(Alliance News) - Summit Therapeutics on Wednesday said its loss narrowed in its financial first quarter due to an increase in other operating income and a reduction in operating expenses.
Summit, which develops antibiotics, posted a pretax loss of GBP4.9 million for the three months to April 30, reducing its GBP6.8 million loss the year before.
Total operating expenses dropped 29% to GBP9.9 million from GBP13.9 million, including a 28% drop in research & development expense to GBP8.3 million from GBP11.6 million.
Revenue totalled GBP249,000, a fraction of its GBP3.9 million revenue the year before. The dramatic fall was largely due to a drop in revenue related to Summit's Sarepta licence and collaboration agreement, after the company decided to discontinue
development of duchenne muscular dystrophy drug ezutromid in June 2018.
Other operating income, however, increased to GBP4.9 million from GBP4.5 million.
As at April 30, Summit's cash and cash equivalents stood at GBP28.3 million, a rise of 5.2% from GBP26.9 million.
Summit is currently developing the antibiotic Ridinilazole to treat C difficile infection, SMT-571 for gonorrhoea, and DDS-04 to treat enterobacteriaceae.
Glyn Edwards, chief executive of Summit, said: "We were excited to initiate our landmark Ri-CoDIFy Phase 3 clinical programme in February 2019. If successful, we believe our two Phase 3 clinical trials of ridinilazole will deliver clinical and economic data to support ridinilazole as the new standard of care for patients with C difficile infection.
"Our Discuva Platform is enabling us to expand our leadership role as innovators in infectious disease. In April 2019, we announced the addition to our pipeline of another new class antibiotic programme targeting Enterobacteriaceae infections. With this new discovery-stage programme, our preclinical programme for N gonorrhoeae and ridinilazole for C difficile, our pipeline now targets the three most urgent bacterial threats as defined by the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention with new classes of antibiotics."
Shares in Summit were up 2.1% at 23.49 pence on Wednesday afternoon in London.
