John Gillard
Analyst · Noble Equity
Thank you, Joe. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining. As Joe mentioned, I will now take you through the results for Q3 2021.
Starting with revenues. Total revenues for the quarter were $22 million compared with $32 million in Q3 2020. As Joe pointed out and is our typical approach, Ronan will discuss revenues and further detail on the call. As such, I will move on to discuss other aspects of the income statement. Gross margin for the quarter was 40.4% compared to 52.4% achieved in Q3 2020. The reduction in gross margin is mainly due to the exceptionally strong sales and margins recorded in Q3 2020 within our COVID-19-related portfolio of products, with the pricing for such products falling over the course of 2021 as a result of lower demand as the pandemic somewhat subsided in North America and the availability of greater supply from other manufacturers.
As ever, our gross margin remains susceptible to product mix changes, geographic spread, currency fluctuations and product level variation.
Other operating income increased from $3,000 in Q3 2020 to $1 million in Q3 2021. This income relates to a paycheck protection program loan received by the company 2021 totaling $1 million. That was forgiven during Q3 2021 and has therefore been recognized as income this quarter. This loan was treated as a short-term liability at June 30, 2021. Subsequent to the quarter-end, the final remaining Paycheck Protection Program loan for $700,000 was also forgiven, and we expect it will be recognized as income in Q4 2021.
Moving on to R&D expenditure. This decreased to $1.1 million compared to $1.3 million in Q3 2020. Meanwhile, SG&A costs have decreased from $6.3 million in Q3 2020 to $5.9 million in Q3 2021. The company continues to focus on operating efficiency and cost control and have continued to reduce headcount as it pursues greater automation and simplification of processes. These resulted in an operating profit for Q3 2021 of $2.7 million compared to $9.1 million reported in Q3 2020 with the aforementioned reduction in revenue and margin contribution from our COVID-related portfolio of products being the main driver of that reduction in operating profit being somewhat offset by lower R&D and SG&A expenses.
Moving on to financial expenses. This includes the quarterly cash interest cost for exchangeable notes of $1 million. $200,000 relates to notional finance charges associated with lease premises. These notional finance charges are required by the relevant accounting standard IFRS 16. You will note that there is also a noncash financial net income of $31,000, which has made up of $193 million -- sorry, 193,000 fair value adjustment to the derivatives embedded in the exchangeable notes as required by the relevant accounting standards less accretion interest of $162,000 and the accounting carrying value of the exchange of notes.
As you will have seen from the press release, on the 15th of December 2021, the company entered into exchange agreements with holders of over 99% of the convertible notes that provide for the early repurchase of the convertible notes, subject to a number of conditions precedent. And I'll speak about that a little bit later.
Profit after tax before impairments, one-off items and noncash financial expense was $1.3 million in Q3 2021 compared to $7.5 million in Q3 2020. As in prior quarters, and as set out in the press release, we quote earnings per ADS, effectively our equivalent of EPS on a standard basis and also before the impacts of impairments, one-off charges, and noncash financial items. Using the basic measure, earnings per ADS have decreased from $0.35 to $0.063 in Q3 2021.
I will now move on to talk about the significant balance sheet movements since June 30, 2021. There was an increase in intangible assets of $1.5 million, which was made up of additions of $1.7 million, offset by an amortization charge of $0.2 million.
Moving on to inventories. These have decreased by $2.6 million and now stands at $32.1 million. Earlier in 2021, we reduced the level of production of our PCR Viral Transport Media, VTM, in line with projected demand. And this was the main reason for the reduction in inventory this quarter. Meanwhile, trade and other receivables have increased by $1.5 million to $16.8 million, reflecting lower cash collections.
Our trade and other payables reduced by $3 million compared to June 2021 of which $1 million relates to the release of the Paycheck Protection Program loan liability to the income statement in the quarter.
Finally, I will discuss our cash flows for the quarter. Cash generated from operations during the quarter was approximately $500,000. Nonoperating cash inflows during the quarter included income taxes we funded of $1.1 million. Nonoperating cash outflows during the quarter included capital leases -- capital expenditures, excuse me, of $2 million payments for property leases of $0.7 million. Overall, this resulted in a cash balance of $27.5 million at the end of quarter 3 2021.
You will have noted from yesterday's press release that we have entered into agreements related to our capital structure, and I will take you through these now. As already mentioned, after extensive process, the company and certain of its subsidiaries have entered into an $81.25 million senior secured term loan credit facility with Perceptive Advisors. The company is excited to be partnering with a specialist life science investor such as Perceptive.
The loan is a 4-year term and accrues an interest rate of 11.25% plus a higher of 1% or 1-month LIBOR. Under the terms of the loan and drawdown of the funding, the company will issue warrants exercisable for $2.5 million of the company's ADS to Perceptive. The per ADS exercise price for the warrants is equal to the lower of 1, the 10-day volume weighted average price of VWAP for the company's ADSs for the 10 business days prior to 15 December 2021, or 2, the 10-day of VWAP of the company's ADSs for the 10 business days prior to the drawdown of the funding under the loan.
In addition, the company has entered into exchange agreements with 5 institutional investors that hold approximately $99.7 million of the $99.9 million in outstanding notes. While the notes have maturity of 2045, they had a number of put and call options, one of which would allow the holders to put the note to the company at par in April 2022.
Under the exchange agreements, each note holder should receive $0.87 for each U.S. dollar of notes they have plus $0.08 of stock in the form of newly issued ADSs at a price of $1.4955 per ADS, which is a 13% discount to the 5-day trailing VWAP of the company's ADSs on NASDAQ on December 9, 2021. Overall, this equates to an approximate discount of 4% on the early repurchase of the notes.
