The French manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients Euroapi fell 60% on the stock market on Tuesday morning, investors taking note of a new downward revision of financial forecasts for 2023 and beyond. The stock took a long time to be listed after the opening, before plunging more than 60% in early trading. Around 10:35 a.m., it fell further by 58.78% to 5.01 euros, its lowest value since its IPO in May 2022. 650 million euros of market valuation thus disappeared, and the company is now worth less than 500 million euros in the eyes of investors.
Euroapi is among the main producers on the continent of active ingredients, substances which confer therapeutic properties to a medicine. It now estimates that its turnover will increase between 3 and 5% in 2023, compared to between 7 and 8% previously. The company explains this by “price pressure” and “inventory reduction programs at certain customers” as well as “delays or pauses of projects” due to financing problems of biotechnology companies.
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It has also suspended its medium-term outlook for 2023-2026 and will undertake a “strategic review” of its operational model. The results should be known at the time of the annual results, early 2024. “We are extremely surprised by such a significant revision just three months before the end of the year”, comment the analysts at Oddo BHF, who downgraded their rating of the company from “outperform” to “neutral” due to “lack of visibility”.
An alert and distrust
In August, Euroapi notably confirmed its annual sales growth objective and narrowed its profitability forecast range. Other analysts, such as those at Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan, have also significantly revised downwards their financial forecasts for the group, noted the Bloomberg agency. A former subsidiary of Sanofi, it was listed on the stock market at a price of 12 euros per share in May 2022 by the French laboratory, which had sold more than half of the capital in the operation.
After a promising start on the markets, allowing it to peak at more than 18 euros per share in October 2022, investors began to be wary of it after a first alert on results in December 2022 (-15.74% on the session of December 7) then disappointing annual results in March (-21% in one session on March 8), also punctuated by a postponement of its medium-term profitability objective.
(with AFP)
2023-10-10 22:06:43
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