OmniAb Lifts 2026 Revenue Guidance to $32-36 Million, but the Raise Implies Revenue Falling Sharply in the Second Half as Milestones Front-Load
Second quarter 2026 earnings call, August 6, 2026
OmniAb reported second quarter revenue of $13.4 million, up from $3.9 million a year earlier. The company raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $32 million to $36 million and narrowed its ranges for operating expense and year-end cash. The quarter's quality is real, since the increase came almost entirely from clinical milestones that partners earned. But the guidance arithmetic is the more important signal. Year-to-date revenue is already $27.8 million, so the new range implies only about $4 million to $8 million for the back half, or roughly $2 million to $4 million per quarter. CFO Kurt Gustafson attributed this to timing, saying milestone achievements are "front-end loaded for 2026," whereas last year they skewed to the second half. He added that nothing negative is happening in xPloration, royalties or service revenue. Still, investors should read 2026 as a year in which a lumpy revenue line arrived early, not as a new run rate.
Milestones Drive the Beat; Losses Narrow but Remain Dependent on Partners
The net loss for the quarter narrowed to $5.9 million, or $0.05 per share, from $15.9 million, or $0.15 per share, a year ago. For the first half, the net loss was $13.6 million versus $34.1 million. Management stressed that year-over-year operating expense comparisons are distorted by a roughly $2 million one-time net gain on the sale of an ion channel asset in the prior-year quarter and by a non-cash write-off in the first quarter of 2026. Excluding those items, it says R&D and G&A both declined. The company now guides to GAAP operating expense of $84 million to $88 million and to cash operating expense of $51 million to $55 million. The cash figure excludes depreciation, stock-based compensation and intangible amortization, which together make up roughly 35% to 40% of the GAAP total.
The business is still not self-funding on a recurring basis. Rodman & Renshaw's Michael King noted that even after the raise, a gap of more than $20 million remains between spend and expected revenue. Gustafson's answer was that cash was $52 million at quarter-end, from $54 million at the start of the year. He guided to $37 million to $41 million at year-end, which implies about $15 million of burn at the midpoint, and called the runway "pretty long." The longer-term case rests on growing milestone revenue and, eventually, royalties, with "additional revenue that comes in drops to the bottom of the line" because expenses are being held flat. Management did not rule out outside capital, and it did not say how it would close the gap if milestones disappoint. The company said some of the Q2 milestones are still in accounts receivable and not yet collected.
Two Programs Skip to Phase III, Lifting Late-Stage Visibility
The most consequential pipeline news is that two partnered programs moved directly from Phase I to Phase III in the quarter. One is Johnson & Johnson's tri-specific antibody ramantamig in multiple myeloma. The other is Merck KGaA's CEACAM5-targeting antibody-drug conjugate precemtabart tocentecan in metastatic colorectal cancer. CEO Matt Foehr said "the right-hand side of this graphic is continuing to get more crowded with what some of our partners view as important potential first-in-class or best-in-class medicines." The Boehringer Ingelheim BI 878 program is in Phase II for MASH.
The portfolio now stands at 110 active partners and 425 active programs, with about 98% carrying contracted downstream economics. There are 34 active clinical programs and approved products, with four new clinical entrants so far this year. OmniAb cites more than $3 billion in total contracted potential milestones on standard antibody licenses, at an average royalty rate of about 3.4%. Remaining contracted milestones on clinical-stage programs are about $340 million. Foehr cited roughly $350 million in the Q&A, which is probably loose phrasing. Eight of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies are partners. The quarter's new licenses included argenx and the venture-backed EnRosa Therapeutics.
Two upcoming catalysts matter for milestone timing. Teva plans to start a Phase IIb vitiligo study of its anti-IL-15 asset TEV-'408 in the fourth quarter. The asset drew a large Royalty Pharma investment earlier this year. In the earlier study, nearly 75% of evaluable patients reported improvement in facial vitiligo at week 24, and half reported much or very much improved. Immunovant also reported clinically meaningful week 16 response rates for IMVT-1402 in difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis. It expects further updates in the second half in that indication and in lupus, and it said the program remains on track across all six announced indications. The caveat is that the 3.4% average royalty is modest, and meaningful royalty revenue depends on approvals that are still years away for most of the portfolio.
xPloration Gets Its First Real Commercial Proof Points, but Economics Remain Opaque
OmniAb sold two xPloration instruments in the quarter, bringing the installed base to four. xPloration is its high-throughput single B cell screening platform, which pairs an instrument with proprietary single-use consumables, software subscriptions and maintenance contracts. Management is leaning on the platform as a diversifier away from milestone dependence, and it called early feedback on "rapid runtimes, ease of use, and overall robustness" encouraging. New COO Amechi Nwachuku, who has a life-sciences tools background, described the revenue model as potentially including "instrument placements, ongoing consumables and reagent usage, software and service."
The disclosure remains thin. Management declined to break out xPloration revenue and said it is too early to discuss consumables utilization. Gustafson said margins are "very good" on instruments and "even better" on consumables, but he cautioned against extrapolating the quarter's mix. Nwachuku said the company is "still evaluating the full commercial opportunity." Four installed units is a small base on which to judge the razor-and-blade model. The October investor and analyst day, which includes an in-person demonstration, is where management has said it will lay out the market size and strategy. Foehr cited October 6 in prepared remarks and October 1 in his closing remarks, so investors should confirm the date.
OmniUltra and OmnidAb Broaden the Addressable Market
Management says its two newest antibody generation technologies are driving inbound interest. OmniUltra, launched late last year, is described as the first and only transgenic chicken producing antibodies with ultra-long CDRH3 regions, a structural feature normally found in cows. Foehr said these are designed to "reach binding pockets not accessible with other antibodies or modalities." Potential uses include building blocks for multispecifics, binders for CAR-T and radiopharmaceuticals, and in vivo-generated peptides. OmnidAb, a single-domain platform, has potential applications in brain shuttling and multispecifics. Both are being pointed at difficult target classes such as ion channels and GPCRs.
Six partnered programs derived from the chicken platforms, OmnidAb and OmniChicken, are now in Phase I or II. Foehr described OmniAb as "the only company in the world with a transgenic chicken platform that creates fully human antibody sequences." He argued that the chicken's evolutionary distance from mammals helps generate antibodies against highly conserved targets. Management said it will discuss OmniUltra data and new programs more fully as partners disclose results, so quantifiable new-partner contribution is not yet visible.
AI Positioning and Funding Backdrop
Asked by Leerink about lab-in-the-loop AI drug discovery, Foehr pointed to the OmniDeep suite of in silico tools, which has been in place for more than three years. He argued that proprietary input data from transgenic animals, combined with xPloration's ability to generate large data sets of "both hits and misses," feeds the machine learning models. This is a reasonable strategic framing, but management offered no quantitative evidence yet that it influences revenue.
On the funding environment, Foehr said larger partners "are taking bigger swings" at bigger indications and that smaller partners are also showing an uptick. He added that earlier this year there were changes to guidelines on preclinical work required for certain first-in-human antibody programs. He sees that as a potential long-term tailwind, especially for smaller partners. The company said programs continue to progress through each stage from discovery to Phase III, though it did not quantify the preclinical-to-clinic pipeline.