Interim report January - March 2013

First quarter January – March 2013

• Group net sales in the first quarter 2013 amounted to 103.2 MSEK (119.6) which is a 13.7 percent decrease. At comparable exchange rates the sales decreased by 6.9 percent compared to the corresponding quarter 2012.
• Operating profit for the quarter amounted to 6.1 MSEK (8.6).
• The result after tax for the period amounted to 3.1 MSEK (7.9).
• Earnings per share amounted to 0.04 SEK (0.11).
• The cash flow from operating activities amounted to 15.2 MSEK (10.2).
• Net cash at March 31 amounted to 154.0 MSEK compared to 165.4 MSEK at December 31, 2012.
• During the quarter 1,611,469 own shares were repurchased within the repurchasing program resolved at the Annual General Meeting 2012. At March 31, 2013 Biotage owned a total of 3,394,375 own shares, purchased for 28,343 KSEK at an average purchase price of 8.35 SEK per share. The board has proposed to the Annual General Meeting that the repurchased shares should be canceled.
        
  

Comments by CEO Torben Jörgensen
The first quarter of the year has been something of a challenge for Biotage. It is above all the late release of budgets among our European customers and the lack of governmental funding (sequestration) in the US – in combination with the fact that major sales days at the end of the quarter in many cases disappeared due to Easter – that lay behind the unsatisfactory sales level in the quarter. We have noticed that several of the orders that were expected but failed to materialize in the first quarter have been received in the beginning of the second quarter.

The currency development, above all the strong Swedish krona, has had a negative effect on the sales to the amount of almost seven percent compared to the corresponding quarter last year. We now report sales that are 13.7 percent lower than the corresponding period 2012, but at comparable exchange rates they are 6.9 percent lower.

I am, however, satisfied that we despite a tough quarter deliver an operating result of 6.1 MSEK, primarily as a result of good control of the cost development.

It is rewarding that our single biggest product area, Purification, is developing well. During the quarter we have seen a continued strengthening of our market share for these products in the US. During the quarter we sold our first combined Flash and Mass detector instrument, IsoleraTM Dalton. The instrument will be launched to a wider audience at the end of this quarter. This will further improve our competitive position in the market.

The sales of Biotage’s synthesis systems have had a relatively good quarter. We have seen a healthy development primarily in the US and Japan. The success for microwave assisted peptide synthesis has contributed to a strong decrease in the sales of our traditional peptide synthesis systems. Our sample prep products have sold well in China, specially the instruments. In other parts of the world we have seen a slowdown of the sample prep instrument sales. We can look forward to a big product launch in this area later in the year. We expect this to grow the instrument sales again, thereby also driving the sales of our consumables. Among our regions Europe is the most successful in increasing the sales of consumables for analytical chemistry. Towards the end of the quarter we also launched a new consumable for multi analysis of mycotoxines in food products.

In the product area Industrial Resins we have continued our marketing work. We have also linked up with new customers who are currently evaluating our products. There is considerable market interest in our product offering, at the same time as we have realized that the time required for evaluation in lab as well as pilot scale is considerably longer than we initially expected. Part of the Group’s sales decrease is related to one customer building inventory to a value of 4 MSEK in the first quarter last year.

From a geographic angle Japan and China were our best markets in the first quarter. Distributor sales have not been entirely satisfactory, even though we have seen bright spots also there.

On a rolling 12 months basis we now maintain a sales distribution of 60 percent aftermarket products (consumables and service) and 40 percent instruments. This has long been a strategic goal for the company. I am therefore pleased to note that in the first quarter of the year we had sales of 61 percent aftermarket products and 39 percent instruments.
    

For further information, please contact:
Torben Jörgensen, President and CEO, phone: +46 707 49 05 84      
Erika Söderberg Johnson, CFO, phone: +46 730 50 80 56

The information in this press release is of the kind that Biotage AB (publ) is required to make public according to the Financial Instruments Trading Act. The information was released for publication at 15.00 on April 25, 2013.

About Biotage
Biotage offers solutions, knowledge and experience in the areas of analytical chemistry, medicinal chemistry, separation and purification. The customers include pharmaceutical and biotech companies, food producers and leading academic institutions. The company is headquartered in Uppsala and has offices in the US, UK, China and Japan. Biotage has approx. 290 employees and had sales of 463 MSEK in 2012. Biotage is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Nordic Stockholm stock exchange. Website: www.biotage.com