NEW YORK, Oct. 21 (GenomeWeb News) - Thermo Electron today reported a slight increase in revenues for its Life and Laboratory Sciences business unit amid an overall decrease in revenues, lowered R&D spending, and an increase in net income.
Thermo Electron's Life and Laboratory Sciences revenue was $301.5 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2003, compared to $300.0 million in the year-ago period. The company's total revenues, including its Measurement and Control and Optical Technologies business units, was $497.1 million for the third quarter of 2003, compared to $517.2 million in the third quarter of 2002.
In the life science market segment, "ongoing weakness in industrial markets for instrumentation and scientific equipment was offset in part by higher sales of clinical diagnostics and laboratory informatics products during the quarter," the company said in a statement.
The company said that it is seeing "strong orders" for the Finnigan LTQ-FT Fourier-transform mass spectrometer it introduced earlier this year.
Thermo Electron reported a decrease in adjusted R&D spending year-over-year for all of its business units, from $37.5 million in the third quarter of 2003 to $34.9 million in the third quarter of 2003.
The company's adjusted net income was $44.4 million for the quarter, compared to $42.7 in the same period of 2002.
As of Sept. 27, 2003,Thermo Electron had $207.5 million in cash and cash equivalents.