Okay, it's 8:30, so I suggest we start. Good morning and welcome to the Q&A session regarding the announcement we made yesterday about divesting the Biotec BetaGlucans business to Lallemand's subsidiary, Danstar Ferment AG. What we'd like to do today is use today to answer questions that you may have related to the announcement. We know it's some time until the Q4 announcement, hence why we thought it was timely to have a dedicated Q&A session today about the divestment. Basically, it'd be myself, Jethro Holter, CEO, who will answer questions, and Børge will also help. Børge Sørvoll, our CFO, will also support with answering questions here as well. Before we go into questions, I'd like to give you a little brief background about the divestment. Let's wind the clock back to December last year. It's important to understand the strategy here.
Back in December last year, we made some strategic decisions. What we said is we were going to maintain ArcticZymes Technologies or Biotec Pharmacon, as it was at the time. We would make it profitable going into 2020. This would be largely driven through the ArcticZymes business, the enzyme business. What we also said, because of this, is ArcticZymes, the enzyme business, will become the core business and main strategic focus moving forward. We also said that Biotec BetaGlucans, or BBG, will become a non-core business, but we will operate while profitable. Of course, we saw that the Woulgan business was not delivering. It was not a commercially viable business, so we decided to divest that. This is where the divestment started to happen. What we did, we ran quite an extensive process over nine months during this year to divest Woulgan.
Despite an intensive process, we were unable to find a suitable partner within the experienced wound care sector and outsiders who were interested in taking on the Woulgan business. This really confirmed that there were significant commercial challenges out there, and it was financially unattractive for the Woulgan business, the small-blown business at the end of the day. What we did see, however, although there was not interest and Woulgan was not commercially attractive, is the interest in the whole of the BBG business, as well as the factory. We had received already several proposals, and with that, we decided to run a bidding process. In the end, Lallemand was the bidder we chose to go with. That is where we ended up yesterday, where ArcticZymes Technologies entered into a share purchase agreement with Lallemand's subsidiary, Danstar Ferment. They will acquire the BBG subsidiary.
What they will acquire is all the BBG assets, the associated intellectual property, including NCARD, SVG, glucan, and Woulgan product portfolio. They will also take over the manufacturing of the glucans in the Nordoya factory in Tromsø, as well as the personnel under the Biotec BetaGlucans business. You're going to ask, why Lallemand? At the end of the day, Lallemand is an excellent strategic fit for the BBG business. They are a global leader in the development, production, and marketing of these bacterial specialty ingredients. They already play in the biotech.
You've been muted. To unmute yourself, press star, six.
Børge, could I please ask if people could mute their microphones, please, until we come to the questions?
In terms of Lallemand's, they have the expertise to fully integrate and develop the beta-glucan portfolio. They plan to continue business as usual to ensure continuity supply of Biotec BetaGlucans to our customers. When you look at Lallemand's, who are they? They are a family-owned business. They have headquarters in Canada. They're present in more than 50 countries. They operate more than 45 manufacturing plants around the world. They're around about 4,500 employees. I think at the end of the day, we've sold the business to the best potential company there is out there. Why are we selling Biotec BetaGlucans now? That's probably going to be one of the major questions here. It really comes back to what I said earlier.
It's about the strategic discussions we had back in December last year, the decisions we made in December last year, where we said that ArcticZymes will be the core business moving forward. At the time, we also had a longer-term strategy, which we had not communicated because that depended on certain things happening. The long-term strategy was to eventually divest the BBG business and subsequently allow the ArcticZymes business to become a pure enzyme company. The reason why it's a long-term strategy is certain things had to happen for that to be achieved, and that wasn't sure how long that would take.
One important fact here was that if ArcticZymes is going to be a pure enzyme business and we needed to divest BBG, it was important that we turned around BBG to turn it into a profitable business, which would then become attractive to a potential buyer. What we saw this year, and I think what we have seen, is that we turned the BBG business around much faster than we expected. At the same time, we've also had interested parties out there to purchase it. If you go back 12 months ago, it would not have been conceivable to be in a position where we could sell Biotec BetaGlucans because of its financial position at the time. I think here, really, at the end of the day, we had turned the BBG business around.
