Investopedia: Illumina Lights Up Again

The go-to stock for genomics just keeps going. It's likely that a fair number of the institutions that love Illumina (Nasdaq:ILMN) would stammer to explain exactly what their machines do, but they certainly know the stock is doing well. 


Another Strong Quarter in the Books
Snarkiness aside, Illumina continues to deliver the sort of high-growth/low-competition story that growth investors dream about and so rarely find. Revenue rose another 47% this quarter, with sequencing sales leading the way at nearly 90% growth and sequencing consumables revenue growing about 70%. Arrays were weaker at 12% growth, but expectations were modest here anyway.

What may surprise some investors is how small Illumina still is. While this is clearly a legitimate growth stock star, the company booked about $283 million in revenue this quarter - on par with F5 (Nasdaq:FFIV) (another growth darling), but far smaller than software companies like VMware (NYSE:VMW) or Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). Even within its own home market of life sciences, Illumina looks somewhat small when compared to names like Life Technologies (Nasdaq:LIFE), Waters (NYSE:WAT) or Thermo Fisher (NYSE:TMO). (For more, see A Fistful Of Life Sciences.)


The full piece can be found here:
http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2011/Illumina-Lights-Up-Again-ILMN-AFFX-LIFE-WAT-TMO-PACB-GE0429.aspx