Destocking behind, NES nascent: DiaSorin's H2-loaded guide leans on a quarter of firsts

Q2 return-to-growth at 4% masks the sharp H2 acceleration required — while tariff refunds start to flow and China keeps bleeding.

DIA.MI · Earnings Call · 2026-07-31

DiaSorin's H1 was a tale of two quarters. Q1 punished the company with an unlucky triple-whammy — severe winter weather in North America, destocking of QuantiFERON by large commercial labs, and a soft flu season — dragging the half to flat revenue at constant exchange rates. Q2 delivered the promised re-acceleration at 4% constant-FX growth, with all three franchises (immunodiagnostics +4%, molecular +1%, LTG +7%) showing the trajectory the March call foreshadowed. But the full-year guide (5–6% revenue growth, 32–33% EBITDA margin) was retained, which means the second half must do all the heavy lifting — and Morgan Stanley's Aisyah Noor was quick to flag the math. In molecular diagnostics, the arithmetic is particularly stark. As Carlo Rosa noted, "quarter 2, 2026 recorded a growth of 4%. And if actually we exclude outliers, China and molecular growth would have been 5%" — yet the retained low-double-digit molecular guidance needs a far steeper second-half sprint. Aisyah Noor put the tension directly:

this after the first half results, including a weak flu season, will still imply that you need to deliver something like 27% organic growth in the second half.
Aisyah Noor, Analyst · 2026-07-31

Management's defense rests on three pillars: a normalized flu-season base, the LIAISON PLEX ramp with its expanding panel menu, and the first real contribution from the NES launch — the point-of-care platform that was this quarter's most-tracked company keyword and that begins its commercial phase just as respiratory season arrives.

The tariff refund inflection

Arguably the most genuinely *new* item for DiaSorin is the one that began as an IEEPA tariff cost and has flipped direction. Paying roughly €9M of tariffs in H1, the company filed refunds through the U.S. CDP's established mechanism and has started collecting. CFO Alberto Donati confirmed the partial receipt:

we did receive in Q2 part of the refunds that we submitted in the order of magnitude of around $2.5 million.
Alberto Donati, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-07-31

That €2.5M is small against a ~€844M net-debt position, but it is a directional signal the whole market is tracking: the IEEPA refund theme was the #1 keyword on the global earnings tape in 20263, and the recent reporter list is studded with peers booking the same refund (AAPL, GEHC, GIL, MAS, MTD, SONO, and others). For DiaSorin, whose own 20262 trajectory already tracked tariff refund as a top-ten keyword, the refund now partially offsets the ~100bp gross-margin drag the tariff costs imposed in Q2 — which is exactly why Q2 gross margin held flat at 65% year-on-year despite the headwind.

China: a structural bleed, not a fix

The most stubborn drain remains China, where VBP pricing and local-supplier preference keep shrinking a market that was already only ~3.5% of revenue. Carlo Rosa was blunt: "In China, the business continues to decline, roughly 25%" — echoing his own May-2025 line that "China has nothing to do with volume... it's a terrible situation in China, a double-whammy situation." The only genuine bright spot is the expected end-of-summer approval of the LIAISON TB assay, with Q4 commercialization — though Rosa cautioned that with ~26 local ELISA suppliers and a collapsing price point, "don't expect China to really move the needle."

Product bets and the geography of the backlog

The real swing factors for H2 are the platform stories. LIAISON PLEX customers now exceed 150, and the GI panel was approved in recent weeks — the mini-panel thesis (their top-ranked keyword at 20254) is the strategic heart, and management argues the reimbursement system is moving toward exactly the flexible small panels they sell. The NES launch, meanwhile, is so early that Rosa declines to give placement numbers, deferring to Q3/Q4 calls, though he insists the reimbursement environment (~$140 per targeted panel with minimal denial rates) is supportive and he sees "no pricing pressure so far." There are also fresh seams of revenue and risk in the geography. The return to growth is partly carried by the U.S., where the 600-hospital placement target by end-2026 appears on track and QuantiFERON is growing double-digit again after the destocking episode — Rosa explained that "the event that we incurred in Q1 was destocking by a couple of very large private labs... they start again with the regular pattern." On the other side, export markets are squeezed by the Middle East situation; Iran alone accounted for €1.5M of revenue in Q2 last year versus zero this year. The balance sheet absorbed the load of capital return: net debt rose to €844M from €580M at year-end 2025, driven by €233M of share buybacks (now ~95% of the program completed, ~6.5% of share capital purchased) plus €65M of dividends, partly offset by €58M of free cash flow as inventory built for the NES launch. Management expects H2 cash generation to improve with revenue. The prior call's promise that "most of the headwinds will not be there in 2026" is now being tested: guidance stands confirmed, but the shape of H2 — a maxed-out product-launch calendar, a recovering flu season, and refund-adjacent economics — leaves little room for another outlier quarter.