NEW YORK – HTG Molecular Diagnostics reported after the close of the market on Thursday a 56 percent year-over-year drop in its full-year revenues, driven by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the closure of customer facilities.
For the year ended Dec. 31, 2020, the Tucson, Arizona-based firm reported revenues of $8.5 million compared to $19.2 million in 2019, at the high range of previously reported preliminary revenues and beating the Wall Street estimate of $8.3 million.
Revenues from product and product-related services fell 46 percent to $7.9 million from $14.6 million a year ago. Revenues from collaborative development services plummeted 86 percent to $650,000 from $4.6 million, which the firm said reflected the completion of "remaining tasks under existing arrangements."
"Though it remains clear that COVID-19 placed significant pressure on our core oncology business, including planned studies and laboratory operations of our customers throughout 2020, we remained agile and continued to make strategic shifts in our business into areas less impacted by the pandemic throughout the year," John Lubniewski, CEO of HTG, said in a statement.
"Our efforts to focus on customer diversification to include a larger number of smaller and mid-sized biopharma customers and academic centers, who have appeared to return to work more quickly than our larger customers, resulted in programs with a number of new customers, including nine new biopharma customers in 2020," Lubniewski added.
HTG did not provide fourth quarter revenue figures, but based on full-year revenues and nine-month revenues provided in November, the firm tallied Q4 revenues of approximately $2.6 million, beating the Wall Street estimate of $2.1 million.
In November, HTG completed a 1-for-15 reverse stock split of its outstanding shares.
On a conference call with investors following the release of earnings, Lubniewski said that HTG experienced a large drop in oncology trials, which had a significant impact on the firm's business. While 63 of 88 programs timed out due to inactivity or cancellation, he highlighted that HTG finished the year with 25 extended programs, as well as 25 additional programs signed with nine new customers.
The firm also launched an early-access program for its whole-transcriptome gene expression profiling program in February, which 15 organizations have agreed to join. Lubniewski said that the firm expects the early-access users will be the first customers for the product when it is commercially launched in the third quarter this year.
"This product will be sold for molecular profiling in academic medical centers, into biopharma as a universal companion diagnostic, and as a platform for LDT technology development, as well as to other large centralized diagnostic companies,” Lubniewski added.
The firm's 2020 net loss rose to $20.9 million, or $4.51 per share, from $19.3 million, or $7.60 per share a year ago, beating the Wall Street estimate of a loss of $4.80 per share.
The firm's R&D spending during 2020 dropped 42 percent to $6.1 million from $10.6 million, and SG&A expenses fell 3 percent to $18.1 million from $18.7 million the year before.
At the end of 2020, HTG had cash and cash equivalents totaling $22.4 million and short-term investments of $6.3 million.
HTG's stock was down roughly 6 percent at $5.32 in early-morning trading on the Nasdaq.