Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NASDAQ:BEC) reported a lower net income in first quarter, missing analysts’ estimates. Beckman Coulter, Inc. is a manufacturer of biomedical testing instrument systems, tests and supplies that simplify and automate laboratory processes.

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Beckman Coulter Earnings Cheat Sheet for the First Quarter

Results: Net income for the scientific and technical instruments company fell to $10.3 million (14 cents/share) vs. $38.7 million (54 cents/share) a year earlier. A decline of 73.4% from the year earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 1.6% to $895.4 million YoY.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: BEC fell short of the mean analyst estimate of 84 cents/share. Estimates ranged from 62 cents per share to $1.06 per share.

Key Stats:

Last quarter marked the fifth straight quarter that the company saw shrinking gross margins as gross margin fell 5.5 percentage points to 40.5% from the year earlier quarter. Over that time, margins have contracted on average 2.1 percentage points per quarter on a year-over-year basis.

From the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year, the company’s current liabilities rose to $1.54 billion from $995.5 million.

Last quarter’s profit decrease breaks a streak of two consecutive quarters of year-over-year profit increases. Net income rose 25.2% in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year and 4366.7% in the third quarter of the last fiscal year.

Revenue rose last quarter after seeing a drop the quarter before. Revenue rose -0.3% to $986.5 million in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year from the year earlier.

Competitors to Watch: Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO), Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:HBIO), IRIS International, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRIS), Cepheid (NASDAQ:CPHD), Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFFX), Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE:PKI), Caliper Life Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ:CALP), Mindray Medical Intl. Ltd (NYSE:MR), and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO).

Stock Performance: Shares of BEC are down 0.1% from the previous close.

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