Breadth divergence is a troubling sign for the stock market

Illumina stock tanks as gene-sequencing company misses expectations and issues bleak outlook

Posted on

Illumina Inc. shares sank more than 22% after hours Thursday after the gene-sequencing company swung to a loss in the second quarter, fell short of revenue expectations and revised its full-year outlook downward.

Francis deSouza, chief executive of Illumina, said in a statement that the quarterly results failed to meet the company’s own expectations because “challenges in a complex macroeconomic environment more than offset the growth we continue to see in sequencing runs on our platforms.”

Illumina
ILMN,
+0.06%

reported a loss of $535 million, or $3.40 a share, compared with net income of $187 million, or $1.26 a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted for $609 million in legal contingencies, plus selling, general and administrative expenses and other costs, earnings were 57 cents a share. Revenue rose to $1.16 billion from $1.13 billion in the year-ago quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast earnings of 64 cents a share on revenue of $1.22 billion.

The company said in a news release that it expects full-year revenue for 2022 to grow 4% to 5% from fiscal-year 2021, citing “ongoing negative impact of foreign exchange rates, customer lab expansion delays, and macroeconomic-driven conservatism around immediate capital and inventory commitments, including in Greater China.” Last quarter, the company said it expected 14% to 16% revenue growth for fiscal-year 2022.

Shares of Illumina have decreased 40% year to date, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
-0.07%

has fallen almost 12% during the same period. The company’s stock dropped sharply in June after it announced that its chief financial officer was leaving for Quest Diagnostics Inc.
DGX,
-0.29%
.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *