Even with this repayment, we continue to have a healthy balance sheet to support our business expansion and a disciplined capital allocation policies. To close out our income statement, adjusted EPS for the second quarter was $0.52 at constant exchange rates and above the outlook for at least $0.50 CER. The adjusted tax rate was 18% and the share count at 231 million shares, and these were in line with our outlook. Before we start, let’s briefly go over our safe harbor statement.
This is seen as well as the balance sheet in terms of the increase in inventories. We call our strategic framework Sample to Insight. QIAGEN offers advanced molecular testing solutions that move customers through the whole process – faster, better and more efficiently. We identify bottlenecks, solve problems and exceed expectations. Find out more about QIAGEN’s vision, identity and mission. Nevertheless, the good news for us is that 85% of our business is a very resilient consumable business, and we haven’t seen any reason to believe that it’s going to change either in ’23 or in ’24.
We achieved this level while investing around 10% of sales into research and development, which is important, obviously, to create new relays of growth and support our midterm ambitions. Nonetheless, I would like to insist that the growth in the U.S., like in the rest of the world for QuantiFERON is driven mainly by volume before than price. What makes us optimistic and confident for QuantiFERON, especially in North America, is that we continue to open new opportunities. For example, diabetes patient is becoming a significant opportunity for us. Second, immigration is starting again at a higher pace compared to the previous administration or the pandemic period. Anytime there is immigration, especially from emerging countries, there is testing for QuantiFERON.
NDIS approval provides access to federal government funding for accredited public crime laboratories in the U.S. to implement next-generation sequencing (NGS) for routine casework // NGS-based ForenSe… According to 3 analysts, the average rating for QGEN stock is «Buy.» The 12-month stock price forecast is $52.67, which is an increase of 36.95% from the latest price. In 2017, QIAGEN acquired OmicSoft Corporation, a leading provider of highly curated public datasets. To opt-in for investor email alerts, please enter your email address in the field below and select at least one alert option.
While we saw double-digit CER growth in non-COVID sales and new placements, we have taken a more cautious view on NeuMoDx sales for this year due to the rapid and more significant decline bdswiss forex broker in COVID testing. As a result, our new target for sales in ’23 is for over USD 40 million. Second key message, our key pillars of growth progressed well in driving our base business.
At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that as ongoing menu expansion in many areas at QIAGEN, so we’re driving our R&D activities. I talked about that, that we actually accelerated a lot of things. dynamic locale en angularjs And again, there is also something what was very helpful for us in the last 3 years, we shouldn’t forget that we had now many consecutive quarters with a healthy double-digit growth rate.
Verogen’s sequencing and analysis solutions are designed for use on the MiSeq FGx® Sequencing System from Illumina, Inc. With this acquisition, QIAGEN gains exclusive distribution rights for this version of the MiSeq sequencer designed specifically for forensics applications. More than 300 MiSeq FGx Sequencing Systems have been placed to date, marking a strong entry into this market segment. And so apologies if you guys have touched on this but jumped on late.
Part of the world, especially in Europe, a strong holidays, either in July for Germany or in August for the rest of Europe. Third, we don’t see any sequential improvement, as Roland highlighted, on the Chinese market. So I don’t think that there is no specific highlight at the moment with either product-wise or geography-wise. Additionally, we will be referring to certain financial measures not prepared following generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP.
And I think this will be a key differentiation and help for the coming years. Continuing with the balance sheet, our total consolidated net debt stood at USD 556 million as of June 30 compared to USD 443 million at the end of ’22. Our liquidity position remained at about $1.3 billion at the end of the second quarter compared to USD 1.4 billion at the end of December ’22. This means that our leverage ratio was about 0.8x net debt to adjusted EBITDA compared to about 0.5x at the end of ’22. In terms of using cash proceeds, we have approximately $400 million of debt reaching maturity in the third quarter of this year and will use a portion of these proceeds for the repayment.
It attempts to reflect the cash profit generated by a company’s operations. 52 week low is the lowest price of a stock in the past 52 weeks, or one year. Qiagen NV 52 week low is $38.14 as of October 15, 2023. 52 week high is the highest price of a stock in the past 52 weeks, or one year. Qiagen NV 52 week high is $51.18 as of October 15, 2023.
Let me walk through a key couple points that shore up our business. First of all, remember that the foundation of QIAGEN rest on highly recurring revenues. We consistently see over 85% of our total sales coming from high-margin consumables.
Our second pillar with very strong leadership is the QuantiFERON franchise. The QuantiFERON latent TB has been delivering double-digit growth on a sizable base for good reason. Well over 100 million people have been screened to date using the QuantiFERON test. Our specialized commercial teams have built critical relationships with national entities in the ongoing effort to transition latent TB screening to this modern blood test from the antiquated old skin test.
The QDI business had an outstanding performance, delivering growth above 20% CER in the second quarter and a double-digit CER growth rate for the first half of the year. Also supporting growth in this product group were incremental sales from our expansion into NGS-based applications for forensics and human identification through the acquisition of Verogen at the start of this year. Among our 4 product groups, let’s start with sample technologies, which represents about 1/3 of total sales. We saw a healthy 6% CER growth in non-COVID products, and this represented well over 85% of sales within this product group.
I will first discuss our results for the second quarter and first half of the year and then share some views on our outlook. As you saw in our press release, net sales for the second quarter of 2023 were USD 495 million at actual rates and USD 497 million at constant exchange rates. Given that there was little impact from currency movements, sales declined 4% compared to the year ago period, which had a xm.com forex broker review substantial COVID-19 revenues. Non-COVID product groups experienced strong growth with sales up 9% CER to $457 million and representing well over 90% of total sales in the second quarter. In fact, this non-COVID sales were up 10% CER for the first half of the year. Instrument sales declined at a low single-digit CER rate as academic and biotech customers continue to be conservative in capital spending.
It is very easy to operate with no upfront sample preparation, and its capability to provide PCR-based quantitative results brings added clinical value for more targeted treatment decision. Many of those key advances make their way across the continuum into clinical health care. And here, we can support customers as we target the areas of immune response, infectious diseases and oncology.
