24 DNA Apps on Offer from Illumina’s Helix

It was just about one year ago that we wrote an article titled Illumina Stock Price Says Buy Me Now! at which time we picked up a whole bunch of shares in Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN) for about $140 per share. Fast forward to today and we see that those shares have appreciated about +49% to around $206 per share. This means we can now start talking about what market timing geniuses we are and how we’re “cautiously optimistic” about future price appreciation. That’s amateur thinking though, because seasoned investors know that we’re just one black swan away from shares breaching their 52-week low of $119.37 and our position going into the red. What we decided to do this week was trim (what was) our single largest stock position and take a look at one of Illumina’s “irons in the fire” for future potential growth – Helix.

With $1.2 billion of cash sitting in their coffers, ILMN hasn’t been shy about making select investments for future growth. They spun out a cancer blood-testing startup called Grail which has now taken $1 billion in funding. They’ve since backed off Grail a bit and now own less than 20% of that venture. In a bid to diversify their bets, today it was announced that Illumina has closed on $230 million for their new genomics venture fund called Illumina Ventures which will make select investments in promising genomics companies (in other words, they’re keeping tabs on their future customers). In Au