NanoString Goes on Hiring Spree After Revenue Jumps 52% in 2014

February 27, 2015
By Jessica Wilson, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

NanoString , a Seattle biotechnology company, grew its revenues 52 percent according to the company’s 2014 earnings report released this week, reaching $15.6 million by the end of the fourth quarter of 2014, up from $10.1 million for the same quarter in 2013. The year-over-year earnings exceeded analysts’ predictions by more than $500,000.

NanoString’s headcount grew by 100 employees in 2014 and now tops out at 270 people, which is one reason for the 41 percent jump in the company’s losses. In addition, the company announced via a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in December 2014 that it would grow its Seattle footprint by leasing more laboratory and office space in the city.

Chief Executive Officer Brad Gray credited this rapid growth to the company’s new strategy to focus on cancer diagnostics. “We're really focusing more explicitly on cancer, and that's relatively new,” Gray told the Puget Sound Business Journal. “For a long time, we were a technology company that focused on a great instrument platform and now we're letting the scientist community determine its best use.”

In a conference call following NanoString’s earnings release, Gray discussed the results of the new strategy, reported Genomeweb. “Instruments and consumables remained the primary engine driving our growth,” Gray said on the call. “Oncology was once again the primary driver of new instrument placement, accounting for approximately 70 percent of new instruments in the quarter.” He also said international instrument sales counted for more than half of all new sales and cited China as the company’s largest international market.

Financial analysts seem to agree with the new strategy as well. Four analysts that cover NanoString have given the company a “consensus broker rating score of 1.13,” which is a Strong Buy, according to Zacks Investment Research, reported Sleek Money. In addition, the four brokers cited in the report by Zacks have set a 12-month consensus price target of $16.50 for shares of NanoString. A J.P. Morgan analyst report set the December 2015 stock price at $18 a share, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. The bank expects NanoString to outgrow similar companies. NanoString’s share price is $10.47 as of 11:20 am today.

Gray, who joined the NanoSpring in 2010, took the company public in 2013 and raised $112 million in two offerings. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the company’s first cancer diagnostic product, the Prosigna Breast Cancer Assay, that same year.

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