PacBio News Doesn't Seem /That/ Bad? Does It?

PacBio released preliminary Q1 revenue and then the stock price dropped ~50%. Market cap currently stands at ~$375M:

They’ve also said they are going to reduce burn with one analyst quoted on GenomeWeb saying "PacBio commented to us that it may reduce its headcount by triple digits to generate these expense reductions.". Another commented on influencing factors:

"[Macroeconomics] seemed to be the biggest culprit in driving the miss as funding remains tight for genomics across the board and was exacerbated by an inherently longer sales cycle associated with new product launches,"

Well That Sucks!

This is kind of a shame, because while they’ve made some dubious decisions. PacBio seem to have executed technically really well with the Revio. But PacBio have a lot more going on than just the Revio, at last count the following instruments are in development or released:

• Onso: A NextSeq 2000 class mid-range short read sequencer

• SuperOnso: A NovaSeq X class high-throughput short read sequencer

• RevioMini: A Benchtop long read sequencer

• Revio: The current-gen long read platform

• SuperRevio: Some kind of undisclosed high-throughput long-read sequencer

In addition to this the Sequel II is still a supported platform.

So PacBio are spread pretty thin. It would be pretty easy to argue that the Omniome and Apton acquisitions were a mistake at this point.

Releasing the Revio first (a 4 chip system) rather than an a cheaper single chip platform also seems like mistake in hindsight. The Revio likely doesn’t (yet) have the necessary pull through to warrant a 4 chip system for many users. They’ve already reduced the price to ~$350K. This is probably what they could have sold a single chip system for at higher margin.

In addition to all this, we’ve got two potential/ongoing lawsuits…

So… what do we think of all this and the financial news?

~WILL I BUY PACBIO STOCK OR NOT? FIND OUT AFTER THE BREAK~