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Co-Diagnostics Net Loss Widens in First Quarter as Public Company

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – After completing its first quarter as a public company, Salt Lake City, Utah-based Co-Diagnostics on Wednesday reported Q3 revenues of $2,598 compared to no revenue in the prior-year quarter.

For the three-month period ended Sept. 30, the firm's net loss grew to $3.9 million, or $.33 per share, from a loss of $449,950, or $.05 per share, in Q3 2016.

The firm's R&D expenses for the quarter rose 58 percent to $272,209 from $172,804 in Q3 2016, while SG&A expenses grew sevenfold to $1.5 million from $212,253.

The company noted that in Q3, it broke ground on a manufacturing facility in India and that the Food & Drug Control Administration in Gujarat State has approved a three-year license for the manufacturing of six tests for diagnosing the Zika virus and tuberculosis. The company said that it expects that tests for drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, dengue, and chikungunya will follow.

Co-Diagnostics said that in the quarter, it introduced products in several key markets in the Caribbean.

The firm said that it continued to do research into applying its intellectual property in multiplexed molecular diagnostic testing, and that its ability to multiplex DNA targets and perform SNP detection has important ramifications for the firm's future growth in the agricultural market, liquid biopsy for cancer detection, and blood-bank screening.

Co-Diagnostics CEO Dwight Egan said in a statement that the firm is experiencing "a strong commercial launch" of its CODX Molecular Diagnostics System, not yet reflected in its reported revenues.

"To date, the combined populations of the countries in which we have placed systems represent over 50 percent of the population of the Caribbean Basin. Most of these systems are in prominent reference laboratories that service their respective populations in a hub-and-spoke business model where a single lab collects patient samples from multiple collection points."

He noted that the firm expects to have systems placed "in a majority of the Caribbean countries" by the end of Q1 2018. The firm also expects to ship tests to participating labs during Q4 2017 and Q1 2018 that include assays for the Zika virus, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, hepatitis B, HIV, and malaria.

During Q4 2017, the company expects to deliver its first shipment of tests under an agreement with Medcis Pathlabs in India, Egan said.

He noted that the firm's management believes support in India for its technology and products "is broad-based with qualified prospects coming from across all market segments," including large centralized labs, mid-size private labs, and government facilities.

Egan said that during Q3 2017, Co-Diagnostics "devoted a substantial amount of effort in developing multiplex test opportunities for the agricultural market."

In early afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Co-Diagnostics were up more than 2 percent to $5.28.