NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Roka Bioscience reported after the close of the market Thursday that its first quarter revenues climbed 82 percent year over year on an increase in placements of its food safety molecular diagnostic systems.
The Warren, New Jersey-based firm reported total revenues of $1.5 million for the three months ended March 31, up from $828,000 for the first quarter of 2014. It said that the revenue gain was the result of an increase in the number of placements of its Atlas instruments with commercial customers and increased utilization of the systems. The firm said that it has placed 41 of the instruments — an automated sample-in, result-out platform that is Roka's flagship technology for food-borne pathogen testing — compared to 32 instruments as of the end of the first quarter of 2014.
Roka also sells assays for detecting Escherichia coli 0157:H7; Shiga toxin E. coli; Listeria; Listeria monocytogenes; and Salmonella.
Roka posted a Q1 net loss of $8.9 million, or $.51 per share, compared to a net loss of $8.4 million, or $13.68 per share, for the first quarter of 2014. It used approximately 17.2 million shares to calculate its loss per share in Q1 2015 compared to 611,419 for Q1 2014. Roka went public in a $60 million offering last summer.
The firm's R&D spending for the quarter ticked up slightly to $1.9 million from $1.8 million, while its SG&A expenses were up 2 percent at $5.1 million from $5.0 million.
Roka finished the quarter with $3.2 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $41.5 million in short-term marketable securities.
Shares of Roka jumped around 10 percent to $3.09 in Friday morning trade on the Nasdaq.