NeuroMetrix Inc. (NSDQ:NURO) sunk deep into the red during the fourth quarter on sales of half their year-ago level.
The Waltham, Mass.-based firm posted losses of $4.2 million, or 18 cents per diluted share, on sales of $3.1 million during the three months ended Dec. 31. That compares to net income of $363,231, or 2 cents per diluted share, on sales of $6.2 million during the same period in 2009.
For the full year, NeuroMetrix pulled in slightly more than half what it made in 2009. The company reported a loss of $16.9 million, or 73 cents per diluted share, on revenue of $13.9 million in 2010. For 2009, the company logged $26.1 million in sales, for a loss of $11.9 million, or 71 cents diluted EPS.
The January 2010 decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to cut reimbursement rates for procedures using the company’s flagship NC-stat device has hit NeuroMetrix hard.
The product, which measures nerve conduction, hit the neurodiagnostics market in 1999. But after this year, the company has said, it will no longer support the device. NeuroMetrix plans to shift customers from the NC-stat to its successor, the Advance.
The company announced layoffs for 27 percent of its workers in January, about a year after the CMS decision, and disbanded its U.S. direct sales force. Those moves came with the announcement that the company is abandoning the NC-stat device in favor of the Type II diabetes market.
The company’s previous three consecutive quarters, all marked by decreasing sales, were fraught with a de-listing warning from NASDAQ and a major investor abandoning ship.
But the company is not leaving the NC-stat name completely behind. As it turns its eye from neurodiagnostics to diabetes, NeuroMetrix hopes to release the NC-stat-SL, a modified version of its NC-stat device designed specifically for point-of-care assessment of diabetic neuropathy in the middle of 2011, according to CEO Shai Gozani.
Late last month NeuroMetrix re-paid tax incentives to Massachusetts after failing to create enough jobs to meet the demands of the deal through which the funding came.
