NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Quanterix reported after the close of the market on Thursday that its third quarter revenues rose 85 percent year-over-year, thanks largely to an 82 percent increase in quarterly product revenues.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, the company posted Q3 revenues of $10.6 million, up from $5.7 million in Q3 2017 and beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $8.5 million.
Quanterix noted that the Q3 2018 figure included a one-time $1.3 million item related to the termination of a licensing agreement with BioMérieux for the company's Simoa technology. Revenue growth would have been 61 percent without this item.
Q3 product revenues rose to $6.0 million from $3.3 million in Q3 2017, driven significantly by consumables sales, which were up 100 percent year over year.
Service and other revenues rose 36 percent to $3.0 million from $2.2 million in the prior year quarter.
In a statement, Quanterix Chairman, CEO, and President Kevin Hrusovsky said the company's technology "has gained considerable traction" for biomarker research and highlighted the company's termination of its agreement with BioMérieux, which allowed it to regain unrestricted rights to its Simoa technology for in vitro diagnostics.
On a conference call following the release of the earnings, he noted that the company is now laying the groundwork for a move into oncology. Thus far, Quanterix has focused largely on neurology applications, but Hrusovsky said that the larger size of the oncology market along with the rise of immunotherapies makes it an appealing target for the company.
He estimated that the oncology market is three to five times larger than the neurology market and noted that in the case of immunotherapies, researchers are interested in looking at low abundance proteins like cytokines to better predict metrics such as patient response or adverse effects. These factors make the market a good fit for Quanterix's high-sensitivity immunoassay technology.
"Given that many of these [immunoncology] drugs only have 20 percent response rate, it is an incredibly ripe area for ultrasensitive digital biomarkers," he said.
To address this market Quanterix is developing a new instrument based on technology acquired through its purchase of Aushon BioSystems earlier this year. The new instrument, which Hrusovsky said Quanterix plans to launch in the first half of 2019, will allow for multiplexing of 10 or more analytes. This is a key requirement for oncology research, according to Hrusovsky.
The company is also working to expand the multiplexing ability of its SR-X platform to six analytes. Hrusovsky said the company has sold 50 SR-X instruments since it launched at the end of 2017.
Quanterix's Q3 net loss widened to $7.7 million from $6.6 million a year ago. It didn't provide a loss per share figure.
Quanterix's R&D spending during the quarter was up 2 percent to $4.3 million from $4.2 million in Q3 2017. Its SG&A expenses, meanwhile, rose 71 percent to $7.2 million from $4.2 million the year before.
The firm ended the quarter $52.4 million in cash.
Quanterix's shares were up less than 1 percent to $17.64 in Friday morning trading on the Nasdaq.