Gentian Diagnostics ASA

OSE:GENT

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Njaal Kind, executive]

All right. Good morning. Welcome to this webcast of the Q2 results for Gentian Diagnostics. My name is Njaal Kind. I'm the CFO of the company. And with me today is Hilja Ibert, CEO of the company.

Just before we get started, a few pieces of practical information. This webcast will be recorded. And if you want to see in replay, or if you don't have time to watch our webcast, you can access that on our website shortly after the presentation is finished. We also have a live Q&A during the presentation. Please use the Q&A box on your screen to submit questions to us and we will try to answer them as good as we can.

Yes, before getting into the numbers, I think we will let Hilja make an introduction and also share some important updates. So I'll be back in a few minutes. Hilja?

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Thank you very much, Njaal. Good morning everybody. Yes, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Gentian. We are fully dedicated to the clinical diagnostics market. And we have as our mission defined that based on our strengths and the experience we have in our company, we innovate the efficiency of clinical diagnostics in order to enable better treatment decisions. So how do we do that as a reagent supplier to laboratories? We enable laboratories to transfer biomarkers from manual or low-throughput platforms to the most efficient platforms and clinical analyzers you find in a laboratory. This improves laboratory productivity. And as those results were fast available for the clinicians, those results have then as well a much higher impact on the treatment decisions for patients.

So we are very encouraged by the value we provide through the market and therefore we have developed a growth plan which is based on currently 7 products, 4 of them being well-established in the market, 2 of them being in sales, but in market develop, means that the market still needs to develop the clinical value, still to be better-understood and communicated in the scientific community. And 1 product is in development. And I will update you as well on that later on.

The other element of our growth plan is our team. We have assembled a team of -- from all over the world with a unique set of expertise which is required to be successful in these demanding and as well highly regulated market. Our mission, based on that, is to achieve NOK 1 billion revenue within the next 4 to 6 years. And we feel encouraged by the success we have achieved in the last years between 2018 and 2021. We achieved an annual revenue growth of 27%.

Talking about the products, to go through these 4 elements a little more in detail. Talking about the products, you see here the overview of the 7 products I had mentioned before. And as you can see on the left side, we are addressing the 7 products 4 different disease groups. So with this, we would like to inform you as well that the disease area is not the guiding principle. We are not focusing on 1 or 2 disease areas. We are focusing again on those biomarkers who drives the highest level of efficiency for laboratories and as well for the clinicians. And therefore, let me give you an example.

Cystatin C, the first product on this screen is a protein in which we have brought to market in 2006. And until today, the demand for this product is increasing significantly. And that is based on the value for the clinicians. And as this product is available now on the clinical analyzers, they can then provide the results very fast to clinicians. And it is scientifically proven that this biomarker detects kidney failure earlier than alternative markers. And early means that clinicians can act earlier on kidneys not working well anymore. And as earlier you treat as more the likelihood is that we prevent severe kidney failures, which leads to dialysis or even in the worst case to transplant. So this is our guiding principle, help laboratories to become more productive, enable them to provide biomarkers relevant, clinically relevant biomarkers faster to clinician, and by doing so improving as well as the clinical efficiency.

Another example is the next product on that list, fCAL. Calprotectin is as well a protein which we quantify in stool in this case. Many, many patients show up every day at physicians with unclear symptoms in the guts. And this is very hard to diagnose. And often physicians decide to send the patients to more invasive diagnostic tools, colonoscopy. That can be avoided in many or in many cases because the symptoms are just based on bad life behavior, on a bad diet and can be treated with very, let's say, unsophisticated treatment means.

The fCAL assay enables physicians now by quantifying that protein in the stool if there is inflammatory bowel disease, which would require this colonoscopy. But the majority of patients don't have that and they can be excluded. And with this there is a win-win for the patients and as well for the health care providers to have a lower number of people queuing or very often queuing to get that exam.

And maybe as well as another example, same protein, the next one in the list GCAL, being detected in serum and plasma. And here, an elevated level of that protein indicates physicians that there is an inflammation or as well an infection in the body of the patient, which requires an obviously immediate treatment. And therefore, as earlier you detect that there is an inflammation/an infection in the patient, and as earlier the treatment is started, which is often as well an antibiotic treatment, as more the impact is on reducing the morbidity and as well partially the mortality.

