Microbix Biosystems Inc. (TSX:MBX)
Canada flag Canada · Delayed Price · Currency is CAD
0.2550
0.00 (0.00%)
May 1, 2026, 3:57 PM EST
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q2 2024

May 15, 2024

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss Microbix's Q2 results, which they posted this morning. With me, I have Cameron Groome, CEO, Ken Hughes, COO, and Jim Currie, CFO. I think the format will be just a bit of an overview of the quarter and then Q&A, of course. So if you have any questions, feel free to input them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen.

Alternatively, you can email them to me at deborah@adcap.ca. And we may not work off a presentation today, but just so you're aware, this session will contain forward-looking statements. You can find more about those on the company's presentation on their website, which we're hopeful to update later today with the financial results. With that out of the way, Cameron, why don't you take the mic and give us a little bit of an overview on the quarter?

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Sure thing. Thank you so much, Deborah, and thank you, everybody, for taking the time to spend with us this morning. These results, of course, are for our second quarter of fiscal 2024. That's the quarter ended March 31st, 2024. We're very pleased to report strong results for the quarter. Our revenues were quite robust at CAD 5.6 million for the quarter, or a smidge over CAD 5.6 million. This is, in fact, our best-ever quarter for product sales by a smidge and exceeds a previous high that was heavily weighted with DxTM sales to government. There were no DxTM sales to government in the current quarter, but we beat that prior all-time record in spite of that.

The overall sales were up quite strongly, a 34% increase year-over-year, driven by strength in, interestingly, both our antigens and test ingredients business and our quality assessment product, medical device business were both up strongly. Gross margins were acceptable. I think we could have done better if everything had clicked over perfectly in terms of manufacturing for the quarter. But at 52%-53%, we were broadly satisfied with that. And really, looking forward, we had good cost control on the selling, general, and administrative and R&D expenses and interest expenses. So with that level of revenues, very much in line with, I think, the loose guidance we provided that, about CAD 5 million a quarter is our break-even level for revenues with a reasonable product mix, and that, approximately 50 cents of the dollar beyond that, break-even point has the potential to move to the bottom line.

CAD 377,000 in net earnings or about CAD 400,000, that's a 7% net margin for the company in the quarter. I think, given this particular level of revenues, that's what we would hope to achieve with them. So I think we got, by and large, we're pleased with the quarter. The combination of strong revenues and spending control led to that margin and obviously good free cash flow and balance sheet position as well. Maybe I can invite Jim to supplement those comments and, if there's any further color you wanted to provide, Jim.

Jim Currie
CFO, Microbix

Sure. Thanks, Cameron. Maybe just a few points. One of the things that one of the areas that we saw some good, strong growth that, obviously was in our antigens or test ingredients business with over CAD 4 million in sales the quarter. And we're seeing, good, excellent growth coming from our Asian distributor. Of note is the fact that we've actually, in the first half of this year, quadrupled what we had last year for the first half, and we're up more than 50% from the second half of last year in terms of, sales to that Asian distributor. So we've been talking about the fact that we've been starting to see a ramp-up. We saw the start of the ramp-up in last year, and we're seeing the fruits of that ramp-up, in the first quarter half of this year.

We were expecting some strong performance from that distributor in the second half of this year as well. We had a really good, strong mix of all products. Often we get margins and bottom line impacted by the mix of the products that we had, but we had contributions from all of our more significant products this quarter. We've got a good, strong order backlog. We're sitting at over CAD 9 million in order backlog at the end of the half. Our cash position is still strong. We've got over CAD 12-13 million in cash and another CAD 2 million in the credit facility. And we've also been using this cash in a couple of areas. One is in the purchase of capital equipment.

So we've, we added another CAD 600,000 of capital equipment in the quarter, and that has been predominantly used for enhancing the equipment and adding equipment to further the growth in manufacturing. We also have used cash in share buyback program, and we've acquired close to 1.2 million shares in the first half of the year. We've added another sort of 100,000 or so in the last few months or month and a half as well. So overall, good, strong financial performance, good, strong balance sheet at this point in time.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Perfect. Very good. Jim, just to recap, the cash level, I think you mentioned it, quarter end.

