Slow CR sales dampen Lumisys revenues

A slowdown in bulk sales of its low-cost computed radiography system is expected to put a damper on third quarter revenues for film digitizer and CR vendor Lumisys. The Sunnyvale, CA-based company is projecting revenues of $3.8 million for the third quarter (end-September), a 17.4% dip compared with revenues of $4.6 million for the same quarter a year ago. Net loss is expected to be $570,000, compared with net profit of $176,000 for the third quarter of 1998. Lumisys will record its first operating loss in seven quarters.

Although several large-quantity sales of the ACR-2000 CR system were pending, they did not close in the third quarter as expected, according to Lumisys president and CEO Dr. Phillip Berman. Small-unit sales have been shipping consistently, however, throughout the four quarters the ACR-2000 has been available, Berman said.

Berman believes the decline in bulk orders is a temporary situation. Despite the slowdown, sales of the ACR-2000 are well above what the company projected when the product was first introduced at last year’s RSNA meeting, he said. More than 150 systems have been sold to date, and several large orders are pending. Lumisys markets the ACR-2000 through OEM relationships with Brit Systems, DR Systems, Picker International, Swissray International, Analogic, and DeJarnette Research Systems. Also contributing to the quarterly loss were slightly lower-than-expected film digitizer sales.

In a new approach for the company, Lumisys is looking to bolster its revenues in coming quarters through direct sales of its new iLuminator miniPACS and CR device (SCAN 9/29/99). The company is currently establishing a direct sales force to market the iLuminator in most major U.S. cities. This is the first time Lumisys has used direct sales, primarily because the company has never before had a stand-alone product like the iLuminator, according to Berman.

“In the past, we sold our digitizers initially with no software layer,” he said. “Even the ACR-2000, while a finished product with an application layer, still requires somebody to provide a DICOM viewer and DICOM archive. But the iLuminator is different by its nature. It has acquisition, viewing, and storage all on a single cart.”