We want to move forward with ArcticZymes being a pure enzyme business. That fits our strategy. That is where we are today. We are divesting the Biotec BetaGlucans. Now we are going to move forward. Rather than 80% focus, it is going to be 100% focus on developing the enzyme business. I think that is important because even with our best efforts, that would be difficult with a non-core beta-glucan business in the background because that still needs managing, it still needs serving, which does not allow us to focus full efforts on ArcticZymes. Hence, moving forward, we will be a pure enzyme business. All efforts now will be towards expanding the ArcticZymes enzyme portfolio through organic and inorganic growth. Organic growth is already we are making significant infrastructure research and development investments. We are making those in 2021, 2022. That will be to expand our organic growth portfolio.
In addition, we want to do M&A activities and grow inorganically by acquiring other companies. That has been challenging to some degree with Biotec BetaGlucans. Also, with the divestment. At the end of the day, we've been focused on efforts to divest Biotec BetaGlucans first, and then we can move forward more and to then bolt on other enzyme companies through mergers and acquisitions. To summarize, the divestment here really supports ArcticZymes' strategy to become exclusively an enzyme business and drive the profit. We've seen that's the most profitable part of the company. Of course, it's also strengthened our cash position to expedite organic and inorganic growth options here. Let's come back to Biotec BetaGlucans. What does this mean for Biotec BetaGlucans? It's a real benefit for Biotec BetaGlucans because it becomes a core business again.
It becomes an important cog in Lallemand's system, sorry, Lallemand's organisation. If you look at today, in ArcticZymes, it is a non-core business, and we can't cater for it being a core business. I think everybody realises non-core businesses, you don't keep them for long. Long-term non-core businesses do not work for everybody. It's not beneficial for ArcticZymes. It's not beneficial for BBG. Hence why the divestment today is the best scenario for BBG and ArcticZymes. In fact, it becomes a win-win situation for both companies, for both subsidiaries. What next? The transition is expected to close by the end of December. There will be a 12-month transition period where it'll be initially business as usual, where the ArcticZymes Group employees will certainly be supporting the Biotec BetaGlucans during a transition phase.
It will take a little time for ArcticZymes Technologies to find its feet as a standalone enzyme business. Of course, we want to move forward very quickly on that and then focus on being a pure enzyme company. With that, I'd like to stop and open up for questions. It is time to unmute microphones now. Hopefully, people will be able to unmute. Hang on. Let me see if it—I'm going to try this one and see if that one works out. Can you try and unmute now?
Jethro, can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you. Yes.
This is David Sutherland of NBM Research. Hi. Well done on executing the divestment. As you're aware, we're in it for the enzymes growth opportunity. We appreciate this move. I think maybe if you can discuss the M&A potential. You previously said that the pandemic has made it difficult for you to move ahead with some of those plans. I think at the same time, you also said that with this success turning around the business in 2020 and now with the increased cash position, you can move ahead with even bigger plans for acquisitions. Can you talk about, number one, access to potential targets and being able to do your due diligence in this period? If you can comment as to timing, what do you expect and news on the M&A front, and also size of potential targets?
Yeah. I can certainly talk about it. I can certainly—let me take a little step back first. I think one thing is we did start the M&A process, and we've been in it for some time. We started that before we had the financial position we have today. Of course, we've been trying to do several things as well, trying to divest Biotec BetaGlucans. We've had the pandemic, and all this creates interesting challenges for us as well as opportunities. What we found is we are a small team, and we've been wanting to do M&A, and we've been trying to do a divestment process. What we found is, being a small team, it has been tough for us to do the divestment and do an M&A at the same time.
