Maravai LifeSciences Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Maravai LifeSciences reported Q3 2026 revenue of $45.9 million, a 10% year-over-year increase, driven by strong demand for mRNA products and significant growth in mRNA revenue.
The company highlighted strategic advancements in mRNA technology and clinical progress, including developments in rare metabolic disease, gene editing, and infectious disease vaccines.
Adjusted gross margin improved by over 1,700 basis points to 57.7%, and adjusted EBITDA increased to $5.8 million, reflecting favorable product mix and operational efficiencies.
Maravai LifeSciences is expanding its product offerings with new mRNA capping technologies and AI-assisted mRNA design services, aiming to maintain a competitive edge.
The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $212-$216 million and adjusted EBITDA guidance to $40-$42 million, indicating confidence in continued growth.
Operational excellence initiatives, including AI integration, are contributing to improved efficiency and financial performance.
Maravai LifeSciences is establishing a stronger commercial presence in China and has secured additional patent protections, enhancing its market position.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Maravai LifeSciences Q3 2026 results earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. To register to ask a question at any time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Please note this call is being recorded. We are standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Deb Hart. Please go ahead.
Debra Hart (Investor Relations)
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our third quarter 2026 earnings call. The press release and the slides that accompany 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. Chan Feng Zhao, our Chief Scientific Officer, and Kurt Oreschak, 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, and we undertake no obligation to update them. We refer you to Slide 3 for details on our 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 the risk factors in Maravai’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and our other SEC filings for additional information on the 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)
Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. We are pleased with our third quarter performance, which builds on the momentum we established in the first half of the year. 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 $45.9 million, representing 10% year-over-year growth. TriLink revenue increased 12%, led by strong demand for our mRNA products. mRNA revenue was up 28% year-over-year. Within mRNA, GMP consumables grew 30% and Discovery mRNA grew 27%. We had no high-volume CleanCap revenue for commercial-phase COVID vaccine programs in the quarter. CDMO revenue grew 8%, while specialty chemistry was down 4% as some large orders from Q3 of 2025 did not repeat in the quarter this year.
Cygnus also delivered a solid quarter, with revenue growing at 8%. This is the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for Cygnus. From a profitability standpoint, adjusted gross margin expanded more than 1,700 basis points year-over-year to 57.7%, while adjusted EBITDA improved by $16.6 million to $5.8 million. These results reflect higher revenue, a favorable product mix, and the benefits of the operating model we’ve built over the past year.
Now let’s turn to slide seven and highlight some of the landmark clinical progress we are seeing in our largest, most strategic part of the business, the mRNA market. While the Moderna/Merck Phase 3 cancer vaccine for melanoma has captured the headlines, there were several other mRNA advancements during Q3 that mark an equally transformative period for our field in rare metabolic disease. An investigational mRNA protein replacement therapy for a severe inherited liver disease with limited treatment options showed meaningful Phase 2 clinical activity across key metabolic biomarkers.
This is mRNA as a protein replacement platform, not a vaccine, and the addressable population extends across a broad class of rare inherited enzyme deficiencies. In gene editing, a single-dose, LNP-delivered base editing therapy for a severe inherited condition affecting the lungs and liver entered a global pivotal cohort intended to support a request for U.S. accelerated approval. Phase 1/2 data at 18 months showed sustained correction above clinically meaningful thresholds. It is the first genetic medicine to reach pivotal-stage development for this condition.
In infectious disease, a major biopharma company announced plans to initiate a Phase 3 trial for an mRNA flu vaccine targeting both HA and NA antigens—the first Phase 3 of its kind. The program carries FDA Fast Track designation, and the sponsor has said that it expects preliminary data next year and to complete its regulatory submission in 2028. Now, not every program will succeed, and we did see a couple of mRNA cancer vaccine programs recently report disappointing results. That is the nature of drug development and why a broad, diverse pipeline like ours matters. We are supporting over 50 GMP customers in 2026 and estimate each customer has two to three clinical programs on average. As programs progress from early-stage studies to pivotal trials and commercialization, they typically require greater volumes of higher-quality GMP-grade materials, directly linking this clinical progress to our long-term growth.
