San Diego’s Sequenom Steps Back Into the Spotlight, Sort Of

San Diego-based Sequenom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SQNM]]) is entering a critical phase in its management of the corporate crisis that erupted in its laboratories last year. It’s stepping back into the spotlight.

As a public company, Sequenom doesn’t have much choice. The maker of genetic diagnostic equipment and supplies says in its latest annual report that as of Dec. 31, it has an accumulated deficit of $597.3 million and available cash of $42.7 million. That means, as Sequenom chairman and CEO Harry Hixson told investors and analysts Monday, the company needs to secure additional financing this year.

Sequenom has been in its bunker since last April 29, after announcing a delay in the long-expected launch of its flagship test—a non-invasive genetic test for Down syndrome—due to “employee mishandling of R&D test data and results.” A subsequent internal investigation prompted a special committee formed by Sequenom’s board to fire CEO Harry Stylli, senior vice-president of R&D Elizabeth Dragon, and three other employees. The CFO and another executive resigned.

After several months of additional corporate governance cleanup, including tighter R&D controls and the appointment of two new scientific advisers and two independent directors, Hixson apparently decided Sequenom is ready to come out of the bunker and begin talking again. Hixson is scheduled to make a 30-minute presentation this morning at Roth Capital’s 22nd Annual Growth Stock Conference, which is being held at the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point, CA. Next week, he is set to make an appearance at the Barclays Capital 2010 Global Healthcare Conference in Miami, FL.

But Sequenom has yet to explain the what, why, or how certain employees mishandled its R&D data—and what consequences, if any, resulted. Remember, the mishandled R&D data were intended to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.