OXB reported 64% revenue growth and EBITDA losses of £7.1m (down from £12.1m in 2015)
Companies: Oxford BioMedica plc
Gene and cell therapy group Oxford BioMedica released positive preliminary results on Thursday, reporting very healthy revenue growth (+64%), and rapidly falling EBITDA losses down from £12.1m in 2015 to £7.1m in 2016. EBITDA losses in the past 6 months have fallen to £1.9m, down from £4.7m in 2015.
The AIM-listed firm says it expects revenues to hit £30.8m, slightly ahead of broker N+1 Singer's forecasts of £29.4m, and EBITDA losses of £7.1m, slightly behind Singer's -£6.6m forecast. Expenses increased 4% to £26.1m, resulting in an operating loss of £11.3m, (2015: £14.1m).
N+1 Singer said the results showed a step up in bioprocessing and commercial development income following the firm's capacity expansion between 2015 and 2016 but stressed that in the near term, financial outlook was highly dependent on Novartis [partnership], which was responsible for the majority of the income increase.
CEO John Dawson said the firm was making good progress spinning out and licensing priority product development candidates and was optimistic that the company will have success with this in 2017:
"We will continue to invest in our platform technology in order to consolidate our leadership position and in our gene and cell therapy product concepts so that we exploit our LentiVector® platform to the full."
OXB shares rose 6% in early trading before falling back to below Wednesday's close. Its stock has never returned to its mid-2015 peak of 12p, but since February has risen c.40%.
The RNS also mentioned that CFO Tim Watts will be leaving the company in September 2017, to be replaced by Stuart Paynter.
