NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Bruker reported after the close of the market on Thursday that its fourth quarter revenues declined 8 percent year over year as currency effects negatively impacted revenues by more than 6 percent.
For the three months ended Dec. 31, 2014, the company reported revenues of $508 million, down from $552.1 million in Q4 2013. The results were short of the average analysts' estimate of $515.5 million.
Bruker said that in addition to the adverse effects from currency translation, acquisitions and divestitures reduced revenues in the recently completed quarter by 1 percent. Organic revenues were down by .5 percent year over year.
On a conference call following the release of the company's financial results, Bruker President and CEO Frank Laukien said that of the $44 million decline in revenues during the quarter from the year-ago period, $34 million was related to foreign exchange rates, while $8 million of the decline resulted from the divestiture of parts of its Chemical and Applied Markets division. He added that the divestiture of CAM is anticipated to be completed by the end of March.
For the quarter, Bruker recorded net income attributable to the company of $26.1 million, or $.15 per share, compared to a profit of $35.2 million, or $.21 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
On an adjusted basis, Bruker had EPS of $.30, just beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $.29.
The firm reduced its R&D costs by 15 percent year over year to 41.6 million from $49.1 million. Its SG&A costs were up a fraction of 1 percent to $118.5 million from $118.3 million.
For full-year 2014, Bruker had $1.81 billion in revenues compared to $1.84 billion in 2013, a 2 percent drop, and short of the consensus Wall Street estimate of $1.82 billion. Currency effects tamped down revenues by more than 1 percent, while acquisitions and divestitures increased revenues by a fraction of 1 percent. Organically, revenues fell by less 1 percent, the firm said.
On the call, Laukien said that the Bruker CALID Group — comprising CAM, Bruker Daltonics, Bruker Detection, and Bruker Optics — posted $554 million in revenues for the year. The Daltonics division was up organically in the low-single digits, buoyed by greater than 20 percent growth in the MALDI Biotyper instrument.
He called the performance of the system in the US "very good" and Bruker is working with the US Food and Drug Administration "to further expand the libraries available" for the technology.
Excluding the MALDI Biotyper contribution, the rest of Daltonics "declined a little bit" year over year, as the rest of the MALDI mass spectrometry business "has come down a little bit in recent years," Laukien said. MALDI technology is viewed as a complementary technology for proteomics research now, and while the firm recently introduced a new electrospray ionization Q-TOF platform, the Maxis II Q-TOF mass spec, it did not generate much in the way of revenues for 2014 since it was launched only in November, he said.
Bruker's profit for 2014 dropped to $56.7 million, or $.33 per share, from $80.1 million, or $.48 per share, in 2013. On a non-GAAP basis, Bruker had EPS of $.75. Wall Street had estimated EPS of $.74, on average. Currency translation reduced EPS in 2014 by $.08, Laukien said.
Its R&D costs were down 9 percent year over year to $174.2 million from $190.5 million, while its SG&A spending increased 3 percent to $451 million from $437.9 million.
Bruker exited 2014 with $319.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and $178 million in short-term investments.
Bruker CFO Charles Wagner said on the call that for 2015, organic revenues are anticipated to grow 1 percent year over year, while non-GAAP EPS is anticipated to be about flat with 2014. Currency translation is expected to reduce revenues by between 7 and 8 percent, he said.
In Friday morning trading on the Nasdaq, Bruker's shares were down more than 3 percent at $18.71.