Trinity Biotech Results & Business Update

 Biosensor technology acquisition

• The Company has today announced the acquisition of the biosensor assets of Waveform Technologies Inc. (“Waveform”) for $12.5 million in cash and 9 million American Depositary Shares (“ADS”) plus contingent consideration.
• Driven by this transaction, the Company intends to use its newly acquired biosensor platform to build a range of wearable biosensors together with an analytical engine that can deliver useful and actionable health & wellness insights based upon what is happening in, on and around the body. 
• We will begin that journey by launching a next generation Continuous Glucose Monitoring (“CGM”) device with an “engineered in” lower cost of care when compared with the current main CGM market participants.
• We believe that this can be a business of true scale and significant profitability. Further details of this transaction and our plans can be found here.
• The Company also today announced it has entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent with Bayer for a joint partnership to launch a CGM biosensor device into China and India – further details can be found here.

Revenue growth and cash generation from our rapid HIV business

• We are working to scale and optimise our rapid HIV testing manufacturing capacity in light of the successful launch of our TrinScreen HIV product in Kenya.
• As previously announced, in December 2023 we began shipments of our HIV screening test, TrinScreen, to Kenya as part of the receipt of an initial purchase order for 2.5 million tests. We expect to receive additional orders throughout FY2024 for Kenya, as the Kenyan Ministry of Health has received commitments from all relevant sponsors (including Global Fund and USAID) to fund the procurement from the Company of at least 10 million rapid screening HIV tests required by Kenya for 2024.  
• The additional volumes arising from these orders is expected to at least triple our annual rapid HIV test manufacturing volumes in 2024 compared to 2023.  These additional volumes should commercially facilitate us changing the location of certain aspects of our manufacturing process of our rapid HIV products Uni-Gold and TrinScreen. We expect significant margin, EBITDA and cash flow generation accretion benefits from this manufacturing location change, which we plan to have in place by the end of 2024.

Optimization of our Diabetes business to help meet growth and profitability goals

• We aim to significantly improve the cost structure of our existing Diabetes HbA1c testing business, which we expect will improve the profitability, cash generation and ultimately the value of that business.
• These initiatives should facilitate a lower price point solution into the Diabetes HbA1c testing market which we expect will deliver renewed growth from our Premier 9210 system, which continues to be widely regarded as the gold standard for interference-free Diabetes HbA1c testing globally. As a management team, we are focused on the execution of the following initiatives, which we believe will allow us to successfully meet our growth and profitability goals for our Diabetes HbA1c business:
  • In-house manufacturing process: Our revised in-house manufacturing process of our key Diabetes HbA1c consumable began in Q4 2023 as planned, and we expect to end external production by the end of Q1 2024.
  • Launch of the Improved Column System: Our programme to develop an improved, backward compatible column system is expected to be completed in the coming weeks with a subsequent commercial launch in Q2, 2024.
  • Supply Chain Optimisation: We continue to optimise our supply chain for our Diabetes HbA1c testing instrument. In Q4 2023 and so far in Q1 2024 we have secured additional savings and we remain on target to deliver a lower cost of instrument which supports our strategy of driving renewed growth by increasing the competitive positioning of our product.
  • We remain on track to deliver approximately $4m of annualised recurring cost savings from these initiatives, based on expected production volumes, and we believe that these changes will allow us to deliver an increasingly cost competitive Diabetes HbA1c solution, putting us in a stronger position to grow market share over time.
  • We also continue to critically examine other aspects of the manufacturing structure of our overall Haemoglobins business with a view to further reducing the cost of operations.

Optimise the value of our other businesses

• We are seeking ways to identify the most value accretive use for our other smaller businesses. We have engaged external consultants to support our examination of the optimal path to value accretion for these businesses, with each business being examined across the following criteria:
  • Its ability to scale in a meaningful manner.
  • Is there existing intellectual property or can we create new intellectual property that creates true points of differentiation to drive meaningful operating margin and cash generation.
  • The identification of alternative uses for the assets and capabilities of each business.
• These reviews remain ongoing, and we will update shareholders in due course as we solidify plans for these businesses.

The Company will host a conference call on Wednesday, January 31 at 8:30 a.m. EST to discuss its recent Waveform acquisition and third quarter results. To access the call, please dial 1-877-407-0784 (domestic) or 1-201-689-8560 (international) and use conference ID 13744109.

A live webcast and replay of the conference call is available at: https://viavid.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1654009&tp_key=270fbd0272

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/01/31/2820978/8624/en/Trinity-Biotech-Announces-Q3-2023-Financial-Results-Business-Update.html