Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including “Management’s Discussion & Analysis” and our financial statements and related notes, before deciding to make an investment decision with respect to shares of our common stock. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business, financial condition, operating results, reputation, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the price of our common stock could decline and you could lose part or all of your investment. We caution you that the risks, uncertainties and other factors referred to below and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may not contain all of the risks, uncertainties and other factors that may affect our future results and operations. Moreover, new risks will emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks.

Risk Factor Summary

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Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

The recent and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic could further materially affect our operations, as well as the business or operations of third parties with whom we conduct business. Our business could be adversely affected by the effects of other future health epidemics or pandemics in regions where we or third parties on which we rely have significant business operations.

Our business and its operations, including but not limited to our laboratory operations, sales and marketing efforts, supply chain operations, research and development activities, and capital raising activities, could be adversely affected by health epidemics in regions where we have business operations, and such health epidemics could also cause significant disruption in the operations of third parties with whom we do business, including third parties upon whom we rely. For example, in December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, causing a disease referred to as COVID-19, was reported to have surfaced in Wuhan, China. Since then, COVID-19 has spread to other countries and throughout the United States. In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, and the U.S. government imposed restrictions on travel between the United States, Europe, and certain other countries. Since March 2020, numerous state and local jurisdictions, including the jurisdictions where our headquarters and laboratories are located, have imposed, and others in the future may impose, quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, executive, and similar government orders for their residents to control the spread of COVID-19.

In response to these public health directives and orders, we have implemented work-from-home policies for most of our employees. The effects of the executive orders, the shelter-in-place orders, and our work-from-home policies have negatively impacted, and may further negatively impact, productivity, and our preclinical and clinical programs and timelines, and disrupt our business in other ways, the magnitude of which will depend, in part, on the length and severity of the restrictions and other limitations on our ability to conduct our business in the ordinary course. These and similar, and perhaps more severe, disruptions in our operations could negatively impact our business, operating results and financial condition. We continue to monitor state and local quarantine, shelter-in-place, executive, and similar government orders and will reopen our offices to allow employees to return to the office, as needed, in accordance with our reopening plan, which is based on a phased approach that is appropriately tailored for each of our offices, with a focus on state and local orders, employee safety and optimal work environment.

Quarantines, shelter-in-place, executive, and similar government orders, or the perception that such orders, shutdowns or other restrictions on the conduct of business operations could occur, related to COVID-19 or other infectious diseases, could impact personnel at third-party manufacturing facilities in the United States and other countries, or the availability or cost of materials we use or require to conduct our business, including product development, which would disrupt our supply chain. In particular, some of our suppliers of certain materials used in our laboratory operations and research and development activities are located in areas that are subject to executive orders and shelter-in-place orders. While many of these materials may be obtained from more than one supplier, port closures and other restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic or future pandemics may disrupt our supply chain or limit our ability to obtain sufficient materials to operate our business. To date, we are aware of certain suppliers for our research and development activities who have experienced operational delays directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The spread of COVID-19, which has caused a broad impact globally, has affected and may further materially affect us economically, including a continuing and significant reduction in laboratory testing volumes. In addition, reimbursements for our tests have been delayed and may continue to be delayed if third-party payors’ processing continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and work-from-home policies and other operational limitations mandated by federal, state, and local governments as a result of the pandemic. While the potential economic impact brought by COVID-19, and the duration of such impact, may be difficult to assess or predict, the widespread pandemic has resulted in significant disruption of global financial markets, which could reduce our ability to access capital and negatively affect our future liquidity. In addition, a recession or market correction resulting from the spread of COVID-19 and related government orders and restrictions could materially affect our business and the value of our common stock.

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In addition, our preclinical and clinical trials have been and may continue to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, while we originally intended to commence our pilot clinical study for PIL Dx in 2020, that timeline was delayed due to circumstances and uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic and we now expect to instead commence this study in 2021. If COVID-19 continues to spread in the United States and elsewhere, we may experience additional disruptions that could severely impact our business, preclinical studies and clinical trials, including:

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve rapidly. The ultimate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic or a similar health epidemic is highly uncertain and subject to change. We do not yet know the full extent of potential delays or impacts on our business, our clinical trials, healthcare systems, or the global economy as a whole.

We currently receive and expect to continue to receive a significant portion of our revenues from our women’s health-related NIPT and carrier screening products, and if our efforts to further increase the use and adoption of these products fail, our business will be harmed.

We currently receive and expect to continue to receive a significant portion of our revenues from the sales of our women’s health-related NIPT product, Innatal, and our carrier screening products, including Preparent. We undertake efforts to increase the awareness and adoption of Innatal and Preparent among laboratories, clinics, clinicians, physicians, payors, and patients. Continued and additional market acceptance of Innatal and Preparent and our ability to attract new customers are key elements to our future success. The market demand for NIPT and carrier screening tests has grown in recent years and is evolving. For example, in August 2020, ACOG issued a new set of guidelines recommending that prenatal aneuploidy screening be offered to all pregnant women regardless of their age or other risk factors. However, this market trend may not continue. Demand for Innatal and Preparent is affected by a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control, including the recommendation of our products by physicians, the timing and development of new products by our competitors, and reimbursement from payors. Despite the recent ACOG guidelines, payors may elect not to cover prenatal aneuploidy screening for average risk women and such recommendations may not result in an increase in market demand.

Our ability to increase sales of our products and establish greater levels of adoption and reimbursement for our products is

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uncertain for many reasons, including, among others:

If the market and our market share for our women’s health-related NIPT and carrier screening products fail to grow or grow more slowly than expected, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.

In addition, as our products may have different reimbursement rates and reimbursement amounts, a change in product mix could negatively impact our average selling price and total revenue. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused an overall decrease in demand for our products, demand for our NIPT product has been more resilient than for our carrier screening products, leading to a higher proportion of NIPT tests in our product mix. The average reimbursement rate for our NIPT product tends to be slightly lower than for our carrier screening products. In addition, we added COVID-19 testing to our product mix, which has a lower reimbursement amount per test. As a result, our average selling price and revenue was negatively impacted.

We have incurred losses in the past, and we may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

In the future, we expect to incur significant costs in connection with the development, approval, and commercialization of enhanced, improved, or new products. Even if we succeed in creating such products from these investments, those innovations still may fail to result in commercially successful products.

Other than revenues from our laboratory testing business, we do not expect to generate revenues from other sources in the immediate future. It is possible that we will not generate sufficient revenue from the sale of our products to cover our costs, including research and development expenses related to furthering our product pipeline, and achieve or sustain profitability. A significant element of our business strategy is to increase and maintain our in-network coverage with third-party payors; however, the negotiated fees under our contracts with third-party payors are typically lower than the list price of our tests, and in some cases the third-party payors with whom we contract may have negative coverage determinations for some of our offerings. Therefore, being in-network with third-party payors has had, and may continue to have, an adverse impact on our revenues especially if we are unable to increase the adoption of, and obtain favorable coverage determinations and reimbursement for, our products.

Since we or any collaborators or licensees may not successfully develop additional products, obtain required regulatory authorizations, manufacture products at an acceptable cost or with appropriate quality, or successfully market and sell such products with desired margins, our expenses may continue to exceed any revenues we may receive. Our operating expenses also will increase as and if, among other things:

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We operate in a highly competitive business environment.

The industries in which we operate are highly competitive and require an ongoing, extensive search for technological innovation. They also require, among other things, the ability to effectively develop, test, commercialize, market, and promote products, including communicating the effectiveness, safety, and value of products to actual and prospective healthcare providers. Other competitive factors in our industries include quality and price, product technology, reputation, customer service, and access to technical information.

Our women’s health-related NIPT and carrier screening tests are molecular tests, which are used by obstetricians and gynecologists, maternal fetal medicine specialists, and in vitro fertilization specialists. The principal competition for our NIPT and carrier screening tests comes from existing testing methods, technologies, and products, including other molecular NIPT and carrier screening tests offered by our competitors. The molecular testing field is characterized by rapid technological changes, frequent new product introductions, changing customer preferences, emerging competition, evolving industry standards, reimbursement uncertainty, and price competition. Many companies in this market are offering, or may soon offer, products and services that compete with our tests, in some cases at a lower cost than ours, and healthcare providers may choose to recommend the tests of our competitors.

Moreover, established, traditional first-line testing prenatal methods, such as serum protein measurement, where doctors measure certain hormones in the blood, and invasive prenatal diagnostics tests like amniocentesis, have been used for many years and are therefore practices that are difficult to change or supplement. Our conception and pre-implantation genetic screening products face competition from various laboratories that offer or seek to offer similar solutions. We also compete against companies providing hereditary cancer screening tests. For more information on our molecular testing competitors, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Competition in Molecular Testing.”

We expect any of our future precision medicine products to face substantial competition from major pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, academic institutions, government agencies, and public and private research institutions. The larger competitors have substantially greater financial and human resources, as well as a much larger infrastructure than we do. For more information on our precision medicine competitors, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Competition in Precision Medicine.”

Additionally, we compete to acquire the intellectual property assets that we require to continue to develop and broaden our product portfolio. In addition to our in-house research and development efforts, we may seek to acquire rights to new intellectual property through corporate acquisitions, asset acquisitions, licensing, and joint venture arrangements. Competitors with greater resources may acquire intellectual property that we seek, and even where we are successful, competition may increase the acquisition price of such intellectual property or prevent us from capitalizing on such acquisitions, licensing opportunities, or joint venture arrangements. If we fail to compete successfully, our growth may be limited.

It is possible that developments by our competitors could make our products or technologies less competitive or obsolete. Our future growth depends, in part, on our ability to provide products that are more effective than those of our competitors and to keep pace with rapid medical and scientific change. Sales of our existing products and any future products may decline rapidly if a new product is introduced by a competitor, particularly if a new product represents a substantial improvement over any of our existing products. In addition, the high level of competition in our industry could force us to reduce the price at which we sell our products or require us to spend more to market our products.

Many of our competitors have greater resources than we have. This enables them, among other things, to spread their marketing and promotion costs over a broader revenue base. In addition, we may not be able to compete effectively against our competitors because their products and services are superior. Our current and future competitors could have greater experience, technological and financial resources, stronger business relationships, broader product lines and greater name recognition than us, and we may not be able to compete effectively against them. Increased competition is likely to result in pricing pressures, which could harm our revenues, operating income, or market share. If we are unable to compete successfully, we may be unable to increase or sustain our revenues or achieve or sustain profitability.

Our success depends on our ability to improve and enhance our current products and develop new product candidates, which is complex and costly and the results are uncertain.

Effective execution of research and development activities and the timely introduction of enhanced, improved, or new products and product candidates to the market are important elements of our business strategy. However, the development of enhanced, improved, or new products and product candidates is complex, costly, and uncertain and requires us to, among other factors, accurately anticipate patients’, clinicians’, and payors’ needs, and emerging technology trends. For more information on our current research and development efforts, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Our Research and Development Activities.”

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In the development of enhanced, improved, or new products and product candidates, we can provide no assurance that:

These and other factors beyond our control could delay our launch of enhanced, improved, or new products and product candidates.

The research and development process in our industries generally requires a significant amount of time from the research and design stage through commercialization. The launch of such new products requires the completion of certain clinical development and/or assay validations in the commercial laboratory. This process is conducted in various stages, and each stage presents the risk that we will not achieve our goals and will not be able to complete clinical development for any planned product in a timely manner. Such development and/or validation failures could prevent or significantly delay our ability to obtain FDA clearance or approval as may be necessary or desired, obtain approval by entities that provide oversight over LDTs, such as the State of New York, or launch any of our planned products and product candidates. At times, it may be necessary for us to abandon a product in which we have invested substantial resources. Without the timely introduction of new product candidates and improvements or enhancements of our current products, our products may become obsolete over time and our competitors may develop products that are more competitive, in which case our business, operating results, and financial condition will be harmed.

We are still developing our precision medicine platform and to date have generated no precision medicine products or product revenue. There can be no assurance that we will develop any precision medicine products that deliver diagnostic or therapeutic solutions, or, if developed, that such product candidates will be authorized for marketing by regulatory authorities, or will be commercially successful. This uncertainty makes it difficult to assess our future prospects and financial results.

Our operations with respect to our precision medicine platform to date have been limited to developing our platform technology, undertaking preclinical studies and clinical trials, and conducting research to identify potential product candidates. To date, we have only conducted clinical trials to evaluate whether our platform localization technology enables identification of the location of our ingestible medical devices within the gastrointestinal tract as well as the function of our DDS device.

We seek to develop a suite of ingestible capsules for both diagnostic and therapeutic solutions. However, medical device and related diagnostic and therapeutic product development is a highly speculative undertaking and involves a substantial degree of uncertainty. Our precision medicine platform has not yet demonstrated an ability to generate revenue or successfully overcome many of the risks and uncertainties frequently encountered by companies in new and rapidly evolving fields such as ours for precision medicine. Consequently, the ability to accurately assess the future operating results or business prospects of our precision medicine platform is significantly more limited than if we had an operating history or approved commercial precision medicine products. Our success in developing commercial products that are based on our precision medicine platform will depend on a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control, including, but not limited to:

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Even if we are able to develop one or more commercial precision medicine products, we expect that the operating results of these products will fluctuate significantly from period to period due to the factors above and a variety of other factors, many of which are beyond our control, including, but not limited to:

Accordingly, the likelihood of the success of our precision medicine platform must be evaluated in light of these many potential challenges and variables.

The development of new product candidates will require us to undertake clinical trials, which are costly, time-consuming, and subject to a number of risks.

The development of new product candidates, including development of the data necessary to obtain clearance or approval for such product candidates, is costly, time-consuming, and carries with it the risk of not yielding the desired results. The outcome of preclinical studies and early clinical trials may not be predictive of the success of later clinical trials, and interim results of clinical trials do not necessarily predict success in future clinical trials. Many companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have suffered significant setbacks in late-stage clinical trials after achieving positive results in earlier development, and even if we achieve positive results in earlier trials, we could face similar setbacks. The design of a clinical trial can determine whether its results will support a product candidate’s marketing authorization, to the extent required, and flaws in the design of a clinical trial may not become apparent until the clinical trial is well advanced. In addition, preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to varying interpretations and analyses. Many companies that believed their product candidates performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and clinical trials have nonetheless failed to obtain marketing authorization for the product candidates. Furthermore, limited results from earlier-stage studies may not predict results from studies in larger numbers of subjects drawn from more diverse populations over a longer period of time.

Unfavorable results from ongoing preclinical studies and clinical trials could result in delays, modifications, or abandonment of ongoing or future analytical or clinical trials, or abandonment of a product development program, or may delay, limit, or prevent marketing authorizations, where required, or commercialization of our product candidates. Even if we, or our collaborators, believe that the results of clinical trials for our product candidates warrant marketing authorization, the FDA and other regulatory authorities may disagree and may not grant marketing authorizations for our product candidates.

Moreover, the FDA requires us to comply with regulatory standards, commonly referred to as the Good Clinical Practice, or GCP, requirements, for conducting, recording, and reporting the results of clinical trials to assure that data and reported results are credible and accurate and that the rights, safety, and welfare of trial participants are protected. Other countries’ regulatory agencies also have requirements for clinical trials with which we must comply. We also are required to register certain ongoing clinical trials and post the results of certain completed clinical trials on a government-sponsored database, ClinicalTrials.gov, within specified timeframes. Failure to do so can result in fines, enforcement action, adverse publicity, and civil and criminal sanctions.

The initiation and completion of any clinical studies may be prevented, delayed, or halted for numerous reasons. We may experience delays in initiation or completion of our clinical trials for a number of reasons, which could adversely affect the costs, timing, or success of our clinical trials, including related to the following:

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In addition, disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may increase the likelihood that we encounter such difficulties or delays in initiating, enrolling, conducting, or completing our planned and ongoing clinical trials.

Any of these occurrences may significantly harm our business, financial condition, and prospects. In addition, many of the factors that cause, or lead to, a delay in the commencement or completion of clinical trials may also ultimately lead to the denial of regulatory approval of our product candidates.

Patient enrollment in clinical trials and completion of patient follow-up depend on many factors, including the size of the patient population, the nature of the trial protocol, the proximity of patients to clinical sites, the eligibility criteria for the clinical trial, patient compliance, competing clinical trials and clinicians’ and patients’ perceptions as to the potential advantages of the product being studied in relation to other available therapies, including any new treatments that may be approved for the indications we are investigating. For example, patients may be discouraged from enrolling in our clinical trials if the trial protocol requires them to undergo extensive post-treatment procedures or follow-up to assess the safety and efficacy of a product candidate, or they may be persuaded to participate in contemporaneous clinical trials of a competitor’s product candidate. In addition, patients participating in our clinical trials may drop out before completion of the trial or experience adverse medical events unrelated to our products. Delays in patient enrollment or failure of patients to continue to participate in a clinical trial may delay commencement or completion of the clinical trial, cause an increase in the costs of the clinical trial and delays, or result in the failure of the clinical trial.

Clinical trials must be also conducted in accordance with the laws and regulations of the FDA and other applicable regulatory authorities’ legal requirements, regulations or guidelines, and are subject to oversight by these governmental agencies and IRBs at the medical institutions where the clinical trials are conducted. We rely on CROs and clinical trial sites to ensure the proper and timely conduct of our clinical trials and while we have agreements governing their committed activities, we have limited influence over their actual performance. We depend on our collaborators and on medical institutions and CROs to conduct our clinical trials in compliance with the FDA’s GCP requirements. To the extent our collaborators or the CROs fail to enroll participants for our clinical trials, fail to

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conduct the study to GCP requirements, or are delayed for a significant time in the execution of trials, including achieving full enrollment, we may be affected by increased costs, program delays, or both. In addition, clinical trials that are conducted in countries outside the United States may subject us to further delays and expenses as a result of increased shipment costs, additional regulatory requirements and the engagement of non-U.S. CROs, as well as expose us to risks associated with clinical investigators who are unknown to the FDA, and different standards of diagnosis, screening and medical care.

The clinical trial process is lengthy and expensive with uncertain outcomes. We have limited data and experience regarding the safety and efficacy of our products. Results of earlier studies may not be predictive of future clinical trial results, or the safety or efficacy profile for such products.

Clinical testing is difficult to design and implement, can take many years, can be expensive, and carries uncertain outcomes. The results of preclinical studies and clinical trials of our products conducted to date and ongoing or future studies and trials of our current, planned, or future products and product candidates may not be predictive of the results of later clinical trials, and interim results of a clinical trial do not necessarily predict final results. Our interpretation of data and results from our clinical trials do not ensure that we will achieve similar results in future clinical trials. In addition, preclinical and clinical data are often susceptible to various interpretations and analyses, and many companies that have believed their products performed satisfactorily in preclinical studies and earlier clinical trials have nonetheless failed to replicate results in later clinical trials. Products in later stages of clinical trials may fail to show the desired safety and efficacy despite having progressed through nonclinical studies and earlier clinical trials. Failure can occur at any stage of clinical testing. Our clinical studies may produce negative or inconclusive results, and we may decide, or regulators may require us, to conduct additional clinical and non-clinical testing in addition to those we have planned.

Interim “top-line” and preliminary data from studies or trials that we announce or publish from time to time may change as more data become available and are subject to audit and verification procedures that could result in material changes in the final data.

From time to time, we may publish interim “top-line” or preliminary data from preclinical studies or clinical trials. Interim data are subject to the risk that one or more of the outcomes may materially change as more data become available. We also make assumptions, estimations, calculations, and conclusions as part of our analyses of data, and we may not have received or had the opportunity to fully and carefully evaluate all data. As a result, the top-line results that we report may differ from future results of the same studies, or different conclusions or considerations may qualify such results, once additional data have been received and fully evaluated. Preliminary or “top-line” data also remain subject to audit and verification procedures that may result in the final data being materially different from the preliminary data we previously published. As a result, interim and preliminary data should be viewed with caution until the final data are available. Additionally, interim data from clinical trials that we may complete are subject to the risk that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change as patient enrollment continues and more patient data become available. Adverse differences between preliminary or interim data and final data could seriously harm our business.

