Quanterix's 34% Revenue Growth Is Measured Against A Quarter That Did Not Contain Akoya
Quanterix Corporation (NASDAQ: QTRX) reported second-quarter revenue of $32.9 million on August 10, up 34% from $24.5 million in the same quarter of 2025. That growth rate is arithmetically correct and economically misleading, and the company said so itself. The prior-year quarter it is measured against contains none of the Akoya Biosciences business that Quanterix now owns, because the acquisition closed on July 8, 2025 — eight days after the June 30, 2025 quarter ended. The comparison is between a smaller company and a larger one, not between two versions of the same one.
To its credit, Quanterix did not leave the reader to work that out. On the earnings call, chief financial officer Jason Faessler put it plainly: 'When including pre-acquisition revenue from Akoya in Q2 2025, what I refer to as pro forma, total revenue declined year-over-year by 23%.' That figure is the like-for-like number, and it is the one worth carrying. Working backwards from it, $32.9 million divided by 0.77 implies a combined prior-year base of roughly $42.7 million, of which about $18.2 million would have been Akoya standalone. The company does not disclose Akoya's contribution to the current quarter, so the split between the legacy Simoa business and the acquired spatial business in Q2 2026 remains undisclosed. The 23% pro forma decline, however, is the company's own figure, not an inference.
There is a second layer to the comparability problem that the 34% headline hides. The base quarter was itself the weakest in recent memory. In its August 7, 2025 release, Quanterix reported Q2 2025 revenue of $24.5 million as 'a decrease of 29% compared to $34.4 million in the prior year.' So the current quarter's $32.9 million — with a full quarter of an acquired business inside it that generated roughly $82 million of revenue in its last full year as an independent company — still lands below what legacy Quanterix alone produced in the second quarter of 2024. Growth measured against a trough is not the same thing as recovery.
The geographic detail, which appears on the earnings call rather than in the press release, shows where the shortfall sat. Americas revenue was $18.1 million and, in management's words, 'down significantly, mostly reflecting commercial execution, but also continued softness in academic and government spending.' EMEA revenue of $10.3 million 'declined by mid-single digits on lower consumables pull-through.' APAC revenue was $4.5 million, which Faessler said was 'only down high single digits' once one factor was excluded: 'One factor in our year-over-year pro forma revenue decline was a 5% headwind driven by revenue pulled into Q2 2025, ahead of tariffs implemented last year.' Note the scope — as stated on the call, that 5% headwind is attributed to the overall pro forma decline, not to APAC alone. Either way, part of the year-over-year gap is a prior-period pull-forward rather than fresh demand loss. Those three regions sum to the reported $32.9 million. Academic and government revenue was $18.7 million, roughly 57% of the total, which is the concentration that matters given the funding backdrop.
In the same release, Quanterix wrote off the goodwill it had recorded on the acquisition. The sentence is short: 'Quanterix incurred a $26.9 million goodwill impairment related to the Akoya acquisition as required under GAAP accounting based on recent circumstances within the business.' Per the quarterly report, goodwill carried at $26.4 million on December 31, 2025 was written to zero at June 30, 2026. The $0.5 million difference between that year-end carrying value and the charge recorded is not itemised in the disclosures reviewed here, and this article does not speculate on it.
Readers should be able to redo the per-share effect themselves. Net loss for the quarter was $48.9 million against $30.0 million a year earlier, and loss per share was $(1.04) against $(0.77), on 47.2 million and 38.9 million weighted-average shares respectively. Divide the $26.9 million impairment by the 47.2 million weighted-average share count and you get $0.57 per share. Strip it out and the quarter's loss per share would have been roughly $(0.47), against the prior year's $(0.77) — which is to say the loss widened in headline terms while narrowing on the piece of it that recurs. Note also that the weighted-average share count rose by about 8.3 million year over year, closely tracking the roughly 7.8 million shares Quanterix issued for Akoya alongside approximately $20 million in cash.
This is the second Akoya-related charge in two quarters, though it needs reading carefully. In the May 6 first-quarter release, Quanterix recorded a $19.8 million line labelled 'Impairment and employee separation costs' and described as 'Impairment charges for an intangible asset related to the termination of a diagnostics development agreement assumed in the acquisition of Akoya, as well as one-time severance and related costs.' That line therefore combines a write-down with severance, and the release does not break the two apart, so it should not be read as $19.8 million of written-off carrying value. Add the June-quarter goodwill charge and the two quarters together carry $46.7 million of Akoya-related impairment and separation costs, against a deal whose consideration was approximately 7.8 million shares plus approximately $20 million of cash.
The guidance cut is the largest number in the release by economic weight. Quanterix now expects full-year 2026 revenue of $142 million to $148 million, 'which assumes no underlying improvement in the academic or pharmaceutical end markets, compared to its earlier expectation for annual revenues of $169-174 million.' The midpoint moves from $171.5 million to $145 million — a reduction of $26.5 million, or 15.5%. Non-GAAP gross margin guidance goes to 48-50% from 49-53%.