Jim Currie
CFO, Microbix

Yeah. Yeah, the cash position is CAD 12 million-CAD 13 million, close to CAD 13 million.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Perfect. Thank you.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

This is, of course, illustrative of the capacity building we've been doing over the last little while. We've easily serviced the growth in the business with some new innovative products and innovative processes and also operational excellence. We have the capacity now to take it on from there.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

I think these are great points to make. You know, we're continuing meaningfully building the financial strength of the business. So we're in a very strong financial and strategic position, and I think both of those are important for us at this stage. You know, our customers, we're seeing, as we've noted, a good surge in all categories, very strong in the antigen test ingredients businesses. Manufacturers' demand continues to increase for those critical products. And we're also seeing very strong engagement and priming the pump for growth in our even far greater growth in our QAPs business with strong relationships with the laboratory proficiency testing and accreditation agencies. That segment of the business continues to build very strongly, as does the relationships with major test manufacturers, particularly in the point-of-care side, but also in laboratory medicine as well.

Last, but not least, the clinical laboratories, we're starting to see a greater, more meaningful number of sales directly to some of the major clinical lab chains, which is nice to see as our name gets out there a little bit more from our regular participation in conferences. And we're seeing revenues driven from that customer base as well. So I think we're broadly, we're certainly not complacent, but I think we are seeing evidence of real progress in the fundamentals of our business. A few things I'll also mention. We're certainly continuing, as Jim mentioned, on the physical builds. We're progressing with the final completion, QC of products as well as completion of automated vial filling. We're moving forward on both those initiatives, as is our practice. We'll make fulsome disclosures, and those all are entirely complete.

We are also moving into novel, additional novel formats for our QAPs products. I'll note the disclosures we made earlier in the spring, in March concerning the paraffin-formatted tissue sample mimetics, which starts to move us into controls in oncology, which is another important area that I think we'll start to see revenues from over the, you know, over the coming quarters and years, extending the expertise we've built in infectious diseases into other exciting new markets as well. So we'll see that with product formats and test types also. So, a lot of good things happening, and we're making them happen while keeping the company in a very good position of financial strength.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

Yeah. I mean, we've been deploying government grant funding and interest-free loans from government to build capacity, including automation, scale-up, and so on and so forth. And that's been implemented and is now manifested in our ability to satisfy the market and continue with our growth. You know, we have a number of labs coming online right now, and they've been, you know, two-thirds supported by external funding. Both we invest reinvest our own monies to make sure that we can build going forward, and everything's going very well in that regard.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Yeah, very, very much so. Good. Well, a few of the, you know, this is principally about the annual for our disclosure here. This quick assessment for the sixth, I think, over CAD 13.5 million for the full year of fiscal track for the record year of 2024. We'll see how our Q3 and Q4 shake out, but we certainly see a very strong progression of quarters as we move forward with our customers in building markets, and advancing the values. And speaking of which, another thing that we have been able to announce over the course of the spring is, of course, the announced CDMO engagement, which occurred in March as well, whereby our development partner, Sequel Pharma, has moved forward with engagement of a contract development and manufacturing organization to revitalize the manufacturing of the drug substance.

This is a very meaningful spend that they're undertaking and arguably the most critical stage to advancing that product, a critical contractor to engage. Ken, do you want to comment a little bit further on that as well?

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

Yeah, sure. The CDMO that Microbix and Sequel I mean, the Sequel ultimately commissioned is very sophisticated, and the work is going very well. I'm very we're very pleased with their technical acumen and their experience in this particular area.I don't really see any problems associated with this. They clearly have a good handle on what we're trying to achieve here. As Cameron correctly says, the production of the drug substance is really the well, it's the it's the most significant part of the entire program. There's no real risk associated with it, but there is a significant amount of expertise, and that expertise is clearly there at the CDMO that we've commissioned. So we expect to move forward according to the plan we've disclosed previously. And at this point in time, I don't see any particular problem with that.

We're advancing quickly, and the technical acumen, as I say, is very much in place, and work is underway. And our relationship with Sequel and their financial backer is maintained as strong, and it's going very, very well. Yeah, they have excellent technical expertise as well. And so, as I say, we're just moving forward, and I don't see any problems at this particular time.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Oh, thank you. Thank you, Ken. Yeah, I think another thing I'll mention is just that can be driving in these fields. You know, in the test ingredients business, certainly, we're the cutting edge you are actually growing, purifying and extracting the native organisms to create tests for the best possible sensitivity and specificity. And the innovations that we've pursued inspired from the effective [biochar] charging enhanced technology and are enabling us to keep up with the growth in demand such as that of novel techniques and technologies driven by the skill of our staff demonstrates very good technical leadership to industry. And whether that is our range of high-risk HPV controls that's really taken us to the forefront of detection of the actual virus, this has been excellent for us. Our work in antimicrobial resistance tests and controlling those has been very well received.