Further, others, including regulatory agencies, may not accept or agree with our assumptions, estimates, calculations, conclusions or analyses or may interpret or weigh the importance of data differently, which could impact the value of the particular program, the approvability or commercialization of the particular product candidate or product, and our results of operations, liquidity and financial condition. In addition, the information we choose to publicly disclose regarding a particular study or clinical trial is based on what is typically extensive information, and others may not agree with what we determine is the material or otherwise appropriate information to include in our disclosure. Any information we determine not to disclose may ultimately be deemed significant by others with respect to future decisions, conclusions, views, activities or otherwise regarding a particular product candidate or our business. If the top-line data that we report differ from final results, or if others, including regulatory authorities, disagree with the conclusions reached, our ability to obtain marketing authorization for, and commercialize, product candidates may be harmed, which could seriously harm our business.

The results of our clinical trials may not support the use of our tests and other product candidates, or may not be replicated in later studies required for marketing authorizations.

As the healthcare reimbursement system in the United States evolves to place greater emphasis on comparative effectiveness and outcomes data, we cannot predict whether we will have sufficient data, or whether the data we have will be presented to the satisfaction of any payors seeking such data for determining coverage for our tests, particularly in the average-risk pregnancy population for which such data is expected to be of particular interest, in new test areas such as preeclampsia, or in precision medicine diagnostic or therapeutic applications.

The administration of clinical and economic utility studies is expensive and demands significant attention from certain members of our management team. Data collected from these studies may not be positive or consistent with our existing data, or may not be statistically significant or compelling to the medical community or payors. If the results obtained from our ongoing or future studies

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are inconsistent with certain results obtained from our previous studies, adoption of our products would suffer and our business would be harmed.

Peer-reviewed publications regarding our products and product candidates may be limited by many factors, including delays in the completion of, poor design of, or lack of compelling data from clinical studies, as well as delays in the review, acceptance, and publication process. If our products or product candidates or the technology underlying our current or future products or product candidates do not receive sufficient favorable exposure in peer-reviewed publications, or are not published, the rate of healthcare provider adoption of our tests and positive reimbursement coverage decisions for our tests and other products could be negatively affected. The publication of clinical data in peer-reviewed journals can be a crucial step in commercializing and obtaining reimbursement for tests, diagnostic and therapeutic products and other products, and our inability to control when, if ever, results are published may delay or limit our ability to derive sufficient revenues from any test, diagnostic or therapeutic product that is the subject of a study. The performance achieved in published studies may not be repeated in later studies that may be required to obtain FDA clearance or marketing authorizations should we decide for business reasons, or be required to submit applications to the FDA or other health authorities seeking such authorizations.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are providing molecular testing for diagnosing COVID-19 through Avero Diagnostics. The demand for such testing may decrease in the future and our investment in such testing capabilities may not pay off.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for our diagnostic tests and the Avero Diagnostics laboratory is providing molecular testing for diagnosing COVID-19. Avero Diagnostics' molecular testing utilizes certain third-party in-vitro diagnostics that have received Emergency Use Authorization, or EUA, from the FDA. The FDA has the authority to issue an EUA during a public health emergency if it determines that based on the totality of the scientific evidence that it is reasonable to believe that the product may be effective, that the known and potential benefits of a product outweigh the known and potential risks, that there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative, and if other regulatory criteria are met. These standards for marketing authorization are lower than if FDA had reviewed these tests under its traditional marketing authorization pathways, and we cannot assure you that these would be cleared or approved under those more onerous clearance and approval standards. Moreover, FDA's policies regarding EUAs can change unexpectedly, and FDA may revoke an EUA where it determines that the underlying health emergency no longer exists or warrants such authorization or if problems are identified with the authorized product. We cannot predict how long these authorizations will remain in place. FDA policies regarding diagnostic tests, therapies and other products used to diagnose, treat or mitigate COVID-19 remain in flux as the FDA responds to new and evolving public health information and clinical evidence. Changes to FDA regulations or requirements could require changes to authorized tests, necessitate additional measures, or make it impractical or impossible for Avero Diagnostics to continue utilizing these tests. The termination of any of the EUAs for the COVID-19 testing being run by Avero Diagnostics could adversely impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. There is no assurance that our COVID-19 diagnostic testing program will continue to be accepted by the market or that, when compared to our COVID-19 tests, other diagnostic tests will not become more accepted, produce quicker results, or be more accurate. Further, the longevity and extent of the COVID-19 pandemic is uncertain. Future demand for COVID-19 testing is becoming increasing difficult to predict due to various factors including but not limited to the availability of vaccinations, the number of individuals who choose to be vaccinated, the effectiveness of the various vaccinations against variants, the rate of new cases, and evolving government directives, laws, regulations and rules related to COVID-19 testing. In the long term, we expect that the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually dissipate and, as a result, the significance of COVID-19 testing to our business and financial results will decrease. As a result, the increase in revenue due to any increase in demand for these diagnostic tests may not be indicative of our future revenue.

Operating our business will require a significant amount of cash, and our ability to generate sufficient cash depends on many factors, some of which are beyond our control. We expect to need to raise additional capital, and if we cannot raise additional capital when needed, we may have to curtail or cease operations.

In the future, we expect to incur significant costs in connection with our operations, including but not limited to the development, marketing authorization, and commercialization of new tests, medical devices, therapeutics, and other products. These development activities generally require a substantial investment before we can determine commercial viability, and the proceeds from our initial public offering, or IPO, in June 2020 and concurrent equity and convertible debt offerings in December 2020 will not be sufficient to fully fund these activities. We expect to need to raise additional funds through public or private equity or debt financings, collaborations or licensing arrangements to continue to fund or expand our operations.

Our actual liquidity and capital funding requirements will depend on numerous factors, including:

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The availability of additional capital, whether from private capital sources (including banks) or the public capital markets, fluctuates as our financial condition and market conditions in general change. There may be times when the private capital sources and the public capital markets lack sufficient liquidity or when our securities cannot be sold at attractive prices, or at all, in which case we would not be able to access capital from these sources. In addition, a weakening of our financial condition or deterioration in our credit ratings could adversely affect our ability to obtain necessary funds. Even if available, additional financing could be costly or have adverse consequences.

Additional capital, if needed, may not be available on satisfactory terms or at all. Furthermore, any additional capital raised through the sale of equity or equity-linked securities will dilute our stockholders’ ownership interests and may have an adverse effect on the price of our common stock. In addition, the terms of any financing may adversely affect stockholders’ holdings or rights. Debt financing, if available, may include restrictive covenants. To the extent that we raise additional funds through collaborations and licensing arrangements, it may be necessary to relinquish some rights to our technologies or grant licenses on terms that may not be favorable to us.

If we are not able to obtain adequate funding when needed, we may be required to delay development programs or sales and marketing initiatives. If we are unable to raise additional capital in sufficient amounts or on satisfactory terms, we may have to make reductions in our workforce and may be prevented from continuing our discovery, development, and commercialization efforts and exploiting other corporate opportunities. In addition, it may be necessary to work with a partner on one or more of our tests or products under development, which could lower the economic value of those products to us. Each of the foregoing may harm our business, operating results, and financial condition, and may impact our ability to continue as a going concern.

Our outstanding debt, and any new debt, may impair our financial and operating flexibility.

As of each of December 31, 2020, we had approximately $171.6 million of outstanding indebtedness, composed of the amount due under our convertible notes payable and mortgages payable. Certain of our debt agreements contain various restrictive covenants and our mortgages are secured by real estate assets.

The indenture for the convertible notes does not prohibit us or our subsidiaries from incurring additional indebtedness in the future, with certain exceptions. Under the convertible notes, we will not, and we will not permit any subsidiary of ours to, create, incur, assume or permit to exist any lien on any property or asset now owned or later acquired by us or any subsidiary that secures any indebtedness for borrowed money, other than (i) secured indebtedness for borrowed money in existence on the date of the indenture; (ii) permitted refinancing indebtedness incurred in exchange for, or the net proceeds of which are used to renew, refund, refinance, replace, defease or discharge any secured indebtedness for borrowed money permitted by clause (i) of this sentence; and (iii) additional secured indebtedness for borrowed money that, in an aggregate principal amount (or accredited value, as applicable), does not exceed $15,000,000 at any time outstanding.

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Accordingly, we may incur a significant amount of additional indebtedness in the future. Our current indebtedness and the incurrence of additional indebtedness could have significant negative consequences for our stockholders and our business, results of operations and financial condition by, among other things:

Our ability to make principal and interest payments will depend on our ability to generate cash in the future. Our business may not generate sufficient funds, and we may otherwise be unable to maintain sufficient cash reserves, to pay amounts due under our indebtedness, and our cash needs may increase in the future. If we do not generate sufficient cash to meet our debt service requirements and other operating requirements, we may need to seek additional financing. In that case, it may be more difficult, or we may be unable, to obtain financing on terms that are acceptable to us or at all.

In addition, any future indebtedness that we may incur may contain financial and other restrictive covenants that limit our ability to operate our business, raise capital or make payments under our other indebtedness. If we fail to comply with these covenants or to make payments under our indebtedness when due, then we would be in default under that indebtedness, which could, in turn, result in that and our other indebtedness becoming immediately payable in full.

Although we have implemented compliance policies and have an internal audit function, we cannot ensure that our employees have adhered or will fully adhere to such policies.

We have implemented compliance policies and procedures intended to train and monitor our sales, billing, marketing and other personnel. Our efforts to implement appropriate monitoring of such personnel are ongoing and we have identified and are analyzing situations in which employees may have failed to fully adhere to our policies and applicable laws in the past. For example, as part of our work to improve our compliance program and our obligations under our Corporate Integrity Agreement (as defined below), including our internal auditing and monitoring function, we commissioned a third-party analysis of our coding and billing processes. In connection with that audit, we identified that we had not timely and appropriately transitioned to the implementation of a new CPT code in 2019, and as a result we received an overpayment of approximately $10.0 million from government payors during 2019 and early 2020. We also conducted a similar review of our historic practices regarding the collection of patient responsibility amounts, including copayments and deductibles, from government health program beneficiaries between May 2018 and May 2020. We reported the overpayments identified in both audits to the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, or the OIG, in compliance with our Corporate Integrity Agreement. For additional information on our transition for this CPT code, see Notes 4 and 10 to our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. There can be no assurance that we will not identify further compliance, billing, or other failures or experience similar issues in the future. Failure by our sales, billing, marketing, or other personnel to follow our policies and comply with applicable laws may subject us to administrative, civil, and criminal actions, penalties, damages, fines, individual imprisonment, exclusion from participation in federal healthcare programs, refunding of payments received by us, and curtailment or cessation of our operations. For additional information regarding recent government investigations regarding our compliance with certain policies and laws, see Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings.” In addition, in the event of failure by our sales, billing, marketing, or other personnel to follow our policies and comply with applicable laws, commercial third-party payors may refuse to provide all or any reimbursement for tests administered and seek repayment from us of amounts previously reimbursed, which failures may harm our ability to secure network contracts with third-party payors. For additional information regarding recent claims by and settlement agreements with commercial payors, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Reimbursement—Payor Dispute” and “—Commercial Third-Party Payors.” Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our revenue, cash flow, and financial condition, and reduce our growth prospects. For additional information regarding these risks, see the risk factor titled “If we or our commercial partners act in a manner that violates healthcare laws or otherwise engage in misconduct, we could face substantial penalties and damage to our reputation, and our business operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.”

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Compliance with the terms and conditions of our Corporate Integrity Agreement requires significant resources and, if we fail to comply, we could be subject to penalties or excluded from participation in government healthcare programs, which could harm our results of operations, liquidity and financial condition.

In connection with settlement of the government investigations described in Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings,” effective July 21, 2020, we entered into a five-year corporate integrity agreement, or the Corporate Integrity Agreement, with the OIG. The Corporate Integrity Agreement requires, among other matters, that we maintain a Compliance Officer, a Compliance Committee, board review and oversight of healthcare compliance matters, compliance programs, and disclosure programs; provide management certifications and compliance training and education; engage an independent review organization to conduct claims and arrangements reviews; implement a risk assessment and internal review process; and submit periodic reports to the OIG regarding our compliance program and Corporate Integrity Agreement implementation. The Corporate Integrity Agreement requires us to report substantial overpayments that we discover we have received from federal health care programs, as well as probable violations of federal health care laws. See “Risk Factors—Although we have implemented compliance policies and have an internal audit function, we cannot ensure that our employees have adhered or will fully adhere to such policies.” We are in the process of implementing the processes, policies and procedures required under the Corporate Integrity Agreement. Implementing and administering such processes, policies and procedures will require significant management attention and cash and other resources. Furthermore, while we have developed and instituted a corporate compliance program, we cannot guarantee that we, our employees, our consultants or our contractors are or will be in compliance with all potentially applicable federal healthcare laws or all requirements of the Corporate Integrity Agreement. Our failure to comply with our obligations under the Corporate Integrity Agreement could result in monetary penalties and our exclusion from participating in federal healthcare programs. The costs associated with compliance with the Corporate Integrity Agreement, or any liability or consequences associated with its breach, could have an adverse effect on our operations, liquidity and financial condition.

Actual or perceived failures to comply with applicable data protection, privacy, consumer protection and security laws, regulations, standards and other requirements could adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

The global data protection landscape is rapidly evolving, and we are or may become subject to numerous state, federal, and foreign laws, requirements, and regulations governing the collection, use, disclosure, retention, and security of personal information. Implementation standards and enforcement practices are likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future, and we cannot yet determine the impact future laws, regulations, standards, or perception of their requirements may have on our business. This evolution may create uncertainty in our business, affect our ability to operate in certain jurisdictions or to collect, store, transfer, use and share personal information, necessitate the acceptance of more onerous obligations in our contracts, result in liability or impose additional costs on us. The cost of compliance with these laws, regulations, and standards is high and is likely to increase in the future. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with federal, state or foreign laws or regulations, our internal policies and procedures or our contracts governing our processing of personal information could result in negative publicity, government investigations and enforcement actions, claims by third parties and damage to our reputation, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our operations, financial performance and business.

As our operations and business grow, we may become subject to or affected by new or additional data protection laws and regulations and face increased scrutiny or attention from regulatory authorities. In the United States, the manner in which we collect, use, access, disclose, transmit and store protected health information, or PHI, is subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, or HITECH, and the health data privacy, security and breach notification regulations issued pursuant to these statutes.

HIPAA establishes a set of national privacy and security standards for the protection of PHI, by health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and certain healthcare providers, referred to as covered entities, and the business associates with whom such covered entities contract for services that involve the use or disclosure of PHI. HIPAA requires healthcare providers like us to develop and maintain policies and procedures with respect to PHI that is used or disclosed, including the adoption of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect such information.

HIPAA further requires covered entities to notify affected individuals “without unreasonable delay and in no case later than 60 calendar days after discovery of the breach” if their unsecured PHI is subject to an unauthorized access, use or disclosure. If a breach affects 500 patients or more, covered entities must report it to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, and local media without unreasonable delay (and in no case later than 60 days after discovery of the breach), and HHS will post the name of the entity on its public website. If a breach affects fewer than 500 individuals, the covered entity must log it and notify HHS at least annually. HIPAA also implemented the use of standard transaction code sets and standard identifiers that covered entities must use when submitting or receiving certain electronic healthcare transactions, including activities associated with the billing and collection of healthcare claims.

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Penalties for failure to comply with a requirement of HIPAA and HITECH vary significantly depending on the failure and could include requiring corrective actions, and/or imposing civil monetary or criminal penalties. HIPAA also authorizes state attorneys general to file suit under HIPAA on behalf of state residents. Courts can award damages, costs and attorneys’ fees related to violations of HIPAA in such cases. While HIPAA does not create a private right of action allowing individuals to sue us in civil court for HIPAA violations, its standards have been used as the basis for a duty of care claim in state civil suits such as those for negligence or recklessness in the misuse or breach of PHI.

Certain states have also adopted comparable privacy and security laws and regulations, some of which may be more stringent than HIPAA. Such laws and regulations will be subject to interpretation by various courts and other governmental authorities, thus creating potentially complex compliance issues for us and our future customers and strategic partners. In addition, California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, on June 28, 2018, which went into effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA creates individual privacy rights for California consumers and increases the privacy and security obligations of entities handling certain personal data. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for data breaches that is expected to increase data breach litigation. The CCPA may increase our compliance costs and potential liability, and many similar laws have been proposed at the federal level and proposed or enacted in other states. Any liability from failure to comply with the requirements of these laws could adversely affect our financial condition.

In Europe, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679), or the GDPR, went into effect in May 2018 and introduces strict requirements for processing the personal data of European Union data subjects. Companies that must comply with the GDPR face increased compliance obligations and risk, including more robust regulatory enforcement of data protection requirements and potential fines for noncompliance of up to €20 million or 4% of the annual global revenues of the noncompliant company, whichever is greater. Moreover, the United Kingdom leaving the European Union could also lead to further legislative and regulatory changes. It remains unclear how the United Kingdom data protection laws or regulations will develop in the medium to longer term and how data transfer to the United Kingdom from the European Union will be regulated, especially following the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union on January 31, 2020 without a deal. However, the United Kingdom has transposed the GDPR into domestic law with the Data Protection Act 2018, which remains in force following the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. In addition to the GDPR, individual countries in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, including but not limited to Brazil, have enacted similar data privacy legislation that applies to data subjects in those countries. This legislation imposes increased compliance obligations and regulatory risk, including the potential for significant fines for noncompliance.

In addition, our direct communications with patients may be scrutinized under the laws and regulations governing such communications. The interpretation of many of these statutes, regulations and rulings is evolving in the courts and administrative agencies and an inability to comply may have an adverse impact on our business. For example, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, imposes significant restrictions on utilizing text messages to mobile telephone numbers as a means of communication, when the prior express consent of the person being contacted has not been obtained or proof of such consent is not properly maintained. Our ability to communicate with patients may be affected by the TCPA, its implementing regulations and litigation pursuant to the TCPA. The determination by a court or regulatory agency that our SMS text messaging violates the TCPA could subject us to civil penalties, could require us to change some portions of our business and could otherwise harm our business.

Although we work to comply with applicable laws, regulations and standards, our contractual obligations and other legal obligations, these requirements are evolving and may be modified, interpreted and applied in an inconsistent manner from one jurisdiction to another, and may conflict with one another or other legal obligations with which we must comply. Any failure or perceived failure by us or our employees, representatives, contractors, consultants, CROs, collaborators, or other third parties to comply with such requirements or adequately address privacy and security concerns, even if unfounded, could result in additional cost and liability to us, damage our reputation, and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

Security breaches, loss of data, and other disruptions could compromise sensitive information related to our business or prevent us from accessing critical information and expose us to liability, which could adversely affect our business and reputation.

In the ordinary course of our business, we collect and store sensitive data, including PHI (such as patient medical records, including test results), and personally identifiable information. We also store business and financial information, intellectual property, research and development information, trade secrets and other proprietary and business critical information, including that of our customers, payors, and collaboration partners. We manage and maintain our data utilizing a combination of on-site systems, managed data center systems and cloud-based data center systems. We are highly dependent on information technology networks and systems, including the internet, to securely process, transmit, and store critical information. Although we take measures to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access or disclosure, our information technology and infrastructure, and that of our third-party billing and collections provider and other service providers, may be vulnerable to attacks by hackers, viruses, disruptions and breaches due to employee error or malfeasance.

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A security breach or privacy violation that leads to unauthorized access, disclosure or modification of, or prevents access to, patient information, including PHI, could compel us to comply with state and federal breach notification laws, subject us to mandatory corrective action and require us to verify the correctness of database contents. Such a breach or violation also could result in legal claims or proceedings brought by a private party or a governmental authority, liability under laws and regulations that protect the privacy of personal information, such as HIPAA, HITECH, and laws and regulations of various U.S. states and foreign countries, as well as penalties imposed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council for violations of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. If we are unable to prevent such security breaches or privacy violations or implement satisfactory remedial measures, we may suffer loss of reputation, financial loss and civil or criminal fines or other penalties because of lost or misappropriated information. In addition, these breaches and other forms of inappropriate access can be difficult to detect, and any delay in identifying them may lead to increased harm of the type described above.

Unauthorized access, loss or dissemination of information could disrupt our operations, including our ability to perform tests, provide test results, bill payors or patients, process claims and appeals, provide customer assistance services, conduct research and development activities, develop and commercialize tests, collect, process and prepare company financial information, provide information about our tests, educate patients and healthcare providers about our service, and manage the administrative aspects of our business, any of which could damage our reputation and adversely affect our business. Any breach could also result in the compromise of our trade secrets and other proprietary information, which could adversely affect our competitive position.

