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Operator
Hello and welcome everyone joining today's Maravai LifeSciences Q2 2026 results earnings call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this call is being recorded, and we are standing by should you need any assistance.
It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Deb Hart. Please go ahead.
Deb Hart - Investor Relations
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our second-quarter 2026 earnings call.
The press release and slides accompanying today's call are available at investors.maravai.com.
As you can see from the agenda on slide 2, our CEO, Bernd Brust, will provide a business update; and our CFO, Raj Asarpota, will review our financial results.
Dr. Chanfeng Zhao, our Chief Scientific Officer; and Kurt Oreshack, our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, will join us for the Q&A session.
Management will make forward-looking statements and refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures during today's call. Actual results could differ materially from expectations. We will undertake no obligation to update them. We refer you to slide 3 for details on forward-looking statements and slide 4 for our use of non-GAAP financial measures.
The press release and the slides provide reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, and we also post reconciling schedules to our investor website.
Please also refer to Maravai's SEC filings for additional information on risks and uncertainties that may impact our operating results, performance and financial condition.
Now I'll turn the call over to Bernd.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our second quarter performance, which builds on the strong momentum we established in the first quarter.
Our results reflect solid execution across the business and reinforce our confidence in both our near-term outlook and long-term strategy.
During the quarter, we generated revenue of $51.4 million, representing 9% year-over-year growth.
TriLink revenue increased 12%, driven by strong demand for GMP consumables and continued strength in discovery mRNA, particularly from larger preclinical programs.
Our potential GMP pipeline as customer programs advance into clinical development. Because TriLink supports customers throughout the drug development life cycle, we believe today's discovery success will create tomorrow's GMP opportunity.
Cygnus also delivered another solid quarter with revenue growing 3% year-over-year, marking its fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Through its industry-leading HCP and ELISA portfolio, combined with expanding analytical services, Cygnus continues to provide stable, recurring high-margin revenue while strengthening customer relationships across the biologics workflow.
Our profitability improved significantly. Adjusted gross margin expanded more than 1,600 basis points year-over-year to 58.9%, while adjusted EBITDA improved by $19.1 million to $8.7 million. These results reflect higher revenue, a favorable product mix and the benefits of the operating model we built over the past year.
We also significantly strengthened our balance sheet. In June, we refinanced our debt, reducing borrowings to approximately $150 million, essentially cutting debt in half since the beginning of 2026, while extending the maturities to 2032.
Combined with improving profitability, we believe Maravai is well positioned from both a liquidity and financial flexibility standpoint.
Now let's turn to slide 7 and discuss our progress against our three strategic priorities: innovation. Commercial execution and operational excellence.
Innovation, this remains the foundation of our long-term growth strategy. During the quarter, TriLink launched its new GMP-grade enzyme portfolio, expanding our ability to serve customers as a differentiated single source innovation partner.
Increasingly, customers are looking for integrated manufacturing solutions rather than individual components. And this launch meaningfully strengthens our competitive position.
We also continue to see outstanding adoption of ModTail. Just one year after commercial launch, more than 125 customers are now actively using this technology, including many of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. Customer adoption continues to accelerate through new accounts, repeat orders and broader use across multiple applications.
Later this year, we expect to launch GMP-grade ModTail, extending this platform into clinical manufacturing. Customer interest has been strong, particularly in cell and gene therapy applications, further demonstrating how discovery innovation creates future GMP growth opportunity.
Cygnus also continued to expand its innovation portfolio through the launch of a new residual PrismA mix and go kit while continuing to invest in mass spec analytical services. Although services have a longer sales cycle, we are encouraged by growing customer engagement and increasing repeat business, and we expect this capability to become a more meaningful contributor overtime.
Finally, we continue strengthening our intellectual property portfolio across CleanCap, ModTail, and Cygnus assays.
In addition to two new European patents we received in Q1, during Q2, TriLink received a new China patent covering a full family of CleanCap capping analogs, further reinforcing our global IP position.
Commercial execution, our commercial momentum continued to build throughout the first half of the year. Greater customer engagement has improved forecasting, increased visibility and strengthened order conversion, and those improvements are clearly reflected in our results.
Within discovery mRNA, we added 67 new customers in Q2, a record quarter for new customer acquisitions, while our e-commerce platform also delivered record quarterly revenue.
GMP consumables remained a standout performer, growing 55% year over year, driven by large CleanCap clinical orders and our first GMP enzyme order. We had no COVID GMP-related revenue in Q2.
