Stock Alert: Twist Bioscience (TWST)

(RTTNews) - Twist Bioscience Corp. (TWST) was one of the top gainers on Thursday, following the release of financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2020, ended December 31, 2019.

Twist Bioscience is a revenue-generating synthetic biology company that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by "writing" DNA on a silicon chip. Revenue is generated through two primary product lines - synthetic biology tools and next-generation sequencing tools. The products are sold to diagnostic companies and hospitals, research institutions, agricultural biotechnology companies, and consumer genetics companies conducting diagnostic tests for a wide range of applications.

In the first quarter of fiscal 2020, net loss attributable to common stockholders widened to $55.6 million or $1.69 per share from $22.64 million or $1.18 per share in the comparable year-ago quarter.

On February 3, 2016, Agilent Technologies filed a trade secret litigation against Twist Bioscience. A settlement agreement was reached between the two warring companies yesterday. The litigation settlement expense for the first quarter of fiscal 2020 was $22.5 million.

Now that a settlement has been reached, the litigation overhang on Twist Bioscience has been removed.

Total revenues were $17.2 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2020 compared to $11.5 million for the same period of fiscal 2019.

While the net loss has widened over the years, the Company's revenue has grown significantly, thanks to the rapidly increasing orders from its customers.

Net loss attributable to common stockholders was $59.3 million in fiscal 2017; $71.54 million in fiscal 2018 and $107.7 million in fiscal 2019. Revenue was $10.74 million, $25.4 million and $54.4 million during the respective year.

Looking ahead to the full fiscal year 2020, Twist expects net loss (Including Litigation Settlement) to be in the range of $129.5 to $132.5 million and revenue to be in the range of $80 to $84 million.

As of December 31, 2019, the Company had $103.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments.

TWST has traded in a range of $19.64 to $35.95 in the last 1 year. The stock closed yesterday's (Feb.6, 2020) trading at $31.11, up 16.30%.