More recently, some of our work in mimicking tissue-infected tissue samples has been very well received as presented at a global conference in Scandinavia. And additional work such as our work with serum room temperature-stable controls for molecular detection of H. pylori. You know, those of us in the business are aware of the discovery of H. pylori as the cause for—excuse me. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Jim was just alerting me that we're having some internet problems and that there is some instability of the feed. So I apologize if I am cutting in and out at all during this.

The thing that I was mentioning was that, in spite of this organism having been discovered a long, long time ago, there was, there were problems with the controls being inadequate that were preventing the full transition of molecular testing of HPV, that we are now addressing and, again, demonstrating, leadership in this in this nature. Just if we're bandwidth challenged, I don't. Yeah, I was gonna need to interrupt, but it might be a good idea for Ken and Jim to turn off their cameras.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Yeah, I was gonna say maybe.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

If there's some bandwidth.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

As much as we love seeing you guys, maybe shut down the cameras, and hopefully that helps with the audio.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Very good.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

I'll do mine.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Okay. Sure. I'm all alone here now. Okay. Well, with that, Deborah, maybe, maybe we could break for some questions from our attendees.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Sure.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

I know we've got a number of shareholders and representatives of the capital markets on the call, so delighted to have everybody and to address questions to the best extent we can.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Sounds good. Okay. First question was, was distributor stocking a significant factor in the quarter? How do you monitor distributor inventory levels?

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Most of our sales continue to be direct. All of our, just making sure I don't misstate myself here. Yeah, most of our sales are direct with the exception of our antigen distributor into Asia. Because of the abruptness with which demand has resurged on the ingredients business, certainly, all product that we're shipping is immediately being sold through to cut to end users. So there's definitely no element of channel stuffing in the test ingredients business. In our controls business, we have for the most part, our proficiency testing and lab accreditation agencies are taking product on a just-in-time basis for their, regular program challenge events, for the labs that subscribe to their, services.

For, other QAPs customers, we don't see a significant amount of inventorying going on, with the possible exception of validation lots that are generated, prior to FDA registrations of assays. But those are relatively small production runs, and we'll pull through quite quickly on the approval of the assays. I hope that addresses the question.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

I think so. I've got a couple other questions that came in via email, so I'm just gonna switch over there. So first question, with Quidel Ortho withdrawing the 510(k) submission for the Savanna respiratory virus test and developing a next-generation RVP4+ assay that expects to be commercially available during the 2024-25 respiratory season, how much revenue do you expect to get from Quidel for the remainder of this year and next, and how much revenue from other QAPs customers of those two periods? And I apologize I butchered that question, Cameron.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

There's a lot to unpack there. Okay. I've gotta make certain that I'm maintaining the required levels of confidentiality from our interactions with QuidelOrtho, which is a disclosed customer of ours. So I'll.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

It's also a last question in the Q&A box if you need to revisit or.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Okay. Sure. Let me pull it up just, just for that purpose as well. Okay. Thank you. So, QuidelOrtho which is QDEL on NASDAQ, a, but, but the fifth largest diagnostics company globally, has developed just for those that may not have followed this as precisely as this question has developed a very capable portable, or point-of-care PCR testing instrument. It's about the size of a two-slice toaster, maybe a smidge bigger, and fits a cartridge in about the size of a thick slice of toast into the front of it that can simultaneously test for as many as 16 different pathogens from one patient sample and can accept a few different formats of patient samples. So it's a very, very beautifully designed assay and does full PCR on the sample to generate those results. We are supporting the launch of all assays on that instrument.

Thus far, there have been two assays commercially available. One is a respiratory virus four-plex panel that is available in Europe. The other is a three-plex genital ulcers panel that is available in North America. QuidelOrtho had filed for a second-generation respiratory four-plex panel for North America for 510(k) FDA approval, and then withdrew that assay. Obviously, as noted specifically in this question, from presumably Quidel disclosures, they have not sat idly, and do not intend that they have. Sorry, I'm just doing a double negative. They certainly don't intend to not participate in respiratory testing. So they are developing, as noted in the question, an RVP4+ assay for launch, and that also has fallen under our relationship with them and we'll be supporting that.

