Qiagen reported after the close of the market recently that its first quarter revenues grew nearly 2 percent year over year as the firm fell short of analysts' topline estimates but beat expectations on the bottom line.

For the three months ended March 31, Qiagen posted revenues of $348.7 million, below the Wall Street estimate of $350.7 million. On an adjusted basis and at constant exchange rates (CER), Q1 revenues grew 6 percent year over year.

The company noted that about one percentage point of total CER sales growth came from the launch of its QiaStat-Dx molecular diagnostics system with the rest of the business contributing about 5 percentage points of growth.

The company said this growth absorbed about one percentage point of decline from the combined impact of divesting its veterinary assay portfolio in April 2018 and a decline in third-party instrument service contracts that began in 2018 when the company shifted resources to support new product launches.

"We were pleased with the placements of instruments, particularly under reagent rental contracts, where sales are recognized through consumables purchases over a multi-year period," Qiagen CFO Roland Sackers said in a morning conference call recapping Qiagen's earnings.

"However, the focus on reagent rental placements, along with the reduction in third-party instrument service contracts resulted in only a 2 percent CER increase in instrument sales to $36 million in this first quarter of 2019," Sackers said. "Excluding the reduction in third-party service contracts, instrument sales were up 8 percent at CER."