March 18, 2020

Grifols reinforces its commitment to all stakeholders as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak

The company takes several measures to keep responding to its stakeholders’ needs in a responsible manner: society, employees, donors, patients, suppliers, shareholders and investors

Barcelona, March 18, 2020 – Grifols has adopted several measures aimed at reinforcing its strong commitment to its main stakeholders in regards to the new situation posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

At Grifols, we believe this current and extraordinary situation requires companies to strive more than ever to serve patients and society in a responsible manner.

A clear responsibility to donors and patients

Grifols first responsibility is with its patients and society. We work to ensure that our products and services, which are essential for patients and healthcare providers around the world, continue to be manufactured with minimal supply delays or interruptions as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Regarding donors and their critical role in the production of life-saving plasma medicines, Grifols continues to work with them in order to keep Grifols as a long-term partner.

As the situation with the novel coronavirus rapidly evolves, Grifols is continuously monitoring the situation of our plasma center network and taking all necessary measures to help ensure the safety of our donors and employees.

In recent years, Grifols expanded and diversified its access to plasma and sustained its leadership position through a network of 300 plasma donation centers in the United States throughout more than 30 federal states and Germany in several Bundesländer.

Over the last years, Grifols has been building up plasma and medicinal products inventory strategically. Grifols reported a plasma levels increase year-over-year of 28% and 13% in 2018 and 2019, respectively. All these efforts across the supply chain allow the company to provide an uninterrupted supply of our products with, at least, half a year worth inventory on hand of plasma and its key proteins globally.

All Grifols’ four divisions work on multilevel contingency plans to ensure manufacturing processes and mitigate any potential issue through our global footprint. Our multi-site worldwide geographically diversified manufacturing footprint provides Grifols the flexibility needed to balance the production among the different sites.

We are continuously tracking any impact it could have on our operations. At this stage all Grifols’ facilities are operational.

A responsibility with our employees

Throughout more than a century, Grifols has experienced crisis situations at different times and in different countries. And we know that in times of crisis, our employees are even more crucial through their commitment beyond the highest expectations.

Following the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, Grifols is taking additional measures to help protect our employees. Within the process of digital transformation in which the company has been immersed over the last years, we have the capabilities to take advantage of it and ensure the continuity of our operations.

Grifols continues to encourage all business to be conducted through video conferencing and other technologies. In addition, the company has implemented a work-from-home policy, as well as reached flexibility agreements to guarantee the production of our products.

Grifols capabilities and expertise are at the service of healthcare authorities

Since the beginning of the epidemic, Grifols has been working closely with healthcare authorities in all those countries where we have larger presence, U.S., Spain, China, amongst others.

In this regard, Grifols has shared its broad knowledge and technology in plasma for transfusion inactivation as well as collection of convalescent plasma (plasma with antibodies against the virus from people who have recovered from COVID-19) with several international health authorities and regulatory agencies to develop and manufacture a potential antiviral treatment with immunoglobulins in its isolated multipurpose facility (MPF) that was built for the past Ebola outbreak.

At the same time, Grifols - leveraging its capability in developing tailored test for new and emerging pathogens - is accelerating the development of diagnostic and screening high throughput tests in plasma and whole blood screening for the detection of the novel coronavirus through NAT technology.

Our hope is to advance the understanding of the virus and the disease and maintain a proactive approach to emerging threats to blood integrity.

At Grifols, we will make our services, capabilities and knowledge available to healthcare institutions to help combat COVID-19.

A strong financial position to meet our duties

The company has the resources and liquidity needed to meet all its short and medium term obligations. As of December 31, 2019, Grifols had EUR 742 million in cash, as well as EUR 532 million in undrawn lines of credit, taking its liquidity position to EUR 1,274 million.

In November 2019, Grifols concluded its senior secure debt-refinancing which optimized the company’s debt structure and extended maturities to more than 7 years. It also provided with greater flexibility on the conditions of the covenants (cov-lite).

Additionally, in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, Grifols has taken all necessary steps to further strengthen its robust financial position.

The company strives more than ever to serve patients and society in these exceptional times and is committed to providing all its expertise for this challenging healthcare emergency.