The agenda today is we're going to start by going through the highlights of Q4. We will then tell you a little bit about the deliverables we delivered on in 2020. We will then go through the ArcticZymes updates. We'll briefly talk about the Biotec BetaGlucans divestment. Børge will walk you through the Q4 financials, then I'll round off by talking about the outlook for 2021 and beyond. Before we go into all the details, I do want to say that all the figures and numbers that are presented today are excluding discontinued operations, which is the Biotec BetaGlucans business. Highlights. In a nutshell, as a company, what we've seen during 2020 is that the company has undergone a significant transformation, and this is no exception in Q4 as well. We've seen a transformation there, and we will touch base on that in a minute.
What have we achieved in Q4? Well, we achieved our second-best ever quarterly sales, achieving NOK 22.1 million in product sales. This is equivalent of 35% growth for this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. We also continue to be profitable, achieving a profitable quarter of NOK 6.8 million in EBITDA. This is equivalent to 39% growth for the same quarter last year. We continue to grow our business in the therapeutics and molecular segments. Of course, this growth varies quarter to quarter, but the trend is growth in both of those areas. We successfully divested the Biotec BetaGlucans subsidiary, and we did that on 31st of December 2020, and this really is where the transformation happens for us because this means going into 2021, we are a pure enzymes business. In terms of deliverables, what did we deliver in 2020?
These were objectives that we'd set at the beginning of the year and we wanted to deliver on. Of course, we delivered on many of these objectives. The first one was our promise to deliver, bring ArcticZymes Technologies into profitability in 2020, and we achieved that very well. We delivered an EBITDA of NOK 45 million. We continued to grow our sales, our top-line sales, and we achieved NOK 93 million for the year. That's equivalent of 107% growth we grew the business last year compared to 2019. To align to our strategy that we set back in December 2019, where we made ArcticZymes, the enzyme business, our core business, we rebranded the company last year from Biotec Pharmacon to ArcticZymes Technologies. Furthermore, to set the stage as being a pure enzyme company, we divested the Biotec BetaGlucans business, as I mentioned before.
Now this allows us to exclusively focus on our enzymes business and our strategic initiatives for that moving forward. What is this all about? All the above here is about creating shareholder value, and we certainly have achieved that and delivered on that in 2020. We've created shareholder value through the activities we've done through the share, and we've seen many new investors come on board as well. The only thing we didn't achieve was the merger and acquisitions. It was something on the table, but we didn't achieve that. Even without that, the business has done extremely well. I'd like to walk you through the ArcticZymes updates, and here we are going to talk about the segments. Before I go into the segments, as mentioned, we have achieved strong underlying growth. We continue to do that on a quarterly basis.
For the quarter, we did have our second-best quarter as mentioned before. In terms of the therapeutics segment, let's look at that. We had a strong quarter. For the quarter, we achieved 138% growth compared to Q4 last year. When you look at the whole year, actually, for the therapeutics segment, we grew the business by 216%. I think, what's driving this growth? Well, we have a growing customer base, and many of those customers are progressing with their pre-clinical and clinical trials efforts. We have seen large orders coming in, and we are seeing now orders in excess of NOK 1 million becoming routine in this business. For the most well-established customers, we have several well-established customers now who have purchased over NOK 5 million of SAN products during the year.
I think this sort of gives you a kind of flavor of how this business is maturing and ramping up. ReiThera, as you've heard before, is a company who is using our SAN products to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. They're progressing well with their phase I clinical trials. Recently, they reported that they are preparing to conduct a large-scale phase II, phase III clinical trial in the coming months. Of course, ArcticZymes will be there supporting them along the way. We also had another European customer who has been purchasing SAN for several other projects. They recently confirmed that they will also expand the utility of our SAN-HQ enzyme into an early-stage COVID-19 vaccine development program. Last quarter, we told you about a top-tier pharmaceutical company who did a GMP audit of ArcticZymes, and they've now started purchasing small amounts of product now.
