NEW YORK – Bionano Genomics said on Monday that it expects Q1 revenues to grow by 28 percent to 32 percent year over year on strong sales of its Saphyr optical genome mapping (OGM) platform and related consumables.
For the three-month period ended March 31, the San Diego-based company reported unaudited preliminary revenues of between $7.3 million and $7.5 million compared to $5.7 million in Q1 2022. On average, analysts are expecting Q1 revenues of $7.1 million.
During the quarter, the company installed 19 new Saphyr systems, growing the instrument’s installed base to 259. This represents a 47 percent increase over the 176 installed systems reported at the end of Q1 2022.
The firm expects to sell 5,226 nanochannel array flow cells in Q1, which would represent a 62 percent increase over the 3,225 flow cells sold in the year-ago period.
Bionano also announced that it has elected to withdraw its applications for category I current procedural terminology (CPT) codes for its OGM technology ahead of the May 2023 CPT Editorial Panel meeting, during which the company’s applications would have been reviewed.
Bionano said the withdrawal was to mitigate the possibility of OGM being assigned category III CPT codes instead of category I CPT codes. According to the company, category III CPT codes can be assigned if a technology is considered to be emerging. Because these codes are not assigned pricing under Medicare's clinical laboratory fee schedule, reimbursement of the technology would be primarily at the payor’s discretion.
"Considering recent progress made by OGM customers in obtaining priced PLA [Proprietary Laboratory Analyses] codes or successfully using gene-specific CPT codes to obtain reimbursement, Bionano is evaluating whether applying for a category I CPT code aligns with its strategy, given that customer-driven reimbursement strategies may lead to OGM-specific CPT codes in the future," the company said in a statement.