NEW YORK – Sema4 said Thursday after market close that its revenues for the first quarter fell 16 percent primarily due to a drop in revenue from COVID-19 testing, a business the company discontinued during the quarter.
For the three months ending March 31, Sema4 booked $53.9 million in revenues, down from $64.2 million a year earlier. The result beat the Wall Street consensus estimate of $52.9 million.
Diagnostic test revenue for Q1 was $52.5 million, down 16 percent from nearly $62.8 million in Q1 2021. Other revenue was up marginally, to about $1.4 million.
Excluding COVID-19 testing, revenues totaled $50.1 million, compared to $48.3 million in the same period a year ago.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Sema4 went public in July 2021 through a reverse merger with special purpose acquisition company CM Life Sciences. The firm closed its $623 million acquisition of GeneDx from Opko Health late last month.
In a conference call Thursday to discuss the financial results, CEO Katherine Stueland said that Sema4 expects to end 2022 with at least $200 million in cash, "which extends our runway well into 2024." She also said that the firm reduced its workforce by about 10 percent during Q1, though the GeneDx acquisition resulted in a doubling of its sales force.
In conjunction with the GeneDx deal, the company closed a $200 million private placement of Class A shares at a price of $4 per share to a group of institutional investors including Pfizer. As a result of the placement, Sema4 had about 377.2 million outstanding shares of Class A common stock as of April 29.
CFO Isaac Ro said that the company will have a weighted average share count of 335 million to 349 million by year's end.
The firm's net loss in the recently completed quarter narrowed to $76.9 million, or $.31 per share, in line with the Wall Street estimate. That compares to a net loss of $191.8 million, or $348.82 per share, in Q1 2021.
Sema4 used 244.4 million shares to calculate its per-share loss in Q1 2022, compared to 549,778 shares in the year-ago period.
R&D expenses in Q1 totaled $21.3 million, down 60 percent from $53.1 million a year ago. The company's SG&A costs decreased 65 percent to $72.3 million during the quarter from $137.4 million in the year-earlier period.
Sema4 performed 84,925 diagnostic tests in the quarter, excluding COVID-19 tests, 27 percent more than in Q1 2021. The company announced in December that it would exit its COVID-19 testing business by the end of Q1 of this year.
As of March 31, the molecular diagnostics and bioinformatics company had $315 million in cash and equivalents plus $900,000 in restricted cash. The firm has not yet drawn on a $125 million revolving credit facility it has available.
Sema4 estimates full-year revenues to be $305 million to $315 million, which includes contributions from GeneDx for the eight months of ownership in 2022.
In morning trading Friday on the Nasdaq, Sema4 stock was up nearly 14 percent at $1.96 per share.