Nightingale's at-home blood testing pilot attracted interest and is advancing on track

Translation: Original comment published in Finnish on 06/23/2021 at 13:35

Nightingale announced on Wednesday June 23, 2021, that it had completed the first phase of its at-home blood testing pilot. The pilot that covered 10,000 consumers was launched in Q2, and according to the company, orders were filled quickly after ordering was opened. The blood samples collected at home were shipped for analysis to Nightingale’s laboratory during June 2021. Due to strong interest by consumers, Nightingale will launch the second phase of the pilot in July 2021. The pilot will consist in total of three phases, and all phases are estimated to be completed by the end of 2021 in accordance with the original schedule.

Prior to the home tests, Nightingale has carried out blood analysis on venous blood samples collected in laboratories. We believe the ongoing at-home blood testing pilot is an essential step towards user-friendliness of the company’s service and better comprehensive service as at-home testing enables the user to receive test results without having to visit a laboratory. The company commented that enabling blood collection at customers’ homes provides a logistically efficient solution to expand the availability of Nightingale’s technology rapidly to the global market. The interest attracted by the pilot and its progress is a good preliminary sign of this testing channel working.

We believe Nightingale can with at-home testing offer consumers assessments on their state of health and disease risks in line with its current health index so the at-home tests would complement the company’s alternatives for sampling already at this stage. However, the company does not at this stage have as extensive samples analyzed from at-home testing for diagnostics use as it has from venous blood samples collected in laboratories. We do not see this as a bottleneck for using at-home tests as the company focuses on describing people’s health situation and predicting disease risks and does not, currently, try to compete as a subcontractor in laboratory diagnostics.

In the months after the IPO, Nightingale has carried out measures in line with its promises on schedule and even faster so in the very short term, the company’s progress has been good. In terms of preconditions for extensive commercialization of Nightingale’s technology, progress in at-home testing is clearly positive, even though the importance in the big picture is still low at this stage. Building of the company’s business and the growth story being successful involve huge risks and the demand for and size of the commercial potential of the services in line with the agreements announced by the company earlier this spring (Terveystalo in Finland, Mitsui/Welltus in Japan) will be revealed only in future. If these commercial models work and attract extensive interest, we believe at-home testing would enable a better customer experience and a scalable model to increase the number of samples taken and expand the customer portfolio. Nightingale will publish its financial statement release on September 15, which offers the next checkpoint for how the company’s strategy is progressing.