Earnings Labs

Fulgent Genetics, Inc. (FLGT)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 4, 2016

$14.79

-3.46%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.46%

1 Week

-1.03%

1 Month

+13.39%

vs S&P

+5.69%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the third quarter 2016 Fulgent Genetics earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to now introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Bob Jones, Investor Relations, The Blueshirt Group. Sir, you may begin.

Bob Jones

Analyst

Thank you, Amanda. Good afternoon and welcome to the Fulgent Genetics third quarter 2016 conference call. On the call today is Ming Hsieh, Chief Executive Officer; Paul Kim, Chief Financial Officer; and Dr. Harry Gao, Chief Scientific Officer. The company's press release discussing its financial results is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website, fulgentgenetics.com. An audio replay of this call will be available shortly after the call concludes. Please visit the Investor Relations section of the company's website to access the audio replay. Management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions on today's call will contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent management's estimates based on current views and assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. As a result, matters discussed in any forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ from those described in the forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements it may make today to reflect actual results or changes in expectations. Listeners should not rely on any forward-looking statements as predictions of future events, and should listen to management's remarks today with the understanding that actual events, including the company's actual future results, may be materially different in what is described in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Please review the more detailed discussions related to these forward-looking statements, including the discussions of some of the risk factors that may cause results to differ from those described in these forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the third quarter of 2016 and the related press release announcing its financial results for that quarter, both of which are available on the company's website. Management's prepared remarks, including discussions of earnings and earnings per share, which are financial measures not prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or GAAP. Management has presented these non-GAAP financial measures because it believes they may be useful to investors for various reasons, but they should not be viewed as a substitute for, or superior to, the company's financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Please see the company's press release discussing its financial results for the third quarter of 2016 for more information, including the description of how the company calculates non-GAAP earnings and earnings per share and a reconciliation of these financial measures to net loss and net loss per share, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. So with that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Ming.

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Thank you, Bob. Good afternoon and welcome to this afternoon's call to discuss Fulgent's third quarter financial results. As you know, this is our first earnings conference call after our initial public offer completed on October 4. It was a pleasure to meeting many of you on the road show and we appreciate your support. I look forward to your discussions in the meetings as we move forward. Fulgent’s strong third quarter financial results, highlighted by 72% of revenue growth, demonstrated how we have been able to disrupt genetic testing market and differentiate Fulgent in the marketplace. Let me first provide the overview of Fulgent, particularly for those who are new to the company. In past several years, we have created high margin genetic testing businesses with a differentiated approach to NGS testing and data analytics. We have been able to combine the company's scientific expertise in NGS testing with a similar data analytical capabilities from our previous experience at Cogent, a technology business that we sold six years ago to a cost of $1 billion. We have built Fulgent around a proprietary technology driven by our own gene probes and data algorithms with integrated technology platforms that allow us to quickly develop a test at a lower cost than many of the other companies in our industry, which has a few of the strong revenue growth and the broader NGS testing for our customers. As our test volumes grow from a relatively low base we have today, we expect we will generally increase our operating efficiency, and that will allow the business to further scale and generate the profitability. Today, we offer over 18,000 single gene tests and approximately 250 panel tests, which we believe is far more than any of our competitors. And with our whole exome genomic…

Paul Kim

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Thank you, Ming and welcome to our first earnings conference call at Fulgent Genetics. The third quarter was certainly a busy and exciting period for Fulgent, capped off with the successful completion of our IPO. As Ming said, we appreciate the support of our stockholders and look forward to seeing many of you at our upcoming conferences and investor events. We believe our third quarter financial results demonstrate that our operating and financial model is driven by our superior technology platform and uniqueness in the genetic testing space. Revenues grew 72% to $5 million in the quarter compared to last year's third quarter, and increased 26% sequentially. Our revenue growth was driven by new customer additions and further penetration of existing customers, primarily in the hospital market. I'd like to point out that virtually none of the new business that Ming described in his remarks covering third quarter accomplishments contributed to our revenue performance during the quarter. We generated 62% of our revenue in the US and Canada, and 38% outside of North America. Test volumes during the quarter rose to 3,423 billable tests from 2,781 billable tests in the prior quarter. Pricing was slightly above our expectation at an average sales price of $14.60 per test during the quarter, which we believe was largely due to our ability to offer more complex and customized tests than many of our competitors. Although our model calls for slight pricing decreases over time, we have not been experiencing pricing degradation recently. Gross margin for the quarter was $2.9 million, excluding share-based compensation of $542,000 in that category, gross margin was $3.454 million, or 69%, which is a record level for the company in its short history. On the flipside, costs per test continue to decrease during the quarter. Excluding aforementioned share-based compensation…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Erin Wilson from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Erin Wilson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you speak first to your progress with the third-party payer contracts? How are the relationships progressing specifically with the Blue's plans, and are you happy on sort of the contracted pricing terms? And are you still in discussion with other larger payers out there? Thanks.

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Erin, those are very good questions. We are progressing our insurance payers’ negotiations now. We do believe the pricing we received from besides this are largely national payer we already signed. The other national payer organizations provided for us a very, very attractive contract pricing schedule, especially for the panels. So we are working actively for all the national payers’ organizations as well as some of the payer subsidiaries. So we're happy to see our position. I think I highlighted before the dealing with the payers. The NGS market, it is growing. NGS is attractive to the insurance payers because it's related to patient care. And that they do like the depth of Fulgent, we could bring to the table for the test menu that we have, and that's why we're attractive to this organization for -- get us on their contracts.

