Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q1 presentation from ArcticZymes. We have gentlemen in the room and hopefully ladies and gentlemen online. On a practical note, I'm reading here, for those of you attending virtually, you can ask your questions via the chat function, please. There's no facility to ask verbally online. Obviously in the room, you can ask questions at the end. I'm Marie Roskrow, as you know, and my colleague, Børge, has joined me today. Let's make a start. I shall be giving a business update and talking about some of the projects that we've been working on in the last quarter. Then Børge will walk us through the financials in some detail.
As you saw from the press release this morning, we achieved quarterly sales of NOK 31.2 million with an EBITDA of just over NOK 6 million. I think before I start into the details of the project, I just want to which I'm sure they're facts you're all very well aware of, but let me you know, start by stating the obvious. We're operating in a very tough environment right now, Q1 and certainly into the Q2 as well. You know, we face macroeconomic winds. Global political situation is still very unstable. There's recession uncertainty and obviously rising levels of inflation, all of which have been contributing to an very nervous financial market and overall depressed company valuations. The IPO market is pretty much dead, and raising money in the secondary market is really tough.
Obviously puts companies in a very difficult situation. As a result of all of that, companies have really, we've noticed, been tightening their belts. They want to reserve cash so that they can get through these lean times without having to go back to the markets. All of that has obviously affected customer buying patterns, and we've noticed that as well. In general, orders are still being made, but of a much lesser volume than we've seen in the past. Secondly, and very importantly in the sectors that we play in, our orders have been affected by customer destocking. Basically in the COVID era, many customers overbought components, and now that they don't want to spend too much money, they're using those components off the shelf. It's not just me using that word destocking.
If you look certainly at Q1 reports from some of the big players in the space, you know, and I'll quote Sartorius, our friends at Thermo Fisher, Repligen, Danaher Corporation, and others have all reported that destocking has been a major issue in the Q1 for them and strongly affected their sales. When that will come out of the market remains to be seen, and I think some analysts are saying this will go through the end of 2023, and other analysts are saying this will go into 2024. I think all of those factors are serious considerations when you look at companies like ours. I'm going to run through now some of the projects and some of the situations that we've been working on before we get into the numbers. Let's look at this.
As you all know, Jethro resigned at the end of March, the effective date is the end of September. We're hoping to get a CEO signed up by that date. We've hired Coulter Partners, who are a specialist in the life science space. We have partners in London and partners in Copenhagen who cover the Scandinavian region, looking for our new CEO. This is the process that they go through, which obviously I'm not going to read. Early indications from Coulter Partners are telling us that there is significant interest in the position, which I think is a positive. There are lots of quite good candidates and some very good candidates out there who are in high demand. There is competition to get good people.
I think the downside that from early feedback has been that traveling to Tromsø, unless you live in Tromsø, is going to put people off, because it's a, you know, it's a serious time commitment. That's been the early feedback. Despite that, we are getting a lot of high-quality candidates that are interested in ArcticZymes. When you look at a lot of companies out there are a lot of companies that are looking for CEOs, but they are troubled companies. They need cash, a lot of these companies. That of course, for a new CEO in this market, is not a very attractive proposition. We're not in that situation. We are in a very strong position, a growth company with a good underlying cash reserves.
This sort of profile does make us very attractive to potential CEOs. That's the process. I'm running the process, and when we get to the point of interviewing, obviously the rest of the board will be involved. If we look a little bit of R&D, if you remember, Darren was here at the Q4 presentation, went through quite a lot of detail about what the R&D department was hoping to achieve in 2023. And you've seen from a press release not too long ago that the first box has been ticked, and that was releasing to the market the enzymes Proteinase High Quality. And this was launched in the middle of April. I won't go through too many details, but that was the first tick in the box.
The next product out of the gate will probably be the AZtaq or the Taq DNA polymerase. We've also got one, if not two other products that we aim to put out at some point during this year. We also had a press release, which is quite an interesting, one. A new patent application. I obviously can't give you too much details because this is a new patent application. I can't give away too much. But it's a nuclease enzyme. It is a unique enzyme. It's not a me too or a generic, and it's basically used in the processing of RNA. This is a pretty little picture, which fills up the slide quite nicely. Basically all it's meaning to show is that this enzyme, which is that little yellow triangle, it cuts RNA at a specific sequence.
When you cut the RNA, it cuts it into two pieces. The 50, as you can see on the top line, once you cut the RNA, you get rid of the long template, and you get two templates of smaller size. It's a very specific enzyme and it's very early. It's in discovery, but it's a new class and we anticipate if it, you know, goes through the whole development, it will be used, for example, in RNA messenger RNA vaccines as an example. Discovery is working well, and we have other things equally exciting in the early pipeline. If you're going to ask me, when is that being launched to the market, which I know somebody might be dying to ask me, we're looking at late 2024. I'll just preempt that question. Right.
