Good start to year for Tecan

Tecan's headquarters in Hombrechtikon (ZH) Keystone Archive

The laboratory equipment group, Tecan, has revealed an impressive set of first quarter numbers with net profit rising 47.2 per cent to SFr11.1 million ($6.4 million), while sales grew 43.4 per cent to SFr84.2 million over the same period.

The canton Zurich-based group is active in the fast-growing life sciences supply industry.

“Our overall sales performance to date not only reflects our strengths in diagnostics and drug discovery but also confirms the merits of our business strategy to expand into the high-growth markets of genomics and proteomics,” said Tecan chief executive Emile Sutcliffe.

“For the first time these two markets represent more than 20 per cent of our total business.”

Sales in genomics/proteomics increased by 118.2 per cent to SFr18.5 million in the first quarter. Growth was driven by strong demand for Tecan’s fully automated high-throughput systems for genomics, functional genomics and proteomics, the company said in a statement.

Tecan expects sales and net profit to grow by around 35 per cent over the year as a whole. The company’s goal for research and development expenditure remains between 10-12 per cent of sales.

Last year Tecan attracted much attention after developing a fully automatic testing platform for detecting the BSE virus in animals.

swissinfo with agencies