Bionano Genomics (NASDAQ:BNGO) effected a 1-for-10 reverse stock split and announced that it will publish quarterly earnings on Aug. 9.
Shares opened this morning at $4.73 each, a market capitalization of $1.49 billion. Bionano reported about $28 million in revenue last year but reported a loss of over $132 million. First-quarter results put it on pace to lose just as much in 2023.
Who, or What, is Bionano?
Analyzing genetic data is vital in creating new drugs. Bionano provides genome analysis hardware and software, which laboratories use to interpret data across a range of platforms. Analysts compare the company to Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN), which has a market cap of nearly $30 billion on $4.5 billion of revenue but achieved a small profit only in the first quarter.
Bionano sells a device called Saphyr to conduct Optical Genome Mapping (OGM) of genomes, then sells software, services, and consumables on top of it. Saphyr was designed to detect individual variants in a nucleotide. The consumables represent $73,000 of revenue annually for each machine in use. Bionano had $7.3 million in revenue during the first quarter, up 30% from a year earlier.
Bionano’s latest system is called Stratys. It was announced in July and claims four times the throughput of Saphyr. Stratys will be rolled out in 2024. The company also announced a new software package called Via, which is already available.
Bionano came public in 2018, and its first trade was at a post-split $6.13. BNGO stock peaked in early 2021 at $13.70, but shares are currently down 93% from the initial trade. The company acquired Purigen Biosystems last year for $64 million. Purigen makes devices to extract DNA and RNA from tissue samples that are fixed with formalin and embedded in paraffin, a system called FFPE.
BNGO Stock: What Happens Next?
Bionano now has more financial runway to sell its system to labs and try to make money. But that runway is limited.
As of this writing, Dana Blankenhorn did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
