OmniAb Opens xPloration to All Customers and Unveils OmniTides Peptide Platform, Targeting a Combined Market Worth Over $1.5 Billion
Investor and Analyst Day, Emeryville, California — October 6, 2026
OmniAb used its first formally branded Investor and Analyst Day to disclose two significant commercial moves: the company is taking its xPloration B-cell screening platform from a limited partner-access program to full general availability, and it is launching an entirely new discovery platform, OmniTides, aimed at the peptide therapeutics market. Both moves extend OmniAb's royalty-and-licensing model into adjacent, faster-growing markets, and management backed the announcements with primary market research and explicit multi-year revenue guidance that investors had not previously seen.
xPloration Goes Fully Commercial, With Data to Back the Pitch
The headline disclosure was operational: starting this month, OmniAb is making the xPloration instrument, consumables, software and support available to all customers, not just its roughly 110 existing licensing partners. The platform had been in a Partner Access program since May 2025, and according to Chief Operating Officer Amechi Nwachuku, the feedback from that trial period across big pharma, CROs and small biotechs was "really positive," giving the company confidence to open the aperture.
Management supported the decision with two commissioned studies from Percepta Associates, each surveying more than 200 respondents across industry and academia. The findings were notable: 63% of respondents said they expect to need a new B-cell screening platform within three years, and more than 20% within the next twelve months. In a conjoint analysis testing product configurations against existing technologies, more than 80% of respondents said they would "definitely or probably" purchase the winning xPloration configuration, a result Nwachuku said held consistent "across industry, across geographies."
The instrument itself is pitched as a differentiated, fluidics-free benchtop system using a proprietary microcapillary array with 1.5 million channels, capable of screening millions of B cells and recovering intact hits in half a day rather than the weeks or months required by legacy approaches. OmniAb estimates the core B-cell screening market at more than $500 million annually, growing at double-digit rates, with industry representing roughly 80% of that spend.
On the financial side, the company guided to $2 million to $3 million of xPloration revenue in 2026, doubling in 2027 and doubling again in 2028. Management described a four-part revenue model: instrument sales as the initial entry point, followed by recurring, high-margin revenue from proprietary consumables, software licenses, and multi-year service contracts. CFO Kurt Gustafson was direct about the margin dynamics: "We make good money on the instrument. We make even better money on the other aspects of the consumables." Over time, management expects the recurring streams to become a larger share of the mix as the installed base grows.
OmniTides: A New Platform Aimed at a $1 Trillion Addressable Market
The second major disclosure was the formal launch of OmniTides, a peptide discovery platform built on OmniAb's OmniUltra transgenic chicken technology, which produces antibodies with unusually long CDR-H3 "stalk and knob" structures inspired by cow antibodies. Senior Vice President Yasmina Abdiche explained that the protruding knob domain on these antibodies can function as a standalone peptide with full target-binding capability once synthesized, effectively allowing the company to repurpose its existing in vivo discovery engine for an entirely new modality.
The pitch to investors centered on manufacturability and stability rather than brute-force screening. Abdiche noted that these peptides "spring into shape by random oxidation," avoiding the need for complex protection chemistries, and described testing that included freeze-thaw cycles, prolonged incubation, and exposure to boiling strong acid without loss of binding activity—attributes she called particularly relevant for radiopharmaceutical applications given the heat and low-pH conditions involved in radiolabeling. Business Development lead Brian McGuinness quantified the opportunity: peptides accounted for 10% of FDA approvals between 2020 and 2024, with roughly 130 approved peptide therapeutics on the market as of 2026. He pointed to market estimates growing from $117 billion in 2026 to more than $300 billion by the mid-2030s, with metabolic disease (driven by GLP-1 agonists) commanding over 60% share today, but oncology and neurology representing deeper, faster-growing pools of opportunity. McGuinness said the company's initial partnering focus will be peptide-drug conjugates, peptide radio-conjugates and precision-targeted payload delivery, areas he said already total around $1 trillion in estimated addressable market when including all relevant indications.
