NEW YORK – Bruker reported after the close of the market Thursday that revenues in the third quarter grew 12 percent year over year.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, revenues rose to $521.1 million from $466.6 million in Q3 2018, beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $496.7 million.
The company saw a 6 percent positive effect on revenues from acquisitions and a 2 percent negative effect from currency translation.
In a statement accompanying the release of the financial results, Bruker President and CEO Frank Laukien said the revenue growth was driven by "our strong performance in life science mass spectrometry solutions and in microbiology."
The company's CALID group, which houses its life sciences mass spectrometry business, posted low teens organic growth during the quarter.
Geographically, revenue was up in the high single digits in Europe and in the mid-teens in Asia-Pacific, driven by strong growth in Japan and high single-digit growth in China. Organic revenue in North America declined slightly.
On a conference call following the release of the results, Laukien said Bruker has seen strong sales in Europe for its recently launched timsTOF mass spec system, noting that the company has been able to take advantage of favorable academic funding trends in that geography.
He said that updating its mass spectrometry portfolio over the last several years has "given us momentum in many fields from applied [markets] to pharma, biopharma, very much so in proteomics, [and] increasingly also in metabolomics and phenomics." He added that the company believed it was gaining share from its competitors in the mass spec space.
Laukien also noted that the company's MALDI Biotyper clinical microbiology platform continued to perform well, with instrument sales growing in the low teens and consumables sales well over 20 percent.
He added that Bruker is working with the US Food and Drug Administration to obtain clearances for several additional capabilities for the platform.
The Billerica, Massachusetts-based company reported a profit of $61.3 million, or $.39 per share, in the recently completed quarter compared to a profit of $43.4 million, or $.28 per share, a year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, Bruker had EPS of $.43, above the consensus Wall Street estimate of $.38.
Bruker's R&D costs were $46.1 million for the quarter, up 10 percent from $41.8 million in Q3 2018. Its SG&A spending was $125.3 million, up 18 percent from $106.5 million in the year-ago third quarter.
The company maintained its 2019 guidance for revenue grow of 7 percent to 8 percent, with organic revenue growth of 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent. It raised its guidance for full year 2019 EPS to between $1.59 and $1.62, up from between $1.57 and $1.61.
Bruker ended the quarter with $302.4 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments.
In trading Friday morning on the Nasdaq, Bruker shares were up 10 percent to $49.06.