Let's come on to the Drug Master File because this is without question the number 1 most important project that we're working on. We explained last time what a Drug Master File is. This is being filed for the SAN HQ GMP grade, so the highest grade SAN HQ that we can make. As we said in the Q4 presentation, you know, all hands are on deck at this project. We've had to take resources from R&D and from all over the place really to put them onto this project to make sure that we can file this on time. We have said, and I say it again, that we're aiming to file to the FDA at the end of the Q2. At the moment, touch wood, we are on track, and we are optimistic that we can...
We're very optimistic that we can achieve that. For us that will be a significant achievement. The next question that I'm gonna preempt, somebody asked me this, it was the gentleman not in the room said, "Well, Marie, once you file that DMF, is it like flicking a switch?" I'm like, "Oh, no." No is the answer to that. It is not like flicking a switch. It is a very complex process. I've tried to sort of simplify it here. What happens once we file that DMF? It disappears off into the FDA. What is the process? We file it at the end of the Q2. It then gets formally assessed by the FDA. This is not a technical review. This is just a box-ticking exercise. They look through it and they say, "Is it formatted correctly?
Does it contain all the pieces of paper that we expect?" They're not looking at the quality at that point, right? That takes them about 30 days, and once they've done that, they give us a DMF number. It's on their files under our name that we have filed a DMF. It goes on the website, and it's available as reference. Basically, potential customers can see it on the website that we've now filed a DMF for SAN HQ. If any potential customers are then interested in looking at that DMF for potentially using SAN HQ, they have to ask ArcticZymes for a letter of authorization. In that letter, it will tell us what they want to use SAN HQ for, which is very useful for us.
We issue them that letter of authorization, and they submit that letter along with all of their other documents. For example, if they're filing an IND, which I'm sure you know what an IND is, or an NDA or any other application, they file this in association with everything else. Once they've done that's a trigger for the FDA to start looking at our DMF and complete a technical review. How long that takes is a bit of a mystery because it's reviewed in conjunction with the other documents that they filed, and depending on what those other documents are will determine the level of technical review that they need to do. Hence, it's not quite so straightforward. That will probably take, generally takes a few months, but it is variable.
Obviously, if the technical review of our DMF does not meet the standard that is required for the application that the customer is making, they will come back and ask us to fix things, and that's completely normal. Different parts of the DMF will be scrutinized differently depending on the proposed usage, if that makes sense. And that's it basically. It is a convoluted process. Once we've filed, that's not the end of the saga because we have DMF maintenance. There has to be reports every year, and also DMF development. We are filing an early-stage DMF, so we're filing for use in preclinical and phase I, early phase II clinical trials. If anybody wants to use this in later big phase II, phase III clinical trials, we need much more documentation.
We do the initial filing, we get this process rolling, so we can be looking for customers in the meantime, and we will be adding to the DMF as we proceed. Not quite flicking a switch. One of the big things that we are doing, and we haven't done this before, to any great extent, is pre-marketing. This is such an important project and potentially this SAN HQ GMP is such an important future product for us, we need to be going to customers and saying, "Look, we're about to file the DMF," or, "We've filed the DMF. Do you want to take a look at it?" They'll say, "Hmm, well, what's the data?
Why should we look at it?" Obviously we'll produce our own data, which we are in the process of doing, but I think even more compelling is when third parties come out and produce data. We haven't paid these people to do this work. This had nothing to do with us, this is an example of a paper that's been recently published. If anybody wants to be excited by this paper, we can certainly send it to them. It's very relevant because it's using, well, endonucleases in the production of recombinant measles virus. There are lots of clinical trials in the market right now that do use recombinant measles virus, so this is not some abstract virus. This is a relevant virus. I think this sentence basically sums it up quite well.
I'm not gonna read all of this, but the SAN and the MSAN that they tested were more efficient in the removal of chromatin as compared to Benzonase and DNase. Those are our competitors. Those already have a DMF, as you know, and they're already being sold to customers. We need this so that we can compete with them in this market. Another piece of very good third-party evidence was presented at the ESGCT, which is Gene and Cell Therapy, a very large conference, one of the global leading conferences, at the end of last year, and this was a poster presented by UCL. Again, they looked at MSAN HQ being benchmarked against Benzonase. As you can see here, the evidence is suggesting that saves cost, saves time, it's a purer product, and it's got higher potency.
Again, very good third-party data that we will use in our pre-marketing brochure. This is a little bit of data from us that came hot off the press yesterday, thanks to Darren and his team. This is showing pretty much the same thing. We've had this graph before just showing Benzonase, but now it's showing those two graphs together there, both Benzonase and DNase, which of course, as you can see, the relative activity, which is on the Y-axis, decreases as the salt concentration increases. In contrast to our SAN HQ, where the activity significantly increases as the salt concentration increases.
