4Q Earnings Show Mostly Gains for Diagnostics

Fourth quarter earnings reports are starting to trickle in. Here is a big picture roundup of some of the key results so far.

Gainers
Companies with strong 4Q diagnostics revenues include:

Abbott Laboratories: Year-over-year (YOY) growth of 3% driven by 4% increase in infectious disease testing and core laboratory sales (from $969 million to $1 billion)—offsetting 1% foreign exchange loss and 8% decline in molecular diagnostics due to wind-down of genetics business;

Quest Diagnostics: Quarterly revenues of $1.86 billion on 0.7% growth (on a reported basis) and full year revenues of $7.52 billion on 0.3% growth;

Luminex: Expected YOY growth of 20% for 4Q and 14% for year with revenues of, respectively, $72 million and $271 million, easily beating Wall Street estimates of $70.3 million and $268.9 million; and

Invitae Corporation: Among best performing of genetic information companies with expected 33% revenue growth (as compared to Q3) driven by 200% YOY increase in billable test volume with approximately 59,000 tests for the year. The genomic testing sector was strong with robust quarterly YOY growth reported by:

• T2 Biosystems (+50%) (preliminary);

• NanoString Technologies (+15%) (preliminary); and

• GenMark Diagnostics (+13%).

Decliners
Although gainers generally outnumbered decliners, companies with weaker than expected diagnostics revenues included:

Meridian Bioscience: Decline of 1% for 3 months ended Dec. 31, 2016 (which is actually the company's first quarter) to $46.8 million, well below Wall Street estimate of $51.2 million, due to 4% decline in core diagnostics business which more than offset 3% growth in molecular diagnostics;

Quidel: Expected 4Q revenue of $52 to $53 million, as opposed to Wall Street estimate of $63.1 million, which company attributes to weak sales of influenza kits caused by late start to flu season; and

Fluidigm: YOY decline of 19% (roughly $25 million v. $30.7 million in 4Q 2015) and expected 9% decline in full year revenues.