2nd Dec 2019 10:49
(Alliance News) - Fusion Antibodies PLC on Monday said its loss narrowed in the first half of its financial year following first revenue from its new RAMP service, but noted limits on order visibility.
The company, which specialises in discovering, engineering, and supplying pre-clinical antibodies for use in medicine, posted revenue of GBP1.8 million for the six months ended September 30, far exceeding the previous year's figure of GBP658,000.
This included first commercial revenue from Fusion's new RAMP service, which provides improvements to antibody affinity as well as other characteristics which optimise antibody performance. The company took additional steps in the year to boost revenue.
"The company's order levels and revenues in the first six months of the financial year showed significant growth on the previous six-month period and a marked recovery from the comparable period last year. This has been achieved by addressing a number of external competitive pressures seen over the last two years, and by improving the company's marketing function and business development strategy," Non-Executive Chair Simon Douglas said.
As a consequence of this sharp revenue rise, pretax loss narrowed to GBP621,000 from GBP887,000. The reason the loss did not shrink further was more administrative expenses, which increased to GBP1.4 million from GBP1.0 million.
So far, uptake of RAMP has been encouraging, Fusion said, and this is expected to continue into the second half. However, order visibility is low because Fusion depends on multiple orders which are all worth less than GBP100,000 and capable of being executed in two to three months. As such, order visibility past three months is limited, it explained. Nonetheless, Fusion is confident order levels will growth for both its new and existing services.
Chief Executive Paul Kerr said: "Our revenues are growing apace, and we have seen a solid improvement in the performance of the business for this period, compared to the previous six months. We have received our first commercial revenues from early adopters of RAMP, and the feedback from the service has been very promising. We are on target to deliver significant revenue growth year on year."
Shares in Fusion were down 2.2% at 73.35 pence in London on Monday morning.
By Anna Farley; [email protected]
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