This is related to an early-stage therapeutic development at one of their European sites. This business is not COVID related therapeutic. In China, ArcticZymes has partnered with Shanghai Besto Biotechnologies for the non-exclusive distribution of SAN -HQ in China. We're very excited because they're an energetic, experienced team who have commercial experience and the competencies in the gene therapy markets. They will be important in driving new opportunities and opening doors in the domestic therapeutic markets in China. Already we've seen initial sales from their sales activities. We've seen a small revenue contribution to Q4 already. When you have a look at the therapeutic segments, at the end of the day, it is supported by over 100 different customers today purchasing our SAN products, and this is across all geographical continents. In the molecular segment, which is research and diagnostics here, we had marginal growth.
We had 4% growth compared to Q4 last year. I think, when you look at this for the year, the growth rate has been very choppy between the quarters this year for this segment. This is due to the coronavirus pandemic. You need to step back, take a look at this, and look at the year 2020 as a whole. When you look at this molecular segment, overall, it has grown 67% compared to 2019. Molecular product sales contributed 59% towards ArcticZymes' total sales for Q4. In terms of this, the main driver has been the molecular diagnostics business, in particular Cod UNG for use by our customers in COVID-19 tests. Beyond COVID-19, we also sold over NOK 1 million of Cod UNG to India, where it is being used and utilized in tuberculosis molecular diagnostics. In Q4 as well as earlier quarters for this enzyme.
You'll see a graph later from Børge which shows how the quarterly sales are here. What we had in Q4 in 2019 was a real big bump with a large rSAP, sorry, the Shrimp Alkaline Phosphatase order. That's what gave the nice bump Q4 last year, and we didn't get that this year. However, when you take a step back and look at this molecular segment, I think despite the slowdown we've seen in the research markets, sales have been counteracted strongly with increased demand in the molecular diagnostics segment. Overall, for the molecular segment, sales growth remains robust, and it's also supported by over 200 customers that ArcticZymes serves today. I'd like to talk a little bit about COVID-19.
When you look at COVID-19-related sales, ArcticZymes will no longer refer to COVID-19-related sales as upsides, but we can now consider them as an integral part of its underlying business. When we report on the segment numbers, this will be inclusive of COVID-19-related sales, and that's what we're doing. All the numbers you see in these slides around the segments include COVID-19-related business. When you have a look for the quarter, we had higher COVID-related sales for Q4 versus Q3. It has been choppy between the quarters this year. These sales contribute 32% to total sales for Q4. When we break these sales down, 86% of these are associated with molecular diagnostics. 14% associated with therapeutics. Moving forward, we do expect this to fluctuate on a quarterly basis. I'd like to talk about innovations, and this is about leveraging the future.
I think at the end of the day, we're very active in innovations. It's important to capturing more of the value chain and the greater value from the market segments we are serving. It's very much at the heart of what ArcticZymes is doing. This is why approximately over 40% of our personnel effort is focused towards product innovation, product improvements, and scale. We are investing in more people here. The R&D efforts will be ramped up moving forward as well. I want to tell you a bit about the pipeline, what's going on. I think last quarter I mentioned about the Salt Active Nuclease. We've been upscaling that. Last quarter we were working on our first medium-scale pilot batch that was in progress, but we were successful with that batch.
That is important because that was actually used to allow us to optimize the infrastructure and the manufacturing process, which is needed before progressing to the large-scale manufacturing. That's work in progress now, we're working on that first large-scale pilot batch. There's been a slight delay here, that's because of scheduling delays beyond our control with the contract manufacturer who's helping us with the fermentation. That will extend now into Q1. Putting that to one side, we do expect to have large-scale SAN-HQ product commercially available to our customers within the first half of 2021. We are working on a lot of new product developments, we anticipate several new products will be ready to launch in 2021, and I want to share some of these with you today.
The one thing we're working on is the M-SAN ELISA kit. Similar to SAN-HQ, the M-SAN ELISA kit will support the sales of our M-SAN enzyme, which we launched back in late 2019. This is into the therapeutic segment, of course. M-SAN was actually optimized for removal of contaminating DNA from non-adeno-associated viruses such as lentivirus. At the moment, we have got prototype kits which we are sending out to customers during January for testing. Assuming all that testing goes to plan, we will then finish the validation of the products, the kit before launching that. Taq polymerases, we're working on those. Those are very important for viral diagnostics, in particular COVID-19. We will have our first thermostable polymerase, which will be optimized for robust utility in virus-based PCR tests.