We at Maravai are proud of the key role that our customers, partners, and employees are playing in bringing mRNA therapies to patients. Now let’s turn to slide 8 and discuss progress against our three strategic priorities: innovation, commercial execution, and operational excellence. Innovation remains the foundation of our long-term growth strategy, and this quarter we made meaningful progress. At TriLink, Motail continues to build momentum. We continue to expect GMP-grade Motail to launch before year-end, and customer interest remains strong. As of the end of Q3, we had more than 180 customers actively using this technology, up from 125 as of the end of Q2.
Adoption is coming through new accounts, repeat orders, and expanding use across applications. Beyond our current commercial offerings, we are also building the next wave of mRNA capping innovation at TriLink. Within our R&D vault, we have available a broad library of novel caps, each with differentiated cap chemistry with the potential to optimize mRNA for different applications. We are now introducing this library to our customers and are working with them to determine which caps suit their application best. This approach lets customers select a cap based on its therapeutic impact for their specific program.
We believe this is a competitive differentiator and valuable resource for our customer. At Cygnus, our recently launched Residual Prism mix-and-go kit continues to gain traction. Although still small, revenue has increased each month since its launch in June. These kits reduce the complexity of the assay and shorten the time to result over traditional protein A assays. Cygnus also recently expanded its innovation portfolio through the launch of a new SV40 particle kit. This is the third kit introduced in the MockV franchise and is tailor-made for those working on gene therapy products, specifically AAV.
It will enable bioprocess scientists to analyze the efficacy of their downstream viral filtration step at a fraction of the cost and time associated with live viral clearance studies. Under innovation, we will also start talking about AI initiatives. Beyond new products, our innovation efforts also extend to helping customers design better mRNA candidates. AI is reshaping that process, and TriLink is positioned to participate not just as a manufacturing partner, but also as a design partner. Most of the AI conversation in drug discovery focuses on identifying the right sequence, but a sequence is not a drug. It becomes a drug only when protein is expressed in the right amount, in the right tissue, for the right duration—and those variables are determined at the mRNA design level.
That is the design space where TriLink’s expertise is uniquely relevant. Our proprietary AI-assisted mRNA builder enables rapid prototyping of mRNA candidates to test diverse combinations of cap analogs, chemistry modifications, and sequence designs to let customers refine constructs before manufacturing. These capabilities are gaining commercial traction. The mRNA builder customer base is growing and has become a significant channel for new customer acquisition, particularly in early-stage research. mRNA builder expands TriLink’s role from reagent supplier to mRNA design service provider.
We believe this broader role gives us a lasting competitive advantage. We are confident our R&D engine throughout TriLink and Cygnus is robust, and we continue to innovate through new product introduction and our AI initiatives, with the goal to help customers’ drug development programs succeed. We also continue to strengthen our intellectual property portfolio. We received an additional China patent in Q3, adding broad composition-of-matter protection to our intellectual property protection.
Together with the patent received in June, these two China patents create a multi-layered intellectual property asset covering both the process of making CleanCap-capped RNA and the fundamental molecular structures at the core of that process. Moving on to commercial execution, our commercial go-to-market strategy continues to translate into results. In Discovery mRNA, we added more than 70 new customers in Q3, exceeding our prior record. From Q2, we saw 27% growth in Discovery mRNA, supported by continued strength in research funding and our commercial and product initiatives. Discovery activity continues to strengthen, which we believe will create future growth opportunities for our GMP pipeline as customer programs advance into clinical development.
