28th Apr 2015 10:33
LONDON (Alliance News) - Life sciences company Avacta Group PLC Tuesday posted a widened pretax loss for its first half as it increased investment in its Affimer business, and said it has made solid progress towards meeting the targets it has set for its Affimer technology for the full year.
For the half year to end-January the company posted a pretax loss of GBP1.6 million, widened from a pretax loss of GBP568,000 a year before, as revenue fell to GBP725,000 from GBP817,000, and it invested in headcount at its Affimer business by forming a commercial and operational delivery team.
The reduction in revenue came from its Animal Health division due to the loss of a customer in the UK. In this business it is developing a range of diagnostic tests, and towards the end of the first half added a US sales presence.
Following the end of the half-year, the company sold the trade and assets of its analytical instrument Optim to Unchained Labs Inc. It will get up to USD5.0 million from the sale, consisting of USD3.5 million upfront and a further USD1.5 million based on the products future sales performance to the end of 2019.
It plans to funnel the proceeds of the sale back into its Affimer business as part of its efforts to focus its resources on that segment of the business. Avacta said it continues to believe this strategy "will deliver the greatest value to shareholders".
Affimers are an engineered alternative to antibodies which Avacta derived from an affinity reagent platform technology it acquired in 2012. The company said it had made good progress in scaling up the business to support the future growth of its Affimer products, and its order intake for the year to date is GBP250,000.
"We have seen very strong interest in Affimers as a therapeutic platform technology even at this very early stage with strategic partnerships established with several small biotechs. This is helpful in validating Affimers in a way that I believe will catalyse further, larger deals," said Chief Executive Officer Alastair Smith in a statement.
Shares in Avacta are trading down 1.2% at 0.840 pence Tuesday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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