NEW YORK – Twist Bioscience said on Friday before the market open that it has raised full-year fiscal 2024 revenue guidance after reporting strong first quarter revenue growth.
The company now expects full-year revenues to be in the range of $288 million to $293 million, representing growth of 18 to 20 percent, year over year, compared to prior guidance of $285 million to $290 million. For fiscal Q2, Twist said it expects total revenue of approximately $70 million to $71 million.
SynBio revenue is expected to be in the range of $114 million to $117 million compared to the previous estimate of $113 million to $116 million. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) revenue is expected to be in the range of $150 million to $152 million, compared to the previous estimate of $147 million to $149 million.
Biopharma revenue is expected to be approximately $24 million, compared to the previous estimate of approximately $25 million.
"We do see green shoots for this business including 41 new program starts in the quarter," CEO and Cofounder Emily Leproust said on a conference call with investors to discuss the firm's fiscal Q1 financial results. "We noted the process of ramping up sales representatives to full capacity typically takes about six months and we are cautiously optimistic that revenue from biopharma services will increase steadily in the back half of the year."
Revenues for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2023, increased 32 percent year over year to $71.5 million from $54.2 million a year ago, beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $67.6 million.
NGS revenues were $39.4 million, up 61 percent from $24.4 million a year ago.
Synbio revenues, which include genes, libraries, and oligo pools, totaled $26.8 million, up 24 percent from $21.7 million a year ago. Revenue from synthetic genes was $19.7 million, up from $16.2 million last year, and the company shipped approximately 171,000 genes during the quarter compared to 134,000 a year ago. Oligo pools revenues were $4.2 million, up from $3.7 million a year ago. DNA libraries revenue was $2.9 million, up from $1.8 million a year ago.
"Growth in Synbio across all product lines was driven primarily by healthcare customers," CFO Adam Laponis said during the call.
Biopharma revenues were $5.2 million, down 37 percent from $8.2 million a year ago.
Healthcare revenues rose to $40.9 million, up from $30 million a year ago, "reflecting the increased uptake of our products by pharma, biotech, and diagnostic companies," Laponis said. Industrial chemical revenues rose to $16.3 million from $15.3 million a year ago. Academic revenues were $13.8 million, up from $10 million a year ago, with growth coming from both synbio and NGS customers.
By region, Americas revenues grew 31 percent year over year to $44 million from $33.6 million; Europe, Middle East, and Africa revenues rose 30 percent year over year to $21.2 million from $16.3 million; and Asia-Pacific revenues increased 48 percent year over year to $6.3 million from $4.3 million.
Twist reported a Q1 net loss of $43.0 million, or $.75 per share, compared to a loss of $41.8 million, or $.74 per share, in Q1 of FY 2023, coming in ahead of the average Wall Street estimate of a net loss of $.78 per share.
Twist's Q1 R&D expenses fell 26 percent to $23.1 million from $31.2 million in the year-ago quarter. SG&A expenses rose 25 percent to $52.8 million from $42.3 million a year ago, driven by higher year-over-year stock-based compensation, offset by the absence of pre-commercialization costs for the firm's Oregon manufacturing site recorded in the prior year period.
As of Dec. 31, 2022, the company had $266.3 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $44.9 million in short-term investments.
In Friday morning trading on the Nasdaq, Twist shares were up 9 percent at $36.29.