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(Alliance News) - Destiny Pharma PLC on Monday posted a marginally narrowed loss for the first half of 2019, helped by operating income and a reduced share option charge.
Destiny is a clinical-stage biotechnology firm and does not yet generate revenue. Its pretax loss for the six months ended June 30 was GBP2.4 million, narrowed slightly from a GBP2.6 million loss the year before.
This was partly due to GBP198,474 of operating income reported in 2019, versus nothing the year before. Destiny further benefited from a drop in share option charge to only GBP109,454 from GBP584,726.
These factors helped offset a 30% rise in Destiny's administrative expenses to GBP2.6 million from GBP2.0 million.
As at June 30, Destiny's cash and term deposits stood at GBP9.1 million, down from GBP15.1 million the year before and GBP12.1 million at the end of 2018.
Destiny Chief Executive Neil Clark said: "Destiny Pharma has made good progress in the first half of the year and we are very pleased to have started recruitment of patients into the important phase 2b study of our lead drug candidate, XF-73, for the prevention of post-surgical hospital infections. This is a major milestone for the company and we look forward to reporting results in mid-2020 with patient recruitment planned to complete in Q1 2020.
"We remain very positive on the clinical need and commercial opportunity for XF-73 in the hospital setting which we estimate in the US alone to be peak annual product sales of USD1 billion. Our discussions with potential US hospital clinical trial sites and new, independent US studies confirm the increase in the decolonisation of nasal carriers of Staphylococcal aureus in the US as 'best practice' ahead of major surgeries.
"Whilst our focus remains on our lead indication, we are also progressing our earlier pipeline to realise further value from the XF drug platform and we look forward to producing new data from these programmes in the next 12 months. Our successes in securing grant funding also helps offset net cash outflows and the company is funded into 2021."
Shares in Destiny were up 1.2% at 41.00 pence in London shortly before midday.
By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com
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