[Featured Stock] Genolution's Operating Profit in H1 Soars 198 Times Year-on-Year... Explosive Demand for COVID-19 Nucleic Acid Extraction

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] Genolution is showing strong performance. The news of a sharp increase in sales and operating profit in the second quarter of this year appears to have influenced the stock price.

At 1:29 PM on the 12th, Genolution was trading at 43,900 KRW, up 22.28% from the previous day.

Genolution announced that its operating profit for the second quarter of this year was 12.8 billion KRW, an increase of 3,248.3% compared to the same period last year. Sales during the same period were 19.2 billion KRW, up 1,837.0%. For the first half of the year, cumulative sales reached 22.5 billion KRW and operating profit 13.5 billion KRW, representing increases of 1,201.2% and 19,793.4% respectively compared to the same period last year.

Founded in 2006, Genolution is a company that develops in vitro diagnostic medical devices centered on molecular diagnostics and sells RNA interference (RNAi) synthesis services. It was listed on the KONEX market in 2015. Through the growth potential special system, it was transferred and listed on the KOSDAQ market on the 24th of last month.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought attention to virus and RNA extraction specialized technologies. Genolution develops and sells nucleic acid extraction products that enable detection of pathogens by extracting DNA or RNA from human-derived materials in its core in vitro diagnostic business. Due to the spread of COVID-19, Genolution’s nucleic acid extraction equipment shortens testing time compared to existing devices, leading to increased exports as the company’s equipment is used not only domestically but also overseas for virus RNA extraction.

Genolution’s automated nucleic acid extraction equipment for extracting RNA of the COVID-19 virus is the ‘Nextractor® NX-48,’ which can process 48 samples within 15 minutes. Currently, the most commonly used nucleic acid extraction equipment in the global market can process 96 samples in 60 minutes, making it less efficient compared to Genolution’s product.