Eurofins’ sales increased by over 50% to € 246 million during the first nine months of 2006

Brussels/ Nantes, November 15, 2006

In the first nine months of 2006, Eurofins' revenues increased by 51.4% to € 245.8 million (€ 162.3 million 2005). This significant expansion has been fuelled by strong organic growth as well as newly acquired and consolidated companies. Operating profit increased by 14% to € 19.7 million (€ 17.2 million 2005). In the same period, net profit increased to € 9.9 million (€ 9.4 million 2005) and earnings per share amounted to € 0.63 (€ 0.61 2005).

Over the past months, Eurofins has had the opportunity to acquire significantly more businesses than anticipated at the beginning of the year. Several of these represent important strategic opportunities for the Group's future development. The larger number of M&A opportunities is due in part to the accelerating market consolidation, in which Eurofins is playing a significant role. While in the past the Group has primarily favoured acquiring already-profitable companies, Eurofins believes that in selected cases acquiring smaller under-performing businesses may also provide an excellent return on capital employed (ROCE)*. This is because the Group is now in more of a position to achieve synergies rapidly and because acquisition prices are lower in such cases. In addition, not taking part in the market consolidation, which is currently gaining momentum, could in the long term prove detrimental to Eurofins' strategic position in the attractive markets where it operates.

Due to recent acquisitions (cf. announcement of November 6, 2006), Eurofins is now in a position to raise its revenues guidance to € 345 million for 2006. This is the third increase of guidance this year (2006 sales objective was already raised from € 275 million to € 300 million on January 19, 2006 and to € 340 million on August 29, 2006). Eurofins' sales objective for 2007 can now also be raised from € 400 million to € 420 million. With this, Eurofins' sales will have doubled in only two years (from € 175 million in 2004).

As a result of Eurofins' faster expansion, several shareholders have expressed the wish to have a better view of the performance of Eurofins' well established laboratory base which functions according to the Group's operational standards. We have thus broken down sales and operating profit as follows:

• The “up-to-standards” established base, including the ongoing and stable businesses such as the Competence Centres and most proximity laboratories where the Group's systems, structure and processes have been deployed for some time.
• We define the remainder of the business as “under development” and this includes companies or countries with new activities or start-ups, companies or countries under full reorganisation due to the integration of less-profitable acquisitions and also the recent additional investments in corporate structure (M&A etc.) that relate to delivering future growth. This group therefore includes primarily the food and environment businesses in the UK and Denmark due to the acquisitions of Direct Laboratories and Steins, the recently acquired company Focus BioInova, the start-ups in China, Sweden, Norway and Ireland, Viralliance virus phenotyping biotechnology start-up and the now fully consolidated MWG Group. Due to the acceleration of opportunities for market consolidation and start-ups, the weight of this “under development” business is significantly higher than anticipated earlier this year. In the short term, this will obviously impact the expected combined margin of both groups of businesses.

In line with these definitions, the “up-to-standards” business had revenues of € 188 million with an EBITA-margin of 13.2% in the first nine months of 2006 and the “under development” business had revenues of € 58 million with losses of about € 5 million in the same period.

Historically, it has taken about 3 years for newly restructured laboratories to be brought up to Group standards. The management is confident that the “up-to-standards” established base will meet profit and margin objectives which were set for this year, and in its ability to bring the “under development” business to Group standards of operational and financial performance in due course.

In view of the more varied profitability profile of companies acquired and speed of start-up of new activities or in new countries, Eurofins has decided from now on to communicate only our objectives on value creation (ROCE*). Eurofins' mid-term goal for ROCE* remains 20%.

* ROCE = EBITA over last 12 months / average capital employed at start of last 4 quarters with WACC of 16% pre-tax.

The full Nine Months Report is available on our website under /investors/publications/reports/en .

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