the percentage of revenue that we generate from both new and repeat customers is an indicator of our ability to drive adoption of our products amongst existing customers while also generating a robust pipeline of new customers. We define a new customer as a customer who, as a separate legal entity or person, has not had multiple purchases in the current fiscal year. We define a repeat customer as any customer who, as a separate legal entity or person, has purchased products or services from us more than once in the current fiscal year.

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We shipped products to approximately 2,900, 2,200, and 1,300 customers in fiscal years ended 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. Our percentage of revenue from repeat customers were 98%, 97% and 97% for the fiscal years ended 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.

Financial overview

The following table summarizes certain selected historical financial results:

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Revenues

We generate revenue from sales of synthetic genes, oligo pools, NGS tools and Biopharma libraries. Our ability to increase our revenues will depend on our ability to further penetrate the domestic and international markets, generate sales through our direct sales force and over time from our e-commerce platform and launch new products.

Revenues by geography

We have one reportable segment from the sale of synthetic DNA products. The following table shows our revenues by geography, based on our customers’ shipping addresses. Americas consists of United States of America, Canada, Mexico and South America; EMEA consists of Europe, Middle East and Africa; and APAC consists of Japan, China, South Korea, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.

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Revenues by products

The table below sets forth revenues by products:

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Revenues by industry

Revenues by industry were as follows:

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Revenues and accounts receivable concentration

There are no major customers who accounted for 10% or more of our revenue for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021. There were two major customers who accounted for 12% and 10% of our revenue for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2020. There was one major customer who accounted for 17% of our revenue for the financial year ended September 30, 2019. There are no major customers who accounted for 10% or more of the net accounts receivable as of September 30, 2021. There was one customer who accounted for 36% of net accounts receivable as of September 30, 2020.

Product shipments including synthetic genes

Shipments of number of genes in years ended September 30, 2021, 2020 and 2019 were as follows:

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Cost of revenues

Cost of revenues reflects the aggregate cost incurred in the production and delivery of our products and consists of production materials, personnel costs, cost of expensed equipment and consumables, laboratory supplies, depreciation of capitalized equipment, production overhead costs and allocations of information technology(“ IT”) and facility costs. Personnel costs consist of salaries, employee benefit costs, bonuses, and stock-based compensation expenses. We expect that our cost of revenues will vary with changes in our revenues and our revenue mix.

Research and development

Research and development expenses consist primarily of costs incurred for the development of our products, which include personnel costs, laboratory supplies, consulting costs and allocated overhead, including IT and facility costs. We expense our research and development expenses in the period in which they are incurred. We expect to increase our research and development expenses as we continue to invest in new product development.

Selling, general and administrative

Selling expenses consist of personnel costs, customer service expenses, direct marketing expenses, educational and promotional expense, market research and analysis. General and administrative expenses include executive, finance and accounting, legal and human resources. These expenses consist of personnel costs, audit and legal expenses, consulting costs and allocated IT and facility costs. We expense all selling, general and administrative expenses as incurred. We expect our selling and marketing costs will continue to increase in absolute dollars, primarily driven by our efforts to expand our commercial capability, with an increased presence both within and outside the United States, and to expand our brand awareness and customer base through targeted marketing initiatives. We expect general and administrative expenses will increase as well as we scale our operations.

Change in fair value of contingent consideration and indemnity holdback

Change in fair value of contingent consideration and indemnity holdback consists of remeasurement of contingent consideration and indemnity holdback related to the acquisition of iGenomX.

Interest expense

Interest expense is attributable to borrowing under our senior secured term loan and our equipment financing facility.

Interest income

Interest income consists primarily of interest earned on our cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments.

Other income (expense), net

Other income (expense), net consists of realized foreign exchange gains and losses and loss on disposal of property and equipment.

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Results of operations

The following table sets forth selected consolidated statements of operations data for the fiscal years indicated and the percentage change in such data from year to year. These historical operating results may not be indicative of the results for any future period.

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