Earnings Labs

Myriad Genetics, Inc. (MYGN)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 6, 2008

$4.63

-4.44%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.70%

1 Week

-3.75%

1 Month

-13.14%

vs S&P

-9.34%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Janet and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Myriad Genetics' Second Quarter Fiscal 2008 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Meldrum, you may begin your conference.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Myriad Genetics earnings conference call for our second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2007. My name is Peter Meldrum, and I am the President and Chief Executive Officer. I am joined today by Jim Evans, our Chief Financial Officer; Gregory Critchfield, President of Myriad Genetic Laboratories and Adrian Hobden, President of Myriad Pharmaceuticals. I will begin the discussion this morning with a brief review of the past quarter and then will be followed by Mr. Evans who will discuss our financial results. Dr. Critchfield will review the company's molecular diagnostics business and Dr. Hobden will discuss our drug development activities. At the end of the presentation, I will turn the call over to the operator for the question and answer period. Please note that some of the information presented here today may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding the future events or future financial performance of the company. These statements are based on management's current expectations and actual events or results may differ materially and adversely from these expectations for a variety of reasons. We refer you to the documents the company files from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the company's annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its current reports on Form 8-K. These documents identify important risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements. The financial results for our second quarter which ended December 31, 2007, represent a truly outstanding performance by the company and its 900 talented employees. Once again, our molecular diagnostic business achieved record revenues and record gross profit margins, and as a result recorded a record net operating profit of over $20 million. Our molecular…

James S. Evans - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Pete. It's my pleasure to present a more detailed look at Myriad's financial results for our second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2007. Myriad's total revenues for the quarter ended December 31 were $56.7 million as compared to $37.1 million for the same period of the prior year. Drilling down into this impressive 53% growth, we find that both components of total revenue: molecular diagnostic revenue and research revenue, contributed to this unprecedented top line performance. As Pete has already mentioned, molecular diagnostic revenues for the quarter were $53.1 million, which is an increase of $18.9 million over the same quarter of our previous fiscal year. On a percentage basis, this is a growth of 55%. Sequentially, molecular diagnostic revenues grew 15% during our second quarter of fiscal 2008 as compared to our first quarter of this fiscal year. Pete has touched on the main drivers of this growth, but suffice it to say we are very satisfied with these results as compared to the Thomson First Call consensus estimate of $50 million. Sample flows continue to look strong during the current quarter. Myriad's high growth technology has shown continued improvement and efficiency gains as can be seen in our gross margins for the quarter ended December 31, 2007. Cost to produce our molecular diagnostic revenues for the December 31, 2007 quarter were only $162,000 more than the total cost of goods sold for the quarter ended December 31, 2006. In other words, Myriad was able to increase molecular diagnostic revenues by 55% while only increasing cost to produce those revenues by 2%. Net operating profits continue to be very impressive with anticipated improvements from the current levels as the final cost of the Consumer Awareness Campaign are pushed through the income statement in our third fiscal quarter…

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

Thank you, Jim. It is a great pleasure to speak with you today about our molecular diagnostics business. As Jim mentioned, quarter two fiscal 08 revenues for our molecular diagnostics business were $53.1 million, a new record, representing a 55% increase over our previous year's quarter two revenue of $34.2 million. This was achieved with a 15% quarter-to-quarter increase in revenue for the second quarter of fiscal year 2008. As testing volumes grow, we continue to make improvements to efficiently process the samples and to improve the quality of our testing procedures. We continue to implement higher throughput instruments and robots that allow us to achieve excellent turnaround time for our tests with the in-laboratory analysis averaging between 7 and 10 days. We deploy additional process improvements through the application of lean systems quality paradigms. Our database migration to Oracle has demonstrated greater reliability and provides massive scalability of our systems as we continue to grow our testing volumes. We have built a software testing environment that permits us to develop future improvements in our systems independent of current production, making installation into our production environment more predictable. We believe that all these operational efforts, both in our laboratory operations and our information technology architecture, position us well to support the exceptional growth that we are experiencing as the leader in molecular diagnostics. A number of factors have contributed to the outstanding growth in molecular diagnostic revenues. The recent expansion of our sales force into the OB/GYN market segment, recent guidelines by the society of gynecological oncologist that expands the scope of patients to be considered for genetic testing and the bolus of growth from the Consumer Awareness Campaign activities launched upon in the Northeast United States. During the last... during the past quarter, we completed a substantial expansion of…

