Thermo Fisher’s revenue increased 10% in the second quarter thanks to $1.3 billion generated by COVID-19 related work.

Thermo posted revenue of $6.92 billion, up from $6.32 billion in the comparable quarter last year.

Life sciences solutions contributed $2.60 billion – up from $1.71 billion – specialty diagnostics brought in $990 million – up from $940 million – and lab products and services generated $2.79 billion, up from $2.63 billion.

Image: iStock/Stadtratte

In contrast, analytical instrument revenue was $1.05 billion, down from $1.32 billion last year.

Thermo said the growth was mainly due to $1.3 billion generated by COVID-related work completed in the period.

CEO Marc Casper spoke about COVID-19 work during Thermo’s Q2 call, telling analysts “We’ve been very-active in those projects and many of the high-profile projects that you read about.

“We are either providing raw materials from our bioproduction or biosciences business to having roles in the production.”

Spokesperson Marcia Goff told us “Our pharma services business is supporting more than 200 COVID projects to develop and commercialize for vaccines, antivirals and treatments.

“We are not able to publicly name specific projects but we’re leveraging our global network to support governments and customers as they accelerate these projects, including some that are undergoing human clinical trials, by providing critical capacity and expertise to get new products to market and ultimately to patients.”

Thermo has also been involved in the production of COVID-19 testing kits, which provided a significant revenue boost.

Casper said, “While we saw significant headwinds in this market due to a decrease in doctor visits and related testing, we met the incredible demand for COVID-19 testing and were able to deliver growth of just over 70% in Q2.”

CDMOs key to COVID-19 capacity boost

Casper also predicted CDMOs would be vital in helping make vaccines affordable for the billions of people likely to need them.

“Should there be a successful vaccine, is that, the role of a company like Thermo Fisher and certainly the CDMO industry more generally will play a significant role, based on the fact that the ramp-up under every scenario would be very dramatic.

Casper predicted such work would continue to boost Thermo’s revenues for the next few years.

“We expect if a vaccine is successful that it will be a meaningful tailwind over time with revenue that we’ve already gotten a little bit of and ramp slowly through the balance of this year and would be more meaningful in 2021-2022.”

Thermo’s Q2 results come weeks after the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) announced funding to support expansion of Thermo manufacturing capacity for sterile injectables.