Fluidigm Shocks Investors with Worrisome Trend
Already reeling from a tumbling stock price, Fluidigm (NASDAQ: FLDM) investors were shocked by the company's latest quarterly report. The laboratory hardware developer, supposedly in the midst of a promising growth trajectory, reported a year-over-year decline in total revenue in the third quarter of 2019. Both business segments, including the high-growth mass cytometry unit, failed to record revenue growth in the comparison period.
It all boiled down to one metric: Fluidigm sold fewer lab instruments than it did in the year-ago period. That wouldn't necessarily be a worrisome trend, as the company's goal is to generate most of its revenue and profit from recurring sales of consumables (sequencing kits, chemical reagents, and other products needed to run each machine), but the business simply isn't large enough to be insulated from a bad quarter of instrument sales. Here's what investors need to know about the latest operating results.
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Source Fool.com
