What happened
As the week came to an end, a clutch of investors were ditching Opko Health (OPK) following the company's Q4 earnings release. Shares of the healthcare diagnostic specialist fell marginally on the day as a result.
So what
In the release, published after market hours on Thursday, Opko said its revenue for the quarter was just over $401 million, representing a notable decline from the nearly $495 million of Q4 2020. On the bottom line, the healthcare company flipped to a loss of almost $74 million ($0.11 per share) from the year-ago quarter's profit of over $32 million.
Image source: Getty Images.
The quarter was a mixed one for Opko as far as analyst estimates were concerned. On one hand, that revenue figure handily beat the average prognosticator expectation of just under $330 million. On the other, the collective estimate for net loss was only $0.02 per share.
A key reason for the dramatic change in fundamentals was a nearly 21% fall in revenue for Opko's core diagnostics business (to almost $363 million). That was due to a decline in COVID testing volume, as the threat of the omicron variant seemed to fade in the latter stages of the quarter. A 15% increase in the much smaller pharmaceutical category didn't come close to compensating for the larger business's drop.
Now what
In the minds of many, Opko is a coronavirus stock due to its presence in the COVID testing segment. As diagnostics are still at the heart of the company's business, it stands to reason that investors would sell out of its stock along with the apparent fade of the coronavirus. While the bottom-line miss certainly didn't help, it was only a reason -- not the reason -- for the share price slip on Friday.
