Presentation

Company Profile
Boule Diagnostics is a Swedish diagnostic company specialised in proprietary instruments and consumables for blood cell counting. The company offers automated blood cell counting systems for global human and veterinary market. Sales are foremost conducted via global distributors in more than 100 countries. The firm was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Spånga, Sweden.

Recent highlights
Net sales in Q2 increased by 22% (34% FX adjusted) y/y to SEK 111m (91m), beating our forecast by 6%. Instrument sales were also better than expected, coming in at 974 units compared with the PAS forecast of 900 units. Due to the product mix and the geographical split, the gross margin was significantly softer than expected at 41.6% versus the PAS forecast of 44.7%. EBIT was substantially lower than we expected, coming in at SEK 2.3m compared to our expectation of SEK 8.3m, mainly due to higher-than-expected expenses related to increasing marketing activities.

Outlook
The current order backlog is larger than normal according to Boule, a large proportion seems to be related to India, which is lower margin, and the supply chain disturbances are set to remain over H2, prompting us to decrease our gross margin assumptions for H2. We forecast the gross margin to slightly increase in Q3 to 42.3%. We argue that the higher-than-expected expenses is a positive indication of markets normalising, which should imply higher sales of consumables in the coming quarters as well.