NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Evogene today reported that its first-quarter revenues increased nearly 13 year over year, and its loss nearly tripled from the same period a year ago.
The Rehovot, Israel-based firm reported total revenues of $2.7 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2010, compared to $2.4 million for the first quarter of 2009.
Evogene posted a net loss of $3.7 million, or $.14 per share, compared to a net loss of $1.4 million, or $.06 per share, for the 2009 first quarter.
During the quarter the firm had $3.6 million in financial expenses due to revaluation for accounting purposes of the publicly traded options issued in its 2007 initial public offering.
Evogene's R&D expenses swelled to $939,000 from $340,000 million year over year, while its business development expenses rose to $200,000 from $144,000, and its general and administrative spending increased to $417,000 from $271,000.
Increased R&D expenses were primarily due to the expansion of internal projects, particularly the development to new core computational technologies and staff increases to handle those projects.
Evogene President and CEO Ofer Haviv said in a statement that the R&D enhancements over the quarter included new computational techniques and tools being developed for the Athlete core technology for gene discovery, for the RePack technology for predicting biological regulatory features of genes, and for the EvoBreed technology for accelerating the breeding process.
The firm finished the quarter with $37.8 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term bank deposits, and marketable securities.