China Bans Illumina

China appears to have banned the import of Illumina sequencers into China. I’m unclear if this just applies to sequencing instruments or reagents as well (chat is indicating that official Chinese government statements make it clear it’s instruments only, meaning existing users can be supported).

Illumina’s Chinese revenue was about 7% of their total, and has been steadily declining. This comes after a likely reduction in US research spending, and increasing pressure from Element, Ultima and others (including MGI). On top of all this there’s Roche threatening to sake things up, and Illumina not really having a pretty weak response. Things are not looking great…

Illumina revenue last year was flat, that they might remain flat this year, seems like a hopelessly optimistic dream.

Rumors from within Illumina also suggest a generally dissatisfied workforce, in part due to compensation cuts.

Illumina don’t seem to have much in the pipeline to combat all the above. There’s Constellation which seems really cool, but at present a tech demo running on their higher end instruments (where it doesn’t seem like a great fit). Ultimately not something that is likely to drive much revenue in the short to medium term.

Then their’s there spatial tech… I don’t think anyone is making billions from spatial right now. When it ships… I don’t expect it to make up from the shortfall from the loss of Chinese business.

Hopefully Illumina has something else in the pipeline?

Otherwise it seems like things may get increasing difficult.