May 5, 2025
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
OraSure, the Bethlehem-based maker of diagnostic kits, will report first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, May 7, and then hold a conference call for investors and analysts.
Meanwhile the shares of OraSure (NASDAQ:OSUR) keep falling. At 11:40 a.m. today, shares traded at $2.85, down 13 cents on the day and at a little more than half of the $5.59 high in the last 52 weeks.
The company’s recent moves have not inspired confidence. It announced a small acquisition in December, and the shares fell.
OraSure announced a $40 million buyback in March, and shares jumped briefly, then fell. Perhaps after some lucky investors got out (I was among them with a short-term position) others realized that spending $40 million of good hard cash on a stock not many people want was not a good idea.
Chief Executive Carrie Eglinton Manner has been on the job for close to three years now and the stock keeps falling. She has made a few million dollars, and who knows? Perhaps nobody could have turned this company around in three years.
At some point, will institutional shareholders such as Blackrock and Vanguard demand changes? Right now, they have bigger things to worry about than a $221 million market-capitalization company in South Bethlehem, but at some point, will the big holders demand a change in management, in focus, or perhaps something bigger?
Nothing OraSure has done internally has made much of a difference. Perhaps some kind of deal or venture with a larger company would help.
Zacks Investment Research provides these estimates, but both are from only two analysts so I can’t call these “consensus estimates.”
Revenue for the quarter, based as noted on just two estimates, is expected to be reported at $29.7 million, and the loss per share is projected to be 15 cents.
It’s not pretty.
OraSure will report results for its first quarter on Wednesday, probably shortly after 4 p.m., and follow up with a conference call at 5 p.m.
— Editor’s note: I do not recommend day-trading. I was lucky to make a small amount of money in OraSure after the buyback was announced, but day-trading is usually a bad idea, and for quite a few years, buying OraSure has been a bad idea too.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 