Operational excellence remains a key driver of our financial performance. The restructuring actions we implemented last year are not largely complete. Combined with our debt refinancing, the company has fundamentally reset its cost structure.
Importantly, our manufacturing infrastructure is already in place. Between our state-of-the-art mRNA facilities and new GMP enzyme facility, we believe our operating model is now built to scale. And we can support meaningful future growth with relatively modest incremental fixed costs. This operating leverage is central to our long-term financial model.
Now let me switch gears for a minute and share how we think about TriLink.
As part of our recent long-range planning process, we concluded that investors may appreciate greater feasibility into the distinct growth engines within TriLink. While we continue to report and manage our business to two operating segments, TriLink and Cygnus, we increasingly think about TriLink through three distinct market categories: mRNA, CDMO and specialty chemistry.
mRNA is our largest and most strategically important business out of these three. It spans the full development life cycle through discovery, clinical trials and ultimately commercial programs.
Discovery mRNA, which grew 17% year over year in Q2, includes our research use products such as CleanCap, ModTail, and related reagents. This spans the full research spectrum, academic and basic research customers on one end and biopharma and biotech conducting advanced preclinical screening and program development on the other.
This business not only generates revenues today, but also seeds future GMP demand.
GMP consumables, which grew 55% year over year in Q2, is the critical grade supply business within mRNA, GMP-CleanCap, GMP-Enzymes and soon GMP-ModTail. This is where TriLink's operating leverage becomes most evident. The growth potential for TriLink here is straightforward.
As customer programs advance through clinical development. We expect their demand for GMP materials to increase significantly, while our infrastructure remains largely unchanged.
During the quarter, four new GMP customers -- more importantly, with additional GMP product launches, we expect to increase the number of products each customer sources from TriLink, deepening relationships and expanding our share of wallet.
The third stage is commercial programs. Today, this revenue consists of COVID-related CleanCap, which you'll recall was $14.3 million in Q1 or approximately 7% of estimated 2026 revenue at the midpoint of guidance.
Over the longer-term, we expect commercial launches from our current non-COVID clinical pipeline to become a meaningful growth driver as customers' programs advance toward commercialization expected to begin around 2028 and 2029. We believe TriLink is well positioned to support commercial-scale manufacturing using infrastructure that already exists.
Overall, excluding COVID CleanCap, mRNA represents approximately 35% of expected 2026 revenue, and we continue to expect this business to grow at high single-digit to low double-digit rates over time.
The second component within TriLink is our CDMO business, which represents less than 5% of expected 2026 revenue. While project-based and inherently variable, it serves a select group of highly strategic cell and gene therapy customers with programs progressing toward commercialization.
Finally, specialty chemistry. This is a stable, recurring research tools business consisting of oligoservices and reagents, NTPs, and other related reagents. This business represents a little more than 20% of our expected 2026 revenue. While we expect lower growth at mRNA, it remains an important contributor with strong customer relationships and attractive profitability.
To be clear, our external financial reporting remains unchanged. We continue to operate and report through our two segments, TriLink and Cygnus. The additional framework we're providing today is intended to help investors better understand the different growth drivers within TriLink and how they contribute to our long-term opportunity.
In summary, we delivered another quarter of strong execution. We advanced innovation, strengthened commercial momentum, improved profitability and significantly enhanced our financial position. Perhaps most importantly, we believe the investments we've made over the past year have fundamentally changed the company's earnings profile.
Our infrastructure is in place, our balance sheet is stronger and as customer programs continue advancing from discovery into clinical development and ultimately commercialization, we believe we are well positioned to deliver attractive long-term revenue growth, expanding margins and increasing cash generation.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Raj to review the financial results and discuss our updated outlook. Raj?
Rajesh Asarpota - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Bernd. Our second quarter reflects solid execution across both segments with improving margin flow-through. I'll focus on the key drivers behind the quarter, including revenue composition, profitability and our updated outlook.
Let me start with a closer look at revenue on slide 10. Our business remains well diversified across end markets.
Revenue by customer type was 30% biopharma, 35% life sciences and diagnostics, 5% academia, 7% CRO, CMO, CDMO and 23% distributors. By geography, revenue was 62% North America, 20% EMEA, 11% Asia Pacific, excluding China and 7% in China.
Turning to slide 11. Our GAAP net loss before non-controlling interest was $21.6 million. This compares to a GAAP net loss before non-controlling interest of $69.8 million in the prior year period.
Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was $8.7 million for Q2, exceeding our expectations and improving by more than $19 million year-over-year. This was driven by stronger revenue, favorable mix toward high-margin GMP and mRNA discovery as well as continued OpEx discipline.
Basic and diluted loss per share in Q2 was $0.08 compared to a loss of $0.27 per share in Q2 2025. Adjusted EPS was a loss of $0.02 compared to a loss of $0.08 per share last year.
Moving to the balance sheet and other financial metrics on slide 12.
As Bernd mentioned, in early June, we significantly reduced debt and refinanced our term loan, extending the maturity out to 2032. We ended the quarter with $70.1 million in cash and $147.1 million in debt.
Depreciation and amortization was $11.8 million. Net interest expense was $3.7 million and stock-based compensation, a non-cash charge, was $10.2 million for the quarter.
Turning to segment performance on slide 13, TriLink represented 67% of total revenue in the quarter and contributed $7 million of adjusted EBITDA, benefiting from high-margin GMP product mix and improved operating leverage. This represents an improvement of more than $14.2 million year over year.
Within TriLink, mRNA and specifically the GMP consumables and discovery mRNA categories were the primary growth drivers. Specialty chemistry was steady, CDMO was down year-over-year and in line with our expectations based on the timing of customer programs.
Cygnus represented 33% of total revenue and continued to deliver strong profitability.
Cygnus generated $11.4 million of adjusted EBITDA with margins of 68%. Cygnus saw steady demand for HCP and Eliza kits and strength in China due to distributor ordering timing. Corporate expenses impacting adjusted EBITDA were $9.7 million in the quarter.
These expenses include HR, finance, legal, IT and public company costs.
Turning to our guidance on slide 14.
We are maintaining our expected 2026 revenue range of $205 million to $215 million, representing growth of 10% to 16% over 2025. We expect TriLink to grow in the high teens, driven by continued strength in GMP and discovery mRNA consumables.
For Cygnus, we continue to expect low to mid-single-digit growth.
We are raising our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $33 million to $35 million, representing an improvement of $64 million to $66 million year-over-year, primarily driven by improved performance in TriLink.
We continue to see strong demand in higher margin areas of the portfolio, including GMP consumables, our high margin mRNA discovery consumables and key Cygnus product lines. That mix shift combined with the structural improvements we've made is driving the outperformance in EBITDA.
Additionally, we see further upside in gross margin expansion and now expect greater than 1,400 basis points of improvement, supported by restructuring actions, cost discipline, favorable product mix and a strong first half of the year.
The remainder of the guidance framework provided in our Q1 call is unchanged.
The adjusted EBITDA guidance raise reflects higher confidence in profitability expectations rather than a change in our prudent revenue assumptions. We are maintaining the expected revenue range because two meaningful parts of our business, CDMO and large GMP consumables orders are program-driven by nature.
Individual orders can be large and their timing can vary meaningfully quarter to quarter. It's simply how these businesses work and our range is sized to reflect it.
Overall, we are encouraged by the momentum in the business, improved commercial execution, a more efficient cost structure and favorable mix are driving meaningful financial progress and we remain confident in our outlook for 2026 and increasingly excited by the longer-term, and commercial opportunity Bernd described.
With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Matt Stanton, Jefferies.
Matthew Stanton - Analyst
Hey, thanks. Maybe first one, just on the guide.
I think you talked about it being prudent and obviously there's a lumpy part of the business, but you did a little over $100 million for the base business the first half. Back half seems to imply that steps down closer to a run rate of mid-40s per quarter from the low 50s you did in the first half.
Just talk about kind of line of sight into that, any areas of potential conservatism there as we think about the back half guide, some of the timing dynamics due to projects you talked about. And then can you remind us what you're penciling in for the GMP mod tail in the back half of the year and then also anything for the recent enzyme launch as well?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
I'll let Raj answer most of that as far as the guidance is concerned. I mean, Q3 inherently is a lower revenue quarter in this business. So that's what you're dealing with certainly in the second-half of the year. And the reality is we grew, I think our GMP business 55% in the second quarter, which is obviously an unusual number, no COVID in there whatsoever.
You just have some variability here. There's a couple of larger deals out there still in a business our size, a couple hundred million bucks. Since you have -- it's not unusual to have multimillion-dollar type of orders in there, it just unfortunately shifts between quarters at a time. There's a couple of deals out there that we'll see whether they come in this year or next year, and we'll adjust it accordingly at that point, but we want to be just careful in how we position that.
