Millipore reports profit fall in third quarter
its third quarter results, mainly due to increased costs and recent
acquisition charges.
The company, which provides biopharmaceutical manufacturing products and services, experienced a 35 per cent slump in net profit to $14.8m (€11.6m), compared with $22.9m a year ago.
Research costs had also an impact on this quarter results as the company recently invested in a new R&D centre for its Bioprocess division, totaling an investment of $50m.
However, the company saw a 38 per cent jump in sales to $330m, attributed mainly to the acquisition of antibody-based products supplier Serologicals in July.
Millipore said that excluding the impact of Serologicals and currency rate changes, its total revenue growth in the third quarter was in fact ten per cent, which included 13 per cent growth in its bioprocess division and 6 per cent growth in its bioscience division.
"Our bioscience division generated a strong quarter in North America for our laboratory water and sample preparation products, while our bioprocess division continues to benefit from healthy demand for our filtration and chromatography products," said Martin Madaus, Millipore's chairman and CEO.
The company's performance in worldwide markets also made for encouraging reading, with US quarterly revenues for 2006 of $151.5 million - an increase of 47 per cent over last year's figure.
Meanwhile, Europe also faired well, increasing its quarterly revenue performance 33 per cent to $126.8 million. Asia-Pacific also improved Millipore's third quarter performance, posting revenue figures of $51.8 million - an increase of 26 per cent.
The firm said that over the next three quarters, it will be focused on completing the integration of Serologicals and taking advantage of the value of this transaction.
"We are applying many of the same strategies and initiatives to the integration that we have applied to improve our own performance over the past seven quarters," said Madaus.