The important thing is to make sure that it's also compatible with our other enzymes such as Cod UNG, the DNases, the proteinases. Our internal prototype, we're giving it some robust testing and we're testing internal PCR assays, and that is functioning very well. At the same time, we're also working on our first reverse transcriptase, and similar to Taq polymerase, it will be optimized for use in viral diagnostic assays, where it can be used both in PCR and LAMP based workflows. We're also working on other SAN products, and I think at the end of the day, what we realize is we're doing very well in gene therapy and vaccine production, but we can capture more of the value chain, particularly in the protein purification world.
At the moment, we have a prototype enzyme, which we are now sending out to customers for testing at this moment in time. We are also working on other enzymes, and several of these enzymes actually relate to customer-specific innovation projects. We're working with some large companies who would like some tweaking of, for instance, our IsoPol polymerases or have support products related to the use of the IsoPol polymerases, for example. This will be for integration into new technologies or diagnostic tests. I think here, sometimes it is working directly with one large customer to optimize and bring a new innovation to market, and then that will extend to others as well. Longer term, we are making progress with our innovations too, which are not destined for launch in 2021, but later on.
Some of these enzymes include novel ligases, DNA-like enzymes, other novel polymerases, reverse transcriptase, as well as other enzymes and support products. That's the innovation pipeline. I want to talk a little bit about strategic initiatives. We’ve been working on organic growth and inorganic growth. Going into 2021, organic growth will really be our primary, main, and immediate focus. For this, we have a key activity where we want to complete the infrastructure expansion of R&D and operations. This project is well underway and is progressing as planned. I think this expansion fits very timely to cater for the increase in commercial demand we see from our customers for our expanding product range. Also, it will allow the company to capitalize on ramping up its innovation pipeline, as you saw earlier. In the meantime, we are continuing to invest in new talent, personnel in R&D and operations.
I think it's important already to do that, and this helps support our organic growth initiatives here. All above is really about investing to leverage for greater growth potential from the ArcticZymes business. In terms of inorganic growth, it is still on the cards, but we have scaled back our activities around temporarily on the M&A activities. I think it is important being a small company, we want to allow the team to really focus right now on the ongoing organic growth expansion initiatives. We want to get these new facilities in place. Of course, the timing for this also makes sense because the corona pandemic that we are seeing, due to this, the market environment is far from ideal at this time. I think for two good reasons. One, firstly, travel restrictions limits our ability to conduct thorough due diligence activities.
Also when you're speaking to potential targets right now, they're somewhat less engaging and receptive to potential acquisition activities. COVID-19, like it has done on our company, puts a lot of extra pressure on small companies. We're seeing, when you talk to other small companies, they don't have the bandwidth at this time to really talk about these things right now. They're trying to manage day-to-day business. That's how it is. I think at the end of the day, it's not that we're not going to do something here, but I think at the end of the day, we're going to remain opportunistic at the moment, and if a fitting target comes along and somebody wants to do a deal and the stars align, we will do that. That's where we are with ArcticZymes updates.
I want to talk a little bit about Biotec BetaGlucans divestment before we go into the financials. I think the divestment of Biotec BetaGlucans subsidiary, this was the most strategically significant event that could've happened for ArcticZymes in 2020. We're delighted about this on several fronts. Firstly, we divested the entire Biotec BetaGlucans subsidiary to Lallemand Inc's Danstar Ferment AG subsidiary. They represent the best owner we could find for the Biotec BetaGlucans. Under Lallemand, Biotec BetaGlucans will have a renewed purpose as a core business again, and I think that's important. Also, I think what was good here, we closed the deal on the 31st of December 2020, and that means we go into 2021 as a pure enzymes business. We will continue supporting Lallemand during 2021 in managing a smooth transition. That is actually moving very fast right now.
BBG, the Biotec BetaGlucans business, will gradually relocate to the Nordøya site. At the same time, as part of the expansion plans, ArcticZymes Technologies production will relocate to the SIVA Innovation Centre. By the end of the year, both ArcticZymes Technologies and Biotec BetaGlucans will be on separate sites. I think at the end of the day, the divestment really marks a new era for ArcticZymes Technologies. It very much supports our strategy to focus exclusively now on the profitable enzymes business. As mentioned before, ArcticZymes Technologies enters 2021 as a pure enzymes business. With that, I'm going to hand over to Børge, and he will walk you through the financials.
