NEW YORK – Sophia Genetics said Tuesday morning that its first quarter revenues were up 13 percent year over year.
For the three months ended March 31, the Swiss company reported $15.8 million in revenues compared to $14.0 million in the same period of 2023, falling short of the Wall Street consensus estimate of $16.5 million.
The firm said it reached 463 core genomics customers as of March 31, up from 437 customers at the end of Q1 2023.
It performed approximately 84,000 analyses on the Sophia DDM molecular analysis platform in Q1 2024, representing 9 percent growth or 11 percent growth excluding COVID-related analyses.
"We delivered solid achievements in Q1 to fuel future growth, including the signing of 27 new core genomics customers, the official launch of MSK-ACCESS powered with Sophia DDM … and new milestones working with biopharma partners to diversify and expand the Sophia DDM network into locations such as Africa for the first time," CEO Jurgi Camblong said in a statement.
"This marks a second consecutive quarter of strong new business growth," he added during a call discussing the firm's financial results.
"As we progress in our path to profitability, revenue growth continues to be the primary driver," Camblong said. "We grow our clinical revenue by landing new customers and expanding within those customers over time as they adopt more and more applications."
More specifically, he said, Sophia saw momentum in its growth in the US in Q1, with the US market making up 34 percent of sales compared to 27 percent in Q1 2023. He cited the Mayo Clinic as one of its newest US adopters for the DDM platform and mentioned recent deals with institutions in India, South Korea, Europe, and Africa, many of them specific to the company's liquid biopsy coupled offering with MSK.
Camblong said that solid tumor HRD testing, as well as overall solid tumor genomics, has taken the lead in terms of applications, with double-digit growth year over year. "Basically, everything that is somatic-related is growing the fastest," he said. Hereditary cancer testing has seen "strong single-digit growth." Inherited and rare disease testing lags these other applications.
On the biopharma side, Camblong said that while its pipeline has more than doubled in the past year, this arm of its business is "still in its nascent stages." As such, the timing of biopharma revenue remains difficult to predict.
Sophia recently signed its first breast cancer pilot project with an unnamed biopharmaceutical firm, he added, which aims to identify multimodal biomarkers and advance personalized treatment for stage 4 breast cancer patients.
The firm's net loss for the quarter was $13.7 million, or $.21 per share, compared to a net loss of $19.7 million, or $.31 per share, in the same period of 2023. Analysts, on average, had expected a higher net loss of $.27 per share.
Sophia's R&D costs rose slightly in Q1 to $9.4 million from $9.3 million in the year-ago period. Its SG&A spending was also up slightly, at $19.8 million compared to $19.6 million.
Sophia left the quarter with $103.7 million in cash and cash equivalents.
In an effort to build more of a financial cushion, Sophia said last week that it had entered into a new, five-year senior secured credit facility with Perceptive Advisors, which provides it with access to up to $50 million in debt financing through March 2026.
Under the terms of the agreement, Perceptive has been issued warrants to purchase 400,000 shares of Sophia's stock as of the closing date, with an exercise price equal to the 10-day volume weighted average price preceding the closing date.
Sophia said it is maintaining its full-year guidance of 25 percent to 30 percent revenue growth.
In morning trading on the Nasdaq, Sophia's shares were down almost 2 percent at $4.97.