The share price of home ultrasound devices company Pulsenmore (TASE: PULS), founded and run by Dr. Elazar Sonnenschein, has risen by about 50% in the past two sessions on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, after the company announced that global imaging giant GE Healthcare had entered into a strategic investment and distribution agreement with it.
GE Healthcare will invest up to $50 million in Pulsenmore. The share price for the purposes of the deal (NIS 20) is double Pulsenmore's market price before the announcement. This is a significant stamp of approval for Pulsenmore's technology and products, and represents a substantial step towards penetration of the US market.
Pulsenmore's portable home ultrasound device is intended for pregnant women as an alternative to a visit to a hospital emergency department when there is a decline in fetal movement or some other reason to fear fetal distress.
GE Healthcare will invest $21 million in Pulsenmore, and a further $21 million when Pulsenmore receives approval to sell its products in the US. If Pulsenmore holds an equity offering by the end of 2023, GE Healthcare will be able to buy up to 20% of the shares on offer, and Pulsenmore will be able to require it to invest up to $8 million in the offering.
Under the agreement, GE Healthcare receives the exclusive right to distribute Pulsenmore's pregnancy product in the US, Europe and Japan, with twenty customers for which GE Healthcare will be the exclusive distributor. GE Healthcare will be able to distribute the products to additional customers and in additional territories, but it will not have exclusivity. GE Healthcare has committed to ordering 20,000 units of the pregnancy product, and it can order up to 50,000 units annually. The product price in the agreement was not disclosed, but in Pulsenmore's agreement with the Clalit health fund, 20,000 units translate into revenue of about $6 million.
Pulsenmore's share price has had its ups and downs since the company went public. In June 2021, it raised NIS 137 million at NIS 16 per share (a company valuation of NIS 740 million). In its 2021 financials, it reported revenue of just NIS 1.5 million, with no orders backlog, and a loss of NIS 26 million, double the loss for 2020, when the company had no revenue.
Sonnenschein told "Globes" that he believed that the agreement with GE Healthcare would be deepened and broadened in the future, and that the trial for the proposes of obtaining marketing approval in the US was underway. In its 2021 financials, Pulsenmore estimated that it would have revenue of $9.6 million this year, $30 million in 2023, and $60 million in 2024. These are ambitious figures for an Israeli medical device company, but with the backing of GE Healthcare they look more achievable.
Pulsenmore is developing additional applications and devices, including remote follicular monitoring for women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as well as remote monitoring for chronic heart failure (CHF) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). The Pulsenmore prenatal ultrasound platform has already been implemented across Israel in partnership with Clalit Health Services. Physicians at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center have been using the device to conduct prenatal ultrasounds on refugees at the Ukraine border as part of a new ‘virtual hospital’ that has Israeli medical staff caring for people injured or displaced in the conflict.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 15, 2022.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2022.