Shield Thera Share News (STX)

(Sharecast News) - Commercial-stage pharmaceutical company Shield Therapeutics reported total 2021 revenue of £1.5m in a trading update on Thursday, in line with market expectations.

The AIM-traded firm said that consisted of net product revenue of £0.1m from US product sales, royalty revenue of £0.9m from product sales in the EU, and milestone payments of £0.5m from the upfront payment of Korea Pharma on signing the licence agreement for commercialisation in South Korea.

Cash on hand totalled £12.1m at year-end on 31 December, compared to £2.9m at the end of 2020.

On the operational front, Shield said payer coverage had increased on Accrufer since its last update in December, and was now covering 60 million commercial lives after several additional contracts were executed with the likes of Cigna, Humana, and Highmark.

It said awareness of Accrufer among target prescribers, meanwhile, had doubled since its launch, to 65%.

Healthcare professionals generated around 2,500 prescriptions for Accrufer into the firm's patient assistance and reimbursement hub since launch, with "significant growth" seen from the third to the fourth quarter.

"Our priorities for the US launch of Accrufer were to increase awareness, generate clinical experience, and expand payer coverage, and we have made significant progress across each of these priorities," said chief executive officer Greg Madison.

"We have been very pleased by the initial feedback and reactions of healthcare providers to Accrufer, and it is clear there is a need for an effective and well tolerated oral iron therapy for the millions of patients with iron deficiency."

Madison said the company would remain focussed on continuing the "strong momentum" in the US, and ensuring the group had the resources to deliver on that goal.

"We believe Accrufer [and] Feraccru has the potential to be the 'best in class' oral iron replacement product, and our efforts over the last six months have set the company up to expand access and grow sales in 2022 and beyond."

At 1533 GMT, shares in Shield Therapeutics were down 15.35% at 27.51p.