Yes. I could speak much longer about that slide. Happy to address any questions. I will give as well an update in 2 slides on our NT-proBNP, the assay which is in the cardiac disease group as this is in product development, and we will speak a little bit more in detail about that. But the main message from here is we improved laboratory productivity by enabling this biomarkers to be run on the high-throughput platforms and by providing those results now very fast to the clinicians, having an impact on the treatment decisions.

As I mentioned, NT-proBNP, here we are addressing the cardiac disease group. And NT-proBNP is a very well established biomarker giving indications about congestive heart failure or not. So as well you quantify that molecule in the serum and plasma, and if there are elevated levels, likelihood of that disease is there and further diagnosis and treatment will be the result of this. Well-established but still not yet available on high-throughput analyzers. It is on analyzers which can do about 700 tests per hour while high-throughput means really 2,000 or more tests per hour. And we know from market feedback that it is highly desired, such an established and high volume biomarker to be run as productive and as efficient on the laboratory level as possible.

In addition to this, the -- this marker is not standardized. That means every individual assay in the market currently produces somehow different results, which is a concern for clinicians. If they receive results from the same patient from 2 different instruments with 2 different results, you can imagine that is not what they really appreciate. Therefore, being instrument-independent, we aim as well to contribute to standardization, harmonization of results in the market.

So how are we doing with product development? We always communicate to the market. This is a development which will be much challenging than others because we are breaking here the barrier of 2D metric assay development. The 2D metric technology has a certain limit in terms of how low you can go in detecting molecules in serum and plasma. This is so-called sensitivity. And by addressing this disease group, we are breaking here the barrier.

We have made very good progress in the past. And but have seen as well that based on that, we had as well being faced with technical challenges. The last technical challenges we had reported in Q1 had been interference and have been as well the signal strength which is related as well to the sensitivity. We have, in the meantime, identified an immunoparticle candidate which has demonstrated good and promising results, reducing these -- the technical challenges, which I just described before. And we have decided to bring this candidate now into further investigations with higher number of samples and, yes, different tests to ensure that this is the candidate to ensure a robust and high-quality assay in the future.

Good progress, but I would like to of course inform you as we did as well in Q1 about good practice. In case this candidate would not bring the results which we anticipate for the moment, there is always as well the opportunity and a chance that this product may be moved back into exploration phase because the current technology/the candidates which we identified have not worked out and we need to find a much different route and that would be then the so-called exploration phase.

Speaking about growth plan, in context of the growth plan, here are the numbers which we have developed to articulate our market potential. We have -- we are addressing or we are acting in a market which you can define to be worth USD 7.1 billion. Peeling there the onion a little bit more and looking into exactly the clinical question we are addressing, we are getting to a serviceable market of USD 1.3 billion.

Our market share ambitions differ depending on the product. For example, established products, we aim a 25% market share. For the so-called blockbuster products, GCAL and NT-proBNP, we assume, due to the competitive situation, a 15% market share. And so all in all, we assume a 15% to 20% market share. Due to our commercial model, means we sell directly, but that is a minority of our sales. Majority of our sales is taking place via commercial partners, mainly the global IVD companies having the instrument platforms in the laboratories. And they take, obviously, a part of the revenues. They are selling to the end-users. And therefore, our revenue take is assumed currently at -- to be at 30% to 50%.

Yes, we highlighted already before that there is of course for product in market development with GCAL, the risk that the market adoption cannot be anticipated with high security. We are pleased with the development made with the key opinion leader endorsement. And of course, the numbers are as well based on the successful launch of NT-proBNP. And as I just mentioned before, we have made good progress during this quarter.

The other element besides products for our growth plan has been the team. With the, our management team, I believe it's a very good representation of the entire Gentian employees. We assembled highly talented colleagues from all over the world and coming as well from different kinds of companies, bringing different kind of expertise which is required to drive the progress on product development, logistics, sales, et cetera, forward now, but as well in the future. A growth company needs to be ready when the demand is increasing, and that cannot be the excuse that we cannot deliver. So we are ready for that.

And as well, from a team point of view, for this quarter we are pleased to inform you about 3 new board members coming with different kind of experiences and bringing here as well complementary competence to the Board.

Yes. As I mentioned before, we are encouraged by what we achieved in the last years. As you can see, significant increase of our revenue, in average 27%, and very much based on our successful engagement with the large IVD companies. For example, Siemens, as we had announced the collaboration on GCAL earlier this year. Long-standing partnership already with Beckman Coulter and as well the partnership which our partner, Bühlmann, has achieved, this was for fCAL. And as we had and most recently announced as well 2 new and additional partnerships for Cystatin C, focusing on the United States. Those partners don't want to be named in public, but as well a global-acting IVD companies with a broad instrument base in the field.