Of course, the thing that we had with BBG is that it's not a core business. It doesn't really fit with an enzyme business. What we've decided is, okay, what we will do is, because we have the pandemic situation and we can't travel—and I'll come back to why that's important in a minute—we decided to prioritize more the divestment of BBG here, the Woulgan beta-glucans. Now, that's important because it's kind of bolt—we have a bolt-and-build strategy by M&A. We want to bolt on synergistic companies. First, it makes sense to unbolt the part that doesn't fit BBG. We've done that. That means that now that bit's done, and now we have the intention to focus a lot more energy and time on the M&A. Okay.
Of course, it's actually convenient timing because during this BBG divestment process, we haven't been able to travel because of the COVID-19 to look at these other companies. We have companies we're talking to who'd like to acquire. However, since they're high-technology businesses, and that's what's important here, they're high-technology, it's not just a paperwork exercise. You have to physically go there, see them, get the feel of their facilities, their equipment, meet the people, and really see, are these people really technically competent or not? You don't get that just through a teleconference. I think that's what we've had over the last nine months. At the end of the day, since we haven't been able to travel and do that, the due diligence we need for an M&A, we haven't done that. That is convenient because we've been able to divest the BBG business.
We haven't lost any time, essentially. Moving forward, what do we want to do? Yes, we want to do two things. We want to grow organically. There's a lot of efforts there where we're investing. We're building out into new facilities. Of course, you see the organic business is going very well, and we don't want to abandon that. We want to keep that growing and put full efforts in that. We are now able to free ourselves up and do more on the M&A front. I think here, we also have a very interesting situation now because, of course, the company is in a different financial position. I think at the end of the day, what we're doing now is to really reevaluate the targets out there that we'd like to acquire because we maybe can think a little bit bigger now.
There are other targets that can come onto the table than we were considering before. I think what we want to do now is also look deep and hard and make sure that when we do that first acquisition, we get the best one. We are looking into those options now. In terms of timing, what I want to do, I'd rather spend and make sure we do the right get that right first acquisition, which will really help accelerate our growth and do it when it's right, not just to rush it. I think at the end of the day, we do want to, I think, the ambition and what we're driving to is do our first acquisition this year, sorry, in 2021. I can't say when.
I think it's important to get it right and spend the time in finding the right things than just to say, "Hey, look, we've done an acquisition and signed it off." Of course, at the same time, manage and ensure that we are growing organically and we put the resources into that in the right way. Hopefully, that helps to answer your questions because there's several things still to juggle. We are a small team. Still, we are going to move forward on both those fronts. Of course, initially, at the beginning of next year, we will very much need to manage the transition of BBG as well. Since BBG has we divested, there's still a lot of work to do in the transition phase, and we need to support that, at least at my sum of the management time as well there.
It will be needed in these processes. I'm trying to give you a full picture of what to expect here and how the bits work here. Does that help answer your question, David?
Yes, thanks. By the sounds of it, you're not looking to make any, I don't know how to put it, but a major M&A, more like a bolt-on, as you say.
A bit more of a—sorry, I forgot.
Not transformational completely.
Yeah, certainly, I'll come back to the value. I've addressed the value. I think one of the key factors here is why we have one key factor, and it is the Corona travel restriction. We have to go out and see those companies in the flesh. That is the point. I think Corona is going to stall us. I think at the end of the day, when we look at it, I don't think the travel restrictions are going to open up anytime immediately. I do expect after this winter period that things hopefully will open up again. Of course, more testing will be in place and ways will be put in place for us to travel to get to those companies. Like I said, we have a much better cash position.
We have a much better position to go out to do an acquisition. I think if we do an acquisition, it will be meaning we need to go out and raise cash. That is important. We will need to go out to our investors to get cash to do that. In terms of the size, we are looking at companies maybe smaller or potentially equal to us in size. That is what we are looking at. Of course, before we had a kind of more of a narrow mindset, our minds are sort of a bit more narrow, but we can broaden our horizons a bit more now. I think that when you look at us in terms of when I say size, it is about the kind of revenues they are driving would be similar to ours. It is all about products at the end of the day.
