Adaptive Biotechnologies grew Q2 2026 revenue 22% to $71.6M on 43% higher clonoSEQ test volume, but a $23.7M non-cash charge from paying off its OrbiMed financing widened the net loss to $39.8M ($0.25 per share).
Revenue
$72M
+21.5% YoY
Net income
-$40M
-55.3% YoY
Diluted EPS
$-0.25
-47.1% YoY
Operating margin
-22.0%
This period vs a year ago
Same period last year
This period
Revenue▲+21.5%
≈$59M
$72M
Year-ago figures (≈) are worked out from the growth rate the company reported. Each row has its own scale.
Overview
Adaptive Biotechnologies' second quarter of 2026 (three months to June 30, filed on Form 10-Q on August 4, 2026) comes down to one contrast. The underlying business improved sharply: revenue rose 22% to $71.6 million and the operating loss shrank from $25.0 million to $15.8 million. The bottom line got worse: the net loss attributable to shareholders widened to $39.8 million from $25.6 million. The whole gap is one accounting charge. Adaptive raised $345 million in convertible notes in June and used $156.9 million of it to pay off, early, a 2022 royalty-style financing deal with OrbiMed. The early payoff produced a $23.7 million non-cash loss. Without it, the company says the net loss would have been $16.2 million.
The growth comes almost entirely from clonoSEQ, Adaptive's test for MRD, or measurable residual disease: a blood or bone-marrow test that looks for the tiny number of cancer cells left after treatment in blood cancers such as multiple myeloma and some leukemias and lymphomas. Doctors use it to judge whether a treatment is working and whether the cancer is coming back. The MRD business was 92% of revenue this quarter.
At a glance
36,111 clonoSEQ tests delivered, up 43% from 25,321 a year earlier. More doctors are ordering the test, which is what drives the revenue line.
MRD revenue of $66.2 million, up 33%, with no one-time milestone in it. A year ago, $5.5 million of MRD revenue came from one-time drug-approval milestone payments. This quarter had none, so the underlying testing business grew 49%.
$371.7 million in cash and investments, up from $240.2 million at the end of 2025, after the note offering. Cash used by operations in the first half fell to $15.9 million from $40.9 million a year earlier.
Key metrics
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Total revenue
$71.6M
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$58.9M
+21.5%
MRD revenue
$66.2M
$49.9M
+32.5%
Immune Medicine revenue
$5.4M
$8.9M
−39.8%
clonoSEQ tests delivered
36,111
25,321
+42.6%
Operating loss
−$15.8M
−$25.0M
loss narrowed 37.0%
Operating margin
−22.0%
−42.5%
+20.5 pts
Net loss attributable to Adaptive
−$39.8M
−$25.6M
−55.3% (loss widened)
Net loss per share (basic and diluted)
−$0.25
−$0.17
−47.1% (loss widened)
Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP)
−$0.7M
−$7.2M
loss narrowed $6.5M
MRD segment adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP)
$9.1M
$1.9M
+377%
Operating margin is the operating loss divided by revenue: the share of each sales dollar lost running the business, before interest and one-off financing items. Adjusted EBITDA is the company's own profit measure that strips out interest, depreciation, stock-based pay, restructuring and the debt-payoff loss.
What drove the quarter
MRD: clinical testing did the heavy lifting. The filing breaks the $16.2 million MRD revenue increase into three parts:
+$17.0 million from clonoSEQ reports for doctors and their patients.
+$4.5 million from MRD testing for drug companies, which use clonoSEQ in their clinical trials.
−$5.5 million because a year ago Adaptive received regulatory milestone payments, which drug-company partners pay when a drug that used clonoSEQ in its trials wins approval. There were none this quarter.
That makes the headline 33% growth rate understate the core business. MRD service revenue, which excludes milestones, rose 49% to $66.2 million from $44.4 million. It was also up about 14% from the first quarter's $58.1 million, so the growth is not only a comparison against a weak prior year. Revenue grew faster than test volume (49% vs. 43%), which fits with the higher Medicare payment rate clonoSEQ received in late 2024 ($8,029 per course of treatment, 17% above the previous rate) and a larger drug-company testing business.
Immune Medicine: shrinking by design. This segment sells immune-system sequencing, data licensing and drug-target discovery work. Its revenue fell 40% to $5.4 million. The main reason is that a collaboration with Genentech ended in August 2025, which removed $3.9 million of revenue compared with a year ago. Without Genentech, the segment grew 8%. In July 2026 Adaptive decided to wind down Adaptive Immunosequencing, its research-only sequencing service for drug companies, over the second half of 2026. The filing says it expects Immune Medicine revenue "to decrease in the short term" as a result. In June the company also announced it intends to separate Immune Medicine from MRD and to choose how by year-end 2026.
Costs: R&D down, selling and overhead up. Total operating expenses rose only 4%, to $87.3 million, while revenue rose 22%. That gap is where the margin improvement came from.
