[math_guy]

A minor tidbit: Roche (not sure of Genentech though) is one of the least experienced in the use of the PacBio systems. I was there working for Roche setting the analytics up (as of mid-2014). I have left Roche since then, but experienced users are really genome centers (I worked for those too).

It's all about the huge pay-check that Roche was/is cutting out to PacBio...Many obligations whether you like it or not, I suppose.

Do you know a genome center (service provider) who will get the Sequel first?

Also, even though Roche was inexperienced with the PacBio system as of mid 2014, it's been nearly a year and a half since then. Maybe they got geared up since, in anticipation of the Sequel?

I am gonna make a prediction here: this machine could change everything. I am not trying to be dramatic. It genuinely could change everything. The FDA needs to get out of the way, which will never happen, but still...the cost and accuracy is geared toward where research is most profitable. That's why I bought the stock the day they announced the Sequel. This is what the market needs.

I just....don't really trust the company. If they're lying about their machine like they lied to me about shipping me some Sequels then I am nervous.

Illumina needs to buy them. Like....now. And not just cuz I own Pacific Bio stock. I need this machine. And I need someone to be honest with me about it and what I can expect. Illumina would do that. PacBio won't.

[Brian Bushnell]

And I need someone to be honest with me about it and what I can expect. Illumina would do that.

[srao]

Do you know a genome center (service provider) who will get the Sequel first?

Also, even though Roche was inexperienced with the PacBio system as of mid 2014, it's been nearly a year and a half since then. Maybe they got geared up since, in anticipation of the Sequel?

I am gonna make a prediction here: this machine could change everything. I am not trying to be dramatic. It genuinely could change everything. The FDA needs to get out of the way, which will never happen, but still...the cost and accuracy is geared toward where research is most profitable. That's why I bought the stock the day they announced the Sequel. This is what the market needs.

I just....don't really trust the company. If they're lying about their machine like they lied to me about shipping me some Sequels then I am nervous.

Illumina needs to buy them. Like....now. And not just cuz I own Pacific Bio stock. I need this machine. And I need someone to be honest with me about it and what I can expect. Illumina would do that. PacBio won't.

I haven't heard of any genome centers getting their sequels just yet. Icahn school of medicine at Mount Sinai seems on the first pass list though. The former CSO of PacBio, Eric Schadt, is over at Mount Sinai, so that is not too surprising to me.

Roche doesn't build anything, they just acquire them. That includes even their primary bread and butter - the PCR technology (which was originally developed by Kary Mullis while he was at Cetus). I left not too long ago, and there was nothing happening until early-mid 2015 over at the Sequencing Unit in Pleasanton, CA. Roche has a non-innovative culture (reason that I left).

They hired a new guy as a director from Asuragen for their sequencing division. He seems like a nice guy, and he is building a team, but then it remains to be seen how far along that will go (without Roche's less than intelligent upper-management intervening for too long).

While I was there, the impression that I had was that PacBio had a lot of obligations from Roche. The rumor was that PacBio was looking at Roche to stay afloat. When you are very rich (like Roche), and cut hefty pay-checks to innovative companies like PacBio, you have the final say on the marketing too, I suppose.

Come 2016 maybe you'll have better luck acquiring the Sequels? Right now, it's just that whole Roche thing... I personally know several of the PacBio folks. They genuinely are very talented, and very nice people. I would work for PacBio any day than Roche. Took some experience to realize that...

Good Luck!

[math_guy]

I haven't heard of any genome centers getting their sequels just yet. Icahn school of medicine at Mount Sinai seems on the first pass list though. The former CSO of PacBio, Eric Schadt, is over at Mount Sinai, so that is not too surprising to me.

Roche doesn't build anything, they just acquire them. That includes even their primary bread and butter - the PCR technology (which was originally developed by Kary Mullis while he was at Cetus). I left not too long ago, and there was nothing happening until early-mid 2015 over at the Sequencing Unit in Pleasanton, CA. Roche has a non-innovative culture (reason that I left).

They hired a new guy as a director from Asuragen for their sequencing division. He seems like a nice guy, and he is building a team, but then it remains to be seen how far along that will go (without Roche's less than intelligent upper-management intervening for too long).

While I was there, the impression that I had was that PacBio had a lot of obligations from Roche. The rumor was that PacBio was looking at Roche to stay afloat. When you are very rich (like Roche), and cut hefty pay-checks to innovative companies like PacBio, you have the final say on the marketing too, I suppose.

