bluebird bio (BLUE -2.73%) announced its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results on Tuesday afternoon. The clinical-stage biotech's stock price fell a bit in after-hours trading as investors reacted to the mixed report.
Although the company beat its revenue target, bluebird failed to hit Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate on earnings per share. The company reported total revenue of $10.0 million, the majority of which came from collaboration agreements. Although that was down substantially from the $19.2 million it reported in the prior-year period, it was still better than the $9.2 million expected by Wall Street analysts.
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bluebird reported a pretty significant net loss for the quarter -- $223.3 million. That was almost 50% higher than Q4 2018's $149.0 million net loss. In terms of earnings per share, bluebird's net loss was $4.04, which was worse than the net loss of $3.79 that analysts were expecting.
Further details
While the biotech is still losing a significant amount of money, it has $1.24 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, enough to last it a little over a year at its current rate of expenditure.
bluebird currently has 21 drug candidates at the moment, several in late-stage clinical trials. Among the most promising is Zynteglo (also known as LentiGlobin), a treatment for transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia (TDT). The treatment received approval in Germany as a treatment for TDT patients; bluebird expects to submit Zynteglo for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration later this year.