Thank you, Jethro. First of all, I think from a financials perspective, I think 2020 has been a remarkable year where we have managed to drive sales into new heights. We have a profitability that we've never experienced before. We have also generated substantial positive cash flow. We have achieved numerous new customers throughout the year, and we have also divested part of the company, becoming a purely enzymes-focused company now. Most importantly, we have managed to drive shareholder value throughout the year. I would say fourth quarter is no exception to this and to the underlying performance as well. Moving into the sales side of the business here. If you can switch that, Jethro, the next slide. As with the third quarter, we did not reach the same sort of sales levels as we experienced in the second quarter.
This is natural. As we talked about earlier, in the second quarter, we experienced a lot of stocking, and of course this had a negative impact on the Q3 sales. Also, we can say it has a minor impact on Q4 sales as well. Of course, combined sales for all segments in Q4, they were NOK 22.1 million, as Jethro pointed out earlier. This is also, as he said, this is the second-best quarter in the history of the company. Our sales grew by 35% compared to the same quarter last year. We also have to bear in mind that fourth quarter last year in 2019 was actually the first quarter we managed to drive sales in excess of NOK 15 million on a quarterly level. Q4 2019 was a new milestone for us that has set now the baseline for the future going forward now.
For the fiscal year 2020, we have secured more than NOK 93 million in revenues or an increase by more than 100% compared to the NOK 45 million we generated in 2019. Also by looking at the table on the right-hand side, you can also see that the positive sales trend that we have experienced over the last two years actually continued into the fourth quarter as well. As Jethro talked a little bit about the therapeutics segment, we generated fourth quarter sales of NOK 9 million compared to NOK 3.8 million in the same quarter last year. For the full year 2020, we generated revenues of NOK 38 million, up from that NOK 12 million we had in 2019. Jethro also touched a little bit upon the research and the other diagnostics segment.
We saw a marginal increase of 4% in the quarter, up from NOK 12.6 million to NOK 13.1 million in Q4 2020. Also for the full year, we have seen that our revenues are up significantly. We ended up 2020 on NOK 55.5 million compared to NOK 33 million last year. It's important to say that as we have talked about the previous presentations and in this one, COVID-19 related sales in the diagnostic area has played a significant role for this growth. It is, however, important to emphasize that we have experienced a significant drop in the research segment. As Jethro said also, sales of Shrimp Alkaline Phosphatase is reduced by more than 50% in 2020 compared to 2019. Of course, this drop in sales are offset by the strong sales we have seen in the diagnostic segment. Moving into the next slide, Jethro, please.
As we've talked about in previous presentations, we will no longer define COVID-related sales as upsides, as we believe they will be an integral part of our business going forward, and it will be tougher and tougher to estimate what kind of revenues that are transient and what kind of revenues that are part of the underlying business. We will, however, continue to report on estimated COVID-19 sales, even though we do not have full visibility into our customers' products and where our products are used in their products, essentially. For the fourth quarter in 2020, we have an estimated COVID-19 related sales of NOK 7 million, and this number ties in well with the revenues that we've seen in the last few quarters. Of course, if this is the kind of revenues we are to expect in the future, that remains to be seen.
As Jethro talked about earlier here, of that NOK 7 million in sales, the majority comes from the molecular diagnostics segment. As we also said, we are starting to see increasing numbers from the therapeutic segment now, especially related to the SAN product. Combined, COVID-19 sales for 2020 is estimated at close to NOK 26 million for the year or 28% of total sales for the year on the enzyme side of the business. Looking at the profitability side of the business, I think Q4 represents a significant change as to the structure on how we present our figures. Due to the divestment of Biotec BetaGlucans, the BetaGlucans segment shall no longer be presented as part of our operations on an EBITDA level.
For Q4 and for the full year 2020, Biotec BetaGlucans is presented with one line in our consolidated profit and loss statement called net profit from discontinued operations. All internal transactions between the mother company and Biotec BetaGlucans is also eliminated on an operations level. This is mainly due to accounting rules. It's a technical way of doing it, and it does not impact the net profit of the group as all intercompany transactions are eliminated anyway. Also, if you want to have more details on the discontinued operations, you can find quite an extensive note in the financial statement that describes some of the effects on the discontinued operations. At the end, with all necessary adjustments, ArcticZymes Technologies delivered an EBITDA of NOK 6.8 million for the quarter, compared to NOK 4.9 million in the same quarter last year.
