
IDEXX Laboratories Inc. (NSDQ:IDXX) beat its own earnings expectations during the first quarter, posting net income of $33.0 million, or 55 cents per diluted share, on sales of $268.5 million.
That’s an earnings increase of 26.7 percent for the Westbrook, Maine-based veterinary diagnostics maker, compared with the $26.1 million (43 cents per diluted share) in net income it posted during Q1 2009. Revenues for the three months ended March 31 were up 13.6 percent compared with the $236.5 million IDEXX posted during the year-ago quarter.
Chairman and CEO Jonathan Ayers said the earnings growth was largely due to "operating efficiencies in our two largest lines of business, instruments and consumables and reference laboratories," along with tightly-managed expenses, according to a press release.
IDEXX also announced plans to launch a new hematology analyzer, the ProCyte Dx, Ayers said. The device is a bench-top analyzer designed to provide blood cell counts with 24 parameters in two minutes, he said. The company will début the device at the June meeting of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and expects to begin shipment in the third quarter.
IDEXX upped its earnings guidance for 2010, from the $2.20-$2.28 range it expected in January to $2.23 to $2.28. Its revenues forecast stayed the same, at $1.1 billion to $1.12 billion.
In February IDEXX said its board of directors approved a 4-million-share repurchasing program, taking the total number it could repurchase to 6.3 million.
Earlier this month the company announced plans for a $50 million renovation of its headquarters, slated to add a 200,000-square-foot administration building and add 500 jobs to the local economy. IDEXX employs about 1,600 workers in Westbrook.