NEW YORK (360Dx) – Interpace Diagnostics reported after the close of the market on Monday that its first quarter revenues rose 25 percent year over year.
For the three months ended March 31, the firm reported revenues of $6.0 million, up from $4.8 million in the year-ago quarter, but missed the consensus Wall Street estimate of $6.3 million.
Interpace President and CEO Jack Stover said in a statement that the firm had a strong start to the year, driven in part by increasing sales volumes for its gastrointestinal PancraGen business and endocrine ThyGeNext/ThyraMir business.
On a conference call to discuss the firm's financial performance, Stover noted that its thyroid cancer assays, ThyGeNext and ThyraMir, generate about 60 percent of its net revenues, and the gastrointestinal assay, PancraGen, generates the rest.
He said that most of the reimbursement for its pancreatic cancer assay stems from coverage by US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Private payors primarily cover its thyroid cancer assays, which are available to more than 200 million covered lives now.
LabCorp, Stover said, is the firm's largest thyroid product customer, which provides "access to important payor groups."
He also noted that in Q1 the company finalized the validation of a third specimen type, FFPE, for use with its thyroid tests.
During the quarter, the journal BMJ Open Gastroenterology published clinical utility data about its lead pipeline product, BarreGen, which identifies patients who are likely to progress from Barrett's esophagus to more advanced stages of the disease associated with cancer.
Stover also said that the firm recently launched RespriDx, a diagnostic test that helps physicians differentiate between metastatic and newly formed lung cancer.
Among its Q1 highlights, the firm announced reimbursement expansion for its thyroid business with Medica in the Midwest to include 1.3 million covered lives; entered into an agreement with the University of Maryland Medical System to provide its molecular products to the UMMS network; and continued to transition more than 30 Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans it brought on for its thyroid products in 2018.
The Parsippany, New Jersey-based firm noted that it received College of American Pathology accreditation for its Pittsburgh and New Haven, Connecticut clinical laboratories, and received New York State regulatory approval of ThyraMir for formalin fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples.
The firm posted a net loss of $3.4 million, or $.10 per share, in the recently completed quarter, compared to a net loss of $3.2 million, or $.11 per share, in the year-ago period. It fell short of the consensus Wall Street estimate for a loss of $.06 per share.
Interpace's R&D spending rose 5 percent year over year to $528,000 from $501,000 in Q1 2018, while its SG&A costs grew 26 percent to $5.3 million from $4.2 million.
The company finished the quarter with $9.1 million in cash and cash equivalents.
The firm said that for 2019 it anticipates revenue in the range of $27 million to $28 million, a roughly 25 percent increase over FY 2018.
In morning trade on the Nasdaq, shares of Interpace were up more than 2 percent at $.73.