So there are other assays that QuidelOrtho has previously disclosed that it's also moving forward with at full pace. And, certainly, we expect that QuidelOrtho will achieve multiple FDA registrations for the planned suite of assays which I believe the disclosed suite is eight multiplex assays that QuidelOrtho has targeted for use on the Savanna instrument. They have noted that they do not expect revenues from the Savanna to exceed the sort of 5% threshold for materiality. That's the general rule of thumb. So with their revenues of $2.8 billion, you can do the math on that. So, well, revenues may not be as significant for QuidelOrtho. They certainly continue to be significant for Microbix. And our 2024 budget is really about supporting QuidelOrtho with the development of novel multiplex controls for the Savanna and the validation orders.

We don't have anything in our budget for 2024, in relation to commercial launches. That will start to shake into our 2025 numbers, as we see that. In spite of that, we're still on track to achieve record revenues and earnings in fiscal 2024, make no mistake. So, hopefully, that addresses that question.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Yeah. How much revenue from QuidelOrtho are you anticipating this quarter, Q3?

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

I'm not prepared to be that granular.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Okay. Here's another audience question. Microbix expects meaningful growth in earnings in 2024, but with CAD 2,833,109 in earnings in the first half of 2024, that could mean meaningful losses in the coming two quarters. Does MBX not expect to be meaningfully profitable the next two quarters? That's the first question there, Cameron.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Let me just look at that here. Just a moment. I'll scroll up. Yes, obviously, we had a fantastic first quarter, and that was driven in, in part by Kinlytic, the recognition of Kinlytic-related milestones. I think we demonstrated in the second we've been quite transparent in the terms of where our breakeven point stands, for the company from operating revenues. And Q2 demonstrates that quite clearly. You know, above CAD 5 million in revenues, we should report some profits. Should our revenues to be below CAD 5 million in a quarter, we would slip into small losses, but those would not be material. And nor is that what we're targeting. So I don't see meaningful losses, quote-unquote, coming up in any future quarter for that matter. And, quite to the contrary, we're targeting meaningful profitability.

The biggest question is, you know, when as our customers achieve traction in markets where our products are directly tied in and as we're continuing to build our customer base and our product line, we see those revenues growing quarter to quarter, not shrinking.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

And then how are your costs related to Kinlytic being covered? What is the timing of the $30 million in milestone payments? And are these payments the means that you're being reimbursed for your Kinlytic costs incurred to advance the drugs? That's the last question there, Cameron.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Yes. The you know, big, big purpose I mean, our big purpose of partnering Kinlytic was to not be betting the company on the outcome of a single project or or asset. You know, Microbix has a very healthy business in the diagnostics field. And as we grow that, it did not make sense to us to jeopardize the overall health of the company by spending and we're talking about big numbers. You're talking you know, on either side of $10 million for the CDMO work that's being undertaken now. So that would take our entire treasury for just that stage of the project. So a whole purpose for us was to cover those costs associated with Kinlytic and have a partner pay for them.

So, certainly, our partners are paying for the direct costs associated with that project, and they are also reimbursing Microbix for the technical support and other support that we are providing for the project. So there is no drag on Microbix from Kinlytic. It is all upside for us. And there are some milestones associated with approval of the product and associated with sales thresholds. So again, as we've disclosed, right now, we'll have two to three disclosures a year associated with Kinlytic as different milestones like the CDMO contract signing are achieved.

But we will be looking at having to have the project make meaningful progress before we start seeing additional big-money milestones. And those big-money milestones are coupled to big-money royalties. So we look at this as a supercharger or turbocharger on the earnings we expect to be generating with the engine of our diagnostics business. Can you jump in? So I think you're champing at the bit to make a comment.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

Just a comment on that. Obviously, the group now can see what my favorite rock band is based on the picture that went up there. In terms of Kinlytic, our expenses are fully covered in real time to support this group. Obviously, we have deep expertise in the scientific manufacturing and regulatory side, and we provide a lot of advice in that regard. Obviously, the CDMO is doing the lab work, but we are overviewing that and providing counsel on that. And the costs of doing that and the travel and everything else is fully reimbursed in real time, and that's nothing to do with subsequent milestones. In terms of the timeline, the timeline has not changed as previously disclosed. As I said earlier, everything's going really well, and as it should. We expect to realize revenues at the time we said we would.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Great. Thank you, Ken. Hang on. I see a pointy question there, which I'll be happy to answer. It says, "Except for a stronger Q1, QAPs revenues appear to have been stuck in a range, per quarter for about 2-2.5 years. The range described of CAD 1.1 million-CAD 1.6 million a quarter. Why aren't we seeing more robust and consistent growth in this business line?" So it's a great question. For starters, I'll just point out that, QAPs sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 actually exceeded the range described; there were CAD 2.2 million. So QAPs sales in Q1 did break out above the previous range. We've seen them ease back a little bit in Q2.

