NEW YORK – Twist Bioscience said on Friday morning that it has increased its full-year 2022 revenue guidance by approximately 4 percent, driven by strength in its synthetic biology business.
The South San Francisco-based synthetic DNA maker now expects revenue of approximately $203 million, up from previous guidance of $191 million to $199 million, including synbio revenue of $80 million, next-generation sequencing revenue of $97 million, and biopharma revenue of $26 million. Both synbio and NGS forecasts are above previous guidance, while biopharma revenues are at the low end of previous guidance.
"We thought we'd give prudent guidance for the [fiscal fourth] quarter," Twist CFO Jim Thorburn said on a conference call to discuss the firm's fiscal third quarter financial results. Twist reported a 60 percent year-over-year increase in Q3 revenues, driven by strength in synbio. He added that the firm's guidance accounted for seasonality in fiscal Q4 due to Europe's vacation period as well as the emergence of new COVID variants.
For the quarter ended June 30, Twist reported $56.1 million in revenues, up from $35.0 million a year ago, beating Wall Street analysts' average estimate of $51.5 million.
Twist's NGS revenues were $27.8 million, up 50 percent from $18.7 million a year ago. Synthetic biology revenues were $22.1 million, up 54 percent from $14.3 million a year ago. Biopharma revenue was $6.2 million, up threefold from $2 million a year ago.
By region, the US and the Americas revenues were $35.8 million; revenues in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa were $15.7 million; and Asia Pacific revenues were $4.8 million.
By end market, healthcare revenues were $29.4 million, up from $17.4 million a year ago; Industrial chemicals revenues were $15.7 million, up from $8.4 million; and academic revenues were $9.5 million, up from $7.7 million.
The firm shipped approximately 163,000 genes in the quarter, Thorburn said.
Twist's research and development expenses for the quarter jumped 86 percent to $36.8 million from $19.8 million in Q3 2021. Selling, general, and administrative expenses totaled $53.7 million, up 56 percent from $34.5 million in Q3 2021.
The firm's net loss for the quarter was $60.5 million, or $1.08 per share, compared to a net loss of $40.0 million, or $.82 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Analysts, on average, had estimated a net loss of $1.31 per share.
The company ended the quarter with $376.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and $151.3 million in short-term investments.
In morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Twist were up 6 percent at $49.57.