Creo Medical ends year 'marginally ahead' of forecasts

The AIM-traded firm said its net cash position as at 31 December was in excess of £45m.

In its trading update, it said that during the year it demonstrated commercial progress with the “transformational” acquisitions of Albyn Medical and Boucart Medical.

The board said the acquisitions provided the company with a direct sales presence in Europe to facilitate the roll-out of its CE-marked advanced energy devices, and strengthen its European Union and UK commercial teams.

It added that the integration of those businesses had performed in line with its expectations.

In addition, Creo had grown its commercial team organically, with David Woods, previously a non-executive director of Creo and former president and chief executive officer of Pentax Americas, joined the company full time as chief commercial officer.

Following his appointment, the board said Woods had built an experienced team in the United States and Asia-Pacific regions, providing it with greater access to those “important” markets.

It said that additional strength, together with the European acquisitions, allowed it to move from a distributor model to a direct and directly-managed sales approach globally.

At the beginning of 2020, the company had a team of 91 people based almost exclusively in the UK, and by the end of the year it had more than doubled the size of its team, with a tenfold increase in its commercial, marketing and distribution resource and a presence across five European countries, four regions of the US and a centralised hub in Asia-Paciufic.

The board said that additional headcount and global presence provided “resilience” and global capability to develop sales across a range of products, primarily in gastrointestinal, but with business also in pulmonary and urology markets.

Creo said it made “good progress” ahead of plan on the regulatory front, noting that during the year it successfully CE-marked an additional five devices, achieved US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510k clearance for its tissue ablation device ‘MicroBlate Fine’, and in December reported the first clinical use of MicroBlate Fine in a successful pancreatic tumour ablation.

Following year-end, in January FDA 510k clearance was achieved for a fourth product, ‘MicroBlate Flex’.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic continuing to create uncertainty worldwide, Creo said it had delivered “exceptional results” across a number of fronts, including building a global commercial team, finding innovative ways to train clinicians, and delivering revenue ahead of its expectations.

Looking at 2021, it said that it was expecting to build on its current momentum and commercial infrastructure to generate increasing revenues, develop wider commercial opportunities and take further steps towards commercialisation.

Its immediate focus was to deliver clinical outcomes for all devices, while it also intended to explore possible applications for its ‘Kamaptive’ technology in the adjacent fields of laparoscopic and robotic-assisted surgery, with third party partners.

“Despite Covid-19 having a short-term impact on the business, the last 12 months has been a period of transformational change for the company,” said chief executive officer Craig Gulliford.

“In addition to stepping up to provide our own Covid response in local communities, we have gained further CE marks and FDA regulatory approvals for our devices, organically grown talent and completed the acquisitions of Albyn Medical and Boucart Medical.”

Gulliford said the “regionalised nature” of the group's business was hedging against pandemic-related travel restrictions.

“With the roll out of Covid-19 vaccines underway, we look forward to realising our goals this year and beyond.”

At 0829 GMT, shares in Creo Medical were up 4.86% at 226.5p.