Adrian N. Hobden, Ph.D. - President

Analyst

Thank you, Greg, and good morning. I'm pleased this morning to be able to give you an update on progress on several of our drug development programs. On December 4th, we announced the submission of an IND on our HIV maturation inhibitor Vivecon. Vivecon is a novel, small molecule drug candidate that Myriad has designed to be taken orally and to inhibit viral maturation. The drug candidate inhibits viral particles from reaching maturity, so they are incapable of infecting other cells by targeting the capsid-SP1 cleavage site in the HIV Gag protein. One of the last steps in viral maturation is the enzymatic cleavage of capsid from SP1 by the viral protease. Vivecon inhibits this cleavage step, leading to inhibition of development of the viral core. It does not inhibit HIV protease itself. Vivecon has been tested extensively for anti-viral activity and safety in preclinical studies with both in vitro and in vivo models. It demonstrated anti-viral activity with an IC50 over less than 10 nanomolar against a variety of HIV viral strains with at least a 1000 fold therapeutic safety index. Vivecon has also been shown to be active against viral strains that are resistant to the currently marketed anti-HIV drugs, including nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors such as AZT, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors such as Efavirenz and protease inhibitors such as Ritonavir. Vivecon has also shown a good safety profile in a variety of preclinical animal studies. The IND was approved by the FDA in less than the 30 day period that the regulatory authority usually takes to review INDs. And Vivecon is already being administered to healthy volunteers in a Phase 1 single ascending dose study. The current clinical development plan for Vivecon is designed to expedite the drug candidate through the clinical development path. The first Phase…

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Adrian, and I will turn it back to the operator for the question and answer portion of the call. Question And Answer

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Geoff Meacham of JP Morgan.

Geoffrey Meacham, Ph.D. - JP Morgan

Analyst

Hi guys, congratulations on a good quarter. A couple of questions on the predictive medicine business. First, with the DTC campaign, can you tell us what percent of new docs or what percent of tests our being ordered from new docs previously who have not -- not ordering a predictive medicine test?

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

Geoff, what we are doing in the DTC analysis is looking at the -- a generation of new physicians. And the focus of the campaign is clearly to grow the number of physicians that are ordering the test. And what we are seeing in the DTC area is an increase in the number of new physicians as we compare... as we look at the data. And this is very, very encouraging. It's very early right now and we still have several months to be able to see the long-term effect. So right now, we are very encouraged by the trends.

Geoffrey Meacham, Ph.D. - JP Morgan

Analyst

And just to follow up on the TheraGuide the 5-FU test, can you guys give us sort of any qualitative comments on maybe the oncologists that were already targeting have adopted the test or what are sort of new to the test overall and then any comments that you have on payor adoption?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you Geoff. TheraGuide 5-FU, as we mentioned in the previous quarter, has been exceeding our expectations in terms of adoption by physicians and revenue growth. And as I mentioned today, it grew double digit quarter-to-quarter growth compared to the September 30, 2007 quarter. So we are very pleased with the adoption and acceptance of TheraGuide 5-FU and very encouraged by the launch of this new product.

Geoffrey Meacham, Ph.D. - JP Morgan

Analyst

So you're just trying to say that that's a little too early to talk about anything specifics with respect to market share?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Yes, I think it probably is, just because it was only launched on July 26th, so we are sort of barely six months into it.

Geoffrey Meacham, Ph.D. - JP Morgan

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Annabel Samimy of UBS.

Annabel Samimy - UBS

Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my call and congratulations on a good quarter. Just a follow up on Geoff's question. 20% is the DTC campaign and the access to new docs creating pull through for some of the other products that you're selling such as COLARIS. You are targeting OB/GYNs, but can you give us some color around that?

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

You bet. As you remember, there are two phases to the activities in the DTC campaign. First is a direct-to-physician phase that began in January where all physicians are trained on how to recognize all hereditary cancer syndromes. The focus of the media thrust of the DTC campaign is on BRACAnalysis. And what we are seeing is more time to talk to doctors, more interest in all hereditary cancer products and, as Pete mentioned, and the numbers show. We've seeing growth across all of our products.

Annabel Samimy - UBS

Analyst

And you are seeing the same for TheraGuide 5-FU targeting new oncologists and being able to pull through other products?

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

Yes, in fact, all of our products are complementary and do give pull through momentum to the other products.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

But Annabel, you make a good point. Any time we launch a new product, that gives us a reason to talk to on oncologist. We get a little more time to talk with that oncologist not only about the new product, but about the existing product line this company has as well. So it certainly is beneficial across all our product lines.

Annabel Samimy - UBS

Analyst

And if I may, a question on SG&A. Can you help us understand how to think about SG&A as we go through the rest of 2008? Is the bulk of the DTC expense out of the way? And I think if I heard correctly, you are not adding any new sales people this year, but maybe next year.

