Life Sciences Market Remains Strong while M&A Provides Support
As we enter the peak earnings season for many tools and device companies, initial reports would indicate that investor expectations are higher and stocks could have a bit of profit taking.
Genomic Health(GHDX $22.11) Turns a Profit But Stock Drops 5%
Genomic Health turned a profit in the current fiscal year ended Q4 2010 earning $4.3M or 14 cents/sh on $178.1M revenue.Q4 Revenues were $47.1M up 19% with a profit of $1.7M or 6 cents/sh. 57,270 cancer tests were delivered for the full year a 17% increase over 2009. Guidance for 2011 is Revenue of $200-$210M with Net Income of $3-5M on 63k to 65k tests delivered. Perhaps the guidance disappointed. International growth was strong. Reimbursement progress for the breast cancer test continued.P/S for 2011 is about 3. Genoptix (GXDX was sold to Novartis for about 1.9X.
Illumina (ILMN $69.13) Guides up EPS 30% and Revenues 20% for 2011
For 2010 leading sequencing provider ILMN earned $125M or 87 cents/sh. on $903M revenue up from $666M in 2009. New product news and increased demand for human genome sequencing as well as clinical applications should support stock which is down 1.4%. Illumina is in the Rayno Life Science Tools and Dx Portfolio.
Becton Dickinson(BDX $81) holds after 5% stock hit following earnings report. Analysts are looking for H2 revenue growth, not cost cutting and buybacks. Some diagnostics and tools overall were weak today tracking NASDAQ despite a report from Moody’s stating that the Life Science industry should grow between 5-7% and that increased tolerance for debt.
Moody’s expects strong growth in life science tech – Yahoo! Finance
Beckman Coulter Valuation at 8.6 Ebitda Leaves LBO Crowd Frigid: Real M&A – Bloomberg
Rayno MicroCaps Beat the Market
Among the Microcaps we are tracking Immucell (ICCC $3.78) market cap $11.2M, is up 6% after reporting 2010 revenues of $4.386M and a net loss of $385k. Cash position was $4.626M at the end of 2010.A significant investment is being made in their Mast Out (TM) product for treatment of mastitis in cows now under review at the FDA.
Other microcaps we track are Corgenix(CONX.OB $0.11) and Ivax Dx (IVD $1.03) will report next week. All of these stocks are up since we wrote about them in December.
Raygent » ‘Tis the Season for Microcaps: Corgenix(CONX.OB), ImmuCell (ICCC) and IVAX (IVD)