In addition, health-related, privacy, and data protection laws and regulations in the United States and elsewhere are subject to interpretation and enforcement by various governmental authorities and courts, resulting in complex compliance issues and the potential for varying or even conflicting interpretations, particularly as laws and regulations in this area are in flux. It is possible that these laws may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our practices. If so, this could result in government-imposed fines or orders requiring that we change our practices, which could adversely affect our business and our reputation. Complying with these laws could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices and compliance procedures in a manner adverse to our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Any failure or perceived failure by us or any third-party collaborators, service providers, contractors or consultants to comply with our privacy, confidentiality, data security or similar obligations, or any data security incidents or other security breaches that result in the accidental, unlawful or unauthorized access to, use of, release of, processing of, or transfer of sensitive information, including personally identifiable information, may result in negative publicity, harm to our reputation, governmental investigations, enforcement actions, regulatory fines, litigation or public statements against us, could cause third parties to lose trust in us or could result in claims by third parties, including those that assert that we have breached our privacy, confidentiality, data security or similar obligations, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition or results of operations. We could be subject to fines and penalties (including civil and criminal) under HIPAA for any failure by us or our business associates to comply with HIPAA’s requirements. Moreover, data security incidents and other security breaches can be difficult to detect, and any delay in identifying them may lead to increased harm. While we have implemented data security measures intended to protect our information, data, information technology systems, applications and infrastructure, and recently hired a Chief Information Officer to supervise such measures, there can be no assurance that such measures will successfully prevent service interruptions or data security incidents.

We have increased the size of our organization and expect to further increase it in the future, and we may experience difficulties in managing this growth. If we are unable to manage the anticipated growth of our business, our future revenue and operating results may be adversely affected.

As of December 31, 2020, we had 635 full-time employees worldwide. We have significantly expanded the size of our organization over the past several years, particularly personnel within our sales and marketing and research and development groups, and we expect to continue to do so in the future. As we transition into operating as a public company, we expect to need additional managerial, operational, sales, marketing, financial, and other personnel. Future growth would impose significant added responsibilities on members of management, including:

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Our future financial performance and our ability to successfully develop, market, and sell our products and product candidates will depend, in part, on our ability to effectively manage any future growth, and our management may also have to divert a disproportionate amount of attention away from day-to-day activities in order to devote a substantial amount of time to managing these growth activities. As we continue to grow our sales force, the impact of such growth on our revenue may be delayed as a result of time needed for onboarding and training of new sales force members.

We are engaged in extensive research and development activities, including innovation within our molecular testing business as well as furthering our novel pipeline of precision medicine product candidates. Conducting these activities will entail significant organizational complexity and require extensive effort on the part of our personnel. If we are unable to execute on our operational goals it would have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

If we lose the services of members of our senior management team or other key employees, we may not be able to execute our business strategy.

Our success depends in large part upon the continued service of our senior management team and certain other key employees who are important to our vision, strategic direction, and culture. Our current long-term business strategy was developed in large part by our senior management team and depends in part on their skills and knowledge to implement. We may not be able to offset the impact on our business of the loss of the services of any member of our senior management or other key officers or employees or attract additional talent. The loss of any members of our senior management team or other key employees could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

An inability to attract and retain highly skilled employees could adversely affect our business.

To execute our business plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. Competition for qualified personnel is intense, especially for sales, scientific, medical, laboratory, and technical personnel and especially in the areas where our headquarters and laboratory facilities are located. We have from time to time experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. If we hire employees from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees have breached their legal obligations to their former employees, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources. In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the value of the stock awards they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our stock awards declines, it may adversely affect our ability to attract and retain highly skilled employees. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.

We may not be able to obtain and maintain the third-party relationships that are necessary to develop, commercialize, and manufacture some or all of our product candidates.

We expect to depend on collaborators, partners, licensees, manufacturers, and other third parties to support our product candidate development efforts, to manufacture our product candidates and to market, sell, and distribute any products we successfully develop. Any problems we experience with any of these third parties could delay the development, commercialization, and manufacturing of our product candidates, which could harm our results of operations.

We cannot guarantee that we will be able to successfully negotiate agreements for, or maintain relationships with, collaborators, partners, licensees, manufacturers, and other third parties on favorable terms, if at all. If we are unable to obtain or maintain these agreements, we may not be able to clinically develop, manufacture, obtain regulatory authorizations for, or commercialize any future product candidates, which will in turn adversely affect our business.

We expect to expend substantial management time and effort to enter into relationships with third parties and, if we successfully enter into such relationships, to manage these relationships. In addition, substantial amounts will be paid to third parties in these relationships. However, we cannot control the amount or timing of resources our future contract partners will devote to our research and development programs, product candidates, or potential product candidates, and we cannot guarantee that these parties will fulfill their obligations to us under these arrangements in a timely fashion, if at all. In addition, while we manage the relationships with third parties, we cannot control all of the operations of and protection of intellectual property by such third parties.

We rely on third-party laboratories to perform some of our testing and further rely on third parties for sample collection, including phlebotomy services, and commercial courier delivery services, and if these services are disrupted, our business will be harmed.

A portion of our tests are performed by third-party CLIA certified laboratories. These third-party laboratories are subject to contractual obligations but are not otherwise under our control. We, therefore, do not control the capacity and quality control efforts of

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these third-party laboratories other than through our ability to enforce contractual obligations on volume and quality systems. In the event of any adverse developments with these third-party laboratories or their ability to perform this testing in accordance with the legal, regulatory, or commercial standards, our ability to provide test results to customers may be delayed, interrupted, or suspended. Any natural or other disasters, pandemics, acts of war or terrorism, shipping embargoes, labor unrest, or political instability or similar events at our third-party laboratories’ facilities that cause a loss of testing capacity would heighten the risks that we face.

Changes to or termination of our agreements or inability to renew our agreements with these parties or enter into new agreements with other laboratories that are able to perform such testing could impair, delay, or suspend our efforts to market and commercialize our tests. Such interruption could harm our reputation and lead to the loss of customers, and we may be unable to regain those customers in the future. In addition, certain third-party payors may take the position that sending out this testing to third-party laboratories is contrary to the terms of their coverage policies and/or our contract in cases where we are in-network with the payor, and may refuse to pay us for testing that we have outsourced. If any of these events occur, our business, operating results, and financial condition could suffer.

Federal and certain state laws impose anti-markup restrictions that prevent an entity from realizing a profit margin on outsourced testing. Whether we will be able to realize a profit margin on outsourced testing will be determined by the application of those laws. If we or our subsidiaries are unable to markup outsourced testing, our operating results would suffer.

Our molecular testing business depends on our ability to quickly and reliably deliver test results to our customers. We rely on third parties to perform sample collection, including phlebotomy services, and to transport samples to our laboratory facility or the third-party laboratories that we contract with in a timely and cost-efficient manner. Disruptions in these services, whether due to any natural or other disasters, pandemics, acts of war or terrorism, shipping embargoes, labor unrest, political instability, or similar events, could adversely affect specimen integrity and our ability to process samples in a timely manner and to service our customers, and ultimately our reputation and our business. In addition, if we are unable to continue to obtain expedited delivery services on commercially reasonable terms, our operating results may be adversely affected.

In addition, our relationships with these third-party providers could be scrutinized under federal and state healthcare laws such as the federal Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Law to the extent these services provide a financial benefit to or relieve a financial burden for a potential referral source, or are subsequently found not to be for fair market value. If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws and regulations, we may be subject to administrative, civil and criminal penalties, damages, fines, individual imprisonment, exclusion from participation in federal healthcare programs, refunding of payments received by us, and curtailment or cessation of our operations, any of which could harm our reputation and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. For additional information regarding these risks, see the risk factor titled “If we or our commercial partners act in a manner that violates healthcare laws or otherwise engage in misconduct, we could face substantial penalties and damage to our reputation, and our business operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.”

We rely on a limited number of suppliers or, in some cases, single suppliers, for some of our laboratory instruments and materials and may not be able to find replacements or immediately transition to alternative suppliers on a cost-effective basis, or at all.

We source components of our technology from third parties and certain components are sole sourced. Obtaining substitute components may be difficult or require us to re-design our products or, for any product candidates for which we may obtain marketing authorization from the FDA, obtain new marketing authorization from the FDA to use a new supplier. Any natural or other disasters, acts of war or terrorism, shipping embargoes, labor unrest or political instability or similar events at our third-party manufacturers’ facilities that cause a loss of manufacturing capacity or a reduction in the quality of the items manufactured would heighten the risks that we face. Changes to, failure to renew or termination of our existing agreements or our inability to enter into new agreements with other suppliers could result in the loss of access to important components of our tests and could impair, delay or suspend our commercialization efforts. Our failure to maintain a continued and cost-effective supply of high-quality components could materially and adversely harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

For example, Illumina, Inc., or Illumina, in San Diego, California, is currently the sole supplier of our sequencing instruments and certain reagents for Innatal and Preparent, pursuant to a supply agreement that, unless extended by mutual agreement, expires in June 2022. Without such inputs, we would be unable to run our tests and commercialize our products. In early 2013, prior to our entering into our agreement with Illumina, Illumina completed its acquisition of Verinata Health Inc., or Verinata, a direct competitor in the NIPT market. We understand Illumina supplies the same or similar instruments and related reagents to Verinata. As a result, we face heightened risk and uncertainty regarding our supply relationship with Illumina. If required, alternative sequencing platforms may not perform as well or may be more expensive and we may be unsuccessful employing such platforms in a commercially sustainable way. Any disruptions to our laboratory performance and ability to deliver our products could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and reputation. In addition, if we were required by the FDA to obtain approval for Innatal or Preparent

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through a pre-market approval application, or PMA, we may also be required to obtain approval of a PMA supplement prior to making any changes to Innatal or Preparent as a result of implementing an alternative sequencing platform.

The manufacturing of our products, including our precision medicine product candidates, is highly exacting and complex, and we depend on third parties to supply materials and manufacture all our products and product candidates.

Manufacturing is highly exacting and complex due, in part, to strict regulatory requirements governing the manufacture of our current and future products and product candidates, including medical devices, diagnostic products, and pharmaceutical products. We have limited personnel with experience in, and we do not own facilities for, manufacturing any products. We depend upon our collaborators and other third parties, including sole source suppliers, to provide raw materials meeting FDA quality standards and related regulatory requirements, manufacture devices, diagnostic products, and drug substances, produce drug products and provide certain analytical services with respect to our products and product candidates. The FDA and other regulatory authorities require that many of our products be manufactured according to cGMP regulations and that proper procedures be implemented to assure the quality of our sourcing of raw materials and the manufacture of our products. Any failure by us, our collaborators, or our third-party manufacturers to comply with cGMP and/or scale-up manufacturing processes could lead to a delay in, or failure to obtain, marketing authorizations. In addition, such failure could be the basis for action by the FDA, including issuing a warning letter, initiating a product recall or seizure, fines, imposing operating restrictions, total or partial suspension of production or injunctions and/or withdrawing marketing authorizations for products previously granted to us. To the extent we rely on a third-party manufacturer, the risk of noncompliance with cGMPs may be greater and the ability to effect corrective actions for any such noncompliance may be compromised or delayed.

Moreover, we expect that certain of our precision medicine product candidates, including PGN-600, PGN-001, PGN-300, and PGN-OB2, are drug/device combination products that will be regulated under the drug and biological product regulations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, or the FD&C Act, and Public Health Service Act, or PHSA, based on their primary modes of action as drugs and biologics. Third-party manufacturers may not be able to comply with cGMP regulations, applicable to drug/device combination products, including applicable provisions of the FDA’s drug and biologics cGMP regulations, device cGMP requirements embodied in the Quality System Regulation, or QSR, or similar regulatory requirements outside the United States.

In addition, we or third parties may experience other problems with the manufacturing, quality control, storage or distribution of our products, including equipment breakdown or malfunction, failure to follow specific protocols and procedures, problems with suppliers and the sourcing or delivery of raw materials and other necessary components, problems with software, labor difficulties, and natural disaster-related events or other environmental factors. These problems can lead to increased costs, lost sales, damage to customer relations, failure to supply penalties, time and expense spent investigating the cause and, depending on the cause, similar losses with respect to other batches of products. If problems are not discovered before the product is released to the market, recalls, corrective actions, or product liability-related costs also may be incurred. Problems with respect to the manufacture, storage, or distribution of products could materially disrupt our business and have a material and adverse effect on our operating results and financial condition. For additional information regarding our third-party suppliers and manufacturers, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Laboratories—Laboratory Supplies.”

We rely on third parties to design our product candidates and conduct our preclinical research and clinical trials, and those third parties may not perform satisfactorily, including failing to meet deadlines for the completion of such trials.

We rely and expect to continue to rely on third parties, such as engineering firms, CROs, clinical data management organizations, medical institutions, and clinical investigators, to conduct and manage our molecular testing and therapeutic product candidate design, preclinical testing, and clinical trials. Our reliance on these third parties for research and development activities reduces our control over these activities but does not relieve us of our responsibilities. For example, we remain responsible for ensuring that each of our clinical trials is conducted in accordance with GCP requirements, the general investigational plan, and the protocols established for such trials.

These third parties may be slow to recruit patients and complete the studies. Furthermore, these third parties may also have relationships with other entities, some of which may be our competitors. If these third parties do not successfully carry out their contractual duties, do not meet expected deadlines, experience work stoppages, terminate their agreements with us or need to be replaced, or do not conduct our clinical trials in accordance with regulatory requirements or our stated protocols, we may need to enter into new arrangements with alternative third parties, which could be difficult, costly or impossible, and our clinical trials may be extended, delayed, or terminated or may need to be repeated. If any of the foregoing occur, we may not be able to obtain, or may be delayed in obtaining, marketing authorizations for our product candidates and may not be able to, or may be delayed in our efforts to, successfully commercialize our product candidates.

If our laboratory facilities become inoperable, we will be unable to perform our tests and our business will be harmed.

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Our laboratory or other facilities may be harmed or rendered inoperable (or samples could be damaged or destroyed) by natural or manmade disasters, including earthquakes, flooding, power outages, disease outbreaks and contamination, which may render it difficult or impossible for us to perform our tests for some period of time. The inability to perform our tests or the backlog of tests that could develop if any of our laboratory or other facilities is inoperable for even a short period of time may result in the loss of customers or harm to our reputation, and we may be unable to regain those customers in the future.

Our tests may not perform as expected and may result in reduced confidence in our products or legal claims.

Our success depends on the market’s confidence that we can provide timely, reliable, high-quality test results. There is no guarantee that the accuracy and reproducibility we have demonstrated to date will continue as our business grows. We believe that our customers (healthcare providers and their patients) are likely to be particularly sensitive to test limitations and errors, including inaccurate test results and the need on occasion to perform redraws on patients. As a result, if our tests do not perform as expected, our business, operating results, financial condition, and reputation will suffer. In addition, we may be subject to legal claims arising from such limitations, errors, or inaccuracies.

Our tests use a number of complex and sophisticated biochemical and bioinformatics processes, many of which are highly sensitive to external factors. An operational or technology failure in one of these complex processes or fluctuations in external variables may result in sensitivity and specificity rates that are lower than we anticipate or that vary between test runs or in a higher than anticipated number of tests which fail to produce results. In addition, we regularly evaluate and refine our testing process. These refinements may initially result in unanticipated issues that may reduce our sensitivity and specificity rates.

Even if our newly developed product candidates receive marketing authorizations, to the extent required, they may fail to achieve market acceptance.

If we can develop enhanced, improved, or new product candidates that receive marketing authorizations, they may nonetheless fail to gain sufficient market acceptance by healthcare providers, patients, third-party payors, and others in the medical community to be commercially successful. The degree of market acceptance of any of our new product candidates following receipt of marketing authorizations, if any, will depend on a number of factors, including:

If our newly developed product candidates are unable to achieve market acceptance, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be harmed.

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Additional time may be required to obtain marketing authorizations for certain of our precision medicine product candidates because they are combination products.

Some of our precision medicine product candidates are drug/device combination products that require coordination within the FDA and similar foreign regulatory agencies for review of their device and drug components. Although the FDA and similar foreign regulatory agencies have systems in place for the review and approval of combination products such as ours, we may experience delays in the development and commercialization of our product candidates due to regulatory timing constraints and uncertainties in the product development and approval process.

Our precision medicine product candidates under development include complex medical devices that, if authorized for marketing, will require training for qualified personnel and care for data analysis.

Our precision medicine product candidates under development include complex medical devices that, if authorized for marketing, will require training for qualified personnel, including physicians, and care for data analysis. Although we will be required to ensure that our precision medicine product candidates are prescribed only by trained professionals, the potential for misuse of our precision medicine product candidates, if authorized for marketing, still exists due to their complexity. Such misuse could result in adverse medical consequences for patients that could damage our reputation, subject us to costly product liability litigation, and otherwise have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

The successful discovery, development, manufacturing, and sale of biologics is a long, expensive, and uncertain process and carries unique risks and uncertainties. Moreover, even if successful, our biologic products may be subject to competition from biosimilars.

We may develop product candidates regulated as biologics in the future in connection with our precision medicine platform. The successful development, manufacturing, and sale of biologics is a long, expensive, and uncertain process. There are unique risks and uncertainties with biologics. For example, access to and supply of necessary biological materials, such as cell lines, may be limited and governmental regulations restrict access to and regulate the transport and use of such materials. In addition, the testing, development, approval, manufacturing, distribution, and sale of biologics is subject to applicable provisions of the FD&C Act, PHSA, and regulations issued thereunder that are often more complex and extensive than the regulations applicable to other pharmaceutical products, to medical devices, or to the LDTs we currently commercialize. Manufacturing biologics, especially in large quantities, is often complicated and may require the use of innovative technologies. Such manufacturing also requires facilities specifically designed and validated for this purpose and sophisticated quality assurance and quality control procedures. Biologics are also frequently costly to manufacture because production inputs are derived from living animal or plant material, and some biologics cannot be made synthetically.

Failure to successfully discover, develop, manufacture, and sell biologics could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Even if we are able to successfully develop biologics in the future, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act, or BPCIA, created a framework for the approval of biosimilars in the United States that could allow competitors to reference data from any future biologic products for which we receive marketing approvals and otherwise increase the risk that any product candidates for which we intend to seek approval as biologic products may face competition sooner than anticipated. Under the BPCIA, an application for a biosimilar product may not be submitted to the FDA until four years following the date that the original biologic was first licensed by the FDA. In addition, the approval of a biosimilar product may not be made effective by the FDA until 12 years from the date on which the reference product was first licensed. During this 12-year period of exclusivity, another company may still market a competing version of the reference product if the FDA approves a full Biologics License Application, or BLA, for the competing product containing the sponsor’s own preclinical data and data from adequate and well-controlled clinical trials to demonstrate the safety, purity, and potency of their product. The BPCIA is complex and is still being interpreted and implemented by the FDA. As a result, the law’s ultimate impact, implementation, and meaning are subject to uncertainty. While it is uncertain when such processes intended to implement the BPCIA may be fully adopted by the FDA, any such processes could have a material adverse effect on the future commercial prospects for our biological product candidates.

In addition, there is a risk that any of our product candidates regulated as a biologic and licensed under a BLA would not qualify for the 12-year period of exclusivity or that this exclusivity could be shortened due to congressional action or otherwise, potentially creating the opportunity for generic competition sooner than anticipated. Other aspects of the BPCIA, some of which may impact the BPCIA exclusivity provisions, have been the subject of litigation. Moreover, the extent to which a biosimilar, once approved, will be substituted for any one of our reference products in a way that is similar to traditional generic substitution for non-biological products is not yet clear, and will depend on a number of marketplace and regulatory factors that are still developing.

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In Europe, the European Commission has granted marketing authorizations for several biosimilars pursuant to a set of general and product class-specific guidelines for biosimilar approvals issued over the past few years. In addition, companies are developing biosimilars in other countries that could compete with any biologic products that we develop. If competitors are able to obtain marketing approval for biosimilars referencing any biologic products that we develop, our products may become subject to competition from such biosimilars, with the attendant competitive pressure and consequences. Expiration or successful challenge of our applicable patent rights could also trigger competition from other products, assuming any relevant exclusivity period has expired. As a result, we could face more litigation and administrative proceedings with respect to the validity and/or scope of patents relating to our biologic products.

