C4X Discovery Holdings focuses on early licensing deals to drive revenue

(ShareCast News) - Drug discovery company C4X Discovery Holdings is focusing on early licensing deals to drive revenue as it bids to become the world's most productive drug discovery engine.The AIM-listed company said it shifted focus on generating a high value pre-clinical asset portfolio that will drive revenue through early stage licensing deals, while existing fee-for-service agreements were discontinued at the end of the financial year in July 2016.During the year, the company made two acquisitions, Adorial together with its subsidiaries and its proprietary DNA based target identification platform, Taxonomy3, were bought in March, and computational drug discovery technologies from MolPlex were bought in July.The company's drug asset portfolio grew from three programmes in addiction, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder at the time of its initial public offering in 2014 to now eight programmes across a number of therapeutic areas.For the year ended 31 July 2016, the fee-for-service revenue slipped 0.1% to £279,000, compared to the previous year, and loss after tax surged 73.6% to £5.32m or 16.83p per share.Research and development expenses increased 66% to 5.23m and administrative expenses doubled to £1.81m.Net assets at the end of July were £4.3m, down 46%, and cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and deposits contracted to £1.32m from £7.48m.Chief executive Dr Clive Dix, said: "In this period, C4X Discovery has taken significant steps towards our vision of becoming the world's most productive drug discovery engine. We have acquired new technologies to enhance our core target identification and drug design capabilities, expanded our drug asset portfolio and signed new strategic alliances to support our core expertise in solving the drug discovery challenges that confound others."We have defined our strategy to drive revenue through early-stage licensing deals around a high value, pre-clinical portfolio."He said in the coming year the company will focus on securing deal revenue from its existing portfolio, progress discovery candidates to pre-clinical development, identify novel drug targets and selectively building operations to support its vision.Shares in C4X Discovery Holdings were down 7.07% to 92p at 0838 GMT.