REGENSBURG, GERMANY--(Marketwire - November 12, 2009) -
- Net sales increased by 10.7% to EUR 4.3M in the third quarter compared to previous year’s reference period with a slight positive result
- Launch of a new customer portal allows efficiency increases in sales and marketing in the future
- Cash, cash equivalents and securities increased to EUR 6.7M due to improvement of free cash flow
Regensburg, November 12, 2009 - GENEART AG, global leader in Gene Synthesis and specialist in the field of Synthetic Biology, showed continued, stable business development in its Consolidated Interim Financial Statements for the third quarter and the first nine months of 2009. Net sales increased moderately by 5.8 % for the first nine months of 2009 to a total of EUR 12.4M (first nine months of 2008: EUR 11.7M). With EUR 4.3M, the third quarter of 2009 exceeded net sales compared to the prior year (third quarter 2008: EUR 3.9M), equivalent to an increase of 10.7%. The defining trend of the previous quarters therefore continued in the third quarter of 2009: GENEART recorded continued stable increase of small and mid-sized new orders, although the economic environment remains difficult. As in previous quarters, customers of the pharmaceutical, chemical and biotech industries remain cautious with their placement of new major orders.
Increased free cash flow during the first nine months of 2009, which improved to EUR 0.06M from EUR -1.8M during the previous year’s reference period, proves GENEART’s high business strength even under difficult market conditions. Consequently, cash, cash equivalents and securities increased to EUR 6.7M as per September 30, 2009.
Although market conditions remain challenging, the GENEART Group reports a slightly positive EBIT of EUR 25 thousand and EUR 51 thousand during the third quarter and over the nine-month period, respectively (first nine months 2008: EUR 1,4M).
Over the past two years, GENEART made trend-setting investments in an ever-increasing level of automation and miniaturization as well as in process improvements. Although these investments affect the 2009 results through increased fixed costs, these investments created the necessary conditions for sustainable, low-cost structures. For example, by increasing automation levels GENEART raised the output per employee by more than 50 % compared to the prior year. The level of automation and miniaturization is the basis for a highly scalable production, which, in the future, will allow considerably higher output with a significantly less than proportional increase in variable costs. Thereby, GENEART created conditions which will allow to profit overproportionally from economies of scale and decreasing unit costs, if and when demand increases. The improved cost structures enable GENEART to partially pass on savings to customers and thus to open the market and further consolidate competition.
In order to profit even more from the capacities created, GENEART focused on increasing efficiencies in the areas of sales and marketing over the past months, and introduced the first module of a new customer portal, which allows recording orders in a structured manner combined with semi-automatic processing. GENEART will fully profit from these advantages after completing the final stage of upgrades in 2010. The launch of a new service unit for the development of cell lines and protein production in mammalian cells (business unit Cell Lines & Proteins) in May 2009 will contribute to lifting additional cross-selling potentials in the future.
For the financial year of 2009, GENEART expects to generate net sales between EUR 16.5M and EUR 17M as well as a slightly positive EBIT, provided a continuing stabilization of the economic environment during the fourth quarter.
The report may be downloaded at: http://www.geneart.com/english/investor-relations/reports/index.html
GENEART Group Jan - Sep 2009
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | In EUR Million | Jan 1 - Sep 30, | Jan 1 - Sep 30, | | | 2009 | 2008 | |-------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------| | Net Sales | 12.41 | 11.73 | | EBITDA | 1.25 | 2.15 | | EBIT | 0.05 | 1.40 | | Free Cash flow | 0.06 | -1.80 | | Number of Employees as per | 182 | 195 | | the End of the Quarter | | | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ For further inquiries, please contact: Dr. Karoline Stürmer GENEART AG Josef-Engert-Str. 11 93053 Regensburg Germany Phone: +49-(0)941-942 76-417 Fax: +49-(0)941-942 76-711 ir@geneart.com www.geneart.com Frank Ostermair Better Orange IR & HV AG Haidelweg 48 81241 Munich Germany Phone: +49-(0)89-8896906-10 Fax: +49-(0)89-8896906-66 info@better-orange.de www.better-orange.de
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This document may contain estimates, prognoses and opinions about company plans and objectives, products or services, future results, opinions about these results or opinions leading up to these results. All these projections into the future are subject to risk, uncertainty and unforeseeable change outside the control of the GENEART Group. Many factors may lead to actual results, which considerably deviate from the given projections for these results.
About GENEART AG:
In 2000, GENEART entered the Gene Synthesis market and has since become the global market leader. Today, the company is one of the leading specialists in the Synthetic Biology field. Experts at GENEART provide key technologies for the development and production of new therapeutics and vaccines. Customers also take advantage of GENEART services to customize enzyme attributes, such as the attributes of enzymes used as detergent additives, and to construct bacteria, which produce complex biopolymers or break down polymers, such as synthetics, petroleum components, etc. GENEART’s service portfolio ranges from the optimization and production of synthetic genes according to DIN EN ISO 9001:2000, to the generation of gene variants or complex gene libraries and the production of cell lines, to the development and production of DNA and protein based drug candidates. GENEART AG in Regensburg and its subsidiaries GENEART Inc. in Toronto (Canada) and GENEART Inc. in San Francisco (USA) employ about 180 people. The company is listed on the German Stock Exchange since May 2006.
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GENEART Publishes Results for Third Quarter 2009: http://hugin.info/136633/R/1354371/328376.pdf
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