Less than a year after the listing of Kechuang board, Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) ( Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) . SH) plans to issue additional shares to raise nearly 2.3 billion yuan.
On the evening of March 23, the company disclosed the latest fixed increase plan, saying that it plans to issue no more than 8004 shares to no more than 35 specific objects, and the fund-raising is expected to be no more than 2.292 billion yuan.
At present, the company is mainly engaged in gene testing and scientific research services, and its downstream customers are mainly universities, scientific research institutions, research hospitals, biomedical enterprises and other institutions Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) said that this release to specific objects will build or expand the gene sequencing laboratory and expand the delivery capacity of the company’s gene sequencing products and services.
According to the plan, Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) in the fixed increase fund-raising, 1.739 billion yuan is used for the new construction and expansion projects of the laboratory, and the other 553 million yuan is used to supplement the working capital. Among them, after the new construction and expansion project of the laboratory is put into operation, it will provide gene sequencing services to universities, scientific research institutions, hospitals, biomedical enterprises and other institutions; The company plans to build or expand gene sequencing laboratories in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore to improve the company’s gene sequencing service capacity and level and alleviate the service bottleneck.
Picture source: Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) 2022 plan for issuing A-Shares to specific objects
According to the interface news, Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) was listed on the science and innovation board in April 2021, and the IPO raised 513 million yuan. The raised and invested projects are respectively the production expansion and upgrading project of gene sequencing service platform, the R & D project of gene detection reagent, the construction project of informatization and data center, and the supplementary working capital.
According to the company’s disclosure, at present, it has used the IPO to raise 398 million yuan. At present, only the gene detection reagent R & D project is left. As of December 31, 2021, the investment is 516755 million yuan less than the promised investment, which has not yet reached the predetermined usable state, and will continue to be invested in the future. Meanwhile, the production expansion and upgrading project of gene sequencing service platform has brought Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) revenue of 673944 million yuan in 2021, meeting the company’s expectation.
In addition, according to the performance express of 2021 released by Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) on February 24 this year, with the improvement of the epidemic situation outside China, the company gradually recovered its business last year, realizing an operating revenue of 1.867 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.30%; The net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company was 225 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 515.74%.
Compared with the assessment standards of the equity incentive plan issued by the company at the end of May last year, there is still a certain gap in its performance last year. According to the assessment management measures of Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) 2021 restricted stock incentive plan, the company takes the operating income in 2020 as the benchmark, and the assessment requirements for the assessment years from 2021 to 2023 are that the annual operating income will increase by 35%, 82% and 146% respectively compared with 2020.
It should be noted that in 2018, 2019, 2020 and January September 2021, Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) the direct material expenses accounted for 66.49%, 70.65%, 66.21% and 66.04% of the main business costs respectively, of which the main material expenses were sequencing reagents. The company’s main raw material suppliers are Illumina and thermofisher in the United States; Among them, in 2018, 2019, 2020 and January September 2021, the amount of reagents and instruments purchased by the company from Illumina accounted for 64.17%, 62.84%, 54.47% and 58.23% of the total purchase amount of the current period.
In this regard, Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) once expressed concern in the prospectus, “If the Sino US trade frictions continue to develop, the import tariffs of the above products will be significantly increased, or the United States will be included in the list of products prohibited from exporting to China, or the company will not be able to normally purchase relevant instruments and reagents due to other trade policy restrictions, or the suppliers will significantly increase the price of raw materials, which will have a significant adverse impact on the cost control and even normal operation of the company.”.
At the close of trading on March 23, Novogene Co.Ltd(688315) shares closed at 28.39 yuan / share, up 3.5%. Accordingly, the company’s share price has fallen by nearly 60% from 69.82 yuan / share in early August last year.
