Biohit strengthens R&D

Translation: Original comment published in Finnish on 06/16/2024 at 10:23 pm EEST

On Friday, Biohit announced that it will change its organization to strengthen the company’s strategic and operational performance of R&D. We believe the change supports the achievement of Biohit’s strategic objectives. 

The strategic and operational roles of R&D are separated

Biohit’s strategy for 2024-2028 aims at 15-20% annual growth One of the key factors in achieving the targets, especially toward the end of the period, is the success of R&D and the commercialization of new successful products. Biohit now announced that Panu Hendolin, the company’s current R&D Director, has been appointed the company’s Chief Technology Officer. In addition to strategic management of R&D, the job includes responsibility for instruments and monoclonal antibodies. Marika Karjalainen, who has worked at Biohit earlier in her career, is appointed to Panu Hendolin's previous position as R&D Director. The purpose of the change is to separate strategic and operational roles. The changes enter into force in August 2024.

Information on the start of the strategy period will be available at the beginning of August

Biohit reached its growth targets very well in 2023, with 19% revenue growth. We feel the goals of the new strategy period 2024-2028 that just started are tough, but Biohit’s recent track record of successful growth creates confidence in the good performance continuing. In the short term, we believe the key to achieving the growth targets is success in sales, especially in the new Gastropanel® fingertip blood test. In the medium term, the development and commercialization of new products and the opening of new markets, particularly in the US are in focus. However, visibility to growth materializing is limited. For 2024, we forecast growth of 17%, which is in line with the company's target of 15-20% growth. Biohit will next announce financial results in connection with its H1 report on August 7. H1 is typically relatively stronger for the company as Chinese earnings are spread over the early part of the year.