We see very much an inevitability to point-of-care technology being available and made widely available for more widely available for use in supporting access to care and prompt and accurate diagnoses. The timing of that is where, you know, we're all getting a bit frustrated. As some of our major customers such as, you know, QuidelOrtho with Savanna have seen a meaningful delay of about 18 months over the timeframe they'd originally expected, and we're a little bit caught up in that. As tests roll out, the math becomes extremely compelling, and we're just making sure that we're positioned to support all of these companies. It's certainly not just QuidelOrtho. Please be disabused of that notion that we only have one such customer being developed.

That is a relationship that formalized to the extent where we could publicly announce it, but there are other relationships we're building that have not been announced, that are with very prominent companies in the field as well. So, we see this coming. They see it coming. We're also getting very good traction in the clinical lab side with our, I mentioned earlier, HPV controls, but also with our, supporting installation of new instruments with our onboard kits is, very popular, becoming a meaningful revenue source as well. So we see a lot of opportunities in front of us, and, it's a question of when, not whether, in our minds.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Okay. One last question. Congrats on the continued excellent execution. With respect to the NCIB, is the company still entertaining block sales for motivated sellers?

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Absolutely, yes. Our NCIB, we're able to, of course, there are specific rules around normal course issuer bids or share buybacks as they're as they're more, well known. For example, we cannot buy on an uptick. We have to wait for a downtick. We're allowed to buy a certain amount of shares per day, and we buy that whenever we can. And we're able to participate in one block trade per week, and we will react to blocks. So, you know, our, the investment dealer managing our normal course issuer bid is Pacific International Securities. So anybody who is may want to sell a block, we are absolutely a buyer. Jim mentioned, you know, we bought 1.2-1.3 million shares back since restarting the normal course issuer bid in December of 2023.

You know, our objective is to buy back well in excess of the number of shares potentially issuable in association with option plan awards. So, we certainly like to buy back 3, 4, 5 million shares if we can. So, you know, we are active in that NCIB and want to be more active in that NCIB.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Excellent. Well, that's all I see for questions. Cameron, was there anything you wanted to talk about today that we didn't get to?

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Yeah. I think, Deborah, you know, the message being we're running this company, as you know, as a professional business, we are engaged in a very material way with many major companies in the diagnostics industry. And, you know, there's a slide I've added in our corporate deck, a few slides where we see the Microbix M in a horizontal position. And I'll just share that, actually, for fun. And, you know, I think this really illustrates a bit of where we are, between our customers and our markets. Just see if I can get this to go full screen here. There we go. You know, we have our different categories of customers. We have the external quality assessment or PT agencies. We have test makers we engage with.

We have clinical labs that we're building. And all of these customers are trying to access different markets for whether this is for research use only or lab-developed tests, whether it's IBD lab tests, whether it's point-of-care lab tests. And what we're finding is between our customers and their target markets, there's a need for the products that we're providing, a need for our antigens, a need for our QAPs, a need for reagents. And this has put us in a very strong position to solve customer needs and build our revenues and profitability by doing so. So, you know, all of this is about making sure tests work, whether it's the ingredients, whether it's our QAPs, whether it's our reagents that we're selling in support of those. All of this is critical to the industry, and we're demonstrating a critical role.

You know, I was at a customer meeting not long ago where we were discussing a project with them, and we were asking this major international company, there are different ways we could solve issues you need us to address. How would you like to approach it? There are different options. And they said, "Well, you tell us. You're the experts." And I found that, you know, very gratifying to have a global, multinational, very, very well respected, recognizing Microbix's expertise in this field. And I think as we continue to add to our product lines and our customers and our base of revenues, we'll see that recognized more broadly in equity capital markets as well.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Mm-hmm.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

I think the slide Cameron just showed is really great because it really illustrates what we are and why we've been doing what we're doing. It's clear that we have a lot of opportunities of customers coming through to address their own markets. The slide makes the point that we don't compete with our customers. So we don't make tests, for instance. As has been said, we make everybody's tests better. We're agnostic to the test which addresses the market. We help them all.

