Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Illumina is just waiting for that inflection point

Illumina just reported 21% Q2 revenue growth, with shipments to oncology segments growing at 35%.  What's interesting about the earnings transcript (available at Seeking Alpha) is that while the next big thing being paid attention is currently the growth in NIPT products (>50% year over year), you need to read until almost the end to hear get some insight into where Illumina's heading.

According to Jay Flatley (Illumina's CEO, if you didn't already know):
In the case of NIPT, it became a marketplace that exploded because the clinical data came out and replaced an invasive test. And so in oncology, we're going to see that inflection point happen. Is it going to happen a year from now or two years from now, it's hard to predict. But there will be an inflection point in the oncology market where that market will explode. And that would be around perhaps the time when in-practice guidelines it becomes standard of care to sequence every tumor when it's biopsied, and that will cause the market to grow very, very quickly.
And that's just one of four really gigantic markets out there that the company is aiming to dominate.  With this kind of potential, it seems like ILMN is going to continue it's long upward trend, but it's already a $35 billion behemoth, which makes Roche's abandoned $6.7 billion 2012 bid for the company sound like a steal.

Aside: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a shame no Canadian analysts were in on that call.  Where was Canaccord?