That's very relevant because as an example, if you look at AAV or adeno-associated virus, which as you know is a virus that's used extensively in the clinic, it works best within that range of salt concentration between 400 and 500 millimole, and the only enzyme that is active in that range is ours. People are still using DNase and Benzonase because it's got very small activity, but that's all there is in the market. Why wouldn't they buy our product? I sound like a salesman now. I'm not a salesman. I'll stop. Dirk won't like my sales technique.
If you look at the right-hand side of the slide, it's really just a very simple table to show, you know, different regions where our SAN product seems to be superior to the other 2 competitors. Obviously we're producing more data in-house, but I think that very strongly supports what we've been harping on about for so long. Coming to the end, so coming to now sales and marketing, taken from Dirk's presentation that you heard in the 4th quarter, there was a lot of key areas that we were looking to improve on this year.
As you can see, there's quite a lot of green ticks on this slide, which means things have either been completed, %, from the beginning of the year, and also introduced our shipping and handling fee, which we hadn't had before. We actually paid for that ourselves. Lots of things that we've been trying to actually, you know, kickstart and improve on the top line. Some of these are more longer term aims, but I think there's been significant activity. We've just hired to bolster the team in the US. We've hired a high-quality salesperson on the East Coast, which we haven't had before. Comes from a very relevant background. Actually, a competitor of ours he was pawned from. We're hoping he can kickstart sales on the East Coast.
We've also looking for a new person on the West Coast to bolster the US sales as well. Of course, you saw yesterday that we announced a collaboration with Genovis. You know, a lot of speculation. There is nothing to speculate. I'll preempt that question as well. This is something that we've been working on in the Q1 . It makes absolute sense, this sort of thing, to do with Genovis. They have a bag of enzymes which is different than ours, but synergistic for many customers. If you've got two small bags, you put them together, you become much more attractive. This is a very simple collaboration.
We share costs, we share profits. And, you know, we start small, and if it takes off and we all make money, we will add more people potentially into that, into that framework that's been created in China. We're excited about this. Genovis are excited about this, and I think it's a very good way to proceed in territories like China, Pan Asia in general, where you need feet on the ground. You can't run sales from the West in Asia. You have to have a very good infrastructure and people on the ground working with the distributors every day, sitting there and working with them to make sales. This is a very good move forward in China for us, and let's just see how that goes. Thank you very much.
Now, Børge will give you the gory details on the numbers.
Thank you, Marie. Yes. I will give you a little bit of update on kind of how sales progressed in the Q1 . For the sales update, I would like to start on the commercial side within molecular tools area. We achieved $16.4 million in quarterly sales, and this represents a decline of 46% compared to the same quarter last year. Of course, if you adjust this one for COVID-related sales, Q1 last year was an exceptional quarter where we had close to $14 million in COVID-related sales. That basically means that taking away that COVID effect, sales are equal in molecular tools Q1 last year as Q1 this year.
As we talked about in the Q4, there were basically three reasons why we had a big decline Q4 last year. It's because we didn't see any larger orders from our key customers that we normally see. We saw there had been an inventory buildup, and there we basically had close to zero in COVID-related revenues as well in the Q4. In the Q1 , however, the larger orders have returned, and we have experienced, I would say, more normalized purchasing patterns now from our customers, even though there are, you can see global challenges out there. At least we have seen improvement, and we see the return of the major customers basically.
Molecular tools had a 52% contribution of total quarterly sales in the Q1 . This was basically evenly split between the research and diagnostics with around 26% on each of those two. As we said, as a follow-up after the kind of the Q4, this is probably the last time we will ever be talking about COVID, hopefully. As I said, the trend is continuing. It is as expected. It is as announced as we talked about in the Q4. Sales are 0 in COVID-related sales here. Of course, as I said in last slide, this is creating a tough comparison when you compare Q1 to Q1 last year. Of course, this will continue moving forward again. Of course, we don't have for the Q2, we don't have any...
we didn't have any COVID-related sales either last year. we can also see that, when it comes to COVID testing, we see that in those places or regions where there's still testing going on, there are no more PCR tests ongoing now. There are more lateral flow tests are being conducted now. that we saw, I saw that for basically from the high-risk area in the U.K., it's lateral flow test. we also see that kind of China, which has been really tight over the last few years. They're opening up much more now, and if there is testing there, it's gonna be lateral flow tests as well. there's gonna basically gonna be no more PCR tests where our products are being used. Moving into the biomanufacturing side of the business here.