In Q3, four additional discovery customers transitioned to clinical-stage GMP customers as they progress toward their Phase 1 clinical trials, bringing year-to-date RUO-to-GMP conversions to 10 and surpassing our initial full-year target of nine new GMP customers. And Cygnus continues to deliver steady performance through its purpose-built portfolio for HCP bioprocess impurity testing. Throughout TriLink and Cygnus, we continue to broaden our commercial presence around the world and recently established an in-country sales presence in China to support further market expansion.
Operational excellence remains a key driver of our financial performance, and you can see that in our results. The actions under our restructuring are complete, the cost base has been reset, and the infrastructure we have in place is built to scale. Leveraging our in-place infrastructure, we expect to drive further margin improvements and improved financial performance as we grow. And AI is now a meaningful part of how we operate. Across Maravai, more than 40% of our employees are weekly active AI users—a number that reflects genuine integration into day-to-day workflows, not a pilot.
We believe that adoption is translating into real operating improvements. Let me give you a few examples of what this looks like in practice. In engineering, AI-assisted analysis helped optimize compressor operating settings, reducing equipment runtime and energy consumption. This illustrates how targeted applications can improve efficiency across our operations. Our finance team is using AI to expand scenario analysis, research, and assumption testing.
This allows us to bring more analytical work in-house and support a business without adding headcount. We’re using customer purchasing trends to identify customers ready to move into GMP products and larger programs that may benefit from our CDMO services. This helps our commercial teams focus their outreach and connect customers with the right capabilities as their programs advance. And in our R&D organization, we have compressed what used to take days into hours.
The common thread is simple: our scientists are spending less time on information gathering and more time on the creative and scientific work that accelerates innovation. To summarize, Q3 was another quarter of strong execution. Revenue grew 10%, with mRNA growing double digits, Discovery mRNA up 27%, and GMP consumables up 30%. Cygnus grew 8% and delivered its sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. Innovation is at the core of what we do and supports our long-term growth. We combine strong R&D with close customer collaboration to develop new products and services to address their challenges. We believe AI-enabled drug discovery is creating a new wave of customer engagement for TriLink, and we are positioned to capture it.
Although our GMP consumable business can have quarterly variability, the mRNA clinical pipeline remains strong with exciting clinical advancements, and we are a foundational partner to that ecosystem. We feel good about where we are and where we’re going. I’ll now turn the call over to Raj to review the quarter and discuss our updated outlook.
Raj Asarpota (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you, Bernd. Our third quarter reflects continued execution across both segments. 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 23% biopharma, 33% life sciences and diagnostics, 7% academia, 7% CRO, CMO, CDMO and 30% distributors. By geography, revenue was 64% North America, 17% EMEA, 10% Asia Pacific excluding China, 8% in China and 1% in Latin and Central America.
Turning to Slide 11, our GAAP net loss before non-controlling interest was 24 million. This compares to a GAAP net loss before non-controlling interest of 45.1 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was 5.8 million for Q3, improving by 16.6 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 Q3 was $0.09 compared to a loss of $0.18 per share in Q3 2025.
Adjusted EPS was a loss of $0.03 compared to a loss of $0. per share last year. Moving to the balance sheet and other financial metrics on Slide 12, we ended the quarter with 73 million in cash, up 2.9 million from our Q2 balance. Our debt stands at 147.2 million, depreciation and amortization was 12.2 million, net interest expense was 3.4 million, and stock-based compensation, a non-cash charge, was 10.1 million for the quarter. Turning to segment performance on Slide 13, TriLink represented 62% of total revenue in the quarter and contributed 2.5 million of adjusted EBITDA. This represents an improvement of more than 10 million year over year. Within TriLink, mRNA represented 15.3 million of revenue, growing 28% year over year. Specialty Chemistry contributed 11 million and was down 4% as some large orders from Q3 2020 do not repeat this year, while CDMO contributed 2 million and grew 8% year over year in line with our expectations based on the timing of customer programs.
