NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Nanosphere said after the close of the market Wednesday that its third-quarter revenues increased 56 percent year over year driven by consumables sales.
The Northbrook, Ill.-based molecular diagnostics firm reported revenues of $865,000 for the three-month period ended Sept. 30, compared to $556,000 for the third quarter of 2011. While the sales figures were up sharply year over year, the firm fell far short of the consensus Wall Street estimate for revenues of $1.7 million.
Nanosphere said that 50 of its Verigene SP systems were placed in the quarter, which President and CEO William Moffitt said was the highest number of system the firm has shipped in any single quarter to date.
"We expect US placements to continue to ramp in successive quarters," Moffitt said on a conference call Wednesday evening, "but we are experiencing softness in Europe as both macro and microeconomic factors are affecting our entire industry."
He noted that over the past year Nanosphere has seen its international systems placements fall from around 35 percent of its total placements to 20 percent during the third quarter.
"The acceleration in product placements was driven primarily by FDA clearance of our gram-positive blood culture test at the end of the second quarter," Moffitt added in a statement. "We are very encouraged with the market's response to the introduction of the gram-positive test and are working diligently to get additional content approved for VerigeneSP, including our C. difficile, gram-negative and enteric panels."
He noted on the call that Installations of the bloodstream infection assay commenced in the first week of July. "With an approximately 90-day cycle from placement to usage as customerds work through training and the validation process, we expect to see early customer revenue from our blood stream infection assay in the fourth quarter."
Nanosphere cut its net loss to $8.7 million, or $.16 per share, from $9.5 million, or $.22 per share, year over year.
Its R&D spending declined 21 percent to $4.6 million from $5.8 million, while its SG&A spending increased 16 percent to $4.4 million from $3.8 million.
Nanosphere finished the quarter with $41.9 million in cash and cash equivalents.