SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 29 – Qiagen on Monday reported a 14 percent drop in operating profits, which it said was a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
The company saw a “significant rebound in sales beginning in early October” and expects continued strong growth in its sector, it said in a statement.
Earnings before interest and tax fell to $10.1 million from $11.8 million recorded in the same period one year ago, and net profit dipped to $6.2 million from $7.2 million, Qiagen said.
The company, based in Venlo, the Netherlands, said sales rose 16 percent to $63.3 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30 while earnings per share fell from five cents to four cents.
“The abrupt decrease in shipments and orders in terms of revenues in the very important second half of September was significant,” Metin Colpan, Qiagen’s CEO, said in the statement. “As expected we also saw a recovery in the weeks following this decrease.”
“As evidenced by many indicators, our markets continue to experience strong growth,” Colpan added. “We believe that public and private research markets increased their planned growth of expenditures and emerging commercial markets for our products in genomics, diagnostics, and gene therapy markets will continue to increase in size.”
In addition to issuing its third quarter earnings on Monday, Qiagen announced two new alliances. The company entered into a magnetic polymer technology development, supply, and marketing agreement with Warrington, Penn.-based Polysciences, and a nucleic acid separation and purification products development deal with East Hills, NY-based Pall Corporation.
In the deal with Polysciences, Qiagen plans to produce nucleic acid and protein separation and purification products by the second quarter of 2002, according to the company. The agreement provides Polysciences with approximately $800,000 in cash and about 52,000 shares of Qiagen restricted common stock in exchange for transfer of assets that were not disclosed by the companies.
In the Pall alliance, Qiagen announced it would combine its technologies with Pall’s filtration systems for medium, high, and ultra-high throughput separation and purification of nucleic acids. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.