If our future pharmaceutical product candidates are not approved by regulatory authorities, including the FDA, we will be unable to commercialize them.

In the future, we may develop pharmaceutical product candidates using our precision medicine platform that require FDA approval of a New Drug Application, or NDA, or a BLA before marketing or sale in the United States. In the NDA or BLA process, we, or our collaborative partners, must provide the FDA and similar foreign regulatory authorities with data from preclinical and clinical studies that demonstrate that our product candidates are safe and effective, or in the case of biologics, safe, pure, and potent, for a defined indication before they can be approved for commercial distribution. The FDA or foreign regulatory authorities may disagree with our clinical trial designs and our interpretation of data from preclinical studies and clinical trials. The processes by which regulatory approvals are obtained from the FDA and foreign regulatory authorities to market and sell a new product are complex, require a number of years, depend upon the type, complexity, and novelty of the product candidate, and involve the expenditure of substantial resources for research, development, and testing. The FDA and foreign regulatory authorities have substantial discretion in the drug approval process and may require us to conduct additional nonclinical and clinical testing or to perform post-marketing studies. Further, the implementation of new laws and regulations, and revisions to FDA clinical trial design guidance, may lead to increased uncertainty regarding the approvability of new drugs.

Applications for our drug or biologic product candidates could fail to receive regulatory approval for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:

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This lengthy approval process, as well as the unpredictability of the results of clinical trials, may result in our failing to obtain regulatory approval to market any of our product candidates, which would seriously harm our business. In addition, the FDA may recommend advisory committee meetings for certain new molecular entities, and if warranted, require a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, to assure that a drug’s benefits outweigh its risks. Even if we receive regulatory approval of a product, the approval may limit the indicated uses for which the drug may be marketed or impose significant restrictions or limitations on the use and/or distribution of such product.

In addition, in order to market any pharmaceutical or biological product candidates that we develop in foreign jurisdictions, we, or our collaborative partners, must obtain separate regulatory approvals in each country. The approval procedure varies among countries and can involve additional testing, and the time required to obtain approval may differ from that required to obtain FDA approval. Approval by the FDA does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other countries, and approval by one foreign regulatory authority does not ensure approval by regulatory authorities in other foreign countries or by the FDA. Conversely, failure to obtain approval in one or more jurisdictions may make approval in other jurisdictions more difficult. These laws, regulations, additional requirements and changes in interpretation could cause non-approval or further delays in the FDA’s or other regulatory authorities’ review and approval of our and our collaborative partner’s product candidates, which would materially harm our business and financial condition and could cause the price of our securities to fall.

The marketing authorization process is expensive, time-consuming, and uncertain, and we may not be able to obtain or maintain authorizations for the commercialization of some or all of our product candidates.

The product candidates associated with our precision medicine platform and the activities associated with their development and commercialization, including their design, testing, manufacture, safety, efficacy, recordkeeping, labeling, storage, approval, advertising, promotion, sale, and distribution, export, and import, are subject to comprehensive regulation by the FDA and other regulatory agencies in the United States and by the European Medicines Agency and comparable regulatory authorities in other countries. We have not received authorization to market any of our product candidates from regulatory authorities in any jurisdiction. Failure to obtain marketing authorization for a product candidate will prevent us from commercializing the product candidate.

Securing marketing authorizations may require the submission of extensive preclinical and clinical data and other supporting information to the various regulatory authorities for each therapeutic indication to establish the product candidate’s safety and efficacy, or in the case of product candidates regulated as biologics, such product candidate’s safety, purity, and potency. Securing regulatory authorization generally requires the submission of information about the product manufacturing process to, and inspection of manufacturing facilities by, the relevant regulatory authority. Our product candidates may not be effective, may be only moderately effective, or may prove to have undesirable or unintended side effects, toxicities or other characteristics that may preclude our obtaining marketing authorization or prevent or limit commercial use.

The process of obtaining marketing authorizations, both in the United States and abroad, is expensive, may take many years if additional clinical trials are required, if authorization is obtained at all, and can vary substantially based upon a variety of factors, including the type, complexity, and novelty of the product candidates involved. Changes in marketing authorization policies during the development period, changes in or the enactment of additional statutes or regulations, or changes in regulatory review for each submitted product application, may cause delays in the approval or rejection of an application. The FDA and comparable authorities in other countries have substantial discretion in the approval process and may refuse to accept any application we submit, or may decide that our data is insufficient for approval and require additional preclinical, clinical, or other studies. In addition, varying interpretations of the data obtained from preclinical and clinical testing could delay, limit, or prevent marketing authorization of a product candidate. Any marketing authorization we or our collaborators ultimately obtain may be limited or subject to restrictions or post-approval commitments that render the approved medicine not commercially viable.

Accordingly, if we or our collaborators experience delays in obtaining authorization or if we or they fail to obtain authorization of our product candidates, the commercial prospects for our product candidates may be harmed and our ability to generate revenue will be materially impaired.

Our products or product candidates may cause undesirable side effects or have other properties that could delay or prevent their regulatory authorization, limit the commercial profile of an approved label or result in significant negative consequences following marketing approval, if granted.

The use of our current products and precision medicine product candidates could be associated with side effects or adverse events, which can vary in severity (from minor reactions to death) and frequency (infrequent or prevalent). Side effects or adverse events associated with the use of our product candidates may be observed at any time, including in clinical trials or when a product is commercialized. Undesirable side effects caused by our product candidates could cause us or regulatory authorities to interrupt, delay or halt clinical trials and could result in a more restrictive label or the delay or denial of regulatory authorization by the FDA or other comparable foreign authorities. Results of our trials could reveal a high and unacceptable severity and prevalence of side effects such

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as toxicity or other safety issues and could require us or our collaboration partners to perform additional studies or halt development or sale of these product candidates or expose us to product liability lawsuits, which would harm our business and financial results. In such an event, we may be required by regulatory agencies to conduct additional animal or human studies regarding the safety and efficacy of our product candidates, which we have not planned or anticipated or our studies could be suspended or terminated, and the FDA or comparable foreign regulatory authorities could order us to cease further development of or deny or withdraw approval of our product candidates for any or all targeted indications. There can be no assurance that we will resolve any issues related to any product-related adverse events to the satisfaction of the FDA or any other regulatory agency in a timely manner, if ever, which could harm our business, operating results, financial condition and prospects.

Additionally, product quality characteristics have been shown to be sensitive to changes in process conditions, manufacturing techniques, equipment or sites and other such related considerations, hence any manufacturing process changes we implement prior to or after regulatory authorization could impact product safety and efficacy.

Product-related side effects could affect patient recruitment for clinical trials, the ability of enrolled patients to complete our studies or result in potential product liability claims. We currently carry product liability insurance and we are required to maintain product liability insurance pursuant to certain of our license agreements. We believe our product liability insurance coverage is sufficient in light of our current clinical programs; however, we may not be able to maintain insurance coverage at a reasonable cost or in sufficient amounts to protect us against losses due to liability, or such insurance coverage may not be sufficient to cover all losses. A successful product liability claim or series of claims brought against us could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, regardless of merit or eventual outcome, product liability claims may result in impairment of our business reputation, withdrawal of clinical study participants, costs due to related litigation, distraction of management’s attention from our primary business, initiation of investigations by regulators, substantial monetary awards to patients or other claimants, the inability to commercialize our product candidates and decreased demand for our product candidates, if authorized for commercial sale. Additionally, if one or more of our product candidates receives marketing authorization, and we or others later identify undesirable side effects caused by such products, a number of potentially significant negative consequences could result, including but not limited to:

Any of these events could prevent us from achieving or maintaining market acceptance of a particular product candidate, if approved, and could significantly harm our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects.

If we receive marketing authorization, regulatory agencies including the FDA and foreign authorities enforce requirements that we report certain information about adverse medical events. For example, under FDA medical device reporting regulations, medical device manufacturers are required to report to the FDA information that a device has or may have caused or contributed to a death or serious injury or has malfunctioned in a way that would likely cause or contribute to a death or serious injury if the malfunction of our device (or any similar future product) were to recur. We may fail to appreciate that we have become aware of a reportable adverse event, especially if it is not reported to us as an adverse event or if it is an adverse event that is unexpected or removed in time from the use of our products. If we fail to investigate and report these events to the FDA within the required timeframes, or at all, the FDA could take enforcement action against us. Any such adverse event involving our products also could result in future corrective actions, such as recalls or customer notifications, or agency action, such as inspection or enforcement action. Any corrective action, whether voluntary or involuntary, including any legal action taken against us, will require us to devote significant time and capital to the matter, distract management from operating our business, and may harm our reputation and financial results.

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Our products, including our precision medicine product candidates under development, if authorized for marketing, may be subject to product recalls.

The FDA and similar foreign governmental authorities have the authority to require the recall of certain commercialized products over which they exercise oversight in the event of material deficiencies or defects in design or manufacture or a public health/safety issue. In addition, foreign governmental bodies have the authority to require the recall of our products in the event of material deficiencies or defects in design or manufacture or a public health/safety issue. Manufacturers may, under their own initiative, recall a product if any material deficiency is found. The FDA requires that certain recalls of medical devices be reported to the FDA within 10 working days after the recall is initiated. We may initiate voluntary recalls involving our products in the future that we determine do not require us to notify the FDA. Companies are required to maintain certain records of recalls, even if they are not reportable to the FDA. If the FDA disagrees with our determinations, they could require us to report those actions as recalls. In addition, the FDA could bring an enforcement action against us based on our failure to report the recalls when they were conducted. A government-mandated or voluntary recall by us or one of our distributors could occur as a result of component failures, manufacturing errors, design or labeling defects or other deficiencies and issues. Once marketed, recalls of any of our products, including our precision medicine products, would divert managerial and financial resources and could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. A future recall announcement could harm our reputation with customers and negatively affect our sales.

Our relationship with Avero Diagnostics may be challenged, and a successful challenge could adversely affect our operating structure.

We provide anatomic and molecular pathology testing through our affiliation with Mattison Pathology, LLP, a Texas limited liability partnership doing business as Avero Diagnostics, located in Lubbock and Irving, Texas. The laws of certain states in which we operate or may operate in the future prohibit non-physician entities from practicing medicine, exercising control over physicians or engaging in certain practices such as fee-splitting with physicians. Although we believe that we have structured our affiliation with Avero Diagnostics to ensure that the physicians maintain exclusive authority regarding the delivery of medical care, there can be no assurance that these laws will be interpreted in a manner consistent with our practices or that other laws or regulations will not be enacted in the future that could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Regulatory authorities and other parties, including our associated physicians, may assert that, despite the management service agreement and other arrangements through which we operate, we are engaged in the prohibited corporate practice of medicine, and/or that our arrangement with Avero Diagnostics constitutes unlawful fee-splitting. If a corporate practice of medicine or fee-splitting law is interpreted in a manner that is inconsistent with our practices, we would be required to restructure or terminate our relationship with Avero Diagnostics to bring its activities into compliance with such law. A determination of noncompliance, the termination of or failure to successfully restructure this relationship could result in disciplinary action, penalties, damages, fines, and/or a loss of revenue, any of which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. For more information regarding our relationship with Avero Diagnostics, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Government Regulation—Avero Diagnostics Relationship and the Corporate Practice of Medicine.”

Defects or failures associated with our products could lead to recalls or safety alerts and negative publicity.

Manufacturing flaws, component failures, design defects, off-label uses, or inadequate disclosure of product-related information could result in an unsafe condition or the injury or death of a patient. These problems could lead to a recall of, or issuance of a safety alert relating to, our commercialized products, and result in significant costs and negative publicity. A material adverse event involving one of our products could result in reduced market acceptance and demand for all products within that brand, and could harm our reputation and our ability to market our products in the future. In some circumstances, material adverse events arising from or associated with the design, manufacture or marketing of our products could result in among other things, labeling changes reflecting the updated safety information, regulatory requirements to issue communications to prescribers and/or conduct additional studies, or the suspension or delay of regulatory reviews of our applications for new marketing authorizations. We also may undertake a voluntary recall of products, or temporarily shut down production lines based on performance relative to our own internal safety and quality monitoring and testing data. Any of these problems could disrupt our business and have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We may not comply with laws regulating the protection of the environment and health and human safety.

Our research and development involves, or may in the future involve, the use of hazardous materials and chemicals and certain radioactive materials and related equipment. If an accident occurs, we could be held liable for resulting damages, which could be substantial. We are also subject to numerous environmental, health and workplace safety laws and regulations, including those governing laboratory procedures, exposure to blood-borne pathogens and the handling of biohazardous materials. Insurance may not provide adequate coverage against potential liabilities, and we do not maintain insurance for environmental liability or toxic tort claims that may be asserted against us. Additional federal, state, and local laws and regulations affecting our operations may be

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adopted in the future. We may incur substantial costs to comply with, and substantial fines or penalties if we violate, any of these laws or regulations.

Our failure to comply with radio frequency regulations could impair our ability to commercially distribute and market our precision medicine product candidates in the applicable country or region.

Our PIL Dx precision medicine product candidate under development includes a wireless radio frequency transmitter and receiver, and is therefore subject to equipment authorization requirements in the United States and elsewhere. In the United States and certain other countries, authorities often require advance clearance of radio frequency devices before they can be sold or marketed in these jurisdictions, subject to limited exceptions. Modifications to our precision medicine product candidate’s design and specifications may require new or further marketing authorizations before we are permitted to market and sell modified precision medicine products. If we are unable to obtain any required marketing authorizations from the authorities responsible for the radio frequency regulations, the sale or use of our precision medicine product candidate could be prevented in such countries. Any such action could negatively affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

The marketing, sale, and use of our products could result in substantial damages arising from product liability or professional liability claims that exceed our insurance coverage and resources.

The marketing, sale and use of our products could lead to product liability claims against us if someone were to allege that our test or other product failed to perform as it was designed, or caused harm to an individual, or if someone were to misinterpret test results. We may be subject to liability for errors in, a misunderstanding of, or inappropriate reliance upon, the information we provide as part of the results generated by our tests. For example, Innatal could provide a low-risk result for a chromosomal abnormality upon which a patient or physician may rely to make a conclusion about the health of the fetus, which may, in fact, have the condition because the Innatal result was a false negative. As another example, Preparent could provide a low-risk result regarding the carrier status of a disorder of an expectant parent upon which a patient or physician may rely to make a conclusion about the health of the fetus, which may, in fact, have the condition because the Preparent result was a false negative. If the resulting baby is born with the condition, the family may file a lawsuit against us claiming product liability or professional liability.

In addition, we may be subject to product liability claims and lawsuits, including potential class actions, alleging that our products have resulted in or could result in an unsafe condition or injury. The product candidates we are developing using our precision medicine platform are designed to be ingested, and there are a number of factors that could result in an unsafe condition or injury to, or death of, a patient with respect to these or other products that we sell. A product liability or professional liability claim could result in substantial damages and be costly and time-consuming for us to defend. Although we maintain product and professional liability insurance, our insurance may not fully protect us from the financial impact of defending against product liability or professional liability claims or any judgments, fines or settlement costs arising out of any such claims. Any product liability or professional liability claim brought against us, with or without merit, could increase our insurance rates or prevent us from securing insurance coverage in the future. Additionally, any product liability or professional liability lawsuit could harm our reputation, result in a cessation of our testing, or cause our partners to terminate existing agreements and potential partners to seek other partners, any of which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our operating results may fluctuate significantly, which could adversely impact the value of our common stock.

Our operating results, including our revenues, gross margin, profitability, and cash flows, have varied in the past and may vary significantly in the future, and period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. Accordingly, our results should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Our operating results, including quarterly financial results, may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. Fluctuations in our results may adversely impact the value of our common stock. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our financial results include, without limitation, those listed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section. In addition, our results may fluctuate due to the fact that we recognize costs as they are incurred, but there is typically a delay in the related revenue recognition as we record most revenue only upon receipt of payment.

Accordingly, to the extent our revenues increase, we may experience increased costs unless and until the related revenues are recognized. In addition, as we increase our internal sales and marketing and research and development efforts, we expect to incur costs in advance of achieving the anticipated benefits of such efforts. We also may face competitive pricing or reimbursement rate pressures, and we may not be able to maintain our sales volume and/or reimbursement rates in the future, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We may engage in acquisitions that could disrupt our business, cause dilution to our stockholders, or reduce our financial resources.

We have in the past entered into, and may in the future enter into, transactions to acquire other businesses, products, or

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technologies. Successful acquisitions require us to correctly identify appropriate acquisition candidates and to integrate acquired products or operations and personnel with our own.

Should we make an error in judgment when identifying an acquisition candidate, should the acquired operations not perform as anticipated, or should we fail to successfully integrate acquired technologies, operations, or personnel, we will likely fail to realize the benefits we intended to derive from the acquisition and may suffer other adverse consequences. Acquisitions involve a number of other risks, including:

We cannot predict the number, timing or size of future acquisitions or the effect that any such transactions might have on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

The development and expansion of our business through joint ventures, licensing and other strategic transactions may result in similar risks that reduce the benefits we anticipate from these strategic alliances and cause us to suffer other adverse consequences.

Ethical, legal, and social issues related to the use of genetic information could reduce demand for our tests.

DNA testing, such as testing that is conducted using Innatal, Preparent and our other products, has raised ethical, legal and social issues regarding privacy and the appropriate uses of the resulting information. Governmental authorities could, for social or other purposes, limit or regulate the use of genomic information or genomic testing or prohibit testing for genetic predisposition to certain conditions, particularly for those that have no known cure. Patients may also refuse to use genetic tests even if permissible, for similar reasons; they may also refuse genetic testing due to concerns regarding eligibility for life or other insurance. Ethical and social concerns may also influence U.S. and foreign patent offices and courts with regard to patent protection for technology relevant to our business.

Although the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act has criminalized the disallowance of health insurance on the basis of genetic information, modification or retraction of this federal law could dramatically reduce public demand for genetic testing. These and other ethical, legal and social issues may limit market acceptance of our tests or reduce the potential markets for products enabled by our technology platform, either of which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We may be significantly impacted by changes in tax laws and regulations or their interpretation.

U.S. and foreign governments continue to review, reform and modify tax laws. Changes in tax laws and regulations could result in material changes to the domestic and foreign taxes that we are required to provide for and pay. In addition, we are subject to regular audits with respect to our various tax returns and processes in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Errors or omissions in tax returns, process failures, or differences in interpretation of tax laws by tax authorities and us may lead to litigation, payments of additional taxes, penalties, and interest. On December 22, 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, or TCJA, was passed into law. The TCJA has given rise to significant one-time and ongoing changes, including but not limited to a federal corporate tax rate decrease to 21% for tax years beginning after December 31, 2017, limitations on interest expense deductions, the immediate expensing of certain capital expenditures, the adoption of elements of a partially territorial tax system, new anti-base erosion provisions, a reduction to the maximum deduction allowed for net operating losses generated in tax years after December 31, 2017 and providing for indefinite carryforwards for losses generated in tax years after December 31, 2017. The legislation is unclear in many respects and could be subject to potential amendments and technical corrections, and will be subject to interpretations and implementing regulations by the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service, any of which could mitigate or increase certain adverse effects of the legislation. In addition, it

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is unclear how these U.S. federal income tax changes will affect state and local taxation. Generally, future changes in applicable tax laws and regulations, or their interpretation and application, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our ability to utilize our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.