The M&A here is about broadening the product portfolio. It's things we can drop in and sell. They're synergistic to what we have. Our customers desire those, and we can get those revenue synergies very early on. That is the whole point of the M&A. It's about building out that portfolio we have.
Arne, do you have a question?
Yes. Hi, Jethro. Congratulations to the sale. I think you've done a fantastic job, and I agree that you should focus on the enzymes. At the same time, me and many shareholders have been in the beta-glucan and was kind of excited, especially about this vaccination part. I just wonder about the timing. Was it possible to wait? I understand maybe that you do not want to wait to be focused. Did you also consider to split the company in two and give the shareholders the chance to continue in the beta-glucan? If you look at the transaction, it is only like NOK 150 per share. It would be a small investment to keep the beta-glucan for investors and maybe raise some capital to pursue the possibilities, especially with the vaccination part and immune therapy or immune system.
Yep. Several things here. Maybe I can answer some and Børge answers some. Børge maybe can talk afterwards about splitting the company, and I can talk about the timing and the adjuvant. When it comes to the adjuvant, what you've got to remember here, the adjuvant is still supporting clinical trials at this stage. Those clinical trials are going to be ongoing for some more years. There are no guarantees there at the end of the day, but it will get FDA approval. Of course, when you think about that as well, to keep that business longer for us in any capacity does need managing. At the end of the day, we want a clean break and just put the beta-glucans behind us so that we can fully focus on the enzyme business.
I think we could have said, "Yes, let's keep on with the beta-glucans for one to two more years." Yes, we could have got a better price for it. However, by doing that, we would have likely lost out on the enzyme side. We would not have grown the enzymes as much as if we didn't have beta-glucans. At the end of the day, by breaking it up, we actually get more value from the business in our enzymes, if you catch my understanding. In terms of, and of course, we didn't want to have a process that goes on forever here. I think here, what we saw is trying to find the best roadmap for beta-glucans.
We felt the best roadmap was to divest it and fully separate it out to a company who can drive it without needing the thought of the ArcticZymes Technologies business anymore. Børge, you might be able to talk a bit more to the splitting the company part.
Yeah. I think, as you said, I think this is also somewhere looked at. This has been the best option for the company. Of course, there are a lot of ways that you could have done this. I think at the end, I think we saw that this was the best fit for the company going forward now. I think that that is essentially where we are, Arne.
Yeah. Has it been the appetite for many shareholders to keep it, or has it been everyone wants to get rid of it? It was split in two. I mean, I understand it's not the option to keep it together.
Yeah. I don't think the question, we haven't gone out to a lot of shareholders and talked to them about if you want to split the company and things like that. I think that's not how you do these kind of transactions. I think this has also been a process with the board where we have looked at the different options and made considerations here down the road here. We also made the decision at one point in time.
Okay.
I think what we realized when we went down the divestment process, of course, we went to try and divest Woulgan and realized that's difficult on its own. They are leading to the commercial value. Also, we had had interest of buying just parts of the business. That does not make sense because at the end of the day, it all relies on the same factory. You just cannot break it up. I think that was it, finding the right owner that could manage that moving forward. Even if you did try and sell it and try and manage it, I think it is a very difficult business to manage. It needs to go into a large organization such as Lallemand, who really know how to run these factories and have got the right investments behind it.
Of course, because even keeping it, it would have required investments. That is important. Investment needs to be put into it to grow it as well here. I think that is another reason why going out and discussing it with Sheldon, it would probably take a long, it would have taken a long time as well. I think, of course, when we have buyers who want to go out and buy it, there is a certain time point they have an appetite to buy it. You do not want to lose that opportunity there. Since the opportunity was on the table and the appetite was there, we need to take that opportunity. We wanted to move forward with our enzyme strategy. That is why we took the opportunity now. It is all about timing as well.
Jethro, I have received a question online here or on an email. How many people are going with the company now?
It's six people. Six people who are in the BBG business will go to Lallemand. Because it's basically, yeah, because it's a whole subsidiary that's going. That's how many people work for BBG. In the meantime, ArcticZymes Technologies, the group employees, will support BBG during the transition phase.