And with this, I hand over to Njaal.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Hilja. I will give a rundown of the most significant highlights and financial figures for this quarter. We are pleased to announce yet another record quarter when it comes to sales. And we today report NOK 30.1 million in product sales for the second quarter. This is 22% up compared to the same quarter last year. Adjusting for some currency tailwinds and using a constant exchange rate, we reported growth of 19% compared to last -- the same quarter last year. So we are obviously pleased about that.

Some other highlights. We also sent a press release a few days ago regarding a new distribution agreement in the U.S. for Cystatin C. This is the second distribution agreement for Cystatin C in the U.S. that we announced this year. So momentum for Cystatin C in the U.S. is increasing. And we also see that we are starting to see better numbers, sales numbers from the U.S. I'll cover that on the next slide.

For GCAL, we have established a scientific advisory board, quite strong lineup with key opinion leaders that will both advise us on how to further develop this product in the market. And of course, they are ambassadors for the product. So this is a good cooperation that we have established here. As Hilja mentioned, we also report good progress on the product development of NT-proBNP this quarter. Other highlights include a completion of a long and big facility plant expansion here in Moss. We have doubled the footprint, more than doubled the footprint of the plant, while still being operational all the time and we have the Norwegian Ministry of Health officially inaugurating the plant yesterday. And that was of course something that we are proud of.

Looking at the numbers we present today and trying also to look a bit forward, we think that we see current demand which supports our ambition of 20% plus growth in revenues from the established product portfolio. And then we have these products that are in market development that may contribute in addition to that. Cash of NOK 92 million, still a solid cash position for the company. And EBITDA of minus NOK 1.2 million. Obviously we are EBITDA positive before R&D, but we will continue to invest in R&D because that's our future.

Looking at the product split and also the geographic split. This quarter we see that Cystatin C is really driving both the absolute revenue and also the growth, NOK 14.4 million in revenues for Cystatin C is quite strong. So that's almost half of the sales revenue. And Europe has been the biggest driver in terms of absolute numbers.

I also want to just take your attention to the U.S. where we have doubled sales, although from a relatively modest number. We have doubled the sales now compared to the first half last year. We have feet on the ground in the U.S. We have now more distributors in the U.S. And we are working on growing the market for Cystatin C in the U.S. And I think we have made some good progress on that.

If we look at the other revenues, so not related to product sales, but to R&D grants, they are a bit down compared to second quarter last year, and that is due to last year we also had quite high funding on the development of SARS-CoV-2, which is now finished. So it's off development, and we don't receive any more grants for it.

Turning to costs. You see that our cost development is shifting between the categories. So total cost is down compared to the second quarter last year. Please keep in mind that the second quarter last year we had some negative influence or one-offs, mainly related to the listing cost since we transferred our listing from Euronext Growth to the Oslo Børs amarket. Sales and marketing expenses is, as you can see, significantly up, and that can be explained by activity in COVID and activity post-COVID. So we now see our sales and marketing activity much more outward, much more physical and that also drives cost.

As I mentioned, R&D expenses are down significantly compared to last year. And this is both because we have completed the development of SARS-CoV-2, but also because the NT-proBNP development efforts are mainly driven internally. So it's driven by our own team, and we don't have that much external services connected to that project at this point in time. That may change. But all in all, the cost picture, as you can see from these bars, it's well within a range that you have seen previously.

So looking a bit at some balance sheet numbers also. I refer to the cash CapEx of NOK 8.4 million in the quarter, and a lot of that is related to the expansion of the plant. That expansion is now completed. And we can say from practical purposes there will be no more CapEx, except for some late billing maybe, but that's not a significant amount. That will come in, in the second half. And we now have a plant that is well-equipped to cater for significant growth going forward. We said that we are breakeven pre-R&D. And looking at the cost base here, be aware that our biggest OpEx is related to personnel, which is in some way where we are going to enjoy scale as we grow the revenues.

Yes. Working capital, still an issue for a small company in terms of getting the number down. We are around 40%. Net working capital is targeted in the long run to get down to about 30% of revenues.

