Singular Genomics Systems reported a $22.0 million net loss for the first quarter 2022 after the close of the market on Tuesday.
For the three months ended March 31, the San Diego-based sequencing technology firm, which raised $237.1 million in an initial public offering a year ago, reported no revenues as it prepares to begin shipping its G4 next-generation sequencer.
“We are on track to begin shipping G4 instruments to our customers in the second quarter. We are encouraged by the robust external validation through our beta and early-access program placements, our acceptance of initial orders, and the assembly of the first production G4 units,” Singular Cofounder and CEO Drew Spaventa said in a statement. “We believe the G4’s combination of power, speed, flexibility, and accuracy will enable more efficient workflows through daily runs, flexible run sizes, and faster results, all at attractive economics for users.”
On a conference call with investors following the release of results, Spaventa noted that the company plans to showcase the instrument and its applications at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference next month. “We anticipate having a G4 system on-site for demos … and providing additional data and highlights from our specialized application chips.”
Along with the financial results, Singular also announced three partnerships, one with graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Nvidia to validate the G4’s workflows with Nvidia’s Clara Parabricks secondary analysis platform, another with Bio-Rad Laboratories to validate Sequoia library prep kits for RNA-seq, and a third with Quantabio to validate that firm’s sparQ kits for DNA and RNA sample prep.
Under the terms of the Nvidia agreement, the partners will optimize alignment and variant calling and enable G4 users to run accelerated bioinformatics pipelines for applications including whole-genome sequencing, RNA-seq, and targeted gene panels. The deal extends the collaboration between the firms — the G4 uses the Nvidia Rtx A6000 GPU for AI-enabled basecalling — to downstream workflows.
Financial and other terms of the three agreements were not disclosed.
Singular’s net loss for the quarter totaled $22.0 million, or $.31 per share, compared to a net loss of $23.9 million, or $2.05 per share, in Q1 2021, beating the consensus Wall Street estimate of a $.33 loss per share. The number of weighted average shares of common stock used to compute net loss per share was approximately 71 million, compared to approximately 11.7 million in the year-ago quarter.
The firm reported $10.6 million in R&D expenses for the quarter, up 61 percent from $6.6 million a year ago. SG&A expenses were $11.4 million, up more than threefold from $3.7 million a year ago. The increase in operating expenses was attributable to growth in headcount, investments to support the G4 launch, investments in the firm’s PX multiomics instrument and R&D roadmap, and costs associated with being a public company.
“With initial orders in, we are ramping up our commercial organization, and we’ll continue to make the necessary investments to support our commercial goals and scale the business,” said Dalen Meeter, Singular’s senior VP of finance.
Singular plans to grow its commercial team, including sales, support, and marketing, to about 40 employees by the end of the year, Spaventa said, while increasing its operations team to 100. The firm had 240 employees at the end of the quarter.
As of March 31, Singular had $188.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and $127.4 million in short-term investments.
In Wednesday morning trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Singular were up 5 percent at $3.53.
This article originally appeared on GenomeWeb. Click here for more information.