When asked directly by an analyst from H.C. Wainwright where early partner interest is concentrated, Abdiche confirmed radioligand therapy as "a real sweet spot," noting the field has shifted from small and large molecules toward peptides because of more favorable clearance profiles matched to radionuclide decay half-lives.
Ion Channel Discovery Quietly Becoming a Larger Deal Driver
CEO Matthew Foehr used the event to elevate the visibility of OmniAb's ion channel discovery capability, an area the company says has long been viewed as a "holy grail" target class for antibody-based approaches. OmniAb disclosed in August an ion channel licensing deal with Eli Lilly covering an undisclosed target and modality, which Foehr said carries "substantial downstream economics" and has drawn increased attention to this part of the technology stack. These deals typically carry larger upfront service fees alongside milestones and royalties, reflecting the specialized, decades-old expertise of the ion channel screening group OmniAb acquired. Management characterized this as a growing, higher-margin segment of the licensing business going forward.
Pipeline Maturation: Two Programs Now Framed as "Pipeline-in-a-Product"
OmniAb highlighted a maturing late-stage partner pipeline, pointing specifically to IMVT-1402 and TEV-408, programs partners are now describing internally as "pipeline-in-a-product" opportunities given their potential across as many as five indications each. The Merck KGaA ADC program precemtabart tocentecan, which jumped directly from Phase 1 to Phase 3 earlier this year in colorectal cancer, was cited as another example of partner conviction, alongside the J&J multiple myeloma program ramantamig, which also skipped from Phase 1 to Phase 3.
Management disclosed, for the first time, data on partner financial commitment to clinical programs derived from OmniAb technology: more than $2.4 billion in estimated partner spend across clinical trial starts and enrolled patients. The company also flagged roughly 19 clinical trial readouts expected across its partner portfolio over the next fifteen months, including potentially pivotal data for IMVT-1402 in mid-2027.
The current portfolio carries more than $3 billion in total contracted potential milestones and an average royalty rate of 3.4% across more than 125 active programs with 110-plus active partners. Of the 34 active clinical and approved programs, roughly $340 million in milestones remain contracted but unrealized.
Royalty Monetization Still Off the Table, For Now
Asked directly whether OmniAb would consider selling a portion of its royalty portfolio to a third-party royalty buyer, Foehr said the company is approached "frequently" by such buyers but has not pursued those transactions, arguing that growing interest in royalty monetization from outside investors only reinforces the asset's intrinsic value. "We feel like the business is very well capitalized, and we do feel like those royalties are the juice of the future," he said, suggesting the company intends to let the portfolio compound rather than monetize it early.
AI Strategy: Conversational Control Coming to xPloration
Chief technology voice Bob Chen outlined plans to layer conversational AI onto the xPloration instrument, allowing scientists to direct screening workflows using natural language rather than manual operation, a capability the company intends to detail further at the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics conference in December. Chen argued that OmniAb's fluidics-free hardware design is uniquely suited to this ambition, since AI-driven automation depends on instruments that fail predictably and visibly rather than through hidden clogs or leaks common in fluidics-based systems. He also framed the broader AI boom as a tailwind rather than a threat to OmniAb's animal-based discovery model, arguing that genetically diverse, in vivo-generated antibody data remains more valuable, not less, as AI models proliferate, since machine learning systems still require real, biologically validated training data that pure computational discovery cannot replicate.
Financial Guidance Reaffirmed
OmniAb reaffirmed its 2026 guidance of $32 million to $36 million in revenue and $51 million to $55 million in cash operating expenses, with management reiterating an expectation to be "really close to breakeven" on a cash flow basis this year. Full 2027 guidance will accompany fourth-quarter results in late February or early March. Third-quarter earnings are scheduled for October 30, with management set to appear at four healthcare conferences in November.