RE: 12 Companies to follow in 2022 from @TMsreach31 Dec 2021 06:58
Open Orphan
Open Orphan (AIM:ORPH) hit the headlines earlier this year when it worked with the UK government’s vaccines task force to organise the first Covid human challenge trial, in which some 90 volunteers were deliberately inoculated under carefully controlled conditions with a version of the virus to test its impact on the immunity system.
The company signed a £3m contract with Imperial College London in May as part of a Wellcome Trust funded initiative to manufacture a Covid challenge virus. But Open Orphan’s ambitions extend beyond Covid, to developing treatments for the wider infectious diseases pharmaceuticals market. The pandemic has highlighted decades long neglect of investment in fresh treatments for continually evolving respiratory and infectious diseases like the common cold and influenza. Governments and pharmaceutical companies across the world are now sinking billions into new drugs generating a market forecast to grow from $20bn in 2019 to $250bn by 2025. Open Orphan is developing a growing range of human challenge trial services that now encompass Covid, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), influenza, asthma, human Rhinovirus hRV, and malaria.
The company owns Venn Life Sciences, a drug development, clinical trial design and execution consultancy, and hVIVO, which conducts challenge studies for several respiratory viruses. It has clinics and screening centres in London and Manchester that allow it to screen more than 500 volunteers each week.
Open Orphan’s financial fortunes soared in 2020, allowing it to record Q4 revenues of £22m, up from £3.5m for the previous year. This year it has continued to make progress in pursuit of its aim of winning new and repeat contracts with leading pharmaceutical companies, including an £8.1m agreement for asthma challenge tests, a £5.7m agreement for testing influenza antiviral therapeutics, and a renewed £1.5m contract with a Big Pharma client to provide dedicated clinical pharmacokinetics support for an array of drug development programmes. Earlier this month the company signed a £5m influenza human challenge study contract with a client developing an antiviral drug for protection against respiratory viral infections.
Open Orphan’s most recent interims reported revenue of £21.9m, up from £6.4m in H1 2020, and an EBITDA profit of £2.1m contrasted with a loss of £4.1m in H1 2020. The company is keen to emphasis its core work beyond Covid, which is expected to account for around 70pc of its 2021 full year revenue mix, earning a projected £50m in 2022.
With its substantial investment in challenge trials Open Orphan continues to make solid progress in establishing itself as a go-to partner in the complex process of bringing new treatments to market. With a coherent business model in place for positioning itself in a fast growing sector the company is one for biotech investors to watch in 2022: its share price is currently around 22p, but was as high as 40p earlier in the year
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