Liposcience, Inc. (LPDX)

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MUST READ lPDX 50 bucks+ EoY

Laboratory Testing Companies

The $50 billion medical-lab-testing sector’s average profit margin is a healthy 8.2 percent, putting it just above restaurants and below oil and gas equipment and services. The mother of all lab-test companies, Quest Diagnostics, earned a 9.1 percent margin during the last year, just a hair behind Exxon Mobil. In April, defunct Quest subsidiary Nichols Institute Diagnostics pleaded guilty and paid a $40 million criminal fine for the felony misbranding of a test called the Nichols Advantage Chemiluminescence Intact Parathyroid Hormone Immunoassay. (With names like these, they could just as well charge you for their afternoon coffee and call it Post Meridien Genera Coffea Robusta on your bill.) Another $262 million was paid by Quest to settle other civil allegations. Despite the fines, Quest’s revenues were up 3.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009, to $1.9 billion, and its C.E.O., Surya Mohapatra, pulled down $11,964,632 in compensation last year.