Oslo, Norway (6 April 2020)  - NattoPharma has seen a significant demand for our products during the first quarter, and we are experiencing more than 100% growth compared to the same period last year, with revenues exceeding NOK 55 million in the period. The Gross Margin is expected to be in the previously indicated range of 42% to 47%. The Adj. EBITDA is expected to be in excess of NOK 10 million for the period.

The increase in demand is a combination of organic growth and impact from the COVID-19 situation where individual customers have placed stock-orders to ensure they have product in case of disruption in supply. Due to the uncertainty related to the situation in the world markets we are not updating the general revenue guiding for the year at this stage and will come back to more information related to the outlook for 2020 in the Q1-2020 earnings release that will be held on May 6[th]. Although we have planned to host face to face presentations going forward, this earnings release will be held as a web-conference due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation.

During the unprecedented situation the world now is going through we want to provide an update on what the NattoPharma team is doing to ensure that we continue to meet our customers needs during this period and beyond. The attached statement related to the COVID-19 situation has been shared with all major customers and partners when this situation started to develop. The NattoPharma team continue to work diligently to ensure all these measures are still maintained so that our commitment to our customers and partners can continue as before this situation arose.

Further, in the finalization of the 2019 Annual Accounts, due to be released on April 30[th], the company has late March received a notice from the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department that the tariff code for formulated products containing vitamin K2 has been set to be a tariff code with higher duty than previously calculated. This has a retroactive effect on imports up to 4 years back in time and will have a negative impact on the 2019 financial results. The estimated impact is approx. NOK 2,7 million and will be accounted for in the 2019 Annual Accounts.

This change in ruling from the US CBP will have a future effect on import to the US of formulated products, however, due to more production now taking place locally in the US, the impact to the gross margin is limited, and is on an annual basis for 2020 estimated to be between 0,5% and 1,5% of total sales. Due to this limited impact we are not at this stage changing our guiding on Gross Margin for the year and maintain the expectation to be between 42% and 47% as earlier communicated.

 

For more information, please contact:

Kjetil Ramsøy, CEO, NattoPharma, kjetil.ramsoy@nattopharma.com

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

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