Ilika Plc Regulatory News (IKA)

Ilika plc

("Ilika" or the "Company")

Half Year Trading Update

Ilika (AIM: IKA), the advanced materials discovery company, announces a trading update for the six months ended 31 October 2013. Ilika will announce Interim Results for the six months ended 31 October on 29 January 2014.

Operational Review

The Company has continued to make progress with developing and licensing its proprietary materials IP. With the goal of driving towards generating licensing revenue, Ilika is currently managing active OEM trials with two separate products from its portfolio: a polymer surface used for cell growth and a low-cost fuel cell catalyst. Technical development of these two products is substantially complete, with the focus now being on market introduction. The polymer is a heritage product from its biomaterial portfolio and is being out-licensed on Ilika's behalf by BioBM, a specialist life science marketing company. Following the delivery of a kg-scale quantity of its low cost fuel cell catalyst, OEM trials have commenced with three global OEM's and a trial with a further automotive OEM will commence in Q1 2014. 

Technology development activities are focused on the Company's solid-sate battery technology. Initial cell performance data have been encouraging and the focus of the programme is now shifting to stacking multiple cells to make higher capacity devices. The benefits of the technology remain of interest to a broad range of sectors spanning different battery scales including micro-batteries for wireless sensors, portable consumer electronics and larger scale automotive.

A new high growth sector for the Company's technology platform is the aerospace sector, where Ilika has entered into initial relationships with two of the world's largest aerospace companies. Further activities are expected to be supported by the Aerospace Technology Institute, which has recently been established to deploy £2 billion of funding for the UK aerospace industry over the next seven years.

Financial Review

Total revenue for the period has shown year-on-year growth of 55%, reaching £0.62m (H1 2012: £0.4m).

Ilika has expanded its active customer base in the period from five in the comparable period last year, to nine in the current year. The geographical spread of revenues has also become more balanced due to a stronger business development performance in Europe. In the previous year, 70% of revenues originated with Japanese customers, whereas in the current year to date, 45% of revenues have come from Europe and 45% from Japan. Business development efforts in the USA are expected result in an increased proportion of revenue in the second half.

Cash and cash equivalents at the period end were in excess of £1.4m

As announced previously, an overview of the business will be provided later today, Tuesday 12 November 2013, at the Black Bar at Rocket, 6 Adams Court, Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1DX and will be followed by drinks and canapés. If you wish to attend please contact Walbrook PR Ltd.