Quarterly sales were NOK 14.9 million, which is a 21% decline compared to the same quarter last year. We are also on the, basically on the same levels as we had on the second and Q3 last year. We are only lower than you can say, the first and the Q4 last year. Except for that, I think we are on a positive trend. We are continued to grow the business even though we see that there are some fluctuations in the business. Biomanufacturing's contribution towards the Q1 sales were 48%, which is a little bit lower than the 69% we experienced in the Q4 last year. It is, however, important to mention that molecular tools in the Q4 last year were historic low.
As I said, we didn't have any major orders from our key customers in that quarter. Hence, biomanufacturing was much, much higher in the Q4 than what it normally is. Even though we did not experience kind of the quarterly upturn in sales following the pandemic that we've seen over the last year, we believe this is part of the challenges that we have seen. As Marie talked about, it is a challenging market out there these days. Of course, we continue to see that the customers are there. The engagement with our customers is still going well. We see that it is getting back to normal even after a little bit tricky times here.
I think we will see how Q2 progresses as well now if we can kinda get out of that slump we've been in or at least in the Q4. As Marie also mentioned, the DMF is that priority 1 project that we are working on now. It's all hands on deck for that one, and I think I leave it with that on the air. We talked more enough about the DMF now. What about the trend in our business now? Where I've tried to take out kind of these anti-quarterly fluctuations.
I've also eliminated kind of the COVID-related sales over the last few years to give you an idea of how the business is actually going on a, from an underlying basis here. As you, as you can see from the graph above, you can see the growth has flattened out over the last 2 quarters, where we have moved our average quarterly rolling sales from $31.3 million to $29.5 million. It's gone down $1.5 million over the last, you can say, 6 months, basically. Even though the trend has been negative over both in Q4 and in Q1, nothing fundamentally has changed in our business here. We are still in those kind of growing markets, and we have attractive products, and we have novel products.
Also we see that the number of orders have come up now from the Q4 last year, where we had 396 orders to 408 orders in Q1 this year. What is even better now is that we had 28 new customers that have never been on our radar before in Q1, where 17 of those customers were within molecular tools and 11 are new biomanufacturing customers. Some of them are just buying samples, but some of them are buying more products, and that's kind of how it develops. They start with just those tiny orders to test our products before they move into those next stages of utilizing our products.
Also, I think it is still important to emphasize there is some uncertainty in the short term, as said, with the kind of the global challenges we see with the macroeconomic climate, the war. Even though the war doesn't impact us in materially at the moment, but who knows? The macroeconomic climate, there are the financing costs that she also talked about. It is tough out there for at least for some of our customers, even though we don't see any challenges from our internal end. There are out there are challenges. Look a little bit about the kind of the how the sales contribution was. Usually you can see the European region has been the most dominant region for our sales, followed by the American region and then the APAC region.
But as we've seen, over last year as well, you can see the shift has been more towards the American, the American region and less towards the European region. You can see that for 2022 and also for Q1 this year, that is. The majority of sales are now coming in, in North America, basically. APAC is, of course, a region where we see the potential for future growth, and we are really excited about the kind of the Genovis collaboration now and how that will pan out in kind of say the next year. We're really excited to see if we can grow those 4% we had in the Q1 this year. Currency impact.
Of course, we work in a global market here, our revenues are of course impacted by fluctuations in currencies, and especially since you can see our sales currencies are US dollars and euros. The Norwegian krone is only a marginal part of our sales, but of course, it's much more important when you look at our expense base. For the Q1 now, 83% of our revenues were in $ and 70% were in EUR. Based on the exchange rates we've seen over the last year, this has, of course, an effect on our profit and loss statement as well.
Based on the US dollars and euros we had in our bank accounts, we had a financing profit of NOK 0.6 million in currency. You can really see we can also see this under other our trade receivables are also impacted by currency fluctuations, and this can be seen under other operating expenses. For the Q1 this year, our operating expenses were basically reduced by NOK 1 million because of the weakening of the Norwegian krone towards the other currencies, basically. That, you can also see that on the graphs on the right-hand side, where you can see that the Norwegian krone has just, I would say, crumbled toward both the euro and the US dollar.
If you are to look at the growth in the underlying business now, exclude where it's, exclude kind of the fluctuations in currency, meaning that we have a constant currency rate, for both 2022 and 2023. Q1 sales would have been NOK 3.8 million lower in the Q1 compared to the Q1 last year. It is, however, important to remember that the currency fluctuations are inherent in the business. For 2021, we had a currency loss when we did that same comparison of NOK 11 million, and in 2022, we had a currency gain of NOK 8 million when we did those same calculations here. Also, as a general principle, I think we try to limit the amount of currency we have in our bank accounts also.
