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COVID-19 Testing Drives 80 Percent Growth in GenMark Diagnostics Preliminary Q1 Revenues

NEW YORK – GenMark Diagnostics said after the close of the market on Tuesday that it expects to report total revenues of $38.7 million for the first quarter of 2020, up 80 percent from $21.5 million in Q1 2019.

For the quarter ended March 31, the Carlsbad, California firm said it expects ePlex molecular diagnostic test revenues of approximately $34.3 million, up around 119 percent year over year. Average annuity per analyzer is anticipated to be approximately $214,000, a 29 increase over Q1 2019.

Testing for COVID-19 positively impacted the firm's first quarter placements and revenues, GenMark said. Approximately 80 percent of gross placements were associated with interest in COVID-19 testing, and SARS-CoV-2 consumable revenues accounted for approximately 5 percent of total ePlex revenues.

Scott Mendel, GenMark's interim president and CEO, said in a statement that its sample-to-answer test enables healthcare providers to determine if a patient has COVID-19 in less than two hours. The company continues "to work at maximum capacity to provide our ePlex SARS-CoV-2 test and Respiratory Pathogen panel," he said.

GenMark said during Q1 it had net new placements for 54 ePlex analyzers and ended the quarter with a global installed base of more than 580 ePlex analyzers, an increase of 48 percent year over year.

Mendel said the company "opportunistically repositioned 55 ePlex analyzers to provide COVID-19 testing capacity across as many customer sites as possible." The repositioning strategy allowed GenMark to expand into new customer sites, he said.

The firm noted it recently received US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization for its ePlex SARS-CoV-2 Test and was awarded $749,000 by the US Department of Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to develop an ePlex RPv2 Panel that includes SARS-CoV-2.

The company said it expects revenue for full-year 2020 in the range of $112 million to $122 million, which represents year-over-year growth of 27 percent to 39 percent. It had previously guided to revenues in the range of $100 million to $110 million for 2020.

GenMark said it plans to provide additional full-year financial guidance updates on its quarterly earnings call in early May.

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