Okay. Will it be a merger between ArcticZymes and ArcticZymes Technologies?
For the foreseeable future, we see that it's going to be ArcticZymes Technologies and ArcticZymes IS for now. Of course, we will evaluate that down the road. Of course, we've got to think about the M&A as well. As we do M&A, what's the best structure there moving forward? That is something we will look at, and we'll update you if anything changes there.
Okay. I have one more. Is there any cash left in the company that's being sold?
Børge, you're pretty good at answering that.
Yeah, probably. As you saw from the announcement, this is based on an enterprise value of NOK 70 million, and it's on a cash-free and debt-free basis. Essentially, there will be no cash left in the company here. Also, what about the profit-loss carried forward? Is that part of AZT, or is it part of BBG side of the business? I think I can answer that question as well. With regards to the profit-loss carried forward, this resides with BBG for their part of the losses that we had in the past. That's also the part of this transaction. It's important that there's still a lot of profit-loss in the mother company as well that we would utilize in the coming years going forward now. Any other questions?
If you have problems on the telephone, I think you should push star six to unmute your phones. Or you can. Yeah.
Hi, Jethro and Børge. I have a question. This is Morton. Just maybe clarifying what you just mentioned, Børge, on the transaction, how will that be relating to tax as well? Will it be booked as a profit on what you had on BBG earlier, or?
Yeah, of course, there will be some things that all the bookkeeping is still to be looked at. At the end of the day, we will definitely have a loss on the shares in BBG on the mother company here. Of course, on the group totality, there will be a profit here going forward.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe a second one for Jethro. I can challenge you a bit. You mentioned a few times on the call now you have a lean and small team, and you've sort of done this in a procedural way, waiting for the acquisitions afterwards. When you're looking at your growth plans forward, does it also include corporate development and staffing up on that side?
When it comes to the corporate, I think we're pretty good there because we have the corporate today serves both ArcticZymes and Biotec BetaGlucans. What's going to happen here is when Biotec BetaGlucans is transitioned out, the staffing that we have corporate will all go to ArcticZymes, and we've already figured out how to use that moving forward. I think that really helps. We don't have to beef things up there. What we are doing is really beefing things up in the ArcticZymes subsidiary itself in terms of operations, R&D. Of course, we are looking to expand what we're doing commercially in Asia, in particularly China and India. I think at the end of the day, we are pushing in several directions there. Corporate's important as well.
Of course, then it's the M&A side of things as well. Of course, when we bring another company in, of course, that's going to be, yeah, that could strengthen different parts of the organisation as well, depending on what that acquisition is.
Thank you. Yeah, that makes sense. Finally, just adding on to a previous question there on M&A and potential size of an acquisition, would you consider placement or issuing any debt, considering where the markets are now? I would reckon there'd be a significant institutional appetite for something like that as well.
I think maybe I can answer that. I think that is an opportunity to be considered as well. Of course, we have not done any transaction at the moment now, and that remains to be seen. Of course, if you just look back nine months in time, and then we had a completely different financial position, I think debt was out of the question. By looking at how the company has developed over the last nine months and also with the increased cash position, debt is an opportunity to consider if you are to go out and raise any external cash now in an event-driven transaction here.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. One more question here, Jethro, that I received on email. Will profit or value increase in ArcticZymes Technologies outperform possible compensation gap in future sale of BBG? That's a little bit strange to understand that question.
Yeah, I think let's try and, so I think when you look at it, then yeah, we have to, it's going to take, what we need to do is look at the business in future. That's how we will present the business, is without BBG alone. I think that's important to look at the dynamics there. At the end of the day, it will be purely the ArcticZymes sales. What we're seeing, that is growing and continues to grow. We expect continued annual growth, of course, in the ArcticZymes business. We'll also see that we will still see those fluctuations quarterly. That's just the nature of the business. Generally, on an annual basis, the bit that it is growing. You can see that.
