Austin’s Luminex benefits from biotech boom

A lot of Austin startups don’t even have as many employees in total as Luminex Corp. is seeking right now.

Luminex has 16 available positions at its Austin headquarters. In all, the biotech company plans to fill about 25 jobs in Austin between now and the end of 2010. Among the jobs listed on the Luminex website are product marketing manager (instrumentation), associate director of business development, internal auditor and senior legal assistant.

So far this year, the company has added more than 30 employees and more than 20 contractors in Austin.

“We have a very low turnover rate. Employees grow with Luminex,” Nancy Capezzuti, senior director of human resources, tells AustInnovation™.

An estimated 80 job openings in Austin could be on tap next year at Luminex, depending on the outcome of ongoing budget reviews, says Capezzuti, who sits on the board of Capital Area Workforce Solutions.

For more information about careers at Luminex, click here. To visit a Luminex employee page on Facebook, click here.

Luminex occupies 121,000 square feet at 12212 Technology Blvd. in Northwest Austin.

Worldwide, Luminex employs more than 460 people, including 300 in Austin. Other offices are in Toronto; Brisbane, Australia; Tokyo; Shanghai, China; and Oosterhout, The Netherlands.

Luminex’s core values are:

• Ensuring customers are always the highest priority.
• Developing and maintaining a culture that values and rewards integrity, execution, teamwork, creativity and communication.
• Delivering innovative solutions to address customers’ unmet needs.
• Building long-term shareholder value by pursuing sustainable growth, continually improving the efficiency of operations and maximizing return on investment.

Publicly held Luminex (Nasdaq: LMNX) was founded in 1995 and went public five years later. The company develops, manufactures and markets biological testing technologies for the pharmaceutical, clinical diagnostics, biomedical research and biodefense sectors.

To read about Luminex’s commercial launch of a cystic fibrosis test, click here. To learn more about Luminex’s biodefense partnership with defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., click here.

Earlier this year, Luminex ranked 42^nd on Fortune’s list of the 100 fastest-growing companies, with three-revenue revenue growth of 32 percent.

In 2009, the company’s revenue jumped by 59 percent, thanks largely to a boost in sales associated with the H1N1 flu outbreak. For the second quarter of 2010, Luminex reported revenue of $33.2 million, up 20 percent from the same period in 2009.

The company forecasts 2010 revenue of $138 million to $148 million, which would be an increase of 14 percent to 23 percent compared with 2009.

“We believe our commitment to our successful partnership model and our ongoing R&D investments will continue to drive growth across all of our markets, and allow us to further extend our global market presence,” says President and CEO Patrick Balthrop (top photo, ringing opening bell at Nasdaq), who joined the company in 2004.

To read a Northwestern University article about Balthrop, click here. To see a video of Balthrop discussing Luminex’s corporate strategies, click here.