I think that's it for me for the moment. I will return to the Q&A. I will let Hilja make a summary and outlooks. Thank you.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Thank you again. Yes, I would like to turn your attention again to the long-term ambition. We have NOK 1 million in the next 4 to 6 years. And what are the strategic milestones against that? Our established products, mainly Cystatin C and fCAL to grow with 20% on an annual basis or more. And we believe that we are here on track. Prove the clinical relevance of GCAL and bring NT-proBNP to market. You heard already from Njaal about GCAL's advisory board, a big step forward as well for the acceptance in the market. And as well we are seeing an increasing number of applications coming partially as well from our funded studies but majority coming from independent studies means the discussion is ongoing. So that is very encouraging and a very good indicator for acceptance in the market.

Yes, bring NT-proBNP to market. We have given you an update on that. And good progress made on that front. Bringing a steady stream of high-impact diagnostics to market. Obviously, the focus on NT-proBNP has an impact on our steady stream, but we have 3 products in the pipeline, 2 of them in exploration phase, 1 in proof-of-concept phase, and we have focused on those as we are thinking beyond a launch of NT-proBNP obviously as well.

Secure 1 new contract with a global commercial partner per year. We had a very good start of this year with announcing the contract with Siemens earlier for GCAL and as Njaal mentioned recently, announced 2 Cystatin C contracts focused on the U.S. with 2 different global IVD companies.

From a financial point of view, we aim then within these 4 to 6 years time frame to improve our gross margin from currently, yes, in 2020, 50% to 60% mainly due to volume production. And with some cost discipline in place, we aim a long-term EBITDA margin of 40%.

Zooming from the 4 to 6 years, a little bit more into the 12-month window what can you expect to see from us here on the established products? Definitively we aim to continue gaining new and additional commercial partners. We aim, obviously, as well access to market. The most important is now the IVDR despite the fact that the deadline is now corrugated to 26. This is, for us, the highest focus. And we are done. It is now just for the pursuit to follow up on all the work we have done.

GCAL is, as I mentioned before, securing the acceptance in the market with clinical studies. And of course, based on that as well, gaining here the attention from the commercial partners. We are very glad about Siemens , and it's a signal to the market and as well all of them based on key opinion leaders being ambassadors for our product as you mentioned that nicely before.

The SARS-CoV-2, we have a tool available if public decision-makers decide to use antibody testing and measuring as a mean to manage the COVID pandemic. We focus on the Nordics market and the visit of the Ministry of Health this week here in Moss with the inauguration of our new facility has been as well one of those opportunities for us to make public decision makers aware of the ability and the possibilities they have.

And with NT-proBNP, I believe everything is said, good progress made. And maybe to add on the -- in addition to the technical development made is that we are in contact with interested commercial partners and definitively that is going in parallel because having a product means as well that we have to have the commercial interest, and that is what our objective is to secure that. And mentioned before as well that we have 3 projects in the pipeline and one of these being in proof of concept. And more news on that when proof of concept is achieved. With this, I believe we are at the end of our presentation and are now taking questions.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Yes. So I will try to moderate this Q&A. Lot of questions here for Hilja. Let's see. We have received some questions in advance, and it's also started filling up on the screen here. I will group some of these questions, so to try to get a structural conversation. So let's start with questions related to, let's say, existing products, existing business and Q2. And one question here on the screen is if we could elaborate on the new distribution agreement for Cystatin C and how or if it differs from the other Cystatin C agreement that we announced earlier this year.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

In general, no difference. It's a different company. They have different instruments in the market. But they both confirm that the demand for Cystatin C increasing. It's important for them to have such an assay in their menu. So overall, it is very similar.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Okay. Thank you. Just related to that, "Are any of these new agreements a result of this joint task force in the U.S. recommending increased use of Cystatin C? Are you able to provide some insight into what could be the direct effect on that? But also what would be the potential for these agreements?"

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

I have to assume, I have no proof, but we strongly assume that this is linked. The demand in the U.S. is increasing significantly. There is awareness about the value of Cystatin C overall for all patients, but especially as well for certain patient groups. And therefore, we see as well as our directed efforts that the demand is increasing as well linked to that reason. So that is the first part of that question. Can we quantify that impact? I would love to, if I could do that. I'm 30 years in the market. But whatever we assume, the reality proves us it is different. So therefore, it will not be professional to do that.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Next question here, I can cover that. "Can we now expect quarterly sales of NOK 30 million and above going forward?" So as you know, we don't make -- we don't provide guiding. However, if you go back, you will also see that we are constantly growing the business. We will continue to grow the business, but there will be quarterly variations. And historically, Q3 has been a bit of a dip compared to, for instance, Q2. So I don't think that we can now establish NOK 30 million as a low watermark for sales. There will be some variation, but the overall trend there is strongly positive.