Rajesh Asarpota - Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, it's actually -- just before we go there. So I think like Baron mentioned on the second-half cadence and like I said in my prepared remarks.
Our range has a couple of meaningful parts of the business, both again CDMO and large GMP, which are more program-driven by nature. So these orders can be very large, like Bernd said, and the timing can vary meaningfully quarter over quarter. So that's just simply how they work.
And what we're doing is giving you a prudent guide based on where we see these, like how this changes, but really kind of it's the timing fits with our customers' program schedules rather than with us. So our practice is not to assume those orders until we can see them. So I just kind of want to emphasize that.
And Matt, you had another question or could you repeat that?
Matthew Stanton - Analyst
If you're penciling anything in the back half of the year for both the GMP ModTail and also the recent enzyme launch.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
No, GMP ModTail in the second half of the year, no, we will release our GMP ModTail in the second half of this year, but we don't expect orders until 2027 for that.
Enzymes is launched, yeah, enzymes we have our first enzymes order shipped, in fact, but mod tail, which is a little bit early, right, it's been about a year now since we launched that, been great uptick, 125 or so customers so far and that we expect some of that to hit GMP requirements sometime next year, but the first step is for us to make it as a GMP quality product and then sell it in 2027.
Matthew Stanton - Analyst
Thanks. And then appreciate the color on the kind of sub-segments within TriLink. Just would love to kind of hear your view on -- you talked about TriLink having potential for higher growth and maybe some upside. The drivers of that sounds like maybe the commercial programs are more '28, '29, earlier biotech funding coming on, maybe that's earlier upside there, some of these bigger product launches taking hold.
Just how do we think about kind of the midterm drivers to some of the color you gave in terms of the five-year CAGRs for the subsegments.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
I think one of the most positive signs in our business is that we're seeing incredible uptick in the discovery world, right, at all levels, basic research as well as into later-stage clinical trials, preclinical trials. So the fact that that business is growing materially, and we see continued growth there, that should certainly lead into more GMP opportunities as those programs progress.
And so I think short-term, that's where we look at it. And again, all the indicators are positive there. So on the commercialization front, obviously, we don't control the speed of what that moves as our customer programs and our customers that are driving that.
But from what we see, we expect that sort of in '27, '28 to take place.
Rajesh Asarpota - Chief Financial Officer
Maybe I'll add a little bit more there and I think in the near term, we expect trialing to grow at high single-digit rate and then it's really again driven by discovery and GMP consumables and as clinical programs convert into commercial supply. We expect that to move to low double-digit rate and then mark tails the lever layered on top of that can really create like an inflection point for the business. So the commercial conversion here is a mixed story, which is why we expect margin expansion to also accompany this revenue growth.
Operator
Subbu Nambi, Guggenheim.
Unidentified Participant
Hi. This is [Ricky] on for Subbu. Thanks for taking our question. Wondering if you could share anything about Mach V growth in the quarter. And previously, you've had some comments around positive regulatory feedback and the potential for this to replace traditional viral clearance studies.
Do you expect any guidance from regulators or any endorsement that could potentially accelerate adoption there? And maybe just how should we think about its contribution to the Cygnus growth this year and next year? Thank you.
Rajesh Asarpota - Chief Financial Officer
We don't really give the market growth rates, but it's a small base and is continuing to grow and contribute to Cygnus' growth profile.
In terms of regulatory, we just -- it's too -- it's a little too early to get any intel from that.
Operator
Matt Hewitt, Craig-Hallum Capital Group.
Matthew Hewitt - Analyst
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe first up, congratulations on the record quarter with the new online strategy. I'm just curious how that's kind of playing out relative to your expectations and how we should think about that ramp over the course of this year into next year?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
I'll maybe give a higher level answer to this and Raj make some specific statistics on that. I mean, the short answer is it's going much better than we even had anticipated. The adoption is incredible. The number of orders and revenues flowing through now without really any human interaction is pretty significant.
Now this largely happens in a smaller discovery world, of course, it's just so many places a half million dollar order, it's hard to kind of assume e-commerce takes that over. But when you look at what we are currently seeing, the largest uptick of orders coming through and trialing come all through our e-commerce platforms.
Matthew Hewitt - Analyst
That's excellent.
