7th Jul 2015 08:37
LONDON (Alliance News) - Avacta Group PLC on Tuesday said it expects revenue from its Affirmers business to be at least in line with market expectations in its current financial year, as its chief financial officer announces his resignation.
The life sciences company said it expects the Affirmers business to make a revenue of GBP0.5 million in the year to July 31 and said it will carry an order book for custom Affirmer projects of approximately GBP0.2 million into the next financial year.
Affimers are an engineered alternative to antibodies which Avacta derived from an affinity reagent platform technology it acquired in 2012. Avacta said it has delivered an order intake of 30 custom Affirmers projects from customers including several large biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical companies, as well as smaller biotechs, diagnostics and other life sciences companies and academics.
Meanwhile, Avacta Animal Health is expected to report revenue of GBP1.4 million for the year.
"Following recent progress the directors strongly believe that Affimers present the most significant opportunity for the group to deliver value growth for shareholders and have therefore decided that the company should focus its product development resources on its Affimer technology," Avacta said in a statement.
"The company has therefore paused the development of its Sensipod point of care diagnostic device whilst it finds alternative ways of delivering its tests at the point of care such as on third party platforms. Accordingly, the group is not expecting to generate revenue from that product for the foreseeable future and, consequently, the directors expect to impair the associated capitalised development costs of approximately GBP2.5 million."
Separately, Avacta said that Chief Financial Officer Tim Sykes is stepping down from his role which has been part-time since the company's IPO. The company said it has decided that it is now appropriate for the role to become full-time but Sykes does not wish to be considered due to other business interests.
Sykes will remain with the group until a suitable replacement has been found, Avacta said.
Shares in Avacta were trading up 2.0% at 1.25 pence Tuesday morning.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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