NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News – Sequenom today reported preliminary full-year revenue of $162 million, an increase of 81 percent over the prior year but shy of consensus analyst estimates of $164.4 million.
Alongside its preliminary financial results, the company said that it is expanding its noninvasive prenatal testing menu by developing a "low cost test on an alternative platform" that it plans to launch by the end of the year. Sequenom's MaterniT21 Plus prenatal trisomy test currently runs on the Illumina sequencing platform.
The company did not provide additional details of the new testing platform, but said it expects it will "facilitate international access and potential future entry into the low-risk market."
Sequenom expects to report diagnostic services revenues of $120 million for 2013, compared to $46.5 million in 2012. It said that more than 185,000 total commercial prenatal and retinal diagnostic test samples were accessioned during 2013, compared to 92,000 in 2012.
Around 148,500 samples for the MaterniT21 Plus test were accessioned in 2013, representing a 140 percent increase over full-year 2012 but falling short of the company's target of 150,000 tests.
Brian Weinstein, an analyst with William Blair, said in a research note that the number of accessioned MaterniT21 tests "equates to about 37,000 tests being accessioned in the fourth quarter versus 38,600 in the third quarter and is the first quarter of sequential decline for the product."
Sequenom said that it held total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of around $71 million as of Dec. 31, 2013.
The company expects to achieve quarterly break-even and positive cash flow by the last quarter of 2014.