For the full year 2020, exclusive of Biotec BetaGlucans, we secured an EBITDA of NOK 45.3 million, up from NOK 2.1 million in 2019, or more than a 2,000% increase. Our expenses are also up in the quarter. I think they are driven by investment in personnel expenses. We did, of course, experience the expenses related to the divestment of Biotec BetaGlucans, and these were around NOK 1 million. We have also seen an increase in property, plant, and equipment-related expenses and some on the IPR expenses for the fourth quarter. I think it is important to think a little bit, if we were to consider Biotec BetaGlucans as part of continued operations now, then EBITDA on a group level would've been NOK 11 million for the quarter and NOK 62 million for the full year.
As I said, these numbers are excluded on an EBITDA level, but they are part of the net profit line. It is worth saying that also that Biotec BetaGlucans did an amortization in excess of NOK 6 million related to WOULGAN in the fourth quarter of 2020 as well. On the margin side of the business, we continue to deliver EBITDA margins in excess of 30% for the quarter, and we have achieved significantly higher for the full year. This is significantly higher than when you look at comparable companies. Look at cash flow. With the divestment of Biotec BetaGlucans, our cash position at the end of the year was significantly strengthened and due to the NOK 70 million settlement on the 31st of December last year. It is also due to good performance in the underlying business.
At the end of the year, we had more than NOK 140 million in our bank accounts. We expect this one to be even further strengthened in the first quarter of 2021. One thing is with the underlying performance. We are also expecting that there is a final settlement relating to the divestment of Biotec BetaGlucans. If you remember, we had an enterprise value of NOK 70 million. It was sold on a cash-free, debt-free, and with normalized working capital adjustments. With our own calculations, this number is estimated to be in excess of NOK 16 million now. Of course, with the end of the year cash position we have now, I think we are well positioned for both organic and inorganic growth opportunities in the future.
I think with that, I will hand it over to Jethro now to talk a little bit about what we can expect for the future.
Thank you, Børge, for going under the hood of the numbers. That's appreciated. What I want to do is sort of give you a flavor of the outlook for 2021 and beyond and where we're going to focus. I think at the end of the day, we see, and I mentioned it a bit earlier, we enter a new era as a pure enzymes company, and it's great we can do that at the beginning of 2021. For this, our attention moving forward will be undivided and totally towards enzymes. With this, our attention will be in four key areas here. Firstly, we cannot forget performance. Performance, we're going to continue that. It's really going to be focused towards top-line sales growth. It's important to step back and emphasize and realize that ArcticZymes does serve three different market segments.
It's the therapeutic segment, the molecular diagnostic, and molecular research segment. We also have a growing customer base supported by over 300 customers, and this continues to grow. We have an expanding product range, we're adding new products all the time. I think this is what has been driven the earlier growth that you've seen and will continue to fuel growth moving forward. Profitability is also a focus for us, as it has been. We will work on increasing the profitability of ArcticZymes. I think as an enzyme business, we have done that since I've been in the company for the last six years. Profitability has been a focus and it's going to remain a focus moving forward. Investment as well.
I think that's something which is really key this year. I think as Børge mentioned, we have a strength in cash position, and we're going to make that cash work for us. We're going to make it work hard. Here we are this year, we are investing to leverage the greater potential from the business more long-term. Here, this is really about investing in the new expanded facilities we talked about earlier. It's also about investing in new and talented personnel. These are very much core to our organic growth initiatives. The last component is really about new innovations and new products. I think new product launches during this year will really allow ArcticZymes to reach parts of the market it cannot reach today. It allows us to take more of that value chain we're missing out on.
We have a small limited portfolio of enzymes today, so it's really important we build that out with synergistic products, and that's what we're really working on. I think new innovations and ramping up innovation efforts will bring ArcticZymes closer to realize its ambition of becoming Europe's leading one-stop shop enzyme supplier in the next two to three years. Of course, down the line, merger and acquisition will also be important to realize this ambition too. With that, I'm going to stop, and we invite you to pose your questions. Anybody who's called in by phone, if you want to ask a question, you can unmute your microphone using star six. Thank you.