Of course, with the nature of our business, there's a limit to how much we can mitigate that risk. Looking at a little bit at about the organization, this is a slide that I showed at the Q4 presentation. As you are aware of, personnel expenses have grown significantly over the last couple of years, and this has been in alignment with kind of the strategy we put in motion, where we want to go for inorganic and organic growth in the organization.
We've had kind of a 30% increase, we had a 30% increase in employees from 2021 to 2022. We have also seen per the end of 2023. We haven't hired any net new people now per end of the Q1 . We're still at those 61 employees. We have, however, hired, as Marie mentioned, we have hired a new business development manager for the West Coast in the U.S. He started on May 1st, so we are really excited to get him on board. We have hired three new people that is gonna be starting at the second half of the year. Two of them is backfill from people that has left the company, and one is a new position as well.
Also from the pie chart, you can see that the organization is pretty much set up the same, is similar to what we had at the end of last year. R&D contributes to around 40% of the organization. Operations and regulatory is around 30%, then you have business development and the commercial side of the organization is around 20%, then the administration is a little bit less than 10%.
Also looking a little bit beyond where we are today and moving into kind of the rest of the year, on the personnel side, as we said in the last quarter, 2023 will be a year where we will kind of reconcile the investments we have done over the last few years, making ArcticZymes becoming a kind of a more effective and productive organization. Because when we hire a lot of new people, it takes time to get them up and running. There is a learning curve before they can say, be self-sufficient and do a good quality job in the organization, and I think that now in 2023, we will be able to do that for sure.
Looking a little bit more on the, on the profitability side of the business, as said, we as Marie's stay has started up, we continue to deliver a positive contributions towards the bottom line, even though, you can see, Q1 is just a little bit stronger than what we've seen over the last three quarters here. Our EBITDA were NOK 6.1 million compared to NOK 28 million, same quarter last year. If we adjust that one for the COVID effects we had in Q1 last year, we had NOK 13.9 million in EBITDA for that one, for Q1 last year.
Our expenses have increased by NOK 3.7 million in the quarter, which is also in alignment with what we have, what we said at the Q4 presentation, where we also gave a little bit more update on kind of where we see our expenses moving in this year. Personnel expenses for the Q1 were at NOK 15 and a half million or this is an increase of NOK 2 and a half million compared to the same quarter last year. If you do that, we kind of guided that we are looking at a personnel expense of NOK 75 million, which will basically mean that there's an average of around NOK 19 million per quarter. You can see this one is, okay, it is lower than that NOK 19 million, but there are explanations behind it.
Part of the explanation is that we did a reversal of our Jethro's options, and that was a reversal effect of NOK 1.8 million basically in the Q1 . Also we see that we had capitalization of the DMF expenses, which was basically NOK 1.3 million in personnel expenses. Also, as we said, there are new people coming in that will start both now and they will start a little bit later in the year as well. There are of course, we have the annual employee salary increase, and I think you all you've seen how kind of the Norwegian market has been. There's been quite high salary raises this year. We will see how that one will end up.
Of course, it will impact our figures at the end of the year. At the end, we are confident without NOK 75 million for 2023 in personnel expenses, unless there are something that will be different. Other operating expenses were at NOK 7.5 million, which is 1 million higher than the same time last year. This is also in alignment with what we said at the end of the Q4. We are looking at a reduction from those NOK 32 million we had at per end of the year.
And also I think what we have also talked, and also looking at the graph on the left-hand side here, you can also see that we are improving our EBIT and EBITDA margin again after a kind of challenging Q4 and Q3 last year. Now we are back to a 20% margin this quarter, and we hope to kind of improve it even better or even further in the coming quarters here. Also I think in the market, there's kind of a common denominator of NOK two and a half million in revenues, how people can look at how what's on efficient organization here, and then you can do a calculation of NOK two and a half million in revenues per employee.
Of course, with the current traction that we see now and how we believe the year will pan out, I think you can see that NOK 2.5 million in revenues per head is something that we can see is achievable in this year. Looking at the cash flow side of the business here, and the cash balance and the changes in cash were of course a little bit different this year or this quarter compared to what we've seen over the last few quarters, where we kind of have seen a steady increase in cash and cash equivalents here. Also in this quarter, we had a decrease of NOK 11 million. You could say there are really good reasons why we had a decline in cash this quarter, and I think I will talk about it.
First of all, is that we had kind of a Q4 that sales weren't that high in the Q4. Normally, you can see that the payments from kind of all our customers they are normally, you can say, they are coming in the following quarters, normally. We also had we had two external production scale-ups here. You can also see that we had a buildup in inventory of around NOK 5.5 million, where we did a scale-up of the SAP, our SAP product, which we are doing once every 1.5 to two years. We did that at the end of last year, but the product was delivered in the Q1 of this year.
