— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
Shares of OraSure Technologies dipped under $3 again.
The stock of the Bethlehem-based maker of diagnostic kits (NASDAQ:OSUR) was at $2.94 at the close Thursday, down 22 cents.
How long will institutional investors be patient with this company?
Now, markets have been in turmoil because of erratic U.S. tariff policy, and potential big cuts in federal spending on healthcare and research affect OraSure, but at some point, this company has to do … something.
It announced a small acquisition a small acquisition in December, and the shares fell.
It announced a $40 million share buyback in March, and the shares initially jumped and then fell.
One thing OraSure had going for it was a cash stockpile, but trading much of that for some stock that nobody else wants perhaps is not a good move.
OraSure thrived, relatively, during the pandemic on federal dollars for its InteliSwab COVID-19 test. It even got money to build a factory in Bethlehem Township.
This is an interesting little company, it contributes to the local tax base and I’d like to see it succeed, but it appears that nothing it can do internally pushes the shares up. Perhaps a deal with a larger company (OraSure’s market capitalization is $228 million) would make a difference.
Chief Executive Officer Carrie Eglinton Manner’s moves to “transform” the company so far have shown no return, at least in the share price. She has cut jobs, cut some costs, shuffled businesses, yet the stock keeps dropping.
Institutional investors own the bulk of OraSure stock, and at some point will they tire of the performance? Will they want a change in management, an end to the buyback, a sale of assets, or something more extreme?
Perhaps they will want to stay the course.
The best move might be to sell the company, but that was tried before and failed. That was before Eglinton Manner was named CEO.
Shares traded at $3.37 on June 6, 2022, the day she took over. As noted, they’re now under $3, and OraSure doesn’t pay a dividend.
Stay tuned. This long-term destruction of shareholder wealth can’t go on forever.
–Note: OraSure was founded in 1988 as SolarCare Technologies, a maker of sunscreen towelettes. Among its founders were Sam Niedbala and Mike Gausling.
It now has its headquarters in South Bethlehem and its main operations facility is in Bethlehem Township. Sometimes the company refers to itself as OTI, an acronym for its full name, OraSure Technologies Inc.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 
It has seemed like this stock has gone up and down in the same range for probably 25-30 years now. I worked as an intern for a local “wealth management” type of financial advisor back in the early 2000s, and he had pretty much all of his clients invested in this company with at least a few percent of their assets under his management, probably because it was a local company in what was then perceived as a growth industry. Unfortunately for anyone holding the stock ultra-long term, it’s been dead money since then.
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