And next question, should we -- I'm just trying to see if there are any more Cystatin C questions here on the list. There are none. We have a question on fCAL which says it's goes from strong moderate or has gone from strong growth, I assume, to moderate or even declining growth. What is the reason for the decline in growth for this test? Yes, so that's a bit of a mixed picture. So yes, the overall revenue has declined compared to the first half last year. But the first half last year was in fact special as we had some very high initial bulk sales. They have materialized so far this year.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Maybe to add, this is for the [indiscernible] new agreement with Roche.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Yes. So that was connected to Roche. And then -- and we -- I think it's reasonable to expect that this bulk OEM will go, let's say will be not every quarter or even every second quarter. It will be sometimes in, sometimes not in. When we look at the kit sale, so that is the sales going from the traditional distributors out to the final customers, we see still strong growth. We saw 20% or 19% growth, to be accurate, in the second quarter when it came to the number of kits being sold. So we are still very positive to the prospect of fCAL. And I think that this bulk, let's say, disturbance, I wouldn't call it disturbance, but infrequent bulk orders, they will probably continue to influence the figures for a while. But the underlying growth there and the underlying prospect for fCAL turbo is very positive. Anything to add there, Hilja?

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

No.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

No. I'm trying to see if we have more on fCAL. Let's go to GCAL. "Are you experiencing increased interest from potential partners for GCAL?"

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

As I mentioned before, we have these 3 elements there. The key opinion leaders who have now -- some of them have agreed as well now to support us with our efforts to act as an advisory board for us. And the other element is the number of increasing publications, and these 2 together has an impact obviously as well on the commercial interest.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Okay. Thank you. We also have a related question on GCAL relating to the contract with Siemens Healthineers that we announced on January 31 earlier this year. And the question reads, "Since we have not been informed on when Siemens Healthineers launched or if it has been postponed, has this agreement resulted in sales? And if not, what is the status of the launch?" Yes, you want to answer that, Hilja?

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Yes. So the contract has been signed earlier this year. The Siemens has launched the product officially. We have generated sales from that. And it is still in early launch phase rollout in 2 different countries. Training of those people is still ongoing. And I think the willingness of Siemens to join our forces on the Scientific Advisory Board for GCAL demonstrate as well how committed they are to this deal and as well to the development of the market.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

And just for the secondary order, that first sales was also announced by us in the first quarter report this year. "Speaking on the GCAL Scientific Advisory Board, can we get some insight into the advisory board, which includes a representative of -- from Siemens Healthineers? What is the importance of such a board and how common is it that a partner such as Siemens participates?"

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

So I mentioned already the value for us and hopefully as well for Siemens to join forces on this advisory board. It is important. 2 ways. It gives a signal to the market that key opinion leaders in this case, Camille from Assistance Publique in Paris, the largest university group in Paris, in France, and as well Michael Bauer from University Hospital in Jena. This is a highly prestigious site in the field of sepsis. So these 2 country leaders, 2 countries recognized key opinion leaders in the field infectious diseases, plus Siemens, is an outside signal as well. But to the inside as well as you mentioned it before, important to gain here concrete experience not only for those 2 countries because we learned as well more about other countries in the world, how to even further accelerate the market awareness and the acceptance of the value and therefore the introduction of such a biomarker into the medical records. So high importance.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

All right. Thank you. Let's move to few questions on NT-proBNP. And here's a question relating to where we are seeing the challenge here and which is still not launched. NT-proBNP product currently under R&D, regulatory matters for issues related to intellectual property.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Yes. So as I had mentioned before, we had been faced with technical challenges, and these technical challenges are in the hands of R&D. So I therefore have to understand that question like where -- why does it take longer than anticipated, and it takes longer because of the technical challenge and that is in R&D. As soon as that is finalized, that part, there are still certain phases to go through, but they have much higher prediction of time. There we have a higher prediction of time security to being able to predict launch dates then.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Yes. The other thing, it's fair to say that since we got held up in the R&D and we also missed one of the, let's say, opportunities we had in the regulatory approval, if this product had been launched as was the original timing before Q1 during Q1 '22.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

So that's a fair point, yes.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Would been launched under IVDD, now we have to launch the product under IVDR, which is a much more cumbersome regulatory environment. So let's say, this technical delay has a knock-on effect on the regulatory approval time line when we get to that point.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Fair point.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

And we complete the questions, so taking the status into account can we say something about the planned launch then?