As of December 31, 2020, we had net operating loss, or NOL, carryforwards of approximately $271.1 million for federal income tax purposes, and $200.0 million for state income tax purposes. The federal NOLs will be carried forward indefinitely and the state NOLs began expiring in 2019. Utilization of these NOLs depends on many factors, including our future income, which cannot be assured. Some of these NOLs could expire unused and be unavailable to offset our future income tax liabilities. In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, and corresponding provisions of state law, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” which is generally defined as a greater than 50 percentage point change, by value, in its equity ownership by 5% stockholders over a rolling three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change NOLs and other pre-change tax attributes to offset its post-change income may be limited. If we determine that an ownership change has occurred and our ability to use our historical NOLs is materially limited, it could harm our future operating results by effectively increasing our future tax obligations. In addition, under the TCJA, federal NOLs incurred in 2018 and in future years may be carried forward indefinitely but generally may not be carried back and the deductibility of such NOLs is limited to 80% of taxable income. On March 27, 2020, Congress enacted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act, which provides some relief from the limitations on the utilization of NOLs and certain other tax attributes described above. During the three months ended March 31, 2020, we recorded a discrete tax benefit of $37.7 million related to the NOL carryback provisions available under the CARES Act for taxes paid in years 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017, which we refer to as the CARES Act Tax Benefit. We agreed to pay 65% of any tax refund received in excess of $5.0 million in a single year, along with other civil settlements, damages awards, and tax refunds, to accelerate payments to the government in connection with our government settlement. During the year ended December 31, 2020, we received a tax refund of $37.7 million related to the NOL carryback provisions available under the CARES Act. As of December 31, 2020, we had paid a total of $37.0 million to the government in connection with our government settlements. See Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings—Federal Investigations.”

Reimbursement Risks Related to Our Business

If third-party payors do not adequately reimburse for our products, they might not be purchased or used, which may adversely affect our revenue and profitability.

Our future revenues and profitability will depend heavily upon the availability of coverage and adequate reimbursement from governmental and other third-party payors, both in the United States and in foreign markets, for the use of our products, including any potential products such as a test for preeclampsia, precision medicine devices, and pharmaceutical products. Coverage and reimbursement by governmental and commercial third-party payors may depend upon a number of factors, including the determination that the product and its use or administration for a particular patient is:

Obtaining coverage and reimbursement approval for a product from each third-party payor is a time-consuming and costly process that could require us to provide supporting scientific, clinical, and cost-effectiveness data for the use of our products to each payor. We may not be able to provide data sufficient to satisfy third-party payors that the product should be covered and reimbursed. There is substantial uncertainty whether any particular payor will cover and reimburse the use of any product incorporating new technology. Even when a payor determines that a product is eligible for reimbursement, the payor may impose coverage limitations that preclude payment for some uses that are approved by the FDA or a comparable authority. Moreover, eligibility for coverage does not imply that any product will be reimbursed in all cases or at a rate that allows us to make a profit or even cover our costs. Interim payments for new products, if applicable, may also not be sufficient to cover our costs and may not be made permanent. In some instances, payment may only be obtained by engaging in lengthy and costly appeals processes. Reimbursement rates may vary according to the use of the product and the clinical setting in which it is used, may be based on payments allowed for lower-cost products that are already reimbursed, may be incorporated into existing payments for other products, may reflect budgetary constraints

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and/or imperfections in Medicare, Medicaid or other data used to calculate these rates. Net prices for products may be reduced by mandatory discounts or rebates required by government healthcare programs or by any future relaxation of laws that restrict imports of certain medical products from countries where they may be sold at lower prices than in the United States.

There have been, and we expect that there will continue to be, federal and state proposals to constrain expenditures for medical products, which may affect payments for our products. Governmental and private entities that establish reimbursement policies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, frequently change product descriptors, coverage policies, product and service codes, payment methodologies and reimbursement values. Third-party payors often follow Medicare coverage policy and payment limitations in setting their own reimbursement rates, and both CMS and other third-party payors may have sufficient market power to demand significant price reductions. Due in part to actions by third-party payors, the healthcare industry is experiencing a trend toward containing or reducing costs through various means, including lowering reimbursement rates, limiting therapeutic class coverage, and negotiating reduced payment schedules with service providers for certain products.

Our inability to promptly obtain coverage and profitable reimbursement rates from third-party payors for our products could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We may be unable to expand or maintain third-party payor coverage and reimbursement for our Innatal, Preparent, and other tests or other products.

Our business depends on our ability to obtain or maintain adequate reimbursement coverage from third-party payors. Third-party reimbursement for our testing represents a significant portion of our revenues, and we expect third-party payors such as third-party commercial payors and government healthcare programs to continue to be our most significant sources of payments in the foreseeable future. In particular, we believe that for us to achieve commercial success it will be necessary to gain acceptance from third-party payors for the screening of microdeletions and for use of NIPT in the average-risk pregnancy population, which population represents roughly 80% of the U.S. pregnancy market, and to obtain positive coverage determinations and favorable reimbursement rates from third-party payors for our tests. We did not receive reimbursement for a significant number of Innatal tests for average-risk patients that we performed in the year ended December 31, 2020. In addition, it is to be determined whether and to what extent certain of our other products, including those under development, will be covered or reimbursed. If we are unable to obtain or maintain coverage or adequate reimbursement from, or achieve in-network status with, third-party payors for our existing or future tests or other products, our ability to generate revenues will be limited. For example, healthcare providers may be reluctant to order our tests or other products due to the potential of a substantial cost to the patient if coverage or reimbursement is unavailable or insufficient.

Leading professional societies may recommend alternatives to our tests in average-risk patient populations, which may provide a basis for third-party payors not to cover or reimburse our tests in those populations.

In making coverage determinations, third-party payors often rely on practice guidelines issued by professional societies. ACOG has issued updated guidelines recommending informing pregnant women that Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening, or NIPS, is the most sensitive screening option for trisomy 13, trisomy 18, and Down syndrome, as well as of the availability of the expanded use of NIPT to screen for clinically relevant copy number variants, or CNVs, in the context of counseling that includes the risks/benefits and limitations of screening for CNVs. A CNV is a genetic mutation in which a segment of the genome has been deleted or duplicated, including microdeletions in which a small segment of a chromosome is deleted. The International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis has issued guidelines that are supportive of performing NIPT in average-risk pregnancies, as well as high-risk pregnancies. ACOG and the American College of Medical Genetics, or ACMG, have also provided support for the use of NIPT in the general population, with ACOG noting, however, that NIPT is not equivalent to diagnostic testing because of its potential for false-positive and false-negative results. However, the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine, or SMFM, has issued guidelines for NIPT stating that, while all pregnant women should be informed of the option to receive NIPT, conventional screening methods, such as traditional serum screening, rather than NIPT, remain the most appropriate choice for first-line screening for average-risk pregnancies. Therefore, while we expect the ACOG and SMFM guidelines to result in an increase in the number of average-risk women who are informed of NIPT and that may request it as a result, not all third-party payors reimburse for NIPT for these average-risk patients.

In December 2020, Aetna finalized its reimbursement policy to cover NIPT in the average-risk population. UnitedHealthcare and a number of other third-party payors have also made a similar change to cover NIPT in the average-risk population. This leaves only some regional plans and some Medicaid plans with negative coverage determinations for NIPT in average-risk patient populations, meaning that their policy is not to reimburse for NIPT for patients in the average-risk or general population. The SMFM guidelines also echoed a previous statement from SMFM that routine screening for microdeletions should not be performed. Many third-party payors do not cover microdeletions screening. We have experienced, and may continue to experience, a negative impact on third-party payors’ coverage for Innatal for microdeletions, at least until additional validation data on the sensitivity and specificity of our tests becomes available. We may not be able to obtain positive coverage determinations for our tests. If third-party payors do not reimburse for NIPT for average-risk pregnancies or microdeletions in the future, our operating results would be adversely affected, particularly to the extent that we continue to perform large volumes of

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tests for which third-party payors do not cover.

New reimbursement methodologies applicable to our tests, including new CPT codes, may decrease reimbursement rates from third-party payors.

In the United States, the American Medical Association, or AMA, generally assigns specific billing codes for laboratory tests under a coding system known as Current Procedure Terminology, or CPT, which we and our ordering healthcare providers must use to bill and receive reimbursement for our tests. Once the CPT code is established, CMS establishes payment levels and coverage rules under Medicare while private payors independently establish rates and coverage rules. A CPT code specific to NIPT for aneuploidies was implemented, effective January 1, 2015, and a CPT code for microdeletions was implemented, effective January 1, 2017. CMS has established a pricing benchmark of $802 for aneuploidy and microdeletions testing. However, our microdeletions reimbursement has decreased under this new code because third-party payors are declining to reimburse under this new code or reimbursing at a much lower rate than we had previously received. Furthermore, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to negotiate favorable rates for this code or receive reimbursement at all if we are unable to collect and publish additional data and obtain positive coverage determinations for Innatal for microdeletions. In addition, effective January 1, 2019, the AMA approved the use of a CPT code for expanded carrier screening tests, which may similarly cause reimbursement for our Preparent expanded carrier screening tests to decline. We do not currently have assay-specific CPT codes assigned for all of our tests, and there is a risk that we may not be able to obtain such codes or, if obtained, we may not be able to negotiate favorable rates for such codes.

We currently submit for reimbursement using CPT codes based on the guidance of outside coding experts and legal counsel. There is a risk that the codes we currently submit may be rejected or withdrawn, including as a result of a change in the applicable code due to the use of a new technology for our tests, or that third-party payors will seek refunds of amounts that they claim were inappropriately billed based on either the CPT code used, or the number of units billed. In addition, third-party payors may not establish positive coverage policies for our tests or adequately reimburse for any CPT code we may use, or may seek recoupment for testing previously performed, which have occurred in the past.

Billing disputes with third-party payors may decrease realized revenue and may lead to requests for recoupment of past amounts paid.

Payors dispute our billing or coding from time to time and we deal with requests for recoupment from third-party payors from time to time in the ordinary course of our business, and we expect these disputes and requests for recoupment to continue. Third-party payors may decide to deny payment or recoup payment for testing that they contend to have been not medically necessary, against their coverage determinations, or for which they have otherwise overpaid, and we may be required to refund reimbursements already received. We have entered into settlement agreements with government and commercial payors in order to settle claims related to past billing practices that have since been discontinued. For more information on these disputes, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Reimbursement—Commercial Third-Party Payors.” Additionally, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, or collectively, the ACA, enacted in March 2010, requires providers and suppliers to report and return any overpayments received from government payors under the Medicare and Medicaid programs within 60 days of identification. Failure to identify and return such overpayments exposes the provider or supplier to liability under federal false claims laws and the OIG’s healthcare enforcement authorities, and would be a potential violation of our obligations under our Corporate Integrity Agreement to report substantial overpayments to the OIG. Claims for recoupment also require the time and attention of our management and other key personnel, which can be a distraction from operating our business.

If third-party payors deny payment for testing, reimbursement revenue for our testing could decline. If a third-party payor successfully challenges that payment to us for prior testing was in breach of contract or otherwise contrary to policy or law, they may recoup payment, which amounts could be significant and would impact our operating results and financial condition, and it may decrease reimbursement going forward. We may also decide to negotiate and settle with a third-party payor in order to resolve an allegation of overpayment. In the past, we have negotiated and settled these types of claims with third-party payors. We may be required to resolve further disputes in the future. For example, on November 16, 2020, we received a letter from Anthem informing us that Anthem is seeking recoupment for historical payments made by Anthem in an aggregate amount of approximately $27.4 million. The historical payments for which Anthem is seeking recoupment are claimed to relate primarily to discontinued legacy billing practices for our NIPT and microdeletion tests and secondarily to the implementation of the new CPT code for reimbursement for our Preparent expanded carrier screening tests. We can provide no assurance that we will not receive similar claims for recoupment from other third-party payors in the future. For more information on this claim, see Part I, Item 1. “Business—Reimbursement—Payor Dispute.” Any of these outcomes, including recoupment or reimbursements, might also require us to restate our financials from a prior period, any of which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

“Most favored nation” provisions in contracts with third-party payors may limit potential for revenue growth and may lead to claims for recoupment.

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Some of our contracts with third-party payors contain “most favored nation” provisions, pursuant to which we have agreed that we will not bill the third-party payor more than we bill any other third-party payor. These contract provisions limit the amount we are able to charge for our products. These most favored nation provisions may require us to forego revenues from some third-party payors or reduce the amount we bill to each third-party payor with a most favored nation clause in its contract, which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. We monitor our billing and claims submissions for compliance with these contractual requirements with third-party payors. If we do not successfully manage compliance with these provisions, this could also subject us to claims for recoupment, which could result in an obligation to repay amounts previously earned.

When third-party payors deny coverage, we are often unable to collect from the patient or any other source and risk disputes if we attempt to do so.

If a third-party payor denies coverage, or if the patient has a large deductible or co-insurance amount, it may be difficult for us to collect from the patient, and we may not be successful in doing so. If we are in-network, we are often contractually prohibited from seeking payment from the patient. If we are out-of-network, we are often unable to collect the full amount of a patient’s responsibility, despite our good faith efforts to collect. As a result, we cannot always collect the full amount due for our tests when third-party payors deny coverage, cover only a portion of the invoiced amount or the patient has a large deductible, which may cause payors to raise questions regarding our billing policies and patient collection practices. We have in the past received, and we may in the future receive, inquiries from third-party payors regarding our billing policies and collection practices in these circumstances. Guidance from third-party payors regarding billing and patient collection practices will continue to evolve and may also impact our compliance with applicable requirements. While we have addressed these inquiries as and when they have arisen, there is no guarantee that we will be successful in addressing such concerns, and if we are unsuccessful, this may result in a third-party payor deciding to reimburse for our tests at a lower rate or not at all, seeking recoupment of amounts previously paid to us, or bringing legal action to seek reimbursement of previous amounts paid. Any of such occurrences could cause reimbursement revenue for our testing, which constitutes the large majority of our revenue, to decline. Additionally, if we were required to make a repayment, such repayment could be significant, which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our revenues may be adversely impacted if third-party payors withdraw coverage or provide lower levels of reimbursement due to changing policies, billing complexities or other factors.

We are in-network, or under contract, with some of the third-party payors from whom we receive reimbursement; this means that we have agreements with such third-party payors that govern approval or payment terms. However, these contracts do not guarantee reimbursement for all testing we perform. For example, many third-party payors with whom we have written agreements have policies that state they will not reimburse for use of NIPT for average-risk pregnancies or for the screening of microdeletions, or do not have a policy in place to reimburse for microdeletions screening. In addition, the terms of certain of our agreements require a physician or qualified practitioner’s signature on test requisitions or require other controls and procedures prior to conducting a test. In particular, third-party payors have been increasingly requiring prior authorization to be obtained prior to conducting a test as a condition to reimbursing for the test. This has placed a burden on our billing operations as we have to dedicate resources to monitor that these prior authorization requirements are met and to conduct follow-up and address issues as they arise, and has also impacted our operating results, including our gross margins, since these requirements began to take effect in 2017. To the extent we or the healthcare providers ordering our tests do not follow the prior authorization requirements, we may be subject to claims for recoupment of reimbursement amounts previously paid to us, or may not receive some or all of the reimbursement payments to which we would otherwise be entitled. This has occurred in some cases in the past and may occur in the future, which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We have experienced, and may continue to experience, delays in reimbursement when we transition to being an in-network provider with a third-party payor. In addition, while we expect to gradually see an increase in test volume through broader access to in-network patients and an increase in percentage of tests paid upon transitioning to in-network status with a payor, we also expect to experience a negative impact in revenues per test due to lower rates. We can provide no assurance that we will see the benefits of this transition to in-network status and that the increase in volume of tests and tests paid will be sufficient to compensate for the decrease in per test revenues.

Where we are considered to be an out-of-network provider, which is the case with some larger third-party payors from whom we currently receive reimbursement, such third-party payors could withdraw coverage and decline to reimburse for our tests in the future, for any reason. They can also impose prior authorization requirements through the terms of the patients’ health plans. Managing reimbursement on a case-by-case basis is time-consuming and contributes to an increase in the number of days it takes us to collect on accounts, which also increases our risk of non-payment. Negotiating reimbursement on a case-by-case basis also typically results in the receipt of reimbursement at a significant discount to the list price of our tests.

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Even if we are being reimbursed for our tests, third-party payors may unilaterally review and adjust the rate of reimbursement, require co-payments from patients or stop paying for our tests. Government healthcare programs and other third-party payors continue to increase their efforts to control the cost, utilization, and delivery of healthcare services by demanding price discounts or rebates and limiting coverage of, and amounts they will pay for, molecular tests. These measures have resulted in reduced payment rates and, in some instances, decreased utilization in the clinical laboratory industry. Because of these cost-containment measures, governmental and commercial third-party payors—including those that currently reimburse our tests—may reduce, suspend, revoke or discontinue payments or coverage at any time.

Reduced reimbursement of our tests may harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. Billing for clinical laboratory testing services is complex. We perform tests in advance of payment and without certainty as to the outcome of the billing process. In cases where we expect to receive a fixed fee per test due to our reimbursement arrangements, we may nevertheless encounter variable reimbursement, leading to disputes over pricing and billing. Each third-party payor typically has different billing requirements, and the billing requirements of many payors have become increasingly difficult to meet. Among the factors complicating our billing of third-party payors are:

These risks related to billing complexities, and the associated uncertainty in obtaining payment for our tests, could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our status as an out-of-network provider with large commercial third-party payors may cause healthcare providers to avoid recommending our tests.

We are considered to be an out-of-network provider with respect to some larger commercial third-party payors from whom we currently receive reimbursement. Physician groups and other healthcare providers may view this negatively and may insist upon only using clinical laboratories that are in-network with their patients’ insurance companies. These types of decisions could reduce our revenue, and harm our financial condition.

Changes in government healthcare policy could increase our costs and negatively impact coverage and reimbursement for our tests by governmental and other third-party payors.

The U.S. government has shown significant interest in pursuing healthcare reform and reducing healthcare costs. Government healthcare policy has been and will likely continue to be a topic of extensive legislative and executive activity in the U.S. federal government and many U.S. state governments. As a result, our business could be affected by significant and potentially unanticipated changes in government healthcare policy, such as changes in reimbursement levels by government third-party payors. Any such changes could substantially impact our revenues, increase costs, and divert management attention from our business strategy. We cannot predict the impact of governmental healthcare policy changes on our future business, operating results, and financial condition. In the United States, the ACA was signed into law in March 2010 and significantly impacted the U.S. pharmaceutical and medical device industries, including the diagnostics sector, in a number of ways. Among other things, the ACA expanded healthcare fraud and abuse laws such as the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Statute, including but not limited to required disclosures of financial arrangements with physician customers, required reporting of discovered overpayments, lower thresholds for violations, new government investigative powers, and enhanced penalties for such violations. The ACA restricts insurers from charging higher premiums or denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions, and requires insurers to cover certain preventative services without charging any copayment or coinsurance, including screening for lung, breast, colorectal and cervical cancers. The ACA also created a new system of health insurance “exchanges” designed to make health insurance available to individuals and certain groups through state- or federally-administered marketplaces in addition to existing channels for obtaining health insurance coverage. In connection with such exchanges, certain “essential health benefits” are intended to be made more consistent across plans, setting a baseline coverage level. The states (and the federal government) have some discretion in determining the definition of “essential health benefits” and we do not know whether our tests or other products will fall into a benefit category deemed “essential” for coverage purposes across the plans offered in any or all of the exchanges. If any of our tests are not covered by plans offered in the health insurance exchanges, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected. There have been multiple attempts to repeal ACA or significantly scale back its applicability, which could negatively impact reimbursement for our testing, adversely affect our test volumes, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. On December 14, 2018, a U.S. District Court Judge in the Northern District of Texas, or Texas District Court Judge, ruled that the entire ACA is invalid based primarily on the fact that the legislation enacted on December 22, 2017, informally known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, repealed the tax-based shared responsibility payment imposed by the ACA, on certain individuals who fail to maintain qualifying

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health coverage for all or part of a year, which is commonly referred to as the “individual mandate.” On December 18, 2019, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas District Court’s ruling that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, but remanded the case back to the Texas District Court to determine whether the remaining provisions of the ACA were nonetheless valid. On March 2, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the petitions for writs of certiorari to review the case and a decision is expected by mid-2021, although it is unclear how the Supreme Court will rule. The repeal of this mandate would mean that fewer consumers will carry insurance coverage and therefore may be less likely to elect to receive our testing because they would be required to pay out of pocket for such tests. The attempts to repeal the ACA have resulted in considerable uncertainty and concern regarding, for example, a patient’s election to undergo genetic screening and whether doing so may impact health insurance eligibility. Because it is unclear whether or how the ACA may change, and whether and to what extent NIPT, cancer screening or other genetic screening may be affected, we are uncertain how our business may be impacted.

