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LONDON (Alliance News) - IXICO PLC expressed confidence Friday in meeting market expectations for the full year, as it swung into a loss in the half year to end-March, hit by costs relating to its AIM listing and a decline in revenues.
The company was formed via the reverse takeover of Phytopharm PLC in October 2013.
The biotechnology company posted a pretax loss of GBP1.5 million, versus a profit of GBP354,000 a year before, as revenues declined to GBP1.2 million from GBP1.9 million and it posted GBP938,000 in costs relating to its listing on AIM. In the previous year revenues were boosted by the accelerated completion of a terminated contract.
IXICO said that its revenues in the year to date were in line with its expectations, and it is confident in meeting market expectations for the full year.
The company said its top priority is the commercialisation of its dementia diagnosis product Assessa. During the year it upped its research and development costs to push forward its Assessa product to launch in December.
In collaboration with InHealth Ltd the company has now started providing Assessa in the UK and Ireland. InHealth will be demonstrating the project at the UKRC annual congress in Manchester in June.
Through an agreement with Re:Cognition Health Ltd, it has also secured its first paying customers for the product in the private sector and is in discussions with other private healthcare providers to extend the service to their clients.
IXICO is progressing its study of using the product in a community setting, but said it had been slower than planned due to a change of clinical leadership at the academic centre conducting the trial. It expects the first patients to be assessed using the technologies later in the year.
The company said that its core clinical trials business continued to perform in line with expectations, and it signed contracts with four new customers during the year. In addition to these contract wins for Alzheimers disease, it has also won contracts for two separate trials in Huntingtons disease.
The company signed a commercial and operational alliance with VirtualScopics Inc, and said it was now integrated its TrialTrack web-service platform into VirtualScoptic's client service offerings.
In December the company won a grant from the UK government's Technology Strategy Board as part of a consortium including AstraZeneca's biologics research and development arm MedImmune Ltd for the development of a digital dementia prognosis tool.
It also progressed four grant-funded programmes on dementia and psychosis during the half year, and said it had secured total grant funding in the last 24 months of around GBP2.3 million.
Shares in IXICO were trading down 4.0% at 60.03 pence Friday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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