Rajesh Asarpota - Chief Financial Officer
I was just going to add to what Bernd said just in terms of top-line growth, this whole e-commerce AI strategy is. Improving our ordering automation. We've got a lot more data-driven customer engagement and predictive analytics, so that's kind of producing into nice commercial opportunities.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
We shared with you, I think, 60-some new customers in the second quarter. A lot of it is driven through e-commerce.
Matthew Hewitt - Analyst
That's great. That's great. And then out of curiosity, so you noted that the CleanCap patent that you received during the quarter. How important was that to, I guess, going after that market in a bigger way, having that patent protection behind you?
Was that something that was critical and now you kind of put your foot on the gas or were you already kind of going after that market hard and this just kind of provides a little bit of protection behind the scenes?
Unidentified Participant
I think the new patent is evidence of the strength of our patent portfolio around the world, I think we are still the business in China at the moment is still small but is a focus of ours as that market continues to develop.
Operator
Matt LaRue, William Blair.
Jacob Krahenbuhl - Analyst
Hi. Thanks for the questions. This is Jake Krahenbuhl on for Matt.
So I guess just want to start on the guide, just a quick one. I know it's kind of been touched on, but just wanted to confirm that the rationale behind not rigging it is just purely prudence and not really related to any nuances and market demand, customer behavior, customer orders, slowing or anything around that and really just prudence and understand or appreciate the fact that you're not including any of the big or your business is like the big lumpy orders quarter to quarter and really just don't want to include that.
So yeah, I guess just wanted to confirm.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
That's absolutely true and I would even add to that. When you look at our run rate business, sort of small to mid-size orders, we see significant growth there and so the revenue guidance we're talking about here is purely driven by larger orders that are purely tied to customer projects, they're not competitive.
Rajesh Asarpota - Chief Financial Officer
Yes, if you look at all the like like I may have mentioned before, the underlying demand indicators, whether it's new customer assets that Baron talked about or GMP consumables growth, the e-commerce, all of those indicators improved in Q2, so it's really just a function of the variability more than anything else.
Jacob Krahenbuhl - Analyst
Okay, that makes sense. And then, yeah, I also appreciate the new disclosures around TriLink breaking out the 367 that's very helpful.
I know you mentioned the external financial reporting, it's not changing anything, but just kind of wondering if these are areas you plan to continue updating the investor community with on a quarterly basis and kind of I know the base TriLink business has now grown double-digits for. Three straight quarters, which is also very good to see.
But just wondering if you can kind of touch on what's driving the improved performance and kind of the sustainability growth here. Is it just as simple as the improved execution and commercial rigor coinciding with improving end markets or is there something else there?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
I think you touched on all of it. I mean, yes, the intent is to continue to report and give this visibility to the investor base that we have.
And yes, I mean, demand is certainly up, the markets are getting stronger. I think our execution is materially better than it has been in the past. I think our new product and technologies coming to market are helping growth. So I think all those pieces together, the sustainability of that growth in TriLink, we feel good about.
I think when you look specifically at our CDMO and our GMP business, we talk about it a lot, this is the lumpiness, that is just simply the nature of that business and that has nothing to do with market demand. In fact, our number of clinical trials are growing, we're almost close to 50 customers now I think in clinical trials.
Each of those customers represents somewhere between two and three programs. So the volume of customers moving, are healthy. And so we feel really good about the underlying markets and how we are positioned in there.
Operator
Matthew Parisi, KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Matthew Parisi - Analyst
Hi, this is Matthew Parisi on for Paul Knight at KeyBanc Capital Markets. You highlighted the incredible uptick in Discovery. And I was wondering if you're seeing that come through from the improved biotech funding or is that improved funding not really translating to revenue yet?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
I think funding in general is improving in the segments where we play. And so there's no question that that's helping out. If you look at the last few years, obviously it's been one of the toughest cycles in the market segment that we find ourselves, but that certainly is showing a rebound here. The fact that we're seeing growth, not just in the later stage clinical trials, but also basic research is a really good indicator for us.
Matthew Parisi - Analyst
I appreciate the insight. And then last quarter, you flagged that you expected nine customers to transition to GMP throughout '26 with two already converting. I'm wondering if that nine still holds and then if you see any convert in 2Q?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Yeah, so we're at six now. We added four in the second quarter. And so, yeah, we see the nine for the three remainder for the year that should be changed.
Matthew Parisi - Analyst
Appreciate the insight and thanks for the questions. Congrats again on a great quarter.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Thank you.
