The boss of Belfast-headquartered Fusion Antibodies says he hopes for better times ahead after a torrid year which saw revenues tumble and venture capital dry up, forcing a restructure which involved laying off staff.
It came as the collaborative research organisation (CRO), founded in 2001 as a spin-out from Queen’s University Belfast, was presenting the London stock market with a year-end trading statement.
It showed that revenues in the 12 months to the end of March more than halved from £2.9 million to £1.14 million, though its cash position improved significantly (it has £1.2m in hand against just £200,000 a year ago).
But the company - a global specialist in pre-clinical antibody discovery, engineering and supply for both therapeutic drug and diagnostic applications - admitted it was presented with “several commercial challenges” during the year.
Most notable was a significant downturn in venture capital investment into biotechnology companies, including therapeutic antibody development programmes, which impacted Fusion’s primary customer type and hit its revenues hard.
Fusion was forced to take steps to meet the challenges presented by the increasing headwinds via a significant restructuring exercise to reduce costs, which included slashing its headcount by more than a third.
But it pointed to a recent improvement in its performance, with February and March being the company’s highest earning months in its last full trading year, which contributed to revenues in the fourth quarter being 47% higher than the first quarter.
This increase in activity towards the end of the financial year has, it says, resulted in a marked increase in its sales opportunity pipeline, and Fusion’s order book at the end of March was £750,000, or around two thirds of its annual revenues.
A fund-raise announced in February also raised £1.37m (before expenses) for general working capital and investment into commercial activities.
“The 2023 calendar year was very challenging for our clients and therefore also for us,” chief executive Adrian Kinkaid said.
“We responded by taking difficult but necessary action while also extending our traction in diagnostics, research antibodies and veterinary medicine markets, and as a result we have secured some excellent new clients.
“These include with global leaders in their respective fields, who are now engaging with us for multiple projects, several of which are being run in parallel.
“Achieving this diversification in client base, combined with a recovery in our core human therapeutic sector, provides a very welcomed improvement in market conditions going forward.”
He added: “We remain optimistic for our prospects and look forward to updating the market further. We continue to be thankful to our shareholders for all their support.”
Fusion begun trading on London’s second-tier AIM stock market in London in December 2017, with an initial placing price of 82p.
Its share price opened on Tuesday at 3.55p, rising to 3.6p before falling back in early trading to 3.19p.
