(Alliance News) - Open Orphan PLC on Thursday said its loss widened in its most recently-ended financial year.
In addition, the AIM-listed company reported Poolbeg Pharma PLC's intention to seek admission of its shares to trading in London.
Funds raised by Poolbeg will be used primarily to fund the clinical trial costs associated with the development of the company's POLB 001 asset as a treatment for severe influenza and to acquire and develop new portfolio assets.
The move comes after on Monday, Open Orphan proposed to make a distribution in specie of its wholly-owned subsidiary Orph Pharma IP Co Ltd to Poolbeg, in return for the issue of new shares by Poolbeg to shareholders of Open Orphan.
Open Orphan shareholders will receive one Poolbeg share for every 2.98 shares held, with resultant entitlements rounded down to the nearest whole number.
"Poolbeg Pharma is a great opportunity to maximise the potential of some of Open Orphan's pharma assets which are non-core to our successful human challenge clinical trial business in a focused and capital efficient way," said Cathal Friel, executive chair of Open Orphan and non-executive chair of Poolbeg Pharma.
Turning back to results, the London-based clinical research firm said its pretax loss for 2020 widened to GBP11.2 million from GBP5.8 million the year before, despite revenue from contracts rising to GBP20.6 million from GBP3.4 million.
Profit was hurt by an increase in direct project and administrative costs to GBP32.4 million form GBP8.7 million year-on-year. Looking ahead, the company says it is targeting delivery of full year profit in 2021.
"The new financial year has started well and is already very well advanced," said Executive Chair Cathal Friel.
Open Orphan shares were trading 14% lower in London on Thursday at 30.00 pence each.
By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com
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