LONDON (Alliance News) - Clinical development and drug discovery business hVIVO PLC said Thursday its loss narrowed in 2017 as Chief Executive Kym Denny stepped aside for Executive Chairman Trevor Phillips to run the company.
hVIVO's pretax loss was GBP14.8 million in 2017 compared to GBP22.6 million in 2016.
Phillips will take over Denny's responsibilities immediately. Phillips joined the hVIVO boad in October 2017.
Phillips has over thirty years’ of experience within the pharmaceutical industry, including extensive international drug development and corporate development responsibilities, according to hVIVO. He was previously chief operations officer and president of US operations, as well as a board member, at Vectura Group PLC.
After joining London-listed Vectura in 2010, Phillips played a role in the acquisition of Activaero GmbH in 2014 and the merger with Skyepharma PLC in 2016, hVIVO noted.
hVIVO, biopharma company, posted a dip in revenue to GBP10.9 million in 2017 from GBP19.9 million the previous year. This includes GBP8.0 million from third-party client engagements, up from GBP7.3 million, and GBP2.9 million from equity investments, down from GBP12.5 million.
A further GBP1.3 million of other income came from a cost-share grant with the US governmental Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Also, a GBP1.0 million scope change to the FLU-v study was funded through a royalty purchase and is not included in the company's comprehensive income statement, it said.
hVIVO had a gross profit margin of 32.7% up from 21.3% the previous year. It claims this was through improved volunteer recruitment funnel efficiencies, speed of performance delivery, and headcount reduction.
Research & development expense was GBP6.1 million, a GBP200,000 decrease due to a more concentrated spend on a smaller number of prioritised projects, balanced by the flu contagiousness project.
Administration expenses dropped to GBP11.4 million from GBP13.8 million - driven by headcount reductions and continued drive to "tighten third-party costs".
hVIVO's short-term deposits, cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year equalled GBP20.3 million. A drop from GBP25.7 million the previous year. hVIVO say this is a result of it "building client clinical study pipeline, invoicing milestones and good cash collection, together with operational efficiencies and cost savings initiatives".
In 2018, hVIVO will seek new business opportunities, including winning contracts to conduct new challenge studies. In addition, the business development team is actively targeting existing clients and partners to leverage services with hVIVO's extended platform, "the continued development of our enhanced services will also be a key strategic focus in 2018", said hVIVO.
It said it anticipates the progress of the FLU-v programme towards monetisation and/or non-dilutive funding for further development.
Executive Chairman Phillips said: "2017 has been a productive year for hVIVO, during which we expanded our services with new proprietary precision development service following the integration of our human disease clinical trial platform and our insights into the biology of diseases that impact the airways. These biological insights played a vital role in advancing the universal flu vaccine candidate FLU-v, where, post period, we announced encouraging symptom based results. This vaccine candidate is designed to minimise the impact of the virus by reducing symptoms - potentially relegating flu to a much milder disease - through stimulating an immune response, in contrast to seasonal flu vaccines. We believe this is the first time any universal flu vaccine candidate has demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in a symptom measure for flu in humans in a controlled clinical study. Our know-how and expertise has also enabled us to expand into new areas, such as drug target identification which we will leverage within our services offering.
"We look forward with confidence to 2018, building on our position as an industry leader in human challenge studies and to expand further into areas such as asthma. Our expanded clinical services platform and precision development services approach has already generated significant interest from global pharmaceutical companies and we are excited about the opportunities."
Shares in hVIVO were down 6.4% to 22.00 pence each Thursday morning.
hVIVO (HVO)