Eevia Health Plc plans divesting assets to an eye-health start-up and provide compensation shares as dividends to its shareholder

Eevia Health Plc ("Eevia" or "The Company") is planning to divest business assets related to Retinari™, a prospective eye health compound with auspicious pre-clinical results for the support of eye health. The aim is to protect the value of market opportunities that Eevia cannot commercialize with its current resource base. The divestment would be against shares in a start-up company focusing on eye health and wood-based ingredients. Eevia's shareholders will receive the acquired shares as a tax-free dividend.

Retinari™, a potential game-changing prophylactic against the onset and progression of AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration), is the most prominent and extreme commercial value option for Eevia. Over 200 million people are affected by AMD globally without any proper solution or cure available. The possible social and economic impact of helping millions of people to avoid blindness is massive. However, the time to market is still in years and requires a path that includes safety studies and regulatory approvals before making it available to humans.
 

Eevia’s is currently under-resourced to pursue multiple commercial opportunities simultaneously. Eevia is now prioritizing developing faster-to-revenue products in gut health. Despite compelling pre-clinical results and the European Innovation Council’s Seal of Excellence recognition twice, and after investing nearly a million euros of equity in Retinari™ over the last six years, Eevia has been unable to secure national funding for further development of Retinari™. The lack of non-equity financing has stalled the project, which has negative value for Eevia in its current state.
 

Therefore, Eevia plans to divest its research assets to a new start-up, Havu Health Oy, allowing for focused management and improved funding. Havu Health (Havu means Conifer in Finnish) is founded by, among others, Eevia's CTO Petri Lackman, one of the inventors of the product. Eevia is currently undertaking obligatory cooperation negotiations with employees and will ask creditors to consent to the divestment. Eevia has engaged expert legal counsel to advise the Company on the transaction process with final negotiations handled by the Board of Eevia. The plan is for Petri Lackman and one laborant to transfer to Havu Health.
 

Havu Health is in talks with a highly focused Finnish venture fund for an equity investment. To further finance the development of Retinari™, Havu Health will file a grant application to Business Finland for c. KEUR 700 next week. The project aims to undertake the required safety studies and other scientific investigations that may allow Retinari™ to be consumed by humans. Similarly, Havu Health is preparing a EUR 2.5 million grant application from the Accelerator program at European Innovation Council.
 

Eevia will receive shares in Havu Health as compensation for the assets, which will be distributed to Eevia Health’s shareholders as a dividend[1] after the rights issue. To provide liquidity in the shares that Eevia Health shareholders will receive, Eevia will consider working with a corporate finance house to arrange block sales of shares in Havu Health to facilitate liquidity or exit before an IPO, an industrial exit, or a future cash dividend stream from Havu.

For further information, please contact:

Stein Ulve, CEO, Eevia Health Plc                          

Email: stein.ulve@eeviahealth.com  or investor@eeviahealth.com                     

Telephone: +358 400 22 5967                         

This information is required for Eevia Health Plc to make public in accordance with the EU's Market Abuse Regulation (MAR). The Company's contact person above made it public on 16 January 2025 at 9:35 CET.

INFORMATION ABOUT EEVIA HEALTH PLC

Eevia Health Plc, founded in March 2017, addresses global health challenges with bioactive compounds sustainably extracted from renewable plant materials. It focuses on the gut and related health, including kidney and urinary health.

Eevia Health is a manufacturer of 100% organically certified plant extracts. The materials are primarily wild harvested from the pristine Finnish and Swedish forests near or above the Arctic Circle. The extracts are sold B2B as ingredients to dietary supplements and food brands globally, and these global brands utilize the ingredients in their consumer product formulas.

As a pioneering company, Eevia is developing biomaterials that may dramatically impact human health. Eevia Health operates a modern green-chemistry production facility in Finland with a short value chain and environmentally friendly carbon footprint. Eevia listed its shares at the Spotlight Stock Market in Sweden in June 2021, with the short name (ticker) EEVIA.

To learn more, please visit www.eeviahealth.com or follow Eevia Health on LinkedIn@EeviaHealth.