Of course, in future, you've got to cast your eye on the ArcticZymes sales and AZT without their, well, it's just the ArcticZymes because you don't need to worry about the BBG anymore. On a cost base, what you're going to see is, of course, since ArcticZymes Technologies Group is not supporting BBG anymore, those costs will all be on ArcticZymes. I think here, on a cost base, you'll see that there'll be more cost on ArcticZymes. Of course, what we're doing is investing for the future growth as well. That's important because we will see more operational costs for us because we are investing in personnel and in terms of growing the innovation pipeline to get more products out there. Also, more in operations because we're going to get more orders. We need to scale up.
The business is growing very nicely. I think here, you need to factor those two elements together when you look at the future numbers. Of course, I think it will all fall into place more when we present the numbers without the Biotec BetaGlucans numbers in there. Do you have anything to add to that, Børge?
No. I think that's fine.
I think it's important to manage those expectations now. You get to see it and get the mindset around how it's going to look moving forward. What we're going to do is we're going to make sure we continue as we're doing, driving the business forward and deliver as a profitable business and top-line growth. That does not change. That's a point. That's why we're comfortable with going out and divesting the BBG business because we're not dependent on it. Of course, that's the beauty of it because then we'll be a pure enzyme business, grow that as a pure enzyme business, and then bolt other businesses onto that and integrate them into getting those revenue synergies.
Other questions? As I said, if you are by phone, I think you should push star six to unmute your phones.
Yes. Yes, hello. This is Carl and Maria from Danske Bank. I have a question regarding your organic initiatives, if you could elaborate a bit. What you're looking to invest in in terms of the R&D, what kind of enzymes you're looking to grow within? Do you want to expand your current portfolio with what we have seen, like that you expand your SAN portfolio, for example? How should we see the mix in your enzyme portfolio going forward, and what will you invest in? Because if I remember correctly, I think you, Jethro, was talking a lot about that you haven't really been able to invest properly historically. It would be interesting to hear because I think you have a lot of interesting, what do you say, opportunities that you can, yeah, that you can, yeah.
Exactly. Very good question. I think when you look at the enzyme as a company, we have some very good enzymes. Of course, you're seeing the attraction of those on the market. This is the whole point of how we want to grow organically and inorganically. Today, we have a small portfolio of enzymes, but it's not a complete portfolio. This is why we want to become that one-stop shop over the next three years, so that every single type of enzyme any company would want in the markets we serve. That goes in two dimensions. One is when you do, for instance, a diagnostic test, you have several different stages in that diagnostic test, each using different enzymes. Okay? We only have some of those enzymes. We need to make sure we fill the gaps in what we're missing there.
The other way is when you do, for instance, diagnostic tests, there are different technologies that can be used from PCR to LAMP technologies to sequencing, next-generation sequencing. All those require different enzymes too. We have a lot of gaps in our portfolio. This is what I talk about. All the growth right now is what we talk about. Growth is about expanding our portfolio and getting those enzymes that we're missing. That is what R&D have been working on very hard. The situation is when we made that decision in December last year, that was the trigger to allow us to spend more time in R&D. That is what we've done last year. This year, we've been working hard in R&D. It does take time because to develop a new enzyme and launch them, it does not happen overnight.
An enzyme can take up to four years from start to finish. Of course, we've always had, but not all our enzymes were started in December last year. We've had things in the pipeline. What's been interesting this year as well is that we've had an interesting situation where we've also seen that the demand for certain products are increasing. We've also had to put R&D into scale-up projects as well on existing products. That's an exciting situation as well. We're balancing two things here, putting things back into R&D to scale up our manufacturing processes for future demand, what we're seeing, as well as innovating new enzymes, as well as new formulations of existing enzymes. Over the next three years, we are going to really broaden that portfolio.
In order to do that, the investment that we're doing now in R&D is in new personnel. At the same time, we need more space. That's another thing. We're investing in facilities to expand so we have more space to hire more scientists. By doing that, we're able to run more product developments in parallel, i.e., can accelerate the amount of products coming out of R&D. What are we focusing on? We have three business areas. One is therapeutics. You can see that's growing very well for us. That's growing very fast. Of course, we have other products in the pipeline that are coming out in the SAN portfolio, which means we can take more of the value chain that we're doing there. Of course, we have enzymes that today are being used in cleaning up AAV viruses.