Come 2016 maybe you'll have better luck acquiring the Sequels? Right now, it's just that whole Roche thing... I personally know several of the PacBio folks. They genuinely are very talented, and very nice people. I would work for PacBio any day than Roche. Took some experience to realize that...

Good Luck!

You really don't like Roche. I sort of have similar opinions on most companies in biotech, especially public companies. I feel that they are run from the top-down by poor, short--term decision makers. Not enough investment in R&D. Too much investment in management.

But, for the record, I complain a lot.

I assume that we will never get a Sequel. We will most likely work out one or two long-term contracts with service providers and wait til Illumina buys them or comes out with a competing technology.

Or...maybe I'll buy one on the open market for a premium. We'll see.

My Pac Bio stock is slowly rising. We'll see if someone makes an offer to buy them soon. If so then I will resubmit my offer to the new sales team and hopefully they will accept my purchase orders. Also, if they are bought out then I will have made enough of a profit for two Sequels. Of course...it is PacBio...I am not ruling out this management team's ability to seriously mess it all up.

[spore]

Can you explain why you think Sequel will change everything? Is it just the 2-3x price reduction that makes it more viable? Or is it something about the long reads you find crucial for sequencing moving forward? I still don't see them taking the thrown from Illumina with this new instrument.

Illumina isn't going to buy them. If anyone will it will be roche. But if Sequel is really the hit you think it is why would they sell the company?

And it makes sense they are being reserved about who gets the first instruments in Q1 (beside the initial 10 for Q4). They got burned with the RS because they shipped too many too early to customers who had no use (or patience) for the machine. This gave them a horrible reputation that took years to fix.

Given the fact only 10 instruments are going out this quarter (probably mostly to roche) I don't think you will find a service provider anytime soon. Yes they will ship more in the US in Q1 but wouldn't it just make more sense to wait a few more months and try and push for a Q2 buy? In the earnings call they expect to open sales worldwide in Q2. So if you are persistent maybe you will get one by next spring. And until then why don't you start the project using RS service providers? If you're willing to pay a premium for sequel why not pay for RS sequencing that's available now?

[math_guy]

Can you explain why you think Sequel will change everything? Is it just the 2-3x price reduction that makes it more viable? Or is it something about the long reads you find crucial for sequencing moving forward? I still don't see them taking the thrown from Illumina with this new instrument.

Illumina isn't going to buy them. If anyone will it will be roche. But if Sequel is really the hit you think it is why would they sell the company?

And it makes sense they are being reserved about who gets the first instruments in Q1 (beside the initial 10 for Q4). They got burned with the RS because they shipped too many too early to customers who had no use (or patience) for the machine. This gave them a horrible reputation that took years to fix.

Given the fact only 10 instruments are going out this quarter (probably mostly to roche) I don't think you will find a service provider anytime soon. Yes they will ship more in the US in Q1 but wouldn't it just make more sense to wait a few more months and try and push for a Q2 buy? In the earnings call they expect to open sales worldwide in Q2. So if you are persistent maybe you will get one by next spring. And until then why don't you start the project using RS service providers? If you're willing to pay a premium for sequel why not pay for RS sequencing that's available now?

It will change everything because of the read length. The lower cost is important as well. But it is the read length. It will change everything for us, personally. Our protocol scales significantly with read length.

As for why we won't use the RS2: it doesn't hit our price point quite yet per read. The Sequel does. We will stick with Illumina until the Sequel is released because of cost per base. For our protocol, the Sequel (if real) is what we need.

As far as Illumina not buying them...yeah...maybe. But they also might buy them. Roche may buy them as well. Or someone else may buy them. As for why Pac Bio would sell....ummm...they can't make money. Their management team is weak. The board must know this (because they could not attract the best). The company has had very little cash for a long time. They only have one machine that is relevant now (the Sequel). The space is becoming more competitive and Pac Bio is winding down their R&D budget (as they said on the conference call). If you're firing on all cylinders then you don't spend less on R&D.

I agree that I may not find a service provider soon for the Sequel. But I am still going to try. A service provider would do well to work with us, in my opinion. We would allow them to become profitable quickly if they were to sign a contract with us. But....we will see. I am also going to try to buy a machine on the open market but I don't expect that will work out.

Also, I don't have the highest faith in Pac Bio being able to ship 10 initial units in Q4. They seemed hesitant on the conference call regarding timing. This leads me to believe that they will be late on the proposed Q1 and Q2 shipments.

