** OraSure’s closing price today was $2.46, up 13 cents **
Nov. 11, 2025
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
Shares of OraSure have been dropping for years, but the fall since last week’s earnings is worse than usual.
How low can it go? How can a company (NASDAQ:OSUR) with about $216 million in cash and cash equivalents have a market capitalization of $167 million? The liabilities as of Sept. 30 were only about $35 million. See the balance sheet.
Perhaps because the third-quarter results posted last week were bad, and perhaps because OraSure has about $51 million less in cash and equivalents than it had at the end of 2024.
Maybe it’s the jargon: “Three pillars of transformation,” as Chief Executive Carrie Eglinton Manner likes to say. The pillars haven’t been propping up the share price. The CEO, meanwhile, has made a few million dollars since starting in 2022.
OraSure’s closing price Monday was $2.33, down 24 cents or 9% down from when earnings were announced last Tuesday. The 52-week high was $4.37, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the shares traded in the teens.
Back then, the federal government was sending millions of dollars to the company.
The third-quarter results don’t need belaboring. The Bethlehem-based maker of diagnostic kits lost money and revenue fell from the year-ago period.
The same old story, no matter how it’s spun. OraSure needs something, and unfortunately that probably means change. Reports of a cash offer being rejected, and of an activist investor, have pushed the shares up briefly. Only briefly.
Perhaps that helps explain why only one analyst asked questions on the OraSure conference call last week.
Perhaps it’s time for Eglinton Manner to cut the jargon and lay out what the future holds bluntly. Nobody’s falling for the “Three pillars” stuff.
OraSure employed 501 people at the end of 2024, down from 638 as of Dec. 31, 2023. Livelihoods are at stake while Eglinton Manner says things about how leadership continues “to significantly advance our strategic transformation.”
Try saying that with a straight face when reporting a quarterly loss and a 32% drop in revenue.
Eglinton Manner was paid a $721,000 salary in 2024 and a $689,997 bonus and she is eligible for additional compensation in shares. (see page 45 of the link).
The company is important to Bethlehem and to the region. Ideally something will get it going.
OraSure was founded in 1988 as SolarCare, a maker of disposable sunscreen towelettes. Its product line include the OraQuick HIV home test, and the InteliSwab COVID test.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 