Antibody maker Bioventix boost revenue and profit

Clinical diagnostics antibody supplier Bioventix has reported revenue up 31% to £7.2m and pre-tax profit 37% to £5.7m in its audited results for the year ended 30 June 2017.

Profits after tax were £4.9m, 40% up on the 2015/16 figure of £3.5m. Despite an increased dividend distribution, cash balances during the year increased by £0.8m to £6.2m

Bioventix specialises in the development and commercial supply of high-affinity monoclonal antibodies for applications in clinical diagnostics, announces its audited results for the year ended 30 June 2017.

Highlights:

• Revenue up 31% to £7.2m
• Profit before tax up 37% to £5.7m
• Cash up £0.8 million to £6.1m
• Second interim dividend of 31p per share (2016: 26p)
• Special dividend of 40p per share

Business review

The company said its most significant revenue stream comes from the vitamin D antibody called vitD3.5H10. This antibody is used by a number of small, medium and large diagnostic companies around the world for use in vitamin D deficiency testing. Sales of vitD3.5H10 increased by 24% to £2.75m during the year, surpassing expectations.

The company warned that is believed the vitamin D market will plateau in the near future. “Nevertheless, we anticipate a modest further increase in vitamin D antibody sales over the next year as a limited number of smaller customers bring new vitamin D products to the market.”

It said it hoped revenues from a successful partnership with Siemens Healthineers, for its troponin project will help replace about £1m sales that will be lost from the 2017/18 accounts due to the termination of a technology licence.

Many of its “core” antibodies saw increased sales in the year. Quantitatively, these were:

• testosterone: approximately £600k(+12%);
• T3: approximately £500k(+33%);
• drug antibodies: approximately £500k(+50%);
• estradiol: approximately £300k(+30%);
• progesterone: approximately £200k(+51%).

Bioventix  said: “This healthy increase in these core antibodies that are sold to a number of customers in many countries does not have a single explanation over and above the 5%-10% increase in the global diagnostics industry that is reported by third party analysts.

“The drug testing antibody portfolio also features a handful of antibodies to different drugs used by different customers for different applications (e.g. EtG for alcohol testing, THC for cannabis testing). The increase in sales within this group has been accompanied by a significant increase in physical antibody sales in milligrams.”

Future developments

Bioventix said shpments of physical antibody to China continued to increase.  It also said: “Modest contributions towards revenue growth are anticipated to come from androstenedione in the financial year 2018/19 and T4 (thyroxine) in the years following androstenedione.”

Bioventix  has four contract R&D projects where antibodies have already been created and despatched to contract partners for evaluation within their own R&D departments. These projects are in the fields of cancer, thyroid diagnostics, viral diagnostics and a certain vitamin/deficiency.

It said: “They are all of modest potential value but if technically successful, capable of contributing towards revenues into the future.”

Currency

The firm’s revenues continue to be dominated by US dollars and Euros but the company said it had no current plans to institute any hedging mechanisms and therefore any future changes in exchange rates, up or down will impact revenues accordingly.