My basic plan is this: I am gonna track down the labs who receive the machine. I am gonna try to work out a deal with one or more of these labs to run the Sequel for us in between their scheduled runs. And I will share parts of our protocol with these labs in exchange for being able to use their machines. If that doesn't work out then I will see if they will sell us the machine outright at a premium...say $700k for the device. If that fails then I will just have to wait for a service provider to come on line. If Pac Bio takes too long to get the machines out then Illumina will release something and that will be that. At least, that is my take on all of this.

Lastly, I do not understand why barely anyone gets it with this machine. I am not saying that it is the holy grail of sequencing. But the specs....they are stellar for many applications that are pertinent right now. I am sort of confused that the stock is only up 30% since I bought the stock on the Sequel news. Unless Pac Bio is lying, eventually the market will understand the value of this device. I know that my company cannot be the only one which hacks sequencing protocols from the 3 main companies in the space. We can't be the only ones who see the potential of this device....can we?

[spore]

I don't think it will be an issue for the to ship out 10 instruments. Sequel is much simpler and cheaper to build (1/4 price of RS). It seems like they pushed most of the optics onto the chip. Mike stated that the restrictions to selling instruments is because of chip inventory and not because of instruments.

I'm a bit confused. So did the sales team just stop responding to you or did they actually tell you they can't sell you a Sequel instrument? I would suspect if you contacted them telling them your situation, your plans for the instruments, etc they should be able to give you a timeline on when you can get an instrument. The only reason I would see them completely blowing you off for a Q1/Q2 shipment is if they are getting bombarded with so many orders that they already are booked for the next 2-3 quarters. But I don't know, maybe you can get some visibility from their sales team if you are persistent...

The stock jumped from $3.50 to $8 on just a product announcement. Assuming Sequel does what they say and it works properly the stock should probably be much higher. Since they havent shipped any instruments and there are no publications using sequel sequencing, the market has to price the risk of this product being a dud. Over the next few weeks as they ship instruments and we start to see customer data along with a build up to agbt I suspect the stock price will shoot up. So I think the market is just waiting to make sure pacbio can delver over the next few weeks. But I totally agree with you, if Sequel does work then it should be able to take a good chunk of the $20billion sequencing market.

[math_guy]

I don't think it will be an issue for the to ship out 10 instruments. Sequel is much simpler and cheaper to build (1/4 price of RS). It seems like they pushed most of the optics onto the chip. Mike stated that the restrictions to selling instruments is because of chip inventory and not because of instruments.

I'm a bit confused. So did the sales team just stop responding to you or did they actually tell you they can't sell you a Sequel instrument? I would suspect if you contacted them telling them your situation, your plans for the instruments, etc they should be able to give you a timeline on when you can get an instrument. The only reason I would see them completely blowing you off for a Q1/Q2 shipment is if they are getting bombarded with so many orders that they already are booked for the next 2-3 quarters. But I don't know, maybe you can get some visibility from their sales team if you are persistent...

The stock jumped from $3.50 to $8 on just a product announcement. Assuming Sequel does what they say and it works properly the stock should probably be much higher. Since they havent shipped any instruments and there are no publications using sequel sequencing, the market has to price the risk of this product being a dud. Over the next few weeks as they ship instruments and we start to see customer data along with a build up to agbt I suspect the stock price will shoot up. So I think the market is just waiting to make sure pacbio can delver over the next few weeks. But I totally agree with you, if Sequel does work then it should be able to take a good chunk of the $20billion sequencing market.

I doubt they will get the 10 initial units out this quarter. But we will see. I am hoping they do.

The sales team just stopped responding to me. I can be a pain to deal with sometimes because I like to just cut to the chase. When I realized I was getting nowhere with the sales department then I went to the VP. When that was a waste I went to the CEO. They will not deal with me. I am pretty sure they read these posts in Seqanswers and they know who I am. They won't work with me. But I knew that when I posted here. In fact, I knew that when I sent them scolding emails. But more importantly: I knew I was not burning a bridge with them because they were never going to sell to me. I mean....what kind of sales team would ignore a million dollar order when they only do $20 million per quarter? Answer: a sales team that can't sell you anything but doesn't want people to know that. Or....the worst-run sales team, I suppose, could ignore me.

Also, regarding the stock price...there is a lot of manipulation in Pac Bio stock. There are a handful of clever traders who are trying to push the price down right now to acquire shares at a discount in anticipation of Pac Bio getting bought out. And...there is the very real chance that the Sequel turns out to be a dud, like you wrote. Lastly, this machine will increase the overall size of the sequencing market. That is the most important thing, in my opinion. Cost of entry is critical for so many labs. And, as I stated before, long reads are the key.

[ymc]

I am also interested in who will be Sequel's first service providers.