Illumina, Inc. ILMN recently entered into a collaboration with Broad Clinical Labs to rapidly streamline and scale single-cell projects with cutting-edge tools and workflows. Together, the companies aim to accelerate the development of a 5-billion cell atlas within the next three years. 

ILMN Stock’s Trend in Response to the News

Following the Feb. 21 announcement, Illumina’s shares lost 3.1% to close at $94.20 last Friday. The company has democratized sequencing over the past 20 years, and set the standard in whole genome sequencing. This partnership with Broad Clinical Labs should help researchers process and analyze unprecedented volumes of single-cell reads with unparalleled speed and accuracy to facilitate large-scale functional genomics studies and accelerate discovery in areas such as disease modeling and drug development. As a result, we anticipate this collaboration to boost market sentiment toward ILMN stock in the coming days.

Illumina presently has a market capitalization of $14.92 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate implies a staggering 83.27% year-over-year earnings growth in 2025. It delivered a trailing four-quarter average earnings surprise of 106.13%.

Significance of Illumina’s New Collaboration

Broad Clinical Labs is experienced, with a long history of translating complex molecular biology assays into high-throughput, quality workflows. Illumina is doing the same with single-cell technology to advance precision health. The partnership is aimed at making significant strides to understand the roots of disease and close the gap between new biological insights and impact on patients. 

The combination of Illumina's Single Cell Prep, NovaSeq X Plus platform, 25B flow cell and DRAGEN analysis software creates a seamless end-to-end workflow enabling the high-throughput processing of single-cell samples. Broad Clinical Labs will use this leading workflow alongside state-of-the-art techniques like Perturb-seq, CRISPR screens and other cutting-edge applications. Together, these capabilities will support rapid and consistent data generation in the whole genome space, allowing the research community to create billion-cell atlas studies to make the next discoveries. 

Industry Prospects Favor Illumina

Per a Grand View Research report, the global single-cell analysis market size was valued at $4.34 billion in 2023 and is projected to witness a CAGR of 18.7% from 2024 to 2030. This growth can be attributed to the expanding application scope in disease diagnosis and drug discovery & development, the lucrative growth of sequencing technology, technological innovations in single-cell analysis & cell isolation, and the rising incidence of cancer.

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Another Illumina’s Partnership 

The previous month, Illumina entered into a collaboration with NVIDIA (NVDA) to advance technology platforms for analyzing and interpreting multiomic data. By combining advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) with multiomic data at scale, the partnership seeks to optimize the analysis of vast amounts of data involved in multiomic research. The latest development is aimed at accelerating progress in clinical research, genomics AI development and drug discovery.

ILMN’s Share Price Performance

In the past year, ILMN’s shares have declined 31.2% against the industry’s decline of 8.7%.

Illumina’s Zacks Rank and Key Picks

Illumina currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Veracyte VCYT, ResMed RMD and Omnicell OMCL.

Veracyte, carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present, has an estimated earnings growth rate of 65.8% for 2025. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

VCYT’s earnings surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 520.58%. Veracyte’s shares have risen 49.2% in the past year compared with the industry’s 5.5% growth.

ResMed, carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present, has an estimated growth rate of 21.1% for 2025. RMD’s earnings surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 6.41%. Its shares have risen 34.1% compared with the industry’s 7.7% growth in the past year. 

Omnicell, carrying a Zacks Rank #2 at present, has an estimated earnings growth rate of 72.7% for fourth-quarter 2024. Its earnings surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 121.74%. OMCL’s shares have risen 26.4% against the industry’s 15.7% decline in the past year. 

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