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(Alliance News) - e-therapeutics PLC on Monday posted a narrowed pretax loss in the first half of its current financial year due to lower research costs and maiden revenue from ongoing business collaborations.
The Oxford-based company also said that it expects a further reduction in operating loss in the second half compared to the first half due to revenue received from collaborations, an ongoing cost reduction plan and anticipated lower spend on the two core drug discovery projects.
The company, which has created two technology-based drug discovery platforms, recorded a pretax loss of GBP1.5 million for the six months to the end of July, compared with a GBP2.8 million loss in the year ago period. Revenue, mainly generated due to ongoing drug discovery collaboration with Danish pharma firm Novo Nordisk AS, totaled GBP188,000 versus none a year ago.
Research & development expenditure fell to GBP1.1 million in the first half from GBP2.1 million a year ago. Administrative expenses declined to GBP599,000 from GBP742,000.
e-therapeutics said it continues to look at alternative sources of funding, including "shared funding" approaches, and for non-organic opportunities, including mergers and acquisitions. The company, however, added that it has enough funds to finance operations until first quarter of 2021.
"In the immediate term, we will continue to focus our efforts on the monetisation of the NDD [Network-Driven Drug Discovery] and GAINs [Genome Associated Network Interactions] platforms through industrial collaborations. If executed successfully, this will enable the business to become self-sufficient and cash flow positive," said e-therapeutics Chief Executive Officer Ray Barlow.
Shares in e-therapeutics were untraded at 2.85 pence each on Monday morning in London.
By Tapan Panchal; tapanpanchal@alliancenews.com
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