Global Top 10 Gene Sequencing Companies: Advancing Technologies and Intensifying Price Competition

Recently, the GEN website summarized the top ten gene sequencing companies globally by revenue in 2018, compiled by Biobeat. The list includes companies focused on the sequencing market and those with sequencing-related business units but broader operations, ranked by each company's most recent annual revenue.

Five years after the advent of the “$1,000 Genome” goal, rumors still circulate in the sequencing field about reducing costs to $100, or even down to $10.

Last year, Veritas Genetics’ sequencing product prices approached $100. The company launched a significant discount campaign for its standard whole-genome testing service, myGenome, originally priced at $999. It offered the genetic test, including an interpretation report, for $199 to the first 1,000 customers in the United States (excluding New York State), representing an 80% discount off the original price. Although Veritas had initially planned for the promotion to last two days, it attracted all 1,000 customers within just six hours.

Mirza Cifric, CEO of Veritas, stated in an interview with Wired magazine, “We are sending a clear signal to the medical research community: within three to five years, the cost of genomic testing services will drop to as low as $99. Many people may believe this is still a decade away, but we aim to awaken them to the reality.”

However, as GEN reported earlier this year, the competition driving down sequencing costs may soon be replaced by other forms of rivalry, potentially centered on companies’ capabilities in developing more powerful analytical tools or embedded applications, or on their products’ tolerance for harsh environments.

This means that for all sequencing companies, especially the top 10 service providers ranked by GEN, if they wish to expand their business beyond the laboratory into clinical settings while attracting customers, they cannot focus solely on lowering their quotes.

In March this year, Grand View Research predicted that the NGS market would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.78%, rising from $8.49 billion in 2018 to $19.7 billion in 2025. This growth will be driven not only by clinical applications—such as the use of the technology in companion diagnostics—but also by its expansion into emerging markets.

In recent years, many other companies have also joined the ranks in advancing the future of sequencing. For example, in 2015, bioMérieux partnered with Illumina to develop bioMérieux EpiSeq, a next-generation sequencing (NGS) service for epidemiological surveillance of bacterial infections.

Recently, in its results report dated March 5, 2018, Eurofins Scientific stated that, following the acquisition of GATC in 2017, its Eurofins Genomics Services business had become “the largest sequencing service provider in Europe today in both traditional Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing.” However, as Eurofins did not disclose specific revenue figures for its genomics business, it was not included in this list.

Meanwhile, this list excludes industry giants that provide workflow solutions for sequencing and companies that have not disclosed their sequencing business revenues, such as the following:

• Roche shut down its 454 Life Sciences business, acquired from CuraGen six years earlier, in 2013, but retained the Roche Sequencing Solutions (RSS) business, focusing on streamlining workflows and expanding assay menus. RSS falls under the molecular diagnostics segment of Roche Diagnostics, which generated revenue of CHF 12.9 billion ($12.925 billion) last year.

• BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) provides NGS workflow solutions through its Biosciences division within the Life Sciences segment; BD reported revenue of $4.33 billion in 2018.

• PerkinElmer offers NGS workflow solutions through its Genomics Division, which operates within its Diagnostics segment and was established in 2018, generating $1.08 billion in revenue.

Revenue: £13.8 million ($18.1 million), 2017

Oxford Nanopore’s 2017 revenue more than tripled compared to £4.5 million ($5.9 million) in 2016. However, the company secured two rounds of financing in 2018: a £100 million ($131.2 million) funding round completed in March 2018, and a £50 million ($65.6 million) equity investment from Amgen in October. Last month, Clear Labs agreed to integrate Oxford Nanopore’s GridION X5 DNA sequencing technology into its Clear Safety NGS platform, which is designed for detecting pathogens and other contaminants in food safety testing. In March this year, Oxford Nanopore’s new R10 nanopore technology moved from internal beta testing to an early preview phase, with feedback from this stage expected to influence the product’s final commercial launch.

Revenue: $78.626 million, 2018

On February 11, PacBio released its 2018 annual report, showing a decline of approximately 16% compared to $93.468 million in the same period of 2017. PacBio reported a net loss of $100 million for the year, higher than the net loss of $92.189 million in 2017. Illumina is acquiring PacBio for $1.2 billion, aiming to expand its business through PacBio’s long-read sequencing technology. The transaction is expected to be completed by mid-2019. Meanwhile, PacBio highlighted improvements in its Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT®) sequencing technology, including the new Sequel II system, which aims to increase data output by approximately eightfold through its new SMRT Cell 8M technology.

Revenue: KRW 110.299 billion (USD 97.066 million), 2018

Macrogen obtained Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certification for its NGS clinical laboratory at its Seoul headquarters and its Bundang Precision Medicine Center in 2018, becoming the first Korean clinical laboratory to receive this accreditation. In December 2018, CEO Kap-Seok Yang stated, “This provides us with an advantage in building genomic big data across global medical institutions.” Last year, Macrogen also provided services accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP), achieving an 8% revenue increase compared to 2017. On March 19, Macrogen partnered with the Australian biotechnology company Microba to develop shotgun metagenomic sequencing services for analyzing all microorganisms within the gut microbiome. The company’s service market, initially launched in South Korea, has expanded to other global markets, including the United States.

