8th Dec 2015 06:44
LONDON (Alliance News) - GW Pharmaceuticals PLC late on Monday said its pretax loss widened in the year to the end of September due to a ramp-up in research and development and administrative costs, while revenue declined amid a reduction in research fees.
GW said its pretax loss for the year to September 30 was GBP57.1 million, compared to a GBP19.6 million loss the year before, as its research and development costs ballooned to GBP76.8 million from GBP43.5 million and as its administrative and sales costs rose to GBP12.6 million from GBP7.3 million.
Those higher costs compounded a decline in revenue for the year, which slipped to GBP28.5 million, compared to GBP30.0 million a year earlier, primarily due to research and development fees falling as GW recharged less in fees to Japanese partner Otsuka as work on the Sativex cancer pain programme came to a close.
Sativex in-market sales volumes for GW's commercial partners rose in the year, as did GW's sales volumes to its partners, mainly due to a good performance in Germany and Italy. The group also made progress on a number of clinical programmes currently in place to develop new products, including treatments for schizophrenia patients and a range of candidates addressing unmet needs of people in the autism spectrum, duchenne muscular dystrophy and a range of cancer types.
GW also made progress on its trials of Epidiolex, its treatment for Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, both linked to childhood epilepsy, with data from the first phase 3 trial of the drug expected in the first quarter of 2016.
"This last year has seen GW maintain a rapid pace in the progress of our pediatric epilepsy research programme, including the start and completion of recruitment of multiple Phase 3 trials for Epidiolex, and the expansion of our expanded access program which has continued to yield promising safety and efficacy data," said Justin Gover, GW chief executive.
"We expect to carry this momentum through 2016 with top-line data from four Epidiolex pivotal trials, our first NDA filing, build-out of our US commercial organisation, and ongoing data read-outs from a number of clinical pipeline programmes," he added.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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