genedrive plc (LSE: GDR), the near-patient molecular diagnostics company, announces unaudited interim results for the six months to 31 December 2020.
Financial Highlights
· Total revenue and other income of £0.4m (2019: £0.6m) including pathogen detection orders from the US Department of Defense. COVID-19 headwinds continued to impact the Company’s HCV and DoD commercial operations.
· Operating loss of £2.9m (2019: £2.6m)
· All loan notes converted into ordinary shares in the period, leaving the Company debt free
· Finance income of £3.6m (2019: £0.8m costs) on conversion of loan notes, reverting the Company’s position to net assets of £5.3m (30 June 2020: £3.3m net liabilities)
· R&D spend of £2.3m (2019: £2.3m)
· Cash of £3.8m at 31 December 2020 (30 June 2020: £8.2m)
· Cash of £2.8m as of 15 March 2021 with R&D tax credit of £1.0m still owing
Operating Highlights (including post period)
· Cooperation Agreement with Beckman Coulter Life Sciences (“Beckman”) for Genedrive 96 SARS-Cov-2 Kit validation with Beckman extraction chemistry. Moved to commercial distribution agreement into Europe and USA post period end with first Beckman purchases (circa $400k) in February 2021
· Significant opportunity with European MoH remains active and ongoing and, if successful, could be low double-digit millions of pounds in revenue
· COVID-19 headwinds continued to impact the Company’s HCV and DoD commercial operations
· AIHL test, the Genedrive®MT-RNR1 ID kit completed implementation studies in Manchester and Liverpool Hospitals. Product on track for summer 2021 commercial launch with good Key Opinion Leader engagement.
· Regulatory approvals for the 96 SARS-CoV-2 kit still outstanding with WHO and FDA. Timings are uncertain.
· New commercial partnership with Mountain Horse Solutions to provide better access to DoD
· Point of Care (“POC”) COVID-19 test still under development and timelines extended to maintain important product differentiation characteristics including rapid test results, full biosafety to users, and extraction free chemistry
David Budd, CEO of genedrive plc, commented:
During 2020 the Company’s development focus moved to the global COVID PCR testing opportunity. While commercial progress has been slowed by registration requirements, the Company made great strides in the development of our COVID test portfolio, POC test platform development, scalable manufacturing capability, and a commercial distribution arrangement with Beckman Coulter that has the potential to be significant and lang-term. Much of our focus has shifted away from low and middle income markets to more western markets with DoD, AIHL, and COVID, driven by the market dynamics and restrictions of travel. These markets however work under standard commercial terms and cycles, and offer more predictable, and often higher margin commercial opportunities, and we anticipate this focus will remain for the foreseeable future.”
genedrive plc
+44 (0)161 989 0245
David Budd: CEO / Matthew Fowler: CFO
About genedrive plc ( http://www.genedriveplc.com )
genedrive plc is a molecular diagnostics company developing and commercialising a low cost, rapid, versatile, simple to use and robust point of need molecular diagnostics platform for the diagnosis of infectious diseases and for use in patient stratification (genotyping), pathogen detection and other indications. The Company has assays on market for the detection of HCV, certain military biological targets, and has tests in development for tuberculosis (mTB). The Company recently released a high throughput SARS-CoV-2 assay and has in development a Genedrive® Point of Care version of the assay, both based on Genedrive® chemistry.
Full update http://www.share-talk.co.uk/announcements/rns/genedrive-plc/half-year-report/202103250700054065T
