Illumina’s (NASDAQ:ILMN) second-quarter earnings crushed expectations last week. Investors cheered the company’s raised guidance, and the stock is up more than 15% since the report.
Illumina’s genomic sequencing machines read the As, Cs, Ts, and Gs of a human being’s DNA and then digitizes them into a format that can be easily understood. One of the most exciting developments in the company’s recent history was the introduction earlier this year of its newest NovaSeq model. NovaSeq has the potential to bring the cost of a human genome sequence down to $100, which would be a tenfold reduction from where we stand today.