James S. Evans - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst

Yes, Annabel, that's correct as far as the sales people expansion goes. We have fully staffed that area of the company for the current fiscal year. So we are not looking to make any additions there. And the DTC campaign will be wrapping up in the quarter that we are currently in, so we should see the last of those expenses pushed through. Now on the other side of things, our 123R expense will continue to grow, commissions will continue to be high as long as we continue to have the kind of sales performance that we have. A number of things are driven by the revenue number, bad debt, some of those types of things, which, as revenues increase, those numbers will increase. So I'm not sure that we would see a tremendous drop off of the SG&A expense just because as those DTC expenses go away, other expenses will be increasing.

Annabel Samimy - UBS

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Charles Duncan of JMP Securities.

Charles Duncan, Ph.D. - JMP Securities

Analyst

Good morning gentlemen. Congratulations on a very strong quarter.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you.

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

Thanks Charles.

Charles Duncan, Ph.D. - JMP Securities

Analyst

I had a couple of questions on the PM business. One is, could you give us a little bit more color besides that they were strong on the sample flows really coming out of the quarter and whether or not that momentum has continued into the current period?

James S. Evans - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst

Yes, Charles. We are very pleased to say that the trends continue to be very strong in the current period. As you know, we've not had a price change recently that would account for any of our molecular diagnostic revenue growth. The 15% growth that we have seen over the past quarter can be directly associated to increases in sample flow, and those numbers continue to be impressive as we enter into our third fiscal quarter.

Charles Duncan, Ph.D. - JMP Securities

Analyst

Okay. And then following on on the Direct-to-Consumer campaign expenditures, can you give us a little bit more idea as to when you will be evaluating whether or not you'll expand that to the rest of the country?

James S. Evans - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst

Certainly, Charles. We look at a return on investment for the DTC campaign, and we are certainly encouraged with the early returns. But our first ROI analysis will be taken at June 30, 2008. We will then do a second analysis at December 31, 2008 to look at the staying power that the campaign has once the ads have stopped. But as Greg mentioned, we've seen such strong demand and so early on in the campaign that we are right now evaluating whether or not to expand it to other regions. And we will certainly talk about this more at the next earnings conference call.

Charles Duncan, Ph.D. - JMP Securities

Analyst

Then Pete, if I may hop over to Flurizan for a quick question with regard to the open label study. Adrian, what's your sense as to why you're getting a lot of people to join in on that open label study? Is it due to efficacy or is it due to supporting best standard of care? And then how long will that study go? Is that another 18 months or is there a certain period at which that will stop?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Charles, let me start off and then I'll ask Adrian to join in as well. We're very impressed with the fact that over 80% of the people want to stay on drug even though there are other clinical trials that they could go into. And to me that says two things: One, the drug must be very well tolerated or they wouldn't to stay on the drug and continue in the open label study. And two, both the patient and the caregiver must perceive some benefit from the drug, or again, there are other clinical studies of other drug candidates in Alzheimer's disease that they could move into. So I think it's anecdotal certainly, but at least a hint of potential efficacy and safety.

Adrian N. Hobden, Ph.D. - President

Analyst

Just to add to that, Charles, a little bit. Clearly, there are anecdotal stories that are arriving with us [ph] from investigators who have a large number of patients, of patients doing really well and equally of patients not doing well. And of course we do know that there is placebo and drug patients in the study, so we assume at big sites, there is at least a good distribution of both of those. So I have to assume at some extent that the physicians themselves are recommending to patients who even have done badly that they might be better off as they go straight into the open label. That's all presumption on our case for us. In terms of how long the open label will last, it will last until the drug is approved, and so we don't have a termination date for the open label study.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Yes. It would be unethical if the drug is providing the patient benefit to deny the patient the drug. So we'll continue the open label study until the drug is commercially available.

Charles Duncan, Ph.D. - JMP Securities

Analyst

Okay. Thanks for the added color. Congrats.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you, Charles.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of William Ho of Bank of America Securities.

William T. Ho - Bank of America Securities

Analyst

Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question and once again congratulations on a strong quarter. Just with respect to the tests, Greg, historically, you guys have told how many tests per week. Can you by any chance give us any additional color on that? And then with respect to BRACAnalysis, how much of that market do you think we penetrated thus far and how much do you think we can grow?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Again, let me jump in and I'll ask Greg to add his thoughts as well. As Jim mentioned, we're seeing very strong growth throughout the prior quarter, 15% quarter-to-quarter growth and we are seeing that same strong growth continue in this quarter. So we are very pleased with the growth that we're seeing throughout really all five of the company's products. It's a little difficult to give more specific information than that because we have a variety of tests that sell for a variety of different prices. But I think if you look at the revenue growth, that's a pretty good indication of the sample growth as well.

