The hits really have kept on coming for Pacific Biosciences (PACB) (“PacBio”). After regulators scotched Illumina’s (ILMN) proposed friendly acquisition and Oxford Nanopore (“ONT”) won a dubious patent case, COVID-19 struck hard, leading labs and other research facilities around the world to either significantly curtail their activities or close entirely, and then the CEO and CFO both announced that they were leaving the company.
Although PacBio has continued to place systems and sell consumables through this challenging time, COVID-19 has temporarily flattened what had been a rather encouraging ramp for the company’s Sequel II system. Still, I believe the company is past the worst with COVID-19, and I continue to believe in the long-term potential of the technology here. Finding a CEO to take the company to the next level is an extremely important item on the board’s to-do list, one not made any easier by the COVID-19 pandemic, but I believe the strength and potential of the company’s technology should enable them to attract appealing candidates.
While the risks here are well above average, so too are the potential returns if PacBio can truly establish itself as the platform of choice for long-read sequencing and if long-read sequencing fulfills its potential in areas like plant/animal sequencing, pathogen sequencing, diagnostics, and epigenetics.
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Pacific Biosciences Looking Toward Labs Getting Back To Work
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