NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Beckman Coulter today said third-quarter revenues increased 6 percent as strong sales for its clinical diagnostics were offset by lower-than-expected sales for its life science products.
Total receipts for the three months ended Sept. 30 increased to $669 million from $631.2 million year over year.
The company said it saw an increase of 9.4 percent in clinical diagnostics, while life science products declined 8.6 percent.
Product-related revenue increased 6 percent to $560.5 million, while service-related revenue was up 9 percent to $108.5 million. Sales of consumables grew by 8.7 percent, the company said.
"Although we continued to experience strong demand for our industry-leading clinical systems, total revenue in the third quarter was lower than anticipated," CEO Scott Garrett said in a statement. He said the lower revenues were due to flagging academic funding and a "short-term supply disruption" for the company's cellular products.
That disruption left the company with around $10 million in cellular instrument backorders, Garrett said, adding that the company expects to "work down these backorders sufficiently in the fourth quarter to achieve our goals for the full year."
R&D spending fell to $59.9 million from $80.9 million in the third quarter of 2006. However, excluding $27.5 million attributed to its R&D spending in the third quarter of 2006, R&D spending was up 12.2 percent for the quarter.
The company said the increased R&D investment was caused by its programs to develop a "sample-to-result system for molecular diagnostics," for its UniCel DxN, which is scheduled for commercial launch in 2010.
Beckman Coulter’s net income increased to $60 million from $47.4 million in the year-ago period.
The firm finished the quarter with around $84.8 million in cash and cash equivalents.
The company said it expects 2007 revenue to grow between 7 percent and 9 percent year over year.