In addition to the ACA, various healthcare reform proposals have also emerged from federal and state governments. The Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, or PAMA, introduced a multi-year pricing program for services payable under the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, or CLFS, that is designed to bring Medicare allowable amounts in line with the amounts paid by private payors. The rule issued by CMS to implement PAMA required certain laboratories to report third-party payor rates and test volumes. Since January 1, 2018, the Medicare payment rate for these tests is equal to the weighted median private payor rate reported to CMS, which for many tests is lower than the previous CLFS payment rates due to the often lower negotiated private payor rates applicable to large commercial laboratories that were required to report data to CMS. While we believe that the new rates will have minimal impact on our business, the rates have been the subject of controversy in the industry, including a lawsuit by the American Clinical Laboratory Association, and it is unclear whether and to what extent the new rates may change. The implementation of the PAMA rates has negatively impacted overall pricing and reimbursement for many clinical laboratory testing services. In addition, federal budgetary limitations and changes in healthcare policy, such as the creation of broad limits for our tests and requirements that beneficiaries of government health plans pay for, or pay for higher portions of, clinical laboratory tests or services received, could substantially diminish the utilization of our tests, increase costs and adversely affect our ability to generate revenues and achieve and sustain profitability.

We cannot predict whether future healthcare initiatives will be implemented at the federal or state level or how any such future legislation, regulation, or initiative may affect us. Current or potential future federal legislation and the expansion of government’s role in the U.S. healthcare industry, as well as changes to the reimbursement amounts paid by third-party payors for our current and future tests, may adversely affect our test volumes and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our revenues may be adversely affected if we are unable to successfully obtain reimbursement from the Medicare program and state Medicaid programs.

Our revenues from Medicare are currently very small and were only 4.2% of our total revenues in 2020, given our current product mix and the fact that our testing generally is not received by Medicare beneficiaries. As a result, we do not expect those revenues to change materially with regard to our current commercial products. However, our other products in development may be used by Medicare beneficiaries in the future. Medicare reimbursement can affect both Medicaid reimbursement, which is relevant to NIPT and carrier screening, and reimbursement from commercial third-party payors. Specifically, fee-for-service Medicaid programs generally do not reimburse at rates that exceed Medicare’s fee-for-service rates, and many commercial third-party payors set their payment rates at a percentage of the amounts that Medicare pays for testing services. Medicare reimbursement rates are typically based on the CLFS, set by CMS pursuant to a statutory formula established by Congress. Our current Medicare Part B coverage was not set pursuant to a national coverage determination by CMS. Although we believe that coverage is available under Medicare Part B even without such a determination, we currently lack the certainty afforded by a formal national coverage determination by CMS. Thus, CMS or a regional Medicare Administrative Contractor, or MAC, could issue an adverse coverage determination as to Innatal or Preparent or our future products, if any, which could influence other third-party payors, including Medicaid, and could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

It is estimated that nearly half of all births in the United States are to state Medicaid program recipients. Each state’s Medicaid program has its own coverage determinations related to our testing, and many state Medicaid programs do not provide their recipients with coverage for our testing. Even if our testing is covered by a state Medicaid program, we must be recognized as a Medicaid provider by the state in which the Medicaid recipient receiving the services resides in order for us to be reimbursed by a state’s Medicaid program. In addition, many Medicaid programs have entered into agreements with managed care plans to have the managed care plans manage the provision of healthcare to that Medicaid program’s beneficiaries. In order for us to enter into contracts to offer our tests to beneficiaries who are enrolled with a Medicaid managed care plan, we must first be recognized as a Medicaid provider in that state, and then contract with the applicable Medicaid managed care program. We are currently recognized by a vast majority of states as a Medicaid provider. It is likely that we will not be able to be recognized as a provider by additional Medicaid programs because some states require that a provider maintain a physical laboratory in that state in order to be recognized; furthermore, some states have closed provider panels, which means that the state does not intend to expand its current provider network and therefore does not intend to recognize additional Medicaid providers. Even if we are recognized as a provider in a state, if Medicare’s CLFS rate

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for our tests are low, the Medicaid reimbursement amounts are sometimes as low, or lower, than the Medicare reimbursement rate. In addition, as noted above, each state’s Medicaid program has its own coverage determinations related to our testing, and many state Medicaid programs do not provide their recipients with coverage for our testing. As a result of all of these factors, our testing is not reimbursed or only reimbursed at a very low amount by many state Medicaid programs. In some cases, a state Medicaid program’s reimbursement rate for our testing might be zero dollars. Low or zero-dollar Medicaid reimbursement rates for our tests could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Federal legislation will increase the pressure to reduce prices of pharmaceutical products paid for by Medicare or may otherwise seek to limit healthcare costs.

The Medicare Modernization Act, or MMA, changed the way Medicare covers and reimburses for pharmaceutical products. The legislation introduced a new reimbursement methodology based on average sales prices for pharmaceutical products that are used in hospital settings or under the direct supervision of a physician and, starting in 2006, expanded Medicare coverage for pharmaceutical product purchases by the elderly. In addition, the MMA requires the creation of formularies for self-administered pharmaceutical products and provides authority for limiting the number of pharmaceutical products that will be covered in any therapeutic class and provides for plan sponsors to negotiate prices with manufacturers and suppliers of covered pharmaceutical products. As a result of the MMA and the expansion of federal coverage of pharmaceutical products, we expect continuing pressure to contain and reduce costs of pharmaceutical products. Cost reduction initiatives and other provisions of this legislation could decrease the coverage and price that we may receive for any pharmaceutical product candidates that we may develop using our precision medicine platform in the future and could materially adversely affect our business, operating results and overall financial condition. While the MMA generally applies only to pharmaceutical product benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, private payors often follow Medicare coverage policy and payment limitations in setting their own reimbursement policies and any reduction in coverage or payment that results from the MMA may result in a similar reduction in coverage or payments from private payors.

If the validity of an informed consent from a patient is challenged, we could be precluded from billing for such patient’s testing or be forced to stop performing certain tests or exclude the patient’s data from clinical trial results.

We are required to ensure that all clinical data and blood samples that we receive have been collected from subjects who have provided appropriate informed consent for us to perform our testing, both commercially and in clinical trials. We seek to ensure that the subjects from whom the data and samples are collected do not retain or have conferred on them any proprietary or commercial rights to the data or any discoveries derived from them. A subject’s informed consent could be challenged in the future, and the informed consent could prove invalid, unlawful, or otherwise inadequate for our purposes. Any such findings against us, or our partners, could deny us access to, or force us to stop, testing samples in a particular territory or could call into question the results of our clinical trials. We could also be precluded from billing third-party payors for tests for which informed consents are challenged, or we could be requested to refund amounts previously paid by third-party payors for such tests. We could become involved in legal challenges, which could require significant management and financial resources and adversely affect our operating results.

Regulatory and Legal Risks Related to Our Business

If we or our commercial partners act in a manner that violates healthcare laws or otherwise engage in misconduct, we could face substantial penalties and damage to our reputation, and our business operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.

We are subject to healthcare fraud and abuse regulation and enforcement by both the U.S. federal government and the states in which we conduct our business, including:

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Furthermore, a development affecting our industry is the increased enforcement of the federal False Claims Act and, in particular, actions brought pursuant to the False Claims Act’s “whistleblower” or “qui tam” provisions. The False Claims Act imposes liability for, among other things, knowingly presenting, or causing to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment by a federal governmental payor program. The qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act allow a private individual to bring civil actions on behalf of the federal government for violations of the False Claims Act and permit such individuals to share in any amounts paid by the defendant to the government in fines or settlement.

When an entity is determined to have violated the False Claims Act, it is subject to mandatory damages of three times the actual damages sustained by the government, plus significant mandatory civil penalties for each false claim. In addition, various states have enacted false claim laws analogous to the federal False Claims Act, and in some cases apply more broadly because many of these state laws apply to claims made to private payors and not merely governmental payors.

The rapid growth and expansion of our business may increase the potential for violating these laws or our internal policies and procedures designed to comply with these laws. The evolving interpretations of these laws and regulations by courts and regulators increase the risk that we may be alleged to be, or in fact found to be, in violation of these or other laws and regulations, including pursuant to private qui tam actions brought by individual whistleblowers in the name of the government as described above.

For example, in April 2018, we received a civil investigative demand from an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or SDNY, and a HIPAA subpoena issued by an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, or SDCA. In May 2018, we received a subpoena from the State of New York Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The civil and criminal investigations related to discontinued legacy billing practices for our NIPT and microdeletion tests and the provision of alleged kickbacks or inducements to physicians and patients and the civil investigations also involved inquiries about our laboratory licenses, our enrollment in state Medicaid programs, and the laboratories that performed testing for us.

On July 21, 2020, July 23, 2020, and October 1, 2020, we entered into agreements with certain governmental agencies and the 45 states participating in the settlement, or the State AGs, to resolve, with respect to such agencies and State AGs, all of such agencies’ and State AGs’ outstanding civil, and, where applicable, federal criminal, investigations regarding our discontinued legacy billing practices for our non-invasive prenatal tests and microdeletion tests and the provision of alleged kickbacks or inducements to physicians and patients. Specifically, we entered into:

The terms of these agreements require that we pay $49.0 million in the aggregate plus applicable interest. As of December 31, 2020, we have paid approximately $36.9 million towards this amount. We will pay the remaining portion of the settlement over an approximately three-year period, structured as follows: $5.0 million in December 2021; approximately $6.9 million in December 2022; and approximately $0.2 million in December 2023. For additional information regarding these agreements, please see Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings—Federal Investigations.”

Our inability to obtain, on a timely basis or at all, any necessary marketing authorizations for new device products, or improvements to our current offerings, could adversely affect our future product commercialization and operating results.

Our planned medical device product candidates, and potentially some of our molecular testing products such as our planned preeclampsia test, are expected to be subject to regulation by the FDA, and numerous other federal and state governmental authorities. The process of obtaining regulatory approvals or clearances to market a medical device, particularly from the FDA and regulatory authorities outside the United States, can be costly and time-consuming, and approvals or clearances might not be granted for future products on a timely basis, if at all. To ensure ongoing customer safety, regulatory agencies such as the FDA may re-evaluate their current approval or clearance processes and may impose additional requirements. In addition, the FDA and other regulatory authorities may impose increased or enhanced regulatory inspections for domestic or foreign facilities involved in the manufacture of medical devices.

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We may develop new medical devices in connection with our precision medicine platform and new molecular test candidates that are regulated by the FDA as medical devices. Unless otherwise exempted, medical devices must receive one of the following marketing authorizations from the FDA before being marketed in the United States: “510(k) clearance,” de novo classification, or PMA. The FDA determines whether a medical device will require 510(k) clearance, de novo classification, or the PMA process based on statutory criteria that include the risk associated with the device and whether the device is similar to an existing, legally marketed product. In the 510(k) clearance process, before a device may be marketed, the FDA must determine that a proposed device is “substantially equivalent” to a legally-marketed “predicate” device, which includes a device that has been previously cleared through the 510(k) process, a device that was legally marketed prior to May 28, 1976 (pre-amendments device), a device that was originally on the U.S. market pursuant to an approved PMA and later down-classified, or a 510(k)-exempt device. To be “substantially equivalent,” the proposed device must have the same intended use as the predicate device, and either have the same technological characteristics as the predicate device or have different technological characteristics and not raise different questions of safety or effectiveness than the predicate device. Clinical data are sometimes required to support substantial equivalence. In the process of obtaining PMA approval, the FDA must determine that a proposed device is safe and effective for its intended use based, in part, on extensive data, including, but not limited to, technical, preclinical, clinical trial, manufacturing, and labeling data. The PMA process is typically required for devices that are deemed to pose the greatest risk, such as life-sustaining, life-supporting or implantable devices. The process to obtain either 510(k) clearance or PMA will likely be costly, time-consuming, and uncertain. However, we believe the PMA process is generally more challenging. Even if we design a product that we expect to be eligible for the 510(k) clearance process, the FDA may require that the product undergo the PMA process. There can be no assurance that the FDA will approve or clear the marketing of any new medical device product that we develop. Even if regulatory approval or clearance is granted, such approval may include significant limitations on indicated uses, which could materially and adversely affect the prospects of the new medical device product.

If a medical device is novel and has not been previously classified by the FDA as Class I, II, or III, it is automatically classified into Class III regardless of the level of risk it poses. The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 established a route to market for low to moderate risk medical devices that are automatically placed into Class III due to the absence of a predicate device, called the “Request for Evaluation of Automatic Class III Designation,” or the de novo classification procedure. This procedure allows a manufacturer whose novel device would automatically be classified into Class III to request down-classification of its medical device into Class I or Class II on the basis that the device presents low or moderate risk, rather than requiring the submission and approval of a PMA application.

FDA marketing authorization could not only be required for new products we develop, but also could be required for certain enhancements we may seek to make to our existing tests and other products. Delays in receipt of, or failure to obtain, marketing authorizations could materially delay or prevent us from commercializing our products or result in substantial additional costs that could decrease our profitability. In addition, even if we receive FDA or other regulatory marketing authorizations for a new or enhanced product, the FDA or such other regulator may condition, withdraw, or materially modify its marketing authorization.

If we fail to comply with laboratory licensing requirements, we could lose the ability to perform our tests or experience disruptions to our business.

We are subject to CLIA, a federal law that regulates clinical laboratories that perform testing on specimens derived from humans for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of disease. CLIA regulations require clinical laboratories to obtain a certificate and mandate specific standards in the areas of personnel qualifications, administration, and participation in proficiency testing, patient test management and quality assurance. CLIA certification is also required in order for us to be eligible to bill state and federal healthcare programs, as well as many private third-party payors, for our tests. To renew these certifications, we are subject to survey and inspection every two years. Moreover, CLIA inspectors may make random inspections of our clinical laboratory.

We are also required to maintain state licenses to conduct testing in our laboratories. We cannot provide assurance that state authorities will at all times in the future find us to be in compliance with all applicable laws. If a clinical laboratory is out of compliance, the state authority may suspend, restrict or revoke the license to operate the clinical laboratory, assess substantial civil money penalties, or impose specific corrective action plans. Any such actions could materially affect our business.

Moreover, several other states require that we hold licenses to test samples from patients in those states. We have obtained licenses from states where we believe we are required to be licensed. From time to time, we may become aware of other states that require out-of-state laboratories to obtain licensure in order to accept specimens from the state, and it is possible that other states do have such requirements or will have such requirements in the future. If we identify any other state with such requirements or if we are contacted by any other state advising us of such requirements, we expect to seek to comply with such requirements. However, there is no assurance that we will be able to obtain any such required license for the particular state.

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Any sanction imposed under CLIA, its implementing regulations, or state or foreign laws or regulations governing licensure, or our failure to renew a CLIA certificate, a state license or accreditation, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. For a discussion of an inquiry from the State of Texas regarding our CLIA certification, see Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings—Texas OIG Inquiry.” CMS also has the authority to impose a wide range of sanctions, including revocation of the CLIA certification along with a bar on the ownership or operation of a CLIA-certified laboratory by any owners or operators of the deficient laboratory. If we were to lose our CLIA certification or required state licensure, we would not be able to operate our clinical laboratory and conduct our tests, in full or in particular states, which would adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We are subject to costly and complex laws and governmental regulations.

Our precision medicine product candidates are subject to a complex set of regulations and rigorous enforcement, including by the FDA, DOJ, HHS, and numerous other federal, state, and non-U.S. governmental authorities. To varying degrees, each of these agencies requires us to comply with laws and regulations governing the development, testing, manufacturing, labeling, marketing, and distribution of our products. As a part of the regulatory process of obtaining marketing authorization for new products and modifications to existing products, we may conduct and participate in numerous clinical trials with a variety of study designs, patient populations, and trial endpoints. Unfavorable or inconsistent clinical data from existing or future clinical trials or the market’s or FDA’s perception of this clinical data, may adversely impact our ability to obtain product approvals, our position in, and share of, the markets in which we participate, and our business, operating results, and financial condition. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to obtain or maintain marketing authorization for our product candidates and/or enhancements or modifications to existing products, and the failure to maintain or obtain marketing authorization in the future could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition.

Both before and after a product is commercially released, we and our products are subject to ongoing and pervasive oversight of government regulators. For instance, in the case of any product candidates subject to regulation by the FDA, including those products candidates in connection with our precision medicine platform, our facilities and procedures and those of our suppliers will be subject to periodic inspections by the FDA to determine compliance with applicable regulations. The results of these inspections can include inspectional observations on FDA’s Form-483, warning letters, or other forms of enforcement. If the FDA or a non-U.S. regulatory agency were to conclude that we are not in compliance with applicable laws or regulations, or that any of our product candidates, if authorized for marketing, are ineffective or pose an unreasonable health risk, the FDA or such other non-U.S. regulatory agency could ban products, withdraw marketing authorizations for such products, detain or seize adulterated or misbranded products, order a recall, repair, replacement, or refund of such products, refuse to grant pending marketing applications, require certificates of non-U.S. governments for exports, and/or require us to notify health professionals and others that the products present unreasonable risks of substantial harm to the public health. The FDA and other non-U.S. regulatory agencies may also assess civil or criminal penalties against us, our officers, or employees and impose operating restrictions on a company-wide basis. The FDA may also recommend prosecution to the DOJ. Any adverse regulatory action, depending on its magnitude, may restrict us from effectively marketing and selling our products and limit our ability to obtain future marketing authorizations, and could result in a substantial modification to our business practices and operations. Furthermore, we occasionally receive investigative demands, subpoenas, or other requests for information from state and federal governmental agencies, and we cannot predict the timing, outcome, or impact of any such investigations. See Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings.” Any adverse outcome in one or more of these investigations could include the commencement of civil and/or criminal proceedings, substantial fines, penalties, and/or administrative remedies, including exclusion from government reimbursement programs and/or amendments to our corporate integrity agreement with the OIG. In addition, resolution of any of these matters could involve the imposition of additional, costly compliance obligations. These potential consequences, as well as any adverse outcome from government investigations, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Even if we obtain regulatory authorizations, our marketed products will be subject to ongoing regulatory review. If we fail to comply with continuing U.S. and foreign regulations, we could lose any marketing authorizations we have obtained and our business would be seriously harmed.

Even after authorization, any medical products we develop will be subject to ongoing regulatory review, including requirements for manufacturing, labeling, packaging, storage, advertising, promotion, sampling, record-keeping, conduct of post-marketing studies, and submission of safety, efficacy, and other post-market information, including both federal and state requirements in the United States and requirements of comparable foreign regulatory authorities. Any marketing authorizations that we obtain for our product candidates may also be subject to limitations on the indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to the conditions of approval, or contain requirements for potentially costly post-marketing testing, including Phase 4 clinical trials, and surveillance to monitor the safety and efficacy of the product candidate.

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If a regulatory agency discovers previously unknown problems with a product, such as adverse events of unanticipated severity or frequency, or problems with the facility where the product is manufactured, or disagrees with the promotion, marketing or labeling of a product, such regulatory agency may impose restrictions on that product or us, including requiring withdrawal of the product from the market. If we fail to comply with applicable regulatory requirements, a regulatory agency or enforcement authority may, among other things:

Any government investigation of alleged violations of law could require us to expend significant time and resources in response, and could generate negative publicity. Any failure to comply with ongoing regulatory requirements may significantly and adversely affect our ability to commercialize and generate revenue from our products. If regulatory sanctions are applied or if regulatory authorization is withdrawn, our business could be seriously harmed.

Moreover, the policies of the FDA and of other regulatory authorities may change and additional government regulations may be enacted that could prevent, limit or delay regulatory authorization of our product candidates. We cannot predict the likelihood, nature, or extent of government regulation that may arise from future legislation or administrative or executive action, either in the United States or abroad. If we are slow or unable to adapt to changes in existing requirements or to the adoption of new requirements or policies, or if we are not able to maintain regulatory compliance, we may lose any marketing authorization that we may have obtained and we may not achieve or sustain profitability.

Similarly, our commercial activities are subject to comprehensive compliance obligations under state and federal reimbursement, Sunshine Act, anti-kickback and government pricing regulations. If we make false price reports, fail to implement adequate compliance controls or our employees violate the laws and regulations governing relationships with healthcare providers, we could also be subject to substantial fines and penalties, criminal prosecution and debarment from participation in the Medicare, Medicaid, or other government reimbursement programs. For additional information regarding these risks, see the risk factor titled “If we or our commercial partners act in a manner that violates healthcare laws or otherwise engage in misconduct, we could face substantial penalties and damage to our reputation, and our business operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.” Noncompliance with European Union requirements regarding safety monitoring or pharmacovigilance can also result in significant financial penalties. Similarly, failure to comply with the European Union requirements regarding the protection of personal information can also lead to significant penalties and sanctions.

