This article has been updated to include comments from a conference call and a stock quote.
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Ilumina reported a 69 percent increase in first-quarter revenues year over year while swinging back to a profit compared to a loss in last year’s Q1.
The San Diego-based firm reported revenues of $121.9 million compared with $72.2 million in the first quarter of 2007.
“Sequencing instrumentation and genotyping consumables contributed about equally to both year-over-year and sequential product revenue growth,” said CFO Christian Henry during the firm’s conference call on Tuesday.
Illumina brought in consumables revenue of $63.2 million during the first quarter compared to $38.8 million in the first quarter of 2007. Instrument revenue for the quarter was $44.5 million compared to $19.6 million in the first quarter of 2007, driven partially by the introduction of the firm’s Genome Analyzer II.
Its service and “other” revenue increased slightly year over year to $11.2 million from $10.9 million.
“Our feeling is our technologies, in both the sequencing and array businesses, continue to have enormous headroom to get better in terms of density, in terms of overall throughput, [and] continuing to reduce cost,” said Illumina President and CEO Jay Flatley during the call. “We’re a long way from feeling like we are technology limited or bounded.”
He added that “the demand for sequencing is going to be insatiable as far out as we can see, and certainly it’s going to be a highly elastic market.”
Illumina posted net income of $13.4 million, or $.21 per share, compared with a net loss of $298.1 million, or $5.58 per share, for the first quarter of 2007. Last year’s results included a non-cash charge related to its $600 million acquisition of Solexa.
The firm’s R&D expenses climbed 28.8 percent to $20.6 million from $16 million, while its SG&A costs rose 43.2 percent to $33.8 million from $23.6 million.
Illumina finished the quarter with $118.6 million in cash and cash equivalents.
The company expects to report fiscal 2008 revenue of between $515 million and $535 million. For the second quarter, it forecast revenues of $127 million to $132 million with earnings per share of $.37 to $.40.
Shares of Illumina were up 10.4 percent at $80.01 in Wednesday morning trade on the Nasdaq.