Operator
Dan Arias, Stifel.
Unidentified Participant
Hey, guys. This is [Rohan] on for Dan. Thanks for the questions.
It looks like ModTail went from more than 70 customers in the first quarter to more than 125 in Q2 within a year since launch. If you convert that to dollars, what did Mod Tail contribute this quarter and how many of the 125 customers have requested GMP material?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
We won't break out the dollar value for ModTail. This is one level too low. As far as what number of customers, a few customers have requested GMP material. I don't know, Raj, an exact number for that. But we expect that there's some number of customers that are going to request GMP material for 2027. We'll be ready sometime later this year to have that material available.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thanks. And how much of signatures to -- sorry, how much of the 2026 and 2027 revenue plan comes from products launched in the last 24 months? Trying to figure out whether the innovation pipeline is genuinely additive or substituting for legacy CleanCap dollars.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Was it Cygnus question or was it TriLink's question?
Unidentified Participant
Sorry, this is just the overall product this is overall like product question within the pipeline, sorry.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Yeah, we're not going to break down revenues coming from new products. I mean, ModTail is obviously a driver there, and then some things with Insignis on services are big drivers, or will become bigger drivers. And so we're not specifically going into what revenues are coming from newly introduced products.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Jason Bowers, Deutsche Bank.
Justin Bowers - Analyst
So just curious what the funnel looks like for GMP. Is there potential for upside to that, the nine customers for this year? I mean, you're at six now. And do you have visibility into 2027 on GMP?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Well, certainly, there's an opportunity for upside, right? As we talk about being prudent on our revenue because these things can be rather big, that means you can see some delays, but you can also see some things happening. So we like our funnels, they're growing steadily.
And so from that perspective, we feel good about where that business is heading. We're not giving guidance yet on '27 yet on what the new incremental customers will be. But I will say where we've seen really throughout this year, we've seen really nice performance in this larger discovery world where that kind of really indicates people getting ready for clinical trials.
These are very large preclinical orders, and we've seen nice movement there. And so we feel good about where that funnel is heading and so there's nothing we see today that would indicate that it's not going to continue to grow.
Justin Bowers - Analyst
Appreciate it. And then just on the other end of the spectrum, how about uptake of the e-channel, how that's trending and how that's performing versus sort of what your expectations were when you changed the commercial strategy there?
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
Yeah, I mean, it's doing really well. When you look at the new number of customers, we mentioned sort of in the mid-60s this quarter, that's primarily coming from this earlier stage basic research world, there's some exception to that, but the majority are new customers and a lot of those are acquired through our e-commerce capabilities these days.
And with that, we're starting to see nice growth, right? When you look at the basic research segments up until really six months ago, that was a struggling market, and we've seen a nice rebound there, both market funding as well as our ability to acquire those customers.
And certainly, ModTail is not hurting there either. We're seeing a big uptick in that world of people trying ModTail with mRNA experiments.
Operator
Thank you. This does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to now turn the conference back to Bern first for any closing or additional remarks.
Bernd Brust - Chief Executive Officer, Director
All right. Well, thanks, everyone. We appreciate the time here.
We keep on loving where this business is going, right? TriLink grew 12% year over year, great strength in the mRNA business, both in GMP consumables as well as discovery. I'm glad everybody appreciate the other insights we're giving in this business to really understand where growth sits within the TriLink business.
This remains stable, right, it's 3% year over year, we've always had mid-single-digits, that business is on track for hitting plan this year, we should see a little bit more growth in the second half. But generally, that business is performing the way we expect it to.
Another great quarter of execution, great innovation. Really good commercial momentum, both from large deals and the commercial teams in the field to the e-commerce capabilities that we really have brought on board here.
Our profitability continues to get better. There's not been that many questions on this here, but our financial position really has been significantly at hands. When you look at us recapping the business, our cash position is absolutely amazing. We're good until in the early 30s now.
And if you're looking at the long-term outlook of this business where great growth in research as well as clinical trials, but as that evolves into commercial, having that balance sheet in place gives us a lot of confidence that we're in here and we'll work this for many years to come and see a growth coming or see our growth getting to where we want it to be when you have multiple commercial programs going live.
So we feel confident about the business, we like the quarter, we feel good about the rest of the -- we feel certainly great about the long-term future of the company.
We appreciate everybody's time here, and we'll speak to you again next quarter.
Operator
Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.