This week: Design Capital tables a significant contract, Polo gets a whole lot better, things are going (ba)rite for Sunrise, and Tristel is looking to clean up
Angel Biotechnology Hldgs (LON:ABH) (ABH 0.23p/£4.88m)
AIM listed biopharmaceutical contract manufacturer has announced plans to increase manufacturing capacity and is expanding its Business Development team. This is a direct response to the continuing demand for Angel’s products and to help capitalise on growth in the EU and US advanced biologics market. Angel has seen four new projects and five contract extensions since July 2010 that total more than £250,000- this represents approximately 70 per cent of budgeted revenues for 2011 with a total forward order book of more than £4m.
To increase the Company’s manufacturing capacity, it is seeking to acquire a mothballed GMP-Standard facility which when fully commissioned will potentially increase the capacity by 5-fold. In support of this increase Angel has hired Andrew Carver and Susan McKee into its Business Development team to help the Company reach out to new companies developing advanced therapy medicinal products, such as stem cell therapies and other live biological products. Given that most of 2010 budgeted business has been signed, as has a large proportion of the business budgeted for 2011, Angel is well worth a punt.
Avacta Group Plc (LON:AVCT) (AVCT 0.86p/£12.43m)
Provider of innovative, high value technologies and services to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics markets announced its results for the year to 31 July 2010 and showed revenue up 120 percent to £2.07m (2009: £940,000) and an underlying operating loss reduced to £1.53m (2009: £1.81m), giving a loss per share of 0.15p (2009: 0.28p) on the increased number of shares. The confident statement accompanying the announcement highlighted that the core contract services businesses achieved revenue growth of 74 percent to £1.64m and a year end cash balance of £1.43m (2009: £880,000). The CEO commented that sales are beginning to progress with the September appointment of Isogen as their distribution partner in Europe already bearing fruit and that the Company is “poised to transition from three years of intense product development to the commercialisation of its innovative products”.
Our only cautionary comment to investors would be that with a year end cash of £1.43m against a historic burn rate of…
