(News Bulletin 247) – The designer of the artificial heart Aeson announced Monday evening the commissioning of its second production building on its Bois-d’Arcy site. This will allow it to increase its production capacity to 500 cores per year by the beginning of next year.

Carmat rolls out its plan and the market appreciates it. The inventor of the artificial heart Aeson jumped 33% late Tuesday morning after announcing the commissioning of a second production building on its Bois-d’Arcy site.

“The work has been completed and all of the installations have been reviewed by the notified body Dekra which issued, in mid-November 2023, its approval to produce the Aeson total artificial heart there,” explained the company in a press release. .

This new production building will allow the company to increase its total production capacity to 500 cores per year “at the beginning of 2024”, continues Carmat. We will note a slight postponement since in October the company indicated that it was aiming for this production capacity objective of 500 cores “by the end of 2023”. But the market does not take offense at this small discrepancy.

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A sales peak of several hundred million euros?

“In accordance with our strategic plan, we will continue to evolve this industrial system over the coming years, to reach an annual production capacity of 1,000 Aeson cores by 2027,” declared Stéphane Piat, the company’s general manager. , quoted in the press release.

In a note published at the end of October, Degroof Petercam estimated Aeson’s peak sales at around 750 million euros (for comparison, Carmat’s first half 2023 turnover was almost zero at 600,000 euros, and then corresponded to the sale of three Aeson cores). The Belgian bank then had a purchase recommendation on the stock and a target of 20.5 euros, while Carmat shares are currently trading around 5 euros.

Furthermore, Carmat should probably find additional sources of financing in the coming weeks. In mid-October, the group completed a capital increase of 7 million euros with several historic shareholders. But this call to the market only ensured its financial horizon until the beginning of 2024.

The company then estimated that it would need to find around 65 million additional euros (an amount which includes the repayment of a tranche of a loan from the European Investment Bank in January) to continue its operations until end of October 2024.