Revenues for the quarter soared to $217.9m, up from $135.0m for the same period in 2007.
90 per cent of Qiagen’s revenues come from the consumables market which has been largely unaffected by the economic slow-down that is starting to affect many instrumentation suppliers.
Operating income for the quarter rose 10 per cent to $34.0m, compared to the $31.0m recorded for the second quarter last year. However, operating income as a percentage of revenues fell to 15.6 per cent for the quarter from 22.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2007.
"Qiagen experienced a successful second quarter 2008, we saw strong revenue and net income growth and continue to expand our leadership and strategic position," said Peer Schatz, Qiagen's CEO.
"We launched 19 new products in the area of sample and assay technologies with a focus on gene and protein function analysis and in June also started shipping of our new flagship platform, the QIAsymphony which was launched in January 2008 and already received significant interest from our customers across all segments.”
Net income for the quarter increased slightly to $23.2m, up from $22.6m for the same quarter in the prior year, however this was adversely affected by acquisition and integration costs relating to the purchase of Digene and its $135m acquisition of Australia-based Corbett Life Science.
"We further expanded our market and technology leadership in molecular diagnostics by adding two important products to QIAGEN's instrumentation platform through the acquisition of Corbett Life Science in July this year,” said Schatz.
“Both products, the Rotor-Gene real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) cycler and the CAS instrument, a reaction set-up system, can be seamlessly combined with QIAGEN's sample and assay technologies portfolio.”
He also highlighted how the cycler technology can be integrated with the QIAsymphony platform to complete an automated system covering the whole workflow from sample preparation to result measurement in all key areas of PCR-based assay analysis.
The company recently announced that prior to its acquisition of Corbett a settlement had been agreed with Idaho Technology for rights to use intellectual property relating to Corbett’s Rotor-Gene instruments.
While financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, the agreement covers patents surrounding PCR methods and instrumentation, the use of SYBR Green I in PCR reactions, melting curve analysis (obtained through Roche Diagnostics), analysis methods of high resolution DNA melting data.
"We are pleased with this settlement which was a condition for our transaction with Corbett and which provides customers of Corbett cyclers and Qiagen the key freedom to operate elements required to develop, market and operate performance leading real-time PCR detection technologies based on Corbett's innovative Rotor-Gene solutions," said Schatz.