NEW YORK – Pacific Biosciences reported after the close of the market on Tuesday that its second quarter 2021 revenues grew 79 percent year over year, driven partially by consumables sales.
For the three months ended June 30, the Menlo Park, California-based company recognized revenues of $30.6 million, compared to $17.1 million in Q2 2020, in line with its preliminary announcement and beating analysts' average estimate of $29.9 million. Revenues included $14.3 million in instrument revenue, compared with $8.9 million a year ago; $12.2 million in consumables revenue, compared with $4.8 million a year ago; and $4.1 million in service and other revenue, compared to $3.3 million a year ago. The company placed 38 Sequel II or IIe instruments in the quarter, bringing the total installed base to 282 instruments, compared to 148 a year ago.
"We delivered another record quarter in Q2, and since the second quarter of last year, we’ve nearly doubled our Sequel II installed base," PacBio CEO Christian Henry said in a statement. "We're making great progress in scaling our business with our agreement to acquire Omniome and the acquisition of Circulomics."
On a conference call following the release of the results, Henry said the growth in consumables revenue was the result of the expanding installed base of Sequel II instruments. The company placed 10 Sequel II and 28 Sequel IIe instruments in the quarter, with approximately 25 percent of them going to new customers.
Approximately 85 percent of consumables sales were for Sequel II and IIe systems, with the rest for older systems, CFO Susan Kim said, adding that growth in service revenues was also attributable to the growing number of instruments in the field.
PacBio noted that financial results from the year-ago quarter were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. "Instrument utilization largely returned to normal by the fourth quarter of 2020, and we subsequently have not seen significant issues with deliveries or operations at customer sites," the firm said in a statement. "This resulted in higher product revenues of $26.5 million for the second quarter of 2021 compared to $13.8 million for the same period of 2020."
Use of PacBio sequencing for COVID-19 surveillance, especially in the US, made a "modest" contribution to Q2 revenue, Henry said, though volumes slowed in June.
PacBio's net loss in the quarter was $41 million, or $.21 per share, compared to a net loss of $23.1 million, or $.15 per share, in the prior year period, narrowly missing the Wall Street estimate of a $.20 loss per share. The number of shares used to compute loss per share in the quarter was approximately 198.6 million, compared to approximately 154.2 million a year ago.
The firm's R&D expenses in Q2 2021 were $22.3 million, up 49 percent from $15 million a year ago. Its SG&A expenditures nearly doubled year over year to $29.1 million from $15.1 million.
PacBio added 57 employees during the quarter, including 11 salespeople, bringing its headcount to 492 employees as of June 30.
As of June 30, the company had $1.14 billion in cash and investments.
For full-year 2021, Kim said the firm expects revenue to grow in the range of 62 percent to 67 percent compared to 2020, which represents revenue of approximately $128 million to $132 million, with sequential growth in both Q3 and Q4. "However, the quarterly revenue mix can shift based on the volume of instrument placements in any given quarter. Additionally, multi-instrument orders from customers with larger projects can add additional variability to timing of orders in any particular quarter," she noted.
In morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of PacBio were flat at $29.95.