We also did a scale-up of the SAN HQ enzyme that we did at Pharma-Faros Pharmaceutical in Oulu, that one was also delivered in the Q1 of this year. You can see those two had a net effect of NOK five and a half million in our cash balance. That is basically in an inventory that is gonna be used in the coming quarters when sales are coming in. We also had a tech transfer that was quite expensive. Well, when we did the scale-up of the SAN HQ at Farma-Faras, part of that was a tech transfer as well, and that we impacted our figures as well.
We also have had investments of close to NOK 1 million in equipment related to partly the DMF production as well, or the validation batches that we're doing on the DMF. Yeah. There's been a general that we have paid our invoices out, so there's been a reduction in payables from the end of the year as well. All of these have affected our cash flow, basically. Per the end of March, we still have a comfortable cash position with NOK 232 million in our bank accounts, and I am confident that we will be able to grow the cash position in the coming quarters as well now, especially if we are growing the sales side of the business. I think it...
With that, I'm gonna also hand it over to Marie, who will give us kind of the, what we can see for the last part of the year.
Mm.
Some expectations we have.
I'll take out my crystal ball now 'cause that's what it is. There's nothing much different here to say. You know, we said at the end of last year, we talked about inorganic and organic growth. This year is certainly all about organic growth, we are, you know, opportunistic. Couple of things are coming across our desks every week, that, you know, we're looking at. There isn't a whole lot out there that even if I was in a buying mode, that we would want to buy, I think we have to sit and wait a little bit. The interesting thing is, as you can all, imagine, that last year the valuation expectations were huge because they had big revenue numbers, because that was all COVID driven. Being smart, they thought, "Right, we've got a huge revenue number this year.
Let's sell out at a nice multiple." Some of those companies, there was quite some consolidation in the spaces that we're interested in, and high multiples were paid. Now, of course, it's a different story, and I think we have to sit and wait a little bit, and I think opportunities that perhaps we might have looked at before and thought, "No, we can't afford that," might well become within our domain in the next 9 to 12 months. The reasons for that, obviously, is that all their COVID-related sales have disappeared. All of a sudden, their top line has been halved or less. The multiples expected in the market are now less than what they were. So all of a sudden expectations become more aligned.
We're keeping very close eye on certain opportunities, but we're also, I think it's fair to say, looking and thinking outside the box a little bit. I want to, you know, put that on the table. We've got a superb suite of enzymes that are used in the biotech and pharma space. There are lots of other potential uses for our enzymes, lots of other markets that we are not experts in, but that are worth exploring. For example, one quick example is the plant genomic space. The plant genomic space has exploded, right? Seed the whole seed world. Why is that? Because the population of the world has exploded, and we have to feed people, the only way we're going to be able to do that is with genetically modified plants and animals.
Our enzymes are used in that plant world. We don't know anything about it, but it's one example of, you know, at some point we perhaps have to think a little bit more laterally about how we can, you know, produce sales with our enzymes and start to explore and start to be a bit more, you know, forward-thinking potentially about new markets for our currently existing portfolio. That's all work that goes on in the background. We do expect sales to grow this year as compared to last year. We are optimistic about that despite the global headwinds we've talked about. They're not to be underestimated. They have, you know, impacted, we believe, our sales quite considerably, and listening to the voice of customer, there's no question that they're saying, you know, "We are still buying, but we're buying lesser volumes. We're trying to reserve cash.
We're trying to be conservative," and we appreciate that. That will change, right? We're hoping, you know, towards the latter end of this year that a lot of that headwind will be out of the market. As you've seen, and this is one of the drivers to opening the market, is that the M&A world, certainly in biotech, is taking off again. There's been a number of high value deals that have been announced in the last month or two, and, you know, looking historically, once M&A starts to take off in the biotech world, that can turn things reasonably quickly. That all remains to be seen. New products will be coming out. We've had one. We're aiming for at least another two, hopefully more than two, coming out this year.
Let's see how we go in China with Genovis and also keeping our eye on the rest of Asia. You know, India is now got more people than China. They have less capita per head, so there's huge growth in India to be seen. They are very savvy nation, obviously, who wants to progress quickly. We are keeping our eyes on the rest of Asia as well and maybe their markets to explore in the future. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for your attention, we will now endeavor to answer some questions. I know there's some online that I've just been looking at, if anybody, of course, privilege in the room first would like to ask. John, of course. Good morning.
I think you answered all the obvious questions apart from one.
Oh, no.
I was difficult to tell, but what is the market, the size of the market for the SAN enzymes?
Well, the nucleases, those type of endonucleases, it's hard to find a written number, but I know 'cause we've heard it from Sigma.
Mm
... that they're talking NOK 300 million-NOK 500 million. That's the total market.
