NEW YORK – Quanterix reported Tuesday morning that its fourth quarter revenues rose 16 percent year over year, driven by increased product sales.
For the period ended Dec. 31, 2021, the company posted revenues of $30.3 million, up from $26.1 million in Q4 2020, and beat the consensus Wall Street estimate of $28.5 million.
The firm's Q4 product revenues rose 49 percent to $23.5 million in 2021 from $15.7 million in Q4 2020. Service and other revenues rose 3 percent to $5.7 million from $5.5 million in the prior-year quarter. Collaboration and license revenue was $162,000, down 60 percent from $408,000 in Q4 2020, while development revenue was $975,000, down 78 percent from $4.5 million the year before.
On a conference call following the release of the Q4 results, Kevin Hrusovsky, Quanterix's chairman and CEO, announced that on April 25, company President Masoud Toloue will succeed him as CEO. Hrusovsky will move into a new role as executive chairman.
He characterized the leadership change as part of Quanterix's push into the diagnostics space, noting Toloue's past experience in that area. Toloue was most recently senior VP of diagnostics at PerkinElmer.
Hrusovsky also announced a new agreement with drugmaker Eli Lilly that gives Quanterix access to Lilly's antibody reagents for the Alzheimer's biomarker P-tau217 and extends its collaboration with the pharma firm across a variety of disease categories. Under the deal, Lilly will purchase $11 million worth of services through Quanterix's Accelerator Laboratory in 2022.
Quanterix hopes the Lilly deal "would spur on and catalyze similar relationships with other pharma customers," Hrusovsky said, adding that the company plans to offer the P-tau217 assay for research use only initially and eventually develop it as an in vitro diagnostic. The deal with Lilly allows Quanterix to offer the assay to other pharma companies and researchers, Hrusovsky said.
Lilly has used Quanterix's technology to measure P-tau217 in its Phase 2 TRAILBLAZER-ALZ study for its Alzheimer's drug donanemab.
Michael Doyle, Quanterix's CFO, said that customer activity has returned to pre-pandemic levels and that in Q4, the company "scrapped COVID-related inventory" it had built at the beginning of 2021.
The firm's Q4 net loss increased to $20.0 million from $9.8 million a year ago. The company did not provide a loss per share figure for Q4 2021 or Q4 2020.
Quanterix's R&D spending during the quarter was $7.7 million, up 24 percent from $6.2 million in the year-ago period. Its SG&A expenses rose 51 percent to $28.4 million from $18.8 million the year before.
For full-year 2021, Quanterix's revenues rose 28 percent to $110.6 million from $86.4 million in 2020 and beat the Wall Street consensus estimate of $106.8 million.
The firm's 2021 product revenues rose 84 percent to $81.1 million from $44.0 million in 2020. Service and other revenues fell 2 percent to $23.6 million from $24.1 million in the prior-year quarter. Collaboration and license revenue was $648,000, down 95 percent from $11.8 million in 2020, while development revenue was $5.2 million, down 19 percent from $6.4 million in Q4 of 2020.
Instrument installations grew 32 percent in 2021, to a total of 708.
Quanterix's net loss for full-year 2021 rose to $57.7 million from $31.5 million in 2020. It did not provide a loss per share figure for either year.
The firm's full-year R&D spending was up 39 percent to $28.0 million from $20.2 million in 2020. Its SG&A spending rose 55 percent to $92.3 million from $59.6 million the year before.
The company ended 2021 with $396.5 million in cash and cash equivalents.
Hrusovsky said Quanterix expects revenue growth of 22 percent in 2022.
In Tuesday morning trading on the Nasdaq, Quanterix shares were up 1 percent to $34.09.