>>ABI Says No More Layoffs Anticipated
By a GenomeWeb staff reporter
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 8 - Will the new year bring additional layoffs for Applied Biosystems?
Probably not -- but maybe -- ABI executives said today at the JPMorgan 21st Annual Healthcare Conference here.
At the end of 2002, ABI cut approximately ten percent of its staff, giving about 500 people the pink slip between Christmas and New Year's. The company said the job reductions were to gird for uncertain economic conditions in addition to bringing resources in line with a lowered research budget.
"We think we did that," said Michael Hunkapiller, president of Applied Biosystems, who said he did not think there would be more layoffs in the near term but cautioned it "depends on what happens in 2003."
"Based on best estimates, we think we've done what we had to do," said Tony White, CEO of ABI's parent company Applera.
"But no guarantees," he added.<<
I listened to AFFX at the conference. Mr. Fodor was pretty general. He talked of AFFX' version of Moore's law. While the cost of the chips may not have gone down much (to hear researchers gripe per the post from Nigel citing GenomeWeb a few months ago, Mr. Fodor did not talk of price), they have gotten much more dense. When first introduced in '96, the feature size was 100 microns. Now it's 18, and they're working on 10. Partly in conjunction with Perlegen, they are moving into the sequence analysis/SNP space. HuSNP chips for whole genome analysis, linkage studies, LOH; custom chips for candidate region analysis (currently available to early access customers). The large wafers used by Perlegen for whole genome analysis are available to other customers. As the density goes up, these wafers, too, will be more dense. AFFX will release a chip with 100k SNPs on in the next year.
What is unclear to me is how effectively these compete with the other SNP companies, such as Illumina (whose much delayed high throughput genotyping system is in dispute with ABI). It could be that these chips gaining traction are what make analysts believe AFFX can triple earnings. Hope so, because it P/E is around 200. In any case, Perlegen has scored some deals that GNSC and VGNX would probably liked to have had.
He also mentioned the new 3000 reader is manufactured by AFFX, rather than third parties, as in the past.
Cheers, Tuck |