As a reminder, two meaningful parts of our TriLink business, CDMO and large GMP consumables orders, are program-driven by nature. Individual orders can be large and the timing can vary meaningfully quarter to quarter. Cygnus represented 38% of total revenue and continued to deliver strong profitability. Cygnus generated 12.5 million of adjusted EBITDA with margins of 71%. Cygnus saw steady demand for HCP and ELISA kits and strength in China, Korea, and India. Corporate expenses impacting adjusted EBITDA were 9.1 million in the quarter. These expenses include HR, finance, legal, IT and public company costs.
Turning to our guidance on Slide 14, based on our Q3 results and our visibility into Q4, we are raising our expected 2026 revenue range to $212 million to $216 million, up from the prior range of $205 million to $215 million, up 4 million at the midpoint. We’re also raising our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance to 40 million to 42 million, up 7 million at the midpoint from the prior range of 33 to 35 million. This represents an improvement of over 70 million year over year.
Additionally, we expect continued adjusted gross margin expansion of greater than 1,600 basis points year over year. Overall, we are encouraged by the momentum in the business and the strength of our pipeline. Our infrastructure is in place, our balance sheet is strong and our R&D engine continues to broaden our product portfolio as customer programs advance 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.
We remain excited by our long-term opportunity and our position in enabling drug development. With that, I’ll turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.
OPERATOR
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star 2. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. We’ll take our first question from Matt Stanton with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Matt Stanton (Analyst)
Hey, thanks. Maybe to start, would love if you guys could offer any kind of framing comments on ’27. I think you’ll do high single digit for the base business here in ’26. You have a number of exciting initiatives on the ramp of GMP ModTail, taking TriLink more into China. If we look back a year ago, you obviously revamped your guidance policy to sort of talk about or put in what is at hand. So we’d love to just hear a little bit of color in terms of order trends, funnel dynamics as we think about what’s in hand for you guys now as we move into the last two months of the year.
As we look out to ’27, any color you guys could add there? Thanks.
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Hey Matt, it’s Bernd. Maybe a little bit early to talk a lot about ’27 here. In general we feel really good about our pipeline. Certainly the fact that our discovery revenues both in early-stage discovery and advanced later-stage drug discovery are both looking very healthy. We really see no reason why there is any material change happening there next year, maybe only improvement with some of the things that we’re doing. The GMP funnel is looking good. I think you will find some timing next year where it’s a little bit heavier in the second half than the first half. This is again due to timing of customer programs, nothing really market-related. And on the Cygnus front we feel that probably similar market conditions and a few other things we’re doing will drive similar performances next year.
Thank you. Thanks, Matt.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will move next with Brendan Smith with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.
Brendan Smith (Analyst)
Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys, and congrats on the quarter here. Some really nice numbers here actually, especially on adjusted EBITDA, and I guess with the updated guide we can more or less kind of estimate where that goes over the next quarter. But maybe as we think about some of the operating leverage you guys have now, especially with GMP ModTail and some of the newer offerings coming online, I guess how should we think about, and maybe should we just assume, adjusted EBITDA is kind of a steady sequential grower into and through next year, or are there kind of quarter-over-quarter considerations here we should be mindful of?
And then I have a follow-up. Thanks.
Raj Asarpota (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I think one thing, again, I’ll echo what was said in the prepared remarks in terms of, you know, our EBITDA is a function of kind of, you know, just the revenue mix. And, you know, we’ve said that our business model now is such that every incremental dollar of revenue drives—like 70% of it falls to the bottom line, right. But it goes both ways. So you’ll have quarterly swings as your revenue mix is up or down. So that is definitely a function.
It’s not kind of linear, just like our GMP and CDMO businesses are not linear. Likewise, EBITDA is a little bit of a function of that product mix and that’s kind of the way to think about it.
