Incyte hit by 2001 income forecast

Shares in US genetic database firm Incyte Pharmaceuticals took a bashingafter the company announced that its net loss for 2001 could be in the range of $47-$57 million. Incyte made the statement having announced a healthy set of figures for 2000 which showed a revenue increase of 24% to $194.2 million and a net loss of $29.7 million (+10.8%). For the fourth quarter of 2000, revenues reached $55.4 million, up 20%, while net loss was $7.4 million (+15.6%).

In 2000, Incyte's R&D expenses rose 31.2% to $192.6 million and the company added that it intends to invest an extra $60 million in addition to existing unspecified R&D costs to further develop its intellectual property portfolio and drug discovery program.

Incyte was upbeat about its performance in 2000, noting that it entered into more database subscriptions last year than any previous period. It managed to raise $622 million for future business acquisitions during the year and its recent $77 million purchase of Proteome (Marketletter January1 & 8), says Incyte, makes the firm "the leading provider of genomic and proteomic annotation information to the life science community."