Jethro, this is David Zetterlund of Invium Partners. Good morning. Can I start by asking about your SAN enzyme ramp-up? You've mentioned several times that you're running medium-sized batches, which is about 10 x the small batches that you've run historically, and you're about to run a large batch, which is 100 x bigger than what you've produced historically. How do you explain running such volumes? Well, how do you explain, what's the motivation for that? This year you've grown your SAN sales from NOK 11 million to NOK 38 million. Are you planning to sell 10x or 100 x that, or how does that reconcile with price pressure.
Yeah.
Things like that?
Good question, David. Let me explain. There are two parts to this. One, it's about serving existing business, and it's also about serving the growing demand as well. Basically, what we've been doing, 2020, we've been doing small-scale manufacturing. Actually, that's been back to back. Production's been really busy, and then more or less, one production line has been just tied up making small-scale SAN back to back. Of course, we've been working on that scale-up, and the point of the scale-up is to reduce the number of manufacturing cycles we do. Of course, it will also help you also improve the margin there as well. The point here is that, rather than doing back-to-back small batches, we can do one or two large batches per year.
That's to serve our existing customers as well, prepare us for the future for capacity from the new customers and the growth we see in our existing customers as well. I hope that sort of gives you an idea of what we're doing there. What we want to do, we want to make sure we're in front of the wave, commercial demand, when it comes to scale-up. There is a trigger in when you decide to start doing the scale-up activities. That's why we're working on them. Rather than just going to medium scale, that just helps us to get to the large scale. We probably won't use medium scale. We're going to use large scale. Scaling up from small scale straight to large scale, that is difficult. That's why we worked on a medium scale.
That helped us optimize what we needed to go to large scale. I think, the timing is perfect for us. What that means is, once we've got the large scale operation going, it frees a lot of resources up to put it onto some of the other manufacturing. We get more efficiency as well in our production.
Okay. Thank you. Second question, as it relates to ReiThera and their COVID vaccine. There was a media report earlier this week that a major investment by, I don't remember if it was EU or Italy as a country, but investing, I think, EUR 80 million into scaling up the company. They're talking production of 100 million doses per year. Can you in some way guide us to how that would impact your sales and earnings?
Yeah
ReiThera would produce 100 million doses?
Yeah. At the end of the day, we have a forecast. I can't tell you what that forecast is from them. That's confidential. Of course, at the end of the day, we're able to cater for that need. Of course, yes, demand is certainly going to grow, assuming they're successful, of course, in launching that. I think at the end of the day, we're all ready for that. I can't say what that forecast is because that's confidential.
Okay. Thanks.
Jethro, I have one question that I received on an email, and it was question, has SAN been negatively affected by the lockdown in all around the world, like with molecular research side?
Yes. That's a very good question. Yes, it has, actually. I think that's the feedback we get from our business development team. Actually, sales of SAN would have been more if it wasn't for the COVID-19 pandemic. I think that's really important because generally, there is different dynamics at play, with COVID-19 slowed some parts of the business down, but when lockdown comes off, other parts of the business speed up. I think, yeah. Again, coming back to the question, yes, it has had some negative impact, yeah.
Any other questions?
One more from me, Jethro. Your cost base was up, if you just look at the OpEx number. How much cost did you actually add, how much is sort of overhead added to your enzymes business now that Biotec BetaGlucans is gone?
I'll pass that one to Børge, if that's okay.
Yeah. I think if you also have a look in the financial statement, you can see that there are some of the expenses that we have been able to pass on to the Biotec BetaGlucans side of the business. We will no longer be able to pass on those expenses. Those for the whole year of 2020, these expenses are in excess of NOK 2 million for the full year. That is expenses that we will have to carry with us going forward now. It is, of course, also important to say that we have increased, as I said, the personnel on the ArcticZymes. We did a restructuring at the end of 2019, basically. We are a much larger enzymes organization than we were for one year ago.
Of course, with the increased sales, we have also had to take on some more expenses related to OpEx and things like that. To run the business as is, there was some higher expenses. Okay. I don't know if there are any other questions. I think we thank you all for attending this fourth quarter presentation, and we wish you all a great day going forward now. Okay.
Thank you.
Bye.