Fusion Antibodies confident after 'challenging' first half

Contract research organisation Fusion Antibodies reported first-half revenues of £1.9m on Monday, down from £2.4m year-on-year.

The AIM-traded firm said its expenditure on research and development increased 7%, to £0.45m in the six months ended 30 September.

Its loss widened to £1.1m, from £0.6m in the same period last year, while its cash position at period-end shrunk to £1.2m, from £2m at the end of March.

On the operational front, Fusion said it introduced a “new approach” for selling combined services, dubbed ‘integrated therapeutic antibody services’.

The board appointed Adrian Kinkaid as its new chief executive officer in August, and reported “continued successful progress” in the development of the ‘OptiMAL’ library.

Finally, it said a “small number” of projects were being delayed by clients, as they looked for further investment.

“We are re-positioning the company's service offering to best serve our clients in therapeutic antibody drug discovery,” said chief executive officer Adrian Kinkaid.

“Following the restructuring of our commercial team and once again attending in-person conferences this is the right time to re-align our services with client needs.

“By integrating our current discovery, engineering and supply services into one integrated end-to-end service we aim to enhance the client journey with the development of high performing antibodies to their targets.”

Kinkaid said the integrated approach had been trialled with an existing client with “exceptionally good results”, and would be augmented by the new OptiMAL mammalian display technology in due course.

“While this has been a challenging period, the board believes that we can deliver the second-half performance necessary to continue to build shareholder value in the company.”

At 1245 GMT, shares in Fusion Antibodies were down 7.25% at 42.2p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.