NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — German diagnostics firm Curetis today posted a 45 percent increase in its first quarter revenues.
For the three-month period ended March 31, Curetis' revenues climbed to €708,000 ($791,207) from €490,000 the year before. The total installed base of its Unyvero sample-to-answer molecular diagnostics system increased to 172 during the quarter from 167 at the end of 2018, with 15 of the US Food and Drug Administration-cleared systems being placed in labs and hospitals across the US.
Curetis reported a Q1 net loss of €4.7 million, or €.22 per share, down from a loss of €5.7 million, or €.37 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
R&D spending in the quarter declined slightly to €2.0 million from €2.2 million. Meanwhile, administrative costs dropped to €860,000 from €1.0 million and distribution costs fell to €1.7 million from €2.0 million year over year, reflecting a recent reorganization that included a 30 percent reduction in its workforce.
At the end of March, Curetis had cash and cash equivalents totaling €6.2 million.
Looking ahead, Curetis said that it expects to begin generating revenues from the Chinese market in 2020 if it receives regulatory approval of the Unyvero system and a related pneumonia assay, which were submitted to the Chinese National Medical Products Administration earlier this year.
The company also anticipates rolling out its Unyvero A30 RQ mid-plex system for verification and validation testing by licensing partners, as well as submitting its Unyvero lower respiratory tract (LRT) infection test for use with bronchoalveolar lavage to the FDA, later this year. A Unyvero LRT assay for use with tracheal aspirates was cleared in the US last year.
Curetis added that its Ares Genetics subsidiary — which licensed its bioinformatics tools for antimicrobial resistance research to Qiagen in February — is on track to launch a next-generation sequencing lab service mid-year.