Brendan Smith (Analyst)
Okay, got it. That’s helpful. And then maybe just as for some of the kind of newer capping technologies you guys discussed in the pipeline, how should we think about potential phasing in of some of those over the coming quarters, and just any incremental color on how revenue contribution for each of these would compare with existing offerings? I guess just kind of like existing customers would maybe switch from what they use today, or should we think of those as primarily like new offerings to cast a wider net for new customers or products, kind of a thing?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, this is Bernd. I think a lot of these caps are not necessarily newly developed. They’ve been developed over the years for a number of reasons—either to find improvements to our capping technology, our IP positioning—and what we’ve come to learn with this broad library of caps, and as we see more and more mRNA activity happening in specialty areas, that small variations in these caps can make meaningful changes to how the mRNA reacts depending on the cap.
And so what we are doing here is, as we’ve opened that—we call it our R&D vault—we have opened that to have access to our customers where they can select three, four, five different caps in their mRNA and see which one performs best. So these are currently available. We will continue to develop new caps obviously as well. And so we’re just commercializing that more than anything at the moment.
Brendan Smith (Analyst)
Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, guys.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will move next with Justin Bowers with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Justin Bowers (Analyst)
Hi, good afternoon everyone. Appreciate the additional detail that you’re providing on innovation and commercial. We talked about 50 new clinical GMP customers as of this quarter end. Could you help us understand what that looked like at year end last year?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
As far as number of customers or programs?
Justin Bowers (Analyst)
For clinical GMP customers? Yes.
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Well, like we said, we brought 10 new ones in this year versus our target of nine. So we certainly see that funnel being healthy. I think maybe even more importantly at the moment when you’re seeing this really nice growth in early-stage discovery and some of those programs will evolve over time, that should mean your pipeline for GMP only gets better, right? You’re coming out of a few years of pretty tough discovery growth. But given from where we are, it’s in line with what we’re expecting.
Hopefully we’ll see our first ModTail GMP customers going into the clinic sometime next year. I would assume it’s later in the year just from a timing perspective. But in general we feel really good about the pipeline of, number one, the GMP customers we have, but maybe even more importantly, sort of the pipeline that’s being built out of the discovery side.
Justin Bowers (Analyst)
Thanks. And then one follow-up: when you look at your discovery customers or RUO customers that have gone into GMP, what is your retention rate for those customers?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, that’s more tied to the success or failure of clinical trials. We kind of look statistically at that, what that means historically on trials. I think we shared those numbers in the past. I don’t know what they are, but that is no longer a competitive environment. But I think we shared something like 10% or so of all clinical trials end up in phase one, in phase three at some point. So whatever you see standard in the industries, that’s how we look at our retention of customers.
Justin Bowers (Analyst)
Understood. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will move next with Doug Schenkel with UBS. Please go ahead.
Sean Gardner (Analyst)
Hi, this is Sean Gardner on for Doug. Thank you for taking my question. And a quick question on ModTail again. So you mentioned adoption has grown to over 180 customers. GMP launch remains on track for year-end. You mentioned last quarter that a few customers had already requested GMP material. Can you provide an update just on discussions there? Are we advancing in the actual process, qualifications, supply planning, and what the primary gating factor for initial orders as we enter next year might look like?
And if I can tag on one more there, I know you mentioned this is likely a later-in-the-year dynamic. Can you just help us understand the phasing a bit more and the dynamics of the rollout there? Thank you.
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, most of the interaction right now that’s happening with customers on GMP ModTail is around their progressing into their drug discovery. They want to make sure those materials are ready if they do get into the clinic. I don’t think there’s anything ready to go into the clinic tomorrow. I think we expect that—not completely in our hands, of course—for that to happen at some point next year. But us having GMP material available so they can make the decision to stick with ModTail moving forward into the clinic is the way you have to think about that.
So I think if I look at 27 you’ll continue to see growth there in discovery. I think again you’ll see some early-stage clinic there. But I wouldn’t expect massive dollars in 27 on ModTail in GMP.
