CALP reports:
>>MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Caliper Technologies Corp. (Nasdaq: CALP - news) today announces its second quarter financial results for 2001. For the quarter ended June 30, 2001, the company reported a net loss of $6.2 million or $0.26 per share as compared to a net loss of $5.2 million or $0.25 per share for the same period last year. For the first six months of 2001, the company reported net income of $20.2 million or $0.79 per share as compared to a net loss of $13.5 million or $0.65 per share for the same period in 2000. Included in the net income for the first six months of 2001 is the $27.5 million or $1.07 per share and the $5.0 million or $0.19 per share the company recorded for the dismissal of all suits and countersuits and for the initial licensing of the ``Ramsey'' family of patents, respectively, all between the company and Aclara Biosciences.
Total revenues were $5.3 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2001, as compared to $4.2 million in the same period in 2000, representing a 26% increase. Of this increase, half is attributed to product sales increases associated with the company's commercial collaboration with Agilent Technologies. The remaining increase is principally attributed to product sales associated with the company's AMS 90 and Caliper 42 systems. Technology Access Program (TAP) revenue declined 14% for the quarter as compared to the same period in 2000.
Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2001 were $14.4 million, an increase of $3.6 million over the comparative second quarter of 2000 primarily due to expanded research and development activities. Also contributing to expenses were additional administrative costs from increased marketing efforts offset by reduced expenses associated with deferred stock compensation.
Cash and investments totaled $177.8 million at June 30, 2001. In the first six months of the year, the company received 900,000 shares of common stock from Aclara Biosciences, which, along with an accompanying letter of credit, has a guaranteed aggregate value of $32.5 million for the company that is reflected in other assets on our balance sheet.
``Our financial performance for the second quarter 2001 reflects growth in some key areas of the company, including increasing traction for our AMS 90 and Applications Developer Program offerings, continuing strong growth of the Agilent 2100, and only modest growth in TAP revenue when compared to the first quarter 2001,'' said Jim Knighton, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. ``In this quarter, an important positive trend was the increase in the percentage of our revenue deriving from product sales, as contrasted with licensing fees and R&D contract services. In the second quarter 2001, product related sales were 35% of the total revenue compared to 14% in the first quarter 2001 and 7% in the second quarter of 2000. We anticipate that this trend will continue as Caliper strengthens and expands its commercial activities, especially related to our high throughput screening business, which is evolving from a technology access program to a products business. Our expenses and use of cash were in line with our expectations for this quarter, driven, in part, by investment in high value R&D programs, recruitment and facilities expansion. We also initiated a major effort to build a broader commercial infrastructure, including sales, marketing and market research activities, with the goal of intensifying the commercialization of all our products, which impacted our net loss for the quarter.''
``In the second quarter 2001, Caliper enjoyed some important successes, and faced some key challenges, in expanding commercialization efforts for our LabChip® product lines,'' said Dan Kisner, M.D., Caliper's President and Chief Executive Officer.
Continued Dr. Kisner: ``Agilent is now selling Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer on a worldwide basis with increasing success. For the first six months of 2001, Agilent and we have seen a doubling of unit sales over the same period last year, a trend that we believe will continue throughout 2001. We believe that we are on track at least to double instrument placements this year over the number placed in 2000. We are especially pleased with the progress of the RNA chip, which continues to be the most widely used application, and with the protein chip, which has gained a foothold in pharmaceutical quality assurance/quality control laboratories. Based on this progress, Agilent intends to seek full compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) of the 2100 Bioanalyzer by the end of 2002. The development of cell-based assays is on track and we anticipate introducing new chip kits later in 2001. Our relationship with Agilent continues to be strong and collaborative and is an important asset for the company.
``We are also pleased with our progress in selling Applications Developer Program collaborations as well as advancing sales of our AMS 90 systems. We recently announced an exciting collaboration with NASA to develop novel LabChip® systems to perform protein crystallization in space. We believe that this kind of innovation, combining Caliper's microfluidic chip expertise with the customer's functional expertise, is representative of the significant potential of the Applications Developer Program. We anticipate establishing additional collaborations this year. Our AMS 90 system for automated high throughput DNA analysis is also gaining ground. We have sold four systems to date and are on track to meet our commercial goals for the year.
``During the second quarter, we made the decision to introduce a new commercial structure for selling LabChip® high throughput screening systems. Based on thorough market research, our analysis of customer preferences and the advancing development and commercial readiness of our HTS systems, we are planning to replace our current TAP business model with a products-based model. We believe that this strategy will enable us to accelerate and broaden the penetration of LabChip® systems into the high throughput screening market and enable us to serve customers' needs more effectively. This restructuring is a natural transition away from a technology access, fee-based program toward a commercial product line that reflects the completion of the product development cycle, the growing competitiveness of our system's features and benefit set and demonstrated performance. We are currently implementing a full-scale sales and marketing program to support this new initiative and we are planning a formal launch of our new high throughput screening product line in the fall.
``We believe that our transition away from a TAP model to a products business is a significant event for Caliper and will position the company to continue to build and sustain its product-related revenue base. The efforts we are undertaking to establish our HTS business and build a commercial infrastructure to support new sales and marketing initiatives will, however, impact our expenses as well as the pace at which we anticipate growing our revenue for the second half of the year.
``In conclusion, we believe that this is the right time to implement this transition strategy as our HTS products have sufficiently advanced in performance and functionality to be highly attractive commercial offerings. We believe the HTS market is looking for new technology solutions to their difficult research challenges within a flexible commercial program. We are optimistic that Caliper's LabChip® HTS system will be able to meet those needs. We anticipate that these new commercial initiatives will enhance our ability to maintain and strengthen on our position as the leader in microfluidic technology and create value for the company. We believe that our fundamentals are strong and that our strategies are the right ones with which to build our company for the long term.''<<
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I'll get to the CC at some point this weekend. The new marketing costs caused part of the miss, but the Street sees them as adding a bit of value? OTOH, the revenues are well short of targets. Apparently the Street was ahead of analysts published thoughts on earnings & revenues, and had priced them in. Stock is closing well.
Cheers, Tuck |