Dollars.
Yes.
Dollars, yes.
Yes, dollars. Oh, sorry, not NOK. I don't talk NOK.
That.
That's what they've said fairly recently.
Yeah.
You can't find it written in their reports because, of course, it's such a small part of their business. Selector doesn't give insight. We know that, you know, obviously, the Denarase is their largest product, so we reckon they're selling quite high, close to NOK 100 maybe.
Mm. Yeah,
Yes, the potential is there.
Yeah.
Let's say NOK 400 million, pick a round number.
Mm.
If we can really show superiority, and get that message across, it doesn't take many customers to build sales.
Mm
really quite rapidly.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
I can see that, you have an average, order of NOK 75,000 this quarter.
NOK 75,000.
Based on the 400 and something orders.
Right.
Divided by the revenue.
Okay.
Would you say that is a normal average on the orders? The second one is, when you say you have 18, somewhere you said 18 new customers...
28 new customers.
28.
Yeah, yeah.
What's the average order on the newcomers, and how long would it take the newcomers to reach the average order, so to speak?
Well, I think average orders are down, and you know, our big players that maybe didn't, can't name names obviously, but a couple that didn't buy in the Q4, that killed us in the Q4, have bought in the Q1 , but not to the same level that they had projected. They give us projections, you know, last year for this year, or forecasts, let's say, and they're not always very accurate. Looking at the forecasts we've been given from some of the bigger players, they're not living up to the forecasts. They are buying, but they're buying less volume. I think the average is less overall. Of course we've got customers that buy millions, and we've got customers that buy 10. You know? The average is very skewed.
It's more a median value that's probably more applicable, you know, I would say, if you, if you look statistically. Our 28 new customers, some of them are just in the testing phase, so they're buying, you know, a handful, let's say. Some of those customers will probably never buy again. That's how it goes. There's attrition. How many of those will actually turn into, you know, really large orders remains to be seen. Depending on what their usage is, that can take from a few months to come to a decision as to whether they want to order big, or that can take. We've had people that test for like 2 years, and they gradually increase what they buy before they plunge for the big orders. It's very tricky to sort of generalize, I think. Thank you.
All right.
All right.
I can do a question from online then, Marie.
Yes, yes.
Did any of the postponed orders from Q4 materialize in Q1, or were they just canceled?
No. Some did come through, but with lesser volume. Again, talking about the bigger players, what we thought, they may have ordered in the Q4 and didn't, and some of them ordered 0, have ordered in the Q1 , but less than we thought they were going to. They are buying, and they've come back, but some of them not quite to the same level that we thought they might. That's not to do with us. That's to do with the situation macro, in my view.
Can you also quantify a little bit about how much the destocking affected sales in the Q1 ?
No. I can't because, you know, we have very little insight. We're a B2B business, we're not the, you know, we're not selling to the end customers. You know, our customers were also destocking, but the clients that they sell onto were also destocking. It's very difficult for me to predict. It's certainly. Again, it's listening to the voice of customers, right? That's the feedback that we're getting. That is real amongst our customers, for sure.
Okay. You also say that the destocking effect within the biomanufacturing side will decline during the second half of the year now. Do you think this will be gradual or?
Will you also see a significant de-stocking effect in the Q2 as well?
You know, I think you've got to have a look at what the analysts are saying, what the US analysts are saying in particular, and that's who I follow quite intently. I think, you know, there is a consensus that the second half of 2023, some of the de-stocking will decline, and it'll be a gradual thing. You look at other analyst reports, and they're saying they expect it to go through 2024. I think, you know, we know it's there, we know it's significant. When it'll actually go away I think will also, you know, depend on what is happening in the markets as well, you know, how quickly the markets will open. People will be less conservative once the markets are open, and they can go out and raise capital, so de-stocking won't become such an issue or won't remain such an issue.
I'm hoping it'll have gone by the end of 2023, but remains to be seen.
All right, I have one more. In light of the launch of the ArcticZymes Proteinase HQ, and the patent application for novel nuclease enzymes for RNA therapeutic applications, could you provide an overview of the company's innovation strategy and how you intend to reinforce the product portfolio to strengthen our competitive position in the market?
Oh, wow.
That's a elaborate question.
Yes. I mean, you know, I think as Darren explained quite nicely, to produce novel enzymes from start to finish is a very lengthy process. We've got a number of enzymes in our portfolio which are generics. Frankly, you know, that's not ideal. We need to be spending, you know, more time looking for the really novel, innovative enzymes, but they're, you know, rare and difficult to find. In order to obviously grow the bag, if you want to do that more quickly, you have to buy, right? Back to the old M&A question. That's how you increase the bag, that's how you increase the number of enzymes that we can offer to our customers in a, in a shorter timeframe than we can do organically.
