NEW YORK – NanoString Technologies reported after the close of the market on Wednesday that its first quarter revenues rose 15 percent year over year.
For the three months ended March 31, the Seattle-based spatial biology company's revenues were $35.8 million, up from $31.1 million last year and beating Wall Street analysts' average estimate of $33.1 million. Of the total revenues, $17.1 million came from the company’s spatial biology business.
"2023 is off to a strong start, with spatial biology revenue up more than 75 percent over the prior year," NanoString President and CEO Brad Gray said in a statement. "Demand for our CosMx Spatial Molecular Imager is robust, with new orders driving an increase in CosMx backlog even as we accelerated shipments in the first quarter. We also generated sequential and year-over-year growth in consumable revenue across all our platforms."
First quarter instruments revenues were $11.4 million, up 25 percent from $9.1 million in Q1 2022. Consumables revenues totaled $19.8 million, a 13 percent increase from $17.5 million in the year-ago quarter. Services and other revenues grew 4 percent in Q1 to $4.7 million from $4.5 million in the same period last year.
During the quarter, NanoString grew its total installed base for spatial biology systems to approximately 385, representing 31 percent year-over-year growth. The company also expanded the installed base of the nCounter platforms to approximately 1,130, an increase of 6 percent year over year.
The company's Q1 R&D spending dropped 7 percent to $16.1 million from $17.4 million a year ago. Its SG&A spending in Q1 increased 3 percent to $37.4 million from $36.4 million in Q1 2022.
NanoString's net loss for the quarter was $41.2 million, or $.88 per share, compared with a net loss of $39.5 million, or $.86 per share, a year ago. On average, analysts had been expecting a smaller Q1 net loss of $.73 per share.
The company ended the quarter with $121.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and $33.2 million in short-term investments.
For the full year, NanoString increased its revenue guidance to between $175.0 million and $185.0 million compared to its previous outlook of $170.0 million to $180.0 million. The updated revenue guidance for spatial biology is $100.0 million to $105.0 million, up from the previous revenue range of $95.0 to $100.0 million. Meanwhile, nCounter revenue, inclusive of all service and other revenue, remains unchanged from the previous guidance range of $75.0 million to $80.0 million.
In Thursday afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, NanoString's shares were down about 3 percent at $9.46.