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TWST: Could we start with a quick overview and historical sketch of MWG Biotech (Xetra:730010.DE)?

Mr. Schonermark: We see us as a genomics company that is an enabler, which means that we are a supplier of instruments, tools and consumables for the genomic, or molecular biology to keep it a broader industry, and the scientific arena. The company was founded in 1990 as a special chemicals company and basically as a sales organization, but started with the production of oligonucleotide already in 1992 and then grew dramatically. The next business unit or area of business was the sequencing service. The company actually introduced genome sequencing in Europe very early on. Then, in 1999, the company went public and added two more business units: one was an instrumentation business where robots are produced and which also supplies the internal oligonucleotide synthesis group with proprietary synthesis technology; and a license from Affymetrix was acquired and the Microarrays business was setup. So right now, we have four business units, which we renamed on April 1st this year: Genomic Synthesis, Genomic Diagnosis, Genomic Information and Genomic Technology.

TWST: Who are your major competitors and what do see as your differentiating advantages?

Mr. Schonermark: The major competitors are the companies like Qiagen, if I look at our entire portfolio, and also PerkinElmer. Then we have different competitors for the different business areas. In the technology area it would be a Tecan or Hamilton. In the sequencing area, it would have been Celera, although they are moving out of the business. In the oligo business it will be a Sigma Genosys. So for the different business areas, we have couple of competitors. What differentiates us is that we very early on understood the integrated approach towards genomics. We understand where the genomic information comes from, i.e. from the sequence. We know how to sequence. We can use this information to produce the oligos. We can take these oligos and put them on an array so that along the entire genomic value chain, we understand the business. Qiagen for example are coming from the kit business and from the very front end sample preparation. They are now moving slowly towards the value added products and do not have a detection system yet while we are already in the arrays. So I think that is one of our unique selling points. Another unique aspect is, as I mentioned earlier, the deep understanding of the customer base especially in Europe that differentiates us from the American companies also for instance from Bio-Rad who are very, very big in the US and also in Asia, but who are somewhat behind in the European market.

TWST: What’s your sense of customer needs today? Are they utilizing that full genomics value chain yet?

Mr. Schonermark: We see the market moving towards our direction and that has also been our problem in the past; maybe we and the old management were a bit too visionary about our plans. What we see now is that companies and our competitors are moving that way, and we see if we look at our customer base and at the cross selling potential between the different business units that the customers also start to behave like that. If you for instance look at Tecan, they are desperately trying to move towards the genomics market, and get the consumables for their robots so they can integrate. And Eppendorf for instance announced that they are about to look for an array company which they wish to acquire. So we see our competitors moving this way and we saw the customers moving. We anticipated it quite a while ago, so I think we are in a good position.