Obviously we continue the organic growth at a rate that we can sustain, and hopefully when the right opportunities come, we will add to the bag inorganically.
Let's ask a follow-up to that question here, Eson. What kind of R&D innovation excites you the most then?
Oh, you mean ours or someone else's?
It's ours.
Ours, I presume.
Ours. Yeah.
Well, of course, all the enzymes, or they're not enzyme, prototypes, let's say, that will play in the RNA space because that's a huge potential future space. The whole RNA vaccines, particularly in oncology, we have a number of very early prototypes that might play in that space, and I think they're novel, and innovative, and we hope to be pushing those out. That's, you know, that's, again, a lengthy timeframe. Those excite me because they're novel and they're different. Generics don't excite me.
Okay, thank you. Adelbe here. When will the China collaboration be effective? Nice-
Effective
... nice touch with Genovis by the way as a question.
Oh. Oh, that's kind.
Up here.
Um-
Yeah, when will it be operative on that collaboration agreement?
As soon as possible. Straight away. We're hiring a second person, to join the team that Genovis have established, in China. That's gonna be a product specialist to support the sales, salesperson that they already have that's working with the distributors. It's ongoing. Immediately.
Sounds good. Another question here. Why not relax somewhat regarding the location requirements for the new CEO, I.E., part-time in Tromsø?
What?
Parath.
Well, the company's based in Tromsø, so the CEO has to be in Tromsø. We haven't said, you know, that the CEO has to live in Tromsø, right? That is a stretch too far and obviously Jethro didn't live in Tromsø, and Christian before him didn't live in Tromsø, so that is not an absolute requirement. It is an absolute requirement that they're going to be up there very frequently. I can't really relax that part of it. Unless, of course, we move everybody from Tromsø, but that's not happening, so, you know.
I have two more questions here online here.
Aren't there any for you? Any questions, Brogan?
It depends. You indicate the revenues of two and a half million per head, that is within reach of 2023. That basically means NOK 152 million in sales revenue.
Does it? Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Right.
That compared to the $120 million in revenue for the last 12 months, taking out Q1 last year. Where do you see those additional $32.5 million in increase in revenue in the next 12 months to come from?
Well, I haven't stated that number, and I'm not gonna state any number for this year. You can do your own calculations. you know, $2.5 million indicates an efficient organization. If you look at, you know, comparator companies, if you're hitting that between $2.5 million and $3 million per head, you know that you're running an efficient organization. Where's future sales gonna come from? Well, obviously, it's from organic sales of our products, and hopefully, you know, maybe the latter end of this year, but certainly going into next year, we're looking at the SAN portfolio.
That's good. I think we have one last question here. It's regarding a forecast here, and it could also indicate when you will give an update on the long-term revenue forecast.
I'm not doing that this year because there's too many uncertainties in the market. I think we have to get back to a normalized situation, where there's normalized patterns of ordering and all the things we've talked about that are outside our control are out of the market or in a much more diminished state. Then I think we can really establish a bit more where we currently stand. I think it would, you know, it, it wouldn't be a good thing to talk about that in these sort of times.
All right. I see. I just have one last one, and then I think we are have completed most of the online question. Was Q1 the trough for molecular tools?
Trough?
Yeah. I'm not really sure what it means.
Was it the trough like the nadir?
Who knows?
Oh, I know what trough is.
Yeah.
It means on the floor, the nadir. Was it the trough for
Not really sure.
Not really sure. Why would it be a trough? No.
All right. Any more questions, from people in the room?
Okay.
Small one for you.
Oh, good, John. Thank you.
About cash flow, I mean, we don't invest that much, so I mean, our EBITDA is very close to our EBIT. What do you expect actually to have, see from investments, in the normal quarter, normalized investment in the normal quarter?
You can see normalized investments. Right now there is a lot of investment, especially intangible investments that are going on in the company. As I said, we spent quite a lot of money on the DMF now, both internal hours, and there are also been some expenses related to kind of equipment as well. You can see normalized capital expenditures should be around NOK 3-4 million on an annual basis here. Of course, then you have some of those special projects that we are also capitalizing on that will also impact kind of some of the cash flow as well. We do expect to have positive cash flows moving forward. Of course now, as I said, in the Q1 , we had some big production.
Mm
... scalar projects that we had that impacted especially the cash flow side of the business here.
What you are saying is as EBITDA is very close to cash flow on a normal basis.
On a normal basis, yes, that's true.
Minus a couple of NOK million here or mock, and then we are at the cash flow.
Yeah. That's it. It sounds like a good.
Yeah. Thank you.
No more questions. Thank you very much, gentlemen in the room, ladies and gentlemen online for joining us, we look forward to seeing you at the Q2. Thanks very much.