R&D fell 21% to $19.2 million, mainly from $2.2 million lower personnel costs, $1.9 million lower depreciation and $1.3 million less spent on lab materials, "driven primarily by decreased investments in drug discovery and clonoSEQ efforts."
Sales and marketing rose 12% to $26.4 million, mainly from $1.3 million more in personnel costs.
General and administrative costs rose 19% to $21.2 million, including $1.3 million more in legal expenses and $0.8 million more in third-party billing fees.
Cost of revenue rose 12% to $20.2 million while revenue grew 22%. It fell to 28% of revenue from 31%, so each test got cheaper to run as volume grew.
What the headline numbers hide
The net loss is distorted by a one-off, in the unfavourable direction. The $23.7 million loss from paying off the OrbiMed deal early is an accounting charge, not cash lost in operations. Take it out and the loss narrowed to about $16.2 million, from $25.6 million. The reason to pay off the deal was that OrbiMed was owed a percentage of all of Adaptive's revenue. As clonoSEQ grows, that claim would have become more expensive. It has been replaced by notes that pay 0% interest.
The year-ago quarter was flattered by revenue that won't come back. Q2 2025 included $3.9 million from Genentech and $5.5 million in milestones. Excluding both (our calculation from the filing's figures), revenue grew about 45%, not 22%. The flip side: milestones are lumpy. There was $9.0 million in the first quarter of 2026 and none in the second, so quarter-to-quarter MRD revenue can swing.
"Almost breakeven" on adjusted EBITDA excludes stock pay. Adjusted EBITDA was −$0.7 million, but it leaves out $11.1 million of stock-based compensation (about 16% of revenue) and $3.7 million of depreciation. Stock-based pay is a real cost to shareholders because it increases the share count. The weighted-average share count rose 5% year on year to 159.9 million.
Cash burn is well below the reported loss, and falling. For the first half, operating activities used $15.9 million of cash, against a $59.8 million net loss. The gap is mostly the non-cash payoff loss and stock pay. The filing attributes the improvement from $40.9 million a year earlier mainly to "an increase in customer collections."
Receivables are not piling up. Accounts receivable, money billed but not yet collected, fell slightly to $49.5 million from $50.4 million at year-end, even as revenue grew. So revenue is turning into cash. Deferred revenue, cash received up front for work not yet done, rose to $53.3 million from $45.2 million.
The balance sheet is stronger in cash but now carries more debt. Of the $345 million raised, $10.2 million went on issuance costs, $25.6 million on a "capped call" (a hedge meant to limit the share dilution if the notes convert into stock), $156.9 million on the OrbiMed payoff and $25.0 million on buying back 1,451,800 shares. The company netted $128.0 million. The notes pay no interest and mature in July 2031. They are carried at $334.9 million, against $126.6 million owed to OrbiMed at year-end. Shareholders' equity fell to $150.7 million from $225.0 million, mostly because of the payoff loss and the capped-call and buyback costs.
Guidance went up again. Adaptive raised its full-year MRD revenue guidance for the second time this year: from $255–265 million to $260–270 million with Q1 results, and now to $268–278 million.
Takeaway: The −$0.25 loss per share looks like a worse quarter, but it isn't. The loss came from a one-time, non-cash charge for replacing an expensive revenue-linked financing with 0% notes. Underneath, clonoSEQ volume grew 43%, MRD service revenue grew 49% and MRD became solidly profitable on the company's measure ($9.1 million segment adjusted EBITDA). The investment question is now mostly about clonoSEQ, especially once Immune Medicine is separated.
Outlook
Management's guidance (from the July 29, 2026 earnings release):
MRD revenue: $268–278 million for full-year 2026, implying 26–31% growth, up from $260–270 million.
Total operating expenses, including cost of revenue: $350–355 million, narrowed from $350–360 million.
No revenue guidance for Immune Medicine.
Our read: The MRD guidance looks conservative. First-half MRD revenue was $133.3 million, so the new range implies $135–145 million in the second half, or roughly $67–72 million a quarter. MRD service revenue alone was $66.2 million in Q2 and has been rising, so hitting the range doesn't require new milestones. Any milestones would add to it. The expense guidance points the other way: first-half operating expenses were $177.4 million, so the full-year range implies $173–178 million in the second half. That is roughly flat on the first half, so improvement over the rest of the year depends on revenue growth, not cost cuts.
Things to watch in the third-quarter report:
Whether clonoSEQ volume growth stays near 40% without help from milestones.
How quickly Immune Medicine revenue falls as the sequencing service winds down, and what the wind-down costs.
Any detail on how the Immune Medicine separation will be done (spin-off, sale or partnership), which the company plans to choose by year-end 2026.
The business still lost money at the operating level, but with $371.7 million in cash and investments, first-half cash burn of $15.9 million and debt that carries no interest and does not mature until 2031, Adaptive has a long runway. The filing says its cash will fund operations "through at least the next 12 months."