CeriBell (NASDAQ:CBLL) executives outlined the company’s 2026 priorities and growth drivers during a fireside chat at the 46th annual TD Cowen Healthcare Conference, emphasizing continued expansion in hospital adoption, upcoming pediatric and neonatal offerings, early plans for a delirium commercialization pilot, and efforts to maintain strong gross margins amid shifting tariff dynamics.
Co-Founder and CEO Jane Chao said the company’s approach to guidance is shaped by an emphasis on setting targets and meeting them. CFO Scott Blumberg added that the company builds “a healthy but reasonable amount of conservatism” into its outlook. Management reiterated its 2026 top-line growth guidance range of 25% to 29%, while noting multiple potential accelerators that could drive results toward the high end of the range or above it.
Blumberg pointed to several operating metrics to frame the runway ahead, including that the company is currently in about 11% of U.S. hospitals and is roughly 30% penetrated within those accounts. He also said the company has repeated the account acquisition process “647 times,” describing that as a foundation for scaling further execution.
Management highlighted the expected benefit from prior commercial investments. Blumberg said the company expanded its account acquisition salesforce from roughly 35 territories to about 55 over the second half of 2024 through the first three quarters of 2025. With a sales cycle that can take about a year for new hires to become productive, he said those territory managers are now beginning to “turn on,” and the company expects to close more accounts in 2026 than in 2025.
On the utilization side, Chao described a more systematic approach to departmental expansion inside existing customer hospitals. She said the company often enters with one ICU and, over time, expands into multiple ICUs, step-down units, and the emergency department. She noted that 2025 was the first year the company began tracking and managing departmental expansion as a pipeline process similar to new account acquisition.
Chao also emphasized “bread and butter” utilization initiatives focused on physician engagement and training, especially given staff turnover and the need to ensure clinicians are trained for after-hours coverage. She added that some of the company’s highest-using accounts become top users immediately after launch, which she attributed to improved launch execution and sales compensation tied to launch quality.
Blumberg said the company is also building a regional health system function to complement territory-level selling by engaging system leadership and expanding from early “foot in the door” wins across more hospitals within large systems.
Chao said pediatric and neonatal monitoring would expand the company’s U.S. total addressable market by roughly $400 million, which she characterized as about a 20% increase compared with the adult opportunity. She said neonatal opportunity is the larger portion of that figure and is focused on higher-acuity NICUs, estimating about 800 such NICUs in the U.S.
Chao said roughly 200 of those NICUs are already within existing Ceribell customer accounts, which she described as a nearer-term opportunity, albeit one requiring contracting and committee processes because the company charges for its Clarity offering for neonates and uses a different neonate headcap device. She said onboarding includes committee review and contracting work followed by training and launch activities that can take additional months. She also identified 600 NICUs at hospitals where the company does not currently have accounts, which could both add new departments to existing sales cycles and introduce new influential stakeholders such as NICU medical directors.
For pediatrics, Chao described the larger opportunity as being in the emergency department rather than the ICU setting. She framed it as a patient population expansion that may face fewer acquisition barriers for hospitals already using the system in the ED. Chao said seizures are the number one neurological reason for pediatric ED visits, and that hospitals currently lack EEG capability for pediatric patients in the ED, creating an unmet need.
Management said the neonatal and pediatric launches are expected to be more meaningful in 2027 than in 2026. Blumberg said the company’s goal is for the offering to be ready to be a “big contributor” in 2027, and that any pull-forward into the back half of 2026 would represent upside not contemplated in guidance.
Chao said the company obtained FedRAMP High clearance, enabling access to the Veterans Affairs (VA) system. She said Ceribell completed a pilot with VA last year, and that a “pretty significant cohort” of VA accounts was committed under the VA’s 2025 budget. The company is in the process of launching those accounts, with the majority expected to go live in the first half of the year.
Looking ahead, Chao said Ceribell is working with the VA on timing and size of a second cohort tied to the VA’s 2026 budget, with some accounts potentially launching later in the year and many likely launching in the first half of the following year.
On utilization, she said it was too early to draw conclusions due to limited early data, and noted two factors that could push VA utilization in different directions:
Potential headwind: the initial VA launch is focused on the ICU and not the ED, and VA EDs may have lower volume and acuity since veterans with emergencies may go to the closest civilian ED.
Potential tailwind: VA facilities may have weaker conventional EEG capability than civilian hospitals, which could increase the opportunity for Ceribell.
Blumberg said Ceribell’s gross margin ran at about 88% through 2025 before declining to 87% in Q4, which he attributed to partial-quarter tariff impacts under the structure in place prior to a Supreme Court decision (which he characterized as potential upside if policies become less punitive). For 2026, he said the company guided gross margin to remain in the mid-80% range.
He cited two main supply chain and manufacturing actions taken in 2025:
The company rapidly established manufacturing in Vietnam, which was materially lower cost than China under the earlier tariff structure and also added geographic diversity.
The company implemented manufacturing efficiency improvements that permanently lowered costs, which Blumberg said also reduces the tariff base and creates a compounding benefit.
During the discussion, management also described plans for a commercial pilot for delirium beginning in Q2, with a potential broader launch in Q4 or early next year depending in part on pricing strategy and adoption dynamics. Chao said initial reactions from pilot discussions have been strong, while emphasizing that it remains early and that financial impact is not yet quantifiable from the information shared.
On legal matters, the executives offered limited commentary regarding the USITC process, noting a preliminary timeline for November 19 and a final decision timeline around March, subject to potential changes such as a government shutdown.
CeriBell Corp (NASDAQ: CBLL) is a healthcare technology company specializing in the design, manufacture and sale of automated newborn hearing screening devices. The company offers a suite of medical diagnostic tools based on otoacoustic emissions (OAE) and auditory brainstem response (ABR) technologies, enabling early detection of auditory impairments in infants. CeriBell’s solutions are used in hospitals, birthing centers and audiology clinics to support universal newborn hearing screening programs aimed at improving language development outcomes through prompt intervention.
The company’s product portfolio includes handheld and desktop screening units, proprietary software for data management, and accessories designed to streamline testing workflows.