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

With respect to the penetration of the BRACAnalysis market, one of the major reasons that we launched the direct-to-consumer activity is the fact that after more than a decade of testing, somewhere between only 3% and 4% of individuals in the U.S. who carry mutations have been identified to date. So that means that the great majority of individuals are out there walking around not knowing that they have mutations. These are individuals for whom more intensive interventions would offer very significant health benefits. So we believe that the market is largely in front of us and that we have penetrated it to a small extent thus far.

William T. Ho - Bank of America Securities

Analyst

And just a follow-up question on Azixa. I know there is some anecdotal evidence, as Adrian had mentioned, that you hope that the outcome would be positive. But quite obviously, you have various investor basis from... due to the two sides of your business. Can you discuss a little bit as to what would your plans be should the outcome fail and would those expenses continue or what can investors look towards?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

I think it's important to note that the company has seven clinical trials ongoing. And we have very exciting drugs from Vivecon to Azixa to Flurizan in clinical studies. And as Adrian mentioned, MPC-3100, a very exciting cancer drug, should be moved into the clinic this year. So we have a very strong commitment to the pharmaceutical side of the company. And if any one drug fails, then we have five or six other drugs that we are moving forward toward regulatory approval. So we realize that this is a risky business and that it's difficult to develop new pharmaceutical products. And I don't think the company is going to be overly discouraged if one of the drugs doesn't sell. On the same time, we are not going to stay married to a drug. So if a drug doesn't work well and we don't have a good reason to believe that doing additional studies would change that outcome, we will abandon those drugs very quickly and focus on the ones that we think have greater promise. But we do have a strong commitment to the pharmaceutical area, and the failure of a single trial is not going to discourage us from moving our other drug candidates toward regulatory approval.

William T. Ho - Bank of America Securities

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Are there any updates as to potential timing for Azixa data?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Not really. Understand that Azixa is an adapted design. So there is no set time or study period and there is no set number of patients that we enroll in Azixa. Also, appreciate that because it's a three arm study, we have to do a stage one before we actually start the full scale Phase 2 study where we determine the maximum tolerated dose of the combination of Azixa and the other drug that is being used in the study. So I would not expect really any significant data on Azixa in this calendar year. I am really looking toward 2009 for the Azixa results.

William T. Ho - Bank of America Securities

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Monane of Needham & Company. Mark Monane - Needham & Company: Good morning and thank you for taking my call rings [ph] from New York City. A question on the personalized medicine program, how is your market research... let me start again. The cancer diagnostic is a very powerful one, and if one gets it paid for by insurance, then clearly there will be reimbursement, but there is also a potential for the insurance agent and carrier to know the results of the BRACA test. Has your market research addressed this? And similarly, can you identify how many patients actually self pay for their test, thereby allowing a potential of keeping the results from an insurer?

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

Yes. We work with a large number of insurance carriers as you know. The reimbursement for our test is excellent. In many situations, we have contracts with managed care companies where the results of the BRACAnalysis test are not... are contractually not given to those individuals. The results are returned to the physician and the patient. The physician and the patient are the ones that use that information to decide what they want to do next, and that paradigm has worked very, very well.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

With regard to reimbursement, if you look at the revenues for our first fiscal quarter ending September 30th, about 96% was paid by insurance. Only 4% was paid by private individual, and most of that was co pay. So it's very rare that a person would actually pay for the test. It really is reimbursed by essentially all insurance companies and HMOs, including Medicare. Mark Monane - Needham & Company: That was very helpful. And in addition, I know you'redeveloping a drug for Alzheimer's disease. Is there efforts at the company to develop a personalized medicine test for early detection of Alzheimer's, which traditionally has been very hard to do?

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

This is a very interesting area. We are looking at technologies that may be useful there and working with our pharmaceutical colleagues in the company to see which technologies are the most promising. Mark Monane - Needham & Company: Thanks for the added information. Congratulations on the quarter.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Goater of Cowen and Company.

Jeff Goater - Cowen and Company

Analyst

Good morning and thank very much for taking the questions. Just two quick questions and a clarification. Jim, could you just give us a sense of the relative level of DTC spend thus far in the March quarter versus the December quarter?

James S. Evans - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst

So in the March quarter, I am not sure that I... we only have a couple of million left that will be going through this last quarter, the most of it has already been spent up in the previous quarters. Obviously, the large amount of the DTC spend is in the development of materials, and that happened upfront. Now we are into just paying for the airtime that we'll continue to have through this quarter. So I think we are just down to $1.5 million, $2 million that would still come through this last quarter.

