3rd Sep 2024 12:19
(Alliance News) - Oxford Nanopore Technologies PLC said on Tuesday that first half performance was in line with expectations despite a "challenging backdrop", as its annual loss widened slightly.
The Oxford-based specialist in DNA and RNA sequencing technologies said its pretax loss for the six months ended June 30 widened to GBP74.7 million from GBP70.1 million.
Its revenue fell slightly to GBP84.1 million, a 2.2% decrease year on year from GBP86.0 million. Underlying revenue was up by 9.2% to 82.6 million from 75.6 million, and was up 12% at constant currency.
Gross profit for the first half was GBP49.5 million, with the 2024 full-year gross margin expected to be 57%.
Oxford Nonopore won various contracts over the last six months such as with Precision Health Research Singapore, or Precise, to sequence 10,000 long read human genomes to gain a deeper understanding of Asian genetic diversity. The company also agreed a multi-million, multi-year contract expansion in August with Plasmidsaurus, delivering whole plasmid sequencing.
Chief Executive Officer Gordon Sanghera said: "As we look forward, our highly differentiated platform and substantial market opportunity position us well to deliver long-term, sustainable growth. Our growth and margin guidance for the full year remains unchanged. We enter the second half in a strong position; new and enlarged contract wins, such as Precise and Plasmidsaurus, coupled with the increased productivity of our sales teams in the second quarter reinforces our confidence in delivering between 20 - 30% underlying revenue growth on a constant currency basis in full year 2024."
Peel Hunt said 2024 financial year-end consensus expectations for Oxford Nanopore are for GBP185.0 in revenue, GBP105.3 million in gross profit and a loss of GBP110.6 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation.
Shares in Oxford Nanopore Technologies were up 6.2% to 129.09 pence each in London on Tuesday morning.
By Emily Parsons, Alliance News reporter
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