30th Mar 2015 10:52
LONDON (Alliance News) - Instem PLC Monday said its expectations for 2015 are underpinned by a strong order backlog and new regulatory submission standard rules from the US Food and Drug Administration, even as higher costs meant pretax profit declined in 2014.
The IT services provider to the life science and healthcare sectors posted a pretax profit of GBP212,000 in 2014, down from GBP698,000 in 2013, as a rise in revenue of GBP13.4 million from GBP11.4 million was offset by higher operating expenses and amortisation charges related to assets it acquired.
During the year the company invested in its sales, marketing and implementation services teams and continued to scale up its operations in Pune, India.
Revenue growth was driven by increased sales of its Submit software suite and a full year contribution from its acquisition of Perceptive Instruments Ltd in November 2013.
Instem won eight new clients for the Submit software during the year, boosted by a mandate by the US Food & Drug Administration for the submission of drug data under the Standard for Exchange of Non-clinical data, abbreviated as SEND.
The FDA set out mandatory guidance last December for the SEND standard, setting dates by which all regulatory submissions musty comply with this standard, which Instem expects to drive growth for its products going forward.
"Total research and development pipelines within the pharma sector have increased by almost 9% to approximately 12,300 drug candidates during 2014, which makes us particularly positive about our outlook for the future as we can now see sustainable growth across our target markets," said Chief Executive Officer Phil Reason in a statement.
Shares in Instem are trading up 1.1% at 189.50 pence Monday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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