NEW YORK – Myriad Genetics reported after the close of the market on Tuesday year-over-year revenue gains of 11 percent for both the fourth quarter of 2023 and full year.
The Salt Lake City-based company finished the three months ended Dec. 31, 2023, with $196.6 million in revenues compared to $177.8 million for the same quarter in 2022, beating analysts' average estimate of $194.8 million.
Strong increases in test volumes drove revenue growth, including a 20 percent year-over-year increase for the quarter and 35 percent year-over-year increase for the full year. Prenatal testing was the biggest growth driver, expanding 29 percent year over year for the quarter and 62 percent year over year for the full year.
In an after-market call with investors, Myriad President and CEO Paul Diaz further attributed the company's strong revenue gains to "record-breaking" sales of its GeneSight pharmacogenomics platform and to having addressed issues that had negatively impacted the company's collections and pricing in the first half of the year. These included transitioning GeneSight to a new PLA code as well as clients moving to new health plans that required new administrative claims processes.
Fourth quarter net loss decreased to $31.2 million, or $.36 per share, from $42.3 million, or $.52 per share, in the same quarter a year ago. Myriad reported adjusted Q4 earnings per share of $.04, beating analysts' consensus estimate of $.01.
Myriad's Q4 R&D spending fell approximately 10 percent to $21 million from $23.4 million a year ago, while its SG&A expenses dropped nearly 1 percent to $145.4 million from $146.5 million a year ago.
Diaz commented during the call that he expects the firm's R&D efforts to pay off moving forward.
"We see the investments that we have made in R&D over the past three years starting to bear fruit, with an emerging body of clinical evidence that we believe will support guideline expansion, clinical utility and adoption, and improve reimbursement over the next few years," he said.
In 2024, Myriad plans to roll out a new version of its Foresight carrier screening assay called Foresight Universal Plus, Myriad Chief Commercial Officer Mark Verratti said during the call, though he offered no additional details.
The company also plans to launch Precise Liquid and Precise MRD for research use only, Verratti said.
Myriad recently acquired these assays, which are designed/intended to discover and target key genetic variants within patient tumors and comprehensively profile patient genomes via blood draw, respectively, from Intermountain Precision Genomics.
Earlier on Tuesday, the firm also announced a research collaboration with Japan's National Cancer Center Hospital East to study the prognostic and predictive value of molecular residual disease testing using the Precise MRD platform.
The MRD landscape has been fertile ground for patent litigation over the past few years. Natera, for example, recently won an injunction against NeoGenomics Labs, alleging that the latter infringed two patents related to Natera's Signatera MRD assay.
Diaz, however, stated that he is confident in Myriad's freedom to operate in this space.
"We've built these technologies on existing platforms, using systems and processes that have been in existence and are patent protected for [some time]," he said.
While its recently launched Collaborative Research Registry is not a revenue driver, Myriad highlighted the pan-cancer platform previously called the Precise Treatment Registry that now includes germline and tumor testing results obtained via Myriad's assays from over a million patients.
"We believe in sharing our data with the broader scientific and medical community for the betterment of healthcare, rather than looking to monetize such patient-related information," Verratti said.
Myriad reported $753.2 million in total revenues for 2023, up approximately 11 percent from $678.4 million in 2022 and beating the Wall Street estimate of $751.3 million.
The company's full-year R&D spending rose nearly 4 percent to $88.7 million from $85.4 million in 2022, while its SG&A expenses rose approximately 11 percent to $572.9 million from $514.7 million a year earlier.
Full-year net loss rose to $263.3 million, or $3.18 per share, from $112 million, or $1.39 per share in 2022. On an adjusted basis, Myriad reported a loss per share of $.27 for 2023, bettering analysts' average prediction of a $.30 loss per share.
Myriad finished the year with $132.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and $8.8 million in marketable securities.
The company said it anticipates full-year 2024 revenue within the range of $820 million to $840 million and adjusted EPS of $.00 to $.05, with an expected first quarter loss per share due to seasonality. On average, analysts are expecting full-year 2024 revenues of $819.3 million and a loss per share of $.01.