Qiagen reports strong 4th-qtr and fiscal 2005 year-end results

Netherlands-based' Qiagen NV says it saw net sales of $104.3 million in the final quarter of the financial year 2005, ahead of the firm's revised guidance prediction of between $101.0 million and $104.0 million. The company also reported a 17% increase in its net operating income to $26.0 million, from $22.3 million in the same quarter in 2004. Operating income for the period includes charges regarding acquisition-related amortization, and costs incurred due to corporate integration, which totaled $900,000.

For the year ended December 31, 2005, the firm saw a net sales increase of 5% to $398.4 million from $380.6 million in 2004 and notes that this excludes sales from its synthetic DNA business unit which it sold in the second quarter of 2004. The group's operating income for the year reached $94.8 million, up 13% from $84.1 million in 2004.

Qiagen's chief financial officer, Roland Sackers, said that the company's growth in the year had been driven by the introduction of new products, which included: 50 new kits for preanalytical sample management; several validated new platforms for H5N1 avian influenza surveillance; the launch of the molecular biology products such as the Qproteome protein fractionation and depletion kit and the integrated RNAi and SYBR Green-based real time PCR reagent line; and the release of the GeneChip globin-reduction technology with Affymetrix.