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Bionano (BNGO) to Report Q4 Earnings: What's in the Offing?

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We expect Bionano Genomics, Inc. (BNGO - Free Report) to beat expectations when it reports fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 results.

The stock has skyrocketed1156.4% in the past year compared with the industry's growth of 13.9%.

The company missed expectations by 33.33% in the last reported quarter. Over the trailing four quarters, it missed earnings estimates on two occasions while matched in one. The four-quarter average negative earnings surprise is 23.23%.

Let us see how things have shaped up prior to this announcement.

Factors in Focus

Bionano is a life sciences instrumentation company in the genome analysis space. The company develops and markets the Saphyr system, a platform for ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific structural variation detection that enables researchers and clinicians to accelerate the search for new diagnostics and therapeutic targets and streamline the study of changes in chromosomes, which is known as cytogenetics. The Saphyr system comprises an instrument, chip consumables, reagents and a suite of data analysis tools.

The company generates product revenues from the sale of its instruments and consumables. It currently sells its products for research-use-only applications. Consumable revenues consist of sales of complete assays, which are developed internally, along with sales of kits that contain all elements necessary to run tests.The company also generates service revenues from the sale of diagnostic testing services for those with autism spectrum disorder and other neuro developmental disabilities through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Lineagen. Other revenues consist of warranty and other service-based revenues.

Total revenues were $2.2 million in the previous quarter, down 33.7% from the year-ago quarter due to a change in the mix of revenues between instrument sales and our reagent rental program.

Operating expenses grew 46% in the last reported quarter due to increased legal and accounting fees to support business operations and the company’s international presence, including approximately $1.5 million in transaction costs associated with the Lineagen acquisition and an increase in wage expenses as a result of the addition of employees from the Lineagen acquisition. Increased headcount in the company’s global sales and marketing teams and back-office support teams to assist with the growth of its worldwide product distribution also led to the increase. Expenses are most likely to have been higher in the quarter under review.

In December 2020, Bionano achieved a key milestone for the throughput of its Saphyr System. With the release of a software update for the Saphyr Instrument, part of its system for optical genome mapping, the system is now capable of imaging up to 96 human genomes per week to a depth of coverage of 100x, or 4,992 samples per year. Saphyr Assure is designed to monitor Saphyr's health and, once enabled, can alert Bionano support of potential issues and allow itto recommend preventative services. Also, with a growing installed base of customers looking to put Saphyr into production use, Saphyr Assure will allow Bionano to work in conjunction with customers to optimize Saphyr uptime in these time-sensitive settings. We expect an update on this in the fourth quarter.

In January 2021,Bionano released version 1.2 of its Compute On Demand (COD) cloud compute solution, which significantly reduces the cost and time to analyze structural variants (SVs) in a human genome. This update is part of the company’scontinuous efforts to decrease time to results while reducing per sample costs to make Saphyr data available toevery clinician and researcher. We expect an update on this in the fourth quarter.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model predicts an earnings beat for Bionano in the soon-to-be-reported quarter.The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat.

Earnings ESP: Bionano’s Earnings ESP is + 9.09% as the Most Accurate Estimate of a loss of 5 cents is pegged narrower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 6 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Bionanohas a Zacks Rank #3.You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Stocks to Consider

Here are some biotech stocks that have the right mix of elements to beat on earnings this time around:

Moderna Inc. (MRNA - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +0.57% and a Zacks Rank #1.

Castle Biosciences Inc. (CSTL - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +54.55 % and a Zacks Rank #3.

Atea Pharmaceuticals Inc. (AVIR - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +279.59% and a Zacks Rank #2.

5 Stocks Set to Double

Each was hand-picked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2020. Each comes from a different sector and has unique qualities and catalysts that could fuel exceptional growth. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

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