NEW YORK – Adaptive Biotechnologies reported a 52 percent year-over-year increase in second quarter revenues after the close of the market on Tuesday.
For the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2019, Adaptive reported $26.1 million in revenues, up from $ 17.3 million during the year-ago period and beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of $22.1 million.
By segment, sequencing revenues were $11.7 million, up 38 percent from $8.5 million in the prior-year period. It included research fees for service testing and clinical clonoSeq testing revenues. Meanwhile, development revenues from biopharma partnerships were $14.4 million, up 65 percent from $8.7 million in Q3 2018.
"During the third quarter, we continued to make strong progress across our existing products and our pipeline," Adaptive CEO and Cofounder Chad Robins said in a statement. "We are encouraged to see increasing demand for clonoSeq as we continue developing the market and expanding our label. We were also excited to confirm our first clinical signal for immunoSEQ Dx, proving that we can read and translate how the adaptive immune system diagnoses disease."
On a conference call following the release of results, CFO Chad Cohen said the sequencing revenue growth was driven by biopharma and academic partners, and the development revenue increase was due to amortization of an up-front payment from Genenetch, partially offset by a decrease in regulatory milestone payments. However, the firm did receive a $2 million milestone payment from an unnamed biopharma partner with whom Adaptive had collaborated with on the use of clonoSeq to expand a drug label.
Research sequencing volume rose 25 percent to 10,618 sequences, up from 8,466 sequences in Q3 2018, and clinical testing volume increased 36 percent to 2,551 tests from 1,879 tests in Q3 2018.
Clinical testing volumes were "growing in line with expectations just nine months following Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services coverage," Adaptive President Julie Rubinstein said.
Adaptive's net loss for the quarter totaled $14 million, or $.11 per share, compared to a net loss of $8.3 million, or $.66 per share, in Q3 2018, and beating the consensus analyst estimate of $.24 loss per share. The weighted average number of shares used in computing net loss per share increased to 124.3 million in the recently completed quarter from 12.6 million a year ago.
The company went public in late June raising about $321 million in net proceeds.
The firm's R&D expenses more than doubled to $20.5 million in the quarter, up from $9.8 million a year ago, attributable to the cost of materials, lab expenses related to supporting the firm's T cell receptor drug discovery efforts and TCR antigen map, and personnel cost increases. Adaptive's SG&A expenses amounted to $17.6 million, up 63 percent from $10.8 million a year ago, driven by increased headcount and "costs associated with being a public company," Cohen said.
As of Sept. 30, Adaptive had $74.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $498.5 million in short-term marketable securities.
Adaptive raised its full-year 2019 revenue guidance to between $82 to $83 million, representing approximately 48 percent growth over 2018 revenues. Previously, the firm had guided to between $78 million to $81 million in revenues.
In morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Adaptive were down 5 percent at $26.97.