Strong results across many of the main laboratory suppliers could indicate that while the pharmaceutical industry is slimming down its investment in R&D it continues to invest in the laboratory technologies that increase efficiency and research output.
Second quarter 2007 results were even stronger than results in the first quarter of the year.
Thermo Fisher Scientific continued its strong first year as the "world leader in serving science" following the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific last year.
The company reported revenues of $2.39bn in the second quarter of 2007, a growth of 9 per cent over the pro forma additive results from individual companies last year.
The company's analytical technologies segment, Thermo Scientific, grew 13 per cent in the second quarter to $1.04bn compared with pro forma 2006 revenues of $915m.
Revenues for Fisher Scientific, the laboratory products and services segment of the business grew 6 per cent to $1.43bn compared with $1.35bn in the previous year.
While research and development (R&D) investment increased in monetary terms from $79.4m to $118.5m, this value as a percentage of the company's earnings actually decreased from 5.7 per cent to 2.5 per cent.
This drop is largely due to the company's merger as the laboratory products and services segment has traditionally not needed as heavy R&D investment as the analytical instrument business.
"Our customers are recognizing the true extent of our combined capabilities, and we are intent on leveraging our breadth of technologies and services to meet their needs," said Marijn Dekkers, CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
"We continue to develop the integrated workflows our life sciences customers rely on to accelerate their research, from new mass spectrometry solutions introduced at ASMS to our new services for RNAi-based screening."
Waters Corporation reported a 17 per cent increase in second quarter revenues, with sales reaching $353m compared with $302m in Q2 2006.
Pretax profits rose nearly 25 per cent to $70.5m from $56.6m for the same period last year.
Investment in R&D dropped slightly from $19.7m in Q2 2006, 6.5 per cent of revenues, to $19.1m this year, 5.5 per cent of revenues.
Douglas Berthiaume, CEO of Waters, was happy to see continuing sales growth to the company's large pharmaceutical accounts which had been blamed for lower than expected sales in 2005 .
"The generally broad-based growth that we experienced in the first quarter accelerated with continued rapid uptake of our new products and strengthening demand from life science customers, including our large pharmaceutical accounts," he said.
PerkinElmer's strong start to the year continued with as the company's increased focus on cellular imaging paid dividends . The company saw revenue growth of 16 per cent to $437m, compared to the second quarter last year.
This helped profits (net income) rise by 37 per cent to $437m with PerkinElmer CEO, Gregory Summe stating: "We are continuing to see the benefits of our increased investments in R&D, marketing, and capital equipment… [and] expect to carry this momentum into the second half of 2007 on the strength of our new products and market development initiatives."
R&D investment to $27m from $25m in the second quarter in 2006, however, this equates to a slight drop in investment as a percentage of revenue with this years figure equating to a figure of 6.2 per cent compared with last year's 6.6 per cent.
The company's Life and Analytical Sciences division saw revenue grow 17 per cent to $326m while the Optoelectronics division's revenues grew nearly 13 per cent to $111m.
Summe is planning to step down as CEO to become executive chairman of the board in February and it is expected that Robert Friel, currently head of the Life Sciences and Analytical Sciences division, will take over.
Affymetrix may have turned the corner on its 'toughest year yet' with revenues increasing 10 per cent to $88.3m in the second quarter of 2007 compared with $80.2m a year ago.
This led to pre-tax profits of $1.8m compared with a $5.8m pre-tax loss last year. This growth has been helped by the increased revenues from sales to Perlegen Sciences, which increased to $4.4m compared to $2.7m a year ago.
76 per cent of the company's revenue came from sales of consumables for its GeneChip range with $41m, 46 per cent, coming from microarray sales.
"We are pleased with the sequential and year-over-year top-line revenue growth driven by the strong adoption of our new SNP 6.0 genotyping product," said Kevin King, president of Affymetrix Life Sciences.
"The successful launch of this product has resulted in a number of important new global commercial agreements."
