8th Apr 2016 09:07
LONDON (Alliance News) - Plant Health Care PLC Friday said increased spending on research and development caused its pretax loss to widen in 2015 despite reporting a healthy rise in sales and revenue.
The provider of biological products to agriculture markets said its pretax loss widened to USD7.7 million in 2015 from the USD6.0 million loss in the previous year after higher revenue was offset by a rise in certain costs.
Revenue in the year rose to USD7.5 million from USD6.7 million, pushing its gross profit up to USD4.7 million from USD3.5 million.
However, research and development expenditure ramped up to USD4.1 million from USD2.0 million. Administrative costs increased to USD4.5 million from USD3.8 million. Sales and marketing costs were broadly flat year-on-year while business development spending experienced a small rise.
Plant Health Care has two main divisions and areas of focus, the first being its technology unit, which discovers early development biological solutions using the company's PREtec platform, and the second unit which operates around the commercial side of the business that sells its products.
The commercial unit, in turn, is also split into three geographical areas: Mexico, Americas and the rest of the world.
The commercial division is currently focused on selling Harpin and Myconate around the world, both directly and with value chain partners. Harpin is a protein based product used in soil to boost the defence of plants whilst Myconate accelerates the growth of plants.
Plant Health Care said overall sales were 9% higher year-on-year in 2015, and up 15% at constant currency. Mexico remains the company's key market, accounting for 47% of all sales in the year. Sales made in the Americas increased 24% during 2015.
"Agriculture markets in general are much less buoyant than in previous years, driven by lower commodity prices. However, we believe that growers in key markets will continue to adopt agricultural biological products which increase their productivity," said Christopher Richards, who turned to an executive chairman at the start of the month from his non-executive role.
Plant Health Care shares were trading up 1.3% to 53.19 pence per share on Friday morning.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
Copyright 2016 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
PHC.L