NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Quanterix reported after the close of the market on Wednesday that its first quarter revenues were up 41 percent year over year.
The company posted Q1 revenues of $7.5 million, up from $5.3 million in Q1 2017 and above the consensus Wall Street estimate of $7.1 million.
Q1 product revenues rose 38 percent to $4.7 million in Q1 2018 from $3.4 million in Q1 2017, thanks largely to sales of consumables. Service and other revenues rose 52 percent to $2.5 million from $1.6 million in the prior-year first quarter.
"The first full quarter following the successful close of our initial public offering marked an important milestone in our transition as a public company, particularly as we continue our focus on growing revenues and transforming biomarker detection by enabling non-invasive, ultra-sensitive measurement of molecular biomarkers," Quanterix Chairman, CEO, and President Kevin Hrusovsky said in a statement. " We are pleased with our strong first quarter performance and enthusiastic about the market opportunity in front of us, particularly in research markets for improving drug development with biomarkers and pharma services in the short to mid-term and in diagnostics and precision health screens in the long term."
On a conference call following release of the earnings results, Hrusovsky cited the placement of 15 of the company's SR-X instruments along with strong consumables demand as key revenue drivers during the quarter.
Quanterix's pharma business grew 48 percent during the quarter while its academic business grew 33 percent. Hrusovsky said the company saw a shift towards more academic business with the Q1 release of the SR-X platform, which is a smaller, less expensive system than its Simoa HD-1 Analyzer. He estimated that roughly 60 percent of the SR-X placements have gone to academic customers versus around 40 percent to pharma.
He added that while sales of the SR-X have largely gone to North American customers so far, the company expects its Asia sales to "tick up" when it launches it in that region in Q2.
Quanterix also plans to expand the multiplexing capabilities of the SR-X to six-plex assays in Q2, Hrusovsky said.
On the services side, Hrusovsky highlighted the company's acquisition earlier this year of Aushon Biosystems, which he said had boosted this segment of its business by providing it a CLIA lab for running pharma services, enabling Quanterix to expand into this business more quickly than anticipated.
The firm's Q1 net loss widened to $7.2 million from $6.4 million a year ago. It didn't provide a loss per share figure.
Quanterix's R&D spending during the quarter was down 14 percent to $3.6 million from $4.3 million in Q1 2017. Its SG&A expenses, meanwhile, rose 61 percent to $6.7 million from $4.2 million the year before.
In Thursday morning trading on Nasdaq, Quanterix shares were down 1 percent to $18.77.