Jeff Goater - Cowen and Company

Analyst

Okay. Maybe just to ask that question in a different way, relative airtime in the March quarter versus December quarter, is it expected to be essentially the same?

James S. Evans - Chief Financial Officer

Analyst

Yes, it should be about the same.

Jeff Goater - Cowen and Company

Analyst

Okay, thanks. And then a quick question for Adrian. On the last call, you indicated you were going to submit the Natural History Staggered Start plan to the FDA feedback. Any update there?

Adrian N. Hobden, Ph.D. - President

Analyst

Yes, we are still finalizing that. We are looking to make a publication out of this as well. So when we have publication quality material, we will be submitting it. But we don't want to rush into something ahead of time. We would like it to be the final thing when it goes to the FDA. Of course, that's only for their consideration. We don't expect to get approval from them for it. But it is widely talked about and we know that Dr. Katz [ph] has been talking about it at a number of public forums. So we are very encouraged by that analysis.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

I think that's an excellent question and one that I would like to elaborate on just a little bit. I think it is important to investors to appreciate that the protocol and the statistical analysis plan for Myriad's Phase 3 clinical trials, both the U.S. and the European, is a very standard vanilla plan. And we analyze the data just as previous Alzheimer's studies have done. We use the same clinical endpoint of cognitive function and behavior. Our statistical analysis is exactly what has gone before us. The historical staggered start design is a sub analysis that we do once we've done the initial statistical analysis in an effort to present an argument in favor of disease modification for Flurizan. So I would like to clarify that the historical staggered start design is a sub analysis in support of disease modification, not the overall statistical analysis. That is very standard, very vanilla as Alzheimer's... all Alzheimer's drugs have had in the past.

Adrian N. Hobden, Ph.D. - President

Analyst

And just to add finally to that, that standard analysis data has been submitted to the FDA for their input. So we have done that part of it, the set piece, the Natural History Staggered Start is just a secondary analysis of the data, not the primary analysis.

Jeff Goater - Cowen and Company

Analyst

Okay, thank you for the clarification. And just a clarification from a question earlier. In the past you've quantified the sample flow rate, Greg, for the diagnostics business. Can you provide us an update for this quarter?

Gregory C. Critchfield, M.D. - President

Analyst

Yes, what we can tell you is that we are seeing strong growth rates, and that's really the case. Other than that, we are not commenting further.

Jeff Goater - Cowen and Company

Analyst

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Lucy Lu of Citigroup.

Lucy Lu - Citigroup

Analyst

Thank you. Basically, in terms of the positive impact of the DTC campaign, can you just give us a little bit more color such as what exactly is the magnitude of this impact and also like what is the incremental revenue from OB/GYN sales in the Northeast?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

Thank you Lucy. We are still in the process of analyzing and understanding the full impact of the DTC campaign. But I think, simply one way of looking at it is historically we have had about an 8% to 10% quarter-to-quarter growth, and of course this quarter we saw about a 15% quarter-to-quarter growth. The majority of that increase from 8% to 10% to 15% is as a result of the Direct-to-Consumer marketing campaign. And future conference calls, we will, as we analyze the data in more detail, give you a little more color on the impact of the DTC campaign.

Lucy Lu - Citigroup

Analyst

So do you expect the DTC's effort or the impact on revenue to reverse itself once you conclude the DTC in the Northeast for now?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

That's a very good question, and that's one of the questions we are going to answer. One option is that the DTC campaign as it's designed, is really designed to create new physician customers. And we use the bolus of patients coming to those physicians to reinforce to those physicians the value and importance of the test. If we do create a new physician customer, one would anticipate we would be able to keep that customer pretty much for the life of that physician's practice. So we wouldn't anticipate seeing a drop of once the DTC campaign was concluded. And that certainly has been our strategy with the effort we have put in the direct to physician part of the campaign in the first half of last year.

Lucy Lu - Citigroup

Analyst

Okay. And then the last question in terms of margin improvement, what can we expect going forward on the diagnostic business? Thanks.

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

As I mentioned, we think the current gross profit margins are sustainable and we are continuing to make additional technology improvements in the laboratory. The company will probably have future price increases around our test as well, which should improve margins. So I think we feel very comfortable with this mid to upper 80% as not only sustainable but modest growth in the future.

Lucy Lu - Citigroup

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have reached our allotted time for the questions. Mr. Meldrum, do you have any closing remarks?

Peter D. Meldrum - President and Chief Executive Officer

Analyst

I would like to thank everyone on the call for your participation. We are very pleased to be able to report the results for our second fiscal quarter and this does conclude the conference call. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.