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

As I just mentioned, as soon as we have finalized the current phase where there are a lot of uncertainties, we can much better predict the launch date. So stay tuned, please.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

All right. Few questions on, let's say, more general, not related maybe to products. So a few corporate questions here. "What does the new Board members bring to the table, specifically Monika Neuman, Frank Frantzen? So the 2 of the new Board members that has been elected by the shareholders."

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Well, I invite you to look a little bit to the bio, but from my interpretation and as well experience is they bring a strong background in diagnostics industry, both from commercial partners, one from a technical point of view.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Okay. Thank you. We have also a presubmitted question here regarding IR policy and whether we could publish that policy and also elaborate on more of the activities around the IR. And yes, we will, let's say, within a week or so, we will have expanded the corporate government section of the IR pages where we also published the IR policy. If you can wait for 1 week, there is a summary of the IR policy in the annual reporting fact. So it can be found there in the summary segment. And related to that question is also a question on when we are planning to start our presentations as physical events to allow better interaction between audience and presenters.

When it comes to these results presentations, we have had a strong positive feedback on performing them as a webcast, available to all. And we also see that the number of questions that we get on the webcast in fact surpasses that we -- the number of questions that we get in physical presentations. So for results presentations, we will definitely stick to webcast. Happy to take input from our audience on how those can be improved. And when it comes to the physical presentations.

First of all, we try to attend all the investor or bank conferences that we are invited to. We will, let's say, not with a set frequency, but we will provide more nonfinancial, more strategic or technical capital market updates. Those will be physical if there is interest for it. And of course, if you would like more interaction with Hilja and myself, please reach out to us, schedule a call or send us an e-mail, and we are happy to speak with our existing shareholders and potential shareholders. So that is something that we are open to do.

Any last questions here on the list or have I managed to get all of them covered? I think we have covered most of it. And now Hilja -- here, came something, a few questions popping in here, I have to read them first, and, "Do you have a strategy for making more products available in the U.S.?" I think that's more a general question. Maybe it relates a bit into the regulatory environment, Hilja.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Yes. That is one of our milestones, potentially not the next 12 months milestones, but is, as you said, as U.S. is a market access, we require a different kind of regulatory approval or in fact clearance. And that are processes which take time, but we definitely aim to bring more products to market to the U.S.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Yes. And I see there's a question necessarily related to pipeline. So it states, "You have an ambition of bringing a steady stream of high-impact tests to the market. However, due to challenges with NT-proBNP and resource allocation into this project, there were no tests on the market in 2021 and probably no test until 2024 or even later." And the question reads, "What is the strategy here with regards to NT-proBNP versus other tests in the pipeline and the above-mentioned ambition?"

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

I assume test means new tests. And we have launched SARS-CoV-2 knowing that we cannot anticipate any business. It has been well-funded. But it was the right thing to do to support the management of this pandemic, but it could become a solid business opportunity. So therefore we consider that as a successful new test in the market. NT-proBNP, as we had as well been transparent on that, has taken focus, and it is the right thing to do, to focus on it. We still, as I mentioned before, we have 3 products in the pipeline, 2 of them exploration, one in proof of concept. The one in proof of concept is not at all influenced by NT-proBNP. There we go full speed ahead on the exploration phase pipeline. We have reduced certain level of activity in order to address NT-proBNP needs, but there have been always activities.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Yes. And then the related question I see on the screen now relating to the pipeline is that can we give us some insight or elaborate on development of the technologies that we are looking at. So I'm rephrasing the question a bit there.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

For a small company, it is very important to focus and not to lose yourself too much into different areas where you need different kind of skill sets, different kind of talents and probably as well investments in the facilities. So therefore, it was for the first 21 years a very good approach to focus fully on PTR. And we will continue to focus on PTR. But while I say that, we are obviously looking into alternative technologies which are as close to us or at least where we believe that we can add unit value to the market.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

All right. Thank you. I think we have -- I think we have completed the question on the list, and I haven't seen any new questions on the list for a few minutes now. So by that, I think we will conclude, and thank you all for joining us this morning. And as I said before, if there is anything that you would like to discuss with us, please reach out.

[Hilja Ibert, executive]

Thank you very much as well from my side, and see you soon.

[Njaal Kind, executive]

Bye-bye.