The implied second half is worth doing on paper. First-half revenue was $69.3 million ($36.4 million in Q1 plus $32.9 million in Q2). Subtract that from the new range and the back half is guided to $72.7 million to $78.7 million, midpoint $75.7 million; the old range had implied $99.7 million to $104.7 million, a midpoint of $102.2 million. Against the actual second half of 2025 — full-year 2025 revenue of $138.9 million less Q1 2025's $30.3 million and Q2 2025's $24.5 million, or $84.1 million — the new guidance implies a decline of 6.4% at the top end and 13.6% at the bottom. Crucially, the second half of 2025 already contained Akoya — the deal closed on July 8, so all but the first week of it — which makes this a close to like-for-like comparison: the company is guiding the combined business to shrink.
Liquidity moved with it. Quanterix ended the quarter with $96.9 million in cash, equivalents, marketable securities and restricted cash, of which $44.2 million was cash and cash equivalents per the quarterly report. The company now forecasts 'approximately $80 million for the 2026 year-end cash balance, compared to $100 million previously,' expects to end the year with no debt, and 'now anticipates achieving cash flow breakeven in 2027' — a target that in the March 2, 2026 full-year release had been 'the second half of 2026.' Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $10.0 million from $13.7 million, and the quarterly report references roughly $85 million of annualised cost synergies realised from the Akoya integration — stated as captured rather than targeted, and echoed on the call by chief executive Everett Cunningham, who said the company 'achieved the planned $85 million in annualized savings.' That is the likeliest mechanism by which a shrinking revenue line produced a smaller EBITDA loss.
Now the margin line, which at first glance reads like a contradiction. GAAP gross margin fell to 38.5% from 40.9%, down 240 basis points. Adjusted gross margin rose to 47.9% from 41.8% — up 610 basis points on the reported percentages, described as roughly 600 basis points on the call. Two measures of the same quarter's profitability moving in opposite directions is the kind of thing that deserves an explanation, and in this case the company supplies one.
The release carries a line-item reconciliation, and it resolves the inversion completely. GAAP gross profit of $12,674 thousand plus $203 thousand of 'purchase accounting impact on inventory and property and equipment' plus $2,886 thousand of 'amortization of acquired intangible assets' equals adjusted gross profit of $15,763 thousand. On $32.9 million of revenue, that $3,089 thousand of add-backs is 9.4 points of margin — precisely the distance from 38.5% to 47.9%. In the prior-year quarter the same reconciliation ran $10,001 thousand plus $234 thousand to $10,235 thousand, an add-back worth about 1.0 point. One rounding note, since the percentages are close enough to matter: on the rounded $24.5 million of prior-year revenue, $10,001 thousand computes to 40.8%, while the company states 40.9%, which is what the unrounded $24,476 thousand produces. The company's figure is the correct one; the discrepancy is rounding, not restatement. In other words, the add-back grew from one point of margin to nine, and almost all of that growth is amortisation of intangibles Quanterix booked when it bought Akoya. The GAAP line is absorbing purchase accounting; the adjusted line is not. That is what the two directions mean.
One further disclosure is needed to read the multi-year margin series honestly, and it is easy to miss. 'During the first quarter of 2026,' the release states, 'we changed our accounting policy for classifying shipping and handling costs for product sales and they are now recorded in cost of product revenue. Historically, these shipping and handling costs were recorded in selling, general and administrative expenses, and we calculated our non-GAAP financial measures by including these shipping and handling costs within cost of product revenue.' That change moves costs into GAAP cost of goods sold and structurally lowers GAAP gross margin, while leaving the non-GAAP measure untouched — the company says as much in that final clause. It also restated the comparative: Quanterix originally reported Q2 2025 GAAP gross margin of 46.2% on August 7, 2025, and the August 10, 2026 release shows the same quarter at 40.9% — 5.3 points lower. Consistent with that, adjusted gross margin for Q2 2025 is 41.8% in both releases, unchanged. The company's own guidance corroborates the effect: between the March 2 release and the May 6 release, GAAP gross margin guidance was cut from 45-49% to 41-45% while non-GAAP guidance held at 49-53%.
That matters because it disarms an easy narrative. Quanterix reported full-year GAAP gross margin of 60.5% for 2024 against 60.7% in 2023, so 2024 was not a one-off spike, and the apparent collapse from 60.5% to 38.5% is not a clean measure of business deterioration — a large part of it is a definitional break in Q1 2026 plus Akoya purchase accounting. The continuous series is the adjusted one, and it tells a milder but still negative story: adjusted gross margin was 54.6% in 2024, 47.3% in 2025, and 47.9% in the June quarter. What remains genuinely undisclosed is narrower than it first appears — chiefly the split of current-quarter revenue between the legacy and acquired businesses, and the reporting-unit detail behind the goodwill test. Quanterix stock closed Friday, August 14, 2026 at $2.59, down 9.44% on the day, per stockanalysis.com, a figure matched by WallStreetZen; the last close before the report was $4.03 on Friday, August 7, and the stock closed at $2.42 on August 10, down 39.95%. As of Saturday, August 15, the company's investor relations page showed no announcement dated after August 10, when it released results and separately named Jim Gute chief commercial officer.
