Time to Buy These 3 Healthcare Companies That Raised Revenue Guidance?

 | Jan 17, 2024 12:50PM ET

  • Exact Sciences develops cancer detection and diagnostic tests like Cologuard.
  • Hologic reported Q3 2023 17.5% organic revenue growth, excluding COVID-related revenues, which resulted in a drop of 5.5% year-over-year as normalization continues.
  • Amicus Therapeutics develops treatments for rare diseases like Fabry and Pompe disease.
  • The new year brings a clean slate heading into the fourth-quarter earnings season. Companies can usually gauge if their previous forecasts were in line or need to be adjusted to warn or prepare investors ahead of time.

    Some companies may partake in the guidance shuffle dance, purposely lowballing forecasts to hop over the original forecasts for a beat, while some companies overpromise and underdeliver. Here are three healthcare companies in the medical sector starting the year on the right foot by raising their revenue guidance.

    h2 Exact Sciences Co./h2

    Exact Sciences Co. (NASDAQ:EXAS) provides FDA-approved cancer screening and diagnostic test products. Its leading product is Cologuard, an at-home stool-based DNA test to detect colorectal cancer. Healthcare insurers and systems have used it as a standard method of preventative care for years.

    The test usually arrives in the mail and requires a stool sample to be taken and mailed back quickly. It's simple, convenient and noninvasive. It's recommended once every one to three years starting at age 45. With an aging population, the product has been a solid leading revenue machine for the company.

    h2 More cancer tests/h2

    Exact has many other cancer tests: Oncotype DX, a genomic profiling test for breast cancer; CancerSEEK, a blood-based test for early detection of up to eight types of cancer; and the Oncoguard Liver, a blood test for the fastest-growing cause of cancer-related deaths, liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma). It also offers the Riskguard Hereditary Cancer Test, a 32-gene sequencing test for detecting inherited forms of cancer.

    h2 Pipeline of tests/h2

    Cancerguard is in the developmental stage and detects multiple cancers in its earliest stages. The next-gen Cologuard is a multi-target stool DNA test undergoing one of the largest clinical trials with over 20,000 adults aged 40 and over in its BLUE-C study.

    Oncodetect is a tumor-informed molecular residual disease (MRD) test that refers to the presence of tumor-specific DNA after cancer treatment, which may have a total addressable market (TAM) of over three million patients in the United States. Exact is also developing a colorectal cancer blood test which can reach 44 million Americans who need colorectal cancer screening.

    h2 Strong Q3 2023 earnings and raised full-year 2023 guidance/h2
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    On November 1, 2023, Exact Sciences reported a breakeven EPS, beating consensus analyst estimates for a loss of 47 cents by 47 cents. Revenues surged 20.1% to $628.34 million, beating $616.79 million consensus estimates. The company raised its full-year 2023 revenue guidance to $2.476 billion to $2.486 billion versus $2.46 billion consensus analyst estimates.

    h2 Reraised revenue guidance/h2

    On January 8, 2024, Exact Sciences provided upside Q4 2023 revenue guidance of $645.5 million to $647.5 million (up 17% YoY) versus $631.48 million consensus analyst estimates. Full-year 2023 revenues should meet consensus analyst estimates at $2.83 billion. The company also submitted the final module of the next-gen Cologuard premarket approval application to the FDA. It also announced that CFO and Executive Vice President Jeff Elliot plans to step down.