Bruker on R&D high as Q4 exceeds expectations

Fourth-quarter results revealed that the company's revenues were $183.7m, an increase from $135.6m in the fourth quarter of 2006. Organic revenue growth for the quarter was 26 per cent. Bruker posted a fourth-quarter profit of $14m, up 44 per cent over net income of $9.7m, in the fourth quarter of 2006. R&D expenses rose 20 per cent to $16.2m from $13.5m year over year, while Selling, General and Administrative (SG&A) expenses rose 22.4 per cent to $41.5m from $33.9m. Bruker's R&D costs for 2007 increased 17 per cent to $58.5m from $50m, a possible indication of the investment efforts and project areas the company are focusing on. Analysts have pointed to this high level of R&D investment, which has led to the company receiving numerous awards throughout 2007. Its AXS' Microstar Ultra high brightness X-ray source for structural biology recently won an R&D 100 Award in 2007. The 2007 award follows R&D Magazine's R&D 100 Award last year to Bruker AXS for its innovative novel XFlash QUAD detector for X-ray microanalysis on electron microscopes. The company also won bronze in the Pittcon Editor's Awards for the world's smallest laboratory FT-IR spectrometer, the Alpha, with honourable mentions for the company's RAID-AFM (atomic force microscope) and Ultra Bright X-Ray source. "At this point, the feel of the market continues to be quite good in clinical research systems, in life science systems​," said Bruker President and CEO Frank Laukien during a company conference call. "I have not even anecdotally so far detected any change in the market. The firm would have a better picture of any changes in the market at the end of the first quarter​." As a result of its acquisition of Bruker BioSpin this week, the company has renamed itself as Bruker Corp. Laukien said that the results would do not include the operations of BioSpin and an update would be provided next month on the combined figures of Bruker BioSciences and Bruker BioSpin. About 57.5m shares of Bruker common stock worth approximately $624.9m were issued for the stock aspect of the deal. Combined with $388m that represented the cash component of the deal, the total value of the purchase was nearly $100m more than when the seal was announced in the beginning of December.