NEW YORK – Twist Bioscience announced after the close of the market Thursday that its fiscal second quarter revenues jumped 54 percent year over year driven by an increase in customers and orders.
The South San Francisco, California maker of synthetic DNA reported total revenues of $48.1 million for the three months ended March 31 compared to $31.2 million for the second quarter of 2021. It beat the consensus Wall Street estimate of $45.3 million.
"We're building momentum through the first half of fiscal 2022, with another consecutive quarter of record revenue and orders," Twist CEO Emily Leproust said in a statement. "We continued to deliver a wide range of products to our customers through the Omicron surge, while bolstering our balance sheet to reduce downside risk in this unpredictable market."
Next-generation sequencing revenues were $23.1 million, up 36 percent year over year. "We continue to expand the number of customers we serve in NGS, with the top 10 accounts resulting in about one-third of our revenues for the quarter," Leproust said on a conference call with investors following the release of the financial results. Synthetic biology revenues were $18.4 million, up 42 percent year over year, and biopharma revenues were $6.6 million, more than fivefold what it was a year ago.
By end market, revenues from healthcare were $24.1 million, up from $16.6 million a year ago; industrial chemicals revenues were $14.1 million, up from $8.7 million a year ago; and revenues from academia totaled $9.5 million, up from $5.6 million a year ago. "The major contributors to growth this quarter include healthcare and industrial chemicals," Twist CFO Jim Thorburn said.
Revenues from the Americas were $28.5 million; revenues from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa were $15.2 million; and Asia-Pacific revenues were $4.5 million.
Twist said total orders for the quarter were $55 million versus $41.7 million for the second quarter of 2021. It shipped products to around 2,000 customers in Q2, up from around 1,700 in the comparable period a year ago, while the number of genes shipped to customers increased from 90,000 to 124,000 year over year. A total of 750 NGS customers placed orders in Q1, Thorburn noted, with the top 10 NGS accounts worth approximately $8 million combined.
Leproust noted that the firm added five new partnerships and 15 programs during the most recent quarter.
Twist's net loss attributable to shareholders was $60.7 million, or $1.13 per share, for the quarter, up from $37.9 million, or $.78 per share, for Q2 2022. Analysts, on average, had expected a loss per share of $1.28.
The firm's R&D costs nearly doubled to $31.2 million from $15.8 million year over year, primarily due to increased spending associated with biopharma, the firm's IgG antibody platform, and DNA-based data storage. SG&A expenses, meanwhile, jumped 57 percent to $54.0 million from $34.4 million.
In Friday morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Twist were flat at $30.93.
Twist finished the quarter with $407.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and $166.2 million in short-term investments.
The company raised $269.8 million in an offering of common stock in February.
Twist increased its 2022 revenue guidance to a range of $191 million to $199 million, with a predicted net loss between $260 million and $265 million. Previously, it had expected revenues in the range of $189 million to $198 million. It expects to bring in revenue of $71 million to $73 million from its ongoing synthetic DNA supply agreement with Ginkgo Bioworks; sales of $94 million to $96 million related to NGS; and revenues of $26 million to $30 million from biopharma customers.