Illumina Banks On New Product Suite Despite Margin Woes

On Sep 6, we issued an updated research report on Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) , a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. The company’s market opportunities continue to expand owing to accelerated demand from clinical and translational customers. Its recent strategic collaborations are also expected to widen its product portfolio.

Shares of the company have outperformed its industry over the past six months. The stock has declined 9%, narrower than the industry's decrease of 13.9%.

Year-over-year growth in revenues can be attributed to strength across Illumina’s sequencing consumables portfolio, especially in the high and low throughput categories. Furthermore, Illumina continues to showcase robust performance across a broad range of sequencing applications.

Illumina, Inc. Price

Illumina, Inc. price | Illumina, Inc. Quote

The launch of Veriseq NIPT v2 and the company’s partnership with AnchorDx in the second quarter of 2019 also buoy optimism. Meanwhile, the HiSeq to NovaSeq upgrade cycle is progressing well and NextSeq placements are strong as well. Moreover, we are looking forward to the company's newly-inked Pacific Biosciences deal.

In the second quarter, the company saw a solid uptick in oncology testing on application of genomic information. It is upbeat about 12 new drugs being introduced with a predictive biomarker (nine of which were approved for oncology indications). In 2019, we expect Illumina to progress within this space as a powerful provider of genomic testing.

In the quarter, EMEA demonstrated impressive growth of 7% with a record number of sequencing systems and sequencing consumables delivered. Despite revenues from Greater China falling 9% year over year during the quarter, currently there are 3-4 million NIPT tests done annually in the country.

On the flip side, HiSeq consumables persist to drop as expected. Seasonality in DTC functionality also continues to erode Illumina’s microarray sales. Contraction in both margins and a year-over-year deterioration in Service and Other revenues are concerns.Additionally, the company is operating in a tough competitive landscape.

Stocks Worth a Look

A few better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) , Baxter (NYSE:BAX) and NuVasive (NASDAQ:NUVA) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Medtronic’s long-term earnings growth rate is expected to be 7.13%.

Baxter’s long-term earnings growth rate is projected at 12.8%.

NuVasive’s long-term earnings growth rate is estimated to be 12.75%

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