Nightingale opens a laboratory in the United Kingdom

Translation: Original comment published in Finnish on 1/25/2023 at 8:52 am.

Nightingale announced it is opening a new laboratory in the UK during 2023 as part of the implementation of its growth strategy. The company has been working for years with many leading universities and the UK Biobank so opening a new laboratory is not surprising as such. By opening a local laboratory, the company aims to expand its partnerships within the medical research industry and make its technology available to the entire health ecosystem. In connection with the release, Nightingale also said it has hired a local team with expertise in medical research sales and disease risk prediction. The recruitments also aim to strengthen Nightingale’s unit specialized in genomic data analysis, which the company announced around a year ago in connection with the acquisition of the genetic testing company Negen.

Opening of the new laboratory is not a complete surprise

We believe that opening a new laboratory has only been a matter of time. We expect that the capacity of Nightingale's existing own laboratories in Finland and Japan have been in efficient use, so the implementation of the company's intended growth would have required an increase in laboratory capacity in any case. On the other hand, a more extensive laboratory network enables faster and more logistically effective service for local customers, which we suspect will improve the attractiveness of its services.

The laboratory opening could be followed by commercial advances

We believe that establishing the laboratory is a good sign of progress in Nightingale’s growth strategy, but the news does not lead to an immediate change in our view of the company. In our view the bottleneck in the company's growth lies in achieving commercial contracts, and in particular in expanding these to a significant size. However, the opening of the laboratory indicates that the company is in active customer discussions in the UK, so we eagerly follow the company's future news flow concerning commercial advances. We believe improving visibility to strong growth progressing is the key for the development of Nightingale’s growth story at the moment.