NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Precipio said after the close of the market on Monday that its third quarter net sales fell 26 percent year over year.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, the firm posted net sales of $270,000, compared to $365,000 in Q3 2016. Precipio attributed the drop to a 23 percent year-over-year decrease in cases processed in the recently completed quarter. In Q3 2017, 207 cases were processed, down from 269 cases a year ago, the firm said, adding that the downtick resulted from turnover in key sales personnel.
In October the company launched its first re-designed ICE-COLD PCR target enrichment kit to identify mutations in lung cancer using liquid biopsies. The company also said that in the quarter its PCR technology was selected by the University of Kentucky for a liquid biopsy study, and by Methodist Healthcare System for use in its liquid biopsy platform.
Precipio had a net loss of $6.3 million for Q3 2017, compared to a net loss of $499,000 in the prior year.
Net loss available to common stockholders was $10.1 million, or $1.36 per share, in Q3 2017, up from a net loss available to common stockholders of $499,000, or $1.15 per share, in Q3 2016. Precipio used more than 7.4 million shares to calculate its loss-per-share figure for the recently completed quarter, up from 435,060 shares in the year-ago period.
In June, Precipio Diagnostics and Transgenomic completed their merger, which had been announced in October 2016. This past August, the firm closed on a $6 million public offering. Last week, it raised another $2.7 million in a public offering.
In a statement, Precipio President and CEO Ilan Danieli said that at the start of Q3, the company faced numerous issues, including financial, operational, product development, and sales challenges. "We now have the appropriate resources, products and services mix, financial foundation, and infrastructure to build upon last quarter's successes and drive growth," he said, adding the firm has been recapitalized, and restructured its debt to manage cash flow.
Precipio has also relocated its lab operations, which will accelerate R&D efforts and "transfer those developments into product tests," while the firm builds out its sales force. "While much work remains, I have never been more excited about the future of Precipio," Danieli said.
Precipio ended Q3 2017 with $381,000 in cash and cash equivalents.