Revenue: $121 million, fiscal year 2018 (year ended September 30, 2018)

GENEWIZ’s revenue increased by approximately 33% compared to $91 million in fiscal year 2017, with management projecting fiscal year 2019 revenue to exceed $140 million. On November 15, 2018, Brooks Automation acquired GENEWIZ for approximately $450 million in cash. The company generated $33 million in operating income in the first quarter of 2019, of which $16 million was attributed to Brooks. Driven by a 30% growth in next-generation sequencing (NGS) and a 15% growth in Sanger sequencing, the company achieved a 20% year-over-year increase. According to data published by Seeking Alpha, Brooks CEO Steve Schwartz told analysts on February 5, “Although the company was busy with sales and integration efforts in the first quarter, our team remained diligent and unwavering.”

Revenue: $140 million, 2018

On February 5, QIAGEN announced full-year 2018 NGS sales revenue of $140 million and projected this year’s sales to reach $190 million, representing a 36% increase. Last year, QIAGEN launched the QIAseq TMB Panel, which leverages proprietary digital NGS technology designed to predict responses to immuno-oncology therapies, as well as the QIAseq FastSelect RNA Removal Kits, offering faster and simpler library preparation solutions for RNA sequencing. Additionally, during the company’s fourth-quarter 2018 earnings conference call, CEO Peer M. Schatz told analysts, “GeneReader NGS has successfully created new growth opportunities in the tumor sequencing sector, and the sales growth in this area in 2018 validates this market.”

Revenue: $146 million, 2018

10x Genomics recorded the highest year-over-year revenue growth among companies on this list, with its revenue doubling from the $71 million reported in 2017, when it ranked ninth among sequencing companies on the GEN website. This January, 10x Genomics announced a second close of $35 million in its Series D financing round, bringing its total capital raised to $243 million. The round was led by Meritech Capital Partners, with participation from Fidelity Investments and Wells Fargo. 10x Genomics expanded its business by launching six major new products and acquiring two companies. In August 2018, the company acquired Epinomics, an epigenetics firm, and two months later, it acquired Spatial Transcriptomics, a spatial genomics technology provider offering 2D RNA sequencing technology.

Revenue: Approximately $250 million in 2018

Agilent Technologies publicly stated at its Analyst/Investor Day in June 2018 that its business related to next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflows achieved annual revenue of approximately $250 million in the previous year. This accounted for 26.5% of the $944 million in total revenue reported by Agilent’s Diagnostics and Genomics Group (DGG) in 2018. Last year, Agilent considered DGG to hold a leading position in the high-growth market of NGS-based clinical oncology, with an internal estimate of a $600 million addressable market and a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25% for this business. Mike McMullen, President and CEO of Agilent, remarked during the first-quarter earnings report to analysts on February 20, “Our NGS-related business once again achieved double-digit growth this quarter.”

Revenue: RMB 2.463 billion (USD 366 million), Q4 2017–Q3 2018.

BGI Genomics has no plans to announce its full-year 2018 financial results before April 25, but the company’s performance over the most recent four quarters showed a nearly 18% increase compared with RMB 2.095 billion (USD 310 million) in 2017. BGI Genomics is a leading genetic testing company in China, conducting more than one million cell-free DNA tests annually. In the United States, BGI Genomics offers whole-genome sequencing for humans, with prices starting at USD 600. On March 11, BGI Genomics announced plans to further commercialize Natera’s Signatera molecular residual disease (MRD) test in China and, through a USD 50 million partnership, to conduct reproductive health testing using BGI sequencing instruments in specific markets.

Revenue: nearly $420 million in 2017

Thermo Fisher Scientific has not provided an update on the revenue of its NGS business since CEO Marc N. Casper told analysts last year that it “accounts for less than 2% of our revenue.” This share could even be higher than 2%, as the company launched its benchtop NGS instrument series, the Ion GeneStudio S5 Series, in January 2018. The NGS business falls under Thermo Fisher’s Life Sciences Solutions segment, which generated $6.269 billion of the company’s total revenue of $24.358 billion in 2018. Thermo Fisher did state that clinical NGS sequencing was one of the primary drivers of revenue growth in the Life Sciences Solutions segment during the fourth quarter; the other two major businesses within this segment are Bioproduction and Biosciences.

Revenue: $3.333 billion, 2018

Illumina CEO Francis deSouza told analysts at the 37th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that the company remains committed to reducing the cost of genome sequencing to $100, though he did not indicate when this goal would be achieved. Illumina believes that the increasing adoption of its sequencers in clinical settings, research, and applied markets will help drive growth, with the company’s annual revenue in 2018 rising by 21% compared to 2017.

David Bentley, Vice President and Chief Scientist at Illumina, revealed that after the company’s flagship NovaSeq sequencer completes validation this year, the HiSeq instruments used in the UK’s 100,000 Genomes Project will be upgraded and replaced with NovaSeq systems, further driving revenue growth.

Original URL:

https://www.genengnews.com/a-lists/top-10-sequencing-companies/