We launched mSAN late last year, which also goes into, for instance, lentivirus. At the end of the day, we want to have enzymes that can clean up all viruses and go beyond viruses as well. Where there are not good solutions today, we are going to cherry-pick and put the best solutions in place when it comes to that type of that area. The other area is, of course, diagnostics. Diagnostics is very much on the map. It has been on the map for a long time for us. We have been serving virus diagnostics since I have been in the company, serving people making HIV, HCV-type diagnostic tests and COVID-19, of course. That is where our enzymes today are used. We are expanding our portfolio. R&D are working very hard as we speak on working on thermostable polymerases. These are the hot polymerases. Today, we have cold polymerases.
They're working on reverse transcriptases. These are enzymes we do not have. Of course, at the end of the day, when we launch them, the market isn't easily there. That's just a flow. We are working on a lot of other kind of novel enzymes, such as novel ligases. Novel ligases are enzymes that can be used in, particularly importantly, next-generation sequencing technologies in synthetic biology, where you're making synthetic genomes and synthetic life. These are things that we're all working on. What we want to do is it all comes back to this one-stop shop in having every single type of enzyme that will be needed by our customers. They only have to come to us for enzymes. They don't have to go anywhere else.
At the end of the day, as we do with many of our customers, we do not just sell one product to individual customers. Our customers buy multiple products over time and integrate it into many products. It is a marriage that we forge. Of course, they come to us and say, "Hey, do you have this?" and we do not have that. Of course, we are trying to get those enzymes in that we are missing. I know that is kind of a long answer, but I think it is important to give a detailed answer on what we are doing there. Hopefully, that answers your question, Carl.
Yeah. Thank you. That's a very good answer. It is kind of a follow-up question regarding the kind of SAN with respect to the gene therapy. Because I don't really know if you have commented on how many customers you have in that respect. Because I saw a presentation that's in your Q1 presentation from 2018. You said that you have over 90 customers within the gene therapy. I don't know if you could comment anything on how that has developed until now and approximately how many customers you have within the gene therapy space as of today.
Yeah. Of course, we have, when I say customers, all different stages. Some are buying small quantities. They're dabbling.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course.
Of course, we have our major ones that are purchasing over NOK 1 million when they place orders. It is still around the 100 mark. At the end of the day, I think at the end of the day, what is happening here is what you are seeing. The reason why it does not increase so much is because there is a lot of acquisitions and M&As and things transition from one customer to the next. It has increased. It is into the hundreds now. I think you have got a kind of critical mass of companies there now. I think a lot of people saw the opportunity. They jumped on the bandwagon in 2016. Now you see all the major players out there, large and small, that are in this space.
I think that's why it's not sort of it's rapidly expanded over the last couple of years. What you've seen is a lot of companies have merged or there's technologies have been transferred out of the university and then licensed by a company. I think here, that's why when you look at it, the players out there haven't actually increased that much. The number of entities is still the same. It's just things have transferred hands at the end of the day. Like I said, it's about 100-plus people we serve today. Of course, what we are seeing is actually outside of I think there's certainly where it is expanding much more right now is in Asia as well. We're seeing a lot more interest in Asia as well. Hence why we are it's been Japan has been there for a long time.
Japan is very much a country that has focus on gene therapy. Of course, we're there. Of course, in China now, there's interest. That's why we're starting to get some help in China now to move forward in that direction as well.
Yeah. Very interesting. Thank you for your answers. Any other questions on the, especially hopefully on the BBG divestment or? No? I think if there aren't any more questions, that's why I think we just thank you, everyone, for participating in this Q&A event. We will see you again at the end of January when we have our Q4 presentation. We hope to see all of you at that point in time as well.
Thank you for all the questions and the interests. Have a good day.
Good day.