REG - Fusion Antibodies - Trading Statement

Fusion AntibodiesAnnouncement

06/03/2023 07:00

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RNS Number : 9224R  Fusion Antibodies PLC  06 March 2023

 

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to
constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations
(EU) No. 596/2014 ("MAR"). With the publication of this announcement via a
Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to
be in the public domain.

 

6 March 2023

 

Fusion Antibodies plc

("Fusion" or the "Company")

 

Trading statement

 

Fusion Antibodies plc (AIM: FAB), a contract research organisation ("CRO")
providing discovery, design, and optimisation services for therapeutic
antibodies to the global healthcare market, provides an update on the
Company's R&D programme and unaudited trading for the year ending 31 March
2023 ("FY 2023").

 

As announced in its half year report on 5 December 2022, the Company had a
commercially challenging first six months of trading due to a combination of
factors, including a number of valuable projects being suspended by clients
due to delayed investment into those businesses. There continues to be
uncertainty over the timing of commencement of several such anticipated orders
which is out of our control. Consequently, revenues and earnings for FY 2023
are now expected to be significantly behind current market expectations: the
Board anticipates that revenues for FY 2023 will be not less than £2.8M.

In line with the Company's previously announced strategic change to focus on
larger integrated service contracts, the Company has engaged with several
potential clients for the broader service offering, which has been very
positively received. In particular, negotiations concerning a significant
order for an integrated service contract have progressed but have not
materialised in time for the end of this year. While there is the possibility
that negotiations could be completed in the near term, the majority of the
revenues would be recognisable in the financial year commencing 1 April 2023.

 

Having recently announced the development of its Mammalian Display technology
to complement the integrated service offering, the Company is actively
engaging with leading Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ("AI &
ML") companies as potential partners to make these novel approaches available
to our client base. As a consequence, the Company announces that it has signed
a Memorandum of Understanding ("MoU") with a leading biotech company, based in
the USA, focused on AI & ML to generate de-novo antibody sequences. The
Company will utilise its new Mammalian Display technology to express these
antibodies as focused libraries. The MoU is expected to provide for the
development of a partnership that will enable the derivation and evaluation of
AI generated antibodies and offer clients a new route to market, complementary
to our established discovery methods.

 

Mammalian Display, which Fusion has now commercialised and offers to clients,
is the first technology to come from the Company's OptiMAL® R&D
programme. Work continues to progress on the full OptiMAL® Library platform.
In this regard, the Company can report that, following resolution of
substantial technical issues experienced by our supplier, the full DNA Library
required to support OptiMAL® has now been delivered. The Company is taking
this opportunity to increase resources to the R&D programme and accelerate
progress.

 

Fusion Antibodies CEO, Adrian Kinkaid said: "This is an important period for
Fusion as we roll out the end-to-end Integrated Therapeutic Antibody Discovery
Services and augment this by introducing new technologies from our R&D
programmes to create stronger revenue streams in the next financial year and
position the business for a sustained period of growth. It is important for
the business to keep abreast of the constantly developing technologies driving
therapeutic antibody development as the sector strives to bring better drugs
to patients more rapidly. We are particularly enthusiastic about our newly
announced Mammalian Display capabilities being matched so well with the
exciting potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning approaches
to antibody design. When these are harnessed correctly, they are being
heralded as our sector's 'most important innovation since the invention of
phage display."

 

Enquiries:

 

 Fusion Antibodies plc                                 www.fusionantibodies.com
 Adrian Kinkaid, Chief Executive Officer               Via Walbrook PR

 James Fair, Chief Financial Officer

 Allenby Capital Limited                               Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656
 James Reeve/Vivek Bhardwaj (Corporate Finance)

 Tony Quirke (Sales and Corporate Broking)

 Walbrook PR               Tel: +44 (0)20 7933 8780 or fusion@walbrookpr.com
 Anna Dunphy                                           Mob: +44 (0)7876 741 001
 Paul McManus                                          Mob: +44 (0)7980 541 893

 

About Fusion Antibodies plc

 

Fusion is a Belfast based contract research organisation ("CRO") providing a
range of antibody engineering services for the discovery and development of
antibodies for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic applications.

 

The Company's ordinary shares were admitted to trading on AIM on 18 December
2017. Fusion provides a broad range of services in antibody design,
generation, development, production, characterisation and optimisation. These
services include antigen expression, antibody production, purification and
sequencing, antibody humanisation using Fusion's proprietary
CDRx (TM) platform and the production of antibody generating stable cell
lines to provide material for use in clinical trials. Since 2012, the Company
has successfully sequenced and expressed over 250 antibodies and successfully
completed over 200 humanisation projects and has an international, blue-chip
client base, which has included eight of the top 10 global pharmaceutical
companies by revenue.

 

The Company was established in 2001 as a spin out from Queen's University
Belfast. The Company's mission is to enable pharmaceutical and diagnostic
companies to develop innovative products in a timely and cost-effective manner
for the benefit of the global healthcare industry.

 

Fusion Antibodies growth strategy is based on combining the latest
technological advances with cutting edge science to deliver new platforms that
will enable Pharma and Biotech companies get to the clinic faster, with the
optimal drug candidate and ultimately speed up the drug development process.

 

The global monoclonal antibody therapeutics market was valued at $135.4
billion in 2018 and is forecast to surpass $212.6 billion in 2022, an increase
at a CAGR of 12.0 per cent. for the period 2018 to 2022. In 2017, seven of the
world's ten top selling drugs were antibody-based therapeutics with the
combined annual sales of these drugs exceeding $63.2 billion.

 

 

 

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