IDH.L Regulatory News (IDH)

 10 October 2013

Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings plc

Trading Update

Financial results in line with expectations and continued strengthening of senior management team

Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings plc ("IDS" or "the Company" or "the Group"), a leading producer of manual and automated specialist diagnostic testing kits and instrumentation for the clinical and research markets, today provides a trading update for the six months ended 30 September 2013.

Financial update

IDS can confirm that results for the six months ended 30 September 2013 are anticipated to be in line with the Board's expectations.

Total revenues are expected to be c. £27 million (H1 2012/13: £24 million), representing c. 13% growth in revenues compared to the prior year equivalent period. The increase in revenue was driven by the continued growth in automated revenues of c. 37%, compared to the prior year period. Manual revenues continued to decline by c. 14% compared to the prior year period, which was a slightly better performance than anticipated.

Closing net cash improved and was c. £24 million as at 30 September 2013 (31 March 2013: £20 million).

IDS-iSYS instrument placements

Direct instruments are those sold or placed with reagent rental IDS end-user customers in the Group's core markets of the USA and Europe (excluding distributor territories of Spain and Italy). Direct instrument placements were 16 (net of returns) (H1 2012/13: 41). Whilst the direct placements in the first half have been disappointing, the placement pipeline in our direct territories is encouraging and we expect net direct placements to pick up in the second half of the year. Average revenue per direct instrument was c. £71,000 per annum (calculated on a rolling 12 month basis) (H1 2012/13: £76,000).  The total number of instruments placed (directly or through distributors) and sold to OEM partners was 45 (H1 2012/13: 58).

Management appointments

We have continued to strengthen the senior management team and are pleased to announce the recent recruitment to the executive team of Jorge Cerda as Group Operations Director and Hans-Werner Griesser Ph.D as Group Technical Director. We are delighted with these senior hires that both bring significant diagnostic experience to the Group.

Jorge has previously worked for Dako in Denmark as the Corporate Vice President of Global Operations and prior to this worked for both GE Healthcare Life Sciences and Amersham Pharmacia Biotech.

Hans-Werner previously worked with Boehringer Mannheim, Roche Diagnostics and Straumann. He has extensive experience in assay development, managing R&D teams, launching new products and introducing new platforms internationally.

Outlook

Overall, we anticipate that revenues for the full year will show modest growth year on year, with pre-exceptional profit in line with the prior financial year, and that our second half net direct placements will pick up materially over the first half.

We continue to pursue our three strategic initiatives: increasing the menu of assays available on the IDS-iSYS, improving our instrumentation through the development of the mark II IDS-iSYS and building our presence in the emerging markets. We continue to make good progress in all of these areas and will provide a full update with the interim results announcement on 27 November 2013.

Patrik Dahlen, CEO of IDS, commented:

"We are pleased with our trading performance in the first half of 2013/14, particularly the continued increase in contribution from automated revenues, and we are confident of delivering modest year on year top line growth over the full year. We continue to make encouraging progress in the execution of our strategic plan which we believe offers significant growth opportunities for the future."

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