These transactions should help the company repaid the convertible notes in advance of the April 2022 put date, thus extinguishing uncertainty regarding the company's near-term capital structure and access to funding. The company believes that this stability should add to investor confidence and provide a strong foundation from which the company can grow.
While the interest rate is higher than the rate on the convertible notes, it is important to note that apart from the $2.5 million ADS warrants, the term loan has no other convertible features, thus reducing the potential dilution impact of another convertible debt instrument if loan was available.
In addition, these transactions, if approved by shareholders should mean the company would have no material debt maturities for 4 years. The term loan allows the company greater optionality in choosing its capital structure going forward compared to the convertibles by allowing for partial or full early repayment, albeit at a premium. The transaction will also result in a reduction of gross debt of approximately $19 million, somewhat offsetting the additional interest rate.
Based upon current prevailing rates, the annual interest cost is expected to be approximately $10 million. The company intends to primarily service the additional interest costs through cash on hand growing earnings through the near-term launch of key pipeline products, including TrinScreen HIV and our rapid COVID antigen test, thus continuing to focus on cost control and disciplined R&D investment.
The company's Board and management team intends to keep the company's capital structure under review. Both the term loan and exchange agreements are subject to shareholder approval with 75% approval from vote cast required for the transaction to proceed. And the company expects to hold a general meeting in December 2020 to seek for shareholder approval -- sorry, in January 2022 to seek for shareholder approval, my apologies.
Thank you. I will now hand over to Ronan , who will bring you to our revenues.
Ronan O?Caoimh: Thanks, John. I'm now going to review the revenues for quarter 3 and for the corresponding quarter in 2020 before opening the call to a question-and-answer session.
Our revenues for quarter 3 were $22 million compared with $32 million in quarter 3 2020, which is a reduction of 31.3%. And Point-of-Care revenues in quarter 3 were $4.1 million compared with $2.1 million in quarter 3, which is an increase of 99%. This increase is attributable to higher HIV revenues from Africa related sales.
Revenues in quarter 3 2020, however, had been negatively impacted by logistical constraints caused by the pandemic. While the situation has improved during 2021, COVID-19 continues to have the potential to cause disruption to HIV testing in Africa.
In March 2021, we announced that we had submitted our TrinScreen HIV product to the World's Health Organization for approval. This product once approved, will allow the company to enter for the first time the HIV screening market in Africa, which at 170 million tests annually is a twofold bigger market by value and the confirmatory test market, where Trinity Biotech has for many years had a dominant market share with Uni-Gold.
In late September 2021, the WHO requested additional information on the submission. And this information has been provided, allowing the assessment to be finalized. Typically, this process would take another 30 to 60 days. But because of COVID-19, the WHO review processes are taking longer. Despite this, we are confident that an approval is imminent. Following approval, we are confident of quickly leveraging the quality of this product given its advantages over the competition, also given our experienced sales and marketing team on the ground in Africa, our reputation for excellence with Uni-Gold and our high-volume automated production capability in Ireland. And we believe that all of these factors will enable us to quickly take market share in the African HIV screening market.
Moving on to Clinical Laboratory. Our revenues for quarter 3 were $17.9 million compared with $29.9 million in the corresponding quarter, which is a decrease of 40%. The decrease is largely due to lower revenues from within our COVID-19-related product portfolio. In quarter 3 2020, demand for our PCR Viral Transport Media product was exceptional. But as the pandemic has persisted, manufacturing capacity in the market has ramped up significantly with a consequent negative impact on demand.
While the situation rate of the COVID-19 products remains fluid with the evolving impact of the new variants, the company has seen increased cost of demand for VTM products over recent months. And we have resumed manufacturing VTM products, albeit on lower volumes. We have retained the capability to increase manufacturing volumes should market conditions warrant.
Meanwhile, we are pleased to report that we have completed the development of our COVID-19 antigen -- rapid antigen test, which has demonstrated really impressive performance characteristics in its evaluations. We are confident of launching the products in the European market during quarter 2, having achieved European approval or CE mark. While we do expect to launch the product in the U.S.A., the regulated path for such products remains fluid, and thus we'll continue to assess the most appropriate regulatory approval pathway. But in reality, it may well be that a standard EUA will suffice and that we'll actually enter that market almost immediately after the European market. Our principal focus at this time is on transferring the product on to our high-volume automated production line in Ireland.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and with new variants emerging, it has now become apparent that widespread -- sorry, that despite widespread vaccine availability an antigen rapid testing will be a key tool in day-to-day COVID-19 management for the foreseeable future. We, therefore, expect our high-quality antigen test, which we can manufacture in high volume to be a very significant growth driver for the business into the future.
And now moving back to our core business, our Clinical Laboratory business and COVID-19 products were excluded increased 5% compared -- when compared with the corresponding quarter in 2020. With our -- within our haemoglobin A1C business, we continue to have lower instrument placements with just over 40 instruments placed during the quarter, which is just over 50% of normal replacement levels. This was expected as hospitals and clinics are less likely to purchase new capital equipment during the pandemic. However, we are confident these placements will fully recover in a post-pandemic environment.
Meanwhile, haemoglobin reagent revenues, and by this, I mean the number of tests being run in our diabetes business are running at about 90% of normal, again, due to the fact that patients are less likely to perform discretionary tests during the pandemic. Meanwhile, our autoimmune business generated revenues approximately 8% lower than in the pre-pandemic environment with reference laboratory testing volumes down approximately 10% and product revenues marginally down. We believe this is also entirely due to the pandemic as many patients deferred doctor visits unless absolutely necessary. And we are confident these revenues will fully recover post pandemic.
And I now open the call to our question-and-answer session and pass it back to Jason.