NEW YORK – Genetron Health reported on Monday morning a 20 percent year-over-year increase in its fiscal first quarter revenues, driven by continued growth in its LDT business.
For the three months ended March 31, the Beijing-based company's revenues increased to RMB 92.1 million (US$14.1 million) from RMB 76.8 million a year ago, falling slightly short of analysts' consensus estimate of US$14.2 million.
Excluding RMB 16.6 million in revenues from the firm's SARS-CoV-2 test, Q1 revenues from Genetron's core oncology business grew 53 percent year over year, the firm said.
Diagnosis and monitoring revenues increased by 30 percent to RMB 87.1 million from RMB 66.8 million in the same period of 2020. The increase was driven by the growth in revenues generated by LDT testing, particularly in early screening.
Genetron's Q1 LDT test revenues grew 51 percent to RMB 71.8 million from RMB 47.6 million, driven by HCCscreen, the company’s liquid-biopsy early screening product for hepatocellular carcinoma. The company sold approximately 5,100 LDT units during the quarter, about 30 percent more than in the prior year's quarter.
The firm's first quarter 2021 IVD sales were RMB 15.3 million, a decrease of about 21 percent compared to RMB 19.2 million in Q1 2020.
Genetron's development services revenues decreased by 51 percent to RMB 5.0 million from RMB 10.1 million in the same period last year. The firm attributed this to a drop in sequencing services, reflecting the continued adjustment of its business strategy toward biopharmaceutical services.
"We're pleased with the results, given the backdrop of a challenging operating environment coupled with seasonality resulting from the Chinese New Year holiday in February," Genetron CEO Sizhen Wang said during a call discussing the firm's results.
"As we mentioned on our last call, in late December and January there was notable COVID resurgence in China, particularly in northern parts of the country. As Northern China is our key market … we were impacted by these issues throughout the first two months of the quarter, [but] since March we are starting to see some volume stabilization and we're optimistic that trend will be more normalized in the coming months," Wang added.
Among recent milestones, Wang highlighted the company's recently announced deal with JD Health under which the two firms are launching a series of marketing and educational activities for HCCscreen. According to Wang, this could lead to a new digital health market for the assay. He also mentioned Genetron's new partnership with Siemens Healthineers aimed at broadening the use of its S5 sequencing platform and eight-gene lung cancer IVD assay in Chinese hospitals.
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Wang said the company is eagerly anticipating the start of registrational trials for both its HCCscreen and Onco Panscan assays, as well as the LDT launch of its Seq-MRD product.
Genetron's Q1 loss was RMB 115 million, or RMB .25 per share, compared to a loss of RMB 115.5 million, or RMB .92 per share, a year ago. Loss attributable to ordinary shareholders and not in line with International Financial Reporting Standards was RMB .23 a share in the recently completed quarter compared to a loss of RMB .52 a year ago.
The firm's research and development spending increased nearly 81 percent to RMB 50.0 million from RMB 27.6 million a year ago, while SG&A costs rose about 38 percent, to RMB 104.3 million from RMB 75.4 million.
The company finished the quarter with cash and cash equivalents totaling RMB 1.07 billion.
Assuming no further major COVID-19-related disruptions, Genetron reiterated its 2021 guidance of full-year revenue totaling approximately RMB 615 million to RMB 625 million.