Sean Gardner (Analyst)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt LaRue with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Jacob (Analyst)
Hi, thanks. This is Jacob on for Matt. Thanks for taking the questions. So I wanted to ask first one just on the guide. The midpoint of the 4Q guide implies just about 2% growth versus 10% year-to-date growth so far this year. Last quarter you talked about a handful of large GMP orders that were expected to hit sometime in the second half of this year or early next year but were not included in guidance. I just wanted to confirm that, number one, these orders are still in the hopper, and number two, that the guide raise still does not assume these orders come in the back half.
Really just trying to get a sense for how much prudence is embedded in the updated guide.
Raj Asarpota (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, let me take that one. So, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I think what you’re getting to—and again, I’ll emphasize—both our GMP and CDMO businesses remain lumpy. So a single order can kind of move the quarter. But again, emphasizing that our underlying demand is not slowing. We are showing really positive growth both in Discovery mRNA and GMP. And then just also keep in mind, in the third quarter our GMP growth was on a pretty low basis. As you think about Q4, we’ll expect volume growth that’ll be multiples of Q3 performance, but again continuing to maintain that there’s going to be quarterly variation.
But the pipeline is really strong, like Bernd said, and we expect long-term growth. I think your final point there: we are very comfortable with the full-year outlook, and where we land within the range is going to reflect when those orders that we’re expecting convert to revenue. And our guidance kind of allows for that variability. So we see little or no risk to what we’ve guided right now.
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
To build on that—and we keep talking about this—when you look at GMP, I think based on our current Q4 forecast, like Raj said, that’s certainly a lot more volume than Q3. Q4 was big last year, so you may not see material growth there, but net-net for the full year you’re looking at plus 20% growth for GMP. Right? That’s hard to look at that. I think when we look at 27—I think the first question from Brendan maybe was on 27 guidance—I think we feel great about GMP numbers for next year, but I do think next year you’ll see a quarterly shift later into the second half of the year. So that’s the one thing you’re going to have to kind of accept. In our business we have great line of sight to the GMP funnel. Those customers tend to be locked in, but that variability by quarters is something we’re going to have to absorb and deal with.
Jacob (Analyst)
Got it. That’s helpful. I wanted to ask a follow-up just on Cygnus. That business has also been growing—well, growing for six straight quarters now. It was up high single digits in the third quarter. Just wondering what kind of the right long-term framework is for this business and should we assume that the business is, I think, mid-single-digit plus is kind of the right way to think about it. But could maybe Mach V or other new products coming in this business kind of help elevate Cygnus’s long-term growth profile above this?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, I think there’s a few things you can think about here. Certainly the base business, the way we see it, is mid-single digits. Mid-single digits plus is the right way to think about it. Where do we see upside? Certainly some commercial execution. Outside of the U.S. there’s been very little commercial presence there other than some dealers, and so we think there’s some upside to be had there. There’s still a material section of our customer base that’s homegrown in that world, and so there again some commercial execution—interacting with those customers more effectively—should give us a little bit of growth here and there. And then Mach V is an example, and I would add services to that as well. Those are new offerings in the business that I think might be more controlled by regulatory acceptance, and that is a little bit out of our control when that would happen.
But lots of interaction, and we feel good about where the long-term future sits there. On services, earlier this year we built some infrastructure capabilities. Those are longer sales cycles, and I think those will start picking up again as you move into next year as well. So we like Cygnus, but obviously it’s a great cash generator for the business. It’s starting to see good growth. I think there’s enough move there to get that growth even a little higher from where we are for the year. I think Cygnus, probably for the year, is about 5 or 6% when we’re kind of landing here.
But yeah, there are a few things there that could get that a little bit north of that.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will move next with Matthew Parisi with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Matthew Parisi (Analyst)
Yes, this is Matthew Parisi for Paul Knight, KeyBanc Capital Markets. You called out that you expected nine customers to transition to GMP throughout 2026, yet 10 have converted year to date. Do you expect additional conversions for the remainder of the year?
