Avacta revenue in line with forecasts, but losses mount

Life sciences company Avacta said on Monday that revenue for the year to the end of July grew by around 19% but losses nearly doubled due to a change in accounting policy.

In a pre-close trading update ahead of its preliminary results for the year to the end of July, Avacta said revenue rose to £2.15m from £1.81m, in line with market expectations.

However, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation losses widened to around £4.5m from £2.3m the year before as a result of an accounting policy change. After the fundraising at the beginning of the year to support an in-house therapeutics research and development programme, Avacta will adjust its accounting treatment to expense these R&D costs to be consistent with other companies with therapeutics programmes.

The group said it has made “excellent progress” in developing several Affimer affinity purification systems.

Chief executive officer Dr Alastair Smith said: “We have made good progress in the key areas that we set out at the half year in our detailed strategy for commercialisation of Affimer reagents for research, diagnostics and therapeutics.

“There are a significant number of Affimer technology evaluations now ongoing and we continue to grow the pipeline of such partnerships that will ultimately deliver a stream of "Affimer powered" products to underpin long term revenue growth.”

At 1426 BST, shares were up 0.7% to 85.05p.