14th Apr 2015 08:20
LONDON (Alliance News) - Horizon Discovery Group PLC shares were up Tuesday morning after it reported strong growth in revenue and gross margins in 2014, although profit was hit by the investments it is making in its research tool and services capabilities.
The company, which provides research tools for the growing genomics research and personalised medicine sector, reported a pretax loss of GBP6.1 million for 2014, compared with a GBP3.0 million loss in 2013, as research and development and sales, marketing and distribution costs all rose significantly as it continued to build scale.
However, revenue nearly double to GBP11.9 million, from GBP6.6 million in 2013, while gross margin improved to 55%, from 52%.
Horizon is building scale partly through acquisitions. It bought the CombinatoRx service business and assets from Zalicus Inc for GBP4.7 million and Sage Labs Inc for up to USD48 million last year, and bought Haplogen Genomics GmbH for an initial consideration of GBP6 million earlier this year.
"Since our listing in March 2014, we have successfully delivered upon our international growth strategy, positioning the company to offer a full spectrum of products and services that impact academic research, drug discovery and development, biomanufacturing and clinical diagnostics from DNA sequence to patient treatment," Chief Executive Darrin Disley said.
"Looking to 2015, we plan further investments in the scaling of our products and services businesses including the development and implementation of new e-Commerce and enterprise resource planning systems group-wide that will deliver long term value as we continue on our strong growth trajectory. We will also continue to leverage additional non-organic (milestone) value in our research business over the coming years," he added.
Horizon Discovery shares were up 2.8% at 216.95 pence Tuesday morning. That's well above its IPO price of 180 pence.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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