NEW YORK – Quanterix reported Tuesday that its first quarter revenues were up 9 percent year over year.
The company posted Q1 2022 revenues of $29.6 million, up from $27.2 million in Q1 2021 and above the consensus Wall Street estimate of $29.1 million.
Quanterix's Q1 product revenues rose 13 percent to $20.7 million from $18.2 million in Q1 2021. Service and other revenues were up 37 percent to $8.8 million from $6.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Collaboration and license revenues were down 67 percent to $86,000 from $261,000 in Q1 2021. The company posted no development revenues compared to $2.3 million from grants from the National Institutes of Health's RADx program in Q1 2021.
On a conference call following release of the Q1 results, Quanterix CEO Masoud Toloue, who took over from former CEO Kevin Hrusovsky at the end of April, said that revenues were driven by strong performance in the company's consumables business, which was up 28 percent year over year, partially offset by a decline in instrument sales and demand for its Accelerator Laboratory services following a spike in demand in the year-ago quarter driven by COVID-19.
Hrusovsky is now executive chairman of the company's board. Toloue has been president at Quanterix since June 2021.
Toloue said that during Q1 the company continued to see a "roughly even split" in revenue from pharma, CRO, and academic customers. He said that 82 percent of Q1 revenues "stemmed from [neurology]-related offerings," a 77 percent jump from Q1 2021, driven by strong demand for its p-tau 181 and neuro multiplex assays. He highlighted the receipt during the quarter of breakthrough device designation from the US Food and Drug Administration for its neurofilament light chain (NfL) plasma test for multiple sclerosis as well as a study published in The Lancet Neurology in which researchers used the company's NfL assay to establish reference ranges for the marker.
Toloue said by the end of the year Quanterix plans to offer its anticipated 100x sensitivity improvement through its Accelerator Laboratory as well as an assay for the neurology marker p-tau 217.
During the call CFO Michael Doyle said the company felt "comfortable that customer activity has returned to pre-COVID levels," though he added that new SARS-CoV-2 variants could force additional lockdowns.
He added that Quanterix during the quarter changed its method for accounting for excess and obsolete product, moving to look at 12 months of activity as opposed to three months. He said the change was driven by recent growth highlighting inefficiencies in the company's inventory management processes.
The firm's Q1 net loss rose to $18.1 million from $10.1 million a year ago. It didn't provide a loss-per-share figure.
Quanterix's R&D spending during the recently completed quarter was up 4 percent to $7.0 million from $6.7 million in Q1 2021. Its SG&A expenses rose 32 percent to $25.7 million from $19.5 million the year before.
The Billerica, Massachusetts-based company ended the quarter with $374.3 million in cash and cash equivalents and $2.6 million in restricted cash.
In Tuesday morning trading on the Nasdaq, Quanterix's stock was down 3 percent to $17.94.