Booming sales for Invent Medic
Sales of the Efemia Bladder Support and the Efemia Menstrual Cup have picked up for Lund-based Invent Medic. For Q3, the company reported 160 per cent growth in sales, while costs continue to fall. BioStock contacted CEO Anna Lindström to find out more.
Invent Medic’s product portfolio is developed to promote women’s health in various ways. Efemia Bladder Support is designed to help women suffering from stress urinary incontinence (SUI), and Efemia Menstrual Cup is a new patented menstrual cup developed to be both comfortable and compliant, while being safe from leakage.
In the past year, the company has focused on sales and marketing activities, and CEO Anna Lindström already hinted this spring that she saw signs indicating that this focus would yield good results in the autumn. Looking at the company’s third quarter performance, Lindström was right. Sales for the third quarter amounted to 861 000 SEK, an increase of approximately 160 per cent compared to last year’s third quarter. Sales increased sequentially by approximately 10 per cent from the second quarter.
“It is extra encouraging that we managed to break another quarterly record and maintain the positive trend from the second quarter. We have previously had weaker sales during the summer months,” Anna Lindström writes in her CEO statement in the Q3 report.
Continued success for the bladder support
With a new quarterly record, sales for the first nine months already exceed Invent Medic’s sales for the full year of 2021. The strong sales are mainly attributed to the bladder support, where the company has seen a clear increase in the number of single packages sold in the Nordic market. The sales figures are also boosted by the fact that the British distributor iMedicare has started selling the product. The distribution agreement with iMedicare was signed in March this year, aimed at markets in the UK and Ireland, and the collaboration was officially launched in the second quarter.
Continuing investments in healthcare
Even with a considerable pick up in sales, there is still a lot to be done to ensure that the bladder support enters the market properly. BioStock recently wrote an article about the efforts to secure the product’s place in the market. Learn more. In addition to marketing towards end customers, activities are also underway aimed at healthcare professionals.
Among other things, the process for SUI diagnosis is developed together with healthcare professionals, to make sure that patients can come into contact with the product earlier.
If we turn to Efemia’s menstrual cup, the marketing efforts continue unabated. In the report, Invent Medic states that it has successfully worked with grading services such as Trustpilot, and the product has also been made available at several Swedish online pharmacies such as Apotea and Apoteket Hjärtat.
Improved earnings and focus on financing
While Invent Medic continues to focus on increasing sales, the company has also been able to further reduce costs during the quarter. According to the company, expenses are 20 per cent below the level seen in the second quarter. This, together with the increased sales, means that the result for the third quarter amounts to -2.2 million SEK, which can be compared to a loss of almost 4 MSEK for the corresponding quarter in 2021. The same goes for the cash flow statement, where operating cash flow for the period was -1.8 MSEK, compared to -4.5 MSEK for the third quarter of 2021.
Despite the improved earnings and cash flow, more attention is being directed towards the cash position, which at the end of the quarter was approximately 4.7 MSEK. Anna Lindström writes that she, together with the board, is actively working on the long-term financing. This work runs in parallel with the acquisition strategy that was communicated last spring, which you can read more about here.
Comments from the CEO
BioStock contacted Anna Lindström to find out more about how she sees the development during the third quarter and the work that lies ahead.
First of all, you are performing your best quarter so far. Do you see this momentum holding up going forward?
– We are working towards sales growth, and there is still a lot to do and prove in Germany and the UK, among other places. We have high hopes for the new distributors who have now started working on their respective markets.
– Even in Sweden there is more to do, and here we have two new framework agreements, one with Region Stockholm and one with Region Jönköping. We are working intensively with both by meeting the medical community and discussing Efemia and how to prescribe it. It takes time to process the market, and it is fun to see how what we did at the beginning of the year is now paying off.
In the report, you write that sales of the bladder support have gotten a goot start in the UK. What does it look like for the German market?
– We have just attended the annual meeting of the Incontinence Society in Germany and showcased the product to key opinion leaders and other important players in the German market. This is a very important milestone in the marketing of Efemia bladder support in Germany. We are now continuing to raise awareness among healthcare professionals and to get the product into more health insurance companies.
You are currently actively working on your communicated acquisition strategy. Can you tell us a little about what kind of company you are looking for?
– We are looking for companies that fit into Invent Medic, where we can see clear synergy effects in e.g. sales, marketing, the product range. An acquisition target must already have at least one product on the market with existing sales. It is also important that the companies have similar visions – to contribute to better women’s health and to actively drive the issue forward.
The year is coming to an end, and you have already increased sales sharply in 2022. Looking a little further ahead, what does the goal look like for 2023?
– To continue to grow as a company. There is more to do in the markets in which we are now established and we are also looking at new markets, especially in Europe. We have a strong position, given that we are already certified in accordance with the new medical device regulations, MDR. We see that competitors are now leaving Europe because they cannot meet the new requirements.
The content of BioStock’s news and analyses is independent but the work of BioStock is to a certain degree financed by life science companies. The above article concerns a company from which BioStock has received financing.
