Mar 3 2009
Luna Innovations Incorporated (NASDAQ: LUNA), a company focusing on sensing + instrumentation and pharmaceutical nanomedicines, today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2008.
“A major portion of our business is geared toward partnerships with industry leaders in selected market spaces. During 2008, we entered into or continued partnership relationships with global market leaders in surgical robotics, heart bypass equipment, oilfield services, telecommunications equipment, power generation equipment and defense systems. The company continues to make progress towards new opportunities for partnering in solar and wind energy generation, non-robotic medical devices, pharmaceuticals and defense solutions.
“In addition, our Technology Development Division, which provides applied contract research to customers, achieved our planned revenue growth of 15% in 2008 and has continued to be successful in attracting new contract awards in early 2009. We believe our backlog of $29 million as of year-end in new research opportunities will continue to support product development in sensors, nanomedicines and defense in accordance with our long-term business strategy.
“In the fourth quarter, we were awarded work with GE Aviation on a U.S. Army program to develop an integrated corrosion health monitoring system. GE Aviation selected Luna for this project due to our experience and knowledge of aircraft corrosion and materials and our concurrent development efforts in corrosion monitoring, modeling, and prediction. The goals of this Army program are to improve rotorcraft safety, decrease maintenance costs, and increase rotorcraft readiness.
“We also continue to garner interest in our unique organic solar cells, which use patented carbon nanomaterials to capture energy more efficiently than many existing organic solar cells to convert to electricity. Our research was recently published in Nature Materials, and demonstrates an entirely new approach of enhancing organic photovoltaic device performance. We are collaborating with solar cell manufacturers for testing and evaluation of Luna’s proprietary nanomaterial technology.”
On the outlook for 2009, Murphy commented, “Given these times of economic uncertainty, it is difficult to project 2009 revenue. We currently expect flat to modest revenue growth in 2009. We believe that our development relationships with industry leaders in broadband, alternative energy and healthcare markets, in addition to our opportunities within the federal government, position us to offset some of the uncertainty in our sensing and instrumentation product sales. As the economy recovers, we believe our Luna-branded test & measurement products will be attractive products to address the needs of broadband access and high speed network infrastructure in 2009 and beyond.”
Fourth Quarter Business Highlights
Sensing and Instrumentation
Launched the PHOENIX™ 1400 swept tunable benchtop laser, which offers best-in-class wavelength precision and tuning linearity.
Demonstrated the feasibility of removing gaseous emboli from the bloodstream using our acoustic expertise along with our EDAC®medical device, which detects and verifies the removal of emboli.
Pharmaceuticals / Nanomedicine
Demonstrated our nanomaterial-based hair growth compounds in topical form and successfully repeated efficacy testing by an independent third party.
Selected two contrast media agent candidates with the core technology for developing targeted agents for imaging both inside blood vessels, or intravascular, and in the small structural space between tissues or parts of an organ, or interstitial sites.
Demonstrated in vitro that our TRIMETASPHERE®-based contrast agent can possibly be used to target and image arterial plaque, which could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery and other diseases.
Technology Development
Demonstrated a new approach of enhancing organic photovoltaic (OPV) device performance using Luna’s exclusive TRIMETASPHERE® carbon nanomaterials in place of the empty cage fullerenes. Research published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials.
Luna’s nanomaterials were independently verified at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) as setting a new record for efficiency of the commercially available P3HT organic solar cell polymer.