Original from: 360DX

Qiagen on Tuesday afternoon reported strong first quarter revenues that blew by Wall Street estimates, driven by growth in its molecular diagnostics business.

The manufacturer of life science research tools and diagnostics reported total revenues of $628 million, or $654 million at constant exchange rates (CER), for the first three months of 2022, compared to $567 million for Q1 2021. Analysts, on average, had expected sales of $516.4 million for the quarter.

Based on its first quarter results, Qiagen also increased its full year 2022 net sales outlook to at least $2.12 billion at CER, up from previous guidance of $2.07 billion. It also bumped up its forecast for adjusted EPS at CER to at least $2.14 from a previous estimate of $2.05. The company said that guidance takes into account a reaffirmation of its previous goal for double-digit CER sales growth from non-COVID product groups but a "significant year-on-year decline in COVID-19 product group sales based on the expected volatile pandemic trends."

The Q1 2022 sales rise of 11 percent, or 15 percent at CER, was the result of double-digit growth among both its COVID-19 product groups, up 13 percent to $229 million, and non-COVID groups, which increased 10 percent to $400 million. 

Sales of consumables and related products were up 13 percent year over year to $561 million, while instrument sales declined 2 percent to $67 million. The firm's molecular diagnostic revenues were up 28 percent year over year to $357 million, while life sciences product sales were down 6 percent to $272 million.

Sales of the firm's sample technologies were up 17 percent to $265 million, and sales of diagnostic solutions jumped 16 percent to $174 million.

Among its diagnostic products, sales of the Quantiferon tuberculosis test were up 38 percent to $78 million, while sales of QiaStat-Dx were up 25 percent to $27 million, and sales for NeuMoDx dropped 15 percent to $27 million, adversely affected by COVID-19 consumables testing trends, Qiagen said.

The firm's Genomics/NGS product group had a strong quarter with sales rising 11 percent to $56 million, driven by its Qiagen Digital Insights bioinformatics business, functional genomics consumables, and universal next-generation sequencing consumables. Earlier this week, the firm launched its Biomedical Knowledge Base, a collection of manually curated data that lists structured biomedical relationships between elements including genes, diseases, functions, targets, drugs, and chemicals to power graph analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other drug discovery applications. 

Qiagen posted net income of $155.3 million, or $.67 per share, compared to a profit of $129.2 million, or $.56 per share, for Q1 2021. On an adjusted basis, EPS was $.80, well above the consensus Wall Street estimate of $.65.

The firm's R&D spending decreased slightly to $46.4 million from $47.4 million, while its SG&A costs rose around 4 percent to $152.9 million from $147.6 million.

Qiagen finished the quarter with $770.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and $459.3 million in short-term investments.

Source: Qiagen Q1 Revenues Rise on Strong MDx Sales, Surpassing Expectations