NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Nanosphere today posted a 56 percent slide in first-quarter revenues that it attributed to delays in regulatory clearance for its new products.
The company reported total revenue of $255,000 for the three-month period ended March 31, 2009, compared to $576,000 in the prior-year period.
For the first quarter of 2009, all of the company's revenues were from product sales. For the prior-year quarter, Nanosphere reported $303,000 in product sales and approximately $273,000 from government grants and contracts.
"We have a strong pipeline of new products in the FDA, additional new products coming through the development process, such as our troponin assay, but our marketing efforts have been hampered by delays in new product clearances," William Moffitt, Nanosphere's president and CEO, said in a statement.
Nanosphere said that it received clearance this week from the US Food and Drug Administration for its influenza and respiratory syncytial virus test. The firm said that it still has three submissions outstanding with the FDA: assays for cystic fibrosis and hemochromatrosis and a new version of its Verigene System that incorporates automated sample processing.
Nanosphere's first-quarter R&D expenses decreased 19 percent to $4.8 million from $5.9 million in the first three months of 2008. The company said that this drop in spending "reflected successful completion of specific programs related to cartridge development and manufacturing scale up."
Sales, general and administrative expenses dipped 8 percent to $3.1 million from $3.4 million in the first quarter of 2008.
The company posted a net loss of $8.2 million, or $.37 per share, compared to $8.8 million, or $.40 per share, in the comparable period of 2008.
As of March 31, Nanosphere held $66.3 million in cash and cash equivalents.