It also speaks to why we're building capacity and the opportunities going forward and being successful in regard to adding and implementing the new electronic quality management system, the new enterprise resource planning software to make sure we have the capacity and the scalability to service those markets going forward and being ready for the opportunities that are clearly coming, as I think is really well illustrated in that slide. And everything we've presented today, despite the dodgy Wi-Fi, is illustrative of that trajectory and that goal.

And that slide summarizes the opportunity going forward. And we're pursuing with all vigor. And I wanted to say we have a great team here, which are continually updating processes and developing new products, validating them to be regulatory and quality compliant. We're just going to continue executing that in that regard. I hope the shareholders see what we're doing that, and we're going to build value through doing that and being consistent in doing that.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Yeah. And there are a few interesting trends going on as well that I think are some good tailwinds for us, additional to that. One is, of course, the transition in Europe from the in vitro diagnostic directives, IVDD, to the in vitro diagnostic regulations, or IVDR. And this is putting a heightened level of rigor, requiring a heightened level of rigor and subjecting companies in our sector to a higher level of scrutiny for their products. And that's a standard we're committed to meet and exceed. But some levels of competition will fall away as a result of that.

And we're also seeing, similarly, in the United States, the FDA has just issued final guidance and decisions on how they will implement increased scrutiny on laboratory developed tests, which are often used in lieu of formally approved assays that have gone through the 510(k) or PMA processes. And the FDA is saying, you know, these loopholes weren't intended for use in millions and tens of millions of tests, and we're going to start to put a stop to it over time. And that's going to bring a greater requirement for the quality monitoring, quality assessment of assays in the United States and Europe.

And I think positions us very well to help companies and to make sure that tests actually are accurate, that we're avoiding false negatives and false positives. It's important work. It's work we demonstrate we're demonstrating there's a market for, and we're going to be growing with our customers across their portfolios of new products.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

That's all. Regulatory compliance teams all over these changes. And as ahead of the curve as these new regulations come into play.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Very good. Jim, what, what comments would you want to conclude with about, about our second quarter?

Jim Currie
CFO, Microbix

Yeah. I think, Cameron, it's indicative of the work that we've been doing over the last couple of years in terms of getting, you know, all of our business areas firing at all cylinders. And I think the emphasis on growing the antigen business as well as the QAPs business and that was interesting, that question on the QAPs business about, you know, sort of indicating rather level growth. But we're looking at the QAPs business this year to grow by 40%. And I don't see that as limited growth. We do see some, you know, additional upside to the QAPs business, but we're also seeing it from the antigen business.

You know, when we're looking at over CAD 6 million in the antigen business in the first half of the year, and we've got some excellent, strong order backlog for the test ingredients antigen business in the second half and even into next year. So we've got, and Ken has identified the fact that we've invested in our infrastructure that will allow us to grow both businesses in the facilities that we've got that we're expanding upon right now. So the outlook for the business, not just Q2, it was a strong quarter, but we're looking for the continued growth and continued strength and profitability of this business as we go into 2025 as well.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Thank you. Thank you, Jim. I think those are great points. And we're, you know, we're running a very serious business. And, you know, having state-of-the-art systems, Jim and the team have successfully transitioned to a new ERP system. We're continuing to work for full digital quality management systems, and rolling that out across the organization. And we've done all this, you know, while maintaining profitability. So, you know, we're positioning we've positioned the company to capture some serious growth.

And that's what we're doing and what we're continuing to execute on. So, you know, thank you, everyone, for your interest and support. And know that we take it very seriously and are committed to building value. You know, everyone on the call here, as well as the management team, you know, owns shares, in addition to being incented with participation in our option plan. So our interests really are aligned with shareholders.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

That's great. Well, congrats on a great quarter and a great start to the year. You must be happy laying that foundation for growth for the future as well. Market seems to like it. I mean, stock's up CAD 0.02 since we started the call, up 12% on the day. So hopefully, hopefully, that momentum continues. Thank you all for taking the time to have this webinar. Thanks to the investors that participated and for your questions. If anyone has any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out. Or if you'd like a one-on-one meeting, also feel free to reach out, and we could get that arranged for you. Thanks, everyone.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Absolutely.

Deborah Honig
Investor Relations Representative, Microbix

Thank you, everybody. Yeah. Have a great day.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

Hey, guys.

Cameron Groome
CEO, Microbix

Thanks. Take care, everybody. Bye.

Ken Hughes
COO, Microbix

Bye.

Powered by