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Wafergen Q3 Revenues More than Double

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Wafergen Biosystems today said that revenues in its third quarter more than doubled year over year.

For the three months ended Sept. 30, Wafergen's total revenues reached $389,547, up from $176,608 a year ago as the company took in $125,000 in license and royalty-related revenues in the quarter, compared to none a year ago. Product revenues increased to $264,547 from $176,608.

The Fremont, Calif.-based firm had a net loss of $11.0 million, or $4.34 per share, compared to a net loss of $3.0 million, or $7.56 per share, a year ago. It used 2.8 million shares to calculate its loss on a per-share basis in the recently completed quarter, compared to 419,028 shares a year ago.

During the quarter, Wafergen raised $13.4 million in net proceeds from a private placement. Also, in late August, it announced a series of maneuvers, including a stock split and a capital restructuring, in order to increase its share price and improve its cash position.

The company increased its R&D costs 33 percent year over year to $1.6 million from $1.2 million, while its SG&A costs ballooned to $1.8 million from $646,593 a year ago.

Wafergen ended the third quarter with $14.5 million in cash and cash equivalents.

In a statement, Wafergen President and CEO Ivan Trifunovich said that the firm has seen "keen interest" in its products, in particular the SmartChip TE for target enrichment before next-generation sequencing.

"In addition to the current product offering that enables more accurate NGS-based clinical tests, we are working on a new product that would revolutionize the sample preparation prior to sequencing," he said. "The streamlined workflow is designed to combine target enrichment and all subsequent library preparation steps into one step on SmartChip TE," reducing time-to-result, hands-on-time, and the overall cost of diagnostic tests, while improving quality and productivity.

Trifunovich said that a working prototype designed for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes is being beta tested, and Wafergen plans to make it commercially available in the first quarter of 2014.

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