REG - Fusion Antibodies - Trading update

Fusion AntibodiesAnnouncement

06/05/2025 07:00

For best results when printing this announcement, please click on link below:
https://newsfile.refinitiv.com/getnewsfile/v1/story?guid=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20250506:nRSF3339Ha&default-theme=true

RNS Number : 3339H  Fusion Antibodies PLC  06 May 2025

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to
constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse (amendment)
(EU Exit) Regulations 2019/310 ("MAR"). With the publication of this
announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is
now considered to be in the public domain.

 

 

Fusion Antibodies plc

("Fusion" or the "Company")

 

Year-end trading statement

 

Fusion Antibodies plc (AIM: FAB), specialists in pre-clinical antibody
discovery, engineering and supply for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic
applications, provides an unaudited trading update for the financial year
ended 31 March 2025 ("FY2025").

 

Highlights

 

·    Unaudited revenues for FY2025 of £1.96m (FY2024: £1.14m).

 

·    Achievements in the second half of FY2025 included:

 

o  Future Medicines Institute ("FMI") grant funding was announced on 4
December 2024 providing access to approximately £1m of direct non-dilutive
funding for the Company and access to other FMI assets including facilities
and staff and access to up to £5m of new capital equipment;

 

o  Further purchase orders received under a master services agreement ("MSA")
with a leading diagnostics company;

 

o  Cell line development project received with a US based biotechnology
client announced on 27 February 2025;

 

o  Positive momentum in the ongoing collaboration agreement with the National
Cancer Institute ("NCI"):

 

§ The collaboration agreement was extended to include the humanisation by
Fusion of several of the NCI's existing camelid nanobodies;

 

§ Receipt of positive cells ("hits") from the NCI for the use of OptiMAL®;

 

§ The Company reproduced the evaluation of the initial hits confirming their
positive nature with regard to the OptiMAL® platform; and

 

§ The resynthesis of OptiMAL® antibodies encoded by DNA from hit cells,
which  has shown positive binding in multiple established assay formats.
Validation work is continuing.

 

·    Equity fundraise announced on 18 March 2025, raising approximately
£1.17m (before expenses) for additional research and development ("R&D")
work primarily related to the validation of the hits from the studies with the
NCI, general working capital and to invest into commercial activities,
especially to support OptiMAL® should the validation prove successful.

 

·    Cash position as at 31 March 2025 of £0.4m* (31 March 2024: £1.2m).

 

*£0.57 million of the 18 March 2025 placing proceeds, as well as the initial
FMI grant payment, were received after the period end and are therefore not
reflected in this figure.

 

While the broader economic environment continued to present Fusion with
headwinds in FY2025, the Company's new commercial strategy delivered a
positive outcome with unaudited revenues for FY2025 of £1.96m. This is
broadly in line with consensus market expectations and represents a 71%
increase on the previous financial year.

 

The significant growth seen in the Diagnostics sector was particularly
pleasing, along with the increasing interest from early-stage smaller-scale
prospects in the Veterinary sector, which suggests that there is potential for
further growth in this sector. Moreover, the approval of the FMI grant is both
positive in terms of non-dilutive cash income for the Company but is also an
acknowledgement of our scientific experience being recognised independently as
well as being viewed as strong and valuable.

 

While we are very encouraged by the turnaround in revenue in FY2025, we must
remain cognisant of recent challenging market conditions, most notably the
downturn in venture capital investment into biotechnology companies that was
seen in FY2024, which appears to now be easing slowly. This has continued to
affect a significant proportion of the Company's prospective client base. This
also affected their projects for therapeutic antibody development programmes
which is Fusion's current primary customer type.

 

The Company has since taken steps to overcome the aforementioned challenges.
For example, through focused business development activities targeting
Diagnostics, Veterinary Medicine and Research Antibody markets, the Company
has made the sales pipeline more resilient with less exposure to individual
sectors.

 

In addition, scientific attrition, caused by the natural risk in the
development of highly sophisticated targeted biological systems, also impacted
the business with some pipeline projects yet to convert and other projects
being received later than originally anticipated. In one instance, a project,
details of which were announced on 6 February 2024, was paused part way
through the project. Fusion understands that it has may now have been entirely
stopped. Accordingly, the Company does not anticipate recognising all the
project's full revenue potential, although US$293k has been recognised to
date.  This type of scientific attrition is an ever-present risk faced by
Fusion's clients and in no way reflects poorly on the Company but rather
reflects the inherent challenges of harnessing biology to fight disease. The
Company continues to work with the client on other projects which were
unaffected.

 

FMI

 

The establishment of the FMI in Belfast as part of a multi-million grant
initiative was announced by the Company on 4 December 2024. The Company plays
a central part in the consortium behind this project and stands to benefit in
many ways, including through direct non-dilutive funding, access to up to £5m
of capital equipment, access to the FMI laboratories at Queen's University
Belfast as well as the 20 expert FMI staff and a similar number of PhD
students.