We and our commercial partners and contract manufacturers are subject to significant regulation with respect to manufacturing medical devices and therapeutic products. The manufacturing facilities on which we rely may not continue to meet regulatory requirements or may not be able to meet supply demands.

Entities involved in the preparation of medical devices and/or therapeutic products for clinical studies or commercial sale, including our manufacturers for the therapeutic products that we may develop, are subject to extensive regulation. Components of a finished medical device or therapeutic product approved for commercial sale or used in late-stage clinical studies must be manufactured in accordance with cGMP and/or QSR requirements. These regulations govern manufacturing processes and procedures (including record keeping) and the implementation and operation of quality systems to control and assure the quality of investigational products and products approved for sale. Poor control of production processes can lead to the introduction of contaminants or to inadvertent changes in the properties or stability of our product candidates that may not be detectable in final product testing. We, our collaboration partners or our contract manufacturers must supply all necessary documentation in support of an NDA, a BLA, a PMA, a 510(k) application, a request for de novo classification, or a Marketing Authorization Application, or MAA, on a timely basis and must adhere to cGMP regulations enforced by the FDA and other regulatory agencies through their facilities inspection program. Some of our contract manufacturers may have never produced a commercially approved pharmaceutical product and therefore have not been subject to the review of the FDA and other regulators. The facilities and quality systems of some or all of our collaboration partners and third-party contractors must pass a pre-approval inspection for compliance with the applicable regulations as a condition of regulatory approval of our drug and biologic product candidates and may be subject to inspection in connection with a MAA for any of our other potential product candidates. In addition, the regulatory authorities may, at any time, audit or inspect a manufacturing facility involved with the preparation of our product candidates or our other potential products or the associated quality systems for

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compliance with the regulations applicable to the activities being conducted. Although we oversee our contract manufacturers, we cannot control the manufacturing process of, and are completely dependent on, such contract manufacturing partners for compliance with these regulatory requirements. If these facilities do not pass a pre-approval plant inspection, marketing authorizations for the products may not be granted or may be substantially delayed until any violations are corrected to the satisfaction of the regulatory authority, if ever.

The regulatory authorities also may, at any time following approval or clearance of a product for sale, audit the manufacturing facilities of our collaboration partners and third-party contractors. If any such inspection or audit identifies a failure to comply with applicable regulations or if a violation of our product specifications or applicable regulations occurs independent of such an inspection or audit, we or the relevant regulatory authority may require remedial measures that may be costly and/or time-consuming for us or a third party to implement and that may include the temporary or permanent suspension of a clinical study or commercial sales or the temporary or permanent closure of a facility.

Any such remedial measures imposed upon us or third parties with whom we contract could materially harm our business.

If we, our collaboration partners or any of our third-party manufacturers fail to maintain regulatory compliance, the FDA or other applicable regulatory authority can impose regulatory sanctions including, among other things, refusal to approve a pending application for a new product candidate, withdrawal of a marketing authorization or suspension of production. As a result, our business, operating results, and financial condition may be materially harmed.

Additionally, if supply from one approved manufacturer is interrupted, an alternative manufacturer will need to be qualified and we may need to obtain marketing authorization for a change in the manufacturer through submission of a PMA supplement, 510(k) pre-market notification, NDA or BLA supplement, MAA variation or other regulatory filing to the FDA or other foreign regulatory agencies, which could result in further delay.

These factors could cause us to incur additional costs and could cause the delay or termination of clinical studies, regulatory submissions, required marketing authorizations or commercialization of our products, including product candidates. Furthermore, if our suppliers fail to meet contractual requirements and we are unable to secure one or more replacement suppliers capable of production at a substantially equivalent cost, our clinical studies may be delayed or we could lose potential revenue.

The FDA may initiate rulemaking to impose premarket review, clearance, or approval or other requirements on LDTs, and we may become subject to extensive regulatory requirements and may be required to conduct additional clinical trials prior to continuing to sell our existing tests or launching any other tests we may develop, which may increase the cost of conducting, or otherwise harm, our business.

We currently market all of our commercial molecular tests as LDTs and may in the future market other tests as LDTs. Under current federal policy, FDA premarket review of LDTs is not required, but laboratories may voluntarily submit 510(k) or PMA applications, or de novo classification requests, for LDTs to obtain FDA clearance or approval following a demonstration of clinical validity. If there are changes in FDA regulations, particularly under the new Biden administration, or if the FDA disagrees that our marketed tests are LDTs or determines that we are marketing our tests outside the scope of the FDA’s current policy of enforcement discretion, we may become subject to extensive regulatory requirements and may be required to stop selling our existing tests or launching any other tests we may develop and to conduct additional clinical trials or take other actions prior to continuing to market our tests. If the FDA allows our tests to remain on the market but there is uncertainty about our tests, if they are labeled investigational by the FDA or if labeling claims the FDA allows us to make are very limited, orders from physicians or reimbursement may decline. If required, the regulatory authorization process may involve, among other things, successfully completing additional clinical trials and submitting a 510(k) notice, or filing a de novo classification request or a PMA application with the FDA. If the FDA adopts regulations requiring premarket review, our tests may not be cleared or approved on a timely basis, if at all. This could significantly increase the costs and expenses of conducting, or otherwise harm, our business.

While we believe that we are currently in material compliance with applicable laws and regulations as historically enforced by the FDA with respect to LDTs, we cannot assure you that the FDA will agree with our determination. A determination that we have violated these laws and regulations, or a public announcement that we are being investigated for possible violations, could adversely affect our business, prospects, results of operations, and financial condition.

On July 31, 2014, the FDA notified Congress of its intent to modify, in a risk-based manner, its policy of enforcement discretion with respect to LDTs. On October 3, 2014, the FDA issued two draft guidances, entitled “Framework for Regulatory Oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs),” or the Framework Guidance, and “FDA Notification and Medical Device Reporting for Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs).” The Framework Guidance stated that the FDA intended to modify its policy of enforcement discretion with respect to LDTs in a risk-based manner consistent with the existing classification of medical devices. Thus, pursuant to the Framework Guidance, the FDA planned to begin to enforce its medical device requirements, including premarket submission requirements, on LDTs that have historically been marketed without FDA premarket review and oversight. In August 2020, HHS

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announced that the FDA will not require premarket review for any LDTs without first conducting notice-and-comment rulemaking proceedings. Although, as a result of this decision, the FDA may not rely on guidance documents, policy statements, or other informal decision-making to impose premarket review requirements on LDTs, the FDA could ultimately adopt rules that modify its current approach to LDTs in a way that would subject our products marketed as LDTs to the enforcement of regulatory requirements. Additionally, if and when the FDA begins to actively enforce its premarket submission regulations with respect to LDTs, we may be required to obtain premarket clearance or approval for our currently marketed tests and other products we plan to commercialize as LDTs. Moreover, legislative measures have recently been proposed in Congress that, if ultimately enacted, could provide the FDA with additional authority to require premarket review of and regulate LDTs. For example, in late 2018, the FDA proposed to Congress significant reforms to the agency’s regulation of LDTs that would bring all in vitro clinical tests, including LDTs, under a unified framework and would dramatically increase FDA oversight of LDTs. The FDA’s proposal included premarket review for certain tests, a precertification program to permit approval or clearance of a group of tests based on the review of a representative test, registration and notification requirements, quality system requirements, adverse event reporting, labeling requirements, and explicit authorities for the FDA to revoke the marketing authorization of tests and to take corrective action against test developers. However, in August 2020, the HHS issued a rescission order stating that the FDA will not require premarket review of LDTs absent changes in policy implemented through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures. It remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will continue this HHS policy. The outcome and ultimate impact of such proposals on our business is difficult to predict at this time. Potential future increased regulation of our LDTs could also result in increased costs and administrative and legal actions for noncompliance, including warning letters, fines, penalties, product suspensions, product recalls, injunctions and other civil and criminal sanctions, which could have a material and adverse effect upon our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We may be adversely impacted by changes in laws and regulations, or in their application.

The industries in which we operate are highly regulated, and failure to comply with applicable regulatory, supervisory, accreditation, registration, or licensing requirements may adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. The laws and regulations governing our research and marketing efforts are extremely complex and in many instances there are no clear regulatory or judicial interpretations of these laws and regulations, which increases the risk that we may be found to be in violation of these laws.

Furthermore, the industries in which we operate are growing, and regulatory agencies such as HHS or the FDA may apply heightened scrutiny to new developments. While we have taken steps to ensure compliance with current regulatory regimes in all material respects, given the nature of such regimes and our geographical diversity, there could be areas where we are noncompliant. Any change in the federal or state laws or regulations relating to our business may require us to implement changes to our business or practices, and we may not be able to do so in a timely or cost-effective manner. Should we be found to be noncompliant with current or future regulatory requirements, we may be subject to sanctions which could include changes to our operations, adverse publicity, substantial financial penalties and criminal proceedings, which may adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition by increasing our cost of compliance or limiting our ability to develop, market and commercialize our products. For additional information regarding these risks, see the risk factor titled “If we or our commercial partners act in a manner that violates healthcare laws or otherwise engage in misconduct, we could face substantial penalties and damage to our reputation, and our business operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.”

In addition, there has been a recent trend of increased U.S. federal and state regulation of payments made to physicians, which are governed by laws and regulations including the Stark Law, the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and the federal False Claims Act as well as state equivalents of such laws. Among other requirements, the Stark Law requires laboratories to track, and places a cap on, non-monetary compensation provided to referring physicians.

While we have a compliance plan intended to address compliance with government laws and regulations, including applicable fraud and abuse laws and regulations such as those described in this risk factor, the evolving commercial compliance environment and the need to build and maintain robust and scalable systems to comply with regulations in multiple jurisdictions with different compliance and reporting requirements increases the possibility that we could inadvertently violate one or more of these requirements.

Changes in the way the FDA regulates the reagents, other consumables, and testing equipment we use when developing, validating, and performing our tests could result in delay or additional expense in bringing our tests to market or performing such tests for our customers.

Many of the sequencing instruments, reagents, kits and other consumable products used to perform our testing, as well as the instruments and other capital equipment that enable the testing, are offered for sale as analyte specific reagents, or ASRs, or for research use only, or RUO. ASRs are medical devices and must comply with FDA QSR provisions and other device requirements, but most are exempt from 510(k) and PMA review. Products that are intended for RUO and are labeled as RUO, including our epigenetics platform, are exempt from compliance with FDA requirements, including the approval or clearance and other product quality requirements for medical devices. A product labeled RUO but which is actually intended for clinical diagnostic use may be viewed by

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the FDA as adulterated and misbranded under the FD&C Act and subject to FDA enforcement action. The FDA has said that when determining the intended use of a product labeled RUO, it will consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding distribution and use of the product, including how the product is marketed and to whom. The FDA could disagree with a supplier’s assessment that the supplier’s products are RUOs, or could conclude that products labeled as RUO are actually intended for clinical diagnostic use, and could take enforcement action against the supplier, including requiring the supplier to cease offering the product while it seeks clearance or approval. Suppliers of RUO products that we employ in our other tests may cease selling their respective products, and we may be unable to obtain an acceptable substitute on commercially reasonable terms or at all, which could significantly and adversely affect our ability to provide timely testing results to our customers or could significantly increase our costs of conducting business.

Disruptions at the FDA and other government agencies caused by funding shortages or global health concerns could hinder their ability to hire, retain, or deploy key leadership and other personnel, or otherwise prevent new or modified products from being developed, cleared, or approved or commercialized in a timely manner or at all, which could negatively impact our business.

The ability of the FDA to review and clear or approve new products can be affected by a variety of factors, including government budget and funding levels, statutory, regulatory, and policy changes, the FDA’s ability to hire and retain key personnel and accept the payment of user fees, and other events that may otherwise affect the FDA’s ability to perform routine functions. Average review times at the agency have fluctuated in recent years as a result. In addition, government funding of other government agencies that fund research and development activities is subject to the political process, which is inherently fluid and unpredictable. Disruptions at the FDA and other agencies may also slow the time necessary for new drugs, medical devices, and biologics or modifications to cleared or approved drugs, medical devices, and biologics to be reviewed and/or approved by necessary government agencies, which would adversely affect our business. For example, over the last several years, including for 35 days beginning on December 22, 2018, the U.S. government has shut down several times and certain regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, have had to furlough critical FDA employees and stop critical activities.

Separately, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA temporarily postponed routine surveillance inspections of domestic and foreign manufacturing facilities and inspections of foreign products. The FDA is only conducting prioritized domestic inspections, where possible to do so safely, and, on a case-by-case basis, “mission-critical” inspections. The FDA has also expanded its use of other tools, when possible, to ensure the quality and safety of products being imported into the United States. Regulatory authorities outside the United States may adopt similar restrictions or other policy measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If a prolonged government shutdown occurs, or if global health concerns continue to prevent the FDA or other regulatory authorities from conducting their regular inspections, reviews, or other regulatory activities, it could significantly impact the ability of the FDA or other regulatory authorities to timely review and process our regulatory submissions, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

If the FDA does not conclude that certain of our product candidates satisfy the requirements for the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory approval pathway, or if the requirements for such product candidates under Section 505(b)(2) are not as we expect, the approval pathway for those product candidates will likely take significantly longer, cost significantly more and entail significantly greater complications and risks than anticipated, and in either case may not be successful.

We are developing proprietary product candidates, such as PGN-600, a GI-targeted tofacitinib, for which we may seek FDA approval through the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway. We expect that PGN-600 will be regulated as a drug/device combination product under the drug provisions of the FD&C Act, enabling us to submit NDAs for approval of this product candidate. The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, also known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, added Section 505(b)(2) to the FD&C Act. Section 505(b)(2) permits the filing of an NDA where at least some of the information required for approval comes from studies that were not conducted by or for the applicant and for which the applicant has not obtained a right of reference. Section 505(b)(2), if applicable to us under the FD&C Act, would allow an NDA we submit to the FDA to rely in part on data in the public domain or the FDA’s prior conclusions regarding the safety and effectiveness of approved compounds, which could expedite the development program for our product candidate by potentially decreasing the amount of nonclinical and/or clinical data that we would need to generate in order to obtain FDA approval. If the FDA does not allow us to pursue the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway as anticipated, we may need to conduct additional nonclinical studies and/or clinical trials, provide additional data and information, and meet additional standards for regulatory approval. If this were to occur, the time and financial resources required to obtain FDA approval for this product candidate, and complications and risks associated with this product candidate, would likely substantially increase. Moreover, inability to pursue the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway could result in new competitive products reaching the market more quickly than our product candidate, which would likely materially adversely impact our competitive position and prospects. Even if we are allowed to pursue the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway, we cannot assure you that our product candidate will receive the requisite approval for commercialization.

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In addition, notwithstanding the approval of a number of products by the FDA under Section 505(b)(2) over the last few years, certain pharmaceutical companies and others have objected to the FDA’s interpretation of Section 505(b)(2). If the FDA’s interpretation of Section 505(b)(2) is successfully challenged, the FDA may change its 505(b)(2) policies and practices, which could delay or even prevent the FDA from approving any NDA that we submit under Section 505(b)(2). In addition, the pharmaceutical industry is highly competitive, and Section 505(b)(2) NDAs are subject to certain requirements designed to protect the patent rights of sponsors of previously approved drugs that are referenced in a Section 505(b)(2) NDA. These requirements may give rise to patent litigation and mandatory delays in approval of our NDAs for up to 30 months or longer depending on the outcome of any litigation. It is not uncommon for a manufacturer of an approved product to file a citizen petition with the FDA seeking to delay approval of, or impose additional approval requirements for, pending competing products. If successful, such petitions can significantly delay, or even prevent, the approval of the new product. Even if the FDA ultimately denies such a petition, the FDA may substantially delay approval while it considers and responds to the petition. In addition, even if we are able to utilize the Section 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway, there is no guarantee this would ultimately lead to streamlined product development or earlier approval.

Moreover, even if our product candidate is approved under Section 505(b)(2), the approval may be subject to limitations on the indicated uses for which the product may be marketed or to other conditions of approval, or may contain requirements for costly post-marketing testing and surveillance to monitor the safety or efficacy of the product.

The misuse or off-label use of our products or product candidates may harm our reputation in the marketplace, result in injuries that lead to product liability suits or result in costly investigations, fines or sanctions by regulatory bodies if we are deemed to have engaged in the promotion of these uses, and any of these consequences could be costly to our business.

We are developing certain precision medicine product candidates, including pharmaceutical products and medical devices, which if authorized for marketing by the FDA or other regulatory authorities, will be authorized for use in specific indications and patient populations. We expect to train our marketing personnel and direct sales force not to promote our product candidates for uses outside of the FDA-approved or -cleared indications for use, which are sometimes referred to as “off-label uses.” We cannot, however, prevent a physician from using our products off-label, when in the physician’s independent professional medical judgment he or she deems it appropriate. There may be increased risk of injury to patients if physicians attempt to use our products off-label. Furthermore, the use of our products for indications other than those authorized for marketing by the FDA or any foreign regulatory body may not effectively treat such conditions, which could harm our reputation in the marketplace among physicians and patients.

If the FDA or any foreign regulatory body determines that our promotional materials or training constitute promotion of an off-label use, it could request that we modify our training or promotional materials or subject us to regulatory or enforcement actions, including the issuance or imposition of an untitled letter, a warning letter, injunction, seizure, civil fine, or criminal penalties. It is also possible that other federal, state or foreign enforcement authorities might take action under other regulatory authority, such as false claims laws, if they consider our business activities to constitute promotion of an off-label use, which could result in significant penalties, including, but not limited to, criminal, civil, and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, exclusion from participation in government healthcare programs and the curtailment of our operations.

In addition, physicians may misuse our products or use improper techniques if they are not adequately trained, potentially leading to injury and an increased risk of product liability. If our products are misused or used with improper technique, we may become subject to costly litigation by our customers or their patients. As described above, product liability claims could divert management’s attention from our core business, be expensive to defend and result in sizeable damage awards against us that may not be covered by insurance.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

Third-party claims of intellectual property infringement could result in litigation or other proceedings, which would be costly and time-consuming, and could limit our ability to commercialize our products.

Our success depends in part on our freedom-to-operate with respect to the patents or intellectual property rights of third parties. We operate in industries in which there have been substantial litigation and other proceedings regarding patents and other intellectual property rights. For example, we have identified a number of third-party patents that may be asserted against us with respect to certain of our current molecular testing products and certain of our future products in the molecular testing and precision medicine space. We believe that we do not infringe the relevant claims of these third-party patents and/or that the relevant claims of these patents are likely invalid or unenforceable. We may choose to challenge the validity of these patents, though the outcome of any challenge that we may initiate in the future is uncertain. We may also decide in the future to seek a license to those third-party patents, but we might not be able to do so on reasonable terms. Certain third parties, including our competitors or collaborators, have asserted and may in the future assert that we are employing their proprietary technology without authorization or that we are otherwise infringing their intellectual property rights. The risk of intellectual property proceedings may increase as the number of products and the level of competition in our industry segments grows. Defending against infringement claims is costly and may divert the attention of our management and

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technical personnel. If we are unsuccessful in defending against patent infringement claims, we could be required to stop developing or commercializing products, pay potentially substantial monetary damages, and/or obtain licenses from third parties, which we may be unable to do on acceptable terms, if at all, and which may require us to make substantial royalty payments. In addition, we could encounter delays in product introductions while we attempt to develop alternative non-infringing products. Any of these or other adverse outcomes could prevent us from offering our tests, which would have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. See Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings—Natera Lawsuit” and “—Ravgen Lawsuit” for more information regarding patent infringement suits filed by Natera and Ravgen, Inc., respectively.

As we move into new markets and develop enhancements to and new applications for our products, competitors have asserted and may in the future assert their patents and other proprietary rights against us as a means of blocking or slowing our entry into such markets or our sales of such new or enhanced products or as a means to extract substantial license and royalty payments from us. Our competitors and others may have significantly stronger, larger, and/or more mature patent portfolios than we have, and additionally, our competitors may be better resourced and highly motivated to protect large, well-established markets that could be disrupted by our product candidates. In addition, future litigation may involve patent holding companies or other patent owners or licensees who have no relevant product revenues and against whom our own patents may provide little or no deterrence or protection.

