NEW YORK – Bionano Genomics reported a 39 percent decrease in first quarter revenues after the close of the market on Thursday.
"The decrease impacted all regions, largely driven by customers temporarily shutting down their lab operations in response to COVID-19 shelter-at-home orders," the firm said in a statement.
For the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Bionano reported $1.1 million in revenues, down from $1.9 million during the year-ago period and in line with preliminary revenues announced in May. Of total revenues, $ 983,000 were product revenues and $153,000 other revenues, compared to $1.7 million of product revenues and $165,000 of other revenues in Q1 2019.
On a conference call following the release of the results, CEO Erik Holmlin said the decrease was also attributable to the company's shift to a reagent lease model instead of upfront instrument purchases.
Holmlin noted that as of March 31, the Saphyr instrument installed base was 83, with 116 total shipments, and that France's Curie Institute, the UK's NHS Lothian, and Germany's MVZ Martinsried have begun using Saphyr for genome analysis. Moreover, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics will switch to Saphyr optical mapping to test patients for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, Bionano said.
"We are encouraged by the easing of many of the restrictions that were put in place globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic and are hopeful that the disruption to our business as a result of the pandemic will ease as well," Holmlin said in a statement. "We have focused on building customer awareness and demand for our Saphyr system and have seen many examples of our success, but the reality of the broad impact of COVID-19 on corporate capital expenditures has been sobering."
Holmlin noted that Bionano's platform was being used by several research groups to interrogate the role of structural variants in patients' response to COVID-19.
The company also noted that it recently received a new US patent covering the addition of a detector, potentially a nanopore, to its nanochannels.
Bionano's net loss for the quarter totaled $10.5 million, compared to $7.9 million for Q1 2019.
R&D expenses were $2.7 million, up 27 percent from $2.1 million in the year-ago quarter. SG&A expenses grew 54 percent to $7.4 million, up from $4.8 million in Q1 2019, attributable to hiring for the global sales and marketing teams as well as back-office support teams to assist with product distribution. Bionano also noted it recorded a bad debt expense of nearly $1.0 million.
As of March 31, Bionano had $8.1 million in cash and cash equivalents. Holmlin noted that in April the firm raised approximately $18 million in a public offering. Combined with cuts to executive salaries and money saved due to lack of travel, he said he expected that cash to be able to fund operations through the end of the year.
In morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Bionano were down 4 percent at $.50.