Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

18 January 2019

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Share Incentive Plan/Issue of Equity

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and reagents, is pleased to announce that as part of its HMRC Approved Share Incentive Plan ("SIP") Award Scheme, ordinary shares of 10p each in the Company ("Ordinary Shares") up to a value of £3,000 per employee will be issued at the prevailing middle market price at the close of business on 16 January 2019 to all eligible employees. These shares awarded will form part of the employee's remuneration package. 

Accordingly, today 372,826 Ordinary Shares have been issued as part of the SIP Award Scheme to eligible employees.

Application has been made for the Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and dealings are expected to commence on 25 January 2019 ("Admission") . The Ordinary Shares will rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares of the Company. 

Following Admission, the Company's enlarged issued share capital will be 115,835,037. This figure may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.

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For further information from Avacta Group plc, please contact:

About Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer® technology which is a novel engineered alternative to antibodies that has wide application in Life Sciences for diagnostics, therapeutics and general research and development.

Antibodies dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn despite their shortcomings. Affimer® technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally; the time taken to generate new antibodies, the reliance on an animal's immune response, poor specificity in many cases, and batch to batch variability. Affimer® technology is based on a small protein that can be quickly generated to bind with high specificity and affinity to a wide range of protein targets.

Avacta has a pre-clinical biotech development programme with an in-house focus on immuno-oncology as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer® reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.