NEW YORK – Akoya Biosciences reported after the close of the market Monday that its Q3 revenues rose 35 percent.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, the Marlborough, Massachusetts-based spatial biology firm posted revenues of $13.5 million, up from $10.0 million in the year-ago period.
Product revenue was $10.9 million, up 38 percent from $7.9 million in Q3 2020. Service and other revenue was $2.6 million, up 24 percent from $2.1 million in Q3 2020.
The company sold 16 of its Codex instruments and 17 Phenoptics instruments during the quarter.
On a conference call following the release of the Q3 results, Akoya CEO Brian McKelligon said the growth was driven by "strong instrument sales and consumable pull-through."
He noted that as of the end of Q3 the company had 651 instruments installed globally.
McKelligon said that Akoya has seen high adoption of its Codex instrument, which is aimed at the discovery market, in the academic space, "especially at the individual investigator level," which he attributed in part to the platform's relatively low price point of under $100,000. He added that the platform, which is designed to integrate with existing microscope systems, is "just beginning to penetrate the fully addressable market of nearly 20,000 microscopes already in the field."
McKelligon said that the company's Phenoptics system, which is aimed at the translational and clinical markets, is seeing increased use for clinical trial work and that Akoya has inked a number of agreements with biopharma firms for fee-for-service work on clinical trial samples.
He added that the company expects to receive CLIA certification for its laboratory in the near future, noting that this would further drive growth of clinical trial work.
McKelligon said that next year Akoya plans to introduce a number of platform improvements and products that will improve its systems' scale, speed, and ease of use.
Akoya CFO Joe Driscoll said that reagent spending on both the Codex and Phenoptics instruments is on pace to exceed an average of an annualized $30,000 per system, with the highest volume Codex and Phenoptics users spending, respectively, around $175,000 and $200,000 on reagents annually.
Akoya's net loss in the second quarter was $11.6 million, or $.31 per share, compared to $5.8 million, or $2.44 per share, in Q3 2020. The firm used approximately 37.2 million shares to calculate per-share loss in the recently completed quarter compared to about 2.4 million shares in the year-ago period. The firm completed a $153 million initial public offering in June.
The company's R&D expenses were $4.0 million, up 74 percent from $2.4 million in Q3 2020. SG&A costs more than doubled to $13.7 million from $5.7 million in the year-ago period.
McKelligon said Akoya has grown its headcount to 305 employees, up from 170 at the end of 2020, and has almost doubled its commercial headcount to around 150.
The company ended the quarter with $120.2 million in cash and cash equivalents.
Akoya upped its 2021 revenue guidance from a range of $52.5 to $53.0 million to at least $53.8 million and projected Q4 2021 revenue of at least $15 million.
In Tuesday morning trading on Nasdaq, Akoya shares were down 8 percent to $11.92.