In addition, our agreements with some of our customers, suppliers, and other entities with whom we do business require us to defend or indemnify these parties to the extent they become involved in infringement claims, including the types of claims described above. We could also voluntarily agree to defend or indemnify third parties if we determine it to be in the best interests of our business relationships. If we are required or agree to defend or indemnify third parties in connection with any infringement claims, we could incur significant costs and expenses that could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Because the industries in which we operate are particularly litigious, we are susceptible to intellectual property suits that could cause us to incur substantial costs or pay substantial damages or prohibit us from selling our products or conducting our other business.

There is a substantial amount of litigation over patent and other intellectual property rights in the industries in which we operate, including but not limited to the biotechnology, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and medical device industries. Whether a product infringes a patent involves complex legal and factual issues that may be open to different interpretations. Searches typically performed to identify potentially infringed patents of third parties are often not conclusive and because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be applications now pending, which may later result in issued patents which our current or future products may infringe. In addition, our competitors or other parties may assert that our product candidates and the methods they employ may be covered by patents held by them. If any of our products infringes a valid patent, we could be prevented from manufacturing or selling it unless we can obtain a license or redesign the product to avoid infringement. A license may not always be available or may require us to pay substantial royalties. Infringement and other intellectual property claims, with or without merit, can be expensive and time-consuming to litigate and could divert our management’s attention from operating our business.

Any inability to effectively protect our proprietary technologies could harm our competitive position.

Our success and ability to compete depend to a large extent on our ability to develop proprietary products and technologies and to maintain adequate protection of our intellectual property in the United States and elsewhere. The laws of some foreign countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States, and many companies have encountered significant challenges in establishing and enforcing their proprietary rights outside of the United States. These challenges can be caused by the absence of rules and methods for the establishment and enforcement of intellectual property rights in certain jurisdictions outside of the United States. In addition, the proprietary positions of companies in the industries in which we operate generally are uncertain and involve complex legal and factual questions. This is particularly true in the diagnostics area where the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions setting forth limits on the patentability of natural phenomena, natural laws, abstract ideas and their applications (see, Mayo Collaborative v. Prometheus Laboratories (2012), Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics (2013), and Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank (2014), which has made it difficult to obtain certain patents and to assess the validity of previously issued patents). This uncertainty may materially affect our ability to defend or obtain patents or to address the patents and patent applications owned or controlled by our collaborators and licensors.

We will be able to protect our proprietary rights from unauthorized use by third parties only to the extent that our proprietary technologies are covered by valid and enforceable patents or are effectively maintained as trade secrets. Any finding that our patents or patent applications are invalid or unenforceable could harm our ability to prevent others from practicing the related technology. We cannot be certain that we were the first to invent the inventions covered by pending patent applications or that we were the first to file such applications, and a finding that others have claims of inventorship or ownership rights to our patents and applications could require us to obtain certain rights to practice related technologies, which may not be available on favorable terms, if at all. There may be times when we choose to retain advisors with academic employers who limit their employees’ rights to enter into agreements which provide the kind of confidentiality and assignment provisions congruent with our consulting agreements. We may decide that

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obtaining the services of these advisors is worth any potential risk, and this may harm our ability to obtain and enforce our intellectual property rights. In addition, our existing patents and any future patents we obtain may not be sufficiently broad to prevent others from practicing our technologies or from developing similar or alternative competing products, or design around our patented technologies, and may therefore fail to provide us with any competitive advantage. Furthermore, as our issued patents expire, we may lose some competitive advantage as others develop competing products that would have been covered by the expired patents, and, as a result, may adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We may be required to file or defend infringement lawsuits and other contentious proceedings, such as inter partes reviews, reexaminations, oppositions, and declaratory judgement actions, to protect our interests, which can be expensive and time-consuming. We cannot assure you that we would prevail over an infringing third party, and we may become subject to counterclaims by such third parties. Our patents may be declared invalid or unenforceable, or narrowed in scope, as a result of such litigation or other proceedings. Some third-party infringers may have substantially greater resources than us and may be able to sustain the costs of complex infringement litigation more effectively than we can. Even if we have valid and enforceable patents, competitors may still choose to offer products that infringe our patents.

Further, preliminary injunctions that bar future infringement by the competitor are not often granted; therefore, remedies for infringement are not often immediately available. Even if we prevail in an infringement action, we cannot assure you that we would be fully or partially financially compensated for any harm to our business. We may be forced to enter into a license or other agreement with the third parties on terms less profitable or otherwise less commercially acceptable to us than those negotiated between a willing licensee and a willing licensor. Any inability to stop third-party infringement could result in loss in market share of some of our products, or lead to a delay, reduction, and/or inhibition of our development, manufacture, or sale of some of our products. A product produced and sold by a third-party infringer may not meet our or other regulatory standards or may not be safe for use, which could cause irreparable harm to the reputation of our products, which in turn could result in substantial loss in our market share and profits. See Part I, Item 3. “Legal Proceedings—Natera Lawsuit” and “—Ravgen Lawsuit” for more information regarding patent infringement suits filed by Natera and Ravgen, Inc., respectively.

There is also the risk that others may independently develop similar or alternative technologies or design around our patented technologies, and our competitors or others may have filed, and may in the future file, conflicting patent claims covering technology similar or identical to ours. The costs associated with challenging conflicting patent claims could be substantial, and it is possible that our efforts would be unsuccessful and may result in a loss of our patent position and the issuance or validation of the competing claims. Should such competing claims cover our technology, we could be required to obtain rights to those claims at substantial cost.

Any of these factors could adversely affect our ability to obtain commercially relevant or competitively advantageous patent protection for our products.

“Submarine” patents may be granted to our competitors, which may significantly alter our launch timing expectations, reduce our projected market size, cause us to modify our product or process or block us from the market altogether.

The term “submarine” patent is used to denote a patent issuing from an application that was not published, publicly known or available prior to its grant. Submarine patents add substantial risk and uncertainty to our business. Submarine patents may issue to our competitors covering our product candidates or our pipeline candidates and thereby cause significant market entry delay, defeat our ability to market our products or cause us to abandon development and/or commercialization of a product or molecule.

The issuance of one or more submarine patents may harm our business by causing substantial delays in our ability to introduce a product candidate or other product into the U.S. market.

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If we are not able to adequately protect our trade secrets, know-how, and other proprietary information, the value of our technology and products could be significantly diminished.

We rely on trade secret protection and proprietary know-how protection for our confidential and proprietary information, and we have taken security measures to protect this information. These measures, however, may not provide adequate protection for our trade secrets, know-how, or other proprietary information. For example, although we have a policy of requiring our consultants, advisors and collaborators to enter into confidentiality agreements and our employees to enter into invention, non-disclosure and, where lawful, noncompete agreements, we cannot assure you that such agreements will provide for a meaningful protection of our trade secrets, know-how or other proprietary information in the event of any unauthorized use or disclosure of information, including as a result of breaches of our physical or electronic security systems, or as a result of our employees failing to abide by their confidentiality obligations during or upon termination of their employment with us. Any action to enforce our rights is likely to be time-consuming and expensive, and may ultimately be unsuccessful, or may result in a remedy that is not commercially valuable. These risks are heightened in countries where laws or law enforcement practices may not protect proprietary rights as fully as in the United States. Any unauthorized use or disclosure of, or access to, our trade secrets, know-how or other proprietary information, whether accidentally or through willful misconduct, could have a material and adverse effect on our programs, our business strategy, and on our ability to compete effectively.

If our trademarks and trade names are not adequately protected, we may not be able to build name recognition in our markets of interest, and our business may be adversely affected.

Failure to maintain our trademark registrations, or to obtain new trademark registrations in the future, could limit our ability to protect our trademarks and impede our marketing efforts in the countries in which we operate. We may not be able to protect our rights to trademarks and trade names which we may need to build name recognition with potential partners or customers in our markets of interest. As a means to enforce our trademark rights and prevent infringement, we may be required to file trademark claims against third parties or initiate trademark opposition proceedings. This can be expensive, particularly for a company of our size, and time-consuming, and we may not be successful. Our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names may be challenged, infringed, circumvented, declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks.

Our pending trademark applications in the United States and in other foreign jurisdictions where we may file may not be allowed or may subsequently be opposed. Even if these applications result in registration of trademarks, third parties may challenge our use or registration of these trademarks in the future. Over the long term, if we are unable to establish name recognition based on our trademarks and trade names, then we may not be able to compete effectively and our business may be adversely affected.

We may be subject to claims that our employees, consultants, or independent contractors have wrongfully used or disclosed confidential information of third parties.

We employ individuals who were previously employed at other companies in the industries in which we operate, including biotechnology or diagnostic companies. We may be subject to claims that we or our employees, consultants or independent contractors have inadvertently or willfully used or disclosed confidential information of our employees’ former employers or other third parties. We may also be subject to claims that our employees’ former employers or other third parties have an ownership interest in our patents. Litigation may be necessary to defend against these claims, and if we are unsuccessful, we could be required to pay substantial damages and could lose rights to important intellectual property.

Even if we are successful, litigation could result in substantial costs to us and could divert the time and attention of our management and other employees.

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Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

The market price of our common stock has fluctuated in the past, and is likely to continue to be volatile, which could subject us to litigation.

The market price of our common stock has fluctuated and is likely to be subject to further wide fluctuations in response to numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control, such as those in this “Risk Factors” section and others including:

In addition, if the stock market experiences uneven investor confidence, the market price of our common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business, operating results, or financial condition. The market price of our common stock might also decline in reaction to events that affect other companies within, or outside, our industry even if these events do not directly affect us. Some companies that have experienced volatility in the trading price of their stock have been the subject of securities class action litigation. If we are the subject of such litigation, it could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our management’s attention and resources.

The issuance of shares of our common stock upon conversion of the convertible notes will dilute the ownership interests of our stockholders and could depress the trading price of our common stock.

We must settle conversions of our outstanding convertible notes in shares of our common stock, together with cash in lieu of issuing any fractional share. The issuance of shares of our common stock upon conversion of the convertible notes will dilute the ownership interests of our stockholders, which could depress the trading price of our common stock. In addition, the market’s expectation that conversions may occur could depress the trading price of our common stock even in the absence of actual conversions. Moreover, the expectation of conversions could encourage the short selling of our common stock, which could place further downward pressure on the trading price of our common stock.

Hedging activity by investors in the convertible notes could depress the trading price of our common stock.

We expect that many investors in our outstanding convertible notes will seek to employ a convertible note arbitrage strategy. Under this strategy, investors typically short sell a certain number of shares of our common stock and adjust their short position over time while they continue to hold the convertible notes. Investors may also implement this type of strategy by entering into swaps on our common stock in lieu of, or in addition to, short selling shares of our common stock. This market activity, or the market’s perception that it will occur, could depress the trading price of our common stock.

Provisions in the indenture governing our outstanding convertible notes could delay or prevent an otherwise beneficial takeover of us.

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Certain provisions in our convertible notes and the indenture governing the convertible notes could make a third party attempt to acquire us more difficult or expensive. For example, if a takeover constitutes a “fundamental change” (which is defined in the indenture to include certain change-of-control events and the delisting of our common stock), then noteholders will have the right to require us to repurchase their convertible notes for cash. In addition, if a takeover constitutes a “make-whole fundamental change” (which is defined in the indenture to include, among other events, fundamental changes and certain additional business combination transactions), then we may be required to temporarily increase the conversion rate for the convertible notes. In either case, and in other cases, our obligations under the convertible notes and the indenture could increase the cost of acquiring us or otherwise discourage a third party from acquiring us or removing incumbent management, including in a transaction that holders of our common stock may view as favorable.

We may be unable to raise the funds necessary to repurchase the convertible notes for cash following a fundamental change or to pay any cash amounts due upon conversion, and our other indebtedness may limit our ability to repurchase our outstanding convertible notes.

Noteholders may require us to repurchase their convertible notes following a “fundamental change” (which is defined in the indenture governing the convertible notes to include certain change-of-control events and the delisting of our common stock) at a cash repurchase price generally equal to the principal amount of the convertible notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any. In addition, noteholders that convert their convertible notes before December 1, 2022 will, in certain circumstances, be entitled to an additional cash payment representing the present value of any remaining interest payments on the convertible notes through December 1, 2022. Furthermore, additional cash amounts may be due upon conversion in certain circumstances if the number of shares that we deliver upon conversion of the convertible notes is limited by the listing standards of The Nasdaq Global Market. We may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to repurchase the convertible notes or pay these cash amounts upon their conversion. In addition, applicable law, regulatory authorities and the agreements governing our other indebtedness may restrict our ability to repurchase the convertible notes or pay these cash amounts upon their conversion. Our failure to repurchase convertible notes when required or pay these cash amounts upon their conversion will constitute a default under the indenture governing the convertible notes. A default under the indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under agreements governing our other indebtedness, which may result in that other indebtedness becoming immediately payable in full. We may not have sufficient funds to satisfy all amounts due under the other indebtedness and the convertible notes.

The accounting method for the convertible notes could adversely affect our reported financial results.

The accounting method for reflecting the underlying shares of our common stock in our reported diluted earnings per share may adversely affect our reported earnings and financial condition. We expect that, under applicable accounting principles, the shares underlying our convertible notes will be reflected in our diluted earnings per share using the “if-converted” method. Under that method, diluted earnings per share would generally be calculated assuming that all the convertible notes were converted into shares of common stock at the beginning of the reporting period, unless the result would be anti-dilutive. The application of the if-converted method may reduce our reported diluted earnings per share.

Furthermore, the conversion features in our convertible notes are accounted for as a free-standing embedded derivative bifurcated from the principal balance of the convertible notes. The embedded derivative liability is remeasured at fair value each reporting period with positive or negative changes in fair value recorded in our consolidated statement of operations, which may adversely affect our reported earnings and financial condition and result in significant fluctuations in our future financial performance.

General Risk Factors

Insiders have substantial control over us and will be able to influence corporate matters.

As of December 31, 2020, our current directors and executive officers, together with their affiliates, beneficially own, in the aggregate, a majority of our outstanding common stock. As a result, these stockholders, if they act, will be able to exercise significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets. They may have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a way with which you disagree and that may be adverse to your interests. This concentration of ownership could limit stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters and may have the effect of delaying, deterring or preventing a third party from acquiring control over us, depriving our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of our company, and could negatively impact the value and market price of our common stock.

We do not intend to pay dividends on our capital stock, so any returns will be limited to changes in the value of our common stock.

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While we have paid dividends to our stockholders in the past, we currently anticipate that we will retain future earnings for the development, operation and expansion of our business and do not anticipate declaring or paying any cash dividends for the foreseeable future. In addition, our ability to pay cash dividends on our capital stock may be prohibited or limited by the terms of any current or future debt financing arrangement. Any return to stockholders may therefore be limited to the increase, if any, of the price of our common stock.

Future sales and issuances of our common stock or rights to purchase common stock, including pursuant to our equity incentive plans, could result in additional dilution of the percentage ownership of our stockholders and could cause the stock price of our common stock to decline.

In the future, we may sell common stock, convertible securities, or other equity securities in one or more transactions at prices and in a manner we determine from time to time. We also expect to issue common stock to employees, directors, and consultants pursuant to our equity incentive plans. If we sell common stock, convertible securities, or other equity securities in subsequent transactions, or common stock is issued pursuant to equity incentive plans, investors may be materially diluted. New investors in such subsequent transactions could gain rights, preferences, and privileges senior to those of holders of our common stock.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market by our existing stockholders could cause the price of our common stock to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market or the perception that these sales might occur could depress the market price of our common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. We are unable to predict the effect that sales may have on the prevailing market price of our common stock.

We have and will continue to incur significantly increased costs and devote substantial management time to reporting and other requirements as a result of operating as a public company.

As a public company, we have and will continue to incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. For example, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, or Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as rules and regulations subsequently implemented by the SEC and The Nasdaq Global Market, or Nasdaq, including the establishment and maintenance of effective disclosure and financial controls and changes in corporate governance practices. We expect that compliance with these requirements will increase our legal and financial compliance costs and will make some activities more time-consuming and costly. Certain members of our management and other personnel have little experience managing a public company and preparing public filings. In addition, we expect that our management and other personnel will need to divert attention from operational and other business matters to devote substantial time to these public company requirements. In particular, we expect to incur significant expenses and devote substantial management effort toward ensuring compliance with the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which will increase when we are no longer an emerging growth company, as defined by the JOBS Act. We will need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we may incur as a result of becoming a public company or the timing of such costs. Additional compensation costs and any future equity awards will increase our compensation expense, which would increase our general and administrative expense and could adversely affect our profitability. We also expect that operating as a public company will make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance on reasonable terms. As a result, it may be more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified people to serve on our board of directors or our board committees or as executive officers.

We are an emerging growth company and the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies may make our common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an emerging growth company. Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies can delay adopting new or revised accounting standards until such time as those standards apply to private companies. We have elected to avail ourselves of this exemption and, as a result, will not be subject to the same implementation timing for new or revised accounting standards as are required of other public companies that are not emerging growth companies, which may make comparison of our consolidated financial information to those of other public companies more difficult.

For as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, however, we intend to take advantage of certain other exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies including, but not limited to, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We cannot predict if investors will find our common stock less attractive because we will rely on

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these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock and our stock price may be more volatile and experience decreases.

We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of (a) the end of the fiscal year (i) following the fifth anniversary of the closing of our IPO, (ii) in which the market value of our common stock that is held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million and (iii) in which we have total annual gross revenues of $1.07 billion or more during such fiscal year, and (b) the date on which we issue more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt in a three-year period.

We have previously identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. If additional material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting are discovered or occur in the future, our consolidated financial statements may contain material misstatements and we could be required to restate our financial results, which could adversely affect our stock price and result in an inability to maintain compliance with applicable stock exchange listing requirements.

We previously concluded that there were matters that constituted material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting that have since been remediated. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected and corrected on a timely basis. The material weaknesses related to a lack of (i) controls designed to reconcile tests performed and recognized as revenue to billed tests and (ii) appropriately designed or effectively operating controls over the proper recording of accounts payable and accrued liabilities.

If additional material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting are discovered or occur in the future, our consolidated financial statements may contain material misstatements and we could be required to restate our financial results. If we are unable to successfully remediate any material weaknesses in our internal controls or if we are unable to produce accurate and timely financial statements, our stock price may be adversely affected, and we may be unable to maintain compliance with applicable stock exchange listing requirements.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If few securities analysts provide coverage of us, or if industry analysts cease coverage of us, the trading price and volume for our common stock could be adversely affected. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our common stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our common stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which might cause our common stock price and trading volume to decline.

Provisions in our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws and Delaware law might discourage, delay or prevent a change in control of our company or changes in our management and, therefore, depress the market price of our common stock.

Our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws contain provisions that could depress the market price of our common stock by acting to discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control of our company or changes in our management that the stockholders of our company may deem advantageous. These provisions, among other things:

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In addition, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control of our company. Section 203 imposes certain restrictions on mergers, business combinations and other transactions between us and holders of 15% or more of our common stock.

Our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be the exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.

Our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the sole and exclusive forum, to the fullest extent permitted by law, for (1) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, (2) any action asserting a breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any director, officer or other employee to us or our stockholders, (3) any action asserting a claim against us or any director, officer or other employee arising pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law, (4) any action to interpret, apply, enforce or determine the validity of our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated bylaws, or (5) any other action asserting a claim that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine, shall be the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (or another state court or the federal court located within the State of Delaware if the Court of Chancery does not have or declines to accept jurisdiction), in all cases subject to the court’s having jurisdiction over indispensable parties named as defendants. In addition, our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the federal district courts of the United States will be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act but that the forum selection provision will not apply to claims brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Although we believe these provisions benefit us by providing increased consistency in the application of Delaware law for the specified types of actions and proceedings, the provisions may have the effect of discouraging lawsuits against us or our directors and officers. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our eighth amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results. For example, under the Securities Act, federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction over all suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act, and investors cannot waive compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in our shares of capital stock shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to this exclusive forum provision, but will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.