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  "documentTitle": "Twist Bioscience (TWST)",
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  "authorName": "Scorpion Capital",
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  "presentationDate": "2022-11-15 00:00:00",
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      "text": "Twist’s competitors are disciplined and not pricing insanely; charging $1.50 to $2 per base pair while Twist caters to the commodity end of the market and charges 10 cents or less; Twist has no capability for real DNA sequences",
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      "text": "Twist’s competitors are disciplined and not pricing insanely; charging $1.50 to $2 per base pair while Twist caters to the commodity end of the market and charges 10 cents or less; Twist has no capability for real DNA sequences “I think they’re losing money partially because of pricing, obviously, and partially because their system isn’t as efficient as they expected. The people who are making money in this space are doing the volume that Twist is, and they’re not doing it at 10 cents a base. They have much, much higher pricing, but they will make any sequence you want. Some sequences are really complex to, and pharma customers will put a value of $1.50 or $2 a base or more on those, depending on how hard they’ve tried to make them before they look for someone who can do it for them. There is money to be had there, but you can’t go after the entire commodity market. I don’t think Twist has the capability to make that harder stuff yet. I know they’ve talked about building it. They even talked about doing it when I was there, but it’s a different kind of manufacturing to make that work. It requires a different approach to what you’re doing, and I don’t think they’ve established that ability.” - Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles",
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      "text": "Twist’s competitors like Thermo Fisher are disciplined and charge double the price; “don’t lose money” as they price properly vs. Twist’s price dumping approach “They charge a lot higher prices for their work. Almost double. No, they don’t lose money. Thermo wouldn’t tolerate that. They also have a better algorithm for scoring them so that that you can say the average gene is going to cost you 18 cents a base. This one’s really complex and long. It’s going to cost you 45 cents a base. They’re right most of the time.” -Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles",
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      "text": "“I think they’re losing money partially because of pricing, obviously, and partially because their system isn’t as efficient as they expected. The people who are making money in this space are doing the volume that Twist is, and they’re not doing it at 10 cents a base. They have much, much higher pricing, but they will make any sequence you want. Some sequences are really complex to make, and pharma customers will put a value of $1.50 or $2 a base or more on those, depending on how hard they’ve tried to make them before they look for someone who can do it for them. There is money to be had there, but you can’t go after the entire commodity market. I don’t think Twist has the capability to make that harder stuff yet. I know they’ve talked about building it. They even talked about doing it when I was there, but it’s a different kind of manufacturing to make that work. It requires a different approach to what you’re doing, and I don’t think they’ve established that ability.” — Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles; “They charge a lot higher prices for their work. Almost double. No, they don’t lose money. Thermo wouldn’t tolerate that. They also have a better algorithm for scoring them so that you can say the average gene is going to cost you 18 cents a base. This’re really complex and long. It’s going to cost you 45 cents a base. They’re right most of the time.” -Ex-employee in senior product management and sales leadership roles",
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      "text": "Source: Scorpion Capital consultation calls with experts",
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      "text": "Our interviews indicate that in contrast to Twist’s reckless Ponzi-like pricing, incumbents like Danaher/IDT and Thermo Fisher are disciplined, charging prices that are many multiples higher – 15 to 100X Twist’s 1.5c to 10c deals – and focusing on complex, value-added DNA sequences, while Twist focuses on low-quality, commodity sequences that it has to basically give away to drive revenue.",
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