Ixico confident as full-year revenue, earnings decline

Data analytics company Ixico updated the market on its trading on Friday, confirming that despite a “challenging” business environment, it expected to deliver £8.7m in revenues for the 2021 financial year.

The AIM-traded firm said that would result in EBITDA of around £1.2m, maintaining its EBITDA margin in line with the prior year at 14%.

It said that, following the news of its largest client's decision to cease dosing on its Huntington's Disease phase 3 and open-label extension trials, the board now had further insight on the expected impact of those trials on full-year trading.

The “significant” descope in service requirements on the trials, and the continued impact of Covid-19 on new bookings, were expected to result in a reduced revenue performance compared to the first half of the year, with full-year revenues of £8.7m down from £9.5m year-on-year, and EBITDA of £1.2m falling from £1.3m in the 2020 financial year.

Its directors said that, while the challenges it outlined were continuing to impact it beyond the current financial year, it had grown its pipeline of new opportunities across a “diversified range” of therapeutic neurological indications, with both current and prospective new clients.

As a result, the company's focus was on converting those identified opportunities into signed contracts, while simultaneously delivering its strong order book of £19.5m as at 30 June.

At the same time, the firm said its strong cash position enabled it to continue investing to ensure it could scale and convert the available medium- and long-term market opportunity in the neurological disease clinical trials market.

“Having grown rapidly over recent years, we acknowledge that we are not immune to the industry wide impacts of Covid-19 and the unexpected developments on our largest client's trials,” said chief executive officer Giulio Cerroni.

“Despite these short-term challenges, the resilience that we've built in our business over the last few years continues to enable the delivery of strong profit margins.”

Cerroni said that as clinical trials delayed due to the Covid-19 crisis were initiated, and by ensuring commercial execution of the company’s growing pipeline, it anticipated returning to a double-digit revenue growth trajectory as its 2022 financial year progressed.

“Consequently, we will continue to focus on our clients' needs, and invest appropriately to deliver the medium- and long-term market growth opportunities that are available to us.”

At 1321 BST, shares in Ixico were down 4.11% at 70p.