Erin Wilson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Okay, great. And, Paul, maybe I missed this but did you give what your guidance implies in terms of pricing and volume for the fourth quarter?

Paul Kim

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

No, we didn't give any guidance on the pricing and volume. We're only one month into the fourth quarter, but based on the one month, we don't see any drastic changes in the pricing environment based on the orders that we received.

Erin Wilson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Okay, great. And then speaking about -- I noticed a comment about the Xi Long JV in the press release. When do you think that will start to sort of materialize? And can you kind of speak to the broader opportunity there as you kind of enter the China market? Thanks.

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Yes. Erin, that’s a very good question. We are processing some more paper works. We expect this joint venture, the paper works will be finalized by this quarter towards maybe end of November or middle December. So this JV will be finalized. So besides this Xi Long JV joint venture, we see very attractive opportunities in China for the preventive care market. We do have a separate relationship with the Chinese major peripheral medicine company. They are looking forward the relationship with us to build a genetic testing to profile some of their patients or their customers. So in general, the China market is very, very attractive for us and we're very aggressive in chasing the market.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.

Bill Quirk

Analyst · Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open

Great. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. A couple of questions from me. First off, Ming, you mentioned in your prepared comments that you saw both some new account growth as well as volume growth with an existing account. Is there any way to just get a sense about that same-store sales volume growth, how much of that is kind of ongoing kind of market volume growth versus incrementally winning business at some of these accounts and from other labs, for example?

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open

Bill, that’s a very good question. Our business in terms of quarter-over-quarter, we do have some variations from hospital to hospital. But in general trends, we do see the hospital business, the volume in general, is growing and we might see a certain hospital grow fast than others, but that's maybe related to seasonal issue. But in general, we see our test volumes grow up in general.

Bill Quirk

Analyst · Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open

Maybe a different way of asking the question, Ming is, are you -- is there any -- no doubt, you're watching metrics in each of your accounts in terms of the type of tests that they're ordering. I mean, are you seeing any broadening of menus and such from some of these existing accounts?

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open

Yes. Bill, we see a lot of actions. We see the cardio, we do see attraction on the cancers and all those volumes are growing as the test [indiscernible] comes in.

Bill Quirk

Analyst · Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open

Okay. Very good. Now, that’s helpful. And then secondly, and I think this is a question to Paul. I know that for the commentary, you didn't see much impact from the deals that you guys signed in the third quarter numbers. Are you expecting much impact from those in 4Q, or is that something that we should really be thinking about potentially accelerating in 2017? Thank you.

Paul Kim

Analyst · Bill Quirk from Piper Jaffray. Your line is open

We're not anticipating a whole lot in the fourth quarter. If we do get it in the fourth quarter, then we think that there's potential upside to the fourth quarter numbers. But a lot of these drivers -- whether it'd be progress that we're making in the payer side, whether it be progress that we're making on the international side, or progress that we're making on the OEM side or even the government, we really see those as being volume drivers in 2017 rather than 2016.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Andrew Cooper from Raymond James.

Andrew Cooper

Analyst · Andrew Cooper from Raymond James

Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. I guess first, you talked about kind of more OEM opportunities in oncology or cardio. I just want to kind of get your thoughts on why kind of target that sort of opportunity relative to developing another panel yourself, or what your thoughts would be as to who you're going to partner with and how you're thinking about that opportunity in general.

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Andrew Cooper from Raymond James

Yeah. This is a good question. I think I might have created some kind of confusion. When I mentioned about the OEM relationship, this is related to the prenatal testing. And that's the one we signed a major contract with a major prenatal -- the leader in that market. Related to the cardio, our regular genetic tests, clinical-related tests, we are still working by ourselves. We have built a sales force to penetrate this market. We're also working with some of our sales forces now outside of US such as Middle East. Those relationships we have be the distributor relationship, so we are handling all those clinical-related tests by our own sales force. But when we penetrate into the different markets, such as prenatal, and that's a market that we are not exposed to before, we [indiscernible] OEM relationships.

Andrew Cooper

Analyst · Andrew Cooper from Raymond James

Okay, great. Thanks. And then I guess just one more. As we think about the JV with Xi Long, if you could talk about kind of, one, a little bit more of the timing into 2017. I know you said sign it by kind of the end of the year, but anything on timing there in terms of when you would be up and running and what sort of investment would be required out of you before you're able to start seeing some of the benefits there?

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Andrew Cooper from Raymond James

We will see the level to be up and running in the earlier of 2017. As I mentioned, regardless for the lab we also have another relationship with a major Chinese herbal medicine company and to build the genetic testing for their customers. So that will be through this joint venture -- part of the deal was to go through this joint venture.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Hsieh for closing remarks.

Ming Hsieh

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open

All right. So I would like to thank you for all of your participation in Fulgent's first earnings call as a public company. We're very proud of the company we have built in such a short period of time. We believe there's a tremendous opportunity to reach our ambitious goals and now we are a public company. The NGS market is large and growing. We have many opportunities before us to grow our business globally. As we seek expansion, our customer-base beyond the hospital market, we believe our proprietary technology platform provides a sustainable and competitive advantage. I would like to thank our customers for their confidence in us, and our stockholders in their support. Thank you, and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everybody have a great day.