Raj Asarpota (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
We’re at 10 so far. It’s hard to judge it exactly, particularly in Q4. The end of the year is obviously a little different with the holidays, so it could be. We’re not guiding to anything like that, but the pipeline of new customers—both for maybe the remainder of this year, certainly the next year—we feel good about. Yeah, either way, any new adds at the end of the year would only translate to material revenue next year.
Matthew Parisi (Analyst)
Appreciate the insight. And then for a follow-up: following the addition of the China patent protection—or the additional China patent protection—and then also the establishment of a sales presence, how should we think about the commercial opportunity in China?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Well, I think for TriLink, in that we’re starting from about zero. Right. So there’s really no basis there to come from, and we’ve been very careful with it just to make sure that we protect our brand and our product IP. Now that we have these new IP issued in China, we’re reassessing that, and I think we have some good ideas as to how we’re going to move forward with that. More to come, maybe next year on it. But certainly we expect TriLink to start building a position in China as well.
Cygnus—you know, it’s been pretty good growth this year in China to begin with. So the markets are healthy there. Putting our direct sales force on the ground there I think is a combination of not just going direct there—that’s not the intent—but supporting our dealers better, interacting with our customers better. So that should lead to upside. But certainly China for Cygnus has been performing very well this year in general already. Thanks for the questions and congrats again on the quarter.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Thank you. We will move next with Suwu Namby with Guggenheim. Please go ahead.
Suwu Namby (Analyst)
Hey guys, thank you for taking my question. Does TriLink supply into other individualized neoantigen programs? How does that compare to the economics when it’s individualized cancer vaccine versus a prophylactic vaccine for you?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, listen, I think that ultimately becomes an answer when we understand the volumes that come. When it goes personalized, it doesn’t, I think, theoretically matter that much to us in that our capping and tailing is the same. This probably is more applicable in the CDMO world that we play in, and so it’s something that we will talk to through pricing models here. I don’t know if we have everything sorted out completely ourselves yet, but certainly pricing will be modified depending on high volume versus very specialized mRNA.
Suwu Namby (Analyst)
That’s fair. You have framed the non-COVID commercial launches for 2028–29. Is that still the right framework, or are there any other clinical customers in phase three or filed today that could be approved in 27?
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
I’m sorry, are you asking if there’s more phase three approved into commercial next year? We think there are a few customers out there that are close. Whether they will happen in 27, it’s not in our control, obviously, but there’s a few phase three customers that we are working with.
OPERATOR
Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. And once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We will move next with Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Raj Asarpota (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Sorry, guidance for China? Okay. I think most of our China growth and revenue comes from Cygnus. In Q3, China grew about 48%, and that’s a little bit a function of timing from Q1 softness into Q3. We expect normal growth back in the fourth quarter, and all of that is kind of baked into our roughly 5% growth for the total year. And TriLink is zero, of course. Yeah. For Q4, we have no China revenue assumptions. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And at this time, we show no further questions in queue. I will turn the call back to Bernd Brust for closing comments.
Bernd Brust (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you everyone for joining the call. Maybe a few closing points. mRNA—a highly strategic part of our portfolio—this quarter’s key growth driver, both in discovery, where we grew 27%, and GMP where we grew 30%. Clearly both excellent performances. And I think what makes it that much more impressive: discovery, growing both in discovery and advanced drug discovery at similar levels, shows us a high level of confidence in what’s happening not only in the markets, but with what we are doing as a company to capture share there.
Cygnus at 8%, another great quarter. That business is stable, high margin. We talked a little bit about this in some questions and performing to plan. I think we’re all seeing this: the mRNA clinical landscape is robust—cancer vaccines, rare disease, protein replacements, gene editing, infectious disease vaccines—and we’re in the middle of all of it. We’re foundational to customer programs that can improve human health. Progress we’ve made over the past year is real, it’s meaningful, and we’re just getting started.
So thanks again for your time. We look forward to speaking next quarter.
OPERATOR
Thank you. This brings us to the end of today’s meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.
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