 

The FMI project has been brilliantly designed and coordinated by the lead
applicants to support platform development in diagnostics and therapeutics and
so maps very closely to the ambitions of the Company. Specifically, this grant
allows Fusion to allocate more resources to the R&D of our platform
technologies whilst contributing to the labour and consumables costs of this
effort. The initial draw down payment available to Fusion from this grant was
received on 2 May 2025 and is therefore not reflected in the year end cash
position.

 

OptiMAL® validation project

 

Positive progress has been made on the Company's OptiMAL® validation project
with the NCI. Fusion received positive hits from the NCI for the use of
OptiMAL® in the discovery of novel antibodies against targets selected by
NCI. The Company has since sequenced the relevant DNA from those cells, which
codes for the expressed antibody, and has resynthesized the antibody through
an independent transient gene expression process. The resynthesized antibody
has been shown to bind to the target protein in two separate assay formats.
Further work is ongoing.

 

Other exciting developments achieved in FY2025 included:

 

·    securing a substantial cell line development project under a
collaborative R&D agreement with a US based biotechnology company;

 

·    the receipt of further purchase orders under the MSA with a leading
diagnostics company; and

 

·    our first OptiPhage(TM) contract, whereby Fusion designed a phage
display library using the diversity principles behind the OptiMAL® library.
The client has an option to license the library on an exclusive basis.

 

The board of directors of Fusion (the "Board" or the "Directors") believe that
the above developments provide strong evidence that the Company's
diversification strategy, together with the recovering economic climate,
provides confidence for continued growth into FY2026. However, we remain
conscious that the market is not yet fully recovered and, whilst tariffs do
not normally apply to service-based transactions which constitute the vast
bulk of Fusion's revenues, additional macro-economic and political factors may
also have an impact on the overall marketplace.

 

To support Fusion's new commercial and sales strategy, the Company
successfully raised approximately £1.17m in March 2025. The Placing was very
well supported by existing institutional investors and VCT funds. The issue
price of the Placing was not discounted and represented approximately the
prevailing share price of an ordinary share at the time. The Company has since
begun to apply the proceeds towards increasing its R&D activities
supporting the OptiMAL® validation and positioning for a commercial launch in
the future.

 

The Company's cash position as at 31 March 2025 was £0.4 million, with £0.57
million from the March fundraise and the initial FMI grant payment being
received after the period end and therefore not reflected in this figure.
This, with the expected grant monies still to be received, positions the
Company well considering the current economic environment and the additional
activities described above.

 

Adrian Kinkaid, CEO of Fusion, commented: "It is a testament to all our
staff, from the bench to the Board, that we have effectively and efficiently
guided the Company through some very challenging times for the industry, met
our revenue targets and have securely positioned the Company on a sound
footing for growth.

 

"We believe that recovery and growth will continue into FY2026 and beyond. Our
diversification strategy to target adjacent markets such as the Diagnostics
sector has proven to be effective, and we will continue to address these
additional markets as well as our core markets in order to grow the business
beyond its previous boundaries and do so through all three of our primary
offerings: Discovery, Engineering and Supply.

 

"Our R&D efforts have played an important part in our recovery with
technological developments such as Fusion's proprietary Mammalian Display and
OptiPhage(TM) being derived from our flagship OptiMAL® research project. The
OptiMAL® platform itself has the potential to markedly change our traction in
the therapeutics space, particularly with larger pharmaceutical and biotech
clients, so it is particularly pleasing to be able to report on the positive
progress made to date. We intend to commit further resources to this important
platform now that we have the additional funds to do so, while continuing to
manage capital in a cautious and conservative manner."

 

InvestorHub

We encourage all investors to share questions on this announcement via our
investor hub. You can view it here:
https://investorhub.fusionantibodies.com/link/YeNjZe
(https://investorhub.fusionantibodies.com/link/YeNjZe)

 

Enquiries:

 

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

 Stephen Smyth, Chief Financial Officer

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

 Tony Quirke/Joscelin Pinnington (Sales and Corporate Broking)

 Shard Capital Partners LLP
 Damon Heath (Joint Broker)                                          Tel: +44 (0) 207 186 9952

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

 

 

About Fusion Antibodies plc

 

Fusion is a Belfast based contract research organisation ("CRO") providing a
range of antibody engineering services for the 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 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 provides
a broad range of services in antibody generation, development, production,
characterisation and optimisation.

 

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.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact
rns@lseg.com (mailto:rns@lseg.com)
 or visit
www.rns.com (http://www.rns.com/)
.

RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services. For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange use the personal data you provide us, please see our
Privacy Policy (https://www.lseg.com/privacy-and-cookie-policy)
.   END  TSTUOOKRVKUVRRR